owing to the want of accurate information. The only truly historical records are to be found in the Chinese chronicles and encyclopædias,[1] where, however, the Turkish proper names appear in such distorted forms as to be unrecognizable; yet, till the 6th century of our era, no other accounts are available.
The Hiong-nu.It is generally admitted that the first Turkish people mentioned by the Chinese are the Hiong-nu, who, wandering to the west, occupied the country south of the Altai Mountains and expelled (about 177 B.C.) the former occupants of those regions, the Yue-chi,[2] Kan-goi, and Usun (U-ssun), tribes of unknown nationality, but possibly also Turks.[3] The Hiong-nu were identified by Deguignes with the Huns, this denomination being used in a political or collective sense, and including, besides the Huns proper, the Ephthalites or White Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Khazars, and Petchenegs, who are styled by several scholars Hunnic or Scythian peoples,—a term of no scientific value whatever, as the main body of these peoples consisted really of Mongol-Turks or Finno-Ugrians. As, however, separate articles have been devoted to most of these ethnical names, we abstain from further details, as also from discussion of the question of the Turkish origin of the Magyars and the Khazars, though that of the former seems to us as improbable as that of the latter is certain.[4] The Tu-kiu.Be this as it may, the Hiong-nu are, so to speak, proto-Turks, and the history of the Turks proper begins with the Tu-kiu, the Chinese equivalent of the word Turk. Originally a division of the Hiong-nu, almost extirpated by wars, but miraculously saved from complete destruction, the Tu-kiu settled south of the Kin-Shan (Altai?) Mountains, and were miners and iron-smelters in the service of the Juen-Juen[5] ("les Tartares Geou-gen" of Deguignes). About 552 A.D., however, they conquered their former masters and founded a mighty empire under princes who took the title of Ili khan. In these Tu-kiu Deguignes recognized the Turks who entered into friendly relations with Byzantium, and to whom Justin II. sent two ambassadors,—Zemarchus (568) and Valentinus (575). The narratives of these ambassadors are preserved in the fragments of Menander Protector; and (comparing the variations of the corrupt text with the record of Tabari) from him we learn that at the first date the reigning prince was Sinjibulus (Arabic Sinjibu).[6] From the Greek and the Arabo-Persian accounts it seems that Sinjibu put an end to the empire of the Ephthalites or Haitals in those regions. He shared the conquered country with Khosrau I., the Oxus becoming the frontier between Irān and Turān. The memory of the empire of Sinjibu and of its political strength has been preserved by the Arabic authors Ibn Khordādbeh and Mas'udi, who inform us that the Turkish tribe of the Karluks, settled in the provinces of Ferghāna and Shāsh (Tashkend), were of old the mightiest of all the Turks, and that their sovereign, the khakān of khakāns, was obeyed by all the neighbouring princes. To them they reckon the mythical Afrāsiāb and the historical Shāwa. [7] It is uncertain at what epoch the empire of the Karluks came to an end; but the Chinese assert that about 650 they reduced the inhabitants of the Ili and Jaxartes territory, though they were unable to protect them afterwards against the inroads of the Arabs under Kotaiba b. Moslim (706-714). The latter defeated the armies sent to their aid under Kurbogha Noyon, a sister's son of the Chinese emperor.[8] It is also doubtful if the so-called Afrāsiāb kings or Ilekkhans, who reigned in the 10th century at Kāshgar and Balāsāghun and conquered (999) the dominions of the Samanids in Transoxiana, belonged to the Karluks, as is supposed by Grigorieff and Lerch, or to the Uigurs, as others think.
