The Historic Steppes Nomad Tribes

from:

http://www.geocities.com/kaganate/tribelist.html

The Kaganate (or the smaller tribal confederacy) was commonly built of leading Steppes Nomad tribes, subject Steppes Nomad tribes, subject agricutural and hunter-fisher (together henceforth called "settled") tribes of the region, vassal tribes (tribes owing Taxes to the Kaganate but not living within its "borders"), as well as tribes in more or less continuous relationships with the Kaganate (and thus influenced by, and influencing the culture of the Kaganate).

This article is an attempt at a list-form overview of three thousand years of Steppes Nomad history.It is a work in progress -- Contributions to the article are welcome.

Where a more detailed article on a given tribe exists, a hyperlink is provided to that detailed article.

The Kurgans - To disappoint "Highlander" fans -- this is not a tribe.A Kurgan is a burial mound - similar to the Barrows or "Fairy Mounds" of Brittain. The Kurgans were the method of burial used by the Steppes Nomads from the earliest times and into the High Middle Ages. For the Early Nomad cultures, the goods found in those mounds are fundamental to our knowledge of those cultures, while for the Medieval Nomads, the Kurgans offer a valuable suplement to other evidence.(to help out "Highlander" fans -- the "Kurgan" character seems to have been a caricature Scythian)

THE ANCIENT STEPPES KINGDOMS

The Cimerians - This was an Iranian-speaking tribe which came down from the Eurasian Steppes into the fields of Eastern Europe in roughly 1000 BCE and was the leading force in the area until it was eclipsed by he Scythians.Yes, this is the tribe of fantasy's famed Connan - although Connan is a Celtic name - not likely to have been used by them. To disapoint film fans further, the iron swords used by the Cimerians were light, long, one-handed swords with a small grip that would have been used with two fingers by the movie hero.

The Scythians - Likely closely related to the Cimerians, the Scythians came down from their ancestral lands in the Altai mountains in approximately the 8th century BCE, taking the place of the Cimerians.Their chief deity seems to have been a snake-footed godess and, in Greek historiography, they were thought to be the descendants of Hercules and this godess.Briefly making a bid for Persia, the Scythians settled in Eastern Europe where they controlled trade between the Greeks and the settled tribes of Eurasia (keeping a tight hold on Greece's wheat supply).The Scythians were decimated by Philip of Macedon (the father of Alexander) and never recovered.A number of tribes closely related to the Scythians remained to the East and North, closer to the Scythian ancestral areas.- The Saka - One of the more famous of these, located in the area of modern Kazakhstan.- The Amazons - Little is known about this tribe outside of the Greek legends. The name the Scythians used for them means "Man killers", which seems to back the legends.

The Sarmatians - Said by the Greeks to be the offspring of the Scythians and the Amazons, this new group of Iranian tribes came onto the scene as the Scythians declined, in roughly the 3rd century BCE.

THE MEDIEVAL STEPPES KINGDOMS

The Huns - This confederation of tribes was built solely on the strength of character of their leader -- the famed Attila. It began with his assent and ended with his death. In between, the Hunnic Kaganate took tribute from both Eastern and Western Rome.Displacing, and likely incorporating, the Sarmatian tribes, the Huns incorporated what were to become the new Turkic and Uighur tribes that would thenceforth be the face of Steppes nomad culture.

Map of the major area of activity on the Western Steppes circa 350 - 627 CE.

The RED KAGANATE Begins - 560 CE

The Great Kaganof the North

The Turks enterthe world stage

The Great Turk Kaganate - Considered by their Byzantine contemporaries to be the descendants of the Saka, the Turks entered the world stage in the second half of the 6th century.

From the begining, this confederacy was composed of two semi-autonomous nations - the White (Eastern) Turks and the Blue (Western) Turks who soon quareled and split into independant Kaganates.

The Blue Turks - The Western half of the original "Great Turk Kaganate", this kingdom controlled Eastern Europe and Western Central Asia and seems to have been the direct ancestor of the Khazar Kaganate.

The Uighur - These tribes formed several important empires in the Central and Eastern Steppes. Uighur groups are often named with a prefix added to the root Gur (ie: the Onogur).

Bulgars - The Bulgars entered the world stage in the 6th century CE.The "Great Bulgar" Empire was established near the Caspian Sea, where the group that eventually converted to Islam came to be known as the Volga Bulgars. 

The Historyof Bulgaria

A second group continued west and south, invading the region between the Danube River and the Black Sea now known as Bulgaria, where they formed a relatively small ruling class over a large Slavic population. Bulgaria was converted to Christianity in the 9th century under Kijnaz (king) Boris/Michael. The first Bulgarian Empire was a major rival to the Byzantines until it was conquered and absorbed by them in the 11th century. A second empire's brief flowering was cut short in the 14th century by the conquest of the Ottoman Turks.

