Political Vagabonds of the Steppe and their Influence on Modern
Eurasia. A Conversation About Qazaqlïq with Joo-Yup Lee
What are the origins of the Kazakh nation? What is common between
Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Cossacks? In this interview, Joo-Yup Lee tells us
about political vagabonds, ambitious brigades that were called qazaqs
who played an important role in the formation of new states, including
the Timurid states of Central Asia and India and the Uzbek and Kazakh
khanates.
Joo-Yup Lee, who holds a Ph.D. in Turko-Persian Studies from the
University of Toronto (awarded in 2012), is an intermittent lecturer at
the University of Toronto, where he teaches courses in Central Eurasian
history. He has published a number of books and scholarly
articles, including Qazaqlïq, Or Ambitious Brigandage, and the
Formation of the Qazaqs: State and Identity in Post-Mongol Central
Eurasia (Brill, 2016), which won the 2017 CESS (Central Eurasian
Studies Society) Book Award, and the entries “Kazakh Khanate”
and ”Turkic Identity in Mongol and Post-Mongol Central Asia and the
Qipchaq Steppe” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.
As the author of Qazaqlïq, or Ambitious Brigandage, and the Formation
of the Qazaqs, can you please tell us about the main arguments of this
book? And how did you prepare it?
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to you (the Abai
Center / the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Washington, D.C.) for inviting me
to give this interview. I am truly honored!
The main argument of my book is that the formation of the Kazakhs at the
turn of the sixteenth century should be understood in the historical
context of qazaqlïq, a custom of political vagabondage that played an
important role in state and identity formation in post-Mongol Central
Eurasia. Let me elaborate on this.
Joo-Yup Lee at his book launch at the University of Toronto.
During the post-Mongol period, qazaqlïq, meaning in Turkic the qazaq
way of life, denoted a form of political vagabondage that involved
fleeing from one’s state or tribe and/or living the life of a freebooter
in a frontier or remote region. Qazaqlïq activities became widespread
starting in the mid-fourteenth century, when the fragmentation of the
Chinggisid, and later Timurid, states triggered a steady flow of mounted
political vagabonds who, struggling to make a political comeback or
ensure their political survival, fled and became freebooters in the
frontier regions in Transoxiana and at both ends of the Qipchaq Steppe.
Temür, Abū al-Khair Khan, Jānībeg Khan, Girāy Khan, Muḥammad Shībānī
Khan, and Babur were all dissident or displaced leaders of Chinggisid
and Timurid lineage who, prior to founding their own states, lived the
qazaq way of life. This enabled them to muster a loyal band of
warriors and increase their political and military power. In short,
qazaqlïq played an important role in the formation of new states,
including the Timurid states of Central Asia and India and the Uzbek and
Kazakh khanates.
Let me now tell you why my explanation of the formation of the Kazakhs
matters and how it differs from previous explanations. My book
challenges both the contemporary Kazakh interpretations of Kazakh
ethnogenesis, which mainly argue that the Kazakhs were formed by
amalgamating all the nomadic peoples that inhabited the steppes of
Kazakhstan from the Bronze Age until the Mongol invasion, and the
Western explanation of the origin of the Kazakhs, which simply equates
the emergence of the Kazakhs with the formation of the Kazakh Khanate in
the second half of the fifteenth century. The former explanation
overlooks the important historical fact that a separate Kazakh identity
did not exist prior to the mid-fifteenth century. The latter, meanwhile,
overlooks the complex nature of Kazakh ethnogenesis. My book, by
contrast, emphasizes the fact that the development of Kazakh identity in
the eastern Qipchaq Steppe following the qazaqlïq activities of
Jānībeg Khan and Girāy Khan occurred in line with the rise of the
Shibanid Uzbeks in Transoxiana following Muḥammad Shībānī Khan’s
qazaqlïq activities and conquest of southern Central Asia at the turn
of the sixteenth century. In other words, my book argues that the
formation of the Kazakhs should be understood as part of the larger
historical process through which the Jochid/Uzbek ulus, or people,
became divided into the Kazakhs and the Shibanid Uzbeks as a result of
the conflictual and interrelated qazaqlïq activities of Jānībeg Khan
and Girāy Khan (of Urusid/Chinggisid lineage), on the one hand, and of
Muḥammad Shībānī Khan (of Abulkhairid/Chinggisid lineage), on the other.
My book further argues that the Cossacks of the Black Sea steppes were
also the products of the qazaqlïq phenomenon. As the Jochi ulus
(Golden Horde) gradually disintegrated into smaller polities over the
course of the fifteenth century, the Black Sea steppes became a
political no-man’s-land known as the Wild Field (Dikoe Pole) in which
a great number of fugitives, in search of freedom and booty, took
refuge. The first Cossack groups were made up of Tatar fugitives but in
time the latter were replaced by East Slavic adventurers and fugitives
from Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. Among these Cossack groups, Ukrainian
Cossackdom occupies the most important place. The qazaqlïq activities
of the Ukrainian adventurers and fugitives not only led to the formation
of the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate, but also contributed to the eventual
consolidation of a separate Ukrainian identity distinct from the Russian
one.
The mausoleum of Alash Khan, the legendary founder of the
Qazaq people. This monument is located in central Kazakhstan near the
city of Zhezkazgan. Photo by Maxim Khil.
As you can see, my book deals with two different themes: the qazaqlïq
phenomenon and the formation of the Kazakhs. Combining these two themes
was not my own idea, but the suggestion of my co-supervisors, Professor
Victor Ostapchuk and Professor Maria Eva Subtelny. Initially, I had
planned to focus on Kazakh history. However, I believe that combining
these two themes made my study unique and original, enabling it to win
the 2017 CESS (Central Eurasian Studies Society) Book Award.
In order to write my book, I utilized a wider range of primary sources
than had been used in previous discussions about the formative period of
Kazakh history and the socio-political phenomenon of qazaqlïq. While
the sources pertaining to the early Kazakhs and qazaqlïq are somewhat
disparate and fragmentary, the extant source base is large. The major
primary sources that my book used can be categorized as Uzbek, Moghul,
Timurid, Ilkhanid, Crimean and Volga Tatar, Muscovite, Kazakh, and
Chinese histories written in various languages. Prior to embarking on
this research project, I had to study many different languages,
including Persian, Chaghatay Turkic, Mongolian, Chinese, Russian, and
Kazakh, among others.
Some historians suggest that the words “Kazakh” and “Alash” have
the same historical origin. There is also an argument that the word
“Kazakh” is derived from the concept of “Qashaq” (lit. “runaway,” which
is close to your term of political vagabonds). Where did the word
“Kazakh” come from?
Let me first clarify one point. [As an admirer of Kantian critical
philosophy,] I would like to distinguish between what we can learn from
surviving sources and what we cannot. My book is not concerned with the
etymology of the word “qazaq” because any argument about the origin of
the term has to rely on conjecture. As such, my book only introduces the
arguments of such scholars as Gyula Nemeth, Peter B. Golden, and V. P.
Yudin in a footnote.
What I did in my book was conduct a comprehensive examination of the
meaning of the term “qazaq” as found in the written sources and oral
traditions produced during the post-Mongol period. I investigated the
various contexts in which the term “qazaq” was used in a broad range of
sources in order to provide the first truly integrated understanding of
the socio-political phenomenon of qazaqlïq and its historical
significance. In that process, I did not find any evidence that would
corroborate the hypotheses that the words “Kazakh” and “Alash” have the
same historical origin or that the word “Kazakh” derives from the
concept of “Qashaq.”
However, based on a thorough examination of numerous qazaqlïq
activities described in reliable historical sources, I can offer the
following findings.
First, in Timurid and post-Timurid Central Asian sources, the term
“qazaq” was generally used in the sense of “a (political)
vagabond/wanderer” and “a (frontier) brigand/freebooter,” whereas in the
Turkic, Slavic, and Latin sources composed in the western Qipchaq Steppe
and Eastern Europe, the term “qazaq” (kazak in Russian and kozak in
Ukrainian) was used in a broader sense to denote “a political dissident”
or “a fugitive/runaway,” as well as “a vagabond/wanderer” and “a
brigand/freebooter.”
Second, the term “qazaq” in the sense of a fugitive, freebooter, or
vagabond gained wide currency from the fifteenth century. In other
words, widespread diffusion of the term “qazaq” did not occur in the
fourteenth century. Although the term “qazaq” also appeared in sources
written prior to the fifteenth century, it carried different meanings.
For instance, in mid-fourteenth century Mamluk dictionaries, the term
“qazaq” carried the meaning “freed, free” or “bachelor, single” (qazaq
bašlı). Along similar lines, quasi-qazaq bands—such as the Negüderi
that became active in Khorasan from the second half of the thirteenth
century—were not referred to as qazaqs by their contemporaries,
implying that the term “qazaq” was most likely not used in Central
Eurasia to designate political fugitives or frontier freebooters in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The term “qazaq” in the sense of a
fugitive, freebooter or vagabond began to appear in those sources
written in the fifteenth century. Importantly, whereas the Timurid
histories written in Persian in the early fifteenth century did not
refer to Temür as qazaq, the contemporary histories of Sulṭān-Ḥusain
Bayqara (r. 1469–70 and 1470–1506) and Babur (r. 1526–30)—sources
written in the second half of the fifteenth century and
thereafter—used qazaq to denote the qazaqlïq days of these two
Timurid princes.
If further investigations are made of the qazaqlïq activities
described in those historical sources of which I am not aware, I believe
we will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the meanings of the
word “qazaq.”
So Qazaqs, Shibanid Uzbeks, and Ukrainian Cossacks were all founded by
qazaqs, or “ambitious brigands.” So the term qazaq had no ethnic
connotation?
From the fifteenth century onward, in Central Asia and the Qipchaq
Steppe, the name qazaq was attached to those political vagabonds who
fled their state or tribe and/or lived the life of a frontier
freebooter. In this sense, qazaq had no ethnic connotation. However,
qazaq became an ethnonym when it was attached to the Uzbeks who broke
away from Abū al-Khair Khan’s state in the second half of the fifteenth
century. I should explain here that Uzbek was the new designation for
the Jochid ulus, or people, after the reign of Uzbek Khan (r.
1313–1341). Although the term “Uzbek” is usually associated, in the
modern scholarly literature, with the ulus of Abū al-Khair Khan or the
modern Uzbeks, it covered Jochid nomads during the post-Mongol period.
The same Jochid people were called Tatars by the Russians and
Ottomans. At first, the dissident Uzbeks were called qazaq Uzbeks,
meaning fugitive or brigand Uzbeks, while the Abulkhairid Uzbeks were
called Shibanid Uzbeks by their contemporaries since Abū al-Khair Khan
was a descendant of Shībān, the fifth son of Jochi. In time, the qazaq
Uzbeks came to be called simply Qazaqs—that is, Kazakhs. Importantly,
the early Kazakhs and the Shibanid Uzbeks were considered one and the
same people by their contemporaries. They were made up of the same
Jochid/Uzbek tribes and used the same Kipchaq Turkic language.
However, one should differentiate between the modern Uzbeks and the
Shibanid Uzbeks. The former came into existence in 1924, when the Soviet
Union decided to bestow the name Uzbek also on various non-Uzbek
Persian- and Turkic-speaking groups of modern-day Uzbekistan. Therefore,
one can say that the modern Uzbeks are only partly related to the
Kazakhs.
As for the Cossacks, the English word cossack is derived from the
Ukrainian kozak and the Russian kazak, which in turn have their
roots in the Turkic qazaq. The earliest Cossacks were Turkic-speaking
Tatar fugitives, who were the same people as the Uzbeks of the eastern
Qipchaq Steppe. As I mentioned earlier, the Tatar Cossack groups were
later joined and supplanted by East Slavic adventurers and fugitives
from Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy.
A Zaporozhian Cossack from Crimea (CossackMamay). Cossack Mamay is a legendary hero in Ukrainian folklore. Painting by an unknown folk painter, late 18th–early 19th century. Kyiv, National Center of Folk Culture “Ivan Honchar Museum.”
In short, the Kazakhs, the Shibanid Uzbeks, and the earliest generations
of Cossacks were virtually one and the same people. They were all
Turkic-speaking nomads from the Jochid ulus (Golden Horde) and the
Mongol empire. However, the Shibanid Uzbeks became mixed with
Iranian-speaking groups, while the early Tatar Cossacks were assimilated
with and supplanted by East Slavic Cossacks. This means that the Kazakhs
are arguably the most direct descendants of the Jochid ulus (Golden
Horde).
Uzbeks in Central Asia are also a young nation. What do you find
special about the formation of national identities? How did the Soviet
period affect them? And in general, how close are the nations of Central
Asia to each other historically?
The modern Uzbeks are a much younger nation than the Kazakhs. As I
remarked earlier, they should be differentiated from the Shibanid
Uzbeks, whom I discuss in my book. The latter were the Jochid nomadic
people (ulus) of the Kazakh Steppe who conquered the Timurid states of
Transoxiana and Khorasan at the turn of the sixteenth century.
Importantly, the Shibanid Uzbeks and the Kazakhs were one and the same
people prior to their division at the turn of the sixteenth century.
They shared a common history (as members of the Jochid/Uzbek ulus and
the Mongol empire), religion (Islam), and language (Kipchak Turkic). The
modern Uzbeks were formed in 1924, when the Soviet Union created the new
Uzbek nation, tailoring nationalities to the Soviet national republics.
The new Uzbeks consisted of not only Shibanid Uzbeks, but also Sarts
(mostly groupings of Tajik origin that became Turkic-speakers) and
Tajiks, neither of whom had previously been regarded as Uzbeks. The
Soviet Union also chose Karluk Turkic, not Kipchak Turkic, as the
language of this new Uzbek nation.
As for the Kyrgyz and Tajiks, they are descended from the peoples that
had previously been known as such. The Persian-speaking Tajiks are an
indigenous Indo-European people of Central Asia. The Kyrgyz are
descended from the ancient Yenisei Kyrgyz, who were most likely of
Scythian/Indo-European origin. They came to modern-day Kyrgyzstan during
the post-Mongol period.
If the Soviet Union had not created the new Uzbek nation in 1924, the
Kazakhs and Uzbeks would have been much closer to each other ethnically
than they are now. The Tajiks and Sarts would also have formed a much
larger group than they currently comprise.
A Persian miniature painting. Portrait probably of a Qazaq khan. The inscription identifies him as a “Tatar Khan Padishah of the Qipchaq Steppe (Tātār Khān pādshāh-i Dasht-i Qīpchāq).” Calligraphy on verso. 1550 (circa). © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Many Kazakhs identify with different historical groups, from the
Scythians to the Mongols. Anthropologically, Kazakhs range from
green-eyed and red-haired to Caucasian- or Japanese-looking. This is
partly why genetic studies among Kazakhs are especially popular. What do
you think about this? What has influenced this portrait of the nation?
How young is Kazakh identity or do you think it is already formed?
Modern DNA studies demonstrate that the Kazakhs are descended from both
Inner Asians and West Eurasians. Contrary to the popular belief that the
Kazakhs were originally Indo-Europeans who gradually transformed into
Inner Asians due to their intermixture with the latter, the Kazakhs are
and have always been made up of heterogeneous elements. It would be more
correct to say that some Kazakhs are descended from Indo-Europeans,
while others are descended from Inner Asians. This logic applies to both
Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA lineages. I would also like to add that a
Kazakh individual of Inner Asian descent may have a West Eurasian
physiognomy, while a Kazakh individual of West Eurasian descent may
possess Inner Asian phenotypes. This is because phenotypes are not
always linearly inherited.
DNA analysis shows that the Kazakhs—or, more precisely, the
Jochid/Uzbek ulus—were formed after the rise of the Mongol empire,
in which virtually all Turkic, Iranic/Indo-European, and Mongolic
nomadic groups of the Eurasian steppes were merged into one entity.
What historical topics do you find relevant to study? Kazakhstan
recently opened the Golden Horde Institute. What materials or topics
remain blank spots in history?
I firmly believe that the Golden Horde Institute will contribute greatly
to the study of the history of the Golden Horde/Jochid ulus. I am also
aware that Kazakh historians have already been covering all the relevant
materials and topics. What I would personally like to see in the study
of Jochid history is a holistic approach to Central Eurasian history. In
the Mongol and post-Mongol periods, “Turks” and “Mongols” were not
differentiated from each other based on language. The nomad followers of
Chinggis Khan and the Chinggisids were all considered Mongol, while the
Mongols were identified as Turks in the Islamic world. Accordingly,
there was no division between Turk and Mongol in the Golden Horde and
the Kazakh khanate. In my opinion, this means that if Chinggis Khan
comes back to life, he will identify himself as both Kazakh and Mongol.
Could you please tell us about your connections with Kazakhstan? Have
you been to Kazakhstan? Could you share your impressions of and
observations about the country, the culture, the Kazakh language,
etc.?
I have now been studying Kazakh history for about twenty years. Along
the way, I have always been fascinated by the rich heritage of Kazakh
history and culture. My impressions and observations of Kazakhstan based
on my experience and studies are that Kazakhstan is a developed country,
a regional power, and, along with Mongolia, the most important direct
successor of the Mongol empire. Also, Kazakhstan seems to me a vast,
cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic country like Canada, where I have been living
for the past seventeen years. As a Korean, I feel that Kazakhstan and
Korea have a lot in common in that we both experienced rapid economic
development and democratization. I hope we will deepen our strategic
partnership.
Author near a bookstore in Almaty.
I visited Kazakhstan for about a month in 2010 after receiving a
research travel grant from the University of Toronto. While staying in
the beautiful city of Almaty, I also visited Sairam, where the mausoleum
of Yassavi’s father is located. I had a tasty shashlik in a small bazaar
in Shymkent before going, by marshrutka, to Turkistan, capital of the
Kazakh Khanate. I was captivated by the city’s historic charm. I then
took a seventeen-hour train ride from Turkistan to Almaty. Since I
traveled alone, communicating in my poor Russian, my journey was not
easy at all. However, I had the time of my life. If I visit Kazakhstan
again, I will definitely drop by the futuristic city of Nur-Sultan. I
will also travel to Zhezkazgan in order to visit the mausoleums of Alash
Khan and Jochi Khan.
In 2010, I was unable to meet any scholars or students. I was a stranger
there. However, I cannot forget the kind Kazakhs I met in the street.
When I got lost in Almaty, a café owner helped me with directions and
gave me a very good map of Almaty as a gift. A lady at a travel agency
(I recall her name was Arina) spent half a day without complaining
trying to book train tickets to Shymkent for me. During my train ride to
Almaty, a young man named Kanat from Atyrau befriended me and offered me
sausages and tea. I bow to them in gratitude.
I am also very grateful to Nygmet Ibadildin, who is now a professor at
KIMEP University, for treating me to a wonderful dinner at a splendid
mall (Mega) and taking me on a night drive around Almaty even though he
had met me only briefly once at a conference in Toronto. Nygmet has
become one of my best friends.
Before I end my interview, I would like to express my unbounded
gratitude to my Korean Kazakh friend Professor Sofia An, the late
professor of Sociology at Nazarbayev University, for offering me
indispensable help and support at various stages of my research.
Unfortunately, she passed away two years ago due to cancer. Her nephew,
Dmitri Choi, who showed me the kindest hospitality during my stay in
Kazakhstan, is now my adopted nephew. He took me to many places,
including the Medeu Resort, the movie set of Nomad, and the Ili River,
which was my ultimate destination in Kazakhstan. His wife, Olga, cooked
the tastiest pilau for me.
To conclude, Kazakhstan is in my brain and heart.
