1 - Ergenekon

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Turkish History Podcast, episode one, Adaginikon. One of the most meaningful and evocative words in modern Turkish is Adaginikon. It is the name of a mythical valley, thousands of miles from Anatolia in the mountains of Central Asia. The word is known to all people in Turkey today. It is found in epic poems, in literature, political manifestos, and trial documents. It's been used as a metaphor for the establishment of the Turkish Republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire as a metaphor for the rebirth of the Turkish nation and as a symbol of the Turkish Revolution. It's lent its name to a supposed conspiracy theory to overthrow the Islamist government. But why does this name of a far away mythical valley continue to evoke such feelings and emotion in today's Turkey? According to Turkish legend, the valley of Adaginikon is the birthplace of the Turkish people. In this legend, the ancestors of the Turks were heavily defeated in a great battle. The only survivor was a 10-year-old boy. The boy then fled the battlefield and was led by a she-wolf through a secret passageway into a remote and hidden valley named Adaginikon. The boy grew up and made it with the wolf, who gave birth to 10 sons, each of whom in turn grew up and married a woman led into the valley by a wolf. In this valley, their descendants were trapped for 400 years, slowly rebuilding their numbers, until a blacksmith melted the mountain and created a passageway out. Through this passageway, the ten clans of the tribe emerged. A grey wolf named Ashina led them out of the valley of Adaginikon where they then went on to found the guk to Khanate. Now, Adaginikon is clearly a myth, and it's an enduring one. The fact that the Turks themselves continue to tell the story of this mythical valley shows just how much they continue to see their story as beginning far away from Anatolia on the steps of Central Asia. And so that is where we too will begin, with the rise of the first Turkish state, the guk Turk Khanate. But before we can go into the actual origins of the Turks and the beginnings of Turkish history, we need to understand the step world that the Turks emerged from. So what was this ancient step world like? The defining feature of step life is that it was nomadic. Turks are just one of many peoples who lived a step lifestyle. Others include famously the Mongols and less famously the Majars or the Hungarians and even less famously a whole host of other nomadic peoples. Scythians, Sarmations, the Messagatai, Tukarians and Tungusic peoples. Others are just lost to history. Now putting ourselves in the mindset of a nomadic people can be difficult. Unless you are a truly unique podcast listener, I can bet that you are sedentary. You leave in a fixed home, be it an apartment or a house. More importantly perhaps your ancestors lived in homes. Your society, your people's history, descends from the peoples who settled down and grew crops to subsist. Your culture in turn has developed a lot of concepts about society, property and the importance of place, which differ markedly from those of the nomads. The nomads primary property was movable. It was the herds themselves, not the land that they walked upon that mattered. These people's sustenance, their culture, was based on movement, not on rootedness. This is exactly the opposite of our sedentary cultures, which value place and stability. We have also inherited our ancestors' fear and distrust of the nomad, which colors how we see these people. Now economically, the fundamental mode of production for the nomads was animal husbandry, which was perfectly suited to the environment of the Eurasian step. These are wide open grasslands. Archaeological evidence is scarce, but the nomadic way of life appears to have begun on the Eurasian step around 4000 BCE, with the domestication of the horse. The horse provided nomads with what would become their key attribute, both sociologically and militarily, which was their mobility. It allowed them to travel vast distances with their herds. Unsurprisingly, horses grew to have a key place in nomadic societies, including early Turkish society. Archaeological sites show evidence of horse remains buried with human remains on the Eurasian step. Perhaps these were warriors riding into the afterlife on their steeds. With the domestication of the horse, nomadic peoples would move throughout the year as their herds consumed the grass in a given location and as the weather and climate shifted. The roots were usually pretty regular throughout the year, but not always, and they would occasionally travel vast distances if required to by famine, war, or disease. The size and the composition of their herds can be hard to discern, but Eurasian nomads came to keep five main species of mammals. Sheep, goats, camels, cows, and the all-important horse. Studies I've read of modern Central Asia and Mongolian nomads say that an average semi-nomadic or nomadic nuclear family might own 100 or so sheep and goats, tens of cattle, and maybe 5 to 10 horses, while a rich family may own 2 to 300 sheep and goats over 50 cattle and tens of horses. 60 to 100 head of animals appears to be something of a lower bound, below which survival for a family really kind of becomes impossible. And, anecdotally, when I traveled to Kurgistan myself, I spoke with a man who essentially lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle, that is, he sombered in the high mountain pastures while keeping a house in a town that he would return to for the winters, or maybe for other occasions. And this guy claimed to own over a thousand sheep and over 50 horses. Incidentally, he also drank me under the table and shot rifles out of his Lexus like a G, but that's a whole other story. So while we should be hesitant about extrapolating modern herd numbers back into the past, especially because the concept of a nuclear family wasn't as fixed for the nomads as it is for us, it's definitely certain that the nomads were far outnumbered by their livestock. Sociologically, the family and the clan were the basic underpinning social structures of early Turkic society. In general, families living together were likely not large. Two generations are potentially three. This was likely dictated by the economic restrictions of step life. Most camping herds could not reliably support more people. Turkic clans were theoretically based on paternal relations, with different family groupings organized along lines of seniority. However, this seniority was not necessarily rigid. It could also be undermined by the Turkic custom of inheritance. In general, older sons would take their share of their father's herds and property and move off, while the youngest son would inherit the remainder of the household, which would often be the most valuable portion. Clans could be more or less cohesive or diffuse, more or less bound by bonds of loyalty and could vary greatly in size and in composition. Above the family and the clan, the fundamental political unit of early Turkic society was the tribe. But that said, it's difficult to understand exactly what tribe meant to the early Turks. A tribe might be composed of multiple families or clans themselves interrelated. It might be led by and centered around a charismatic military leader, such as the later Chinggeseed Timorid or Ottoman tribes. It might be centered