The Khazars and the Turks in the Ākām al-Marjān

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),2 which 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
into Bahr al-Shash ('L.4). The latter term would be
(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
Bahr al-shamali (3Lc ) "Northern sea" has the advantage of
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 Toghuzghuz Muslim 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.
This content downloaded from 71.172.230.205 on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:35:23 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions