The ancient Turkic title ilig and its variants, yelig, yelik, yilig, elig, ilik, ilek go back to the title of the son of Attila and Akatsir/Akatzir/Akatziri, (Greek: Άκατίροι, Άκατζίροι, Akatiroi, Akatziroi; Latin: Acatziri), a Turkic tribe under Huns that was first reported by the Byzantine/East Roman author, diplomat and historian Priscus in the 5th century.
“Ellac and Ilek: What Does the Study of an Ancient Turkic Title in Eurasia Contribute to the Discussion of Khazar Ancestry?” — Farda Asadov
Acta Via Serica, 2017
Several theories about the ancestry of the Khazars and the origins of the Khazar state have been suggested to date. None of them provides a comprehensive solution for the controversial data of the written sources on the early history of the Khazars. This article investigates a possible link between the title of Kagan-Bek of the Deputy Kagan of the Khazars and a similar title Ellac/Ilek of the Akatsir-Huns. This study of the title argues for statehood and political culture connections between the earliest Turkic tribes of Western Eurasia and the Khazars and Turks of Central Asia.
Keywords: Khazar, Akatsir-Huns, Turkic tribes, Central Asia
INTRODUCTION:
THE ENIGMA OF THE KHAZAR ANCESTRY
Confederations and states of nomadic people in Eurasia
may arise and disappear, but people united in clans and tribes can regroup in
new alliances. New tribes and clans may join and lead them, while fragments of
tribes that dominated in a preceding political entity can be ordinary members
in a new alliance that would also have a new ethno-political designation.
Professor Peter Golden, to whom this generalizing statement belongs, has
supported his judgment through evidence from the Tölös, Kipchak, Kyrgyz, and
Türgesh clans among diverse kin groups of the contemporary Altai Turks. States
may collapse but people remain to create new states, often with new names, and
possibly with new ruling dynasties.[1]
The Khazar puzzle has been that after the collapse of
the Khazar kaganate in 965–969 CE, the presence of the Khazar ethnic name in
other later political entities was not found.[2]
Almost all their occasional mentions after the disaster were related to the
fact of their adoption of Judaism, and apparently referred to the urban
population in the lands formally controlled by the Khazars on the Black Sea
shores of the Caucasus and in the Crimea.[3] In
the Caucasus, the central terrain of the former Khazaria, we have only two
vague indications of Khazars after the downfall of the Khazar kaganate that
have no reference to their Judaic legacy. A local source reported that in 1064
“the remnants of the Khazars” amounted to 3,000 families rebuilt the city of
Kahtan on “the former Khazar territory” and settled there.[4] M.I.
Artamonov has pointed out that the remains of the Khazars mixed with Kipchaks
were referred to in a narration by the Azerbaijani poet Khagani and in the
Georgian chronicle “Kartlis Tskhovreba,” in which the Khazars were described as
fighting in the army of the Emir of Derbent during his unsuccessful campaign
against Shirvan in the 12th century. According to this Russian
scholar, the Khazars, either remaining in the area of Derbent or being in the
service of the Emir of Derbent, were absorbed among the Kipchaks by that time,
had lost their identity and became known as Kipchaks.[5]
Today, none of the existing peoples is known as
Khazars. The name of the Hazara people in central Afghanistan has nothing to do
with the ethnonym Khazar. The traditional view on the origin of the Hazara
people as offspring of Mongol soldiers who ended up in Afghanistan seems
doubtless to almost everybody.[6]
Even critics of this view do not see any connection between the Hazara people
and the Khazars.[7]
People get famous through the perception and the names
that are given to them by neighbors, but along with that, they might also be
known by their own naming. Given that virtually all external sources–Arabic,
Caucasian, Byzantine and Chinese–did not differ in the name of the Khazars,
each of them seems to have borrowed the term from the outside. However, was
this the Khazars own name, or a name that one of their neighbors gave them? Is
there any eponym, political event or social shift behind the term that could
lead to the formation of a new identity, and, accordingly, a new name of the
people? There is also another side of the issue. The transformation of an
ethnonym to a political term that embraces a multi-ethnic or multi-tribal
confederation is a usual process of people building big states in Eurasia.[8]
This can be seen in the examples of the terms Türk, Kipchak, and Mongol. The
fate of these terms can evolve in different ways depending on the fate of the
community they designated: they could designate the emerging broader
ethno-linguistic identity (Türk, Kipchak), or the fragmentation of the
community they represented could lead to a narrowing of the meaning down to a
designation of a single constituent ethnic group (Mongol). However,
ethno-political consolidation and consequently transition of the ethnic name of
a single group to denote broader ethno-political commonality may also occur.
The contemporary meaning of the term “French” can be an example of the latter.
The fact that after the collapse of the Khazar Khanate, the Khazar identity
ceased to exist and was not continued in the name of any unit within later
confederations of Eurasian nomads may justify that by the time of the
disintegration of the Khazar state, the word Khazar was more a political or
religious term than an ethnonym. This problem is an important aspect of the
debate about the emergence and meaningful frames of the Khazar identity, but we
cannot consider it in this paper.
