between 557-561 through the joint action of the Turk khagan Ishtemi and Khosrow I Anushrven, king of the Persians. Cooperation between the Sassanid King and the Turks was not uniformly harmonious; though their alliance was strengthen by Khosrow’s marrying a daughter of the Turk ruler. In their contacts with Byzantium, Persians and Turks both claimed suzerainty over the land of the defunct Hephthalite Empire, the partition of which created a new situation in Central Asia. Since 527 Persia and Byzantium were engaged in a series of wars. The appearance of major power and potential ally on Persian’s eastern border was a fact which Byzantine diplomacy could ill afford to ignore. In contract, an alliance with Byzantium directed against the Persians would have held little political promise for the Turks, whose cooperation with Khosrow – as a joint campaign against the Hephthalites showed could be fruitful. But the deterioration of Turko-Persian relations occurred as Sogdian merchants in pursuit of profit from the trade in silk with Iran and Byzantium had made efforts to this. Sogdian merchants, to whom at the Hephthalite’s power, silk trade effectively assigned, convinced their new lord, the Turk khagan, to send in 568 – a commercial mission to Persia, in order to obtain permission for carry out trade in silk within the country. Although the mission was carried out under the patronage of the Turks, in fact it was Sogdian headed by Sogdian Maniakh. However, Khosrov, fearing the Turks free access to his country and disinterested in a sharp increase in import silk in the Iranian market, what would lower the income of local silk weaving production, bought the silk brought by Maniakh and then burned it. Then Maniakh made an attempt to find a buyer of the silk in the face of Byzantium. In 568, he arrived in Byzantium at the head of the embassy before the eyes of the Byzantine Emperor Justin II who received the Turks with much attention. Byzantium also as Iran was not in acute need of the Sogdian silk, but was interested in an alliance with the Turks against the Persians. So, knowing about it, the Sogdian ambassadors sought to conclude a trade agreement. So the Turkic embassy was received at the imperial court and a military agreement against Iran between the Turks and the Byzantine Empire was signed. The response embassy came to the Turks in August 569 under the leadership of the strategus Zemerhos. Menander gave a detailed and trustworthy account of Zemarkhos' journey to the Turks. Maniakh invited Zemarkhos to accompany him on a foray against the Persians. Zemarkhos was also present at an altercation between his host and a Persian ambassador. The Turkic attack on Iran finished with the capture of a several wealthy cities in Gurgan, and soon retur of the Turks to Sogd in 569. Following it Ishtemi carried military operations to the Volga, by 571, he had won the North Caucasus, and soon reached the Bosporus (Kerch). With these actions Khagan cleared roundabout way to Byzantium (through KKhwarezm, the Volga region, the Caucasus and Crimea). In the period between 568 and 576 diplomatic contacts were frequent; the Byzantine historian Menander mentioned seven Roman embassies to the Turks. The inControline war in the First Turk khaganate inside the ruling clan for the inheritance lasted more than twenty years and ended in 603 with the disintegration into two states – the Western Turk khaganate in Central Asia, including Dzhungaria and a part of Eastern Turkestan and Eastern Turk khaganate in Mongolia. It should be noted that the Western Turk khaganate (its self-designation was "On Ok Eli" – "The Ten Arrows State ") very considerably differed from the Turk khaganate in the east. In the Western Turk khaganate nomadic life prevailed, but in the Eastern Turk khaganate most part of the population was settled and occupied with farming and trade. The social structure of the Western Turk khaganate was much more complex, it could be rightfully regarded as an early state. On the territory of the Western Turk khaganate existed urban and agricultural culture. There were created with the help of the Sogdians, who put their trade and agricultural colonies on the Great Silk Road – in Semirechye, Dzhungaria, Eastern Turkestan, Northern China. In the V-VII centuries Sogdian intensive colonization in the valleys of the rivers Chu, Talas, Ili resulted in the emergence of a dozen cities and fortified settlements there. Only in the Chu Valley in the VI-VIII centuries there were at least 18 large cities and small settlements. In the Western Turk khaganate the khagan’s power was not as strong as in the east. In consequence of the weakness of the khagan’s power and the fact that tribal nobility was in a constant state of struggle, positions of small and large Sogdian merchants were extremely profitable. They had an opportunity to act as a third force in any large internal or external conflict. Although Turkic khagans called the Sogdians as tatami – subjects, but their role was very significant, since they control the whole economic life of the state.
Control questions:
1. Prove the following statement: the ancient Turks were widely included in international relations of that time (with the Hephthalite Empire, Sasanian Iran and the Byzantium Empire)
2. Define the main stages of the First Turk khaganate political history (551–630)
3. Prove the following thesis: the Western Turk khaganate highly significantly differed from the Turk khaganate in the East.
4. Define the Sogdian’s role in the life of the First Turk khaganate
2.2 Kazakhstan lands under the Western Turk khagans and its successors’ power
The heyday of the Western Turk khaganate came at the time of Shegui (609-618) and Tong Yabghu khagan (619-630) reign. It was the time of the greaControl territorial expansion of the Western Turks. So, Shegui made Altai the eastern border of the khaganate and extended his rule to the Tarim Basin and the Eastern Pemir region. Tong Yabghu (also known as T'ung Yabghu, Ton Yabghu, Tong Yabghu khagan, Tun Yabghu, and Tong Yabğu, T’ung yabghu khagan) was khagan of the Western Turkic khaganate from 618 to 63 °C.E. His name is usually translated as "Tiger Yabgu" in old Turkic. Another interpretation of his name is "sufficiency" or "completeness". He was the brother of Shegui (611-618), the previous khagan of the western GökTurks, and was a member of the Ashina clan. Tong Yabghu's reign is generally regarded as the zenith of the Western Turk khaganate3. It was the time of the greaControl territorial expansion of the Western Turks. So, Shegui made Altai the eastern border of the khaganate and extended his rule to the Tarim Basin and the Eastern Pemir region. Tong Yabghu revived active western policy of the khaganate and carried his winter residence to Suyab – a large trade-handicraft center in the Chu Valley (now close by Tokmak in Kyrgizstan), but the summer residence – to Ming-Bulak village (not far from Turkestan city). New campaigns widened the Western Turk khaganate borders to the Amu-Darya River and the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain system. Tong Yabghu maintained close relations with the Tang Dynasty of China, and may have married into the Imperial family. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang visited the western GökTurk capital Suyab in modern Kyrgyzstan and left a description of the khagan. Xuanzang described the khagan as follows: The khan wore a green satin robe; his hair, which was ten feet long, was free. A band of white silk wound round his forehead and hung down behind. The ministers of the presence numbering two hundred in number, all wearing embroidered robes, stood on his right and left. The rest of his military retinue [was] clothed in fur, serge and fine wool, the spears and standards and bows in order, and the riders of camels and horses stretched far out of [sight]. Tong Yehu Khagan is a man of bravery and astuteness. He is good at art of war. Thus he controlled Tiele tribes to the north, confronted Persia to the west, connected with Kasmira (nowadays Kashmir) to the south. All countries are subjected to him. He controlled ten thousands of men with arrow and bow, establishing his power over the western region. He occupied the land of Wusun and moved his tent to Qianquan north of Tashkent. All of the princes of western region assumed the Turk office of Jielifa. Tong Yehu Khagan also sent a Tutun to monitor them for imposition. The power of Western Turks had never reached such a state before". Tong Yabghu's empire fought with the Sassanids of Iran. In the early 620's the khagan's nephew Buri-sad led a series of raids across the Caucasus Mountains into Persian territory. Scholarly consensus has identified Tong Yabghu as the Ziebel mentioned in Byzantine sources as having (as khagan of the Khazars) campaigned with the Emperor Heraclius in the Caucasus against the Sassanid Persian Empire in 627-628. or any Khazar ruler) and may actually have died as early as 626. These scholars point to discrepancies in the dates between Byzantine and Chinese sources and argue that definitively conflating Ziebel with Tong Yabghu is an exaggeration of the extant evidence. In 627 the Turks penetrated the Gates of Alexander and sacked the city of Derbent (The Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent are part of a strategic
Tong-Yabghu-Kagan // See: http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia
