Murad ADZHI
THE KIPCHAKS An Ancient History
of the Turkic People and the Great Steppe
The Steppe is our Homeland
and the Altai is our cradle
Introduction
Many people, in fact billions of them around the Earth, speak Turkic languages today, and have done so since the beginnings of history, from snow-swept Yakutia in Northeast Asia to temperate Central Europe, from chilly Siberia to torrid India, and even in a good many villages in Africa.
The Turkic world is vast and diverse. Turks are its largest tribe. They are the title nation of Turkey, a big country in West Asia and a long-familiar name for the rest of the world for its distinct identity, ancient customs and traditions, and high and unique culture, a subject of a myriad of books and features.
At the other end of the Turkic world, the Tofalars, numbering only a few hundred, are not someone you can tell much about. It’s a sure bet they are hardly known to anyone beyond their dense Siberian forests and the couple of villages they call home town. But then, the Tofalars, perhaps, still speak the original, ancient Turkic tongue after many centuries of only occasional contacts with outside cultures that could distill their speech with borrowings.
The Turkic world is great indeed, and thoroughly enigmatic, too. It is like a cut diamond, its every facet a nation – Azerbaijanis, Altaians, Balkarians, Bashkirs, Gagauzes, Kazakhs, Karaims, Karachais, Kyrgyz, Crimean Tatars, Kumyks, Volga Tatars, Tuvans, Turkmen, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Khakass, Chuvash, Shorians, Yakut – too many names to reel off in the same breath.
Dozens of peoples live in the Turkic world – all alike and different at the same time. You can always tell where they belong, from the special sounds and undertones of their speech. Which means a word that is one thing in one place may be a completely different thing in another. This diversity of meaning makes the Turkic languages fathomless, on top of their simplicity and ancient heritage.
They were not always that different, though. There was a time, too long ago, when all members of the Turkic race spoke one tongue that everyone understood in every corner of the Turkic world. Around two thousand years ago, they started for various reasons to move away from one another, geographically and linguistically, from their next of kin and their common tongue, developing their endemic dialects that were a closed book to outsiders. For a while, they were keenly aware of their common ancestry and remembered their shared language that they could still speak at bazaars and fairs drawing merchants from far away.