The subject of this study is related to possible early
evidence of the word “Khazar” that predates the sources contemporary to the
Khazar state. In the context of the formative trends of political life among
Eurasian nomads as detailed by Peter Golden, the efforts of researchers to find
a Khazar ethnic or ancestral component in the political entities of Central
Eurasian nomads which preceded the Khazars look quite explainable. In this
article, the Khazar-Hun connection through the ancient Turkic institution of
co-ruler, or deputy of supreme royal figure, will be contemplated.
ETHNIC ROOTS AND THE ETHNONYM OF THE KHAZARS
A majority of researchers have considered the Khazars
a distinct ethnic group and have sought their roots in prior populations of the
region. Russian researcher S.A. Romashov in “Historical Geography of the Khazar
Kaganate” details five major versions of the origins of the Khazars.[9]
In his review of the current state of Khazar studies, Professor Peter Golden
also indicated five viewpoints on the matter that were developed at different
times and have retained their value.[10]
Three versions are identical in the designations of these two experts, but the
two other versions are apparently different. None of the existing versions is
deemed absolutely convincing. Reputable historians have voiced arguments in
favor of one or other of the versions simultaneously. For example, a leading
expert on the history of the Khazars, Professor Peter Golden, having
contributed to the development of several existing concepts, carefully spoke in
favor of the Khazars’ descent from the Sabirs, a division of western Turkic
(Oghur) tribes, and the Turks of the Western Turkic kaganate being the leading
political element in the Khazar confederation.[11]
The theory of the emergence of the Khazars from an
early Uyghur confederation has been the longest under scholarly consideration
and still continues to be a central subject of attention by Turkologists. The
connection with Uyghurs has found new supporters due to data on the early
history of the Uyghurs preceding the establishment of the Uyghur kaganate on
the northern borders of China in the middle of the eighth century, which are
increasingly available over time. In recent years, a special merit in
strengthening this theory of the origin of the Khazars belongs to the prominent
Russian scholar Sergey Klyashtorny, who unfortunately passed away in 2014.[12]
The assumption of the Khazars’ connection with the Akatsir, a Hunnic tribe whom we know thanks to reports by the Byzantine authors Priscus of Panium (5th c.) and Jordanes (6th c.), takes a remarkable place in the debate about the origins of the Khazars. This concept, if accepted, would restore confidence in reports by Syrian and local Armenian and Georgian sources about the appearance of the Khazars in the Caucasus earlier than the evidence of the Khazar kaganate in contemporaneous Byzantine and Arab sources.[13]
AKATSIR-HUNS
In the middle of the fifth century, Priscus of Panium,
who visited the headquarters of the Hun king Attila somewhere in the territory
of present-day Hungary, reported on the tribe of the Akatsirs in the Union of
Huns. The Akatsirs had been independent of the Huns of Attila. The Huns had to
wage a military campaign and foment rivalries and intrigues inside the Akatsir
nobility to subjugate them. Having used the discontent of the nobility with
their tribal leader Kuridakh, Attila appointed his eldest son Ellac as lord
over the Akatsirs.[14]
Priscus also provides important information about the incursion the Akatsirs
and the related Turkic-Bulgar tribe the Saragurs launched into the South
Caucasus through the Derbent and Daryal (Alanian) passages that facilitates the
argument for Khazar-Akatsir connections, since it was carried out via the same
routes which the Khazars later followed to make their raids.[15]
In the middle of the sixth century, Jordanes added to the description of the
Akatsirs that they were a tribe who did not know cereals but lived on cattle
breeding and hunting.[16]
This information about the Akatsir found a lot of
similarities between them and the Khazars. They allegedly occupied territory
north of the Black Sea steppes, and a hundred years after their location by
Priscus, they were squeezed out by Bulgars to the north, where Jordanes fixed
them. They also launched raids through the Caucasus gorges against Albania and
Iberia, and they were a nomadic people connected to the Bulgars like the
Khazars. Obviously, the author of the anonymous “Ravenna Cosmography,” written
at the end of the seventh century, i.e., a half century after Jordanes, had
many reasons for concluding that Jordanes called his contemporaries the Khazars
by a different name, Akatsirs.[17]
Consequently, in the second half of the nineteenth century, attempts were made
in scholarly literature to identify the Khazars with the Akatsirs.[18]
Scholars exerted considerable efforts to justify the linguistic connection of
the term Akatir/Akatzir with the ethnonym Khazar. Almost simultaneously, two
possible explanations of this connection were suggested. According to the first
one, articulated by Vilem (Wilhelm) Tomaschek in 1872, the name Akatsir was
derived from the Turkic “aqach eri,” i.e., “forest people.”[19]
This etymology was later supported by the credible opinion of Joseph Marquart.[20]
The second opinion explained the ethnonym Akatsir as ak-khazar (white Khazars). As mentioned
above, this point of view emerged not later than the first one, and it was
referred to as a well-established concept in the scholarship of the
mid-twentieth century.[21]
Evidence from the Arab author al-Istakhri that the Khazars were of two types –
black (kara Khazars) and white –
acquired a special significance in support of this interpretation.[22]
According to Douglas Dunlop, this evidence by the Arab author is an additional
argument in favor of the theory of the relationship of the Akatsirs
(Ak-Khazars) with the Khazars.[23]
Being reserved in his own judgments, Dunlop never expressed his definitive
opinion concerning the idea of the Akatsir origin of the Khazars. However, in
his consideration of arguments in favor of the Akatsir theory, he was both
consistent and unusually persistent. Thus, he leant towards Zacharias Rhetor’s evidence on the Khazars’ presence amid nomadic people in the
Caucasus not later than the latest date of the compilation of his work in 569
CE. Similarly, he also accepted the identification of the Akatsirs in Jordanes’
evidence on the Khazars as asserted by the above-mentioned author of the
“Ravenna Cosmography.” Furthermore, Dunlop seriously considered the earliest
evidence of Khazars in Armenian history by Moses Khorenatsi, which reported on
a Khazar incursion into the south Caucasus in cooperation with related Barsil people. He believed that there
were many specific details in the story of the invasion of the Khazars and
Barsils under the leadership of King Vnasep Surhap that validated the source.
