Download PDF | The Bulgars and the Steppe Empire in the Early Middle Ages (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450), By Tsvetelin Stepanov Translated from Bulgarian by Tatiana Stefanova and Tsvetelin Stepanov, Brill 2010.
201 Pages
INTRODUCTION
Over the last two-three decades the problem of alterity (and the closely related problem of identities1 ) has turned into a much-debated issue. This study is another proof of its importance. The real image or the notion of the Other is created most of all in a dialogical interaction with me or us. In this very case it reflects the situation ‘we vs. them’ since it is a basic one for the pre-modern (or traditional) societies that used to create their (self )notions mostly on the mental horizons and markers for the identification of the own and other/foreign set by the community and the traditions. The dichotomy is of great assistance to traditional societies, who typically employ ideologies distinguishing them from other communities, in order to build a sense of self-identity. It is especially true for the ones I have designated as “significant neighbor(s)”, i.e. the societies which were stronger and more advanced as far as economy, politics, and culture are concerned.
They are the ones who serve as a mirror—when one is looking at them, one finds out who one actually is. This way they also generate problems for they urge one to compare and/or compete with them, to develop together with them as well as to change and learn more about oneself by learning more about the others. In the philosophy-driven anthropology, drawing a border between self and other (sometimes the other is considered as a threatening foreigner) is related to the problem of the position of the person in the environment. However, humans create their ‘own places’ not only in the natural environment; humans aspire to create their own microcosmos where the complex relations between ‘I’ and ‘you’ and ‘he/she/ it’ have a very dynamic nature and, in fact, form the ground for the self identification and for the development of one’s self culture. Moreover, exactly that self culture discovers and defines its specific features and peculiarities only in the process of understanding the foreign/other culture and in communication with it. We can therefore accept as valid that one’s own culture is created by uniting two possibilities: the first one consists of the ability to discern the Self from the Other and the other’s culture; the second one—to open the Self for the Other and the other’s culture; it is nothing more but a dynamic balance between ‘openness’-‘closeness’ towards the Other.2 Such issue requires an interdisciplinary approach and, as a consequence, the use of various methodologies and research methods, because the notions of Other and its representations are often variable quantities just as the Other is a variable quantity too.
However, the Other is not only the foreigner (a representative of another tribe/state) but also someone from ‘another’ social group, religion, culture, sex/ gender, etc.3 The present study aims at bringing light, by means of comparison, on problems that have not been paid enough attention by historians.4 Until now, it has been the notions of the Other (the “barbarians” being implied) of the sedentary civilizations which usually have been a subject of analyses and interpretations, a fact that results from a number of objective reasons.5 One of the most important reasons is related to the existence of an ancient written tradition among sedentary societies such as ancient Greece, Persia, China, the Roman and the Byzantine Empires providing the opportunity of accumulation of enough amount of information to make the description of the notions and the images of the Other and the otherness far easier. However, here I am not focusing my attention on the sedentary civilizations. Instead, the research interest focuses mainly on the steppe lands of Eurasia and on the world of the nomads and semi-nomads/semi-sedentary societies and their perception of the ‘outside Other’ (e.g. Arabs, Sassanian Persians, Chinese, Byzantines). At the same time, this study takes into consideration that the relations, the interactions, the contacts, and the encounters with the others are a source and sometimes a motivating power for the economic, military, cultural, religious and other changes occurring in a certain environment as a result of their impact. To put it another way, it is Arnold Toynbee’s famous “challengeand-response” theory that is especially appropriate to our case.
