Steppe Tradition Research Articles

STATE FORMATIONS IN ANCIENT TURKIC STEPPE SOCIETIES

The Turks are one of the oldest nations of the world, and there is evidence that they had established states very early in their history. The masses of the Turks living a nomadic life in the steppes had formed political structures diff erent from the state systems of settled societies, and we can call these "steppe states". The most important feature of the steppe states was that they did not have fi xed centers and ruled over expansive territories using their well-trained armies. Nomadic steppe states were unions of tribes. They were established not by settled states or cities, but by the gathering of nomads who had the power of war. A family with authority torule ("kut" in ancient Turkic), which was received from God and could be held by legitimacy, established the state. The strength of the centralized structure depended on the ability to intervene in the remote corners of the state; otherwise, the dynamics of the steppe would bring about the rebellion of the connected tribes. The Turkic state existed in tribes formed by families connected to each other by blood kinship, and the state emerged from the tight, disciplined cooperation among these tribes. This gave the state a military character. Since the soldiers, horses and weapons were always ready for war, the expansion of the state was inevitable. Starting from the Huns until the 9th century, the center of these great states, which had a nomadic structure before Islam came onto the scene, was Ötüken, which was originally thought to be in the Orkhun Valley. After the 9th-10th centuries, Turkic states were established by Muslim horse warriors who combined urban and nomadic steppe traditions, making rich trade networks their political centers.

‘Getting Asia right’: de-essentializing China's hegemony in historical Asia

AbstractInternational Relations (IR) scholars have taken China's presumed hegemony in pre-modern East Asia as an ideal case to ‘undermine’ the field's Eurocentrism. If Eurocentric IR is guilty of ‘getting Asia wrong’, do students of historical Asia ‘get Asia right’? Analysts should avoid exotifying differences between the West and the East and ‘exchanging Eurocentrism for Sinocentrism’. This article tries to ‘get Asia [more] right’ by ‘disaggregating’ and then ‘reassembling’ taken-for-granted concepts by time, space, and relationality. When ‘Confucianism’ is understood to justify both war and peace in competition with other thoughts, it does not dictate peace among East Asian states or conflicts across the Confucian–nomadic divide. When ‘China’ is unpacked, it does not sit on top of an Asian hierarchy. When Korea's, Vietnam's, and Japan's views of their relations with China are examined rather than presumed, cultural legitimacy is thinned out. When ‘Asia’ is broadened to cover webs of relations beyond East Asia to Central Asia, Confucianism recedes in centrality and pan-Asian phenomena including Buddhism and the steppe tradition come to the fore. The article concludes that a better challenge to Eurocentrism is not to search for cultural differences but to locate Eurasian similarities that erase European superiority.

Hazar Kağanlığının Kutsal-İkili Yönetiminin Judaik Şifreleri

As its institutional structure and powerful presence of more than three hundred years in Southern Russia – Caucasia zone, the Khazar Qaganate was one of the most prominent Turkic state in history. The issue of the adoption of new “universal” religions by the Eurasian steppe nomads was a common situation. But in a time period when the Islam spread of rapidly and the Muslim – Christian conflict had begun to be flourished intensely, the conversion of Khazar royal elites to Judaism made their history much more remarkable. Here, we would not to examine the questions on why-how-when did the Khazars embrace the Judaism; but to try to illuminate the issues about their ruling system, so-called “Dual Kingship/Royal Diarchy or Sacral Kingship” by researchers, which is one of the most striking feature of the political structure of the Khazar Judaism. Although this model does not match the functional structure of the Qaganal office observed in the old Turkic steppe tradition which scholars generally relate to the "äb/eb Qagan and/or Yabgu Qagan" models–in particular Gök Türk administrative structure – the dual kingship/royal diarchy (sacral kingship) of Khazar Qaganate has been interpreted as a traditional but also a unique system. In this article, by the way on the clues obtained from written sources it has been hypothesized that this “unique” model of the Khazar’s Royal Diarchy (Sacral Kingship) was probably a TaNaKh-based Judaic form, inheriting only some symbolic essences from old Altaic-Turkic origin steppe-state motifs.

