Problems in the Study of the Archeology and History of the Medieval Kyrgyz

Tabaldyev Kubatbek

The earliest information about the Kyrgyz is contained in the Chinese chronicle, Sima Qian’s Shiji (Historical Records), in which the Kyrgyz people (Jiankun = Gyangyun) are mentioned as a tribe which was conquered in 201 B.C. by the Xiongnu. V. V. Barthold wrote:“A story about the event of 201 B.C. says nothing either about the region of the Kyrgyz people, nor about their location. However, together with the Kyrgyz people, apparently as their neighbors, the Dinlin [i.e., Dingling] people are named”. [Barthold, 1996, p.178]

Analyzing information in Hanshu (History of the Former Han) by the ancient Chinese historian Ban Gu, V. V. Barthold further suggests that the Kyrgyz may have already been living, as they later lived, on the Yenisei, as well as in the area south of Kyrgyz Nur [Lake],nor or nur being the Mongolian word for “lake”. [Barthold, 1996, p.178]

Apart from these mentions, written sources do not provide much information about the ancient Kyrgyz, and archaeological data are still absent. However, the analysis of written evidence and archaeological sources with the use of the latest research methods continues,and a scientific picture of ethnic processes is being revealed.

Studies of recent years show that the Kyrgyz people resettled in territory more to the west of Kyrgyz Nur, on the eastern branches of the Tien Shan in the Boro-Khoro range in the area watered by the northern upper tributaries of the Ili River.

At present, this territory is part of the Ili-Kazakh region of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. “Perhaps, the Boro-Khoro range was a natural boundary dividing the lands of the Usun and the three tribes”. [Borovkova, 1989, p.62]

The three tribes comprise the Wuje, Jiankun (ancient Kyrgyz), and Dingling, conquered by the Zhizhi Shanyu, leader of the Xiongnu (Huns), in 49 BCE.

According to ancient Türkic genealogical legends, the Kyrgyz relocated from the territory of the Eastern Tien Shan to the Yenisei in Southern Siberia, as part of the Ashina Turks, at the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th centuries and in the 6th century the Kyrgyz state was established on the Yenisei.

Thus, we associate the original history of the Kyrgyz (Jiankun) with the eastern ranges of the Tien Shan, where they lived before resettling on the Yenisei. However, they have not yet been identified with any of the archaeological cultures of the Tien Shan and adjacent areas, and no direct analogies have been revealed between the well-known ancient archaeological cultures of the Tien Shan and the Yenisei River basin.

According to the historian T. Choroev, the lake called Kyrgyz Nur in north-western Mongolia could not have been related to the ancient Kyrgyz people, but could have related to groups of Kyrgyz who lived in the given territory in the period from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, when the Kyrgyz Kaganate lost its position on the vast expanse of the Mongolian steppe and increasingly shrank to regions of Southern Siberia, the Altai, and Northwestern Mongolia. [Choroyev, 1995, p.90] At the same time, a part of the Kyrgyz people lived in the territory of Altai, modern Khakassia, and the Eastern Tien Shan. In 1125-1128, the Kyrgyz people living in the area of Kyrgyz Nur and the Kyrgyz people of the Eastern Tien Shan fought against the Kara-kitai. [Chorotegin, Moldokasymov, p.41]

At the beginning of the era of Great Migration, the first victim of the Xiongnu was the Yuezhi people. They were neighbors of the Central Asian Xiongnu (Sünnu, Hunnu). The fascinating military campaign of the Xiongnu led by Maodun (Modu) took place in the Zhangye area of what is today Gansu. [Zuev, 1974, p.199] The Xiongnu then conquered the Usun people, who lived in the Semirechye region.

In the opinion of A. N. Bernshtam, “during the wars in Xinjiang, China with the tribes called the Yge, Jiankun, and Dingling, the northern Huns came into contact with the various ethnic and cultural phenomena that they brought to Semirechye”. [Bernshtam, 1997, p.212]

A. N. Bernshtam noted the penetration of the ancient Kyrgyz by the Xiongnu tribes on the Tien Shan and connected the carriers of the Kenkol type of catacomb burials with the Huns and the ancient Kyrgyz tribes of the Tien Shan (Plate I-1). The Kenkol type included the burial mounds of Kyrgyzstan that surmounted catacomb graves in the period from the first to the fifth centuries. He noted the connection between the cultures of the ancient Kyrgyz tribes and of the Huns from the fact that the culture of the Kenkol type in all its main parts was adopted by the Kyrgyz tribes. He discovered some similarities between Kenkol monuments of the Hunnish period and the culture of the Kyrgyz of the mid-20th century.Other similarities included the use of a particular type of cradle, the cut of clothing, some forms of utensils, and the techniques of grave construction.

In his opinion, “the Kyrgyz of the Tien Shan formed in an intermediary Hunnish-Turkic environment, having absorbed a significant part of this ethnic bias in the course of their development and the occupation of their ancient territories”. [Bernshtam, 1952, p.89]The opinion of Professor A. N. Bernshtam has not yet lost its significance. The descendants of the Huns, the early medieval Turkic tribes, undoubtedly remained in the Tien Shan and Semirechye and became part of the Kyrgyz and Kazakh peoples. This analysis of the cultural genesis of the Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples has been underscored by research in recent years.

Yet the question remains: Where did the aforementioned Dingling and their neighbors,the Jiankun, live and when did they migrate? A careful analysis of Chinese sources does not provide evidence locating the tribes of Dingling and Jiankun in Southern Siberia in the first half of the first millennium CE. Until the third century CE, the Dingling and Jiankun were, of course, distinguished by the Chinese as different tribes. The Dingling lived north of Kangju,and the Jiankun lived west of the Dingling. During this period, the Dingling split into two domains. The western Dingling lived in Xinjiang, China and in the following centuries they are known by the names Gao-Suu Dingling and the Tiele. The eastern Dingling lived south of Lake Baikal and became part of the Shiva. In the period from the fourth to the fifth centuries CE, the Jiankun were known as Hegu or Qiqu. They settled north of Yantsi (Karashar), near the White Mountains. [Suprunenko, 1974, p.239] It was during this period that the Jiankun could mingle with the Dingling of Eastern Turkestan, as they are mentioned as one of the tribes of the Tiele.

Sources also mention that they were dependent on the Xianbei. In the fifth century the Zhuzhan Kagan named Khulyui conquered the Heiwei and Yegu tribes to the north. The territory of the Zhuzhan people extended to Yantsi (Karashar). In the fifth and sixth centuries,the Zhuzhan people waged frequent wars with the Tiele (Gaoju Dingling). It was during these wars that the Jiankun became part of the Tiele Confederation, and in the fifth century BCE they were relocated together with the Turks to the Sayan-Altai. [Khudyakov, 1993, p.45]

According to the ancient Turkic genealogical legends, the Kyrgyz from Eastern Turkestan to Southern Siberia were resettled as part of the Ashina Turks. [Kozhobekov, 1996,p.62]

Despite the long period of research, there are still a number of problems related to the ethnic history of the Kyrgyz, their genetic connection, and the resettlement of the Yenisei Kyrgyz in the Tien Shan. There are a number of problems related to the territories of resettlement of the Kyrgyz people at various stages of historical development.

Having read the written sources and the results of the research, we find a range of interesting information about the territories inhabited by the Kyrgyz in antiquity, at various stages of the Middle Ages. Based on them, we know the Kyrgyz lived in various regions of Central Asia. Moreover, the analysis of the reasons for the displacement of the Kyrgyz for a century and a half is very interesting.

Based on the above data, we can consider the eastern spurs of the Tien Shan as the habitat of the Kyrgyz from the third century BCE to the fifth century CE. According to written information, their resettlement on the Yenisei after the “Great Power epoch” in different territories of Central Asia was directly related to the political situation of that time.More precisely, it related to the weakening or strengthening of the power, including military power, of the Kyrgyz. Despite various difficult situations over two millennia, the core of the Kyrgyz people was preserved and its distinctive culture was developed.

