Origins of the Kyrgyz people

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Kyrgyzstan (kur-gi-stan), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country located in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. Its capital and largest city is Bishkek.

Despite Kyrgyzstan’s struggle for political stabilization among ethnic conflicts, revolts, economic troubles, transitional governments, and political party conflicts, it maintains a unitary parliamentary republic. A revolution in April 2010 overthrew the former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev and resulted in the adoption of a new constitution and the appointment of an interim government. Elections for the Kyrgyz Supreme Chancellor were held in November 2011.

The national language, Kyrgyz, is closely related to the other Turkic languages, with which it shares strong cultural and historical ties. Kyrgyzstan is one of the active members of the Turkic Council and the TÜRKSOY community. Kyrgyzstan is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Community, the Non-aligned movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

“Kyrgyz” is believed to have been derived from the Turkic word for “forty”, in reference to the forty clans of Manas, a legendary hero who united forty regional clans against the Uyghurs. Literally it means We are forty. At the time, in the early 9th century AD, the Uyghurs dominated much of Central Asia (including Kyrgyzstan), Mongolia, and parts of Russia and China.

The 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan is a reference to those same forty tribes and the graphical element in the sun’s center depicts the wooden crown of a yurt – a portable dwelling traditionally used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.

The history of the Kyrgyz people and the land of Kyrgyzstan goes back more than 2000 years. They were an ancient people that dwelled along the upper Yenisei River valley, in the southern portion of the Minusinsk Depression in central Siberia from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. According to David C. King, “Scythians were early settlers in present-day Kyrgyzstan”. The Yenisei Kirghiz may perhaps be correlated to the Tashtyk culture.

The Yenisei Kirghiz had a mixed economy based on traditional nomadic animal breeding (mostly horses and cattle) and agriculture. According to Chinese records, they grew Himalayan rye, barley, millet, and wheat. They were also skilled iron workers, jewelry makers, potters, and weavers. Their homes were traditional nomadic tents and, in the agricultural areas, wood and bark huts. Their farming settlements were protected by log palisades.

The resources of their forested homeland (mainly fur) allowed the Yenisei Kirghiz to become prosperous merchants as well. They maintained trading ties with China, Tibet, the Abbasid Caliphate of the Middle east, and many local tribes. Kirghiz horses were also renowned for their large size and speed. The tenth-century Persian text Hudud al-‘alam described the Kirgiz as people who “venerate the Fire and burn the dead”, and that they were nomads who hunted.

The heart of their homeland was the forested Tannu-Ola mountain range (known in ancient times as the Lao or Kogmen mountains), in modern day Tuva, just north of Mongolia. The Sayan mountains, and much of Mongolia’s Great Lakes Depression, were also included in their territory at different times. Although geographically isolated by its mountainous location, it had an important role as part of the historical Silk Road trade route.

Culturally and linguistically, the Yenisei Kirghiz were Turkic. But ethnically they may be a mixture of different people. The Kirghiz were described in Tang Dynasty texts as having primarily Caucasian features, with some having East Asian features.

Chinese of 2nd BC and Muslim sources of the 7th–12th centuries AD describe the Kyrgyz as red-haired with fair complexion and green (blue) eyes. According to the Tang Huiyao (961 CE) article on Jiegu (the Kirghiz), which very likely comes from the Xu Huiyao that Yang Shaofu and others completed in 852, citing Ge Jiayun, who was the Protector General of Anxi: During the reign period of Kaiyuan of [emperor] Xuanzong, Ge Jiayun, composed A Record of the Western Regions, in which he said “the people of the Jiankun state all have red hair and green eyes. The ones with dark eyes were descendants of Li Ling.

Since the Turks were being described as people of small stature in the Tangshu. The description of the Kirghiz as tall, blue-eyed blonds excited the early interest of scholars, who assumed that they could not have originally been Turkic in language. Ligeti cited the opinions of various scholars who had proposed to see them as Germanic, Slav, or Ket, while he himself, following Castrén and Schott, favoured a Samoyed origin on the basis of an etymology for a supposed Kirghiz word qaša or qaš for “iron”.

However Pulleyblank argued: As far as I can see the only basis for the assumption that the Kirghiz were not originally Turkic in language is the fact that they are described as blonds, hardly an acceptable argument in the light of present day ideas about the independence of language and race. As Ligeti himself admitted, other evidence about the Kirghiz language in Tang sources shows clearly that at that time they were Turkic speaking and there is no earlier evidence at all about their language.

The descent of the Kyrgyz from the autochthonous Siberian population is confirmed on the other hand by the recent genetic studies (The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity). Remarkably, 63% of the modern Kyrgyz men share Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) with Tajiks (64%), Ukrainians (54%), Poles (56%) and even Icelanders (25%). Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) is believed to be a marker of the Proto-Indo-European language speakers.

Kyrgyz genesis legend tells about an ancestor and father of all Kyrgyzes Kyzyl Taigan (Red Dog). A daughter of the khan was in the habit to take long walks in a company of 40 maidens-servants. Once, on return home after her usual walk, the Princess saw that her native aul was ravaged by an enemy. In the aul they found only one alive creature, a red dog.

The princess and her 40 maids become mothers, in a company with only one male attraction, a red dog. By the number of matrons, the posterity of 40 maidens, kyrk-kyz, began to be called Kyrgyz people. The cult of the Heavenly Dog was widespread between the tribes west and east of the ancient China.

According to recent historical findings, Kyrgyz history dates back to 201 BC. In between periods of self-government it was ruled by the Tiele tribes, a confederation of nine Turkic peoples living to the north of China and in Central Asia which emerged after the disintegration of the Xiongnu confederacy, the Göktürks (552–745), a nomadic confederation of Turkic peoples in medieval Inner Asia, the Uyghur Empire, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia, and the Khitan people, before being conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century; subsequently it regained independence but was invaded by Kalmyks, Manchus and Uzbeks.

The Kirghiz Khaganate existed from 550 to 1293 CE; in 840, it took over the leadership of the Turkic Khaganate from the Uigurs, expanding the state from the Yenisei territories into the Central Asia and Tarim basin. The Yenisei Kirghiz is modern day Khakas, Tuva.

The first Turks to form a state in the territory of Central Asia (including Kyrgyzstan) were Göktürks or Kök-Türks. Known in medieval Chinese sources as Tujue (tú jué), the Göktürks under the leadership of Bumin/Tuman Khan/Khaghan (d. 552) and his sons established the first known Turkic state around 552 in the general area of territory that had earlier been occupied by the Xiongnu, and expanded rapidly to rule wide territories in Central Asia. The Göktürks split in two rival Khanates, of which the western one disintegrated in 744 AD.

By the fall of the Gokturk empire in the eighth century CE, the Yenisei Kirghiz had established their own thriving state based on the Gokturk model. They had adopted the Orkhon script of the Gokturks and established trading ties with China and the Abbasid Caliphate in Central Asia and Middle East.

The first kingdom to emerge from the Göktürk khanate was the Buddhist Uyghur Empire that flourished in the territory encompassing most of Central Asia from 740 to 840 AD. In 742, the Uyghur, Karluk, and Basmyl tribes rebelled against the ruling Göktürk Khaganate. The Basmyls captured the Göktürk capital Ötügen and the Göktürk king Özmish Khan in 744, effectively taking charge of the region.

In 758, the Uyghurs turned their attentions to a rival steppe tribe to the north, the Kyrgyz, and killed the Kirghiz Khan. The Kirghiz came under the rule of the Uyghur Khaganate. Bayanchur Khan destroyed several of their trading outposts before slaughtering a Kyrgyz army and executing their Khan. In 759, Bayanchur Khan died after drinking heavily at a celebration. His son Tengri Bögü succeeded him as Khagan Qutlugh Tarkhan sengün.

