Читать книгу The History of Kazakhstan from the Earliest Period to the Present time. Volume I - Zhanat Kundakbayeva - Страница 6

This chapter is written on the base of Chapter eleven of the Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia by Sinor, Denis (Cambridge University Press, 2008). The authors of this chapter assert that the Chinese data concerning the origin of the Turks are contradictory and difficult to interpret. But they note strong corroborative evidence provided by the Turk ancestral legends. There are three versions, showing but a minimal thematic overlap. Even the Cou shu – where two of the three legends are given – remarks on their divergence and comments that they agree only in that in both versions the Turks are said to descend from a she-wolf. The first of these, which we may call that of ‘The Abandoned Child Brought up by a Wolf’, is related with slight variations by both the Cou shu and the Pei-shih. It tells the story of a young boy mutilated by the enemy and thrown into a marsh where he has intercourse with a she-wolf. The wolf and the boy subsequently took refuge in a cavern, where the wolf gave birth to ten boys. Several generations later the Turks emerged from the cavern and became the blacksmiths of the Juan-juan. There is another legend, also related in the Cou shu, which, in the words of this source, ‘differs from the other [legend], nevertheless it shows that [the Turks] descended from a wolf’. The third version of the legend gives entirely different story. A third legend is preserved only in a collection of anecdotes, curious and miraculous histories probably compiled in 860 and entitled the Yu-yang tsa-tsu. According to this legend, which we may call that of ‘The Spirit of the Lake’, the ancestor of the Turks, who is called Shê-mo-shê-li and lives in a cavern, has a liaison with the daughter of the lake spirit. One day, as the Turks are preparing for a great hunt, the girl says to Shê-mo:

‘Tomorrow during the hunt a white deer with golden horns will come out from the cavern where your ancestors were born [author’s emphasis]. If your arrow hits the deer we will keep in touch as long as you live, but if you miss it our relationship will end.’ In the course of the hunt, a follower of Shê-mo kills the deer. Shê-mo angrily decapitates the culprit and orders that a human sacrifice be established in which a man of that follower’s tribe be beheaded. Today, no one doubts the validity of the Chinese historical works data of ancient Turkic legends as they were received from the Turks themselves and written by Chinese authors. The Turks built their empire on the ruins of the Juan-juan. In 439, when the Northern Wei emperor T’ai-wu destroyed the small barbarian state of North Liang, established in Kansu by Chü-ch’u family, some five hundred Turk families sought refuge with the Juan-juan. The reasons that prompted this action remain unknown, but the sources report that the Turks, all of whom bore the surname Ashina, were settled by the Juan-juan in the Altai, where they worked on the manufacture of iron implements. The Gold Mountain where they worked had a shape of a helmet which in their language was called Turk. The last pages of the Juan – juan’s domination in Mongolia remain unknown. But we know that in 552 the Turks rebelled against the Juan – juanes. The death of Anakui presented Bumin and his Turk people with the task of ruling over a great empire. Two centuries later in the Orkhon inscription were recorded memories of those events:

"When high above the blue sky and down below the brown earth had been created, betwixt the two were created the sons of men. And above the sons of men stood my ancestors, the khagans Bumin and Ishtemi. Having become the masters of the Turk people, they installed and ruled its empire and fixed the law of the country. Many were their enemies in the four corners of the world, but, leading campaigns against them, they subjugated and pacified many nations in the four corners of the world. They caused them to bow their heads and to bend their knees. There were wise khagans, these were valiant khagans, all their officers were wise and valiant; the nobles, all of them, the entire people were just. This was the reason why they were able to rule an empire so great, why, govering the empire, they could uphold the law". The founder of Turkic power was a wily politician named Bumin, who bore the title of khagan, or ruler. How he became leader of the Altay Turks is not known. But having forged an alliance with the Western Wei dynasty of China, Bumin deliberately provoked the Juan-juan into a war by demanding one of their princesses in marriage. Aided by Chinese forces, the Turks routed the Juan-juan in 552 and then subjugated neighboring nomadic tribes to become unconControled master of the Mongolian steppe. Bumin, the founder of the Turk Empire, died soon after his victory and was followed by his son Kuo-lo, who ruled only a few months. From the very formation the Turk empire was bifocal. The eastern part, centered on Mongolia, had the supremacy of the two halves. It was ruled by Muhan (553-572), son of Bumin, whereas the western parts fell to Bumin’s brother Ishtemi (553-?). Together, they are the founding fathers of the First Turk khaganate. Because of the large size of the territory, which was controlled by the Turks there existed an administrative division, while retaining significant powers of local rulers. Menander Byzantine, wrote that the First Turk khaganate was divided into four parts. Chinese sources also note a clear division into four administrative units – Central, East, West and the Western Frontier regions. The ruler of the Central region was the Great Khagan. Muhan embarked upon a series of military conquests. He wiped out the last identifiable military forces of the Juan-juan. In the east Muhan defeated the Kitans, in the north he incorporated the Kirgiz into his realm; in the west he defeated the Hephthalites; his might extended from the Pacific to the Western Sea and to Lake Baikal in the north, he subdued "all the countries outside China", as it was rapturously written in Chou shu.

Also Muhan was nominally created with the defeat of the Hephthalites, the campaign against them was probably led by Ishtemi, his uncle, who was in charge of the Western Frontier Region. The Hephthalite State was destroyed between 557-561 through the joint action of the Turk khagan Ishtemi and Khosrow I Anushrven, king of the Persians. Cooperation between the Sassanid King and the Turks was not uniformly harmonious; though their alliance was strengthen by Khosrow’s marrying a daughter of the Turk ruler. In their contacts with Byzantium, Persians and Turks both claimed suzerainty over the land of the defunct Hephthalite Empire, the partition of which created a new situation in Central Asia. Since 527 Persia and Byzantium were engaged in a series of wars. The appearance of major power and potential ally on Persian’s eastern border was a fact which Byzantine diplomacy could ill afford to ignore. In contract, an alliance with Byzantium directed against the Persians would have held little political promise for the Turks, whose cooperation with Khosrow – as a joint campaign against the Hephthalites showed could be fruitful. But the deterioration of Turko-Persian relations occurred as Sogdian merchants in pursuit of profit from the trade in silk with Iran and Byzantium had made efforts to this. Sogdian merchants, to whom at the Hephthalite’s power, silk trade effectively assigned, convinced their new lord, the Turk khagan, to send in 568 – a commercial mission to Persia, in order to obtain permission for carry out trade in silk within the country. Although the mission was carried out under the patronage of the Turks, in fact it was Sogdian headed by Sogdian Maniakh. However, Khosrov, fearing the Turks free access to his country and disinterested in a sharp increase in import silk in the Iranian market, what would lower the income of local silk weaving production, bought the silk brought by Maniakh and then burned it. Then Maniakh made an attempt to find a buyer of the silk in the face of Byzantium. In 568, he arrived in Byzantium at the head of the embassy before the eyes of the Byzantine Emperor Justin II who received the Turks with much attention. Byzantium also as Iran was not in acute need of the Sogdian silk, but was interested in an alliance with the Turks against the Persians. So, knowing about it, the Sogdian ambassadors sought to conclude a trade agreement. So the Turkic embassy was received at the imperial court and a military agreement against Iran between the Turks and the Byzantine Empire was signed. The response embassy came to the Turks in August 569 under the leadership of the strategus Zemerhos. Menander gave a detailed and trustworthy account of Zemarkhos' journey to the Turks. Maniakh invited Zemarkhos to accompany him on a foray against the Persians. Zemarkhos was also present at an altercation between his host and a Persian ambassador. The Turkic attack on Iran finished with the capture of a several wealthy cities in Gurgan, and soon retur of the Turks to Sogd in 569. Following it Ishtemi carried military operations to the Volga, by 571, he had won the North Caucasus, and soon reached the Bosporus (Kerch). With these actions Khagan cleared roundabout way to Byzantium (through KKhwarezm, the Volga region, the Caucasus and Crimea). In the period between 568 and 576 diplomatic contacts were frequent; the Byzantine historian Menander mentioned seven Roman embassies to the Turks. The inControline war in the First Turk khaganate inside the ruling clan for the inheritance lasted more than twenty years and ended in 603 with the disintegration into two states – the Western Turk khaganate in Central Asia, including Dzhungaria and a part of Eastern Turkestan and Eastern Turk khaganate in Mongolia. It should be noted that the Western Turk khaganate (its self-designation was "On Ok Eli" – "The Ten Arrows State ") very considerably differed from the Turk khaganate in the east. In the Western Turk khaganate nomadic life prevailed, but in the Eastern Turk khaganate most part of the population was settled and occupied with farming and trade. The social structure of the Western Turk khaganate was much more complex, it could be rightfully regarded as an early state. On the territory of the Western Turk khaganate existed urban and agricultural culture. There were created with the help of the Sogdians, who put their trade and agricultural colonies on the Great Silk Road – in Semirechye, Dzhungaria, Eastern Turkestan, Northern China. In the V-VII centuries Sogdian intensive colonization in the valleys of the rivers Chu, Talas, Ili resulted in the emergence of a dozen cities and fortified settlements there. Only in the Chu Valley in the VI-VIII centuries there were at least 18 large cities and small settlements. In the Western Turk khaganate the khagan’s power was not as strong as in the east. In consequence of the weakness of the khagan’s power and the fact that tribal nobility was in a constant state of struggle, positions of small and large Sogdian merchants were extremely profitable. They had an opportunity to act as a third force in any large internal or external conflict. Although Turkic khagans called the Sogdians as tatami – subjects, but their role was very significant, since they control the whole economic life of the state.

Control questions:

1. Prove the following statement: the ancient Turks were widely included in international relations of that time (with the Hephthalite Empire, Sasanian Iran and the Byzantium Empire)

2. Define the main stages of the First Turk khaganate political history (551–630)

3. Prove the following thesis: the Western Turk khaganate highly significantly differed from the Turk khaganate in the East.

4. Define the Sogdian’s role in the life of the First Turk khaganate