Nevertheless, the idea put forward by A. N. Bernshtam about the formation of the medieval Kyrgyz people in the environment of the Huns and Turkic people was important for future research.

Undoubtedly, we are inclined to consider that the culture of the ancient Jiankun developed in parallel and formed in the environment of the Saka, Usun, Hun, Yuezhi, Kangju,and Dingling, but there has been no evidence to date that any of these peoples cremated their deceased. The ceremony of cremation was characteristic of the Yenisei Kyrgyz people. They possibly changed their burial practices after mixing with the Dingling or when they began to assimilate in the environment of the Southern Siberian tribes (for example, with tribes of the Tashtyk culture).

The territory of their dwelling, of course at a different stage of development, as well as in the next centuries, was changed. As anthropological research shows, the so-called Saka tribes were not similar. The anthropologist S. S. Tour, on the basis of craniological material from Semirechye, Tien Shan, and Alay, distinguished about twenty different populations from the time of the Saka people. The original group among the Tien Shan Saka people was connected with the Minusinsk Basin in Khakassia in Southern Siberia, and with the Altai.[Tour].

According to our research, the origins of the early Saka culture of the Tien Shan were separately connected with Western Mongolia and the Altai, as demonstrated by the “eightstone” memorial fences and “deer stones” of the period from the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE (Plate I-2). [Tabaldiev, 1996]

It is possible to notice similar elements in the cultures of the Saka people and the Tagar tribes inhabiting the Minusinsk Basin. Among the smaller- and medium-sized burial mounds of the early Tien Shan nomads, some are surrounded with tall pillars, as are those of the Tagar tribes.

Therefore, it would not seem to be an exaggeration to argue that the history of the ancestors of the Jiankun people covered a vast expanse of territory from the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai to the western spurs of the Tien Shan, including East Turkestan.

The experiences of ancient and medieval nomadic and semi-nomadic cultures in different historical situations reveal that habitation is often determined by natural and ecological environments and in future archaeological research special attention will be hopefully paid to this issue.

The richest information about the multilateral culture of the Yenisei Kyrgyz people is provided by funeral monuments and burial mounds. The shape of the culture of the early Kyrgyz people who once lived on the eastern spurs of the Tien Shan remains a riddle, but we know that on the Yenisei the Kyrgyz people cremated their dead. The shape of the culture and the mode of burial prior to resettlement on the Yenisei still remains a riddle.

Researchers have often noted a close genetic linkage between the Tashtyk and Kyrgyz cultures of the Yenisei; similarities were noted in elements of funeral design, in the ceremony of cremation, and in accompanying stock.

The Kyrgyz culture during the Chaa-tas era, which chronologically directly followed the Tashtyk culture, was generally found in the same territory as Tashtyk culture. However,archaeological research has revealed distinctive features of a Tashtyk set of objects from the Kyrgyz. The unique ethnographic shape of the Tashtyk and Kyrgyz cultures has been revealed and it led to the traditional idea that Kyrgyz culture grew out of Tashtyk culture. [Khudyakov,1995, pp.82-88]

However, the genetic links of the medieval Kyrgyz people with ancient archaeological cultures have not yet been tracked. There are only vaguely similar aspects shared by medieval Kyrgyz culture and other early cultures.

For example, according to Chinese records of the Tang Dynasty (660-960), which can be thought of as the early medieval period, the Kyrgyz people followed the custom of tattooing or coloring the face and body: “The bravest men blackened their hands, but women having married blackened their neck”. And: “The bravest adult men blackened their faces as a display of difference. Women having married also blackened [the face] from the ears to the neck”.

