The Khazars and the Turks in the km al-Marjn

Author(s): V. Minorsky
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1937),
pp. 141-150
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies
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The Khazars and the Turks in the Akam al-Marjan

By V. MINORSKY
N 1929 Professor Angela Codazzi published a careful edition, with
an Italian translation, of a geographical compendium by Ishaq
ibn al-Husayn entitled Kitab akam al-marjan fT dhikr al-mad&'in
al-mashhiira fT kull makdn.1 According to Professor Nallino's
suggestion the author may be identical with one of the sources
mentioned by Idrisi (" Ishaq ibn al-HIusayn al-munajjim ") and by
Ibn-Khaldin (" Ishaq ibn al-Hasan (?) al-Khazinl"). As regards
the date of the text, the editor takes as its terminus a quo 262/875 and
as its terminus ad quem 454/1062. Most probably he belongs to the
eleventh century. Several indications suggest that the author was a
native of the westernmost part of the Islamic world (Spain ?). He
seems to have used (directly or indirectly ?) Khuwarizmi's rifacimento
of Ptolemy and Ya'q-ibi's Kitab al-buldan. Some single points of
likeness have been discovered by the editor in I. Khurdadhbih (a
legend on Alexandria and another on the Seven Sleepers) 2 and in
Ibn-Rusta (San'a, Saba', Misr, and the Khazar lands). Very judiciously
Professor Codazzi (p. 461, note 5) points out some confusion in our
author, who, under al-Khazar, quotes a feature 3 which in Ibn-Rusta
belongs to the Burdas (Burtas), and we shall see that such cases are
much more numerous in our text!
On the whole, the compendium, though not very original, gives
some curious facts regarding the towns of the Islamic countries. It
shows a marked predilection for historical data relating to their
conquest, local risings, etc. Quite isolated are the two last paragraphs,
on the Khazars and the Turks, where the description becomes very
vague and some puzzling and misunderstood forms of names occur.
These two passages will form the subject of the present article with a
view to explaining the facts quoted, and ascertaining the sources from
which they were borrowed by the author.
1
Rendiconti della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali,
Novembre-Dicembre, 1929, pp. 373-463.
2 Under several towns our author
quotes the amount of taxes paid by them.
I. Kh., 35, quotes the taxes only for Khorasan [and 'Iraq]. Our author seems to
have rounded off I. Kh.'s sums, e.g. Bokhair, 1,189,200 dirhams > 1,000,000;
Nishipiir 4,108,900 > 5,000,000; Gurgin 10,176,800 > 10,000,000. But some of
the sums are apparently false : for the insignificant Sarakhs 1,000,000 (instead of
I. Kh.'s 307,440) and for the enormous Khorsdin 10,000,000 (instead of 44,846,000).
3 Freedom of the women.

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142

V. MINORSKY-

The quotations below reproduce the text as it stands in the unique

MS. belonging to the Ambrosiana of Milan. Asterisks mark some of
Professor Codazzi's emendations of obvious character. My own
corrections will be found in my translation.

(sic.V.M.)

LIV.

*)

THE LANDS OF THE KHAZAR AND *SARIGHSHIN.

Ibn-Rusta

1. " These are vast and extensive lands on the confines of

*al-SarIr.
2. " Their supreme king professes Judaism.

p. 147,. " You travel from alKhazar [i.e. from the capital of
the Khazar] to (the Sarir) 12
days."
p. 13912. [The Khazars]:
"their supreme chief professes
the religion of the Jews."

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KHAZARS AND

THE TURKS

IN THE AKAM AL-MARJAN

143

Ibn-Rusta

3. " They (i.e. the Khazars)

p. 1405. "Every year the
the
Khazars
Turks
and
lead an army against the
(in their
fight
turn) are attacked by the (people) Pechenegs."
of *al-SarIr.
p. 1431. " It is said that the
Khazars had previously built
fortifications to protect themselves against the Majghari and
other neighbouring nations."
4. " Their king has a great
army.
5. " In their country there
"[The Burdas]
p. 1415.
are (numerous) fields, gardens, possess fields."
and fruits [v. i. 9].
6. " To it belong many towns,
among which is *
~
Balanjar, which is in subjection
to the Khazar king. And from it
come out 10,000 fighters.

p. 14016. " [The Burdas] are

in subjection to the Khazar king
and from them come out 10,000
horse."

