S.A.Pletneva KIPCHAKSISBN 5-02-009542-7 © Publishing house " Science ", 1990 Appelatives: Kipchaks, Qipchaq, Qifjaq, Xifjaq, Kimchag, Kimcha'ud, Kuchak, Kyfchak, Kimaks, Kibi, Kukiji, Kujshe, Kuche, Kyueshe, Kushi, Kushu, Kuchuk, Cumans, Quman, Comani, Kumandy, Kun-ok, Kun, Kangli, Kengeres, Qangli, Seyanto, Sirs, Tele, Falven, Falones, Val(e)we(n,) Phalagi, Skythicon, Sakaliba, Khartesh, Рlаvсi, Рlаwсу, Рlаuсi, Рlаwci, Раlусz(оk), Polovetsy, Polovtsy, Polowtzi, and other variations Subdivisions and ethnic affiliates XXX, and other variations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Links | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreword to the Selected Quotations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Page numbers of the original are shown in blue. The translation replaces Russian-specific terminology with generally accepted English terms used in the literature, thus avoiding repetition of various distortions found in the Middle Age Rus annals and notoriously carried over into the present Russian publications, like using "Torks" for "Oguz Türks", "Pecheneg" for "Bajanak", and "Polovetses" indiscriminately for "Kumans" and "Kipchaks". This rendition also helps to eliminate terminological puzzles. Like the term "Polovetses" used indiscriminately in the Rus annals for "Kumans" and for "Kipchaks", the author does not discriminate between the Rus and the Russian periods of the history, calling "Russian" most of the subjects from the time when Russia did not exist yet, and because in the literature it is conventionally termed "Rus", this term "Rus" is used in the present translation where appropriate. The author uses indiscriminately the Türkic word "ordu", army (Engl. "Horde") for the whole population of a tribe, a group of clans, or for one clan, and also as a synonym for "they" vs "us", as a faceless crowd; this term is rendered by its English synonym "horde" when it is not semantically grossly misleading. The author's mindset, like the Russian historiography as a whole, equates the terms "Slavs", "Rus-Ruses", and "Russian", thus projecting the traits of the native populations into the Russian-Rus-Ruses-Slavs canvas, and confusing the political control of the Rus princes with the ethnic composition, and with the religious composition of the populace. Another misleading notion of the Russian historiography is to aggrandize the territories inhabited by just subjugated tributors into "Rus Land", pretending that there are "borders" between the subjugated tribes and the other native population, when in fact the tribute-demanding area was mostly limited by the river boundaries and extended only as far as the pretender's ability to collect. The author, against factual situation, follows the Russian imperial position bundling together the Tengrian, Christian, Manichean, Buddhist and Judaic religions of the ingenuous population as paganism, while the Rus i.e. Slavs are pure Christians, contrasting the two worlds as was projected backwards in the 17th c. When helpful, the author's initial Russian term is shown in parenthesis. The author's notes are given in normal font, and the Translator's Notes are in (blue italics and parenthesis), or are in blue boxes. The English rendition of the extensive citation of the work is much simplified, with many details omitted and much reduced references, but with an eye to preserving the facts and evidence of the original work. The author, S.A.Pletneva, is a venerable, outstanding scientist doing an honest work, a feat not too frequently met in the Russian politicized humanities field, she frequently uses language appropriate for the subject, not lowering herself to the version of the present Russian scientific language cleansed from its inherent Türkisms, and having addressed Alans twenty five times in her book, not once did S.A.Pletneva used the title "Iranian-Speaking" mandatory applied to Alans, like in the Soviet epoch was the title "President" applied to "Brezhnev", or neither did she invoke the also mandatory Scytho-Ossetian faux. Nowadays the name of S.A.Pletneva is so firmly associated with the archeological studies of the N.Pontic that no author writing about the E. European history can do without citing and deferring to her works. Without even stipulating her position, in contrast with the revelations usually heralded by the Indo-Iranists, S.A.Pletneva does not get at all into the Indo-Iranian type of quasi-scientific fishing, but instead in an inconspicuous footnote quietly etymologizes the Türkic names of the Bajanak Khans, and on the maps she supplies the unheard of in the Russian academic works Türkic toponyms that were cited by Herodotus and lasted, at least some of them, into the present. Though the historiography of the book is highly questionable, the archeological content is invaluable, and the tell-tale attributes revealed by S.A.Pletneva present an outstanding achievement toward completing the task for which a generation of Soviet archeologists paid with theirs and their family's lives. This ability to be factual is the best and lasting honor that the author can endow herself. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mini Glossary | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ail = village, extended family | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| S.A.Pletneva | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The book is devoted to the history of one of the most known and powerful Türkic-speaking ethnoses of the Middle Ages epoch, the Kipchaks, called Polovetses by Rus chroniclers. In the Arabian and Persian compositions they were called Kipchaks, and in the Byzantian and Latin compositions they were called Kumans. The author examines written sources and archeological materials about this ethnic formation, raises and quite often solves in a new way many questions of the origin, economic and social relations, ideology and political history of this people. Their Rus contemporaries in the 11th-13th centuries called them Kipchaks. Byzantines, and after them all Western Europe called this people Kumans. The eastern hordes of this ethnos were coaching east of Itil and Urals steppes, up to Irtysh, were called Kipchaks. Under that name they entered the pages of the Arabian and Persian manuscripts. The Chinese transcribed the word "Kipchak" by two hieroglyphs: "Tsyn-cha". The Chinese chroniclers knew the Tsyn-cha in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, but Byzantines and Rus met them 1300 years later. in the 11th-12th centuries. In that long time the Kipchaks went through periods of glory, military successes, economic rises, and the periods of bad falls, when the chroniclers and travelers of all countries and nations ceased mentioning them. Nevertheless we can confidently tell that the general tendency of thr Kipchak society before the Mongolian invasion in the beginning of the 13th century was a tendency of development: from a small tribe, slightly mentioned in the Chinese chronicle, by the beginning of the second millennium they turned into a strong, powerful and numerous ethnic formation, with the political influence and military potential of which had to be reckoned by the aging Byzantium and incipient Rus. The complex, multifaceted history of the Kipchaks, naturally, frequently drew the attention of scientists. P.V.Golubovsky, second half of the 19th century, "Badjanks, Türks and Kipchaks before invasion of Tatars", printed in Kiev in 1883. I.Markvart, ca. 1900, German Türkologist "Ober das Volkstum der Komanen", some Markvart's positions on the early history of Kipchaks and now have not lost their scientific value. D.A.Rasovsky, the beginning of the 1930es, "Sermnariuni Kondakovianum", Prague, and brilliant articles devoted to the history of the nomads of the Eastern European steppes, synchronous and interacting with Kipchaks (Badjanks, Türks, Kara Kalpak union, etc.). After these works it became clear, that rather new data, the new facts can be received only by developing one more source, which until then was not used at all by the scientists. This source were archeological materials. Their accumulation began in the end of the 19th century. A mass excavation of nomadic kurgans was undertaken by the general-lieutenant N.E.Bravdenburg in Cherkass area (in the Ros area), and by one of the most active Russiann archeologists B. A.Gorodtsov on the banks of the Severski Donets and Don, started a collection of nomadic (including Kipchak's) antiquities of the Eastern Europe. A.A.Spitsyn suggested that the burials excavated by Brandenburg should be connected with Badjanks, Türks and Berendeys, located by the Rus annals in the river Ros area. The remarkable archeological intuition peculiar to Spitsyn, and deep knowledge of the material allowed him to correctly date these burials by the 11th - the beginning of the 13th century. Gorodtsov divided into the ethnic groups the kurgans excavated by him in the basin of Severski Donets. He was the first who allocated precisely the features of the Kipchak's funeral ceremony: kurgan kurgans with stone, tombs with timber roofs, eastern orientation of the diseased. Fedorov-Davidov's monograph "Nomads of the Eastern Europe under the authority of the Altyn Ordu Khans" is a complete report of all nomadic antiquities, in which he divides them into four chronological groups: 1st belongs to the 9th-11th centuries and is linked with Badjanks and Türks; 2nd belongs to the end of the 11th-12th centuries, the first period of the Kipchak's domination in the steppes; 3rd belongs to the pre-Mongolian period of the Kipchak's domination; 4th belongs to the 13th - 14th centuries Kipchak Khanaate period. Each group has a number of the burial types, and that gives Fedorov-Davidov a basis to stipulate that it is impossible to discern the ethnic definition of each type: their mixture in any chronological period is too commingled. However with the general propriety of that division of the material, each period has a typical prevalence of one type ceremony, or the funeral ceremony has new features traceable in other territories in the earlier, and sometimes also in the synchronous burials. Obviously, a connection of a ceremony with a certain ethnos undoubtedly existed. At present it only develops, and in the future with further accumulation of the material and its processing these connections will come to light more clearly. In the last two decades (i.e. 1970-1990) the update of source base is conducted rather actively, as the excavations of the steppe archeological monuments, kurgans of different epochs including medieval, is annually done by tens of new construction expeditions. Now is starting a new stage of understanding the found up materials, which, in due course will end up with a monographic summary. A much greater unity and clearness achieved the archeologists in the ethnic, and in particular the Kipchak's stone sculptures (balbals), today they are a most characteristic accessory in the museum collections of the southern steppe cities of in the Ukraine and Russia. At the time tens of thousand sculptures stood in groups or alone on all elevated, visible from afar points of the steppe. The Russian ploughmen in the 17th-18th centuries ploughed the virgin lands and a widespread construction led to a mass destruction of these works of art. By the 20th century almost none of them remained in the Dniepr-Don interfluvial, the main territory of their distribution. Countess P.S.Uvarova, an archeologist and philanthropist, started a fight for their preservation. She asked the governors of the southern provinces to organize a census of the statues. This great source for study of the statues and their distribution in the steppes is kept now in the GIM. At the same time at the end of the 19th - the first decades of the 20th century, started to be created extensive museum collections of the steppe statuary. For a long time, during all of the 19th century, the stone statues were attributed to a variety of peoples who lived in the teppes: Scythians, Huns, to Goths, Bulgars, Finns, Slavs, Ugrs, Tatars, Nogays and even to Slavic migrants. The first researcher who resolutely stated that they are left by the Kipchaks, and tried to prove his hypothesis, was I.Veselovsky. After publications of his work in the 1915 the majority of scientists unconditionally recognized them as Kipchak's. The material was not specifically canvassed. Only in 1974 was published my book "Kipchak's stone sculptures" where all largest museum collections of statues (1322 originals) were investigated whenever possible. In addition to the publication of statues (catalogue), the work attempted to make it a historical source for future historical studies. A big attention is paid to Kipchaks in the works of the historians for the history of the pre-Mongolian Rus. Especially big place occupy the sections about them in B.A.Rybakov's books. Essential role in the research of the Kipchak history and culture played the abundance of monographs and articles addressing the "Tale of Igor's Campain". There with especial thoroughness are examined the questions of mutual relations between the Kipchaks and Rus: language, cultural, political and so forth. Thus, the Kipchak's subjects are traditional for the Russian historical science. Noteworthy is that in the beginning of the 70es, not without the influence of the "flashed" and spread in the previous decade interest to the Kipchaks and other so-called late nomads, in Romania were published two good books of Peter Diakonu about Badjanks and Kipchaks in the Danube basin.
