Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars live in the Black Sea region of Russia, Ukraine and Romania. Their homeland in the warm and strategic Crimean peninsula is contested by Russia and Ukraine.  Turkic by language and Muslim by faith, Tatars claim descent from the Mongol Horde.

The Mongols invaded Russia in the 13^th century, slaughtering hundreds of thousands.  The Europeans called them ‘Tatars’ and the name stuck. The Tartars of Crimea descend from those Mongols, the Kipchaks who fought with them, and the Turks, Scythians and Goths who came before. They have been Sunni Muslims since the 1400s and are close cousins of the Volga, Nogai and Siberian Tatars of Russia and the Lipka Tatars of Lithuania.

Crimean Tatars are well integrated in Turkey and a protected minority in Romania. In the Crimea itself, where most live, they are not so lucky.

The Crimean Khanate, founded by a descendant of Genghis Khan, ruled Crimea and the Ukraine from 1478 to 1783 and provided cavalry and slaves for their allies the Ottoman Empire. Russian settlement began after Catherine the Great conquered Crimea in 1783. Since then, the Tatar population has fallen from 83 to 15%.

In 1856 after losing the Crimean War, the Tsars imposed Russian as Crimea’s official language and replaced Tatar place names with Russian ones. Many Tatars emigrated to Turkey and Romania.

The Crimean Tartars suffered under Communism. The White Army made its final stand at Crimea, and the Soviets subsequently deemed the Tatars a ‘suspect nationality’, whose way of life threatened the revolution. The Soviets converted Crimean mosques into cinemas and ‘atheist museums’ and sent 40,000 intellectuals to the Gulag. 75,000 Tatars starved to death in the 1930s.

Such was their hatred for Stalin and the USSR, some Tatars collaborated with the Nazis in WW2. When Stalin retook Crimea in 1944, he held the entire people accountable, even Red Army officers. The Soviets bound all the Crimean Tatars in freight trains and deported them to Central Asia. 20% died on the way and Stalin forbade anyone in Crimea from mentioning its lost inhabitants. The Tatars mourn the event every year on the 18^th of May.

Return was not possible until the 1980s, when 280,000 resettled en masse without compensation. When Ukraine gained independence, Crimean Tatars were afforded equal rights for the first time.

Blue – Russia, green – Ukraine, black – Crimea

The honeymoon did not last. In 2014 Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. The Tatars were opposed and Russian authorities took note. Upon annexation, although granting it official status, Russia closed Tatar language television stations, newspapers and schools to prompt assimilation.  On charges of inciting separatism or Islamist terror, Tatar activists were detained, tortured and imprisoned while skinheads desecrated Tatar graves. Despite the charges, there has been no political violence, only peaceful protest. In 2014 the UN declared the Crimea referendum a sham and Russia’s annexation a breach of international law. No government or body, however, was willing to challenge it.

The Crimean Tatar language is related to Turkish, derived from the language of the Kipchaks, a people who once lived in the region. Before the Russian Revolution, the entire peninsular – Tatars, Russians and Jews alike, spoke it. According to UNESCO, it is now critically endangered.

Sources: Al Jazeera, Crimea Dekoder, Foreign Policy, Human Rights Watch, National Geographic, Open Democracy, UNESCO, United Nations, Washington Post

See Also:

• Turkic Migrations
• Steppe People

The HU

‘The HU’ (2016-) of Mongolia fuse nomadic folk music with heavy metal, a style they call Hunnu Rock.  Throat singing with double kick. I usually don’t listen to metal, or Mongolian folk for that matter, but combined it is something else. Over a heavy and hard hitting rhythm, they sing lyrics from Mongolian poetry and battle cries of old. Hey traitor, bow down!

The band:

• Gala – lead throat singer and morin khuur (horsehead fiddle)
• Enkush – lead morin khuur and throat singer
• Jaya – tumor khuur (jaw harp), tsuur (Mongolian flute) and throat singer
• Temka – tovshuur (two stringed, horsetail lute)

All four instruments date back to at least the 1200s. Four extra musicians provide backing vocals, drum and bass.