Although the author of the first detailed monograph about the Khazars conceded
the need for more evidence to justify the information of the Armenian, Georgian
and Syrian sources, it was obvious that the relationship with the Akatsir
seemed to him the only explanation and grounds to trust these stories.[24]
The explanation of Akatsirs as agach-eri (forest
people) creates a difficulty for the concept of Akatsir ancestry of the
Khazars, since the latter are characterized by various credible sources as
nomadic people living in the steppes. An interesting way out of this difficulty
was proposed by another supporter of the Akatsir concept, the well-known
Russian historian A.V. Gadlo. According to him, Bulgars evicted the Akatsirs from
a Black Sea strip to the north-east Caspian steppes, where they changed their
lifestyle and turned back to nomadism. That was when Jordanes met and located
them after the earlier reported evidence by Priscus of Panium. Consequently,
their name was changed to the consonant title Khazars, which was etymologically
connected to the Turkic verb kez
(wandering).[25]
Thus, the Khazars, Gadlo asserted, were linked to the Akatsirs (agach-eri), and
later they become known by a different name, which sounded similar, but derived
from a different origin and had a different meaning. However, one cannot avoid
noting that having denied the etymological connection between two terms, Gadlo
just suggested a conjectural concept of the derivation of the term Khazar from
the Turkic word kez. In addition, we
know nothing about the life style of the Akatsirs except Jordanes’ assertion
that they were people who did not know cereals but lived off cattle breeding
and hunting. In other words, they were hardly forest people.[26]
There is a difficulty also in the etymological connection of the terms Khazar and Akatsir via ak-khazar. Two available phonetic and graphical variations of the term– Akatir and Akatsir–justify the transition of the second consonant to “ch,” but not to “kh.” In other words, agach-eri is a linguistically plausible transformation, but ak-khazar is unlikely. Consequently, the appearance of a kh-azar variation in Arabic, Armenian, Georgian and Greek languages is difficult to explain.[27] Besides the linguistic problem, there is also a controversy over the details of Akatsir reports of their name “white Khazars” (ak-kazars). J. Marquart, who was against this etymology based on the aforementioned linguistic arguments, indicated that, subjugated to the Huns, the Akatsirs would fit the social status of “black Khazars,” i.e., they were not privileged members of the tribal union.[28] In this connection, it should be noted that in the above-mentioned evidence, our source, the Arab geographer al-Istakhri distinguished black and white Khazars based on their physical appearance rather than social status. It is possible that having learned about the existence of white and black Khazars, the Arabic source gave its own explanation which would not necessarily coincide with the principle of division in Khazar society.
A majority of researchers considered the language of
Khazars and Bulgars to belong to archaic Oghur-Turkic languages, in which
“white” presumably would have sounded like sharyg/sary.
The use of the word “ak” (white) is consistent with the norms of the
Common Turkic–the language of ancient Turkic inscriptions in Mongolia. Such
considerations imply a connection between the Akatsirs (based on the etymology ak-khazars–white Khazars) and the tribes
of the Turkic kaganate. This opinion, in particular, was taken by the
well-known Azerbaijani historian Y.R. Jafarov, who believed that the Akatsirs
belonged to a group of “inherently old Turkic” tribes and whose name included
the typical Turkish title “chur.”[29]
The inconsistency of Jafarov’s theory was that to identify a different
etymology and to justify an “ancient Turkish” origin of the Akatsirs, he was
forced to abandon the above two popular interpretations of the name Akatsir.
However, he did not offer a complete explanation of the ethnic name Akatsir
other than the extraction of the title “chur” from it. The other difficulty for
Jafarov consisted in the expression “old Turkic origin,” which was not sufficiently
explained. He asserted that prior to the coming of the Huns to Western Eurasia,
the nomadic confederation was consolidated in the land of eastern Kazakhstan as
a product of interaction between ancient Ugrian and ancient Turkic components.
[30]
The coming of the Hun to this region at the end of the first century CE after
their defeat by Chinese and Xianbei
forces in Mongolia facilitated the consolidation and Turkification of the
ethno-political mass that constituted a milieu for the formation of the ancient
Bulgars. Other components of the “Hun-Bulgarian array,” out of which the Khazars
later came, were, according to Jafarov, Turkified Indo-European “Saka-Wusun”
people and the western branch of “ancient Turkic tribes” whom Huns met there.