In the same 70es and in the beginning of the 80es activated the research of not only the western Kipchak's, but also the eastern Kipchak antiquities and monuments in the Irtysh area and Itil-Ural interfluvial. In the 1972 was published extremely useful and informative book of B.E.Kumekov "Kimak State of the 9th-11th centuries in the Arabian sources", where the author sums up more than a century of studies of this people, and also examines anew many sources, and gives an expressive and full picture of the Kumaks' and Kipchaks' life up before and partially after their migration to the West to the N.Pontic steppes. So, even a most cursory review of the literature about Kipchaks that mentioned only the most important monographic works testifies that this theme is not forgotten in neither Western, nor Russian, nor the Soviet scientists (in other words, "don't kill me for being a maverick, I am only threading the established paths", but fortunately this is not true at all). This book is a first attempt of a popular rendition, and occasional first generalization of the accumulated in the last hundred years observations, materials and conclusions for various moments of the Kipchak history, geography, economy and culture. The book introduced some new materials and facts, it express new ideas and hypotheses for some topics. Apparently, they will be interesting but only for a general reader for whom this book is intended, but also to the history experts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chapter 1. Bosnians (Slav. "Pecheneges") | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| At the end of the 9th century the Khazarian Kaganate, torn apart by internal problems and religious upheaval, lost its recent absolute power, its glory of invincible power won by rivers of blood. The neighboring peoples begun to agitate, one after another began leaving the tribes and the tribal unions of the Khazarian confederation who used to pay a tribute to the Kagan. In the Eastern European steppes at that time formed a new nomadic union, Badjanks (in the Latin and Byzantian literature they were called Patsinaks or Pachinaks, in the Arabian literature they were called Badjnak).
It was headed by the descendents of the political union Kangüy. The new association received a new name.
The origin of a word "Badjank" ("Becheneg") has differing opinions. One of them is rather probable: from the Türkic name Beche, apparently a first leader of the Badjanak's tribal union. Like all nomadic associations, Badjanks were multi-ethnic and multi-lingual union: besides Türkic-speaking hordes, they could also have some Ugrian groups.
In the first decades of their existence the Badjanak's hordes pastured in the steppes on the eastern bank of Itil. There began the formation of both political structure, and the Badjanak's ethnos with a common material culture.
Squizzed in the steppes east of Itil between considerably stronger neighbors - Oguses (Uzes in the original), Kipchaks, Magyars and the Khazarian Kaganate, having felt the weakening of the last, they rushed to the western fringes of their pastures. The Khazars tried to stop the movement of the Badjanak's hordes
9 The (Khazarian) Kagan concluded a union with Oguses, hoping that the allied forces would crush the unexpected aggressors. However, the result of this agreement turned out completely the opposite. The Oguzes, according to the Byzantian historian emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, "joined battle with the Pechenegs and prevailed over them and expelled them from their country...". "And the Pachjinaks, - he writes,- fled and wandered round, casting about for a place for their settlemen" (Constantine Porphyrogenitus, p. 155). The Badjanks' path in the seized lands at the end of the 9th - first decade of the 10th century was marked by big fires, destruction of the overwhelming majority of steppe and forest-steppe settlements, castles and even cities (on the Taman peninsula). This relatively short period of Badjanks' advancement to the west found, from our point of view, a reflection in the Persian geographical work "Borders of the world", by an unknown author, apparently in beginning of the 10th century. It tells about two branches of Badjanks: Türkic and Khazarian. The geographical position of the Türkic Badjanks is described as follows: "The east of their country borders on Oguzes, south of them are Burtases and Baradases, west of them are Magyars and Rus, north of them is the river Ruta".
The description is, like all Arabian and Persian studies of the Eastern Europe, not clear. Nevertheless the pastures of the Türkic Badjanks can be determined, with larger or smaller probability, in the Dnieper-Don interfluvial. The name "Türkic" these Badjanks received from the most fearful and dangerous to them in those decades neighbor, the Oguz Türks (interestingly, the Ruses also later began to call Oguzes Türks (Torks)). West of them were the possessions of the Magyars - Hungarians and Rus. The Rus was to the north of the Badjanak's main direction aimed at capture of the steppe pastures. Therefore Badjanks faced the Rus later.
In the beginning they struck the Hungarians who were living then in Dniestr-Dnieper steppe interfluvial, called Atelkuzu (Ata+el+kuju = Father+land+people, i.e. akin to Fatherland, the Hunnish motherland well known into the 15-th c. O.Pritsak: "literature concerning Atelküzü (Gr. Atelkouzou) is given by Gy. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, ii (Berlin, 1958), p. 77, and Gy. Moravcsik in De Administrando Imperio, ii (London, 1962), p. 148"). For that they first of all concluded an alliance with the Danube Bulgarian King Simeon (aka Shamgun, 893-927) who, naturally, wished to destroy such a dangerous neighbor as the Hungarians. Taking advantage when the main forces of the Hungarians set out to a campaign, Badjanks broke into their country and completely exterminated, as writes Constantine Porphyrogenitus, their families and purged the guards left to protect the land. The Hungarians returning from the campaign found their land "emptied and destroyed", and besides occupied by ferocious enemies. Ascertaining that they could not hold on to their land any more, the Hungarians turned to the west. However their first impulse was to capture the nearest to the Atelkuzu territories, the forest-steppe lands on Rus border. That happened in the 898 briefly recorded in the Rus annals mentioning tabor (mobile fortification of military carts encircling the camp) next to the Kyiv hill on the bank of the Dnieper. Apparently, they tried to settle there, but were met extremely unfriendly by the Rus border regiments and consequently, without stopping any more and not without entering any battles, proceeded over the Carpathian mountains into the Danube area. There, as testified by the (Rus) chronicler, they "started fighting" and, achieving a victory, settled in the rich Pannonian lands.
The Badjanks' victory made them the masters of the Dnieper, Donetsk and Don steppes reaching the Itil. The second section of the Badjanks, named by the Persian Anonym "Khazarian", was coaching in the lands to the east of which were the "Khazarian mountains, south of them were Alans, to the west was the Gurz Sea, in the north of them were Mirvats" (Hudud-al-Alam, p. 160). We see, that the information about this branch is even more uncertain than about the Türkic segment. The only clear reference is the Alans, who lived, as it is known, in the Caucasus foothills. The Sea, mentioned in the citation fragment, apparently is the Azov Sea (and a part of the Black Sea), and the mountains are the hills running along the Kuma - Manych depression. Who was named by the Anonym Mirvats, remains obscure. Nevertheless the provisional site of the Khazarian Badjanks' land all the same can be established as a steppe interfluvial of the Lower Don and Kuban rivers. The archeological research of some seaside settlements testify that many of them, particularly such a big city as Bandja (Phanagoria, named Fanagoriya by the author), were destructed at the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th century.
11 The sources tell us about one more group of Badjanks who lived in the area east of Itil. Passing through the steppes east of Itil in the beginning of the 10th century (i.e. in 922), Ahmed Ibn Fadlan met there Badjanks coaching near the water, that "looked like a sea". Seemingly, he meant the salty lake Chelkar located in the center of the east of Itil lands. Talking about them, Ibn Fadlan writes: "they are dark brunettes with completely shaved beards, and are poor comparing to Oguzes...". Apparently, these were those Badjanks that did not follow to the West together with the main nucleus of the Badjanak's tribal union, and remained in the former pastures, submitting to Oguzes. About these Badjanks also wrote in detail Constantine Porphyrogenitus: "At the time when the Pachinakits were expelled from their country, some of them of their own will and personal decision stayed behind there and united with the so-called Uzes, and even to this day they live among them, and wear such distinguishing marks as separate them off and betray their origin and how clan about that they were split off from their own folk: for their tunics are short, reaching to the knee, and their sleeves are cut off at the shoulder, whereby, you see, they indicate that they have been cut off from their own folk and those of their race". It was most passive and poor part of the Badjanks. Remaining in their former pastures, they, naturally, have submitted to the Oguzes, joined their union and had no independent value any more, and were not mentioned in the other sources. By the middle of the 10c. Badjanks took over enormous steppe territories from Itil to the Danube. About the political geography of the Badjanak's land, about location there of separate Badjanak's hordes, or femas, narrates in detail the same Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The matter is that the Badjanks at that time played in the history of the eastern and central European peoples and countries, and in the history of the Byzantium, extremely visible role. By that, they constantly attracted attention of the Byzantian politicians, who were counting upon them in their plans of the struggle against the states surrounding them of the Bolgars, Hungarians, Khazars, Ruses. Significantly, Constantine begins his composition, an instruction to his son titled "De Administrando Imperio", with the chapters describing the relations of all their neighboring peoples with the Badjanks, with their significant dependence on the Badjanks who are plundering their peaceful settlements, with them interfering in trade, with them extorting repayments and payoffs. Especially suffered from them the Hungarians and Bulgars, who were "repeatedly defeated and plundered by them and learned from experience that it is better and favourable to always be in peace with Pachinakits". After a general characteristic of the "international situation" complicated by the Badjanks, Constantine moves to the description of the "Pachinakia" itself, thanks to which we now have a clear picture of the Badjank location during the high time of their greatest power. He wrote that the country of Badjanks is divided into eight femas. The fema Tsur (or Kuartsitsur), Kulpei (Sirukalpeis), Talmat (Borotalmat), Tsopon (Vulatsopon) are located east from the Dnieper and down to Itil. One of the Jewish authors, namely Joseph bei-Gorion, who also wrote his composition in the 10th century, tells that the tribe Tilmats coached along Itil. Apparently, we can quite compare this name to the fema Talmat named by Constantine. Specifying further the location of the eastern group of the Badjanks, Constantine wrote that their neighbors of were Uzia and Khazaria, the distance from which was five days of travel (about 200 kms), Alania which lands were six days of travel from the pastures of Badjanks, and Mordia (Mordva), at a distance of 10 days travel. The other four femas are: Chopon (Giazichopon) is "neighboring" with Danube Bulgaria, half-day of travel from its borders (15-20 kms); Gila is close to Hungary at a distance of four days travel: Charavon are coaching one day travel from the southern border of Rus, and Irtim (Iavdiertim) is "neighboring" the Rus tributor districts, the Oultines and Dervlenines and Lenzenines and the rest of the Slavs". Now we know well where lived one of the Slavic tribes named by Constantine, the Dervlenines-Drevlyans: in the interfluvial of the Dnieper and Bug, on the southern bank of the Pripyat and its tributaries down to the border with the steppe. Apparently, to the south of this border in the steppes coached Irtim horde. Constantine also repeatedly emphasized that Badjanks are very close to Kherson, "and even closer to the Bospor", which, apparently, means that their pastures were somewhere in the east coast of the Azov Sea and on the Taman peninsula.
The depiction by Constantine Porphirogenesus is the fullest and most detailed description of the location of Badjanks in the Eastern European steppes in middle of the 10th century. It is interesting, that the Khazarian Kagan Joseph who wrote a letter to Hasdai ibn Shafrut, at the same time tried to gloss over the Badjanks, without mentioning that they actually captured all the territory of the Kaganate, and settled there, densely surrounding with a hostile half circle the domain of the Kagan himself. Joseph allocated to them only the former Atelkuzu, placing their pastures between the Dnieper and Danube. And the Kagan also contrived, telling that all Badjanks pay him a tribute. However, the boastful refrain about a tribute paid to him by all neighboring peoples, sounds from him after each mentioning of these peoples and countries. And it is natural, as only the grandfather of Joseph ruled a really powerful state with many subordinated peoples. To reconcile with the loss of this power was difficult for Joseph, especially to admit it in the information letter about his state. However to hold back story about Badjanks who dealt to Khazaria a first crushing blow he could not, as the news about their invasion already reached Spain where lived Hasdaj ibn Shafrut, a Spanish Jew and ranking noble of the Arabian (Cordovian) Caliph. This is evidenced by the "Song about Roland" that mentioned the "hordes of wild Badjanks". Clearly, they were known in Spain, and in France, and in the German princedoms. Nevertheless, Joseph minimized as much as he could the tragical role of this people in the history of his country. And meanwhile the Badjanks had actually destroyed the Kaganate. They destroyed its economy; most of the rich agricultural settlements in the forest-steppe zones of the Don area was wiped out from the face of the earth. The population has been partly destroyed, partly joined the nomadic divisions of the Badjanks. Only a small number of them fled to Danube (to the Danube Bulgaria), to the Middle Itil and to the boondock corners of the upper courses of Oskol and Don rivers, reliably protected by forest massifs from the nomadic attacks. A part of the Bulgaro-Alaian population of the Don area also retreated to the southern areas of the Kaganate, into the domain of the Kagan. The small border town Sarkel on the Don had grown appreciably, which is archeologically clearly traced: the cultural layers of the beginning of the 10th century in the fortress stand out by especially rich and diverse finds. Precisely then appeared in the ity the first Slavic immigrants, the inhabitants of the bordering Kaganate Slavic lands, who fled together with the population of the Kaganate from the Badjanak's invasion. A terrible loss endured the trade of the Kaganate, and its diplomatic communications were broken. Badjanks, who captured the steppes between Kuban and Don, cut off the Khazaria from the Byzantian empire. Besides, the Badjanks destroyed some coastal cities and settlements in the Eastern Crimea. Thus, all the vital arteries that connected Kaganate with its allies, trading partners and tributors, were seveared. The state inevitably was moving to a destruction, by the middle of the 10th century it was practically reduced to the size of the personal domain of the Kagan, located approximately in the territory of the modern Kalmykia. Khazar Kagan royal domain
Badjanks no more saw the Khazars as dangerous enemies in any respect. Apparently, the Kaganate even did not try to expel them from their former lands. And there was no necessity any more, for the lands all the same would remain empty, there was nobody to occupy them. So, neither the Oguzes, nor the Kaganate disturbed the Badjanks. Byzantium was a far and still inaccessible country: it was impossible to reach it, because Badjanks had to cross for that purpose the Danube Bulgaria, leaving in the rear not only the Bolgars, but also a mighty, gaining strength every year opponent, the Rus. It was the only real force, capable to resist the nomadic hordes. For the first time the Ruses have met Badjanks in the 915, when Badjanks made a peace accord with Igor (Ugyr Lachini, 912-945, aka Igor I the Old, Ingvar). Apparently, while resettling in the steppes, capturing ever new and new open steppes, Badjanks tried to also "to master" the forest-steppe areas belonging to Rus. Having encountered resistance of the Rus regiments, Badjanks concluded a peace with Rus to ensure a quiet rear, and proceeded coaching to the borders of the weaker opponents: Bulgaria and Hungary.
Nevertheless Badjanks continued to maintain diversified and brisk relations with the Rus. Byzantium was concerned with it, and also with the rise of Rus, and constantly pitted Badjanks against the Rus, because the Ruses, according to Constantine Porphirogenesus, could not neither be at war, nor trade, if they were not in peace with Badjanks, therefore they constantly were "occupied to have peace with Pachinakits". Besides the peace treaty of 915, the Rus chronicler notes one more, this time already a military alliance made by Prince Igor with Badjanks in the 944 for a joint raid to Byzantium: "collecting warriors of many Vikings, and Rus, and Polyans, and Slovens, and Kriviches, and Badjanks... set out against Greeks in boats and on horses". Emperor Roman, hearing about it, sent towards them "the best Boyars" (Boyars, Türk. "Nobles") paid off Igor and Badjanks, sending them "cloth and gold". Igor desided to stop the campaign, however it did not relieve him of obligation to settle with Badjanks, who joined this campaign for the opportunity to rob the captured lands. Instead of the Byzantian possessions Igor had to direct Badjanks to "fight the Danube Bulgarian land". The Badjanks were an that so-called "tabor" stage of nomadism that is characterized by quite advanced social relations: military democracy. The eight "femas", which is possible to view as associations such as hordes, were headed by the Khans, "archonts" as called them Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The hordes were divided onto 40 divisions, i.e. each horde had five clans. This structure of the Badjanak's society was traced by the ethnographers to some presently existing peoples, in particular to the Karakalpaks. Clans were headed by "arhonts" of a lower rank, the smaller Khans. The role of tribal and clan Khans in conditions of military democracy was fell to a role of a military leader. Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote down the names of the first Khans who led Badjanks in capturing the Eastern European steppes: Baitzas (horde Irtim), Kourkoutai (Gila), Kaidoum (Charaboi), Giazis (Chopon), Konel (Tzour), Ipaos (Koulpei), Batas (Tzopon), Kostas (Talmat). Apparently, basically each horde acted independently. During plundering and occupation campaigns and wars some of them grew especially rich and separated to be on their own. The Byzantian emperor relays: "Pachinakits also are called Kangar, but not all of them, but the people of three femas: Iavdiirti, Kuartsitsur and Chavuksingila, as more courageous and noble, than the others: for it is the meaning of the nickname Kangar". Femas Kangar, apparently, originate from "Kangüy" and from the very beginning, from the formation of the Badjanak federation, they were at the head of the union. Apparently, the heads of the three "selected" hordes, the Khans Kurkute, Vaitsu and Kuel were the most glorious and powerful in the Badjanak's land. For me seem also very significant the semantics of the Khans' names. Accordingly they are: "Wolf", "Storm" or "Typhoon Wind " (?), "Strong El" - "Strong Ruler" (?) They even could not hand down the power to their sons. The power was inherited by cousins or children of cousins, "for the honor not to remain constantly in one branch of a clan, but that honor be inherited and received as well by the relatives on the lateral line. Nobody from outside clans interferes and does not become archont" ends emperor Constantine his knowledge about the social order of the Badjanks. Somewhat unusual order of inheritance described by him suggests, it seems, matrilinear relationship, or, at least, the remnants of the matriarchal law. It should be noted, that the vestiges of the matriarchy were, apparently, generally characteristic for the nomads, some of its features, as we shall see below, are well traced also in the Kipchak society.
The Khans were military leaders and possessed, apparently, executive authority. In extraordinary cases Badjanaks, as is known from the later (11th century) sources, called a "meeting" that was, in essence, a national assembly, a most typical body of the military democracy. Bishop Bruno and the Byzantian Princess Anna Comnenus mention it. Constant wars, participation in plundering campaigns are the most typical features of that social order. For that reason Badjanaks could be so easily raised for any campaign against any country whose robbery would bring benefit them. We already know that the Byzantines used them most often. However and they themselves were constantly mindful about their Crimean possessions, in particular for the Chersonesus, to which walls Badjanaks apparently frequently coached to closely. In the 965 during the reign of the Prince Svyatoslav, Badjanaks participated in the Rus campaign against Khazaria. There is no direct data, but not without a reason the Byzantian emperor emphasized an impossibility for the Ruses to engage in international wars without a prior agreement with the Badjanaks.
The Badjanaks, seeing the arriving Rus cohorts of Pretich, decided that it was Svyatoslav creeping to them from the rear, his glory of invincibility was so strong that the steppe-dwellers, not engaging in fight, retreated, and the Badjanak's prince asked Pretich for peace and friendship, and exchanged with him the weapons: a horse, a saber, and arrows for armor, a shield and a sword. During exchange of these courtesies, Svyatoslav really returned together with cohorts to the Rus, gathered warriors, and expelled Badjanaks into the fields, i.e. far to the steppe, and confirmed again his peace with them. But not for a long time. In the 969 Olga died, and there was nobody left to keep the irrepressible prince in the house.
After dividing the Rus between his already matured sons, Svyatoslav set out in the 971 on a conquest of Danibe Bulgaria (actually, in 967-969, during the . interregnum). The beginning was favorable for the Rus prince, then started failures, and then he recolled, that leaving Kyiv he did not conclude a new peace with the Badjanaks. Svyatoslav had to return across the hostile steppes across along the Dnieper to the home, to Kyiv. Bulgars and Byzantines hastened to inform Badjanaks that Svyatoslav is moving from Dorostol with "uncounted" captured and with "a small cohort". Badjanaks set an ambush at the Dnieper cataracts, waiting for Svyatoslav. Svyatoslav, discovering it, decided to winter in Beloberejie. The wintering was hungry and cold. In the spring the weakened soldiers could not break through the Badjanak's encirclement, and when Svyatoslav came to the cataracts, the Badjanak's chieftain Kurya assaulted them and killed Svyatoslav. Kurya ordered then to cut off Svyatoslav's head and to make a goblet framed in gold from his skull. Making goblets from the skulls of the killed enemies is a custom, widespread in the Türkic world (Iakinf Bichurin, II, p.117). The nomads believed that in this way to them would pass the power and courage of the slain enemy. It is interesting, that Khan Kurya and his wife drank from that ritual goblet to have a son like Svyatoslav. About this mighty and brave knight were composed legends not only in the Rus, but also in the steppes.
After the death of Svyatoslav increased the offensive activity of the Badjanaks. In response to it the new Kyiv prince Vladimir (his Türkic name was Budimir, 980-1015. S.A. Pletneva skips the reign of Yaropolk, his elder brother dethroned in a coup, and the Badjanak-Rus relations during his 972-980 reign), son of Svyatoslav, started an atypical fortification of the state's southern borders: fortification along Desna, and Ustrya, to the Trubeshev, and along Sula, and along Stugna. He settled guards from all ends of the Rus in these fortifications. At that time were built a part of the well-known Snake Bulwarks and those already existing were renewed and upgraded. About these fortifications-bulwarks located south of Stugna, mentions traveling in the Eastern Europe bishop Bruno in the letter in the beginning of the 11th century: "The Rus sovereign saw me off for two days to the last limits of his state, which for safety from the enemy over very big space in all directions are surrounded by the bulwarks". This message is also interesting because, judging by it, the distance between Rus and Badjanak's pastures doubled (to 60 km) compared with that of the Constantine Porphirogenesus' time, at which it was equal one day travel (30 km). Despite of the successful as a whole Vladimir's policy in respect to the Badjanaks, despite the fortification of the borders and gradual expansion of the territory, the Badjanaks hung as a heavy cloud over the Rus. In the 993 they crossed Sula and stopped on the left bank of the Trubej. On the other side opposite them lined his cohort Vladimir. Because both sides hesitated to begin a battle, the Badjanak's Khan (who?) offered to Vladimir a single combat of bogatyrs ("mighty men". S.A. Pletneva is not braving the fate by using a Türkic word, she could not avoid it, Russian has only this word). In case of the Badjanaks' victory his tribesmen by agreement could be free to plunder Rus for three years, a victory by a Rusian would bring them three quiet years, the Badjanaks for these years promised not to raid the Rus' borderlands. The Rus bogatyr won and saved Rus from ruin. The Badjanaks fled, the Ruses went in pursuit and killed many with swords and sabers. Vladimir in the place of the victory built city and has named it Pereyaslavl. For three years the Badjanaks really did not raid Rus, until in the 996 again began a wearisome struggle of the Rus with the steppe. The chronicler wrote about these last years of the first millennium: "unending wars". Judging from the annalistic records, the Badjanaks would come to a town, apparently selected beforehand, take it, plunder its vicinities and retreat with the captured to the steppe. They had no special tools for breaching walls, and therefore as a rule they were starving out (as when they wanted to capture Kyiv in the Olga's and Svyatoslav's time) the besieged. The annals preserved an interesting legend story about the siege of the Belograd by the Badjanaks. When a bad famine began in the city, the Belogradians came up with a ruse: from the last stocks collected from the whole city, they cooked a barrel of gelled punch and a barrel of porridge, and fit them into specially made wells, and then invited 10 of the best Badjanak's nobles into the city and treated with the meal from the wells. The amazed Badjanaks ascertained that the townspeople were not deceiving telling that they have the "food from the earth", and that siege was not threatening them: stay there for ten years and keep ruining yourselves, said the Belogradians. The Badjanak's Khans, having tasting the gelled punch and porridge, ordered to retreat from the city. However such "happy endings" happened seldom, usually the small towns were burned, people were taken to slavery, the cultivated lands were trodden. Therefore the Prince Vladimir tried in every possible way to keep peace. In the first years of the 11th century the bishop Bruno, traveling through the Rus to the the land of Badjanaks, on behalf of the Rus prince concluded a peace with Badjanaks. The Rus prince pledged to observe a number of conditions of the steppe-dwellers, and turned over his son as a security hostage for the peace. What those requirements consisted of can be only guessed.
Apparently, Badjanaks, as usual, demanded payoffs, and the hostage was apparently the unloved son of Vladimir, Svyatopolk. Not accidentally Svyatopolk used Badjanaks' help in his struggle for his father's throne after the death of the Prince Vladimir. For four years the Badjanaks were participating in the revolt, plundering and ruining the Rus. In the 1019 Svyatopolk for the last time came with powerful Badjanak force. (His older brother) Yaroslav the Wise (Mudriy), who already settled on the Kyiv throne, gathered cohorts and defeated his brother. The defeat of the Badjanaks in that fight was so bad that in the beginning of the Yaroslav's reign the pressure of Badjanaks weakened considerably. The Ruses were not slow to take advantage of a respite, and in the 1032 Yaroslav started building fortifications in the "neutral territory". Thus, the Rus was grabbing the territory that previously for a long time (what is this S.A. Pletneva "long time"? 20 years? 50? 1019-1032?) remained a neutral zone separating it from the (millenniums old) nomadic steppe. Trying to retain the reputation of invincible and terrible opponents, Badjanaks made a desperate attempt to crush or at least to temporarily weaken the Rus. For this purpose they went on a campaign to Kyiv in the 1036. Yaroslav came from Novgorod with a strong Viking-Slavic cohort. Understanding apparently the consequences of the forthcoming battle, Yaroslav carefully prepared for it. Three regiments from the city fought Badjanaks in the place where at the time of whiting the annals already stood the Sofia cathedral. Yaroslav won the battle, actually destroying the Badjanak's control. However, the name of Badjanaks did not disappear from the pages of various (multi-lingial) medieval manuscripts. We also not once shall return to them in our book. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chapter 1. (continued) Oguzes (Slav. "Uzes, Torks (Türks)") | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In the beginning of the 11th century new nomadic hordes, called in the Rus annals Torks, in the Byzantian chronicles Uzes, and in the eastern compositions Oguzes flooded the Eastern European steppes. Oguzes displaced Badjanaks from their former stans and pastures, and forced them to search for new lands in the west. The Oguzes, right after the capture the steppes east of Itil, began showing an active interest to their main western neighbor, the Khazarian Kaganate. Documents have preserved that already in the middle of the 10th century they plundered the Kaganate, crossing Itil on ice in the winter. In the bad for the Khazars year of Svyatoslav campaign (965) the Oguzes joined Ruses to rob the weakened state. On the border of the Khazarian Kagan domain in the trading small town-fortresses Sarkel at the end of the 9th century settled Badjanak mercenaries who formed a nomadic garrison of the fortress. The natives of the Oguz hordes constantly poured in, asking for peace and protection in the Sarkel (Türk. Sary Kel = White Fort). This Badjanak-Oguz garrison also continued to function after the capture of the Sarkel by Svyatoslav and his conversion of it into a Rus steppe advanced post White Fort. Gradually near Sarkel - White Fort grew a new political formation: Badjanak-Oguz horde. Near the city appeared a nomadic Badjanak-Oguz cemetary. The members of the horde were connected not by blood relations, but by administrative authority which initially was a Khazarian governor of the Sarkel, and later a head of the Rus cohorts left by Svyatoslav in the fortress. This example well illustrates the fact of gradual penetration of Oguzes in N.Pontic steppes. Apparently, their separate groups and pastoral clans could move about freely enough in the Badjanak's possessions.
In 985 Oguzes concluded an alliance with Vladimir, a son of Svyatoslav, and went with him and his uncle Dobrynya to a campaign against Bulgars. Some believe that Budimir went traditionally against the Danube Bulgars (like his father and grandfather), others believe that these Bulgars were the "black" Bulgars living, in the opinion of the majority of researchers, in the Crimean steppes, a third identify these Bulgars with the Itil Bulgaria. The last hypothesis seems to me the most likely. At that time the Itil Bulgaria became a state strong and rich enough. Being in the rear of the Rus, and besides blocking the Itil trading road connecting the countries of the north and the east, it started seriously obstruct the young, gaining force Rus state. Clever and active prince Vladimir in the beginning of his reign had to think of the opponent that really was giving him problems. There is information that in the 90es he twice campaigned against the Itil Bulgaria (Vladimir, along with Oguzes, joined the intercine war on the side of Ibragim's revolt against Vladimir's cousin Timar, 981-1004, exactly like the Bulgars, Oguzes and Badjanaks were always called for help by the Rus' pretenders, and participated in the Rus intercine wars). The Rus annals tell about this campaign that after Bulgaria Vladimir attacked Khazars and imposed tribute (quite the opposite, Vladimir lost most of his army, and had to pledge to keep paying the tribute). Thus, Vladimir with Dobrynya in the 985 attacked the Itil Bulgaria. Budimir's allies in that campaign were the Oguzes (Türks). The Oguz Türks rode up the river to the Itil Bulgaria approximately 300 km north of their pastures, and Vladimir sailed down Oka to the Itil (i.e. Vladimir brought Viking mercenaries and Slav militia from Smolensk/Shamlyn. See Jagfar Tarihi Chapter 15 Reign of Timar for fascinating political background). Anyway, it is clear that to join Rus cohort the Oguz Türks had to cross the lands of one of the Badjanak's possessions, apparently Talmat. The Bulgars were defeated by the joint efforts of the Rus and Oguz units. Later they together were clobbering down the Khazars and, apparently, greatly enriched in that campaign (See Chapter 15 Reign of Timar for the peace terms). After that successfully completed joint campain the Oguz Türks, apparently, continued relations with the Rus. To the Rus cities were coming to serve the people from the Türkic ranges like they were coming earlier to the Sarkel and other Khazarian cities (in a less Hurray-patriotic scenario, more likely the cantonized structure of the Türkic heritage in the budding Rus has remained, similar to that described in the Itil and other Khazarian cities. Slavs were controlled by a Slavic shieftains, Jews by a Jewish leader, etc, with different degrees of suzerainity over different groups). As a rule, they served for a good pay: they were hired by the masters who paid more, or were at present in favourable political position. In an opposite situation, like any mercenaries, they switched over to the strongest side. So, a known fact is that an Oguz Türk was a cook for young Murom's prince Gleb Vladimirovich, but switched over to Svyatopolk who captured the Kyiv throne, and on an order of Svyatopolk slaugtered his former patron. The annals' message about that event is also interesting because the Oguz Türk joined the retinue of the prince in one of the extreme easternmost Rus princedoms. It can be an additional testimony that even in the beginning of the 11th century (the murder took place in the 1015) the Oguz Türks were still coaching in the eastern regions of the Eastern European steppes. Approximately at that time within the Oguz hordes, who coached in the Aral area steppes, began the so-called Seljuk movement. The Oguzes, passing through the deserts and oases of the Middle Asia, took over the Asia Minor and formed the Türkish empire of Seljuks (aka Selcuks). The northern Oguzes intended to cross the N.Pontic steppes and join in the Byzantium with the main forces of the Seljuks that were pressing the Byzantian empire from the south. The Badjanaks inevitably were drawn in that powerful movement, some joined it, the others were destroyed (the S.A.Pletneva's news of Badjanaks' destruction in 1055 grossly conflicts with S.A.Pletneva's archeological findings). The Oguz Türks tried to not conflict with the Rus cohorts: first, because the Rus lands laid far from their path (they matched in the steppes); and second, the Türks benefited from good neighbors, as they were saving their force for the war with the Byzantian empire. Nevertheless the Rus Princes Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod (Yaroslav's sons, a so-called triumvirate), apparently, were mindful of the danger that could threaten Kyiv in case the Oguz Türkic troops join the Seljuks and destruct the Byzantium. In addition, apparently, the Byzantian politicos used all methods to involve the Rus into a struggle against Oguz Türks. It is telling that the first Rus prince who started a war with the Oguz Türks was Vsevolod Yaroslavich, married to the "Greek Princess". That year (1055) the Oguz Türks, or rather one of their hordes came too close to the Rus border, to the mouth of the river Sudy, where Ruses already staked a small town Voin. The horde stopped there for the winter which, naturally, could not be pleasing for the inhabitants of the small town, because usually the Türks tried to fill the winter shortage of forage with robbery of Rus settlements. Prince Vsevolod fell on these Oguz Türks. The Oguz Türks were "defeated" and driven away into the steppe. And five years after that small raid, in the 1060, all three princes of the triumvirate, with the Polotsk prince Vseslav collected "uncounted" forces and on horses and in boats attacked the Oguz Türk. Having heard about approaching pa steppe Rus regiments, The Oguz Türkic military leaders did not engage in fight, and retreated far into the steppe. The nomads suffered high casialties from the winter colds, hunger and deseases. And in fact, after that the Oguz Türks were not mentioned any more in the Rus annals as an independent political force. However, like Badjanaks, the Oguz Türks were not completely destroyed. The overwhelming majority of the Oguz Türks who survived in the teppes, together with the Badjanaks coached to the Rus borders and enlisted in the service to the Rus Princes, for which they were assigned lands for pasturing in the ajoining with the steppe lands. A searches for strong patrons was necessary for both peoples, because from the east to the Eastern European steppes was already cominga a new nomadic wave, surpassing in power the two previous. This new force were Kipchaks, who for the first time came to the southeastern border of Rus in the summer of the 1055. The Rus chronicler wrote about the first meeting quite favorably: "Came Blush with Kipchaks, signed peace with Vsevolod, and returned back". Thus opened a new page in the joint history of the nomadic steppe and Rus. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chapter 2. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 24 The Arabian and Persian geographers, travelers and historians of the 9th-10th centuries in the sections of their compositions devoted to peoples who lived in the far from the Chaliphate Eastern European and Asian steppes were continuously mentioning the people and the country of Kimaks. The first to name Kimaks and their branch Kipchaks in the list of the Türkic tribes was a well-known Arabian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh (second half of the 9th century), who used in his work the earlier compositions (possibly, even of the 8th century). A little later Ibn Khordadbeh al-Istahri and Ibn Haukal, drawing maps, tried to define the location of the lands occupied by these peoples. Al-Masudi, who was the most educated historian of his time (10th century), gave more specific information about their location, and his contemporary Abu - Dulaf informs in his composition about their economy and religious beliefs. So gradually accumulated knowledge about these periphery for the Arabo-Muslim world Türkic-speaking peoples. In end of the 10th century the Chaliphate's capital writers and scientists were well informed about them, and they were known especially well in the Central Asian states, where not only books inaccessible for the people were written about them, but the travel to the Kimak country was also talked about in the markets and chaihanas (chai houses). The increased amount of information showed up first of all in the well-known Persian geographical treatise "Hudud-al-Alam" ("Borders of the World") which dedicated whole chapters to Kimaks and Kipchaks, and the great Middle Asian writer al-Biruni mentioned them in several compositions. In the 11th century Gardizi wrote about Kimaks in composition "Ornamentation of news" where is told a legend about resettlement of this people, and in the 12th century a main source of study the Kimak-Kipchak country, its occupations and customs became a large Arabian geographical composition by al-Idrisi. A legend about early history of Kimaks and Kipchaks is in the composition of Gardizi. The legend goes back to considerably earlier time, the end of the 7th-8th century. In 7th century Kimaks pastured in the lands north of Altai, in the Irtysh area and were a part of the Western Türkic and partly Uigur Kaganates. With the destruction of the last crystallized the nucleus of the Kimak tribal union headed by a Shad (Prince). Here is how it is told in a legend: "A Chief of Tatars died and left two sons; the senior son seized an empire, the younger began envying his brother; the name of the younger was Shad. he made an attempt on the life of the senior brother, but unsuccessful; afraid for himself, he fled with a slave-mistress from his brother and came to a place where was a big river, a lot of trees,and an abundance of game; there he put up his yurta and settled down. Every day this man and his slave went on hunting, ate meat and made clothes of sable fur, squirrels and ermines. After that seven men, relatives of Tatars, came to them: the first Imi, the second Imak, the third Tatar, the fourth Bayandur, the fifth Kypchak, the sixth Lanikaz, the seventh Adjlad. These people grazed the herds of their misters; in places where before they grased the herds, no pastures remained; looking for grass, they came to the side where was Shad. Seening them, the slave said: "Irtysh", i.e. "stop"; from that the river received its name Irtysh. Upon recognizing the slave, they all stopped and set up the yurts. The Shad, upon return, brought a lot of game from the hunt, and fed them; they remained there till the winter. When the snow fell, they could not come back; there was a lot of grass, and they spend there all the winter. When the land cleared also snow melted, they sent a person to the Tatar camp to bring them a news about thir tribe. When he come there, he saw that all territory was devastated and deserted of the population: an enemy came, plundered and annihilated all people. The remains of the tribe came down from the mountains to the that man, he told his friends about Shad; all of them went to Irtysh. Upon arriving there, everybody greeted Shad as a leader and began honouring him. The other people, hearing about it, began coming there too; 700 men gathered. For a long time they remained in service of the Shad; and then, when they multiplied, they settled the mountains and formed seven tribes named after the seven men". The fragment cited in its entirety is interesting by telling in simplified form and schematically, but apparently as a whole close to the truth the history of the formation of the Kimak tribal union. Abundantly clear is that the Kimak union formed after a destruction of another political formation (in this case the Western Türkic and later the Uigur Kaganate) of seven tribes who earlier were members of the Kaganates. In similar way, as a rule, went the formation of all steppe nomadic and semi-nomadic empires during the epoch of the Middle Ages. The tribe Imak (Yemak, Kimak) became the head of the union, and later of the Kimak Kaganate. In another transcription the tribal name sounds as "Kai", which in Mongolian means "snake". It is possible that during consolidation of this steppe federation of seven tribes appeared the expression: "A snake has seven heads", cited by Mahmud Kashgari in his fundamental work "The Genealogy of Türks". The dominating Kimak tribe was settled mostly on the banks of Irtysh. The Kipchaks, described by Hudud al-Alam, occupied a separate territory located to the west, approximately in the southeast part of the Southern Ural. It is interesting that about mountainousness of the Kipchak land also wrote Chinese chroniclers, in the chronicle Üan-shi these mountains are named Üyli-Boli, and the Kipchaks are called "Tsyn-cha" (etymology?). North of Kipchaks and Kimaks lay everlasting forest. They were ascribed to the legendary tribes Iadjudj and Madjudj (or Gogh and Magog). Ibn Haukal work of the 10th century enclosed a map showing that Kipchak-Kimak tribes pastured together with Oguzes in the steppes north of the Aral Sea, and al-Masudi at approximately the same time wrote that all of them were coaching along Emba and Yaik: "The distance between their estuaries is 10 days of travel; along them are winter stans and summer pastures of Kimaks and Oguzes". About this close neighborhood also knew other Arabian and Persian authors. So, al-Marvazi wrote that "when between them (Kimaks and Oguzes) is peace, in the winter Kimaks coach down to Oguzes", and Biruni, on the contrary, noted that Oguzes quite often pasture in the country of Kimaks. Some hordes of Kimak tribes quite often coached along the coast of the Caspian Sea: "Shakh-name" even calls that sea as Kimak's. The main western neighbors of Kimak-Kipchaks in the 10th c. were Bashkirs, with whom at that time the westernmost Kipchak hordes established very close contacts. In the 10th c. the Kimak union was a strong state known in the sources under a general name "Kimak Kaganate". All tribes named in the Gardizi work belonged to it. The economic development of the Kimak association tribes and hordes that stretched their settlements and pastures in the thousands kilometers of the steppe from Irtysh to the Caspian Sea, from taiga to the Kazakhstan semideserts, was uneven. First of all it is because of the different climatic and enviromental conditions: the eastern areas differed from the western as much as the northern forest-steppe from the southern foothills of the Tian-Shan mountains. The Persian Anonym specially emphasized that Kipchaks living in the extreme western areas of the Kaganate lead a more primitive way of life than the Kimaks who live near Irtysh, where was the center of the Kimak union and the summer stan of the Kimak Kagan, the city Imakiya.
The archeological research in the Irtysh area now allows to assert that Kimaks were semi-settled, and consequently were familiar with agriculture. Al-Idrisi in the 12th century wrote as a well-known fact about the cultivated lands in the country of Kimaks, about weat crops, barley and even rice, the agriculture was quite advanced. The medieval authors alsotestify about Kimak cities and way of life. Al-Idrisi describes these cities in detail, emphasizing that all of them are well fortified, and in the Kagan city where all Kimak aristocracy concentrated, were markets and temples. Apparently, in the central areas of the Kimak Kaganate was going a usual for nomadic peoples process of settling on the land, a transition of a significant part of the population to the agriculture and craft manufacture.
The first data about Kimaks' settled life in the sources at are recorded in the 9th-10th centuries, the blossom of their settled culture belongs to considerably later time of 11th-13th centuries. The Kazakh archeologists investigating Kimak cities note that all of them passed in the development from the temporary settlements, shelters of nomadic aristocrats, to the permanent settlements that became centers of craft and agriculture. Sedentary life has led the population to the necessity to build more fundamental dwellings: in the cities and in the settlements alongside with felt yurts began to be widely used clay-walled semi-dugouts. Typically, both had the hearth in the center, like in yurts: the ancient custom of reverence of the hearth, as a rule, lasted for a long time even for completely settled "nomads". Despite the transition to a settled way of life by a part of the Kimak Kaganate population, many its ethnoses in the 10th c. continued the habitual form of existence,
The Kipchak steppes were favored the advanced and well organized nomadic cattle breeding to prosper. The steppe was subdivided into locations with certain pasture routes, (yaylak, yailag, or jailik, djailik) summer settlements and (aul, atar, kishlak) winter settlements. Near permanent yaylak and kishlak settlements appeared kurgan cemeteries. In the settlements and along the steppe shlyakhs (roads) and coaching routes Kipchaks erected ancestor sanctuaries with stone statues representing the diseased. The most typical and bright feature of the Kipchak culture are the statues, erected at kurgan sanctuaries with square fencing of rough stone and gravel. The statues a simple rough stelae, frequently with figures without details. The faces are indicated by deeply carved lines, frequently in a shape of "hearts". The female statues differed from the men's by round "breasts". Construction of small fenced sanctuaries devoted to ancestors, with a statue (or statues) inside became a distinctive feature of the Kipchaks from the end of the 9th century. Before, in the 6th- 9th centuries, similar sanctuaries with statues of the diseased soldiers and numerous stretching from the fence "balbals" (a line of stone stelae symbolizing enemies killed by the diseased ancestor) were installed by the Türks and Uigurs. Later with the destruction of Kaganates they forgotten this custom, and the Kipchaks were the only Türkic-speaking peoples who kept it. As we shall see below, they continued it until the loss of them of the political independence, i.e. just like in the Türkic and Uigur Kaganates.
The sanctuaries were naturally only built for the rich and noble nomads. Ibn Fadlan in the 922 passed through the steppes east of the Itil, and he wrote that among Oguzes were owners who had herds of 10 thousand heads of sheep (not including the other cattle). Among the Kimak-Kipchak aristocracy were likewise rich men. Their ails (large families) owned huge steppe dominions with their own ranges (routes and settlements). Possibly, private hereditary landownership already existed in the Kaganate. About it tells the author of "Hudud-al-Adam": "... The Khakan of Kimaks has 11 sub-rulers, and their allotments are handed down to the children of these managers". These so-called managers were, apparently, the largest representatives of the clan and tribal aristocracy that gradually was becoming feudal in those centuries.
In the head of the Kimak state in the 10th c. was Kagan, and the Kipchaks in the Kaganate, per "Hudud-al-Alam", were headed by a "malik", which corresponds to the Türkic title "Khan". It indirectly id proved by the message of al-Horezmi, who comments about the Türkic titulature: "A Khakan is a Khan of Khans, i.e. a leader of the leaders, just as Persians say "shah-in-shah". Apparently, the "sub-ruler" Khans were vassals of the Kagan, and they in turn had vassals receiving allotments from them, from among rich clannish aristocracy. Gardizi tells about property inequality of the Kimaks, and al-Idrisi emphasized that "only the noble wear red and yellow silk clothes". Also interesting is his message about the presence in the Kimak army of the foot soldiers who, undoubtedly, were drafted from the poor folk who did not have their own horses.
Burial Customs of Kimaks, Kipchaks, and Oguzes in Kimak Kaganate Besides statues, about the world-vision and various reverence rites for the dead and the funeral cult, not numerous excavated burials contain information about Kimaks and Kipchaks. The things buried together with diseased give some idea about the daily objects surrounding nomads in life, though undoubtedly these materials because of their deposition (in tombs) are somewhat one-sided, usually they are presented by the objects necessary for the nomad during a trip (to the next world): horse harness, weapons, less frequently personal decorations and vessels with ritual food. Next to the diseased was laid his true tovarich (Türk., comrade), a horse, without which in the boundless steppes, where wide movement is necessary for life, a man practically was almost helpless. The belief in need to supply the diseased with the things necessary on the road and at least for initial life in the other world, received an especially detailed illumination from Ibn Fadlan, the most inquisitive and truthful Arab traveler in the beginning of the 10th century. He described not the Kimak- Kipchak, but the Oguz funeral ceremony. However, from the excavations of the nomadic kurgans we know that the funeral ceremony of the Türkic-speaking peoples generally was extraordinarily monotonous, and it means that the general provisions, which the nomads held for the construction of the funeral complexes, were actually identical. Oguzes So, Ibn Fadlan tells: "And if a person from their number would die, for him is dug a big hole in a shape of a house, he would be dressed in his his jacket, his belt, his bow... and would put in his hand a wooden cup with nabiz, would put before him a wooden vessel with nabiz, would bring everything that he has, and would lay it with him in that house... Then would place him in it and cover the house above him with decking, and pile above it something like a dome of clay". So was constructed the sepulchral niche and the kurgan above it (a clay dome). Then Ibn Fadlan wrote about actions accompanying a main ceremony: "Then they would take horses, and depending on their number would kill a hundred heads of them, or two hundred heads, or one head, and would eat their meat, except for the head, legs, hide, and tail. And, truly, they stretch all this on wooden frames and say: "These are his horses on whom he would go to paradise". And if he ever killed men and was brave, they would carve images from wood numbering those whom he killed, would place them on his tomb and would say: "These are his youngsters who would serve him in paradise"". The nomads were always accompanied on the way into another world with slaughtered horses, and sometimes with others animals, and also the killed by him enemies represented by simple stelae or rough human images from stone or wood (balbals). Images of diseased Oguzes themselves were not installed neither over the tombs, nor in special sanctuaries. That custom was only among the population of the Kimak Kaganate, and mainly among the Kipchaks Ibn Fadlan vividly and in details explains the meaning of the ceremony of accompanying the burials with horses: "Sometimes they would neglect to slaughter the horses for a day or two. Then one of their old man from among elders induces them and says: "I saw such and such, which is the diseased, in a dream, and he said to me: „ you see, my comrades already overtaken me, and on my legs formed ulcers from following after them. I have not caught up with them, and remain alone". In such cases they take his horses and slaughter them and stretch them over his tomb. And then a day or two would pass, and this old man would come to them and say: "Tell my family and my comrades that really I already caught up with those who left before me, and that I have found calm from weariness"". Clearly, the horses were necessary for fast crossing, for coaching from one world to another. The more of them were, the better: the richer and more mobile was the diseased in a new to him world. Kimaks and Kipchaks Very sketchy testimony survived about other beliefs of Kimaks, and moreover about Kipchaks. So, Gardizi wrote that Kimaks worship river Irtysh and say that "the river is a god of a man", and the later sources preserved a story about worship of fire, and even about a custom of a part of Kimaks to cremate their diseased, about worship of the sun and stars. "Cumans (Kipchaks) use astrology, use the star signs and worship them", wrote Abulfeda. Abu - Dulaf wrote about soothsayers of Kimaks, particularly the stones with which they call for a rain. A belief in mysterious force of stones was very wide among Türkic-speaking peoples. Kimaks also worshipped rocks with images (apparently, ancient petroglyphs) and images of human foot and horse hoofs. Al-Idrisi spoke about belief in various spirits, and also about acceptance by some Kimaks of Manichaeism and Islam. The last two religions started penetrating Kimaks, apparently, in the 10th century, and spread among them much later, and only in the central areas, in the Irtysh and Balkhash area. Kipchaks, who in the 10th century were coaching in the western fringes of the Kaganate, were hardly inclined to accept and learn alien religious systems. They needed resolute actions and ideology that would substantiate these actions. Shaman star-reading, shaman soothsaying (ironically, for "soothsaying" S.A.Pletneva uses Türkic derivative "kamlanie" from Türkic Kam = diviner) over sacred rocks and burned mutton scapula, the ancestor sanctuaries surrounded by hundreds of killed enemies, called Kipchaks for battles, called into distant raids.