‘Wolf Totem’, their first single, was released in November 2018. It shot to number one on iTunes and garnered 14 million views on Youtube. Their second single, ‘Yuve Yuve Yu’, has 20 million. A third, ‘Shoog Shoog’ was released in June, and their debut album Gereg is upcoming. Since 2018 the Hu have played 23 shows in Europe and met the Mongolian Prime Minister.  They are the most successful act to ever come from that country.

The HU (not to be confused with the better-known ‘Who’) is the Mongol root-word for ‘human’. In Chinese it means ‘barbarian’ –what their histories dubbed the Mongols, Xiongnu and other steppe peoples.  The Mongols, by the way, called the ancient Xiongnu ‘Hunnu’, yet more evidence they were the Huns.

Music is a key component of life on the steppe. In the 1980s western rock found an audience among the youth of communist Mongolia. When the wall fell, it surged. The Hu seek to preserve and renew the Mongolian musical tradition. They do more than add a Mongol tinge to metal, they make it their own.

See Also:

• The Xiongnu

Turkic Migrations

The Turkic Migrations were the greatest population movement before Colombus.  Throughout the Middle Ages, Turkic speaking nomads conquered and settled across Central Asia and Anatolia – assimilating some, replacing others. Once slave-soldiers, they came to rule the Muslim world.

Today there are seven Turkic nations, ordered by population:

• Turkey
• Azerbaijan
• Uzbekistan
• Kazakhstan
• Turkmenistan
• Kyrgyzstan

Significant minorities also live in Russia and China.

The Turks originated in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. Their name comes from the Chinese Tujue, meaning combat helmet, after a hill where they once lived. The early Turks were horse nomads and raiders who wrote in a runic script, worshipped the sky and worked iron.

The Gokturk Khaganate (Celestial Turks) ruled the Asian Steppe from 552-744. Under the Gokturks a common Turkic identity was born and when the confederation fell, Turkic peoples migrated in all directions, intermarrying with and absorbing native peoples where they went. Accordingly, the wider Turkic ethnicity encompasses a range of peoples and appearances.

Their migratory waves are reflected through language.

Speakers of the Oghur branch were the first Turks to migrate west (unless counting the Huns, who may have been Turkic). They included the Khazars, Bulgars and Chuvash. The Khazars, who converted to Judaism, ruled Ukraine from 648 – 1048. The Bulgars forged an empire in the Balkans, became Orthodox Christians and assimilated with their Slavic subjects. Only Chuvash in Russia is still spoken. In the Oghur languages, the common ‘z’ suffix becomes ‘r’: both ‘Oghur’ and ‘Oghuz’ mean tribe.

The Kipchak Branch is named after the Kipchak Confederation (1067-1271) of southern Russia. They fought against, then for the Mongols when they invaded, from whom many descend. Most were Muslim by the 1300s and, of all the Turks, stayed nomads the longest. They include the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tatars and Bashkirs.

The Siberian Branch migrated northward before the rise of the Gokturks and mingled with the indigenous forest people. They traditionally herded reindeer and bred cattle and ponies to withstand Siberian winters. Today they mix Turkic shamanism with ‘modern’ religions – Christianity for the Yakuts and Buddhism for the Tuvans.  

The Southeastern Branch includes Uzbek and Uyghur.  The Uyghurs of Mongolia overthrew the eastern Gokturks and in the 800s, migrated to western China. They settled down, adopted agriculture, a written script and Manichaeism. They were Buddhist for a time then Muslim.  The Uzbeks settled the oasis cities of Central Asia as soldiers in the Mongol Horde, ruling until the Russians came.

The Oghuz of Central Asia were heirs to the Gokturks. After converting to Islam, Oghuz Turks served as slaves, mercenaries and bodyguards for Persian and Arab lords. So reliant did the caliph in Baghdad become on his Turkic generals, that by the 900s, the Seljuk tribe was the power behind the throne.