around a particularly cohesive set of clans. Certain tribal names indicate a union of smaller tribes. For example, Toku's Okus means the nine tribes. Critically, Turkic tribes never developed an idea of orderly rules of succession. Even into the Ottoman era, even onto the end of the empire, the states ruled by a Turkish tribe, were essentially the collective property of the ruling clan of the tribe. Any member of whom could theoretically take it over. Above the tribe, in time, confederations of tribes were formed. Ultimately, out of these multi-ethnic, multilingual, linguistic, multi-religious confederations, huge step empires would come to be formed. But the most important thing to remember is that tribes, tribal confederations, and clans were not static. They were fluid and constantly evolving. The mobility of the step world enabled discontents within a tribe or tribal confederation to just up and leave whenever they wanted to. Maybe they could join other tribes, maybe they could just strike out on their own and create a new tribe. Maybe they would retain a connection to the clan or the tribe that they left, which could create cross-cutting and overlapping webs of loyalty and identity across the step. Now how tribes and tribal confederations formed, and the degree of their political centralization, was really driven by their relations with their neighboring sedentary societies. Nomadic societies always existed and developed in concert with their sedentary neighbors. Political structures were based on their relationship with the settled world. The degree of centralization of the nomads is always directly proportionate to the size of the neighboring agricultural civilization. Mediating the relationship with the sedentary world, including peace and war, was the primary purpose of the higher level political structures on the step. While the image of the horse riding barbarian appearing over the horizon to pillage the countryside as a deeply-rooted trope among settled peoples, the interactions between the nomads and the settled peoples they encountered ran the gamut. Nomadic peoples, including including the Turks produced a variety of animal products such as wool, pelts, leather, felt, textiles, cheese, meat, yogurt. However, while they could produce these products in bulk, they could never produce the variety or quantity of products that a sedentary society could produce. Ownership of large numbers of five species of migratory grazing mammals, however many of them you have, will never be able to equal the productive capacity of sedentary societies, who can marshal all of the resources of their environment and can produce much larger surpluses. The nomads, but often therefore, trade their products for the products of sedentary peoples, such as flour, vegetables, metal products, woodworking products, and in time, books, musical instruments, and other luxury goods. On the other side of the spectrum, the nomads would also just raid the settled peoples they encountered, both to acquire physical goods and slaves, or in time, just to outright subjugate and conquer them. Similarly, the settled peoples had no compunctions about defeating nomads in battle, and then just taking their property and enslaving them. Speaking of war, it was really here that the step people truly excelled. Essentially, each fighting-age man could be a warrior. Step nomads learned to ride horses in childhood, and they rode horses essentially daily. They were skilled archers who hunted for food and for sport. In war, they would primarily rely on mounted archers, who would remain mounted, firing arrows from a distance, or while riding in, firing their arrows, and then retreating out of range. Mounted warriors could also function as heavy cavalry, charging in with lances or swords. They were also apparently just infuriating to fight against from a settled warrior's perspective. They didn't share the notion common among settled nobles that retreat was somehow dishonorable. They would retreat whenever they felt it was strategically necessary, and they would even feign retreats, drawing their opponents into traps where they would then crush them. This is maybe related to the different perspectives of a nomad and a settled man. Holding land, defending land, standing and fighting for a place, probably made little sense to a people whose whole life was defined by moving. The Chinese historical classic, the records of the grand historian, which was composed during the Han Dynasty, says the following about how step children were raised. Quote, "A little boy is start out by learning how to ride sheep and shoot birds and rats with a bow and arrow. When they get older, they shoot foxes and hairs which are used for food. Thus all young men are able to use a bow and act as armed cavalry in time of war. It is their custom to herd their flocks in times of peace and make their living by hunting, but in times of crisis they take up arms and go plundering and moroting. This seems to be their nature. For long-range weapons, they use bows and arrows and swords and spears at close range. If the battle is going well for them, they will advance. But if not, they will retreat. For they do not consider it to be a disgrace to run away." Each warrior would travel on campaign with at least three horses usually, and often the whole horde would be on the move relatively nearby, including women and children. They would often camp relatively near the armies, sometimes even with them. This gave the nomads exceptional mobility. They could travel thousands of miles, so long as there was land for their herds. They weren't constrained by supply lines, only the availability of grass and water. Similarly, they didn't have to stop fighting in harvest time as peasant soldiers did. Many of the nomads of the Eurasian steppe also didn't mind marching in the winter. They could even use the frozen rivers as highways. It also meant that a very large percentage of the male population could fight in war. Some historians estimate that between 75 to 90% of fighting-age men could routinely go to war, which far, far outstrips the percentage of their population that sedentary societies could put in the field. All of this made the steppe warriors, when they could be organized and united, far superior to the armies of the settled world up until the advent of gunpowder. So those are the contours of the steppe world that the Turks emerged from. Now that we've got that covered, we can move on to discuss the early history of the Turks and their emergence onto the world stage. Their emergence from the valley of Ergenekon, so to speak. But if Ergenekon itself is a myth, where did the Turks actually come from? The exact place of origin of the Turkic peoples is disputed, but it probably lay near the all-time mountains of modern day Mongolia. Linguists have reconstructed certain proto-Turkic words through comparative analysis of modern Turkic languages. These words can therefore give us clues as to the environment the first Turks lived in. We know it was a cold environment, evidenced by words for snow, hail, ice, fog, and rain, edited words for mountains and steppes or plains, along with rivers, marshes, and lakes. Interestingly, it had native words for a variety of animals we know to have existed in Siberian forests, like elk, roe deer, and beaver, as well as on the steppes, words for things like stallions, mayors, gazelle, oxen, and cows. This implies that the speakers of proto-Turkic might have lived on the fringes between the steppe and the northern forests of Siberia, and then maybe move south into the steppe and take an uppastoralism. Though it is far from certain, it appears that proto-Turkic began to diverge into different languages and the first to second century BCE. The first grouping of languages to diverge were the so-called "Ordic" languages. Now, the only extant "Ordic" language is "Tuvash", and "Ord" is believed to have been part of the first westward wave of nomadic Turkic peoples, including the Huns and the Heptolites. The other branches of the Turkic languages, like "Karluk, Kipchak, Ohu's, and the Siberian branches", appear to have remained in contact as part of a dialect continuum for a long period of time, with the Siberian languages diverging first. "Karluk, Kipchak, and Ohu's in particular" appear to have remained somewhat mutually intelligible into the early Middle Ages. So at the time that our story begins, there were many, many Turkic tribes who spoke a variety of Turkic languages and dialects. The tribe that we care about, the ones who go on to found the Turkish connet, appear to have spoken a dialect that would grow into the Siberian branch in time, whereas the Turks of modern day Turkey speak a language derived from the Ohu's dialect. But at the time our story begins, these dialects, these languages were probably largely mutually intelligible. As I said, the most important thing to know about the origins of the Turks is that they were step nomads. The second most important thing is that the Turks emerged in close contact with Chinese civilization. The ethno-nim Turk first appears with certainty as Tuzhu, or Turgut, in the Chinese sources dealing with a rise of the Guk Turk. It appears around the same time as Dhrugu in Tibetan sources and as Trukit in Sogdian sources. And it is these interactions with Chinese civilization and with the rich Silk Road Sogdian city-states of Central Asia that would shape and define early Turkish history. Now, the history of China is obviously far, far beyond the scope of this podcast. There is an excellent history of China podcast that you should listen to if you are interested. The important thing for our story is that it was the relationship with the Chinese state that resulted in the formation of the great tribal confederations from which the Turks would emerge and one of which our tribe of Turks would go on to found. So what I'm going to do now is an exceptionally brief, almost insultingly brief, run through of the key parts of Chinese history that will be necessary to set the stage for the coming of the Turks. Briefly, the establishment of the Han dynasty, its unification of China and the rise of classical Chinese civilization resulted in the formation of larger tribal confederations on the nearby steps of inner Asia. These tribal confederations were multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural. They had varying degrees of centralization and formalization of their political structures. It was from these tribal confederations that the great step empires would be born. These confederations were loose and federal in nature internally. The main purpose of the central leader, be it the Shanyu or the Khan, was to mediate the relationship of the confederation with the Chinese state and to settle disputes among the component tribes. As the Han dynasty grew, a tribal confederation called the Yongnu arose with it. Now as we said earlier, nomadic societies are always deeply dependent on the settled societies they border. The degree of centralization of the nomads is always directly proportionate to the size and sophistication of the neighboring agricultural civilization. The Han dynasty and the Yongnu existed side by side for hundreds of years, sometimes at war, sometimes at peace. But in the third century, the sophisticated and centralized Han state began to collapse. The reasons for this collapse are many, but it occurred simultaneously with the crisis of the third century that almost brought down the Roman Empire and the total collapse of the Parthian Empire in Iran. I'm going to call this period throughout the crisis of the third century because it just affected all Eurasian civilizations. Across Eurasia, these three large classical states began falling apart and the Yongnu collapsed with them. with a western faction ultimately traveling across Eurasia to form the Heftalites, or the White Huns, and the famous Hunnic Empire that gave the world Attila. There were a lot of causes for these Eurasian collapses in the third century. Climate change appears to be one of them. There is substantial evidence that the climate experienced a period of cooling and dryness across Eurasia. In China, this made the step way of life viable further into China as desirification turned crops into grassland, thus bringing step tribes into China proper. As Chinese state authority weakened, these raids and eventual nomadic occupation in the North became more and more common and more and more permanent. Climate change also probably contributed to decreases in crop yields and to famine. And this change came on the heels of a long warmer and wetter period of the climate, during which Han society had seen huge population increases. There's evidence of an outbreak of a new infectious disease across Eurasia as well. Based on Han, Roman, and Persian sources, we think it was probably smallpox. The plague spread in recurring waves, just decimating urban societies. Numbers are hard to come by, but it seems that out of a population of about 60 million people in China, at least 10 million, a full 16% of the population, and maybe up to a quarter died of the plague. Think about that. Maybe one in four people dead of disease. And that doesn't include war or starvation. The warmer and wetter period that preceded the change in the climate had also caused population increases across Eurasia, and these prior heights made the fall worse. See, the population increases had changed land holding patterns across China. Much of the land was owned by rich families towards the end of the Han dynasty, with the remaining small plots being divided further and further by the peasants. This was fine until it wasn't. When the change in climate meant that these plots could no longer support the same number of people. The decrease in population also meant that the aristocrats' fields couldn't be harvested. We see evidence of this in decreased tax revenues, made worse by corruption as the state's authority weakened. All of this instability led to challenges to the central authority. The Han state had to deal with increasing rebellions, which really actually began to start earlier than the crisis of the third century in about the year 50, and they had to put these down with fewer and fewer troops and less and less money. The authority of the Imperial Center weakened, and ultimately the center just couldn't hold. For a roughly 400-year period, beginning in about 220 when the Han state collapsed and continuing until the founding of the Tang dynasty in about 620, China entered into a period of prolonged division and instability, though this instability itself waxed and waned. The start of this era of instability was the so-called Three Kingdoms period, from the collapse of the Han state until about 265 when the Jin dynasty partially reunited China. China endured civil wars, warring