Stone from the Tosor Gorge
INSCRIPTION ON THE STONE FROM THE TOSOR GORGE
On the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul, rock inscriptions in Arabic are rarely found. Until now, only one such inscription was known on a huge stone in the area of Chalkan, on the right bank of the Ton River.
We learned about another rock inscription in September 1985. This monument was discovered in the Tosor Gorge of the Jeti-Oguz District of the Issyk-Kul Region. The stone with the inscription is located high in the mountains, not far from the wintering grounds of Gyulbak, in a small hollow among the bushes (Table XXI, Fig. 1, 2).
The inscription is carved on a large stone protruding from the ground. On a suitable writing surface of the stone, there is a Turkic inscription consisting of six lines without diacritics. The lower four lines are placed compactly, while the upper ones are only inscribed on flat areas. We consider the entire text to be a single inscription, carved by one person. The size of the rock outcrop is 2.3 x 1.7 x 2 m. This is currently the only rock inscription in Kyrgyzstan in the Turkic language with Arabic script from an earlier period.
The entire inscription cannot be read yet. In the upper isolated line, we believe the following words are carved:
Men Kara Hasan sakman (?). Here, the words men "I" and Hasan (a name) are undoubtedly clear. As for the words Kara and Sakman (Sagman or Sanman?), their meaning is not entirely clear. The first words of the next line may mean: Жафарга шуни (суй?) берам? ‘I will give this to Jafar (?)’. We think that the interpretation of the entire inscription depends on the reading of these two lines. The last two lines can be deciphered to a greater or lesser extent. In particular, we can read: Мен Масъуд алып (?) алдым or Мен Масъуд-али алдым, or Мен Масъуд-алп алдым, i.e., ‘I, Mas'ud, took (literally, seized); I, Mas'ud-ali, or ‘I, Mas'ud-alp (Mas'ud the hero), conquered’. But what he took or whom he conquered will only be clarified after the previous lines are correctly read. In the last line, we managed to read only the last two words —...кылсун (калсун), амин. However, when the work was already in progress, we sent a drawing of this inscription to the Arabist V. N. Nastich, who reported that he reads in the last two lines: (1) Мен Масъуд алп алдым, (2) Танр[и] кутлуf кылсун, амин, i.e., Mas'ud boasts that he caught a giant and asks the heavens for happiness. At the same time, he writes that he does not insist on a definitive reading of the words алп and танр[и]. Here, he reads the third word as алп ‘giant’. In any case, the translation and interpretation of this monument is a task for the future. Therefore, we publish a photograph of the stone and a drawing of the inscription text. In addition to the inscription, the stone has several well-executed images of mountain goats. The drawing of the inscription and images, as well as the photograph, were made by us. According to paleography, the inscription can be dated to the 11th-12th centuries.