In 1071 a Seljuk army defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert and seized Anatolia.  Turkic tribes flooded the region and over time native Greeks and Armenians adopted Islam and the Turkish language. The remainder were killed or expelled in the early 20^th century. The modern Turkish are genetically closer to Greeks and Armenians than other Turkic people: only 15-20% of their ancestry being Central Asian. Azeri, Turkish and Turkmen belong to the Oghuz Branch.

Turkic migrations. Sakha – Yakut, Cuman- Kipchak.

Sources: The Diplomat, Khazaria.com, Science on the Web, Wikipedia

See Also:

• Science on the Web – The Proto-Turkic Urheimat & The Early Migrations of Turkic Peoples
• Wikipedia – List of Turkic dynasties and countries
• Steppe People
• Crimean Tatars
• Turanism
• Manichaeism
• Other Migrations
  • The Southern Dispersal
  • Southeast Asian Migrations
  • Polynesian Migrations

The Xiongnu

The Xiongnu were the first nomadic empire and the greatest threat China had faced. From 209 BC to AD 89 they ruled a confederacy of nomadic tribes and tributary states across the Asian Steppe. Xiongnu horsemen combined the composite bow and iron stirrups to devastating effect and the echoes of their fall were felt as far as India and Rome.

The Xiongnu’s origin is uncertain. They could have been Turkic, proto-Mongol, Iranian or Siberian. Like other steppe peoples, they were shamanists who worshipped their ancestors, the sun, moon and sky. The only written records come from the Chinese, who viewed them with contempt.

The Xiongnu enter Chinese history as nomads in the Yellow River’s northern bend. Their first known leader, or chanyu, was called Touman. His warriors pillaged China until Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor, pushed the Xiongnu into the Gobi Desert and constructed the Great Wall of China to keep them out.

Huangdi died in 210 BC and his dynasty followed. In 209 BC, Touman was murdered by his son Maodun. A ruthless and charismatic figure, Maodun Chanyu united the northern tribes and founded an empire. He expelled the Yuezhi, a rival people, from western China, subjugated the cities of the Tarim Basin, and crushed a Chinese army. Instead of invading, however, he held the country ransom.

The Han Dynasty placated the Xiongnu with gold and princesses. Maodun’s people grew accustomed to southern riches and took to wearing silk and living in Chinese style homes. They built cities, kept slaves and farmed but never lost their warlike edge. Along with Chinese tribute, the Xiongnu controlled the Silk Road, trading horses from Mongolia, furs from Siberia and jade from the Altai Mountains. They left burial mounds full of tapestries and golden ornaments.

The Han-Xiongnu War began in 129 BC. The humiliating treaties cost China dearly and were often ignored by Xiongnu raiders. Defeating them in battle, however, required matching the Xiongnu strategy. China had few horses of its own.

Emperor Wu dispatched explorer Zhang Qian westward to propose an alliance with the Yuezhi, now based in Afghanistan. They refused. Next, he contacted the city Dayuan, hitherto unknown and far to the west. Its inhabitants were Greek speakers, remnants of Alexander’s conquest, and they bred powerful steeds.

In the War for Heavenly Horses, Emperor Wu acquired 3,000 mounts from Dayuan (and conquered the Tarim Basin). With them he equipped a new cavalry corps, armed with bows and lances in the Xiongnu style.

Buttressed by their ‘Heavenly Horses’, a 40,000 strong Han army thrust into the Xiongnu heartland and defeated them in 119 BC during a sandstorm. The Xiongnu collapsed into civil war and the Han gained the upper hand.

The southern branch were conquered In AD 89. They arose again in the 300s, settled in China and assimilated.

The northern Xiongnu, meanwhile, were forced west. They are mentioned once more then disappear from the pages of history.

Or did they? Three centuries later the nomadic Huns appeared on the fringes of Europe. Could they, the despoilers of Rome, have been a Xiongnu remnant, their proud history lost in the long migration west?  Since Joesph de Guignes in the 17^th century, scholars have thought so, though many disagree.