Article onThe Jewish Khazars

The Khazars - Picking up after the Blue Turks, the Khazars gained controll over a large part of the Caucas and Eastern Europe, building fortresses and cities to cement that controll. 

Maps of the Khazar Kaganate

Under triple pressure from the Russ, Byzantium, and Persia, they declined in the 10th century and were finally descimated by the Russ leader Svyatoslav, who then took to himself the title Kagan in immitation of the Khazar ruler.

The Magyars - Originally a subject peoples of the Khazar Kaganate, the Magyars began a Westward migration in the Seventh Century CE, settling in the Carpathian Basin by about the Ninth Century. The population of the modern state of Hungary are Magyars.

Kyrgyz - This Northern people appears on the world stage in the sixth century becoming the leader of the nations of the Minusin basin (in Siberia), and quickly becomes a vasal of the Turk Kaganate. The Kyrgyz were famous throughout the holdings of the Turk Kaganate for the "sharp blades" they gave in tribute. Other tribute seems to have included fur and "Kyrgyz Maidens". The Kyrgyz repeatedly gained independance and were reconquered by a succession of Blue Turks and then Uighurs. By the ninth century, the leaders of the Kyrgyz have even lost the title of Khan and only apear as "Ajo".Finally, in 820 CE, the tide turns. The leader of the Kyrgyz takes the title Kagan and, by the 40ies of the century they have taken the lands of the Uighur. The Kyrgyz Kaganate thrived and expanded until the second half of the 10th century - at which point it became too big to govern and began to fail under its own pressure. From the later 10th to the 12th century, the Kyrgyz fought internal wars and, by 1130, their lands begin to be taken by the Kara-Kidan (a Mongolian-speaking Eastern people).

Ghuz (Turkmen) -

The Seljuk Turks - The tribal groups mentioned above gained notoriety as they entered the area of modern Russia. The Seljuks, founded and named after the son of a Khazar general, went in a different direction.It was the successful penetration of the Seljuk Turks into the Middle East at the end of the first Millenium CE that sent Byzantium into a panic. Hoping for military aid, Byzantium called Western Europe for help. Europe responded by instituting the First Crusade.

The Seljuk Empire layed the groundwork for what would eventually become present-day Turkey.

The Pechenegs - Following hard on the decline of the Khazar Kaganate, the Pechenegs chiefly asserted themselves in Western Eurasia in the Eleventh Century.

KaraKalpak - Cherniye Klobuki - Black Caps - This confederacy was formed of a collection of small tribes being pushed from the East - better known among them being the Torks, and Berendey.The KaraKalpak Settled on the border of Russian holdings. In the complex politics between Rus (the newly forming Russian ethnicity) and the Steppes, they were a sort of semi-internal complicating Turk element. At times they acted as a buffer for the Rus against the onslaught of other Steppes tribes, at other times their own political needs prevented Russians from making peace with those other tribes. Generally quite loyal and powerful allies to the Rus Knyazi (city kings), they nevertheless made their independence clear -- and, when insulted, were not loath to side with sometime enemies against the Rus.

Polovtsi - Kipchaks - Cumans - Pushing all other tribes before them, this confederacy became the dominant power in Eurasia by the second half of the 11th Century and continued as the major independent Steppes force until the Mongol Hordes came upon the scene in the mid 13th Century.

 

Prior to the time of the Mongols, the Kipchaks were a Kaganate without a Kagan -- they seem to have recognised themselves as a single entity but nevertheless operated as a series of small Khanates. During Mongol rule, Khan Batu, a grandson of Chingis Khan, took firm control of the conquered Kipchak tribes, becoming Kagan of the Kipchak Kaganate and establishing the Golden

Horde.

 

Timeline ofthe Russo-Polovetz Wars

The Great Mongol Kaganate - Temujin was born into a small, dying tribe on the Eastern Steppes. Through his charisma and political accumen he arose to leadership and, by the dawn of the 13th century, unified the tribes of the Eastern Steppes into a great confederacy -- more so, out

The Origins ofthe Polovtsy

of these tribes he created the national identity of Mongolia. Chingis Khan, as he came to be called, then led a series of successful campaigns, establishing what may rightly be called a World Wide Empire.

The Golden Horde - In the Mid 13th century, Khan Batu, a grandson of Chingis Khan, became Kagan of the Kipchak Kaganate. Prior to the coming of the Mongols, the Kipchaks (or Polovtsi) operated as small, independant Khanates. Khan Batu, with the power of the Great Mongol Empire, claimed rulership of this captured people creating the Golden Horde.