[31]
Thus, the origin of the ethnic nucleus of the ancient
Bulgar tribes and the Huns themselves as well as their role in the so-called
Turkification process of the Hunno-Bulgar milieu was too broadly defined. In
fact, this enabled Kazakhstani scholar B.B. Irmukhanov, himself the author of a
peculiar concept of the Khazar origin, to criticize Jafarov, unjustly, in our
view, for following the academic traditions of Soviet scholarship in Khazar
Studies and its patriarch M.I. Artamonov, who asserted the Ugrian ancestry of
Bulgar tribes that adopted the Turkic language in the process of long
interaction with their Turkic neighbors.[32]
However, let us return to the question of the
etymological connection between the ethnonyms Khazar and Akatsir, i.e., to the
plausibility of explaining the latter ethnonym as Ak-Khazars, or the white
Khazars. It has been noted that the identification of the ethnonyms Khazar and
Akatsir lays the foundation for the early mention of the Khazars in the
Armenian written sources, which would otherwise be regarded as anachronisms.[33]
Color markers in Turkish onomastics are a common and ancient
practice.[34]
Chinese sources after the collapse of the Turkic kaganate in 630 distinguished
Ashina Turks (blue Turks) and Turks-Sheli
or Shary-Turks (yellow Turks). Over
twenty years, there was a struggle in the Turgesh kaganate between the “yellow”
and “black” Turgeshes that led to the degradation and decay of the Turgesh
union. Even more common was the division of related tribal groups into “white”
and “black.”[35]
As mentioned above, this division did not mean social and ethnic differences.
For example, amid the Turkic people karayi
(Karaites, or Karayim—Turks professing the karayi
doctrine of Judaism) the color marker kara
(black) does not have negative connotations, but has a number of positive
homonyms—land (fertile), big, strong. It is often found in ethnonyms in the
sense of a large, powerful, inherent people.[36]
Kara-kagan, for example, was the title of the supreme ruler of the Karakhanid
dynasty.[37]
Color markers initially occurred in onomastic pairs. Splitting the terminological pair and upgrading a single part of the pair to a separate ethnonym would mean the disintegration of a former tribal community and the emergence of a new independent group.[38] Thus, the existence of the ethnonym “White Khazars” in the middle of the fifth century, when Priscus of Panium noted Akatsirs in the composition of the Hun tribal union, would imply the existence of the Khazar confederation even earlier in time and its decay to the point marked in the report of the Byzantine envoy to the court of Attila. However, we have no such records in the written sources or other evidence of these events.
ELLAC AND ILEK
Along with these skeptical assessments of Akatsir
identification with the Khazars, there is another consideration that connects
information about these two peoples. Priscus in his narrative about the
Akatsirs says that they were divided into two parts. Some remained subordinate
to their own leader Kuridakh, and the other part was subjected to Attila, and
he sent his eldest son Ellac to them.[39] The
famous Austrian-American historian, author of the fundamental book The World of the Huns, Otto
Maenchen-Helfen definitively believed that it was not a personal name, but the
title of the son of Attila. He reconstructed the title as Elik, or Ilig, and
translated its meaning as “ruler, the king.” A similar explanation was found in
the vocabulary of the Hunnic language by the Ukrainian-American scholar Omeljan
Pritsak.[40]
Ilig, or Ilek as the term is most frequently transliterated in scholarly
literature, is the highest title in the hierarchy of the Turkic nobility after
Kagan, or Khan. Written monuments from Muslim times and numismatic evidence
most often point to its use in the dynasty of Turkic rulers known as
Karakhanids or the “The House of Afrasiab.”[41]
The Karakhanids’ capital at the end of the tenth
century was Balasagun city in the Chuy Valley in the territory of modern
Kyrgyzstan. From here, Harun Bogra Kara-Khan (970–993) began the conquest of Maverannahr,
the lands between the two biggest rivers of Central Asia.[42]
However, only his nephew Nasr b. Ali, who was known as the First Ilek (d. 1012)
succeeded in completing the submission of this critical area by taking Bukhara,
the Samanid capital, in 999. Apparently, the title Ilek was of lower significance than Kagan (or Kara-khan). The
eastern branch of the dynasty had its capital in Kashgar and Balasagun. Supreme
kagans from the Chigil tribe ruled
there with the title Arslan Kara-khan.[43]
Whereas the rulers of Maverannahr were dignified with the title Ilek,[44] the
First Ilek recognized the seniority of Arslan Kara-Khans in Balasagun, though
he did not always obey him. Similarly, Al-Bayhaqi characterizes the
relationship between Ilek and Kara-khan in a story about the conflict between
Ilek Nasr and Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi. He calls Arslan Khan in Kashgar “the most
senior Turkestan khan” and notes that Ilek did not listen to his advice to be
careful with the powerful and fortunate Sultan Mahmud. Nasr went to war against
the Ghazni ruler and was completely defeated in battle in 998.[45]
Later, the Balasagun and Maverennahr branches of Karakhanids—descendants of two
grandsons of the founder of the dynasty, Abd al-Karim Satuq Bogra-Khan
(942–955)—were openly at odds with each other.[46]
After the capital of the Ilek-khans was moved to Samarkand in 1040, the son of
Ilek Nasr Ibrahim took the title of Khan or Kagan, which seems to mean nominal
independence from the elder branch. At the same time, the title Ilek disappears from Karakhanid coins in
Maverannahr.[47]
Kagan and Ilig
were tied together in the title of the founder of the Turkic kaganate Khan
Bumin. In Turkic, his title sounded
like “Il(l)ig/El(l)ig Kagan,” i.e., “Kagan, holding sway over il/el
(the state).”[48]
