often yellowish, but also occasionally fair. These characteristics, while affiliating them directly to the Mongol stock, also betray an admixture of foreign elements, probably due to Finnish influences in the north, and Tajik or Iranian blood in the south. Their speech also, while purely Turkic in structure, possesses, not only many Mongolian and a few Persian and even Arabic words, but also some terms unknown to the other branches of the Mongolo-Tatar linguistic family, and which should perhaps be traced to the Kiang-Kuan, Wu-sun, Ting-ling, and other peoples of South Siberia partly absorbed by them.
The Kara-Kirghiz.—The Kara or “Black” Kirghiz, so called from the colour of their tents, are known to the Russians either as Chernyie (Black) or Dikokammenyie (Wild Stone or Rocky) Kirghiz, and are the Block Kirghiz of some English writers. They are on the whole the purest and best representatives of the race, and properly speaking to them alone belongs the distinctive national name Kirghiz or Krghiz. This term is commonly traced to a legendary chief, Kirghiz, sprung of Oghuz-Khan, ninth in descent from Japheth. It occurs in its present form for the first time in the account of the embassy sent in 569 by the East Roman emperor Justin II. to the Uighur Khan, Dugla-Ditubulu, where it is stated that this prince presented a slave of the Kirghiz tribe to Zemark, head of the mission. In the Chinese chronicles the word assumes the form Ki-li-ki-tz’, and the writers of the Yuan dynasty (1280–1367) place the territory of these people 10,000 li north-west of Pekin, about the headstreams of the Yenisei. In the records of the T’ang dynasty (618–907) they are spoken of under the name of Kha-kia-tz’ (pronounced Khaka, and sometimes transliterated Haka), and it is mentioned that these Khakas were of the same speech as the Khoei-khu. From this it follows that they were of Mongolo-Tatar stock, and are wrongly identified by some ethnologists with the Kiang-Kuan, Wu-sun, or Ting-ling, all of whom are described as tall, with red hair, “green” or grey eyes, and fair complexion, and must therefore have been of Finnish stock, akin to the present Soyotes of the upper Yenisei.
The Kara-Kirghiz are by the Chinese and Mongolians called Burut, where ut is the Mongolian plural ending, as in Tangut, Yakut, modified to yat in Buryat, the collective name of the Siberian Mongolians of the Baikal district. Thus the term Bur is the common Mongolian designation both of the Baikal Mongols and of the Kara-Kirghiz, who occupied this very region and the upper Yenisei valley generally till comparatively recent times. For the original home of their ancestors, the Khakas, lay in the south of the present governments of Yeniseisk and Tomsk, stretching thence southwards beyond the Sayan range to the Tannuola hills in Chinese territory. Here the Russians first met them in the 17th century, and by the aid of the Kazaks exterminated all those east of the Irtish, driving the rest farther west and south-westwards. Most of them took refuge with their kinsmen, the Kara-Kirghiz nomad highlanders, whose homes, at least since the 13th century, have been the Ala-tau range, the Issyk-kul basin, the Tekes, Chu and Talass river valleys, the Tian-shan range, the uplands draining both to the Tarim and to the Jaxartes and Oxus, including Khokand, Karateghin and Shignan southwards to the Pamir table-land, visited by them in summer. They thus occupy most of the uplands along the Russo-Chinese frontier, between 35° and 50° N. lat. and between 70° and 85° E. long.
The Kara-Kirghiz are all grouped in two main sections—the On or “Right” in the east, with seven branches (Bogu, Sary-Bagishch, Son-Bagishch, Sultu or Solye, Cherik, Sayak, Bassinz), and the Sol or “Left” in the west, with four branches (Kokche or Kûchy, Soru, Mundus, Kitai or Kintai). The Sol section occupies the region between the Talass and Oxus headstreams in Ferghana (Khokand) and Bokhara, where they come in contact with the Galchas or Highland Tajiks. The On section lies on both sides of the Tian-shan, about Lake Issyk-kul, and in the Chu, Tekes and Narin (upper Jaxartes) valleys.
The total number of Kara-Kirghiz exceeds 800,000.
All are essentially nomads, occupied mainly with stock breeding, chiefly horses of a small but hardy breed, sheep of the fat-tailed species, oxen used both for riding and as pack animals, some goats, and camels of both species. Agriculture is limited chiefly to the cultivation of wheat, barley and millet, from the last of which a coarse vodka or brandy is distilled. Trade is carried on chiefly by barter, cattle being taken by the dealers from China, Turkestan and Russia in exchange for manufactured goods.