Roman, Buddhist and Hindu writers all report nomadic invasions after the fall of the Xiongnu. Each group may or may not have been their descendants:

• 89 – Northern Xiongnu leave Mongolia
• 153 – Northern Xiongnu in western China
• 350 – Xionites invade Persia
• 370 – Huns invade Europe
• 440 – Svetta Huna (White Huns) invade Central Asia
•  470 – Svetta Huna invade India

Sources: Encyclopaedia Iranica, John Man – Attila: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome, Silkroad, Wikimedia Commons

See Also:

• Steppe People
  
• Attila the Hun

The Tarim Mummies

Buried beneath the sands of China’s largest desert, the 2,000-year-old Tarim mummies are better preserved than the pharaohs of Egypt. The arid climate conserved them so well even their eyelashes remain intact. Strangely, they look more European than Chinese.

Taklamakan means ‘place of no return’. In the dead centre of Asia and surrounded by the world’s tallest mountains on three sides, it is one of the driest and most inhospitable places on earth. The salt-filled desert covers most of the Tarim Basin, a key part of the Silk Road. Temperatures range between 40 and -30 °C and less than 1cm of rain falls each year – perfect conditions for preserving the dead.

Scattered along the Tarim Basin’s dry riverbeds and oases, the tombs were excavated in the 20^th century. Each layered necropolis housed its dead in wooden boat coffins beside carvings of phalluses and vulvas.  Some mummies, both children and adults, had gouged out eyes and were possibly buried alive. Horn cups, wheels, saddles, pottery and bronze tools indicate an advanced horse-riding culture. There are 200 mummies in total.

Though some of the more recent mummies look East Asian, the majority have light hair, narrow noses and deep-set, round eyes. Their plaid woollen clothing resembles that of Bronze Age Europe, their tattoos the ancient Scythians.

The ‘Beauty of Loulan’ is the oldest. According to radiocarbon dating, she died of lung cancer age 40 around 1,800 BC.  Her red hair was braided and she was buried in a twill woollen robe with a wooden phallus and basket of wheat. Neither wheat nor sheep are native to China.

The ‘Cherchen Man’, who lived around 1,000 BC had a red beard and was six foot six. He wore a purple tunic and tartan trousers, deerskin boots and yellow socks with ochre suns painted on his cheeks. His coffin contained a collection of ten different hats. Cherchen Man was around 50 when he died, probably from disease, and was buried beside a woman and baby child.

In 2015 scientists sequenced the DNA of 92 Tarim mummies from the Xiaohe site – the Tarim Basin’s oldest cemetery and the largest collection of mummies in the world. Their maternal lineage (mtDNA) indicates a mixture of Siberian and west Eurasian ancestry – represented by haplogroups C, H and K. Their yDNA, which is passed from father to son, belongs overwhelmingly to haplogroup R1a, a marker associated with Eastern Europe and the proto-Indo-Europeans.

Who were the Tarim Mummies? The archaeological and genetic record suggests they were Indo-European speakers who migrated east from the Russian steppe around 2,000 BC and took Siberian wives. They are likely Tocharians (or Yuezhi), a nomadic people whom the Chinese describe living in the Tarim Basin in ancient times. The Tocharians spoke an isolated Indo-European tongue closer to Latin than the eastern branches and traded jade with China. Migrations by the Scythians, Xiongnu, Han and Turks followed.

Today the Tarim Basin falls under China’s Xinjiang region. Uyghur separatists claim the mummies as their ancestors, saying they, not the Han Chinese, are Xinjiang’s native inhabitants and rightful rulers. Though the Turkic speaking Uyghurs did not settle the Tarim Basin until 842 AD, they absorbed its earlier inhabitants. Some still have red hair today.