Modern ethnography has long acknowledged that tattooing or painting of the face and body was extremely widespread in ancient times, the Medieval period, and among traditional cultures, such as those of the Agafirs, Dakhs, Thracians, Libyans, and Sarmatians, as well as the Dingling and Kyrgyz peoples. Tattoos in the form of figures and fantastic animals were perfectly preserved in archaeological material from the second half of the 1st millennium BCE at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains. [Polasmak, 2000, pp.95-102]

Unfortunately, because of the similarity of only one element, it is impossible to make any conclusions about the similarities between the medieval Kyrgyz and the carriers of Pazyryk culture. There is no direct evidence about their genetic relationship. There is indirect evidence, for example, linking the methods of felt production characteristic of Pazyryk culture and the later development of the ornamental art of the Kyrgyz people. The felt headdresses found in Pazyryk barrows directly remind us of the felt caps of modern Kyrgyz people.

At the same time it should be noted that the funeral memorials of early Tien Shan nomads and Pazyryk culture have some common features, including the burial of early nomads in log buildings [Bernshtam, 1952; Tashbayeva; Abetekov] and the traditional construction of “eight-stone” funeral fences. Communications between the Pazyryk culture and some ethno-cultural Saka groups have been traced through anthropological material.[Tour, 1987]

The opinion of researchers that tribes of Central Asia and Southern Siberia played a role in formation of the Kyrgyz people is well supported by a series of major archeological finds. The role of funeral complexes is high in the search for the genetic roots of the modern Kyrgyz people, as is information on the penetration of the Kyrgyz people into the Tien Shan.The search for the genetic roots of the modern Kyrgyz is also aided by ethnographic material when compared with archaeological sources.

The well-known ethnographer S. M. Abramzon noted that “the Kyrgyz burial structures,despite the completely Muslim burial rites, are a well-known genetic connection with the monuments of previous eras reflecting earlier local traditions”. [Abramzon, 1961, pp.113-116; Abramzon 1990, pp.337-343] He compared the catacomb burials of the first centuries CE and noted that the features of their construction have much in common with typical modern Kyrgyz burial structures. This is most clearly illustrated in materials yielded by the excavation of medieval burial complexes.

The archaeological excavations of barrows of the 11th-14th centuries revealed numerous cultural and lifestyle objects, some of which reflect a material culture and applied art that been improved by the modern Kyrgyz of the Tien Shan.

For a long time, the genetic connection between the Yenisei and Tien Shan Kyrgyz was the object of research and discussion on the basis of written sources and archaeological materials.

Views of the archaeologist A. N. Bernshtam based on data from the Ala-Myshyk cemetery and compared with the Yenisei researchers are not supported.

In 1963, archaeologist Y. A. Sher wrote: “The artificial exaggeration of the role of the Yenisei Kyrgyz in the early stages of the ethnogenesis of the nomads of the Tien Shan is not confirmed by archaeological monuments or written sources”. Investigating the medieval burials with a horse, stone statues and petroglyphs, he came to the conclusion that in the ethnogenesis of the Kyrgyz an essential component belongs to the Altaic-Orkhon Turks. [Sher,1963, pp.158-166]

Due to the absence of burials with cremation in Tien Shan, the ethno-cultural community of the ancestry of the Khakas and Tien Shan Kyrgyz was denied. [Kyzlasov, 1959, pp.104-116]

Written sources reliably testify that in the religious representations of the Kyrgyz and Turkic peoples a cult of fire took hold. Belief in fire was vividly expressed in the funeral rite,when the body of the deceased was cremated and the bones cleansed of dirt and sin were buried.

We have rather fragmentary information about burials with evidence of cremation discovered at the end of the nineteenth century. In September 1891 A. M. Fetisov, a horticultural scientist at the Pishpek botanical gardens who had undertaken archaeological research on behalf of the Russian Imperial Archaeological Commission, conducted excavations in the Kochkor valley of the Tien Shan. In the area of Kesken-Tash, A. M. Fetisov discovered an underground crypt made of raw bricks plastered with alabaster, inside which was a vessel containing ashes.[OAK, 1892, pp.100-117]

Another archaeological report obtained by V. V. Bartold from the south of Kazakhstan,in the area between Jambul and Merke, where grave mounds belonging to people who followed the custom of cremation were found. [Barthold, Book IV, p.29]