However, the Yenisei Kirghiz spent much of their time in a state of rebellion. In 840 they succeeded in sacking the Uyghur capital, Ordu-Baliq in Mongolia’s Orkhon valley, and driving the Uyghurs out of Mongolia entirely. But rather than replace the Uyghurs as the lords of Mongolia, the Yenisei Kirghiz continued to live in their traditional homeland and exist as they had for centuries.

The Kirghiz Khagans of the Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate claimed descent from general Li Ling, grandson of the famous Han Dynasty general Li Guang. Li Ling was captured by the Xiongnu and defected in the first century BCE. And since the Tang royal Li family also claimed descent from Li Guang, the Kirghiz Khagan was therefore recognized as a member of the Tang Imperial family. Emperor Zhongzong of Tang had said to them that “Your nation and Ours are of the same ancestral clan (Zong). You are not like other foreigners.”

After the Uyghur empire disintegrated a branch of the Uyghurs, who fled (southwest and west respectively) from the Yenisei Kyrgyz, migrated to oasis settlements and created the kingdoms of Yugor (848–1036) in Gansu, and the Kingdom of Qocho (856–1369) near Turpan in the Tarim Basin, and set up a confederation of decentralized Buddhist states called Kara-Khoja.

The Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 AD. Then Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years. In the 12th century, however, the Kyrgyz domination had shrunk to the Altay Range and the Sayan Mountains as a result of the rising Mongol expansion.

The Uyghurs in Qocho (Kara-Khoja) converted to Buddhism, and according to Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk (Dictionary of Languages of the Turks) by Mahmud al-Kashgari, were “the strongest of the infidels”. In 1209, The Kara-Khoja ruler Idiqut Barchuq declared his allegiance to Genghis Khan, and the Uyghurs became important civil servants in the later Mongol Empire, which adapted the Uyghur script as its official script.

Others, mainly closely related to the Uyghurs (the Karluks), occupying the western Tarim Basin, Ferghana Valley, Jungaria and parts of modern Kazakhstan bordering the Muslim Turco-Tajik Khwarazm Sultanate, converted to Islam no later than the 10th century and built a federation with Muslim institutions called Kara-Khanlik, whose princely dynasties are called Karakhanids by most historians. Its capital, Balasagun flourished as a cultural and economic centre.

With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Kyrgyz migrated south. Plano Carpin, an envoy of the Papal states, and William Rubruck, an envoy of France, all wrote about their life under the Mongols. Various Turkic peoples ruled them until 1685, when they came under the control of the Oirats (Dzungars).

When Genghis Khan came to power in the early 13th century, the Yenisei Kirghiz submitted peacefully to him and were absorbed into his Mongol Empire, putting an end to their independent state. During the time of the Mongol Empire, the territory of the Yenisei Kirghiz in northern Mongolia was turned into an agricultural colony called Kem-Kemchik. Kublai Khan, who founded the Yuan Dynasty, also sent Mongolian and Chinese officials (along with colonists) to serve as judges in the Kyrgyz and Tuva regions.

The Islamized Karluk princely clan, the Balasagunlu Ashinalar (or the Karakhanids) gravitated toward the Persian Islamic cultural zone after their political autonomy and suzerainty over Central Asia was secured during the 9-10th century.

As they became increasingly Persianized they settled in the more Indo-Iranian sedentary centers such as Kashgaria, and became detached from the nomadic traditions of fellow Karluks, many of whom retained cultural elements of the Uyghur Khanate.

The principality was significantly weakened by the early 12th century and the territory of modern Kyrgyrstan was conquered by the Mongolic Khitan people. The Kara-Khitan Khanate (1124–1218), also known as Western Liao, was established by Yelü Dashi who led around 100,000 Khitan remnants after escaping the Jurchen conquest of their native country, the Khitan dynasty.

The Khitay conquest of Central Asia can thus be seen as an internecine struggle within the Karluk nomadic tribe, played out as dynastic conflict between the conquering Buddhist Khitay elites and the defending Kara-Khanid princes, resulting in the subjugation of the latter by the former, and in the subjugation of the Muslim Karluks by their Nestorian/Buddhist kin.