states headed by local warlords and petty kings, which ultimately consolidated into the eponymous Three Kingdoms. Eventually, the northernmost of these kingdoms was taken over by palace officials of the court, who founded the Jin dynasty. During this period of instability and change, that is, the Three Kingdoms period up through the Jin, no-mads from the step moved deep into northern China. This was largely caused by the no-mads being invited in by Chinese warlords and administrators to serve as warriors and to graze their crops on land that could no longer support agriculture. Eventually, the Jin dynasty would collapse, driven by a destructive civil war and then overthrown by the nomadic peoples recently moved into northern China in the so-called uprising of the five barbarians. Out of the ashes of the Jin dynasty, these nomadic peoples formed many states or statelets across northern China, states that were defined by a Chinese civil administration paired with step military organization. This general pattern of instability in China characterized over an extended period of time by collapse of imperial authority, followed by its partial reformation and then its recalapse, with small states and relatively weak and shortly of dynasty's controlling parts of China would continue for about 300 years. China would not achieve true stability until the rise of the Tang dynasty. During this period of instability, many of these dynasties and small states were formed by step nomads and their descendants, but almost all of them would prove to be short-lived. A pattern or cycle would typically occur. The nomadic dynasty establishes itself in a capital city. Largely leaves intact the pre-existing fiscal system of the conquered sedentary state and comes to rely on the bureaucratic civil officials of that state. In time, as the nomadic dynasty and aristocracy further assimilated to Chinese culture or became "cooked barbarians" as opposed to the raw barbarians, as the Chinese would have said, the gulf between them and their tribesmen on the step would grow. Heard numbers would fall and booty from conquest would dry up. The state would come to primarily rely on taxes from peasants. The ruling elite would slowly abandon the tribal mode of government. Eventually, even the tribal language would be banned as Chinese culture fully assimilated the former nomads. Ultimately, the very things that made the step warrior so formidable, their lifetime in the saddle, their skill as mounted archers, their physical toughness for lack of a better word, and the step mindset would evaporate, and the state would fall apart or be conquered by a new band of step warriors. Meanwhile, as northern China fell into this pattern, on the step new confederations formed. First, the loosely organized Zhangbei confederation, and then the Mongol led Ruran Khanat. The Ruran Khanat was the first step empire to take the now world famous title of Khan, a title that would be borne by the leaders of step empires going forward, including those of the Turkish Khanat, and it is from the Ruran Khanat that the first Turkish Khanat would emerge. The Ruran appeared to have initially consolidated their power on the step under a great step conqueror named Shayloon, who conquered and united the tribes of the step in the early years of the 5th century. Aside from sparse mentions in Chinese sources, however, it is hard to piece together exactly how and when the Ruran established their empire on the step. It appears to have been rapid, however. In 410, they conquered the Tye Le, a loose orc Turkic confederation. The Tye Le would go on to be a thorn in their side, in the side of every step empire for centuries. Ultimately, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, the area around Lake Baikal, and as far west as East Turkestan in the Fargana Valley, and as far east as Manchuria, came under their rule of the Ruran Khanat by the early 5th century. The governmental structures of the Ruran Khanat were greatly influenced by those small, partially nomadic, partially Chinese states that had spread across China following the collapse of the Jin, and with whom the Ruran were in constant contact. Eventually, during the course of the 5th century, one of those partially nomadic, partially Chinese mini-states in China began to consolidate power and gobble up its neighboring mini-states. This dynasty, called the Northern Way, eventually came to partially reunite northern China. They provided that centralization and sophistication of sedentary society that was needed for centralization on the step. Additionally, being of step origin themselves and retaining a step military structure, the Northern Way were also a model of state structure for the Ruran. Now that said, the Ruran Khanat was not as centralized or sophisticated as the Northern Way. They lacked a lot of the sophistication provided by inheriting the Chinese administrative state tradition. For example, there still don't appear to have been written laws, courts, or specialized legal functionaries in the Ruran Khanat. Below the top political level of the confederation, traditional tribal authorities and rules still held sway over day-to-day life. Han Chinese observers were of course dismissive of this centralization, which to them probably seemed to be basically nothing. They also remarked on the illiteracy of the Ruran, saying, "They had no letter to make records, so the heads and chiefs counted approximately the number of warriors by using sheepstroppings." However, we see evidence of the adoption of Chinese language by the Ruran for diplomatic purposes, so almost certainly there were at least some literate people in the court. Nevertheless, despite Chinese snobbery, the Ruran Khanat was particularly organized for a step empire. Certainly more so than the preceding step confederation founded by the Jiangbei and the Jiangnu, it would become even more centralized and organized towards its end. This centralization was occurring at the same time that centralized authority was making a comeback across Eurasia. The green shoots out of the ashes, so to speak. In the far west, Emperor Diocletian returns stability to the Roman Empire, instituting the dominant, called by many a second Roman Empire in the late third century, and by the mid-4th century the Constantinian dynasty was overseeing a renewed flourishing of the Empire. including building a certain capital city on the boss forest, you know, foreshadowing. In Persia, as we will discuss in more detail in coming episodes, the Sassanid Empire had arisen in the aftermath of the collapse of the Parthian Empire, reunifying Iran and ushering in a new era of prosperity in the 4th century. East Asia was, if anything, a laggard in all of this. Though the success of the northern way did bring an increase in stability in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, the northern way were victims of that progression of nomadic kingdoms in China that we mentioned earlier. The step nomads becoming cooked, as the Chinese would say, until they became overcooked and lost their ability to govern. The collapse of the northern way was occurring at the same time that, economically and politically speaking, Eurasia was coming together and pulling itself out of these crises. This dynamic brought the northern way and the Ruran into increasing conflict, as the rising Ruran butted up against the declining northern way. The northern