Studies of barrows of the middle and late medieval period indicate the inexpediency of searching for burials with cremation, characteristic of the Yenisei Kyrgyz. [Tabaldiev, 1996,pp.195-204]

According to information in the medieval text dated to the 11th-12th centuries and titled Al-Marvazi, the ritual of cremating the dead was already referred to in the past tense in the period until they began to live in neighborhoods with Muslims: “The Hirhises have the custom of burning their dead; they affirm that the fire cleanses them. This has been their custom since ancient times, but when they became neighbors of the Muslims, they began to bury their dead”.[Karaev, 1994, p.55]

As archaeological materials show today, perhaps some of the Yenisei Kyrgyz who arrived in the Tien Shan after the events of 840 preserved some features of this funeral rite.In the Tien Shan, isolated data obtained during the excavation of burial mounds reveals the presence of “hidden places” typical of the culture of the Yenisei Kyrgyz.

It is generally known that the Yenisei Kyrgyz people cremated their dead in a funeral pyre. In the mounds of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, in addition to the burnt bones of the deceased,pits and caches with objects are often found. Such “hidden places” were not recorded during the study of ancient and medieval mounds, meaning that this rite was not characteristic of the ancient and medieval tribes of the Tien Shan. Only from the turn of the second millennium CE were clusters of metal objects noted under the mound of individual barrows (details of the harness and of the belt).

Previously, this feature was recorded by A. Kibirov in the Kochkor valley at the Ichke-Zhylga burial ground. Here at a depth of 0.65cm metal objects with traces of fire were found(Plate I-3). [Kibirov, 1995, pp.43-46]

Then clusters of objects were discovered at the Ala-Myshyk burial ground in the Orto-Naryn valley (belonging to the period from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries)[Khudyakov, Tabaldiev, 1994, pp.114-115] and in the Bel-Saz burial ground in the Kochkor valley (13th-14th centuries) (Plate I-4) [Tabaldiev, 1996, p.103]. In burial mounds at Ala-Myshyk and Bel-Saz, graves were found in burial pits according to the rites of inhumation.

It is possible that a part of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, who arrived in the Tien Shan area, after the transition to inhumation, preserved the traditions of keeping the “hidden places” with the things within the mound.

In 2002, a burial of the late medieval period was found in the Alai valley at the Kirpi-Sai monument. This burial of a woman featured a pit full of charcoal which proved the burial ceremony made use of fire. This detail provided new opportunities for solving the mystery of the ethnic history of the Kyrgyz nation.

In the course of studying funeral sites in the territory of Kyrgyzstan, researchers have discovered a number of objects that are characteristic of the Yenisei Kyrgyz and which connected the separate Kyrgyz groups that extended to the eastern spurs of the Tien Shan during the era when they had “great power” status. [Savinov, 1989, pp.77-90; Grach et al,1998; Tabaldiev, Khudyakov, 1999, pp.514-520] The strongest connection would seem to be established by the discovery of a typesetting belt from the southern Issyk-Kul (Boz-Beshik)(Plate I-5). Similar objects have been found near the Chatkal Range.

In recent years, there have been new archaeological finds in the territory of Kyrgyzstan,including medieval iron arrowheads, and bronze and silver belt ornaments. These also show certain similarities between the material cultures of the Kyrgyz on the Yenisei and in the Tien Shan mountains (Plate I-6, 7, 8).

The medieval Turkic runic texts found in the territory of Kyrgyzstan are also similar to the Yenisei and Altai texts. This proves the closeness of the spiritual culture of the medieval Kyrgyz in Tien Shan, Altai, and Yenisei.

After the publication of a series of burials with evidence of cremation, Professor D. G.Savinov emphasized in his writings that the emergence of objects on the Tien Shan that are characteristic of the Yenisei Kyrgyz could be related to the distribution of their culture. After the publication of these materials, he wrote that, despite some originality, they undoubtedly belonged to the same Kyrgyz tradition. Therefore, the question of the possibility that the Yenisei Kyrgyz appeared in the Tien Shan at the end of the first millennium can be considered solved. In his opinion, archaeological materials confirm that separate military groups of the Yenisei Kyrgyz in the 9th-10th centuries reached Tien Shan and could have been the first carriers of the ethnonym “Kyrgyz”, although that does not remove the question of the formation of a Turkic substratum in the ethnogenesis of the Tien Shan Kyrgyz. [Savinov,2005, p.274]

The problem of penetration of the Tien Shan by the Kyrgyz was aggravated by a lack of anthropological research. According to conclusions of the initial research of the anthropologist V. P. Alekseev, “the modern Kyrgyz chronologically demonstrate close morphological similarity with the ‘Yenisei Kyrgyz’ which allows us to affirm their genetic relationship”.

Additionally, it is necessary to mention the view of the anthropologist T. K. Hodzhayev that a part of population of the Karahkhanid era had a line of descent extending back to the Saka and Usun ethnic groups. Undoubtedly, the population of Kyrgyzstan during the Karakhanid era was later a part of the Kyrgyz, thus also playing a role in the formation of the anthropological shape of the Kyrgyz. [Hodzhayev, 1975, p.135]

Similar processes specific to Fergana, which is surrounded by the ridges of Altai and the Western Tien Shan, meant that descendants of the ancient and medieval population were part of Kyrgyz and Uzbek.

Today, certain chronological material from medieval burials in the Tien Shan has been recovered. The research by the anthropologist S. S. Tour shows that “in Turkic times on Tien Shan appeared the alien population connected by origin with the nomads of the Mountain Altai of the 6th-10th centuries AD and of the Minusinsk Basin of the 7th-11th centuries AD”.[Tour, 201, pp.76-78]

These conclusions distinctly coordinate the data from written sources and archaeological research with regard to the question of early Kyrgyz penetration of the Tien Shan and the ethnic situation in Tien Shan and adjacent areas. [Karaev, 1983; Chorotegin, 1995]

Over the last decade in the territory of Kyrgyzstan, about 60 burials of the 11th-15th centuries have been investigated. In them, elements of a funeral complex of Central Asian tribes of Turkic and Mongol origin have been traced, and these show close similarities with burials defined by ethnic accessories as Kyrgyz, Kypchak, or Mongolian. [Tabaldiev, 2007]

Moreover, these late medieval monuments show signs of the early medieval Turkicspeaking people’s culture.

The material remains found in archeological excavations on the Tien Shan and in Semirechye have many similarities with the culture of the Kyrgyz of the 17th-19th centuries.Proceeding from this, we can posit that the early medieval Turkic-speaking people and their late descendants played an important role in the formation of the Kyrgyz people’s culture of the Tien Shan region.

Thus, it is necessary to consider that archaeological materials, together with written sources and data provided by physical anthropology, have played an important role in deciphering cultural and genetic processes.

We do not have any written documentation treating mass migration of the Saka, Usun,medieval Turkic-speaking and other foreign tribes during the Khaganate and Karakhanids period to other territories. On the contrary, there was a continuous influx of related cultures,especially from eastern regions of Central Asia. The political authorities changed, but cultural processes were not interrupted. We have a great deal of archaeological data confirming this process. By comparison, in archaeological data related to the ethnography of the Kyrgyz we find lines of cultures, which evolved over centuries. The concept of “evolution” does not only refer to continuous invariable development.

Similar processes were in the neighboring territories like Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, etc.Sources of ethno and cultural genesis of each of them go into far antiquity. The ancient people that are well known owing to written sources, as well as those that have remained as unknown tribes, nations, and nationalities have the direct relation in formation of the modern nations.Every nation is older than its name.

The continuity of cultural traditions can be clearly traced through details of equestrian equipment and of funeral ceremonies. Remarkably indicative in this regard was the Kyrgyz tradition of distributing meat to guests. In this tradition, elements of the tradition from the last third of the 1st millennium BCE down to the late medieval period can be traced. [Tabaldiev,2008, Antiquity]

Now new opportunities have opened to track the specified processes through the analysis of DNA sample series over a wide spatial area.

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