When, soon after the death of Chingis Khan, his Great Empire fragmented, the Golden Horde Kipchak Kaganate became the major power in its own right. The leaders of this Turco-Mongol Empire saw themselves as heirs to Chingis Khan but, in contrast to Chingis' trully Nomad kingdom, The Golden Horde created a national system of government and built many cities to implement their rule.

The Golden Horde spread from Eastern Europe through Northern Central Asia and at its height was the only place in the Middle Ages where un-walled cities could operate without fear.

The Empire was heavily damaged by the Timurid incursion at the end of the 14th century but it stood until Tzar Ivan IV of Russia, with allies from newly developing Turk confederacies, decimated it in 1480. The Golden Horde fell in the early 16th century under continued attacks from all points and most importantly Russia.

The Timurids - Timur Lenk ("the lame" - called that for a lame leg resulting from a wound early in his career), or Tamerlane to the Europeans, was born, an assimilated Mongol nobleman, near Samarkhand in one of the splinter kingdoms of the Mongol horde.Though he raided far and wide, at one point decimating the holdings of the Golden Horde, he did not remain to rule in the North, limiting his kingdom, which lasted from the later half of the 14th to the 16th century, to areas of South Western Central Asia and Persia.

The Ottoman Turks - With the decline of the Seljuk Empire in Anatolia and the Middle East, in the spirit of Steppes confederacy building, several smaller entities took the place of the Seljuks. Eventually, one of these, the Ottomans, displaced all of the others becoming the heir to the Seljuk legacy and establishing by the 15th century what would become modern Turkey.

The Mughals (or Moghuls) - Though Babur was descended from Chingisid nobility on one side, and Timurids on the other, evidently due to some notion of civilisation, he considered himself a Timurid and was ashamed to be connected with the Mongols. His protestations did not help. He, and the kingdom he founded, came to be known as Mughal (or Moghul) -- the Indian word for Mongol.Babur began his kingdom with an invasion of Afghanistan, early in the 16th century, and went on to conquer India. The Moghuls would continue as India's rulers until the British invasion in the mid 19th century.

The RED KAGANATE Ends - 1530 CE

 

The end date of The Red Kaganate coincides with the death of Babur -- the Last of the Timurids and First of the Mughal Kings.

 

THE MODERN PERIOD

The Modern period is an aproximation equating roughly with the rise in dominance of Western European culture. Western Art, Dress, and modes of thinking slowly became fashionable and even thought of as superior in the Eastern World in roughly the 18th century.

The last of the Steppes Empires, and those that lasted into this "Modern period" were the Mughals and the Ottomans. Though wracked by rebellions from the non-Mughal population of India, the Mughal Empire lasted into the mid 19th century, when India was conquered by Britain.

Ottoman Turkey's economy declined and the government fell into decay. Finally, following World War One, a nationalist revolution led to the establishment.

 

Overview

During the collapse of the Hun Empire in Europe, a new wave of tribal migrations started in Central Asia. The north of the Black Sea was confronted with a new wave of Turkish migration. The first tribes to arrive were the Sabirs, Sarogurs and Onogurs. These Ogur tribes, who settled to the north of the Caucasus, raided the Byzantine territories from Macedonia to Thessaly. It is known that the Bulgarian Turks also came to this region along side the Ogur Turks. Byzantine sources refer to the name "Bulgarian" for the first time in 482. In fact, the Avars, with the Bulgarian Turks under their sovereignty, sieged the Byzantine capital at the beginning of the seventh century.

The Avars , who left their homeland in Central Asia and who escaped towards the West when the Gokturk State was founded in 552, had an important place in the history of Europe. They first came to Caucasia and the north of the Black Sea, made an agreement with the Byzantines and fought against, and defeated, Turkish tribes such as the Sabirs and Onogurs on behalf of the Byzantines. They expanded to the banks of the Danube River, over the lands of the Ants, a Slavic tribe. From time to time, they made raids throughout the Balkans and even as far as the Peloponnese in Greece. They sieged Istanbul in 626 together with the Bulgarian Turks. The borders of the Avar Empire extended from the Dnieper to the Elbe River and from the North Sea to the Adriatic Sea during the reign of their famous ruler Bayan Khan. The Avar Empire collapsed between 776-803 due to the concurrent attacks of Kurum Khan, the leader of the Bulgarian Turks and Charlemagne (Charles the Great). Present excavations and research in Hungary and Central Europe reveal that the Avars had an exemplary organization within the state and the army and attained a high level of civilization.

http://www.byegm.gov.tr/Turkiye/english/history108.htm

Origins

The Avars were a Mongolian peoples, known to the Chinese as the Juan-Juan. In the Fourth Century they were one of many Mongol and Turkic groupings to trouble the northern borders of the Chinese Empire. At this time there was political chaos in China, the north of which fragmented into numerous local states. The restlessness and upheaval, on both sides of the Great Wall, mirrored what was happening in Europe at the same time.