Sources: China Daily Mail, Encyclopaedia Britannica, NCBI, New York Times, Sino-Platonic, UPenn, Wikimedia Commons

See Also:

• NCBI: Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age
• Steppe People
• Turkic Migrations
• Cheddar Man
• The Xiongnu
• Population Y

Steppe People

The Eurasian steppe is a sea of grass stretching from Hungary to Manchuria. In the old days, it supported neither agriculture nor cities. Its inhabitants were pastoral nomads who lived in felt tents and moved with the seasons, living on a diet of meat and dairy from their herds.

The harsh steppe climate and nomadic life bred tough warriors. Steppe peoples like the Turks and Mongols were raised on the saddle, and masters of the bow. What nomads couldn’t raise themselves they took from others. Farmers proved easy targets. Raiders plundered settled communities of animals, valuables and slaves then melted away before organised armies could respond.  In the cutthroat world of the steppe, only the warlike survived.

Skilled mounted archers fire when all four hooves are off the ground to get a clear shot.

The saddle, stirrups and composite bow revolutionised nomadic warfare. Mounted archers could stand in their stirrups and fire at full gallop, controlling their horse with their knees. Under Genghis Khan the average Mongol warrior could twelve arrows a minute and hit a bird mid-flight. Man for man, cumbersome foot soldiers were little match for an organised nomadic army.

What nomads lacked, however, was the unity and numbers of their civilized neighbours. Canny rulers strove to keep the steppe tribes weak and divided through tribute, espionage or bribery. Chinese and Roman Emperors and Arab caliphs hired nomadic cavalry to fight on their behalf.

The Eurasian steppe (blue) covers parts of modern-day China, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Hungary

Occasionally a charismatic warlord or khan united the tribes against their neighbours – a constant fear for the peoples of Europe, China and the Middle East. Men like Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and Attila the Hun slaughtered millions. After a few generations, however, barbarian overlords would typically ‘civilise’, settle down and adopt the ways of their subjects. In some cases – as in Turkey or Hungary – they retained their language and cultural identity; in others they assimilated completely – like the Mongols in Iran and China.

The Orkhon Inscription of 8^th century Mongolia reads:

“The Chinese with silver and gold and sweet enticements draw the [Turkic] peoples into their style of life. Their lazy courts drew our peoples to them and as a result many have died and have been ultimately conquered by the Chinese. Deserting the dark forest many looked toward the south saying ‘I would settle in the plains’. O Turks if you go and settle in that country, you will perish! But if you remain nomads in the forest, where there are neither riches nor cares, you will preserve an ever-lasting empire O Turks!”

Indo-Europeans were the first to domesticate the horse. In ancient times they roamed the steppe on chariots and spread their languages across India, Europe and Iran. Notable examples are the Scythians, Sarmatians and Goths.

The Huns triggered the Germanic Migrations which destroyed Rome, and forged a brief empire in Eastern Europe. Their cousins, the Hephthalites and Sveta Hunna, ravaged Central Asia and northern India in the 5^th century.

The Turks arose in Eastern Mongolia in the 500s. When the Chinese expelled them they migrated west. After Genghis Khan annihilated the Iranians of Central Asia, Turkic peoples took their place.

Magyars from the Ural Mountains terrorised Europe in the 900s. In 1000 they converted to Catholicism and founded Hungary.

The Mongols conquered history’s greatest land empire in the 12^th century. Of their successors, however, only the Golden Horde in Russia maintained a nomadic existence. The Mongols and ancient Turks lived similar lifestyles but spoke different languages. They worshipped the sky god Tengri and called their rulers ‘Khagans’. By 1000 AD most Turks were Muslim.

Despite their prowess, nomadic warriors could not compete against firearms. A rifle, unlike the bow, requires little skill to use. From the 15^th to 19^th centuries, the Russians and Chinese tamed the steppe and subjugated its people.  The age of the nomadic empire was at an end.

Today (outer) Mongolia and the Turkic nations of Central Asia are independent. East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia remain part of China. Roughly 40% of Mongolia’s people still live as nomads.

See Also:

• The Xiongnu
• The Sarmatians
• Crimean Tatars
• Attila the Hun
• Turkic Migrations
• The Tarim Mummies
• Turanism
• Hungary
• Plains Nations