In my view, here it should be applied with certain modification: the sedentary societies are not only and solely a subject of the “challenge” in the studied region and time span; often they were in the position to provide responses to the challenges of the steppe (e.g., the fashion of the “Hunnic” hairstyle was in fact introduced in sixth-century Constantinople, as clearly attested by Procopius of Caesarea). I hope to be able to prove that much through a number of historical examples. It is important to understand in what media and ways were various challenges met, whether or not there was any selective approach, and under what circumstances was selection applied to borrowings from the other culture, who had the power to control the selection, and in which regions was convergence of various cultures stronger. So in reality there are two ways to look at the evidence available. My goal is to analyze and interpret the attitudes and the approaches taken by members of the so-called steppe empires towards sedentary societies, which may thus be used to reveal the notion the steppe empires had about themselves, that is the way in which they constructed their respective group identities. Such a notion could be teased out of a study of the cultural relation between the two worlds, which stood in sharp contrast to each other in many respects. Each one of them attempted to impose its own concept about ‘peace’ and ‘world order’ on territories that look vast even by present-day standards.
The Latin word ‘pax’, which is normally translated as “peace,” also connoted “order” and “empire” (specifically “imperial order”). As a consequence, when Omeljan Pritsak employed the phrase “Pax Nomadica” to refer to the steppe lands of Eurasia, he drew a fundamental distinction between nomadic polities and the ‘sedentary’ empires of the ancient and medieval world. Peter Golden subsequently introduced the phrases “Pax Turcica” and “Pax Chazarica” for the Turkic and the Khazar khaganate, respectively. While the primary meaning of ‘pax’ is “peace,” the Turkic-Mongol word “el/il”, which was equally translated as “peace” by West European authors writing in Latin in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion, in fact refers to the political and military organ - ization in the area onto which peace was imposed and in which law was established by force. In other words, the correlate of the TurkicMongol notion of “peace” was obedience (subordination). (In order for “el” to exist, someone had to accept the political domination of the respective khagan(ate), and not just the “peace” that polity presumably promoted. This terminological distinction is important not just for drawing contrasts between sedentary societies and the ‘Steppe Empires’, but also for gauging the degree to which misunderstanding and mistrust dominated the relations between them). In this book, I adopt a comparative approach, blending a global (Eurasia), regional (Pax Nomadica/Steppe Empire, or following David Christian—“Inner Eurasia”)6 and local (ancient Turks, Uighurs, Bulgars, and Khazars) perspective. The phrase “steppe empire(s)” has already been used here in the sense of what, ever since R. Grousset, was known as an “empire of the steppes”. A ‘Steppe Empire’ in the early Middle Ages was the polity of any one of the “imperial peoples” who, between the mid-sixth and the tenth century (the ‘golden age’ of the ‘Steppe Empires’) established large territorial polities: Turks, Uighurs, Khazars, and Bulgars. Conspicuously absent from my analysis are the Avars. The reasons are quite obvious: unlike the other “imperial peoples,” the Avars left no written sources, which could allow a glimpse into their ways of defining themselves. Moreover, the territories under Avar rule between ca. 570 and ca. 820 were mostly in Central Europe, beyond what ancient and medieval authors regarded as the traditional boundaries of “Scythia”, especially the Lower Danube (together with the river’s delta). In Antiquity, the Roman province between the Danube Delta and the Black Sea was called “Scythia Minor”, because that region was perceived to be very similar, in both landscape and living conditions, to the “Great Scythia” of the steppe lands north of the Black and Caspian Seas.