몽골제국 자르구(ǰarɤu)와 그 지역적 변주

This study explores Mongol legal culture and its method of realizing justice by reconstructing the operation of the ǰarɤu as “a trial” in the Mongol state in the 13th and 14th centuries and identifying the institution’s effects on the empire. Despite its historical importance, the Mongol ǰarɤu has not been given sufficient attention by historians.BR The ǰarɤu, both a bench trial and a joint trial, inherited the universal legal culture of the Mongol steppe. The ǰarɤuči, civil officials, envoys, or community-leaders conducted joint hearings and trials endorsed by joint signature or sealing. The advent of both the name and practice of ǰarɤu thus heralded a new pluralistic legal culture in East Asia.BR The ǰarɤu consisted of three elements: appointment (yuehui 約會), joint discussion and settlement (gongyi 共議 and 斷事 duanshi), and ǰarɤuči and envoys (chailai guan 差來官). These elements acted either independently or collectively as they spread throughout the empire and, as a consequence, evolved diversely. For example, the ǰarɤu found broad acceptance as the yārghū in the Persian culture. In Islamic society, the yārghū functioned as a joint trial in which the yārghūchīs of the great amirs, shaikhs, and qāḍīs gathered to decide cases. The three elements of the ǰarɤu translated into Chinese culture and transformed the institution in various ways. The ǰarɤu was interpreted and transformed into six different vocabularies in Chinese culture beyond its transliteration of the zhaerhu 札兒忽: liwen 理問, huiwen 會問, yuewen 約問, juwen 聚問, zawen 雜問, and zazhi 雜治.BR As the ǰarɤu’s translations and variants continued the practice of joint or group discussion, Mongol-style justice penetrated the whole territory of the great Qan. In the wake of imperial expansion, ǰarɤu began to appear not only to China, Korea, Uyghuristan, Central Asia, and Persia, places far beyond the Mongolian steppes, to peoples of various religions and ethnicities.BR In short, the ǰarɤu constituted the legal culture of the steppe tradition and the universal litigation and trial system of the Mongol empire. It could achieve unity within the empire while instituting “open” justice through a mobile network under the principles of the yuehui (appointment), joint discussion, and the mobility of judges. It also introduced an innovative form of pluralism thanks to its system of joint interrogation and trial. The ǰarɤu continued to play a role in East Asian legal culture, in such forms as the huishen 會審 in Ming China and the jabchi 雜治 (zazhi in Chinese) of Joseon Korea. Accordingly, it helped to dismantle the traditional legal system of the lüling 律令 that prevailed since after the Tang dynasty.

A Digital X-Ray Analysis of Middle Bronze Age Skeletal Samples from the Baraba Forest-Steppe

We present the results of a comparative analysis of skeletal and dental pathologies in Middle Bronze Age individuals buried at Late Krotovo and Andronovo (Fedorovka) cemeteries in southwestern Siberia. This was the period when the Andronovo steppe tradition in Northern and Central Asia expanded in various directions, including the foreststeppe. Growth arrest lines on tibiae (Harris lines) and dental pathologies (enamel hypoplasia and caries) were recorded. To evaluate developmental anomalies in the bone tissue, digital X-ray analysis was used. The principal sample includes representatives of various sex and age groups buried at the largest cemetery in the region, Tartas-1 (Baraba forest-steppe). Harris lines and enamel hypoplasia result from a broad range of factors such as infections, occasional malnutrition, traumas, vitamin defi ciencies, etc. Caries is caused by a high amount of carbohydrates in the diet, accompanied by low standards of oral hygiene. These pathologies occur at different ages: Harris lines and enamel hypoplasia evidence adverse factors during infancy and adolescence, whereas caries is typical of adulthood. Late Krotovo and Andronovo groups differ in terms of occurrence and combination of pathologies. Enamel hypoplasia is less frequent in the Andronovo sample, indicating a lesser stress level in children. Harris lines are less frequent in the Late Krotovo group, suggestive of lower stress level during adolescence. These differences may be tentatively attributed to various models of subsistence and cultural adaptation.

