10 class theme: Ancient of the Kazakhstan territory

Бұл мадалада көшпелі қоғамның ерекшіліктері ның негізінде сақ дәуірінен Ресей империяның Қазақ хандығын жоюына дейін Қазақстан жеріндегі мемлекеттер құрылуының даму тарихы көрсетілген. Ғасырлар бойы мемлекеттіліктің дамуында жалғастық байланыстар қарастырылған.
Keywords: state, breeding structure, nomadic society, Sakas, Huns, TurkisSince ancient times, this region has been involved in various ethnic and genetic relations. Different communities ranging from tribal confederations to large states, formed on the basis of interaction between different ethnic layers, have led to the formation of the Kazakh ethnic territory and a steppe civilisation which has developed into the Kazakh nation.
The origin of Kazakhstan statehood is connected with the Sakas (the 7th - 2nd centuries BC), who mainly engaged in nomadic and semi nomadic livestock breeding. The nomadic way of life allowed the sakas and Scythians to succeed in making the Great Steppe habitable. The core of the Sakas was made up of Issedonian tribes. Eye-witnesses characterised them as brave warriors possessed numerous herds of horses, sheep, and cattle. The Sakas were wonderful riders and expert marksmen. A historian of ancient Greece named them the best archers in the world.
The Sakas belonged to an early class society having three estates: chiefs, priests, and community members (shepherds and fanners). A supreme chief or king originated from warriors. The king was considered to be chosen by the gods as a mediator between heaven and mortals. The art of the Sakas culture is most vividly expressed through their painting in the animal style, manifesting their mythology and attitude toward life, and a special symbolic system for showing the nomadic concept of the world. This is proof both of their high skills in metallurgy, and progressive artistic thinking. In the 4th - 3d centuries BC, the Sakas developed a written language, an inherent characteristic of any organised state.
Therefore, the processes of establishing of a state and the appearance of a written language for the Sakas were interconnected and simultaneous. Continuos linguistic and cultural contacts among the Iranian, Ugric, and Prototurkic tribes were maintained on the Kazakhstan steppe in the 1st century BC changed the ethnic and linguistic situation, and caused the Turkic expansion to prevail.
The process of establishing a state, which had begun in the Sakas period, continued in the Hun community, which created the first nomadic empire in the interior of Asia, and soon after that some proto-Turkic structures existed in Central Asia. When, in the 2nd century BC, the Hun confederation became politically dominant, the State of Huns, called Jueban in some Chinese sources, was then established and existed until the 5th century. Its structure was similar to those which existed in Hun nomadic states in the 3d - 1st centuries BC.
The Hun state had an early class organisation. It was governed by four aristocratic families. The supreme governor, shanjui, could at that time only be from Luyandi, the noblest family bound with three others by conjugal ties. These families were the Hun elite. The specific character of the supreme power in the nomadic community was that the entire family headed by shanjui ran the state. There was a hierarchy of clans and tribes playing a significant role in the Hun society. The subjugated tribes which were included in the Hun system were the lowest rank in this division.
The supreme shanjui was followed by the left and the right “wise princes”, usually his sons or closest relatives. They governed in the western and eastern regions, being at the same time military commanders over the right and the left wings, correspondingly. Then there were twenty four local governors’ having different titles, military commanders. The rule of shanjui was exclusively hereditary, blessed by the divine power, the divine kharism (Tengri Kut). The sacred rule of the shanjui was perfectly inserted into the main features of the universe. Heaven and Earth were described as powers giving birth, and Sun and Moon as powers promoting life. A jasper seal symbolized the authority of the shanjui.
The army and population were organised in tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands for military structuring and census taking. Beginning from the 2nd century BC, the Huns made records of the quantity of population and cattle, according to which people paid an income tax and a tax on cattle. Records were kept in a written form, and decrees and laws were issued. The territory was quarded by frontier sentinels. The economy was based on nomadic cattle breeding, and special attention was paid to horse breeding. The Hun cavalry was divided in four armies, according to colours of horses: white, grey, black, and chestnut. Well-trained and capable of great endurance, the cavalry was the main unit of the army and power of the state. The favourite expression of Huhanie, a shanjui of the Huns, says that, “the Huns created their state fighting on horseback”.
Slavery was widespread. In population numbering 1.5 million people, more than 190 thousand were slaves, i.e. the one-tenth of the population. Slaves tended sheep, and were engaged in agriculture and craftsmanship. There was private property in the society for cattle and slaves. Subjugated tribes were to pay tribute. The traditions of the Hun state served as a prototype for nomadic states in Central Asia.