It is not by accident that in his book “Nomads and the Outside World ” A. Khazanov wrote of Pannonia (the lands in western Hungary and the core of the Avar khaganate) as being marginal to the “Great steppe.” The notion that the civilized world ended at the Lower Danube (including the Danube Delta) was an extremely popular one throughout the Middle Ages. It can still be found in the thirteenth century in the work of William Rubruck, according to whom Scythia stretched from the Danube River all the way to the sunrise. Rubruck’s concept of Scythia mirrors a geographical stereotype, which originated in Greek mythography and ethnography, before being borrowed and much expanded by Roman authors and thus transmitted to the medieval West. The roots of the traditional notion of otherness (especially during the early Middle Ages, when the Other was always the foreigner) lie within a rather general scheme, in which the Other was present as periphery and limit of the self, in other words, geographically placed on the fringes of the Self ’s known world. The Other had to be conquered by means of disintegration and transformation, and later on, by incorporation into the Self. The Other was thus perceived only as a mirror of the Self. Because of that, images or notions of the Other were not required, or even expected to reflect reality.7
In fact, quite the contrary is true: in order to control the Other, (former) nomads often employed hyperbolic representations of alterity, in which eternal or absolute features were given pre-eminence, in order to obtain an idealized mirror-image of the Self. Such representations typically omitted or concealed defeats and mistakes, in order to project the image of a heroic Self. They also spoke with excitement about the Self ’s victories, and belittled the Other’s. However, such strategies of self-representation are hardly typical to nomadic societies and can be found in any society preoccupied with establishing by means of collective memory a sense of group identity. The peoples of Eurasia are thus no ‘exotic’ exception. There are, of course, worse problems to consider. Given that writing was introduced to the world of the nomads only in the mid-seventh century,8 information about how nomadic societies viewed themselves is scarce prior to the ninth century. To put it in other words, there are no written tracts from the world of the nomads, which could inform us about their notions of alterity. It is then almost impossible to find any firm points or hidden references, which are otherwise so typical for understanding alterity in sedentary civilizations, especially those of the “Big Tradition”.9 This is not to say that nomads did not have stereotypical notions of the sedentary Other. On the contrary, they seem to have attributed to the Other a stereotypical identity or at least features, which would become apparent in the course of this study. Stereotypes make people feel secure and stable, since they exploit a sense of familiarity. It all appears as if stereotypes can guarantee the preservation of the well known order and provide especially important support for both the individual and the community.
They seem to ‘promise’ commemoration of the Self as long as the ‘rules’ and the ‘order’, made sacred by tradition, are strictly observed. All this, indeed, creates difficulties in the quest for an adequate methodology and the most appropriate methods to be used in the study of alterity. The difficulties multiply when considering the chronological span (sixth to ninth century), as the geographic area considered, including such contact zones as that between the Bulgars and the Byzantines; the Khazars and the Byzantines; the Khazars and the Arabs; the Turks and Uighurs, on one hand, and the Chinese, on the other hand; the Turks or Uighurs and the Sogdians. Moreover, given that stereotypes are historical constructions, it is important to understand the circumstances for the changes of the negative stereotypes about the sedentary Other. In this study, however, the alterity is defined not just as a contrast between the nomadic Self and the sedentary Other, but also as internal contrasts (the ‘Inside Other’) isolating or marginalizing such groups as blacksmiths, shamans (magicians, koloburs, and the like), and women, whose status in the nomadic world was quite different from that in sedentary societies. Equally revealing in this respect may be the attitudes towards groups inside nomadic communities, which were of a religion different from that officially accepted within those communities. Shamans, blacksmiths, and healers had powers within their own community and for that reason they often found themselves in an ambiguous position within that community. Therefore, the present study will also touch upon such things as outward appearance, clothes, manner of speaking, or general behavior in public.
