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Minorsky (V.) - The Khazars and The Turks in The Ākām Al-Marjān (BSOAS 9:1, 1937, 141-150)
Minorsky (V.) - The Khazars and The Turks in The Ākām Al-Marjān (BSOAS 9:1, 1937, 141-150)
Author(s): V. Minorsky
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1937),
pp. 141-150
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/608182 .
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142
V. MINORSKY-
(sic.V.M.)
LIV.
*)
p. 147,. " You travel from alKhazar [i.e. from the capital of
the Khazar] to (the Sarir) 12
days."
p. 13912. [The Khazars]:
"their supreme chief professes
the religion of the Jews."
KHAZARS AND
THE TURKS
143
Ibn-Rusta
p. 14020.
[The Burdas]:
" their religion resembles that of
the Ghuzz and they have fine
appearance and bodies (la-hum
ru'5' wa-manzar wa-ajsdm)."
p. 1411. " When a girl of theirs
reaches (maturity) she ceases to be
in subjection to her father and
chooses for herself whomsoever
she wants of men .. ."
144
V. MINORSKYIbn-Rusta
called
or
The foregoing analysis has clearly shown that the paragraph on the Khazars is a patchwork of data found in IbnRusta's chapters on al-Khazar (1394-14013), Burdas (14014-1417),
and Bulkar (1417-1424). The extraordinary confusion of the
characteristics of the three nations 1 may be due to the fact that, in the
compiler's source, the headings of the chapters were omitted, as is
often the case when spaces are left in blank for subsequent rubrications.
Another source of confusion must be connected with the desire to fit
in Ibn-Khurdadhbih's short passage (p. 124) on the Khazar towns:
The second name
)
?
-.j.
and the
.-~'-i1
in Arabic('.script looks
very much like
L.J...
~-LL
,L.for the former
epitomator substituted the latter (found in Ibn-Rusta)
(found in Ibn-Khurdadhbih). But Ibn-Rusta nowhere says that the
Bulkar (Kama Bulghars) were subjects of the Khazar king, and this
item undoubtedly refers to Balanjar, which lay to the north-east of the
Caucasus range and belonged to the Khazar.
is
WjL..J1 mentioned in the heading of the paragraph
1 Burdds
stands probably for the ancestors of the present-day Mordva,
(or
Kama Bulghars.
and Bulkdr for the
Bur.tas)
KHAZARS
AND
THE TURKS
145
V
Lh.2
Of these, al-Baydi " the White one " is the name given by I. Kh.
to the western part of the capital, which I. Rusta calls by its native
name of
VOL. IX.
PART 1.
10
146
~"AN
~
v. MINORSKY-
>FTjETURKS.
"A
OF THE TURKS.
KHAZARS AND
THE TURKS
147
148
V. MINORSKY-
Though the description of the " Turks " is very general and no
tribes are distinguished among them, it is curious that the territory
of the Toghuzghuz, the most celebrated of the Turkish tribes,' is said
to lie to the east of, and consequently separate from, the " Turk "
land. The analysis of the text shows that what the author really means
by Turk is the particular tribe of Kimak (*Kimak),2which lived near
the Irtish, but, " when there was peace between them and the Ghuz,"
visited the latter's territory in winter, cf. Huditd al-'Alam, ? 18. These
periodical movements are a source of great confusion in our sources
in which two different territories are usually telescoped into one
" Kimak land ". Therefore one might improve our Bahr al-shami
The latter term would be
into Bahr al-Shash ('L.4).
(CL[-)
quite possible for the Aral sea into which disembogues " the Shash
river " (Jaxartes), and the Ghuz territories are usually associated
with the Aral sea. On the other hand, Professor Codazzi's correction
) "Northern sea" has the advantage of
Bahr al-shamali (3Lc
suiting the Huded al-'Alam, according to which the Kimiik territories
extended in the north up to the Northern Uninhabited Lands.
The river mentioned in the text belongs to the region between the
Irtish and the Caspian Sea, of which Muslim authors (Mas'iidI,Mur7j,
i, 213; Hudjid al-'Alam, ? 6, 41; Gardizi, 83) give very entangled
descriptions. Our sources do not know the lower course of the Irtish :
the Hudid al-'Alam takes the latter for an affluent of the Volga;
moreover, the authors mentioned have a vague idea of the existence of some other river flowing to the Caspian, to the west of the
Irtish. The Ural (Yayiq) river and the Emba, disemboguing into the
Caspian, the rivers of the steppes to the north-east of the Aral sea
(such as the Irghiz and Turghai), and even some left affluents of the
Irtish may be partly responsible for the confused descriptions of the
course of this second river. The new detail added by the Akam, namely
that the river dries up in the summer, points to the steppe region.
The two last paragraphs, which stand isolated in the text of the
Akdm, refer to the north-eastern territories lying pretty close to each
other, and it would be strange if their description were due to two
1 By ToghuzghuzMuslim writers mean both the tribes which originally belonged
to the ancient Turkish (in Chinese Tu-ch'iteh) Empire, and the later Uyghur
possessions in the eastern T'ien-shan.
2 According to Idrisi (Jaubert), ii, 221, the Kimdkiya border on the Toghuzghuz in
the south, but the bearings in Muslim authors constantly vary up to 900.
149
150
the chapters on the Turks are lacking, but, at least, his KhazarBurdas-Bulkar passages account for our text almost verbatim. Still
disbelieving the possibility that two different sources were used by
Ishaq b. al-Husayn, I feel inclined to admit that at the bottom of the
two passages in the Akam there must be a more complete manuscript
of Ibn-Rusta.
As regards the parallel texts quoted in the paragraph on the Turks,
we must add that Gardizi, in his extremely valuable chapter on the
Turks,' expressly mentions Jayhani among his sources. Birfini does
not unfortunately indicate the origin of the story about the spring in
the Kimik land, but almost immediately after, and in the same
paragraph, he quotes Jayhani's testimony on a spring between
Bukhara and Qaryat al-haditha, and, further, on the columns of the
Qayrawan mosque. If only the items on the Kimdk in Birfini (300/1000)
and Gardizi (c. 442/1050) were borrowed from Jayhani, the earlier IbnRusta and Ibn al-Faqih 2 (both writing in the earlier part of the tenth
century) could not have failed to know them through the same author,
whom they certainly did utilize.
Our examination of the two last paragraphs of the Akdm
al-marjan may appear to be merely destructive. Yet the Textkritik
of our composite geographical texts is one of the very urgent problems,
and by disentangling the data of a fresh source and defining the
measure of its trustworthiness some useful purpose is served. It is
necessary, too, to obviate any eventual speculation with misspellings
which might be taken for novelties. Indirectly dur analysis gives a
new weight to the important unknown source (Jayhani ?) which is at
the bottom of so many older geographical works.3
1 Edited by Barthold, in Mlemoires de l'Ac. de St.-Petersbourg, viiie s'rie, I,
No. 4, 1897.
2 According to the Fihrist, 154, Ibn al-Faqih " plundered (salaklha) Jayhdni's
book ".
3 See V. Barthold's and my own Prefaces to the Hudf~dal-'Alam, Gibb Memorial,
new series, vol. 17, 1937.