The Mongols’ invasion of Central Asia in the 13th century devastated the territory of Kyrgyzstan, costing its people their independence and their written language. The son of Genghis Khan, Juche, conquered the Kyrgyz tribes of the Yenisey region, who by this time had become disunited. At the same time, the area of present Kyrgyzstan was an important link in the Silk Road, as attested by several Nestorian gravestones.

For the next 200 years, the Kyrgyz remained under the Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and the Oirats as well as Dzungars that succeeded that regime. Freedom was regained in 1510, but Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the seventeenth century by the Kalmyks, in the mid-eighteenth century by the Manchus, and in the early nineteenth century by the Uzbeks.

In 1775, Atake Tynay Biy Uulu one of the leaders of Sarybagysh tribe established first diplomatic ties with the Russian Empire by sending his envoys to Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. In the early 19th century, the territory of Kyrgyzstan came under the control of the Khanate of Kokand, but the territory was occupied and formally annexed by the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover instigated numerous revolts against tsarist authority, and many Kyrgyz opted to move into the Pamir Mountains or to Afghanistan. The ruthless suppression of the 1916 rebellion in Central Asia, triggered by the Russian imposition of the military draft on the Kyrgyz and other Central Asian peoples, caused many Kyrgyz to flee to China.

In 1876 it became part of the Russian Empire, remaining in the U.S.S.R. Soviet power was initially established in the region in 1918, and in 1924, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created within the Russian SFSR. (The term Kara-Kyrgyz was used until the mid-1920s by the Russians to distinguish them from the Kazakhs, who were also referred to as Kyrgyz.)

In 1926, it became the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On December 5, 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was established as a full Union Republic of the U.S.S.R.

Following Mikhael Gorbachev’s democratic reforms in the U.S.S.R., in 1990 pro-independence candidate Askar Akayev was elected president of the SSR. On 31 August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow, and a democratic government was subsequently established.

In China the Yenisei Kirghiz, also known as the Khyagas or Khakas, with a population of 141,549, live mostly in the Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture in the southwest of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tekes, Zhaosu and Emin counties in the north.

With the Pamir Plateau and the Tianshan Mountains in the west, oases on the edge of the Tarim Basin in the southeast and the Kizilsu, Gaizi and Kokshar rivers meandering through from the west to east, the Kirgiz area has good pasturelands on the mountain and by the rivers. In the river valleys, an irrigated farming system is developed on this fertile land; the nomadic Kirgizes tend their cattle year after year supplemented by farming.

In the Han Dynasty, forefathers of the Kirgizes were called “Jiankun” or “Gekun”. In the Northern and Southern dynasties, they were referred to as the Jiegus or Qigus, in the Tang Dynasty the Jigas, in the Liao and Jin dynasties the Heqis, in the Yuan Dynasty the Jilijis, and the Bulute people meaning “mountaineers” in Mongolian Juggar language in the Qing Dynasty. After the founding of new China, they were officially called the Kirgiz Nationality.

The Kirgiz language, comprising the northern and southern dialects, belongs to the Turkic group in the Altaic family. When the Kirgizes converted to Islam, they started to use an alphabetic writing based on Arabic letters. Today, as the Kirgizes come into closer contact with other peoples, many of them can speak both the Uighur and Kazak languages.

The Kirgizes in China have created distinctive literature and arts. Manass, a famous epic story in 200.000 lines, portray s the Kirgizes’ struggle for freedom. It is a precious literary legacy us well as a treasury of music. The Kirgizes use a special three-stringed plucked musical instrument called “Kaomuzi”, which produces rich and harmonious sounds. Kirgiz handicraftsmen make exquisite embroidery, carving, brocade, gold and silver vessels The Kirgizes celebrate their traditional festivals with various sprightly activities.

Origins of the Kyrgyz people

Kyrgyzstan

Yenisei Kirghiz

China’s Minority Peoples – The Kirgizes