In the 6th century” the development of state system in Kazakhstan attained a new stage, which was connected with the first empire in Eurasia, the Turkis Khaganat. The historiography of China associates the Turkic people’s history with the breakup of the Hun state. In the mid 6th century, the Turks subordinated Zhetysu (Semirechie), Central Kazakhstan, and Khorezm. Some time later, the Khaganat borders expanded to the Northern Caucasus and the Black Sea, allowing for establishment of relations with Iran and Byzantium.
Gradually, the centre of the Turkic ethno genesis moved from the east westward to Central Asia. In the 6th-7th centuries, ancient Turkic military and administrative systems of governing became more popular among the Turkic nations of Kazakhstan. Central Kazakhstan began to be influenced by the politics and culture of the Turkic Khaganat.
In the Turkic conception, the Khagan was in the centre, personifying the entire state. There was the Turkic Khagan dynasty Ashina, originating, according to legend, from a she-wolf. People believed that their Khagans were blessed and had special power and features, which were granted by Heaven. They comprehended and honored Heaven as having two constituents: the material essence and the supreme Deity. Turkic inscriptions prove this assumption, stating that the khagan and his dynasty were born at the will of Heaven, Earth, water, and by deeds of the Turks themselves.
An army flag and state authorities were located in the Khagans “headquarters”. Military administration covered 29 titles, with 5 ranks being superior: yabgu, shad, tegin, elteber, and tutuk. The other 24 were regarded as inferior. Each position was herediatory. The Khagan’s closest surrounding was “wolf” guardsmen, whose flag was decorated with a wolf head. The traditional structure featured the governing centre, the east and the west regions, providing government and defensive stability.
The Turks had a developed common law. They collected taxes and tributes. Every region and its population could offer ten, one hundred, one thousand or ten thousand soldiers. The society was divided into the nobility, the subjugated, and vassals, arranged in a strict hierarchy.
The main economic activity was nomadic cattle breeding; however, a part of the settled population was engaged in agriculture. Towns and steppe were interdependent elements of a single economic structure. Private property as cattle, slave, and other possessions was prevailing in the Sakas community. Cattle was stamped with tamga, a sign of ownership.
The Turkic ideological principle was shamanism, with the “official” cults of Tengri (Heaven) and Earth. Apart from these, Manihaeanism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism were also popular. One off the best achievements of that time was the wide spreading of the ancient Turkic written language, which, obviously, became necessary for the development of administrative, and diplomatic relations, and furnishing documentary evidences of state decrees and customs.
Three powerful state organisations appeared on the territory of Kazakhstan with the fall of the Western Turkic Khaganat: the Oguz state in the Syr Darya and Aral region, the Karluk state in the Zhetysu, and the Kimak Khaganat in Central, Northern and Eastern Kazakhstan. These ethnic and political unions continued the state administrative, military, social, and cultural traditions of Turkic Khaganats in 9th-10th centuries. Similarity in the organisation of society, the political structure, as well as in ethnic and cultural relationship allows consideration of the time of their existence as a relatively integral period in the history of steppe empires and their cultures.
During the 8th-9th centuries, the Kimak tribes strengthened their positions over the territory stretching from the Altai to the south Ural Mountains and the Syr Darya River. These events became the impulse for developing the local state system. It was first mentioned in the Arabic literature of the 9th-10th centuries. The Arabian historian Al-Yakubi, remarkable for being well informed and exact, wrote that “Turkestan and the Turks themselves are divided into several nations, and several states(mamalik) ... Each Turkic tribe has a separate state, some of them are engaged in wars with others”. The Arabian geographer Ibn al-Fakih mentioned that the Turks respected Oguzes, Kimaks, and Tokuz-Oguzes, and all of them had kings.
The power of the Kimak nl1er was significant. Beginning from the 9th century, he was given the highest title of Khagan. The state authority belonged to the ruling dynasty, which was the cradle for khagans. The consecutive transition in titles of the rulers can be observed which the social and political development of a tribe to become a state. Historians have marked the inherited connection of the Kimak titles from the ancient Turkic: khagan, yabgu, shad, and tutuk. The traditional administrative and territorial structure of the ancient Turkic state, the system of wings, is founded in Kimak state power. The East Side (the Left Wing) was located in the area of the Irtysh River, while the West Side (the Right Wing) was between the Ural and Emba Rivers.
During formation of the Kimak state, the quantitative composition of the tribes had changed. According to the “Hudud al-alam” (the 10th century) and al-Idrisi (the 12th century), the core of the state was constituted of 12 tribes. The largest tribal unions were the Kipchaks (Central Kazakhstan) and the Kumans. These tribes included in the Kimak Khaganat were politically dependent to the late 10th century.
Khagans enjoyed the real power and appointed rulers and tribal nobility.