Subsequently, as can be seen in the Karakhanids’ case, the title Ilek acquired independent significance
and became subordinated to Kagan. However, despite the continuing hierarchy of
positions and titles, claims of Karakhanid dynasty representatives to an
independent government in Maverannahr found their manifestation in a combined
title Ilek-khan. When subordination was finally thrown off, the Ilek-khans were
called Kagan, or khans. In different circumstances, when the title ilig/ilek existed within the power
hierarchy headed by Kagan, its combination with an ordinary nobility name bek/beg
was normal and legitimate. It is this use that can be found in the didactic
poem “Kutadgu Bilig” (“Wisdom Which Brings Good Fortune”) by Yusuf of
Balasagun. The author started his poem in Balasagun and completed it in Kashgar
in 1070. Yusuf Balasagunlu presented the poem to the Karakhanid Kagan Abu Ali
Hasan b. Suleiman, who ruled in Kashgar from 1056–1103, in whose titulature all
indicators of higher Karakhanid Kagan power were
introduced–Tafgach-Bogra-Kara-kagan, son of Suleyman Arslan Kara-kagan.[49]
Elik Güntoğdı is the protagonist of the book. He is the embodiment of justice—the
first of four “essences” of the poem. Yusuf of Balasagun introduces him in the
following way: “... there lived Bey, wise and clever, and for many years he
ruled the country.”[50]
Thus, Elik-bek is the title of the ruler who embodied justice.
These considerations seemingly are another argument
for connections between members of the Hun confederation, particularly the
Akatsirs, and the Turkic tribes of the Chinese frontier that later advanced to
the West, to the Central Asian and Eastern Caspian region. However, where is a
connection with the Khazars in this context? Arab authors repeatedly pointed to
a special institution of a Khazar co-ruler, which was most often called bek (or beg).[51] The
same title is found in Byzantine sources. However, its spelling in Arab sources
varies. Al-Istakhri apparently faced such discrepancies in the spelling of the
title of his own sources, and summed up the options in the following testimony:
“... the king in their own language is called the bak; it is also called bāk.”[52]
The second option contains a long vowel “a.” Peter Golden, who devoted a
special article to this subject, drew in comparison an option that has been
preserved in the work of a later author Yaqut al-Hamavi: “... the king in their
own language is called yelik, and
also called bāk.”
First, we have to explain why the same term bek/beg
is quoted with a long “a” and a short one in a single piece of evidence. For
the Arabic writing in which the long articulated vowel, as opposed to the vowel
itself, possesses a graphical notation, it can hardly be the result of phonetic
variations of the same word that would be cited by the source as two
alternative variations. Golden also pointed out that none of the ancient Turkic
texts contains this Turkic term with a long “a,” and therefore a different word
stands behind this invariance distorted by copyists. According to the author,
this was the word “yelik.” Permanent copy errors in making inferior dots under
the letters “ي” (y) and “ب” (b) are
widespread. Writing much later, Yakut al-Hamawi might have taken this
information not only from his famous predecessors of the tenth century, to whom
he referred (al-Istakhri and Ibn Haukal), but have also had the opportunity to
use the earlier original sources. The fact that these primary sources might
have been available for later authors of Muslim geographical works can be seen
in the text preserved by Zakariya al-Qazvini (1203–1283), who similarly to
Yakut wrote three centuries after al-Istakhri: “they (the Khazars) have a
powerful king, whose name is ‘yelik.”[53]
Peter Golden juxtaposed the title yelik
with the name Yeleg of the second son of the Hungarian king Arpad to justify
the existence of the title related to the co-ruler of the Khazar kagan among
early Hungarian tribal confederations. It is well known that the shaping of the
royal power and titles of the Hungarians was considerably influenced and
promoted by the Khazars at the time when the Hungarians inhabited the Eurasian
steppes and were a part of the Khazar union.[54]
The combination of Elig-beg
occurs in Uyghur texts of the tenth century, written in Uyghur script.[55]
Evidence from Uyghur texts allowed Peter Golden to suggest it was not two
parallel versions of the co-ruler title of the Khazars but a single title of Ilik-bek, or Yilig-beg. He suggested that Muslim authors who were well aware of
the word bek did not realize that the
title of the Khazar ruler was a composition of two words and they split it into
its component parts. Thus, in some Arab sources, variance occurred in reports
about the title of co-ruler or regent of the Khazars, in which the title yilik was presented as an alternate to
the title bek,[56]
or khaqan-beh.[57]
It seems to me that one more argument in support to
Professor Golden’s concept can be found in the testimony of the early historian
al-Ya’qubi (died 897): “... Their king is called khaqan and he has a deputy
(khalifa), whose name is y-z-?-d
?-la-sh.” Dunlop considered the reading of the first part of the title
as “Yazid,” as proposed by the editor of the Arab text, unreasonable.[58]
Later publishers have suggested an option for the second part as well–“Balash.”[59]
It is obvious that the text of al-Ya’qubi transfers the title of the Khazar
dignitary in a strongly spoiled way. However, it is noteworthy that the title
consists of two parts, and each word starts with the graphical outline of the
same two letters “ي” (y) or “ب” (b),
diacritical points of which constitute the constant error of the copyists and a
permanent challenge for the reading of ancient Arab texts, particularly when it
comes to foreign words and names. It is likely that the first word in the Khazar
title from the text of al-Yaqubi begins with “y,” and the second with a “b.”