The Uigurs.The name Uigurs is very common during the Mongolian period, and Rashid ed-Din and others use it (by an anachronism) in speaking of remote antiquity, though it is wholly unknown to the Arabic geographers, and, as Vambéry has shown, to the Uigurs themselves,—nay, even impossible in the old Turkish language, in which the form would be Utkur. The name Ugur, Ogur, or Ogor of Byzantine authors is really different; but Grigorieff has recognized the name in the corrupt Arabic form of Tagazgaz, which must be read Toguz-Ugur,[9] the "Nine Ugurs," to distinguish them from another division of the same tribe, the On-Ugur or "Ten Ugurs." In the time of Ibn Khordādbeh and Mas'udi these Turks had gained the supremacy amongst their brethren, and had their residence at Kushān, which has been identified with the Kiao-chang of the Chinese. According to their accounts, the Kiao-chang form the southern division of the Hui-khe (Hoei-ke of Deguignes), and were settled before the Christian era south and east of the Tian-Shan up to the Pamir plateau and the Kuen-Lun. The Arabic authors make them adherents of Manichæism; but, as the original Turkish Shamanism has developed into a dualistic system, this statement may rest on a partial misapprehension. It seems, however, certain that Buddhism reached these Turks on its way towards China, for we know that this religion spread in the 2d century B.C. throughout the adjacent kingdom of Bactria, and was still flourishing when Hwen-T sang visited (7th century) those regions. Thus we can understand why the old Ural-Altaic religion bears a Sanskrit name. The northern division of the Hui-khe, which remained unknown to the Arabs, wandered from the Selenga region to the sources of the Yenisei, vanquished the Tu-kiu (745), and founded an empire from the Selenga to Lake Balkash, till they were overthrown (841) by the Ha-kas (identified with the Kirghiz). These northern Uigurs are called by the Chinese Kao-che, Chi-le, Di-li, and Te-le. The history of the southern branch is unknown, for the chronological data of Rashīd ed-Dīn and Abu-'l-Ghāzi are contradictory and useless, though their statements that the prince bore the title of Idi-kut and submitted to the Mongols have full historical weight. That the Uigurs rose during the
- ↑ Translated in the well-known works of Deguignes, Visdelou, &c.; for a French translation by Stanisl. Julien of the accounts of the Pien-i-tien, referring to the Tu-kiu, see Journ. Asiat., 1864, p. 325 sq.
- ↑ Comp. Persia vol. xviii. pp. 592-4, 600, 603.
- ↑ Radloff, for instance, thinks that the name U-ssun, and perhaps remnants of the people denoted by it, survive in the present Uisuns, a division of the Great Horde of the Kirghiz. At the time of Alexander the Great's expeditions against the Scythians beyond the Jaxartes, we find in that region certain traces of the Turkish language in names of places and persons (cp. vol. xviii. p. 582. note 4). It is therefore certain that long before the age of the Hiong-nu Turkish tribes had spread to the borders of the Jaxartes, and even along the northern coast of the Caspian to the rivers Ural and Volga. But the ethnical denominations of antiquity—Scythians, Parthians, Massagetæ, Sacæ, &c.—do not convey to our mind clear ethnical distinctions, so that the true nationality of these peoples has been much debated. Neither are the pre-Semitic culture of Babylonia and the supposed "Turanian" origin of the Accads facts of such character that from them we can infer the presence of Turks in these regions in remote antiquity.
- ↑ On the Petchenegs see below.
- ↑ From their Chinese name it may be inferred that the Juen-Juen were a Mongolian people, in which case the Avars, who are supposed to have been a division of them, were also Mongols.
- ↑ See Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber, p. 158. The first part of this name is without doubt the Turkish sünjü, süngü, which means "lance," a Turkish proper name of the same kind as Kilij = "sword," which in its Persian form, Nizek, was afterwards borne by a prince of Transoxiana, often mentioned in the accounts of the Arabic conquest.
- ↑ Cp. Mas'udī, ed. Paris, i. 288; Nöldeke, ut sup., p. 269, n. 1.
- ↑ The title Noyon, if the present writer's conjecture on the text of Tabarï, ii. 1195, is right, proves that Kurbogha was a Mongolian prince.
- ↑ Before this Reinaud had conjectured that the Tagazgaz were the same as the Uigurs, but failed to correct the Arabic corruption.