Such aspects of alterity are very important, under the assumption that alterity in the Middle Ages was manifested in highly stable forms, especially those linked to cultural and religious practices. Within the vast region of Eurasia considered in this book, the period between the sixth and the ninth century was one of dramatic changes. We therefore adopt Yurii Lotman’s idea that every semiotic system needs to be analyzed from two fundamental points of view: its relation to the out-system, that is to the world beyond its limits, and the way in which a system can develop while maintaining its internal characteristics.10 It is beyond any doubt that the world of “Pax Nomadica” was a specific system and that it played the role of the Other in relation to the world of the sedentary civilizations. As William Rubruck put it, “when we entered the world of those barbarians [nomads], as I mentioned above, I had the impression of entering another (sic!, Ts. St.) world”.11 Yurii Lotman’s other idea, concerning the ratio between statics and dynamics is particularly important for this study, as it applies to the highly variable boundaries between the Self and the Other attested in the sources pertaining to the region and time span considered in this book. In certain areas, especially in areas of intense contact, such as parts of Central Asia, Crimea, or the ninth-century Balkans, the nomads abandoned their previous ways of life, albeit still regarding themselves as different in relation to the Other in the same way they had constructed that difference before sedentization. Another point about dynamics deserves special emphasis. The steppe lands of Eurasia represent a vast territory of considerable ecological variability. The western parts are by far more fertile and rich than the eastern steppe lands, which is why most migrations of nomads took place from east to west, often under circumstances defined by warfare and short-term political strife.12 Who or what the Other is can therefore never be a homogeneous category, which requires the use of a ‘synthetic’ methodology, combining different approaches such as the history of mentalities, traditional positivist history, anthropology, hermeneutics, and semiotics. Hermeneutics here implies not only a deeper understanding of particular ‘texts’, but also the recognition of the fact that the sedentary world had encountered the nomads much earlier than the sixth century and had therefore long established stereotypes and clichés for the description of the Other. This, of course, means that the same is true about the nomads’ image of the sedentary world. Such remarks imply that at stake is a pre-understanding and preknowledge of the Other, which often takes the form of prejudice. Such a form of pre-knowledge changed gradually as a result of the contact and interaction with the outside Other that happened earlier than the mid-sixth century; and it was even deepened after the beginning of the nomadic expansion to the south, in the direction of the sedentary world.
The ‘interpretative clichés’, which had accumulated in the nomadic consciousness until that period began to give way to some other forms of knowing the Other. The changes in these preliminary knowledge-frames also occur as a result of the changes in the political boundaries existing until then between the sedentary and the nomadic worlds. It inevitably contributed to a better acquaintance with the world of the sedentary civilizations even more so as a considerable part of the nomads settled down in Sogdiana, on the Crimean peninsula, in the Eastern Caucasus region, as well as in the Balkans, which were some of the most important contact zones. In this way, after so many centuries, the nomads finally moved out of the ‘backyard’ of world history. By conquering parts of the ‘central’ world, they effectively moved into the center of world history. This, however, happened at a price, the abandonment of the nomadic way of life.13 One of the most interesting consequences of this process of sedentization was the rapid change of stereotypes referring to the Other. The old acquaintance between nomads and sedentary populations in Eurasia is a very important feature of the history of the region, as well as of the gradual change taking place after the sixth or seventh century14 in the nomadic perception of the Other.
The majority of the sources concerning the problem under study originate from the sedentary world: Byzantine, Armenian, Arab, Persian, and Chinese. One needs therefore to recognize the numerous clichés and the long-lasting stereotypes, before even attempting to approach this interpretatio sedentarica in order to reach the reality of the “Pax Nomadica”. Menander the Guardsman, Patriarch Nicephoros, Theophanes Confessor, Theophylact Simokatta are some of the most important historians writing about the nomads, whose works are going to be analyzed in this book. Further valuable information may be found in the Responsa of Pope Nicholas I to the questions of the khan (or prince) of Bulgaria, Boris-Michael (852–889, d. 907), as well as in the work of the Armenian historian Movses Daskhuranci. I have included in my analysis the few Khazar sources, especially the midtenth-century correspondence between the Khazar King (khagan-beq) Joseph and Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish advisor of the Caliph of Cordoba. The Persian-Arabic tradition is represented by the writings of Ibn Khordâdhbeh, Ibn Rusta, aṭ-Ṭabarî, Ibn Fadlan, al-Masʿûdî, Tamîm ibn-Baḥr, and others. Most Chinese sources pertaining to the problem are chronicles written under the Sui (‘Sui-shu’) and T’ang (‘Tang shu’) dynasties, between the sixth and the tenth century, to which one must add the seventh-century travelogue of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang. Several inscriptions on stone stellae erected for Bulgar, Turk, and Uighur rulers are an especially valuable source for the current study. They are to be regarded and studied as a series of sources, a fact of great significance for the adequate reconstruction of medieval notions and ideas. This is certainly the case of the inscriptions on the Madara Cliff in Bulgaria, of the Chatalar and Philippi inscriptions (all of which concern the Bulgars), as well as of those from Bugut, Orkhon, for the Turks, and of the ones found in Tes, Terkhin, Karabalghasun, and Shine-usu, for the Uighurs. Equally important is the archaeological evidence, particularly that of memorial or funerary monuments, especially the Turkic balbals (“kamennye baby”) and the commemorative temples of Turkic khagans dated to the first half of the eighth century. Much information about Self and Other can be extracted from images carved on the grave stellae of the Turkic commemorative temples or on the Madara Cliff (the Madara Horseman) in Bulgaria, as well as from the frescoes discovered in Panjikand and Afrasiab in the Turkic-Sogdian contact zone.