The bow as an insignia of power in the art of ancient Iran

This article presents the iconographic concept of the bow as an insignia in ancient Iran of the imperial era. The primary source of the bow’s association with the depiction of royal power is Mesopotamian iconography, where the bow is shown in the hands of kings without any connection to the act of shooting itself. The model of depicting a ruler with a bow resting on his foot, developed in the Neo-Assyrian period, was entirely adopted by imperial Achaemenid iconography. Another aspect expressing the association of the bow with royal power is the habit of depicting, in the Mesopotamian tradition, shooting kings without quivers. Iranian art of the Parthian and Sasanid periods, on the other hand, adopted the quiver as a sign of status from the nomadic steppe tradition, but one can nevertheless see in Sasanid iconography relics of the functioning of the bow as an insignia in the Mesopotamian sense.

Дюрбе конца XIV – на­чала XV вв. в Солхате (новые материалы)

Research objectives: To present data about a newly discovered architectural monument of the Golden Horde’s Solkhat/Krym. Research materials: As the result of excavations of the medieval settlement of Solkhat in 2018–2019, we have revealed an unknown archaeological object – a türbe (mausoleum) belonging to the Islamic community of the town. The research materials contain architectural measurements and plans, a description and analysis of the burial structures, along with data on coins and other finds, including female jewelry found in one of the burials. Results and novelty of the research: During archaeological surveys in 2018 in the southeastern part of the Golden Horde’s Solkhat, not far from the modern reservoir, a new archaeological object was discovered and identified as a medieval Muslim mausoleum (türbe). As a result of the 2018–2019 excavations, it was found that it is a ruined structure, preserved at the level of the lower rows of the foundation. The plan of the mausoleum is based on a rectangle oriented to the cardinal directions. The structure consists of two parts – the southern which is the entrance and the northern which contains the actual tombs (gurkhan). In the northern part of the türbe at the floor level, two burial underground chambers were discovered: burial 1, constructed of square Golden Horde bricks, and burial 2, constructed of rubble stones. The first female burial contained fragments of architectural details and a pair of golden earrings with a translucent sub-square inlay. The design features of the earrings indicate a style distinctive to Central Asia and China. The gender of the buried individual is confirmed by anthropological analysis. The second burial is a collective one, with bone remains of at least three individuals, two of them being males. According to the numismatic finds, the mausoleum dates to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The presence of female jewelry among the funeral inventory of burial 1 formally contradicts the traditions of Islamic funeral rites. Apparently, gold earrings, mar­king the social status of the deceased (among other details of clothing that have not reached us), indicate the persistent preservation of traces of steppe traditions.

Empress Dowagers on Horseback: Yingtian and Chengtian of the Khitan Liao (907–1125)

AbstractUnlike their Han Chinese counterparts who were mainly sequestered to the inner quarters, many imperial Khitan women of the Liao 遼 (907–1125) were not only active in state affairs, but they even rode astride and led their own armies to fight on battlefield. This article aims to investigate the lives and political careers of Empress Dowagers Yingtian and Chengtian, who ruled the empire as de facto sovereigns on behalf of their husbands and sons for over fifty years, by focusing particularly on how they proved themselves as capable horsewomen and what strategies have they employed in order to gain access to power and to accomplish their ambitions. Such warrior women, exercising leadership and exhibiting personal bravery, drew their strength from their Inner Asian steppe traditions and therefore established themselves as another type of queenship in Chinese history.

Османи на трьох континентах, пер. з турецьк. О. Кульчинського

Османи на трьох континентах, пер. з турецьк. О. Кульчинського

Chokan Valikhanov and Oral Theory of Word Art

The article is devoted to the memory of Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and topical problems of oral theory-the object of modern intercultural communication. It raises questions about the style and genre of oral utterance, oral and stylistic techniques and the art of speech, which are necessary for students of genre theory and the art of journalism. The main purpose of the article is to identify the relevance of the sci-entist’s ideas in the light of the oral theory of Parry-Lord-the leading American researchers, which comes from the nature of not only genre forms of Kazakh folklore, but also functionally related stylistics and art of speech. The methodological value of both the research and the works of the scientist is revealed in the analysis of oral genre forms of folklore, stylistics and art of speech and taking into account the main method of Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, his view “from within the tradition itself”. This methodology takes into account the comparative studies and comparative-historical and typological, and the systemic methods and method of analysis. The main conclusion of the article is that the first Kazakh folklorist, Ch. Ch. Va-likhanov is at the origins of journalism, acts as a master of the essay. His “ Notes...», “Notes...”,” Essays...   “ require a closer reading: he foresaw many directions of modern oral theory and world folklore. These visionary ideas were based on his clear awareness of the unique value of centuries-old Steppe knowl-edge, an important part of which was the great oral epic and folklore of the Turks of the North Caucasus, Southern Siberia, Central and Central Asia. unified in its development, the integral steppe tradition of the art of speech first appeared in his works in all its genre and species diversity. such a holistic historical and ethnographic approach to the analysis of folklore and the art of speech of the turkic peoples has practical and methodological significance for both oral theory and world epic studies. Кey words: genre, parry-lord oral theory, tradition, formula style, word art, steppe knowledge, genre form.

The steppe tradition in international relations: Russians, Turks and European state building 4000 BCE–2018 CE

The steppe tradition in international relations: Russians, Turks and European state building 4000 BCE–2018 CE

A Kelet-Dunántúl avar kori népességváltozásainak történeti embertani vizsgálata

During the Early Avar period, the Eastern-Transdanubian part of the Carpathian Basin was characterized by cultural heterogeneity. Beside the late antique and Germanic cultural elements the byzantine goods as well as the steppe traditions were included in the archaeological material of this period. The multicultural milieu completely disappeared by the beginning of the Late Avar Period that was defined by a much more standardized culture. In the light of the cultural changes, could we assume that the bearers of the antique and Germanic culture of the Early Avar period are the descendants of the former Romance and Lombard groups? If so, what happened to this populations during the Avar Period, how did they interact with the steppe-originated Avars? Was the Late Avar acculturation caused by new immigrants or is it solely a cultural integration?
 Based on the results of my dissertation, the continuity of the late antique and Germanic groups to the Early Avar period has been proved. The cultural influences and relations of these local populations contributed to the emergence of the Early Avar material culture of Eastern-Transdanubia. The Early Avar period males of other regions had little biological impact on the Eastern-Transdanubian population, however females migrated here to a greater extent. The sex-specific migration rate resulted that the anthropological traits of the local males persisted even through the Late Avar period, while the continuity of the females localised to Baranya-county.
 During the Late Avar period new populations had arrived to Eastern-Transdanubia and occupied mostly the present territories of Tolna- and Fejér-counties. As far as Baranya-county is concerned, the Late Avar period population was formed on the basis of Romance, Germanic and Early Avar period population. The new inhabitants of Eastern-Transdanubia had biological relations with populations living in the Danube-Tisza Interfluve and along the Tisza. Since these regions cover a relatively large geographic area, further systematic comparative studies are necessary to decipher the origin of these populations. Considering that there were similarities between the locally formed Late Avar period populations of Eastern-Transdanubia and the new immigrants, their biological integration could happen rapidly. From a demographic point of view, it is not possible to establish a causal relationship between the new population and the onset of the Late Avar period. Therefore, the cultural transition could have rather been the result of a cultural integration process.

The importance of the Eurasian steppe to the study of international relations

This article is a call for making the Eurasian steppe an object of study within International Relations. The first section argues that the neglect of the steppe is due to 19th-century prejudice against non-sedentary polities as being barbarian. This is hardly a scholarly reason to neglect them. The second section is a nutshell overview of literature on the steppe from other fields. On the strength of these literatures, we postulate the existence of what we call an almost three thousand year long steppe tradition of ordering politics. The third section of the article suggests that the steppe tradition has hybridised sundry polity-building projects, from early polity-building in the European the Middle Ages via the Ottoman and Russian empires to contemporary Central Asian state-building. We conclude this exploratory piece by speculating whether a focus on the steppe tradition may have the potential to change our accounts of the emergence of European international relations at large.

<i>The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia Scott C. Levi The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia. By David Sneath. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Anthropologist David Sneath is director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University and an established specialist in the study of Inner Asian nomadic societies. Sneath's previous publications include Changing Inner Mongolia: Pastoral Mongolian Society and the Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2000), and the co-authored (with Caroline Humphrey) volume, The End of Nomadism? Society, State and the Environment in Inner Asia (Duke University Press, 1999). With this volume, Sneath seeks to advance a revisionist interpretation of Inner Asian history from antiquity to the modern day by establishing two complementary points. First, he aims to discredit the notion, articulated by colonial administrators in the nineteenth century and embraced by many scholars since, that the principle political institutions of nomadic societies in historical Inner Asia were fiercely egalitarian kinship-based clans and tribes. This leads to his second objective, which is to advance an understanding of state and society in nomadic Inner Asia that places social stratification and aristocratic power, not kinship, at the heart of political authority. Sneath's discussion unfolds in seven chapters. In a substantial introduction, he provides a rich analysis of literature on the relationship of kinship and the state. Drawing heavily from recent work on nomadic communities in Africa, he lays out his general argument: Inner Asian nomadic societies functioned as a "headless state," which he describes as a "political environment, in which almost all of the operations of state power exist at the local level virtually independent of central bureaucratic authority" (5). The second chapter, "The Myth of the Kinship Society," elaborates upon this point and explores multiple ways that scholars have cast nomadic societies as primitive, static, tribal (or kinship-based) and stateless. The more analytical portion of the volume begins with chapter three, where Sneath takes aim at the means by which peripheral colonial powers, both European and Asian, have historically monopolized the production of knowledge that pertains to their nomadic neighbors. He locates only a small number of astute scholarly observers (e.g. Owen Lattimore) who have recognized that the tribal political order tribes referenced in the sources bears little similarity to reality as it was on the ground. In the next chapter, Sneath seeks to demonstrate that the notion of "clan" is also an external construct, a byproduct of states. efforts to organize their populace based on idealized patrilineal family structures, the goal of which was to "structure society and guarantee the uninterrupted continuation of the political process" (101). Sneath's fifth chapter lays out the ways in which certain "neocolonial" and Soviet scholars have essentialized nomadic peoples as "barbarians" stranded at an earlier evolutionary stage than their sedentary neighbors. He adeptly summarizes: "The perfect example of the ideal-type pastoral nomadic society, composed of egalitarian clans of fierce and free tribesmen, organized by the principles of segmentary opposition, was like any good mythical beast: no one had actually seen it themselves, but everyone seemed to have it on excellent authority that someone else had" (156). This is followed by chapter six, a somewhat awkward digression into the subject of nationalism that focuses as much on Europe as it does on Inner Asia. One may be sympathetic with Sneath's effort to argue against "the notion that nations are rooted in ?ethnic. units of common descent" (176) and to recognize in Inner Asian history "a rich diversity of political forms, all of which drew to some extent on techniques and institutions of governance that were parts of a distinctive steppe tradition" (178-79). Unfortunately what he means by "rich diversity" goes largely unexplained, and the discussion ventures little beyond the Mongols. Here, and elsewhere in the volume, his evidence is thin and the extent to which he can substantiate his broader assertions remains questionable. In the final, concluding chapter, Sneath returns to his central argument: nomadic societies, even those without a centralized authority figure, are not stateless. In fact, they exhibit all of the key features...

The Ignored Elites: Turks, Mongols and a Persian Secretarial Class in the Early Delhi Sultanate

AbstractThe consolidation of the Delhi Sultanate coincided with the Mongol devastation of Transoxiana, Iran and Afghanistan. This paper studies the Persian literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries invested as it was in the projection of the court of the Delhi Sultans as the ‘sanctuary of Islam’, where the Muslim community was safe from the marauding infidel Mongols. The binaries on which the qualities of the accursed Mongols and the monolithic Muslim community were framed ignored the fact that a large number of Sultanate elites and monarchs were of Turkish/Mongol ethnicity or had a history of prior service in their armed contingents. While drawing attention to the narrative strategies deployed by Sultanate chroniclers to obscure the humble frontier origins of its lords and masters, my paper also elaborates on steppe traditions and rituals prevalent in early-fourteenth-century Delhi. All of these underlined the heterogeneity of Muslim Sultanate society and politics in the capital, a complexity that the Persian litterateurs were loath to acknowledge in their records.