Graphic outlines of the rest of the letters do not rule out the words that we
could restore as “yelik” and “beg.”
The author of “Tarikh al-Ya’qubi,” Ibn Wadih
al-Ya’qubi, spent his younger years in the south Caucasus, which was a major
stage of the Khazar-Arab wars. The ninth century was, however, the time of a
temporary military balance and trade cooperation between the Arabs and the
Khazars. A significant Muslim community lived in the trade centers within the
borders of the Khazar kaganate. The Khazars who adopted Islam often preferred
to move to the Muslim lands. We can find reliable reports of Arab geographers
and historians about Khazar people settled on the Muslim lands in the south
Caucasus, on the territory of contemporary Azerbaijan precisely in the ninth
century.[60]
Evidence from al-Ya’qubi quite convincingly points to the original form of the
title of the deputy of Khazar-kagan as “Yelik-bek,” which later in the
communications of Arab geographers of the tenth century could have been split
and only the second part of the original form might have been kept by
subsequent Arab authors.
CONCLUSION
What does this evidence add to the study of the
connection between the Akatsirs and the Khazars? The functions and the title of
co-ruler, which might have been common for both the Akatsirs and the Khazars as
well as with the government institutions and titles of Central Asian nomadic
states of the Karluks and the Uyghurs, may serve as an additional argument for
the existence of a common political culture and traditions of the nomadic
peoples of Eurasia from the Hun era to the Uyghur domination in Central Asia.
The Khazars, of course, drew from these traditions. Whether they were directly
the heirs of the Akatsirs remains an unresolved issue. The identification of
the Khazars with the Akatsir could solve the problem of anachronisms in the
earliest evidence of the Khazars in the Caucasus. However, the analysis of the
evidence of primary sources in this article still does not allow us to assert
an uncontested direct connection between the Hunnic tribe of the Akatsirs and
the Khazars.
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[1] Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies: An Historico-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1980), 28; See also S.G. Klyashtorny and T.I. Sultanov. Gosudarstva Evraziyskikh narodov: ot drevnosti k novomu vremeni (Sankt-Peterburg: Sankt-Peterburgskiy Tsentr vostokovednikh issledovaniy, 2009), 101; Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East, (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1992), 5–6.
[2] Evidence from Chinese sources about the presence of a tribe called Ho-sa in the Uyghur coalition of Tokuz-Oghuz, which is identified by some researchers with the Khazars, is synchronous with the existence of the Khazar khanate. See details in Shun Shirota, “The Chinese Chroniclers of the Khazars: Notes on Khazaria in Tang Period Texts,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 14 (2005), 242–245. It was also suggested that some Khazar clans are connected with kin groups of western Kazakh tribes within the Junior Juz confederation of later times. See B.B. Irmukhanov. Khazary i Kazakhi: Svyaz vremen i narodov. (Almaty: Nash Mir, 2003).
[3] Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies:
An Historico-Philological Inquiry, 16; M.I. Artamonov, Istoriya Khazar (Leningrad: Ermitaj, 1962; repr. 2002), 442–443.
[4] Vladimir Minorsky and Ahmad ibn Lutf Allah Munajjim Bashi, A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th-11th Centuries (Cambridge: Heffer, 1958), 51; V.F. Minorsky in his commentary on the translated text mistakenly mentioned three hundred families. See ibid., 107.
[5] Artamonov, Istoriya Khazar, 445.
[6] In the word “hazara”–the name of the people in Afghanistan–the uppercase consonant is “h” instead of “x” (kh), as in the word “Khazars.” It is argued that “hazar” is a Persian translation of the Mongolian “ming” (thousand), from which the name of the people derived. S.A Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study (Richmond: 1998), 25–26.
[7] Humayun Sarabi, “Politics and Modern History of Khazara: Sectarian Politics of Afghanistan,” (Medford, MA: Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2006), 15–16.
[8] Peter B. Golden, Central Asia in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 7.
[9] S.A. Romashov, “Istoricheskaya
Geograiya Khazarskogo Kaganata. Chapters 1–2,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 11 (2001), 272–279.
[10] Peter B. Golden, “Khazar Studies: Achievements and Perspectives,” in The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium Hosted by the Ben Zvi Institute (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 52–53.
[11] Ibid., 53.