In sharp contrast to the sixteenth-century discovery of America by Europeans, a case of absolute alterity produced by the contact between radically different civilizations with no previous contact with each other,15 nomads from the Eurasian steppe lands had long been acquainted with the sedentary Other and had established an acceptable modus vivendi long before the sixth century.16 Responsible for this long tradition of contact was trade (such as that between the ancient Greeks and the Scythians or that between the Xiongnu and the Chinese), as well as the desire of the nomads, ever since Antiquity, to establish equivalent relations with sedentary societies. As Nicola di Cosmo has shown,17 the symbiosis between those different ecological, economic, political, and cultural systems was relatively often disturbed by nomadic raids aimed at booty or obtaining payments of tribute and favorable trade relations from rulers of sedentary societies (A. Khazanov’s famous “trade vs. raid” pattern of nomadic-sedentary relations18). Such familiar contact-mechanisms and strategies-of-contact (which sometimes turned into dialogue strategies as well) between representatives of the nomadic and sedentary societies, required also the existence of comparatively sustainable notions of the Outside Other. These notions are clichés similar to those about nomads (mainly Turkic-speaking peoples) in existence among sedentary communities. Most typical for the attitude and established stereotypes about nomads is a quote from Al-Jahiz from Basra (ca. 778–869), which deals with the Turk steppe empire and its significance for the neighboring sedentary civilizations: So the Turks are nomads living in the wilderness and they have [different] cattle . . . their interest is [directed] to raids and invasions and in hunting and horse riding . . . as well as in . . . conquering the states . . . . Accordingly, they have in the warcraft the place which the Greeks have in science and the Chinese—in art, the Arabs (in the language and in the genealogies.—author’s note), and the Sassanians . . . in politics and [administering of] an empire.19 The most important aspect of this description of the early medieval Turks is that the author compared them to the main ‘great powers’ of the early Middle Ages, Byzantium, Sassanian Iran, China, and the Arabs. However, the evidence, particularly that relevant to the Uighurs, the Bulgars, and the Khazars, unambiguously reveals that such clichés were very old-fashioned. The ‘imperial’ people of the steppe had by then switched to a sedentary mode of life, and established complex societies, which contained a number of elements otherwise known only from prestigious sedentary civilizations.20 Another aspect of the steppe empires deserves special attention. According to Arab sources, there were three special chairs in Khosro I Anushirvan’s (531–579) palace in Ctesiphon. On the right side of the shahinshah’s throne, one such chair was reserved for the Emperor of China, another for the great khagan of the steppe, and a third for the Byzantine Emperor, “in case that any of these rulers comes as a vassal in the court of the shahin-shah, the King of Kings”.21 Such considerations required an especially attentive reading of the theoretical literature, as well as of specialized general works concerning the region in question. Among those authors who were particularly influential for the stance taken in this book, mention must be made of Tzvetan Todorov,22 Yurii Lotman (especially some of his studies on the relations between periphery or border, and the center)23 as well as L. Chvyr,24 A. Khazanov,25 R. Cribb,26 Th. Barfield,27 N. di Cosmo,28 P. Golden,29 O. Pritsak,30 O. Lattimore,31 D. Sinor,32 F. Hartog,33 S. Klyashtornyi,34 А. Bartha,35 and others.36
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