7. " Their appearance and

bodies (manizir wa-ajsam) are
like those of the Turks.

p. 14020.
[The Burdas]:
" their religion resembles that of
the Ghuzz and they have fine
appearance and bodies (la-hum
ru'5' wa-manzar wa-ajsdm)."
p. 1411. " When a girl of theirs
reaches (maturity) she ceases to be
in subjection to her father and
chooses for herself whomsoever
she wants of men .. ."

8. "With them, when a

woman reaches (maturity) she
chooses whomsoever she wants of
men; (then) she ceases to be
in subjection to her father and
mother.
9. " (This country) is situated
p. 1415. They live in the
in the plains and most of its trees plains. Most of their trees are
are khalanj (the wood of which) is khalanj.
They possess fields.
exported to Khorasan, and this is Most of their goods are honey,
their greatest wealth.
They martens (dalaq), and furs.
fields
s.
possess
[v.
5].
10. "Most of them profess
p. 14116. [The Bulkar] " Most
of them profess (yantahililna) the
(yantahiliina) . . . (?).
religion of Islam."

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144

V. MINORSKYIbn-Rusta

11. ' And among their towns

is
which
*al-Bay.da-*Hab-baligh,
is great and beautiful and lies on
a great river flowing from the
*Khazar lake (?) to the Khorasan
lake.
12. "Their graves are like
those of the Muslims.
13. " Most of them burn their
dead as atonement for them."
[Cf. under Turk, point 6.]

p.. 13914. [The Khazar]:

their capital is *Sarighshin and
by it (biha) is another town

called

or

p. 1421. [The Bulkar] : " their

graves are like those of the
Muslims."
p. 1414. [The Burdas]: " They
are of two classes : the ones burn
their dead and the others bury
them."

The foregoing analysis has clearly shown that the paragraph on the Khazars is a patchwork of data found in IbnRusta's chapters on al-Khazar (1394-14013), Burdas (14014-1417),
and Bulkar (1417-1424). The extraordinary confusion of the
characteristics of the three nations 1 may be due to the fact that, in the
compiler's source, the headings of the chapters were omitted, as is
often the case when spaces are left in blank for subsequent rubrications.
Another source of confusion must be connected with the desire to fit
in Ibn-Khurdadhbih's short passage (p. 124) on the Khazar towns:
The second name
)
?
-.j.
and the
.-~'-i1
in Arabic('.script looks
very much like
L.J...
~-LL
,L.for the former
epitomator substituted the latter (found in Ibn-Rusta)
(found in Ibn-Khurdadhbih). But Ibn-Rusta nowhere says that the
Bulkar (Kama Bulghars) were subjects of the Khazar king, and this
item undoubtedly refers to Balanjar, which lay to the north-east of the
Caucasus range and belonged to the Khazar.
is
WjL..J1 mentioned in the heading of the paragraph

doubtless the name of the Khazar capital, or rather of the part of it

situated on the western bank of the Volga, which appears in I. Rusta as
in Bakri as
in the Hud&d al-'Alam as
aLb,
.
,
town
mentioned in our
of
the
second
name
I think that the unusual
text is nothing but a combination of two names found respectively in
jp,-

1 Burdds
stands probably for the ancestors of the present-day Mordva,
(or
Kama Bulghars.
and Bulkdr for the
Bur.tas)

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KHAZARS

AND

THE TURKS

145

IN THE AKAM AL-MARJAN

I. Khurdadhbih and I. Rusta. In order to make the comparison clear

we shall place these names under the form found in the Akam :-

V
Lh.2
Of these, al-Baydi " the White one " is the name given by I. Kh.
to the western part of the capital, which I. Rusta calls by its native
name of