The Kara-Kirghiz are governed by the “manaps,” or tribal rulers, who enjoy almost unlimited authority, and may even sell or kill their subjects. In religious matters they differ little from the Kazaks, whose practices are described below. Although generally recognizing Russian sovereignty since 1864, they pay no taxes.
The Kazaks.—Though not unknown to them, the term Kirghiz is never used by the steppe nomads, who always call themselves simply Kazaks, commonly interpreted as riders. The first authentic reference to this name is by the Persian poet and historian Firdousi (1020), who speaks of the Kazak tribes as much dreaded steppe marauders, all mounted and armed with lances. From this circumstance the term Kazak came to be gradually applied to all freebooters similarly equipped, and it thus spread from the Aralo-Caspian basin to South Russia, where it still survives under the form of Cossack, spelt Kazak or Kozak in Russian. Hence though Kazak and Cossack are originally the same word, the former now designates a Mongolo-Tatar nomad race, the latter various members of the Slav family. Since the 18th century the Russians have used the compound expression Kirghiz-Kazak, chiefly in order to distinguish them from their own Cossacks, at that time overrunning Siberia. Siegmund Herberstein (1486–1566) is the first European who mentions them by name, and it is noteworthy that he speaks of them as “Tartars,” that is, a people rather of Turki than Mongolian stock.
In their present homes, the so-called “Kirghiz steppes,” they are far more numerous and widespread than their Kara-Kirghiz kinsmen, stretching almost uninterruptedly from Lake Balkash round the Aral and Caspian Seas westwards to the lower Volga, and from the river Irtish southwards to the lower Oxus and Ust-Urt plateau. Their domain, which is nearly 2,000,000 sq. m. in extent, thus lies mainly between 45° and 55° N. lat. and from 45° to 80° E. long. Here they came under the sway of Jenghiz Khan, after whose death they fell to the share of his son Juji, head of the Golden Horde, but continued to retain their own khans. When the Uzbegs acquired the ascendancy, many of the former subjects of the Juji and Jagatai hordes fell off and joined the Kazaks. Thus about the year 1500 were formed two powerful states in the Kipchak and Kheta steppes, the Mogul-Ulus and the Kazak, the latter of whom, under their khan Arslane, are said by Sultan Baber to have had as many as 400,000 fighting men. Their numbers continued to be swollen by voluntary or enforced accessions from the fragments of the Golden Horde, such as the Kipchaks, Naimans, Konrats, Jalairs, Kankali, whose names are still preserved in the tribal divisions of the Kazaks. And as some of these peoples were undoubtedly of true Mongolian stock, their names have given a colour to the statement that all the Kazaks were rather of Mongol than of Turki origin. But the universal prevalence of a nearly pure variety of the Turki speech throughout the Kazak steppes is almost alone sufficient to show that the Tatar element must at all times have been in the ascendant. Very various accounts have been given of the relationship of the Kipchak to the Kirghiz, but at present they seem to form a subdivision of the Kirghiz-Kazaks. The Kara-Kalpaks are an allied but apparently separate tribe.
The Kirghiz-Kazaks have long been grouped in three large “hordes” or encampments, further subdivided into a number of so-called “races,” which are again grouped in tribes, and these in sections, branches and auls, or communities of from five to fifteen tents. The division into hordes has been traditionally referred to a powerful khan, who divided his states amongst his three sons, the eldest of whom became the founder of the Ulu-Yuz, or Great Horde, the second of the Urta-Yuz, or Middle Horde, and the third of the Kachi-Yuz, or Little Horde. The last two under their common khan Abulkhair voluntarily submitted in 1730 to the Empress Anne. Most of the Great Horde were subdued by Yunus, khan of Ferghana, in 1798, and all the still independent tribes finally accepted Russian sovereignty in 1819.
Since 1801 a fourth division, known as the Inner or Bukeyevskaya Horde, from the name of their first khan, Bukei, has been settled in the Orenburg steppe.
But these divisions affect the common people alone, all the higher orders and ruling families being broadly classed as White and Black Kost or Bones. The White Bones comprise only the khans and their descendants, besides the issue of the khojas or Moslem “saints.” The Black Bones include all the rest, except the Telengut or servants of the khans, and the Kûl or slaves.
The Kazaks are an honest and trustworthy people, but heavy, sluggish, sullen and unfriendly. Even the hospitality enjoined by the Koran is displayed only towards the orthodox Sunnite sect. So essentially nomadic are all the tribes that they cannot adopt a settled life without losing the very sentiment of their nationality, and becoming rapidly absorbed in the Slav population. They dwell exclusively in semicircular tents consisting