On official corruption in the Yuan dynasty

The vicious cycle of official corruption got worse unprecedentedly in the Yuan dynasty (ca.1279–1368). Corrupt officials at all levels from the local to the central governments were “extremely shameless and greedy.” Even many court ministers got involved in the vicious cycle of corruption. The top officialdom was polluted and degenerated badly because the Mongolian nobles made their “Sauqat” (taking gifts) tradition and the Semu, both official and merchant groups, took bribes as a way to amass wealth. Although the Mongol Yuan rulers did make a set of anti-corruption policies such as detailed rules of censorship and inspection relating to corruption crimes, these didn’t work well. Of all the reasons of the Yuan official corruption, the old Mongolian steppe traditions play the most important role, which formed the context for the low salary, improper selection and poor quality of the officials and of bending the law wrongly to pardon official misconduct

To preserve and protect: Husayn Vaciz-i Kashifi and Perso-Islamic chancellery culture

It is Generally Agreed that the Beginning of the Persian Literary Renaissance of the tenth–eleventh centuries was concomitant with the emergence of a bureaucratic tradition that had its roots in pre-Islamic Sasanian Iran. The avatars of these bureaucratic principles in medieval Perso-Islamic history—Nizam al-Mulk, Rashid al-Din, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, to name the most famous—were trained in Arabic and Persian, wrote scholarly treatises on a wide array of religious, philosophical, and scientific topics, and advocated, among other things, the need for responsible rule and consistent administration according to Islamic law and custom. These admonitions were generally directed at their Turkic and Mongol dynastic patrons whose steppe traditions were often at cross-purposes with the running of a sedentary society that depended on irrigated agriculture, commerce, public works, and systems of taxation. Prominent Persian bureaucrats and their descendents undertook these duties and were able to accrue considerable power and wealth, but often at a high cost when we read of the fates of Rashid al-Din, Saᶜd al-Dawla and Juvayni.

Suftan, Dynasty and State in the Ottoman Empire: Political Institutions in the Sixteenth Century

From its inception around 1300, 'the House of Osman' maintained the ancient Eurasian steppe tradition which kept the system of suc cession open. At a sultan's death, the throne went to the best candidate to emerge in a contest. By the end of sixteenth century, dynastic strug gles, amounting to civil war and the killing of all the brothers of a successful prince, had caused disquiet in Ottoman polity. Subse quently, rules of succession favoured seniority due to circumstances of the age and lifespan of sultans. Also in the sixteenth century, the grand vezir established a personal administration. By the end of the century, the sultan, though himself no longer a charismatic military leader, curtailed the emergence of a minister in charge of policy. Ot toman polity remained a dynastic empire to its end which deliberately curtailed the emergence of independent political institutions.

Centralizing Reform and its Opponents in the Late Timurid Period

The disintegration of the Timurid empire after the death of its founder, Timur, in 807/1405 followed the normal pattern for Central Asian nomadic empires based on a military tribal elite. The charismatic Timur had exercised a tight hold on the government of his realm, mainly as a result of the highly personal nature of his rule and the flexibility which the absence of a formal administrative apparatus afforded him. But, after his death, the traditional Turko-Mongol concept that territory was held collectively by the patriarchal, agnatic clan and that all lineal male descendants shared the right to claim political sovereignty over it, reasserted itself.This corporate claim to sovereignty created a free-for-all situation in which individual members of the princely Timurid clan clamored to assert their claims to rule in the steadily shrinking territory under Timurid control, frequently resorting to the time-honored steppe tradition of guerilla struggle (qazāqliq) .