It was also at this time that the Huns, another of the peoples who had troubled China's northern borders, began to migrate westwards, driving back the Goths and other Germanic peoples and thus setting off the chain-reaction that led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But their movements affected events in Eastern Asia as much as in Western Europe. The migration of the Huns paved the way for the Kök Türük (the Blue or Celestial Turks) to succeed them. It was the Celestial Turks who first drove the Juan-Juan (together with many of their fellow Turks) westwards.

The Juan-Juan migrated through northern Iran to the Russian steppes. Here, they mingled with other Turkic and Hunnic peoples, primarily the Uighurs, finally emerging into Eastern Europe in the middle of the Sixth Century. This new confederacy, now known as the Avars, were to threaten Constantinople and much of western Europe for over three centuries.

 

The Avar Empire

Little is known about the Avars in the period of their greatest power. Their base was situated somewhere near present-day Belgrade. By the end of the Sixth Century, their empire stretched from the River Volga to the Baltic Sea and archaeological evidence suggests that they remained a powerful presence until well into the Eighth Century. They succeeded in driving out both the Gepids (567) and the Lombards from the Danube Basin. They also drove the Western Slavs into the areas they have occupied ever since. During this early period they were ruled by the khagan (khan), Baian.

When a new Emperor, Justin II, was crowned in Constantinople, the Avars requested the payment of tribute, which had been promised them by his uncle and predecessor, the great Justinian. Typically, Justin refused. In 568, in pursuit of this tribute, the Avars invaded Dalmatia and indulged in a frenzy of destruction. Justin, sent a large force under his 'Count of the Excubitors', Tiberius. The resulting war

lasted for three years, after which the Byzantines were forced to seek a truce. The ensuing treaty cost Justin 80,000 pieces of silver - far greater than the original sum promised.

In 581, by use of trickery, they captured Sirmium, on the River Sava, which they used as a base from which to mop up a number of poorly-defended Byzantine fortresses along the Danube. Their demands for tribute grew ever greater. After rejecting such exotic gifts as an elephant and a golden bed, the khagan forced the Emperor Maurice to agree to a tribute of no less than 100,000 silver pieces. Such was the drain on Imperial resources that when, in 599, the Avars captured 12,000 Byzantine prisoners, Maurice had to refuse to pay their ransom and every one of them was put to death.

Maurice's successor, Phocas, preoccupied with wars against the Persians, was forced to agree a truce with the Avars at the expense of inevitably huge tribute. With the Byzantine army in the east, however - treaties notwithstanding - the Avars continued to expand into the Balkan Peninsula.

After narrowly failing to capture the Emperor Heraclius by more underhand trickery, the Avars reached Constantinople itself. Faced with the huge fortifications of the Theodosian Walls, however, they contented themselves with destroying a few churches and departed.

In 626, conspiring with the Persians, and leading a barbarian host of 80,000 Avars, Huns, Gepids and Bulgars, the khagan laid more formal siege to the city from the European side of the Bosphorus, while the Persians did likewise from the Asiatic side. True to form, the Avars made one last offer to spare the city - in return for a ransom - but the Emperor rejected it magnificently. Like so many sieges of Constantinople, the attack came to nothing. The Persian fleet was defeated and by the following morning, the khagan's cosmopolitan army had struck camp and left.

After the death of their khagan, the Avars began to decline in the face of Slavic and Bulgar expansion. Charlemagne inflicted crushing defeats on them, destroying their massive military fortifications, the "Avar Ring", in 791. Their power was ended once and for all by the resurgent Bulgars, under their great king, Krum, early in the Ninth Century.

http://www.fernweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mf/avars.htm

Avar-Hun Shamanism 

Article at Come Together Community

   

 

The event which, more than any other, presaged the fall of the Roman Empire was the arrival of a group of the Huns in Eastern Europe, forcing many Germanic peoples to migrate southwards and westwards and setting off a chain reaction which could only end with the inundation of the Empire itself.

Those are the cold, historical facts. To the people of the time, however, these newcomers were to set new standards for savagery and terror. They became known, even to their barbarian enemies, as the 'Scourge of God'. To the Romans, they seemed the embodiment of Anti-Christ, and to herald the coming of the Apocalypse.

