A Taxation in Old Turkic States. Part 1: Türkic Qaghanates and Their Local Successors in Relations with Nomadic and Hunting Tribes

Abstract

Due to the limited found of sources there are different views of researchers on fiscal practices in political formations created and headed by the tribes of the Early Turkic group. The present paper is an attempt to summarize summarizes all direct and indirect evidences of any taxation in the Türkic Qaghanates, as well as in the regionally successive political formations are headed by qaghans from the Xuē-yán-tuó 薛延陁 / 薛延陀 and the Uyghur tribes in Inner Asia, Türgish in Central Asia, Qïrqïz in the Khakass-Minusink basin. A special attention should be paid to the evidence concerning the possessions of the Western Türkic dynasties with settled agricultural population on the territory of Central Asia and Afghanistan. As a result of the summation of disparate sources data, it became possible to identify the certain patterns, which are generally predictable, given the accumulated experience of comparative studies of nomadic societies. First, there is no evidence that the nomadic population, which belonged to the dominant tribal group, was exploited in any way (which, of course, does not exclude the existence of any other practices of internal redistribution). Secondly, from the nomadic and forest hunting tribes were in a subordinate position, all the collections were subjected to taxation of natural products, however, but this was without any regularity and depending solely on the discretion of the representatives of the dominant tribe were directly at their head. Thirdly, the fiscal levies for the conquered sedentary agricultural people were carried out according to the practices prevailing earlier in a particular locality. The agents of the central (qaghanal) government were appointed over such subordinate peoples to exist on a par with the local dynastic rulers. They did not directly influence their domestic policies and, apparently, had only to control the timeliness of payments, among other obligations that their citizenship status implied. The collected data provides important material for theoretical generalizations related to the development of criteria for assessing the complexity degree of certain nomadic political formations.