[12] S.G. Klyashtorny, “Khazarskiye
Zametki,” Turkologicheskiy Sbornik,
2003–2004 (2005), 95–117; “Aziatskiy Aspekt Ranney Istorii Khazar,” in Evrei I Slavyane, ed. V. Moskovich
(Moskva: Mosty kultury/Gesharim, 2005), 259–265; S.G. Klyashtorny, Runicheskiye Pamyatniki Uygurskogo Kaganata
i Istoriya Evraziyskikh Stepey, (Saint
Petersburg: Peterburgs-koye vostokovedeniye, 2010), 175.
[13] P.B. Golden, “Khazars,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition.
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), vol. IV, 1172.
[14] Paniyskiy Prisk, “Skazaniya Priska Paniyskogo. Perevod S. Destunisa,” Ucheniye Zapiski Vtorogo Otdeleniya Impe-ratorskoy Akademii Nauk, 8, no. 1 (1860), 44, 59.
[15] Ibid., 93–94.
[16] Iordan, “O Proisxozhdenii I Deyaniyakh Getov,” Perevod E.Ch. Skrzhinskaya (Sankt-Peterburg:
Aleteya, 1997), 67.
[17] Ravennskiy Anonim,
“Severo-Vostochnaya Evropa v “Kosmografiya” Ravennskogo Anonima, trans. V.A.
Podosinov, Vostochnaya Evropa v
Istoricheskoy Perspektive. K 80-letiyu V.T. Pashuto, (Moskva: Yazyk russkoy
kultury, 1999), 232. [Ravenna Anoymous, Cosmography:
”Further, in the flat terrain, there is an extremely vast <country>, both
in length and in width, which is called Khazaria; the aforementioned Jordanes
calls these Khazars Agatsirs.” Note: Jordan does not identify the Agatsirs
(Akatsirs) with the Khazars. He only reports about Akatsirs that they live
south of the Baltic Estonians, are very powerful, are not familiar with
agriculture and live by hunting and cattle breeding (Iordan. Get. 36: gens Acatzirorum fortissima, frugum ignara quae
pecoribus et venationibus victilat).]
[18] Paniyskiy Prisk, “Skazaniya Priska Paniyskogo. Perevod S. Destunisa,” note 74, 59–60. The author of the translation notes that the opinion about the identity of the Khazars and Akatsir prevails in science. However, he also expresses the view that the interpretation of the name Akatsir as Ak-Khazars (White Khazars) was built only on the consonance of words, which did not suffice.
[19] Y.R. Jafavov, Gunny i Azerbaycan (Baku: Elm, 1985), 33.
[20] J. Marquart, Osteuropèaische Und Ostasiatische Streifzèuge; Ethnologische Und
Historisch-Topographische Studien Zur Geschichte Des 9. Und 10. Jahrhunderts
(Ca. 840–940) (Leipzig:
Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, T. Weicher, 1903), 41.
[21] W.B. Henning, “A Farewell to the Khaqan of Aq-Aqataran,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XIV (1952): 515;
[22] Abu Ishaq Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Farisi (al-ma’ruf bi al-Karkhi) Al-Istakhri, Al-Masalik Wa Al-Mamalik (al-Kahira: Wizarat as-saqafa wa al-irshad al-qaumi, 1961), 131. What has to be noticed is that the Arab text quotes the original Turkic term black Khazars (kara Khazar), but the reference to the white Khazars is done in Arabic translation (sinfun biyadun), without quotation of the Turkic equivalent of the term. This detail, as we will see later, may considerably weaken the argument for Akatsir as Ak-khazar (white Khazars).
[23] Dunlop D.M., The History of the Jewish Khazars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), 7.
[24] Ibid., 7–10.
[25] A.V. Gadlo, Etnicheskaya Istoriya Severnogo Kavkaza IV-X vv. (Leningrad:
Izdatelstvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1979), 60.
[26] Iordan, “O Proisxozhdenii I
Deyaniyakh Gotov,” Perevod E.Ch. Skrzhinskaya, 67.; Jordanes, The Origins and Deeds of the Goths (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1915), V, 36.
[27] Marquart, Osteuropèaische Und Ostasiatische Streifzèuge; Ethnologische Und Historisch-Topographische Studien Zur Geschichte Des 9. Und 10. Jahrhunderts (Ca. 840–940), s. 41, note 2; Golden, Khazar Studies: An Historico-Philological Inquiry, 55.
[28] See Dunlop D.M., The History of the Jewish Khazars, 7.
[29] Jafarov, Gunny i Azerbaijan, 33.
[30] In the study of the ethnicity of Huns and Bulgars, he followed the views of preceding Russian scholars Mikhail Artamonov, Lev Gumilev, Anatoliy Novoseltsev: Ар амонов, Istoriya Khazar; L.N. Gumilev, Istorya Naroda Khunnu; A.P. Novoseltsev. Khazarskoye Gosudarstvo i Yego Rol v I Evropy i Kavkaza. (Moskva: Nauka, 1990).
[31] Jafarov, Gunny i Azerbaijan, 202.
[32] B.B. Irmukhanov, Khazary i Kazakhi: Svyaz Vremen I Narodov (Almaty: Nash Mir, 2003), 219.
[33] Golden, “Khazars,” vol. IV, 1172.
[34] S.G. Klyashtorny, “Kipchaki, Komany i Polovtsi,” in Vostochnaya Evropa v Drevnosti i Srednevekovye: Politicheskiye Instituti i Verkhovnaya Vlast. Materiali Konferentsii “XIX Chteniya Pamyati ChlenaKorrespondenta Akademiii Nauk SSSR Vladimira Pashuto, Moskva, 16-18 aprelya 2007, (Moskva: Rossiyskaya Akademiya Nauk, Institut Vseobshey Istorii, 2007), 113.
[35] S.G. Klyashtorny and T.I. Sultanov, Gosudarstva i Narody Evraziyskikh Stepey: Drevnost i Srednevekovye, Vtoroye Izdaniye, Ispra vlennoye I Dopolnennoye. (Sankt-Peterburg: Peterburgskoye Vostokovedeniye, 2004), 109, 137. S.G. Klyashtorny suggested a new etymology of the name of Ashina. Orkhon inscriptions do not mention the term Asina, which is only reported in Chinese sources. However, the name kokturk in those inscriptions was probably a translation of Sogdian and Tokharian akhshane meaning “dark-blue.” See also S.G. Klyashtorny, “The Royal Clan of the Turks and the Problem of Early Turkic-Iranian Contacts,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47, no. 3 (1994):447.
[36] Y.A. Polkanov and A. Y. Polkanova, “Karai. Simvolika Tsveta,” Gazeta Kyrymkaraylar.
[37] Klyashtorny and Sultanov. Gosudarstva i Narody Evraziyskikh Stepey: Drevnost i Srednevekovye, 118.
[38] Ibid., 137.
[39] Prisk, “Skazaniya Priska Paniyskogo. Perevod S. Destunisa,” 44.
[40] Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their
History and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 407;
Omeljan Pritsak, “The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies VI, no. 4 (1982):445.
[41] Michal Biran, “Ilak-Khanids,” Vol. XII, Fasc. 6, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 621.
[42] In the complex hierarchy of Karakhanid titles, the highest kagan title was Kara Arslan Khan, and the title of the junior western ruler was Bogra Kara Khan. (Klyashtorny and Sultanov. Gosudarstva i Narody Evraziyskikh Stepey: Drevnost i Srednevekovye, 118). According to O. Pritsak, this dualism of power and Kagan titulature were due to the duality of Karluk tribal organization, consisting of Chigil (the ongon or totem patron was Arslan–“lion”) and Yagma (ongon: Bogra–“camel”). (V.V. Bartold, “Bogra-khan,” in V.V.Bartold, Sochineniya, ed. B.G. Gafurov (Moskva: Vostochnaya Literatura, 1964), 506).
[43] Klyashtorny and Sultanov. Gosudarstva i Narody Evraziyskikh Stepey: Drevnost i Srednevekovye, 118.
[44] V.V. Bartold, “Ilek-khany,” in V.V. Bartold. Sochineniya, ed. B.G.
Gafurov (Moskva: Vostochnaya Literatura, 1964), 519.
[45] Abu-l-Fadl Bayhaki, Istoriya Masuda (1030–1041). Perevod s
Persidskogo, Vvedeniye, Kommentariy i Prilozhenniya A.K. Arendsa, Izdaniye
2-oye, dopolnennoye. Pamyatniki Pismennosti Vostoka (Moskva: Nauka, Glavnaya
Redaktsiya Vostochnoy Literatury, 1969), 894.
[46] V.V. Bartold, “Ocherk Istorii Semirechya,” in V.V. Bartold. Sochineniya, ed. B.G. Gafurov (Moskva:Vostochnaya Literatura 1963), 42, 44.
[47] “Ilek-khany,” ibid. (Vostochnaya Literatura, 1964), 519.
[48] Peter B. Golden, “Oq and Oğur~Oğuz,” Turkic Languages 16 (2012), 156, note 3.
[49] V.V.Bartold, “Bogra-khan,
Upomyanutiy v Kutadgu Bilik,” in V.V.
Bartold. Sochineniya, ed. A.N. Kononov (Moskva: Nauka, Glavnaya Redaksiya
Vostochnoy Literatury, 1968), 420.
[50] Yusuf Balasagunskiy, Blagodatnoye Znaniye. Perevod S.N. Ivanova,
Literaturniye Pamyatniki (Moskva: Nauka, 1983), 59.
[51] Golden, Khazar Studies: An Historico-Philological Inquiry, 162-163; Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, 61, 63, 105, 145.
[52] Al-Istakhri, Al-Masalik Wa Al-Mamalik, 129.
[53] P. B. Golden, “The Q’azaro-Hungarian
Title/Personal Name ي
كل,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 1
(1975):38–39.
[54] Golden, Khazar Studies: An Historico-Philological Inquiry, 18-19.
[55] Drevne-Tyurkskiy Slovar, (Leningrad: Nauka, Leningradskoye Otdeleniye, 1969), XXXV, XXXVIII, 170.
[56] Golden, “The Q’azaro-Hungarian Title/Personal Name ي كل,” 40, n. 12.
[57] This is how Ibn Fadlan named the
deputy Khazar-kagan.
[58] Dunlop D.M., The History of the Jewish Khazars, 21.
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