Origins

A tribe known as the Xiongnu existed in western China at the time of the Han Dynasty (the last two centuries BC). They divided into two groups, the smaller of which migrated southwards. The majority, however, went north-west in search of new homes. They found their way into the valley of the Volga and, in the second half of the Fourth Century, attacked the Alans (a people related to the Sarmatians, who lived between the Volga and the Don).

After routing the Alans, they then went on to conquer the Ostrogoths and drive the Visigoths westwards. Early in the Fifth Century, they seem to have been reinforced by fresh hordes, and had become so powerful that, by the time of the Emperor Theodosius the Great, the Romans felt obliged to pay them a substantial tribute. Still, the Hunnic Empire could not pose a serious threat to the Empire; its economy was too primitive, its internal divisions too great, and Hunnic skills in strategy and siege-craft too lacking to defeat a sophisticated, organised opponent.

Attila's Empire

By about 420 AD, however, a Hunnic Confederacy had been established, enriched by plunder and tribute, by the hiring out of mercenaries to the Romans, and by the extortion of what can only be called protection money. Their Empire stretched from the Baltic to the Caspian when, in 445, one of their two joint-rulers murdered his colleague and seized control of the Confederacy. The murdered man was named Bleda and his murderer  was his own younger brother, Attila.

Attila reinforced his position by, it is said, digging up a rusty old sword and proclaiming it to be the Sword of Mars. The Empire he inherited was built on and sustained by booty; without a continual flow of plunder and tribute it could not survive. So it was that the  God of War's chosen one launched an immediate invasion of Eastern Europe. This was in 447 AD, a time when the Empire was already suffering a series of natural catastrophes - earthquakes, pestilence and famine - and it is little wonder that the by now Christian Romans saw the Huns as the very Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The victories of this period may have more to do with Roman demoralisation than any inherent military superiority of the invaders. The Huns fought as horse archers, though their forces were much

bolstered by the heavy cavalry of their Germanic subjects. In fact, the composition of the opposing armies would have been remarkably similar, with large numbers of Germans and even Huns to be found on both sides. The Roman Army of the time was little more than an assembly of  allied or mercenary tribes, with barely an Italian amongst them.

During the next three years, Attila's men lived off the booty and tribute of the Eastern Empire before turning, in 450 AD, to the West. The Western Empire at this time was nominally ruled by the Emperor Valentinian III but was effectively controlled by the warlord, Aëtius. It was Aëtius who assembled a confederacy with which to confront the Hunnic threat. This was composed of  Franks, Visigoths and his own Romano-Germanic army.

The two forces met in 451 at the great battle of the Catalaunian Fields, near Châlons-sur-Marne. It was a brutal battle of little tactical subtlety, barbarian against barbarian, and by the end of the day Aëtius had the upper hand. He could have finished Attila once and for all but he did not. Knowing that, with the Huns destroyed, his Visigothic allies would overrun the whole of Gaul, he let the Huns escape. It was a judgment which the citizens of  Italy would bitterly rue.

For Attila now led his horde across the mountains to Milan (Mediolanum), the Roman capital. He spread devastation across the whole of northern Italy and came to the walls of Rome itself. There is a story that  Pope Leo persuaded Attila to spare the city and that the great king, in terror of the Cross, retreated. This, however, is Christian propaganda. The truth is that Attila had heard of a threat from the Eastern Empire and turned back to deal with it.

He planned to destroy Constantinople, and ensure that the Romans would remain in thrall to him forever. But in 453, lying in a drunken stupor, Attila suffered a  nose bleed. The blood trickled down the back of his throat and choked him to death. For a man who had boasted that 'where my horse has trodden, no grass grows' it was a curiously anti-climactic death. The Empire he had created did not survive him. (* there are numerous other stories about the death of Attila involving a Germanic woman and other versions as well)

After Attila

With Attila dead, the Huns ceased to be a mortal threat to the Roman Empire - though the West never recovered and soon passed into the hands of the barbarians. Yet such was the mark left on men's minds that every subsequent wave of Asiatic invaders in the centuries to come were known to westerners are 'Huns' (even the Magyars, several centuries later, so that the realm they founded is known to this day as Hungary).

The remnants of Attila's Huns regrouped in south-eastern Europe, ruling over the Slavs of that region. These peoples were to found a new Empire which  troubled the Byzantines for hundreds of years, and were known as the Bulgars. (*Some say that it is the Szekely people of Transylvania that are the descendants of the Huns)

 

http://www.fernweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mf/huns.htm