" The Yellow [town ?] ". On the other hand,

...
*'
or L~quoted by I. Rusta is evidently the name of
.
the eastern
or
part of the capital which I. Kh. spells
.
The " Khazar lake ", out of which the river is. said to flow, may
reflect some confusion of the meanings of Arabic bahr and Persian
daryai,which both stand for "a sea, and a large river ". The original
may have referred to the fact that the canal on which the capital
stood was a part of the Khazar river (bahr). Buhayra may then be
a secondary Verschlimmbesserungfor bahr.
must certainly be restored as
The name " The
Throne ", i.e. " the possessions of the Master of the Throne
..1 ", a wellknown designation of a kingdom in the northern Daghestan, of which
the nucleus must have been the present-day Avar territory (on the
Qoy-su). The S~hib al-Sarir was quite rightly the immediate southern
neighbour of the Khazar king. The mention of wars between them is
probably a mere amplification of the epitomator's.
We shall leave aside for the moment the extraordinarily close
analogies of our Khazar paragraph with I. Rusta's text and shall
consider the question of borrowings more completely after we have
examined the second paragraph describing the " Turks ".

VOL. IX.

PART 1.

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10

146

~"AN
~

v. MINORSKY-

>FTjETURKS.

"A

OF THE TURKS.

1. " These are extensive and

vast lands which, in the north,
adjoin the *Northern Sea, and,
in the east, the lands of the
Toghuzghuz.
2. " The Turks are courageous
[Cf. under Khazar, point 7.]
and valiant and have a (fine)
aspect and (fine) bodies.
3. " They are the most skilful of people in the. preparation
of felts, for the latter serve them
as garments.
4. " They have milk (in
Gardizi, 84 : " In summer the
plenty) and game is plentiful.
Kimik drink mare's milk . . .
they hunt sable-martens and
grey squirrels ..."
5. " Their country is very cold
Gardizi, 84. " In the land [of
and snowy. They possess under- the Kimik] falls much snow.
ground dwellings (asrdbfi'l ard) They have underground tanks
which they enter to escape the (chiy-ha < chih-ha) made of
timber for the winter. When the
rigours of the cold.
snowfall is heavy they drink that
water stored in the month of Tir,
for their horses cannot go through
the snow to the watering place."

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KHAZARS AND

THE TURKS

6. "They are idol worship.

pers, may God Almighty humiliate
them. They burn their dead.
They pray twice in the daytime
and fast (only) one day.

7. " Their river flows into the

sea of Tabaristan and in it are
found fish which stick to the feet
(of the bathers ?). The river
dries up in summer and the
(Turks) drink only from lakes
(or marshes).

8. " In their country there is

a mighty mountain with a tree
) on it. On the tree (?)
(;
.?- the marks of two hands, two
are

feet, and a knee, as if (some one

had been) worshipping there. And
everyone of them who notices
those traces worships them.

9. " And in (their country ?)

there are herds of untamed horses
which have become wild in the
desert."

IN THE AKAM AL-MARJAN

147

Gardizi, 87: "the Khirkhiz

[neighbours of the Kimak] burn
their dead, like the Indians;
and they say that Fire is the
purest thing and whatever falls
into it becomes pure." [Cf. under
Khazar, point 13.]
Gardizi, 83. [On the way to
the Kimiks, beyond the mountain
Kinda'uir, is the river Asus (?)] :
its water is black, it flows from
the east, until it joins the sea [dar,
read: dary&]of Tabaristan. After
this, the river Artush (Irtish) is
reached where the land of the
Kimik begins.
Birfini, c'-Athar al-biqiya, p.
2645: " And similar to this lake
[of Tils] is a spring
(
-.)
of fresh water in the land of the
Kimak in a mountain called
M. nkfir, as large as a large shield.
The level of the water in it is up
to the brim, and sometimes an
army drinks from it and it does
not dwindle a finger's breadth.
Near this spring, there is a trace
of a man's foot, of his palms with
their five fingers and of'his knees,
as if he had been worshipping;
and also traces of the steps of a
child and of the hooves of a
donkey. And whenever the Ghuzz
Turks see (that place) they
worship it."
Gardizi, 83. " On both banks
of the Irtish pasture wild horses.
Their race is from the king's
horses which have become wild,"
etc.

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148

V. MINORSKY-

Though the description of the " Turks " is very general and no
tribes are distinguished among them, it is curious that the territory
of the Toghuzghuz, the most celebrated of the Turkish tribes,' is said
to lie to the east of, and consequently separate from, the " Turk "
land. The analysis of the text shows that what the author really means
by Turk is the particular tribe of Kimak (*Kimak),2which lived near
the Irtish, but, " when there was peace between them and the Ghuz,"
visited the latter's territory in winter, cf. Huditd al-'Alam, ? 18. These
periodical movements are a source of great confusion in our sources
in which two different territories are usually telescoped into one
" Kimak land ". Therefore one might improve our Bahr al-shami
The latter term would be
into Bahr al-Shash ('L.4).
(CL[-)
quite possible for the Aral sea into which disembogues " the Shash
river " (Jaxartes), and the Ghuz territories are usually associated
with the Aral sea. On the other hand, Professor Codazzi's correction
) "Northern sea" has the advantage of
Bahr al-shamali (3Lc
suiting the Huded al-'Alam, according to which the Kimiik territories
extended in the north up to the Northern Uninhabited Lands.
The river mentioned in the text belongs to the region between the
Irtish and the Caspian Sea, of which Muslim authors (Mas'iidI,Mur7j,
i, 213; Hudjid al-'Alam, ? 6, 41; Gardizi, 83) give very entangled
descriptions. Our sources do not know the lower course of the Irtish :
the Hudid al-'Alam takes the latter for an affluent of the Volga;
moreover, the authors mentioned have a vague idea of the existence of some other river flowing to the Caspian, to the west of the
Irtish. The Ural (Yayiq) river and the Emba, disemboguing into the
Caspian, the rivers of the steppes to the north-east of the Aral sea
(such as the Irghiz and Turghai), and even some left affluents of the
Irtish may be partly responsible for the confused descriptions of the
course of this second river. The new detail added by the Akam, namely
that the river dries up in the summer, points to the steppe region.
The two last paragraphs, which stand isolated in the text of the
Akdm, refer to the north-eastern territories lying pretty close to each
other, and it would be strange if their description were due to two
1 By ToghuzghuzMuslim writers mean both the tribes which originally belonged
to the ancient Turkish (in Chinese Tu-ch'iteh) Empire, and the later Uyghur
possessions in the eastern T'ien-shan.
2 According to Idrisi (Jaubert), ii, 221, the Kimdkiya border on the Toghuzghuz in
the south, but the bearings in Muslim authors constantly vary up to 900.

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KHAZARS AND THE TURKS IN THE AKAM AL-MARJAN

149

different sources. After all, one might suppose that Ibn-Khurdadhbih's

original work contained a more complete account of the Kimik land
than the bare mention of a road to this tribe (BGA., vi, 28 = Qudama,
209). But then the bulk of our data on the Khazar-Burtas (Burdas)Bulghar (Bulkar) cannot be explained from I. Khurdadhbih. More
probably, therefore, the description of the Kimik territory was only
one of the items in Jayhani's description of the Turkish lands (as
reflected in the Hudiid al-'Alam, ?? 12-22). The Khazar-BurdasBulkar chapters undoubtedly existed in Jayhani.
The latter's Kitab al-nmamn7lik
wal-masalik has not come down to
and
us, but, by quotations
analogous passages in I. Rusta, I. Faqih,
I. Hauqal, the HudTidal-'Alam, Muqaddasi, 'Aufi, etc., we know how
great was the authority and influence of the Samanid vazir who
systematically utilized his exceptional opportunities for collecting
relevant information. However, the size of Jayhani's work (seven
volumes !) rendered it difficult to make and distribute copies, and there
are no indications that it was directly accessible in the extreme west of
the Muslim world where our epitomator lived.
We have, then, to suppose that Jayhani's data were used by our
author through the work of some other author. The obvious person
to come to mind is al-Bakri (d. 487/1094), whose countryman our
Isha1q b. Husayn presumably was, and whose work enjoyed great
esteem among his contemporaries. Indeed, the Gayangos MS.' of
Bakri's al-Mamalik wal-masdlik contains chapters on the KhazarFurdas (Burtas, Burdas)-Bulkar, but in an abridged form omitting
several items which appear in our compendium.
Consequently the latter must be independent of Bakri, and, as the
two possible transmitters of Jayhani's data, we might in principle
consider I. Rusta or Ibn al-Faqih.2 Both authors' works, as reproduced
in de Goeje's edition, are incomplete. Even the copy of Ibn al-Faqih
discovered in Mashhad by A. Z. Validi contains neither the chapters
on the Khazar-Burdas-Bulkar nor the items on the Kimdik quoted in
our analysis. In I. Rusta's text, as printed by de Goeje in BGA., vii,
1 All traces of it seem to have been lost, but the relevant
passages from it bearing
on Eastern Europe were published by Defremery in Journ. As., 1849, t. 13, pp. 460-477,
and re-edited with commentary by Baron Rosen and Kunik, Izvestiya al-Bakri, etc.,
SPb., i, 1878, ii, 1903. [I hear from M. W. MarQais that a very complete MS. of
al-Bakri has been discovered in Morocco and that M. Colin has undertaken its
publication.]
2 Al Bakri quotes as his source (in Jayhdni matters) a certain Ahmad. Baron Rosen,
op. cit., 17, thought that the person meant was Abmad b. Muhammad al-Hamadhini
b. 'Omar.
(= Ibn al-Faqih), but, as a matter of fact, Ibn-Rusta's name also was
Ar4mad

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150

KHAZARS AND THE TURKS IN THE AKAM AL-MARJAN

the chapters on the Turks are lacking, but, at least, his KhazarBurdas-Bulkar passages account for our text almost verbatim. Still
disbelieving the possibility that two different sources were used by
Ishaq b. al-Husayn, I feel inclined to admit that at the bottom of the
two passages in the Akam there must be a more complete manuscript
of Ibn-Rusta.
As regards the parallel texts quoted in the paragraph on the Turks,
we must add that Gardizi, in his extremely valuable chapter on the
Turks,' expressly mentions Jayhani among his sources. Birfini does
not unfortunately indicate the origin of the story about the spring in
the Kimik land, but almost immediately after, and in the same
paragraph, he quotes Jayhani's testimony on a spring between
Bukhara and Qaryat al-haditha, and, further, on the columns of the
Qayrawan mosque. If only the items on the Kimdk in Birfini (300/1000)
and Gardizi (c. 442/1050) were borrowed from Jayhani, the earlier IbnRusta and Ibn al-Faqih 2 (both writing in the earlier part of the tenth
century) could not have failed to know them through the same author,
whom they certainly did utilize.
Our examination of the two last paragraphs of the Akdm
al-marjan may appear to be merely destructive. Yet the Textkritik
of our composite geographical texts is one of the very urgent problems,
and by disentangling the data of a fresh source and defining the
measure of its trustworthiness some useful purpose is served. It is
necessary, too, to obviate any eventual speculation with misspellings
which might be taken for novelties. Indirectly dur analysis gives a
new weight to the important unknown source (Jayhani ?) which is at
the bottom of so many older geographical works.3
1 Edited by Barthold, in Mlemoires de l'Ac. de St.-Petersbourg, viiie s'rie, I,
No. 4, 1897.
2 According to the Fihrist, 154, Ibn al-Faqih " plundered (salaklha) Jayhdni's
book ".
3 See V. Barthold's and my own Prefaces to the Hudf~dal-'Alam, Gibb Memorial,
new series, vol. 17, 1937.

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