way and the Ruran fell into a cycle of violence that would not end until the ascension of the final Ruran Khan, a man named Anaguy. Anaguy Khan was a centralizer and a modernizer. He also furthered the scenicization of the Ruran Khanate. He built a capital city, Mu Mu Chang, though I probably am mispronouncing that. According to Chinese sources, he also "established the post of officials, imitating the Chinese rulers in an appropriate way." Anaguy also introduced written record keeping and gave his retinue and high ranking officials Chinese titles. He brought in emigrated visors, trained in Chinese scholastic methods, likely from the northern way and Han Chinese from further south. Even his chief advisor, his Prime Minister, was an ethnic Han Chinese man named Shunyutan. It's not totally clear what led to these changes. Perhaps Anaguy was simply impressed by Chinese culture, which he would have presumably seen through the northern way. Interestingly, he asked for a millet for sewing from the Chinese, so he may have had an interest in expanding agriculture for economic reasons. Maybe as the northern way were beginning to collapse, he saw his chance to take over northern China. Indeed there are suggestions in some Chinese sources that he was thinking of taking over Lu Yang, old capital of the Jin. And why not? The northern way were on their way out, and the Ruran were at the zenith of their power. Who was going to stop him? Perhaps if he had succeeded, that same cycle we discussed earlier would have restarted, with the Ruran creating a new nomad derived state in northern China in place of the northern way. But things did not work out that way. See there were these discontented tribes and peoples inside the Ruran continent, including a certain little regarded, low-ranking Turkic tribe, which at this point in history was led by a certain booming. And it is here, finally, that our story begins, because it is from this particular Turkic tribe that the first Turkish state would emerge. Our Turkic tribe, who I'm just going to start calling the Turks, first appear in the Chinese records as a low-ranking subject tribe of the Ruran. According to the book of Sway, the Turks came from Hu Barbarians from Gonsu Province, who had the family name Aashina, the same name of the wolf in the famous Adgenic-owned legend. Now who is the Chinese word for Sogdian, that is the inhabitants of those Central Asian city-states? Probably that's not true, but it's interesting to see how the Chinese were making that connection already between the Turks and the Sogdians. In the third century, when the northern way emperor defeated a young new clan that had founded a small state like in Gonsu called the northern Liang, the Aashina, who had been occupying that area fled to the steppe. There, the Chinese records say, they submitted to the Ruran. So what were the Turks like when they were just a small tribe in the all-time mountains? From a political perspective, the tribe was subject to the Ruran Khan. That is, it was a vassal, not a fully-bought-in member of the Confederation with a real seat at the table. They would have owed tribute to the Ruran Khan and would have had to supply troops and war and raiding, but they would not have been part of any decision-making, or had any high offices or titles at the Khan's court. Likely, they would not have even been invited to the Coral Thai. Those are the great tribal Confederation assemblies, or have had a representative at the Khan's court. Likely, it's only communication with the Khan would have been through emissaries, mostly sent to the tribe bearing the Khan's orders. Internally, the tribe seems to have kept the dual leadership structure traditional to many Turkic tribes. But this dual leadership structure was not of two equal leaders. These weren't like Roman consuls sharing power. Instead, there was a primary leader who took the title Khan, and a secondary leader called a Yabgu. Both the Khan and the Yabgu were from the same ruling Ashina clan, and almost certainly always of the same ruling family within that clan. Woman, when he was Khan, ruled alongside his younger brother Ishtami as the Yabgu. But I don't think that we should think of the Yabgu as just a deputy. He appeared to have a great deal of power and an independent source of legitimacy. There are a couple of reasons to think this. Inscriptions mention both Khan and Yabgu side by side, which they likely wouldn't do if the Yabgu was merely a deputy. Also it appears that if the Khan died, the Yabgu would stay on as Yabgu. That is, he would not be reappointed or replaced by the new Khan. As we've discussed before, the Turks never really developed strict rules of succession, and they never really would. Even up to the end of the Ottoman Empire. So I think the institution of Yabgu was probably a way to short-circuit, dynastic conflict and division of the clan's power. You could say to the younger son or the elder son for that matter, like, yeah, you're not going to be the Khan, but you've still got power here. So there's no reason for you to go off and do something stupid. Like launch a succession conflict or civil war unnecessarily. Underneath the ruling Ashina clan, the tribe had other clans of various ranks. They all ultimately owed loyalty to the ruling clan, but due to the fluid nature of tribes on the step, the strength of this loyalty should not be overestimated. The power of the Khan and the Yabgu were probably military with the right to summon and command armies of the clans, and then later on, the other tribes that they would conquer. They probably also had some judicial power, but it was probably pretty circumscribed at this time. Clan leaders themselves were probably the ones with the most autonomy and settling disputes within the clan, and the Khan or the Yabgu would settle conflicts or disagreements between the clans. We have no evidence at this time for a yassa, which is sort of an overarching law. It does appear though that if a person felt that they were mistreated by their clan leader, they could appeal to the Khan or the Yabgu, but we shouldn't think of this as something like a formal, appellate legal process. Now this tribes spoke a Siberian Turkish dialect, but remember that at this time, all non-Auric Turkic languages were essentially just dialects of a common Turkish language, and they were largely mutually intelligible. In time, the Khan would contain speakers of many Turkic dialects and languages, but it's interesting to note that the name "Ashina" is clearly non-Turkic. It doesn't, for example, follow the Turkish rules about vowel harmony. Similarly, both "Bumin" and "Ishtami" are non-Turkish names. Most scholars say that these names are likely "Sagdian" or maybe another Iranian language like "Avar" or "Tokarian". I think "Sagdian" makes the most sense as the tribe had important ties to the Silk Road "Sagdian" city-states of Central Asia. Geographically, that's where the all-tayar, right next to these cities. Now the "Sagdians" are an eronic people who founded and lived in these great Silk Road cities of Central Asia, including Samar Khan, Bukhara and Kiva. And the Turks were clearly in close contact with both Chinese civilization and with this Central Asian-Iranian civilization. The Turks would later use "Sagdian" for administrative purposes, and Chinese courts would also later send "Sagdian" speaking emissaries to "Bumin", so the language was clearly