Enough reasons for the migratory movement had accumulated. First of all, the increasing every year herds needed new pastures. A long peace period provided by the strong central authority of the Kimak Kagan has ended. Rapid development of economy in the state led to centrifugal forces of autonomous units, and corresponding strife. On the periphery the Kimak and Kipchak warriors were joining one by one, and sometimes by the entire clans into the Oguz (Seljuk) movement. The rich aristocracy was grabbing the pastoral routes and pastures. The ordinary nomads who did not leave their native lands had to go in servitude, or engage in robbery, plundering pastures of the weaker neighbors. The central authority could not cope any more with one of its main purposes, keeping order inside the country. Kipchaks have actually received independence already at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. From the beginning of the 11th century they moved to the west. Approximately in the 30es of the 11th century the Persian author Baihani records their location at the borders of Khoresm, and another eastern writer, the Tadjik (in the 11th c. Tadjiks were only Arabs from the tribe Tadjik, not the present Tadjiks) Nasiri Husrau in the middle of the 11th century calls the Aral area steppes already not Oguz's, as did his predecessors, but Kipchak's. Only the "western" authors preserved the news about the beginning of the expansion, namely al-Marvazi, who was serving at the end of the 11th - the beginning of 12th century as a court doctor of the Seljuk Sultans, and the Armenian historian Matvey Edessian who wrote in the middle of the 11th century. They both apparently recorded the same event mentioning semantically identical names. Al-Marvazi tells that Kais (snakes) and Kuns pressed the tribe Shars (Türkic sary = pale, yellow), and those, in turn, occupied the lands of the Turkmen, Oguzes and Badjanaks. Matvey Edessian tells that the people of snakes pressed the "red-haired" (i.e.yellow) and the last moved on the Oguzes, who together with Badjanaks attacked Byzantium. In these testimonies for us is especially important the data about two ethnoses: Kais are, as we know, Kimaks, and Shars, in the opinion of all scientists studying the nomadic associations of the Middle Age epoch, are Kipchaks, because the Slavic copy word for Kipchaks is "Polovetses" (Slav. "polovye") with a meaning light yellow (Slav. "polova" = straw, chaff, husk). Thus, in this total migration to the fecund western pastures Kipchaks were the most active participants, a number of sources calls them "yellow". Many researchers believe that Kipchaks were blonds and blue-eyed, some researchers even connect their origin with the "Dinlins", who lived in the steppes of Southern Siberia in the end of the 1st millennium BC, and who were, according to the Chinese chroniclers, blonds. It is certainly quite apparently that among Kipchaks were some blond individuals, however a great bulk of the Türkic-speaking people with an admixture of Mongoloidness (according to anthropologists) of the Kimak-Kipchaks was dark-haired and brown-eyed. Possibly the color characteristic was a symbolical definition of, apparently, a part of the Kipchaks, as, for example, in the same centuries were separate Bulgarian hordes of "black" Bulgars in the Eastern European steppes, and in the 13th century a color definition received some Mongolian states: Altyn (Golden) Horde, Kuk (blue) Horde, Ak (white) Horde.
Besides Sharys, i.e. the yellow Kipchaks, in the advance to the West participated other Kimak hordes (Kais, Kuns), and other members of the Kaganate.
All this avalanche was moving on the roads still dusty from the Oguz armies and herds: the road to the fertile Don and Dnieper steppes was well blazed. In addition, these steppes were almost empty. The majority of the Badjanaks left to the Byzantian borders, the Oguzes (Türks) defeated by Rus Princes were also coaching in steppe on the right bank of the Dnieper. In front of the the hordes headed by "yellow" Kipchaks laid immense pastures, richest hunting grounds, rich states from which in case of a successful raid or attack was possible to extract a rich payoff, capture slaves, get a booty. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chapter 3. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 35 Hungarian scientists found a very successful definition for the brief period of the Hungarian history when Hungarians left under impacts of Badjanks to Pannonia, occupied Danube lands, pushing asade, and partially including in their union local populations of Slavs, Wallakhs (aka Vlakhs, speakers of Romance, also derisively called "Vulgar Latin"), and, apparently, Avars. This restless time is called in the Hungarian historiography a "conquest period" ora "period of obtaining native land".
36 For Hungarians who conquered the territory of an agricultural state (Great Moravia), this period passed very quickly. In other countries the formation, or, better, stabilization of the nomadic economy and social relations went much slower (sometimes up to a century). A close study of the history of a nomadic ethnos shows that through a period of "obtaining native land" passed each of them. It starts with invasion of another's territory, and violent takeover for constant ownership of the pastoral lands from the former population. A huge nomadic wave of Kipchak hordes in the first decade of the 11th century rose from settled place to a long and gross campaign: an invasion. Its purpose was not a peaceful resettlement of a part of the Kipchak population to the new lands, its purpose was a capture of new pastures somewhere in far west. This phenomenon is economically characterized by a all-the-year-round (so-called "tabor") mode of coaching, and socially by a military democracy. The invasion is headed by few most persistent and talented military leaders. It would seem strange that the "yellow Kipchaks", subjects of a feudal state, headed there by a malik (khan), again descended to a lower stage of the economic and social development. Nevertheless a similar transition is also characteristical for the nomads who fell into similar situations, i.e. had to face a necessity of invasion.
Capture of N.Pontic steppes began with the most fertile area, richest in pastures necessary for pasture of horses and large horned livestock, with the Donetsk, Lower Don and Azov steppes. The same lands were captured in the beginning of their movement by Badjanks, they in the 8th century were occupied first of all by the Bulgar nomadic hordes, displaced by the Khazars from the Eastern Azov (Sorry, S.A Pletneva propagates a Russian state myth about Türkic newcomers, in fact the Onogur Bulgars lived in that area before the Greek colonists came in the 5-6th cc BC, and called a settlement there (Ph)onogur(ia). God bless ancient Greeks for exposing habitual liars). By the 9th century some remains of the ancient Bugarian semi-sedentary population, despite of hard-taken Badjanak invasion, remained along the banks of the river Don basin and and Azov area. In addition, in the upper course of Severski Donets, in dead ends and inaccessible for a nomadic cavalry places still lived the former owners of the forest-steppe belt of the Khazarian Kaganate, the Alans. Though, archeological research of the settlements belonging to Alans and Bulgars gives us incontestable proofs of the destruction of these settlements not later then the beginning of the 10th century, i.e. from the strikes of the Badjanak hordes. However, the history does not know any examples of a total destruction of a population during periods of even most severe wars and most terrible invasions. Burial Customs of Bulgars, Alans, Kipchaks, and Oguzes A significant number of people, mainly women, children, and also artisans, are taken to slavery, and quite often they are left on their old ashes and gradually they, not always completely, restore the destroyed settlements. It is significant that anthropological study of the nomadic skulls of the 10th-13th cc. showed that externally the population of that time almost does not differ from the inhabitants of the steppes in the 8th - beginnings of the 10th century. Also is very significant that in the N.Pontic steppes, and especially frequently in the basin Seber Donets, are found burials of the 12th-13th centuries with a funeral ceremonies connected with former settlers of the steppes, the citizens of the Khazarian Kaganate. First, it is an atypical for Badjanks and Kipchaks meridional orientation of the diseased (heads towards north or south), frequent for ancient Bulgars and Alans; second, a presence in the tombs of a layer of chalk or coal, and some other attributes. For example there, on the banks of Donets and Lower Don, the nomads during Kipchak time used especially widely the objects made and distributed during the previous Khazarian epoch: mirrors, pendant earrings, pottery, etc. Thus, a first component which certainly joined Kipchak's ethnic community and to some extent influenced a change in the physical appearance of Kipchaks, was numerically insignificant, but culturally settled population that earlier was subject to the Khazarian Kaganate.
In the composition of the Kipchak's community much bigger role played remains of Badjanak's and Oguz hordes. First of all testifies to it an extraordinary variety of the funeral customs. As a whole the traditions of all these ethnoses were uniform: a primary task for the relatives was provisioning of the diseased into the next world with all necessities (first of all a horse and weapons). The differences are in the details of a ceremony: orientation of the diseased head to the west or east, burial with him of a full hulk or its effigy (the head, legs severed at the first, second or third joint, a hide filled with dry grass and with a tail), burial of solely an effigy without a dead man, location of the horse in relation to the diseased. Some differences are also observed in the form of the sepulcher and, at last, in the build of the kurgan. Badjanks buried under small earthen kurgans or constructed "additional" burials in the kurgans of the previous epochs, usually only for men, heads toward west, flat on the back, to the left from the diseased was laid an effigy of a horse with legs dismembered at the first or second joint. Apparently, they also buried in ancient kurgans the horse effigies (without a man), thus creating memorial cenotaphs. Oguzes, in contrast with Badjanks, were building log cover above the tomb, to place on it an effigy of a horse, or placed an effigy on a step to the left of the diseased. Initially, the Kipchak tradition, apparently, differed strongly from the Bulgar-Alan and Oguz traditions. Their kurgans were filled with stone or were tiled with stones, were laid heads to the east, near them (mostly on the left) also with the heads to the east were laid whole hulks of the horse or its effigy, but with the legs cut at a knee. Kipchaks buried with honors men and likewise women, and constructed for both sexes memorial temples with statues. This typical Kipchak tradition started to dissolve in a sea of alien customs still steppes in the Aral area and area east of Itil: the stone kurgans began to be replaced with simple earthen (sometimes including several stones in them), instead of a whole horse more often were buried horse effigies, and also sometimes on the steps, like with the Oguzes, and was changing the orientation also, first for the horses heads toward west, and then also for the diseased. As a whole. the funeral ritual testifies, like the anthropological data, about a constant mixing of completely different ethnoses and tribes. This process grew especially stronger, naturally, after arrival of already strongly mixed Kipchak hordes to the N.Pontic steppes. Only one ethnographic attribute remained constant, namely the erection of the sanctuaries devoted to the male and female ancestors. Brought from the depths of the Kimak Kaganate, this custom was further developed and literally blossomed in the N.Pontic steppes. As to the archeological and anthropological data, they allow to state that the Kipchak and Kimak hordes in the Dniepr-Don steppe very quickly, literally after one, at the most two generations, became different people with changed physical and partly cultural build. They like homogenized with all other previous inhabitants of the steppe ethnic groups.