The hereditary power structure existed inside each khagan dynasty, khan family, or tribal nobility. The appanages, a total of eleven, were handed down. However, the appanages’ owners were subordinated to the Kimak Khagan. As the military and administrative powers were consolidated in one person, chiefs and commanders of the main tribal unions strove for strengthening their political importance and for independence.
The majority of the Kimaks were engaged in nomadic cattle breeding. They performed long migration to seasonal grazing lands. Also, there were some compact groups of settled and semi-settled communities. With a reference to the book of the Kimak prince, Zhanah ibn Hakan al-Kimaki, geographer al-Idrisi wrote about towns along water bodies and in the mountains, at the sites of quarries, and on trade routes. The sources of the Middle Ages and archaeological findings prove that there was social stratification, taxes, and an ancient Turkic written language. Kimak tribes adopted ancient Turkic beliefs, of which the most important were the cult of Tengri and the forefathers. Some groups worshipped fire, the sun, stars, rivers, and mountains. Shamanism was widespread. Manichaeanism was also professed, along with Islam, which was popular among the nobility.
The Kimak Khagans were often engaged in wars, though raids to neighboring states altered with peaceful communications. Many trade routes led to Kimak lands from Eastern Europe, the Volga, Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan, and Southern Siberia. Numerous caravan routes led to the Khagans’ headquarters.
By the middle of the 10th century, some Moslem trends appeared there. They marked the initiation of a new Turkic state, Karakhanid. The Islamization of the Karakhanid Turks was a not a result of short-lived missionaries efforts, but a process of Islamic penetration into the Turkic environment, causing the replacement of the ancient Turkic written language with the Arabic script. Despite the general adoption of the traditions of the Turkic Khaganats, the Karakhanid state repeated them neither in the social sphere nor in the economy. Unlike the political systems of nomadic communities in the territory of Kazakhstan, the military power was separated from the administrative. These structures were based on the principle of hierarchy. The state was divided into appanages, whose governors had great authority, up the stamping of coins with their names.
A feudal military system was the main social and political institution in the Karakhanid state. The Khans granted their relatives authority to levy taxes on the populations of specific regions in their favour. Turkic tribes were developing a more urbanised culture and practiced agriculture. During this transition, the formation of an ethnic community, which was more developed than a tribe, became clearly determined. The growth of self-consciousness of Turkic nations under the Karakhanids induced the development of literature in the Turkic language.
In the 11th century, Jusup of Balasagun wrote a poem, Kutadgu Bilig (“Knowledge to become happy”), composed of advice and lessons. The book described the reality, public conscience, and political concepts of particular social layers. In 1074, Mahmud of Kashgar wrote Divine lugat at-Turk (“Dictionary of Turkic dialects”), containing rich linguistic, historical, and cultural, historical, geographical, and ethnographic facts about the Turkic peoples. The outstanding philosopher and poet Hajji Ahmed Yassawi, one of the famous Moslem preachers, has remained in the people’s memory as a person who managed to find a compromise between the Islamic dogmas and the pre-Islamic beliefs of the nomads. His poems, collected in Divine-i Hihmet (The Book of Wisdom), praise meekness, and asceticism, and contain information about cultural, moral, and didactic features of the peoples.
In the early 11th century, the Kimak state was broken up due to the Kipchak khans’ separatism and the migration of nomadic tribes from the interior of Asia. Consequently, the Kipchaks inherited vast lands from the Kimak state. The political importance of the Kipchaks increased as they subdued peoples in the areas of the Syr Darya and the Aral and Caspian Seas to their Khanate. The changed ethnic and political situation brought about the ethno-geographical term Desht-i Kipchak.
The political organisation in the Khanate strengthened in the middle of the 11th century, when the Kimak and Kuman tribes migrated to the steppe near the Black Sea, and to Byzantium. These tribal unions established a basis for the centrifugal driving in eastern Desht-i Kipchak.
The Kipchak community was headed by Supreme Khans, whose power was hereditary. The ru1ing dynasty was El-borili. The semantics of the term borili is connected with the word “wolf”. The cult of the wolf, being the legendary “father” of some Turkic peoples, and a totem animal at several early stages of the Turks’ development, is well known in the historical and ethnographic literature.
In the Khan’s headquarters, called “horde”, there was staff in charge of the Khan’s property and army. The army had a two-winged structure similar to the traditional army of ancient Turks. The headquarters of the right wing were located on the Ural River, at the site of the medieval town of Saraichik. The Khanate centre was located in Central Kazakhstan, in the Turgai steppe. Military organisation and the system of military administration acquired great importance, as they represented a specific nomadic life style, the most convenient for the steppe. The strict hierarchy of the rulers (khans, tarkhans, jugurs, baskaks, beks, and bais) was inequitable. Eastern Desht-i Kipchak included 16 tribes. Their composition was not haphazard, but exactly regulated in accordance with the dynastic, social, and political level of every constituting people. The composition of Kipchak tribes in the late 11th - early 13th centuries was mixed and complex. The Kipchak community “absorbed” some Turkic speaking Kimak tribes, Kuman, Oguz, ancient Bashkir, Pechenegs, and Iranian speaking ethnic groups which became Turkic, in addition to four Kipchak tribes (El-borili, Toksoba, Ietioba, and Durtoba). A strict clan and family hierarchy in the nomadic states of Asia served as the guideline for social and state development.
Both records were made and correspondence with the governors of the neighbouring states was conducted in the Kipchak Khanate. Some Kipchak scientist and sages are mentioned in literary sources. The level of communications between nomadic civilisations on the vast steppe was rather high.
The Kipchak society was socially stratified. The basis for the inequality was the private property of cattle. Breeding of cattle suitable for migration, and development of methods to use grazing lands and water reserves of the territory created the ecological and material basis for the civilisation’s development. It promoted the intensification of communal production without damaging the environment. Nomadic tribes roamed for hundreds and even thousands of miles. The distances depended on historical traditions, prosperity, and features of natural conditions. The main pastures and migration routes were formed over many centuries. In this connection, the concept of a “native land” (or ethnic territory) originates from another concept - a “pasture land””. The migration routes could be changed only for some global economic, social, or political reasons.
Trespassing on cattle was strictly punished: considered a convictable offence, it was judged according to the customary law (Tore). The cattle were branded. If a person lost his cattle and could not migrate any more, he became settled (zhatak). But a soon as he had gathered enough cattle to migrate, he switched to the nomadic life again. The number of slaves was replenished from prisoners of wars, who were deprived of rights.
The vast steppe territory and geographical conditions promoted the development of several cultural and economic systems from nomadic pasturing to fanning. However, only a few groups were practicing settled agriculture, which is proved by the remains of irrigation systems. Mining was also developed. One of the metallurgical centres was the settlement of Miljuduk.
The rapid development of the Kipchaks promoted their literary language, the creation of literary masterpieces, which became a source for the Kazakh language and literature, and the formation of characteristic anthropological features of the Kazakh nation. The Kipchak ethnic community is directly connected with the ethno-genesis of the Kazakh nation. Consolidation of Kipchak tribes in the 11th-13th centuries was the main stage in the formation of the Kazakh nationality. However, the final stage was interrupted by the Mongol invasion in the early 13th century.
After the Mongol invasion, Kazakhstan was included in the Golden Horde. Mongols took over the political reign. However, the majority 0 the population was composed of he Kipchaks. The Mongol nobility was gradually absorbed, becoming relatives of noble Turkic families, and assimilated in the Turkic environment. The more developed Kipchak culture triumphed in this struggle between the two cultures. The concepts of Kipchak statehood turned out to be so enduring, that, at the end of the 13th century, they became the basis for the establishment of the Ak Horde, the first self-governing state after the Mongol invasion of the Kipchak territory. Apart from the Kipchaks, the Kereits, Naimans, Merkits, and Onguts dwelled in the areas near the Irtysh, Ishim, and Tobol Rivers, and further toward the Ulutau Mountains.
Internal wars between dynasties, and a campaign to Kazakhstan’s territory by Emir Timur led to the decline of the Ak Horde, change of the dynasty, and establishment of the Abul Khair State, Mogulistan, Nogai Horde, and Siberian Khanate mostly coincided, and the differences consisted only of qualitative parameters of the ethnic components. The dominating groups in the Ak Horde and Abul Khair State were the Kipchaks, the Dulats in Mogulistan, and the Mangyts in the Nogai Horde. The ascending integrating trend in the ethnic processes gradually prevailed. In the 14th-15th centuries, the formation of the Kazakl1s was completed. The name “Kazakh” underwent many transformations, and instead of the initial social name became the name for the entire nation.
The establishment of the Ak Horde, Abul Khair State, Mogulistan, Nogai Horde, and Siberian Khanate, which had many common features in their state systems (e.g. uniting of nomadic population in Uluses, structure of governing, army, and taxation) became a significant stage in the formation of the Kazakh nationality.
The Kazakhs were subdivided and included in other states, but continuous internal wars between the offspring of Genghis Khan and the nobility, and increasing aggression from the neighbouring states caused the necessity to unite related ethnic groups into one state. Ethnic, political, social, and cultural processes in the territory of Kazakhstan in the 14th-15th centuries resulted in the establishment of the Kazakh Khanate in 1466.
Ak Horde, Abul Khair State, 
MogulistanThe Huns
The  Turkic Khaganats