in use by the Turkish court itself. In time, the "Sagdians" would become immensely powerful and influential within the coming Turkish connet. Additionally, there are Turks in the sources with "Manakean" names, and "Manakean" is and was at this time a very popular religion among the "Sagdians". Some scholars say that perhaps there were strong familial ties to the "Sagdian" city-states. I tend to think that "Sagdian" was probably just a prestige language, and that's why they use these names. But it's really just hard to be certain at this point. We don't have a lot of insight into how women fit into the Turkish tribal power structure at this time, but it was certainly a very patriarchal society by our standards. It seems likely that women were very much subordinated and powerless within the tribal political structure. It's not certain if they even had the right to own property or appeal to the con, or even were protected at all from mistreatment by the men in their lives. We know that polygamy was very common. We can surmise that men felt some loyalty to their direct female relatives and didn't want to see them mistreated, but in all likelihood any claim would have had to be made by a man. Basically, the problem isn't that you mistreated this woman and dishonored her. This room is treating her, you dishonored me, the man that matters here. That's a different way of seeing things. So I think that we should consider that this society was fundamentally patriarchal with women having futile rights. But that said, there is a lot of evidence that Turkish women were treated comparatively better. than women and settled societies at the time, particularly among the elite. There are one or two mentions in the sources to female government officials in the coming Turkish continent, all of whom came from the ruling clan. Also some Chinese sources from the coming Tang era talk about how uncivilized the Turks are in that they socialized with women, and even allowed women to speak in policy debates. The Chinese ideal of that time was for women to be far more cloistered, which Turkish women were not. The Chinese were talking about elite women here, but there was likely more gender equality down the social ladder as well. Remember, step life was hard. Women needed to work to keep the family alive, and sweat always brings some leverage. One avenue for women to have power and respect appears to have been through religion. There's a lot of evidence from step societies of female shamans, some quite powerful and influential, and I think we should presume that there were female Turkish shamans. Tengri is shamanism was the primary religion of the Turks, and I think we should think of this as shamanism as being orthopraxic, that is the practice of religion, and Tengri is him as orthodoxy, that is what people believe about the spiritual world. Now shamanic practices ran the gamut. In essence, shamans served as a conduit to the spirit world. They would conduct sacrifices to please the gods and the spirits. Chinese sources even mentioned human sacrifices, but we should probably take that with a grain of salt. They could predict the future through reading the entrails of animals. They would interpret dreams and perform rituals with sticks and stones and do astrology. They were also doctors of a sort, providing folk remedies with varying levels of efficacy to the sick and the wounded. They could also do the opposite, though. Lay down powerful curses and hexes to confound their enemies or the enemies of the tribe. Powered the shamanic practice was the belief that there was a spiritual world overlaying and touching this world. It was living in trees and lakes and mountains, embodying animals, possessing animals and humans. Ultimately, this shamanic worldview endured and persisted longer than the Tengriest Orthodoxy. In some ways, it's even still here today, in the form of Anatolian folk religion. One of the things we know about from this shamanic Turkish tradition is that the wolf was considered a pathway to the divine, and shamans reportedly had the ability to shape shift into wolves. This sort of gives with what's in the Argonicon story, where we see the importance of the wolf as a key political and religious symbol of the tribe. And I think that we should assume that this is connected to the shamanic practices of the Turks at this time. Since then, of course, the wolf has even been resuscitated as a symbol of the Turks in the 20th century. I mean, see the famous right-wing paramilitary group, the Grey Wolves. The importance of this wolf symbol can also be seen in contemporaneous sources, often in the context of the melding of the spiritual and the political. For example, the Turkish founder of the Tang dynasty would come to use the wolf as his symbol in his court. Aside from these sort of shamanic practices, the overarching religion of Tengriism was still deeply important at this time. The Turkic Pantheon was headed by Tengri, source of the modern Turkish word "Ton-Ruh" for God. Tengri is first mentioned in Chinese sources as the God of the young new, and he was shared among the step-people. He was the God of the blue sky, and traditionally, despite me saying he, there is no evidence that he was considered male actually. He was considered to be beyond gender. In time, Turkic cons would base their legitimacy on Tengri, the man-date of heaven, a concept taken from the Chinese, but now coming from the sky god. Gook Turk actually comes from this "gok" means sky, or blue maybe, in that dialect of Turkish. Tengri ruled the heavens, the celestial sphere. There are some analogies to the Indo-European god Duce, the creator god, and the Indo-Europeans were also a step-people, so maybe there was also a connection there. The Orcon inscriptions carved centuries later during the Second Turkish Connet say that Tengri created humans, "When the blue sky, Tengri above, and the brown earth below were created, between them a human being was created." Tengri was also the God of death, in addition to being the God of life. The inscriptions say, "Tengri creates death, human beings have all been created in order to die." Below Tengri there were other gods and goddesses in the Turkish pantheon. Some were considered aspects of Tengri, or somehow shared his power. Kaira, the son of Tengri, who planted the tree of life, Ullgen, Kaira's other son, patron of the god of the shamans and the creator god. Others were god or goddesses of particular things, like Kuzagan, god of war. Madgan, brother of Ullgen and the god of abundance, Umay, goddess of fertility and sex, Etugan, the virgin goddess of earth, Kubal, goddess of childbirth, Burkut, the great eagle god, and the messenger of Tengri. Below the gods were the Ile, which were spiritual guides and sort of spirits, called upon by the shamans. These spirits would each be masters of a certain essence. Two E.C. was for water, old E.C. for fire, yal E.C. for wind, ev E.C. for the home of the hearth, and da E.C. for mountains, and so on and so forth. However, there were also non-Tengrious religions among the Turks at this time. Perhaps most important was Manikianism. Founded by the prophet Mani, Manikianism was a faith born in Iran during the third century, as the Parthian Empire was collapsing. Mani built upon the traditions of Zoraastrian religion, which saw the world as a contest between Ahura Mazda, the lord of light, embodied in fire, and Akhimon, the lord of darkness, embodied in shadow. And he tied that in with Greek, Gnostic thought and early Christian teachings, and probably also Buddhism. Mani taught that all these faiths were incomplete, and his revelation would perfect them. He preached a dualistic faith, that creation was divided between a material world of darkness and a spiritual world of light. Mani did not believe in sort of an all-powerful God, rather in two equal and opposite forces, good and evil, light and dark, spiritual and material. Another important religious influence was undoubtedly Buddhism. Buddhism was promoted by the northern way throughout China, and appears to have been promoted by certain Ruron Khan's, including Anagui. Additionally, there were Buddhists in Baktria and in the Silk Road cities to the west. It was indeed via this route that Buddhism had first come to China. The Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, famously destroyed by the Taliban in the 1990s, were originally built in this period, that is the 500s. In time, Buddhism would come to be widely promoted by the Turkish Khanate. But it's important to remember that in this time and place, religion was not really exclusive in the way it came to be seen by the Abrahamic faiths in the future. Religions overlapped. There was no contradiction in being both a mannequin and also going to visit a shaman. And believing in Tengri and in the Buddha. Economically, the primary mode of production for the Turks at this time was undoubtedly steppastoralism. That is, the nomadic grazing of the five species of mammals that we discussed. However, there may have been people doing this in a semi-nomadic practice. Perhaps wintering in fixed places they returned to year after year. There was also some evidence for limited sedentary settlement. It's including some limited agriculture, but that's sort of disputed. Another clear theme that we get both from the Adagina Khan myth and from Chinese sources is ironworking or metalworking. There is some evidence that stepp society saw smiths as close to shaman's in terms of spiritual power, basically because of their ability to turn earth into something else. But it also seems that by the time of the Ruran Khanate, this was not a prestige job. There's a lot of evidence that the Turks performed some sort of ironworking or black smithing work for the Ruran Khanate. The book of Sway, for example, claims that they were ironworkers. We have references in the Chinese sources to a mission by one of the northern Chinese dynasties to the Turks to discuss the trade in silk. This implies that they were connected to the Silk Road trade and were wealthy enough to merit an emissary from a Chinese court all the way to Al-Tai, bypassing the Ruran court, which was much closer. Based on everything I've read, I'm going to lay out a sort of short, conjectural history and picture of what this Turkish tribe looked like on the eve of its revolt against the Ruran Khan. Again, some of this might be wrong, I'm just going to lay out what I think is most likely. The Turks, as a tribe, began in a meaningful sense as a sub-tribal of the Zhong-New Confederation. They moved south into Gonsu province during the end of the Han dynasty as the crisis of the third century caused the collapse of the dynasty. All in this region, they became a bit more cooked, as the Chinese would have said. They learned about Chinese political structures and learned the basics of metalworking. The tribal confederation that they were a part of revolted during the uprising of the five barbarians against the Jin and founded the state of northern Liang. Now this state was then subsequently crushed by the northern way, where upon our tribe fled the destruction to the steppe, ultimately settling in the west of the foothills of the Al-Tai mountains. Here they were in close proximity to the Saghdian city-states and the Silk Road. They were able to take advantage of some of their metalworking knowledge to oversee local erotic people, some of them enslaved, some of them free, and producing metals which they traded with the Saghdians and other Silk Road city-states to the west. Over time, due to this connection to the rich Silk Road cities, the elites began to adopt Saghdian as a prestige language. Not the everyday language, but a second language used by the elites in certain contexts, mostly diplomatic and governmental and for recordkeeping. Here the top clans even adopted Saghdian derived clan names, including for the leading clan Ashina. Many of the elites even gave their children both a Saghdian-given name for use in formal occasions and a native Turkic name. Just as in later times, Arabis. Bacchard Persian would be used by the Turks as a prestige language. Here they used Sogdian. But they weren't really Sogdianized. They continued to speak common Turkish among themselves, and mostly they kept their religion. Though some of the elites converted to the new religion of Manikinism that was all the rage in the Sogdian city-states, or followed the Buddhist teachings from Baktrian and from China. But these weren't really exclusive conversions. They would have still practiced Tengriism and seen the shamans when required. Slowly our tribe consolidated a base of support around the all-time mountain ranges. They submitted to the Ruran during Shalu'an's conquest, but they were not fully budding members of the Ruran political establishment. They were conquered vassals, poorly regarded as mere traders with the Sogdian city-states, and producers of some valuable iron products, but really not considered worthy of much more. But within the Ruran Connit, as China stabilized, Iran stabilized, as the Byzantine Empire stabilized, as trade on the Silk Road grew, and as the Ruran Connit became more centralized, their economic power grew. As Eurasia pulled itself out of the crisis of the third century, trade along the Silk Road was more and more important. An hour Turkish tribe was ideally placed to take advantage of these changes. The value and amount of the metals and silks that they made and traded across the Ruran Connit and into Central Asia increased as the demand rose. Soon their wealth began to outshine their low political status. They were sort of the newvoreesh of their day, the upstarts with new money, and they attempted to use this new money to gain influence within the Ruran Connit. And just like all new money guys, they wanted the respect, the power that they felt that their new riches deserved. Which leads us to Bumen. We know very little about Bumen, and even less about his early life. We believe that his father's name was Tuwu and that he carried the title of Yabgu. And we know that Bumen had a younger brother named Ishtami, who had significant power during his reign and in time would continue beyond him. The Orconan Scriptures only say about Bumen's rise to power, quote, "Over the sons of men set themselves as rulers, my forebearers, Bumen and Ishtami Khan, and having set themselves as rulers, they governed and kept order in the Turkish peoples' kingdoms and policies." According to the history of the Northern Dynasties, which was written about 100 years after Bumen's death, Bumen began raiding the territory of a dynasty that succeeded the Northern Way, called the Western Way. In 545, the Western Way sent an emissary to establish commercial relations. These trade missions mostly concerned silk, obviously a very valuable item on the famous