Thus in the N.Pontic steppes appeared initially loose new ethnic mass. It was forming by the same laws like all other nomadic ethnoses and peoples of antiquity and Middle Ages, as in the Eastern European space several centuries ago were formed ancient Bulgars, Khazars, Hungarians. One of essential laws of this process is that the ethnos that gave its name to new ethnic formation not so necessarily happens to be a most numerous: simply due to a fortunate developing of the historical conditions and a vigorous military leader it came to the front in the forming union. In this specific case, in the beginning of the 11th century, this place was taken by Sharys, the "yellow" Kipchaks. They became that powerful nucleus, around which united all isolated and scattered in the steppe hordes of Badjanks, Oguzes, and also partially the remains of the Bulgarian and Alanian population. The new ethnic union developing in the steppes received in Europe a new name: Kipchaks. The Ruses called theim "Polovetes", copying a self-name of new hordes. Following the Ruses started calling them other European peoples: Poles, Czechs, Germans ("Plavtsy", "Flavens"), Hungarians ("Paloch"). However, Hungarians also called them Kumans, like did the Byzantians and Bulgars who were frequently interacting with them. How is possible to explain the different names of the same ethnic formation? Is not unreasonable the hypothesis of some researchers, who believe that in the N.Pontic steppes in the 11th-12th centuries was forming not one, but two closely related ethnoses: Kuns-Kumans, headed by one or several Kipchak hordes, and Kipchaks, united around hordes of Shary-Kipchaks. Kumans occupied the lands west of the Dniepr, they interacted much more, than Kipchaks, with Byzantium and other western states, and consequently their chronicles usually recorded Kumans (quite apparently, even when they actually met Kipchaks). Kipchak's pastures were east of the Kuman's. Their territory is very precisely defined due to a distribution of stone sculptures, characteristic, apparently, only for Shary-Kipchaks (Kipchaks). The earliest Kipchak statues analogous with the Kipchak statues of 10th-11th of centuries (i.e. in Kimakia) are located in the basin of middle and lower course of Severski Donets and in Northern Azov. They are arrow-like flat sculptures with faces and some figure details (breast, hands, vessel in hands and so forth), drawn on a flat surface or made with a low relief. Male and female statues, like in the eastern Kipchak lands, were erected equally. Construction of ancestor sanctuaries is already a testimony of transition the nomads from a stage of invasion to a second stage of herding, for which, as is known, is typical first of all some stabilization and reglementation of coaching along certain routes with permanent locations of winter and summer stans. In turn, a stabilization signifies an end of a difficult and restless period of "obtaining a native land".
We do not know specific facts from the life of the Donets-Azov Shary-Kipchaks in the first decades of their settlement in new pastures, which they occupied, apparently, in the 1020es. As a rule, written sources of the adjacent countries do not tell anything about this dark period of initiation and formation of a nomadic society: the contemporaries were not concerned with the events occuring inside of the steppe formations. The first notes appear, naturally, when composed association starts searching to relieve accumulated energy. Usually this relieve is an attack on the nearest neighbor. For Kipchaks, the Rus became such a neighbor. In the 1060 Kipchaks made a first attempt to rob rich Rusian lands ("rich Rusian lands" is not a sarcasm here. To call the dirt-poor principality "rich" is very-very patriotic). Svyatoslav Yaroslavich of Chernigov with retinue could defeat a four times larger Kipchak army. Numerous Kipchak warriors were killed and drowned in the river Snov, their leaders captured, apparently, almost without resistance. The route was total (but the description is ironic. The mercenary retinue of the Knyaz was not more then a couple hundred men, then the Kipchak "army" was not more than a thousand. Even if the record is truthful, it was an attack on a herding caravan or a similar clearly non-military group. More likely, it was a bandit attack by a Knyaz with his mercenaries, without a fear of retribution). But already by the end of January - beginning of February of the 1061 "came Kipchaks for the first time on the Rus land to fight... That was the first misfortune for the Rus land from the evil godless enemy, and their prince was Sokal..." (PSRL, 2, pp. 152). The circumstance that in those years with Kipchaks fought the Chernigov and Pereyaslavl Princes Svyatoslav and Vsevolod tells, apparently, about attack of the Kipchaks bordering with Rus in the southeast, i.e. they were coaching somewhere in the Donetsk steppes (The Rus annals, and S.A.Pletneva skip the results of the encounter, the peace agreement and its conditions. Must be unpleasant to address this subject, quite a telling professorial muteness.) The next attack from the same southeast side is noted in the (Rus) annals under the year 1068 (i.e. the first peace treaty of 1061 held for 7 years. Most likely, that was a term of that treaty). This time near a rivulet Lta (in the Pereyaslavl princedom) facing Kipchaks were joint forces of "triumvirate", regiments of Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod Yaroslaviches. They too were defeated by Kipchaks. After that event it became clear that a new terrible danger came to hung over the Rus land. Synchronously with the Kipchak's community, was also developing the western branch of the Kipchak conquest: Kumanian. There were doing the same processes, as for Kipchaks. Possibly they were more complicated than for Kipchaks, with a big number of wandering in the steppe Dniepr-Dnestr interfluvial Badjanks and Oguzes, who gradually joined the new association forming there. An absence of stone sculptures does not allow us to pinpoint archeologicalally a fact of stabilization: the transition of the omads to the second stage of nomadic economy. About its completion we can judge only from the Rus annals noting an attack of Kipchaks on Rus right bank of Dniepr. It happened in the 1071. Two small Rus towns were located in the western part of the Ros area, the area on the left bank of the river Ros, a right tributary of Dniepr. Along the right bank of Ros was an enormously large forest, making the river inaccessible from the steppe almost for all its course. It was only possible to get to the river by the road going along the Dniepr to the mouth of Ros, or by circling around the forest from the west, almost at Buh. Apparently, the attack of the 1071 was made by a Kumanian horde, who occupied land in the Buh area, where earlier was herding the Badjanak horde Iavdiertim. The next attack, apparently, by the same horde happened already by the end of the 11th century: in the 1092 in a bad for the Rus droughty summer, and it was particularly noted that western small towns Priluk and Posechen in the Ros area were taken (an indication that the Rus counterpart failed to make a tribute payment, and collection was made from the two towns. But hold off, the most interesting is coming. Kumans took Rus prince with his army to collect from the Poles too, showing that his obligation was to supply military force for the Kuman campaigns). In addition, in the same year these Kipchaks (Kumans?), concluding a military alliance or hired as mercenaries, participated in a campaign of prince Vasilek Rostislavich "agains the Lyakhs (Poles)" (Is not this sweet? While we rob your towns, you hire us to help you to rob your neighbor. What a wonderful professorial righteous lie. They don't give you titles for nothing. Just keep reading.) Vasilko Rostislavpch was not a first of Rus Princes who for his purposes started using the military potential of the steppe-dwellers, who were always ready for battle and a robbery. The first was Oleg Svyatoslavich in the 1078, who fled from Vsevolod Yaroslavich to Tmutarakan (Slavic rendition of Tamiya Tarkhan) and then "brought the pukes to the Rus land" (PSRL, II, pp. 191).
Vsevolod's troops were crushed, and many were killed. Later this adventurous prince repeatedly brought Kipchaks against Rus (Here S.A.Pletneva implies that Chernigov/Karadjar was not Rus, for her Rus was Kyiv). During all of the 12th century his descendants became especially willingly related with Kipchaks and, having among them numerous relatives, constantly called on them for help in internecine rivalry (But calling here the fights "internecine" S.A.Pletneva implies that Chernigov/Karadjar was Rus). The message about the events of the 1078 tells that those Kipchaks who were coaching on the banks of Donets or Azov, i.e. the Shary-Kipchaks, participated in the events, because through their territory passed Oleg on the way to Tamiya Tarkhan and back (later, an assilum given to the Chernigov/Karadjar prince in the Tamiya Tarkhan was used by Russian Empire to claim ownership of that Black Sea city and the whole N.Caucasus. Rus annals called Kipchaks and Kumans "Polovetses". Actually, the diference in the Eastern European steppes was, apparently, quite real and appreciable, though, certainly, Kumans, Kipchaks and groups of Badjanks, Oguzes, Bolgars and other ethnoses who joined in their ranks, and constantly intermixed with each other, participated in common campaigns, concluded common treaties and, naturally, were indistinguishable for a stranger whose sight of a contemporary was poorly used to them. As though there pi was, but we can speak confidently, that in 60es the period of "obtaining native land" at the Shary-Kipchaks (Kipchaks) who have occupied the lands on Dontsu, to the Lower Don and Azov, and, apparently, little bit later - to the beginning of 70es - at Kumen (Kumans, kunov), coached as it was spoken, in steppes, before the Badjanks occupied with four western hordes has ended. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
29 Ağustos 2009 Cumartesi
KIPCHAKS
Kaydol:
Kayıt Yorumları (Atom)
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder