Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (29 page)

5

The Türk Empire

The Second Regional Empire Period in Eurasia

In the mid-sixth century the Persian and Eastern Roman empires were at war, while both East Asia and Western Europe were divided among feuding kingdoms. In the Eastern Steppe, following the dynamics of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex myth, the Türk people overthrew their overlords, the Avars, and chased their remnants to the ends of Eurasia. In so doing, they linked up all the peripheral civilizations of Eurasia via its urbanized core, Central Asia, which quickly became the commercial-cultural heart not only of Central Eurasia but of the Eurasian world as a whole. Because of the Turks’ eagerness to trade, their military power that helped encourage other peoples to trade with them, and their rule over most of Central Asia, the Central Eurasian economy—the Silk Road—flourished as never before.

By the end of the sixth century, China was reunited by the short-lived Sui Dynasty and attempted to expand into Central Eurasia again. The collapse of the dynasty, and the collapse of the Persian and Eastern Roman empires shortly thereafter, was followed by the establishment of new imperial realms both there and in other previously marginal regions: the Franks in Western Europe; the Arabs in the Near East, eventually including northwestern India, western Central Asia, Iran, North Africa, and Spain as well as Arabia; the Tibetan Empire in southeastern Central Eurasia; the T’ang Dynasty in China, which rapidly expanded into eastern Central Eurasia and other neighboring regions; the Khazar Kingdom and several other states founded by Turks in Central Eurasia, in addition to the still existing Türk Empire in the Eastern Steppe; and the old Eastern Roman Empire, which recreated itself as a new, more compact empire that was officially Greek in language. Central Eurasia and its flourishing economy became the focus of all major Eurasian states during the Second Regional Empire Period in Eurasia, which is generally known as the Early Middle Ages.

All of these states were focused on Central Eurasia, and all tried to conquer at least the parts of it nearest to their borders. The cultural flourishing of the Early Middle Ages (ca.
AD
620–840) was thus accompanied by almost constant war in the region. Some new features of the warfare directly reflected the fact that the major empires of Eurasia had ended up bordering on each other: great inter-empire alliances were formed in opposition to other imperial alliances. The constant warfare escalated toward the middle of the eighth century during the Türgi
š
and Pamir wars in Central Asia, ending in victory for the Arab-Chinese alliance against the Central Eurasians. The recession that followed across much of Eurasia shows that the world had already become economically interconnected and dependent on the flourishing of the Central Eurasian economy, the Silk Road.

The Avar Empire in the Eastern Steppe

In the late fourth to early fifth century, the empire of the Avars or Jou-jan,
¹
a people of unknown origin who had been subjects of the Hsien-pei, ruled the northern steppe from the northeast Tarim Basin to Korea. At the same time, the Hsien-pei Mongolic *Taghbač
²
ruled a great empire that included most of North China and the southern edge of the steppe zone. The two peoples were usually at war with each other until the early sixth century, when the *Taghbač, who were by then largely Sinicized, made peace with the
kaghan
or emperor of the Avars, Anagai. In 545, after the Wei Dynasty of the *Taghbač divided into eastern and western halves, the Eastern Wei remained allied with Avars, but the Western Wei made an alliance with *Tumïn,
³
the
yabghu
or ‘subordinate king’ of the Türk, a vassal people of the Avars.

Around 546 *Tumïn heard that the T’ieh-le, a confederation living north of Mongolia, planned to attack the Avar realm. He led a preemptive attack against the T’ieh-le and defeated them. *Tumïn then asked the Avar kaghan Anagai for a royal princess in marriage. But Anagai insulted the Türk, calling them his “blacksmith slaves.” *Tumïn angrily turned to China. In that year he asked for and received a royal marriage from the Western Wei. In 552 *Tumïn attacked the Avars and defeated them. Anagai committed suicide.
⁴
The Türk pursued the remnants of the Avars across the length and breadth of Eurasia, conquering as they went, until they had united under Turkic rule the entire Central Eurasian steppe and had come into direct contact with the Chinese, Persian, and Eastern Roman empires.
⁵

The Avars were given refuge by the Eastern Roman Empire. Partly through clever alliances with other peoples they made their way into the Pannonian Plain, where they settled and continued to call their ruler the kaghan, to the great annoyance of the Türk.

The Türk Conquest

The center of Turkic power, at least in theory, was the Ötükän Yish, or ‘Wooded Mountain of Ötükän’, which was located somewhere in the Altai Mountains.
⁶
The Turkic ancestral cavern was located there, and every year a ritual or ceremony was carried out in the cave.
⁷
Whoever controlled the Ötükän held the dignity of supreme authority among all the Turks. In practice, it meant only that the ruler of the Eastern Steppe had the title of kaghan and theoretical primacy over the other Turkic peoples. The actual home encampment of the Türk was in the Orkhon River region (in what is now north-central Mongolia), the center of Eastern Steppe empires before and after them.

Classical Latin sources, which contain the first historical references to a Türk people, have them living in the forests north of the Sea of Azov.
⁸
The next reference to Turkic peoples is thought to be to members of the Hun confederation, based on their Turkic-sounding names. By the mid-sixth century at the latest, when they are recorded in Chinese sources, they had become pastoral nomads and had learned the skills of steppe warfare. They had also become skilled blacksmiths and continued to practice these skills. Their Avar titulature reveals that they must have learned how to establish and maintain a steppe empire from the Avars.

The religious beliefs of the Türk focused on a sky god, Tängri, and an earth goddess, Umay.
⁹
Some of the Turks—notably the Western Turks in Tokharistan—converted very early to Buddhism, and it played an important role among them. Other religions were also influential, particularly Christianity and Manichaeism, which were popular among the Sogdians, close allies of the Türk who were skilled in international trade. Although the Sogdians were a settled, urban people, they were like the Türk in that they also had a Central Eurasian warrior ethos with a pervasive comitatus tradition, and both peoples were intensely interested in trade.

Tumïn took the title kaghan and ruled over the eastern part of the realm, but died in the same year. He was succeeded by his son K’uo-lo, who ruled for a few months before he too died. Bukhan
¹⁰
(Mu-han, r. 553–572), another son of *Tumïn, then succeeded. *Tumïn’s brother Istemi (r. 552–576) ruled over the western part of the realm as subordinate kaghan
—yabghu
or
yabghu kaghan
—with a winter camp somewhere near Karashahr (Agni).
¹¹
This gradually became the de facto independent realm of the Western Turks, while *Tumïn’s successors reigned over the Türk, or Eastern Turks, and retained the full imperial dignity.
¹²

In pursuing the Avars, Ištemi’s forces reached the Aral Sea region by 555 and soon after the lower Volga. In 558 the first Turkic embassy reached Constantinople, seeking the remaining Avars who had not submitted, as well as a trade alliance with the Eastern Roman Empire.

In their expansion, the Turks encountered the Hephthalites, who by the early sixth century had conquered Sogdiana, eastward into the Tarim Basin, and up to the borders of the Avars and the *Taghbač (Wei Dynasty) in North China. The Hephthalites were thus major Central Asian rivals of the early Turks.

Soon after the Turks under Ištemi Kaghan arrived on the northern borders of the Persian Empire, Khosraw I (Anushirvan the Just, r. 531–579) made an alliance with them against the Hephthalites. Between 557 and 561, the Persians and Turks attacked the Hephthalites, destroyed their kingdom, and partitioned it between the two victors, setting the Oxus River as the border between them.
¹³

At some time before 568, the Turks sent a trading mission of Sogdian merchants led by the Sogdian Maniakh to the Persian Empire to request permission to sell their silks in Persia. The Persians bought the silk but burned it publicly in front of the merchants. The offensive answer prompted the Turks to send another mission, consisting of Turks, but this time the Persians murdered them,
¹⁴
in violation of the time-honored law of international diplomatic immunity. A state of war existed from that point on between Turks and Persians.