silk road. Which again confirms this theory that the Turks were a wealthy tribe and an important link on the silk road. In 546, Bumen paid tribute directly to the Western Way, which again raises questions as to what the exact nature of his tribe was to the Roran. Clearly they were subordinated to the Roran, but paying tribute directly to a Chinese state at least suggests that they had a decent amount of agency and autonomy. This is again consistent with the idea of them becoming wealthy and a bit more powerful. In 546, Bumen mustered a force to crush a Teile rebellion against the Roran. We've briefly mentioned the Teile before, they were that confederation of a war, Turkic peoples' subject to the Roran who were constantly revolting. The sources say that the Turks did this to get on the good side of the Roran, that is to increase their political influence within the continent. And there might be truth to that. The Roran were constantly dealing with Teile uprisings. But undoubtedly the Turks were also doing this for self-interested reasons. The territories that the Teile controlled were on the Silk Road routes that were probably very important to the Turks, and the Teile according to the sources were a bit more uncooked, as you might say, than the other step peoples, which probably meant that they did a lot of caravan raiding on the Silk Road. After this victory over the Teile, Bumen sent a message to the Roran Khan and Agui, asking him for a Roran princess as a bride. This is the new money guy he wants to get the blue blood princess, which is a story as old as time. On Agui though is deeply offended by this. As we discussed, he's in the process of senesizing his state. He's building a capital city. He's giving his advisors Chinese titles. Hell, he's even got a full-on Chinese Prime Minister. And now the leader of this merchant tribe, these iron workers from the step, want to marry one of his family members, so he gets pissed, and he makes a terrible mistake. He writes back to Bumen, and not only does he say no, he says you are my blacksmith slave. How dare you utter these words. Now of course Bumen is furious. He just kills on Agui's messenger and breaks off all relations with the Roran, effectively declaring himself to be in revolt. Now I don't want to psychoanalyze the past too much because we really can't know these things, but what I picture is the new money guy, a bit of a chip on his shoulder, and he's just been told you're not good enough, which is exactly the thing that drives new money guys the craziest. Being told that despite your wealth, despite your success, we the establishment, the blue bloods, the old school lead, are better than you, and we're always going to be better than you. Doesn't matter how rich you get off the soggy and trade, doesn't matter how many rebellions you crush for us, you're still a blacksmith, and there's no way you can date our girls, my man. We don't really have good records for the revolt that Bumen launched. All we know for sure is that in 552, the same year that he had crushed the Tele revolt and the same year that he killed on Agui's messenger, Bumen launched a revolt that effectively destroyed the Roran Connet. Now the Turks must have united at least some other tribes against the Roran, but we can't really be sure how they managed to do this. After the news that the Turks were in revolt reached on Agui and his new capital, he must have sent out messengers to other tribes, both in the Roran Connet and their vassals, commanding them to assemble to defeat the upstarts. We can imagine the Turks sent out their own messengers, trying to get the other tribes within the Connet, again both high ranking core tribes and vassals to join with them, or at least just to stay home. We don't know what each side was pitching to the others, but I think that it's at least possible, if not probable, that Bumen's pitch was based on preserving step traditions in the step way of life. Remember, on Agui was working on his own political project, centralizing and senesizing the Roran Connet. A call from Bumen saying, "Hey, this guy is both corrupting the step culture and is trampling over your ancient freedoms by centralizing and taking away your power must have been very powerful." The reason I think that this is probable is that we see this same thing happen again and again in later step empires, including the coming Turkish Connet and the Mongol Connet. In the Mongol Empire succession crisis, there was the party of the senesizers and the centralizers, represented by Okadeh and Kublai, for example, against the traditionalists like Duyuk and Monke Khan. Similar disputes happen in the Ilconnet and the Golden Horde into the Timurids. Again, this is purely speculation, but I can imagine that this charge would have been very effective against a ruler like Onigui. Additionally, I can imagine the Turks also just sort of buying other tribes off, but we'll never really know how this all worked. I think we should imagine, though, messengers, emissaries from both sides frantically riding across the step, asking this tribe or that, "Are you in or are you out?" The army is sort of gathering quickly. We do know for sure that the main battle occurred in 552. Boomin and his forces faced off with Onigui and the Ruran forces, somewhere near today's Zhangzhiukao, sorry for the pronunciation I don't speak Chinese, which is in Hebei Province in China. Onigui was soundly defeated. According to the book of Zhao, the defeat was so total that Onigui dispared and committed suicide. In the wake of this victory, Boomin called a great Kurueltai, that is those huge tribal conferences, to meet in the mountains of Otukan in the valleys near the Haltai. This place, Otukan, was a place of deep religious and spiritual importance to the Turks and would become virtually the capital in a sense of their new Khanate. There, in these holy mountains, the Kurueltai declared Boomin the Illyuk Khan, that is the Khan of the people, and gave his wife the title "Kahatun", which is Hatun in modern Turkish. Boomin then sent an emissary to the western way, requesting a Chinese princess as a bride, and in response, the court sent Princess Changle, the daughter of the emperor. From being rejected by the Ruran Khan as unworthy of a Ruran princess, to standing over the corpse of the Ruran Khan and now getting a full-on imperial Chinese princess all within a year, this must have been the crowning moment of Boomin's life. Unfortunately, we don't know anything about how Princess Changle felt about it, but she might not have been so sight. The book of Zhao also records that when the emperor of the western way died that same year, Boomin sent two ambassadors and two hundred horses to his funeral. But then, at the height of his power, his crowning achievement, Boomin died. His son and chosen successor Kolo also appears to have died at about the same time, shortly after Boomin, maybe as a result of foul play. Before past, a Kolo is younger brother Mukhan. The Chinese sources say of Mukhan, by means of his power, he subjugated all of the states beyond the borders of China. Ishtami remained on his Yapgu and would go on to conquer far to the west. There was one further campaign against the Ruran in 553, but this was just a mopping up exercise to clean up the remnants. The first Turkish state, the Gokhtur Khanate, had begun. And next time, we will join them as they ride west to shake the world.