Kyrgyz Leader Yaglakar
Yaglakar
"The Great Campaign" is the most archaic part of the epoch. For the sake of completeness of our judgments, we will allow ourselves to briefly pause on the characteristics of the epoch and the personality of Yaglakar, as well as to briefly compare the plot of "The Great Campaign" with the historical data we have.
Along the banks of the mighty Siberian river Yenisei, the camps of Kyrgyz tribes - the oldest population here - spread out. It was a powerful and by no means backward state for its time (6th-10th centuries). The noble Kyrgyz aristocracy - the beki, the names of which were recorded by ancient stonecutters on tombstones in texts written in ancient Kyrgyz runic script, ruled in semi-nomadic communities-bags; the nobility traced its lineage from mythical ancestors - the bars, and therefore among foreign peoples, the Kyrgyz people almost always appeared under the name of bar-bek.
The bar-beks were married off by Turkish khans from the steppes of Mongolia. The bar-beks - the smutty ones, the bar-beks - the enemies of the khanate. The beks were associated with power in the Kyrgyz state. Beks were the owners of cattle, pastures, wives, concubines, given to them by Chinese princesses and Turkish princes - kunchuy (a distorted Chinese term "Gunzzi" - "princess of the court"), slaves - "kulov" and slave women - "kuni" and "kyung." Beks were the heads of clans, in which their own and adopted sons - oguls - were found. Beks held power in the family and in the state. Beks formed an alliance of rulers - the Kyrgyz el, which, similar to the corporations of the Roman aristocracy, rose above the mass of nomadic plebs - budun. And among the budun there were free and dependent, clients and slaves, skilled artisans, farmers, craftsmen, whose hands created values and wealth, long attracting greedy eyes of southern neighbors living on the other side of the Sayan-Altaic ridge. The land of the Kyrgyz had a high level of cultural development at that time. The Kyrgyz engaged in lively trade with Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan, and China. In their art, there is clearly a familiarity with the samples of art from Iran and China, as evidenced by the findings of the Kopensky Chaatas. On the Yenisei at that time, ancient Kyrgyz literature was forming, one of the oldest datable literatures of the peoples of the USSR, almost equal in time to Armenian and not much younger than Central Asian, if we consider the period of composition of the Avesta as the period of the Parthians. The meadows of the Yenisei, occupied by Kyrgyz tribes, were widely known, as were the products of their masters, especially blacksmiths. And not by chance did power-hungry neighbors strive to conquer this country, to exploit its artistic people. More than once over the land of the Kyrgyz rose the sword of its enemy - the state of Central Asia, which inflicted particularly severe wounds in the 8th century AD.
Tortured by incessant wars (8th century), by the raids of greedy neighbors (early 9th century), the people awaited a favorable opportunity to take revenge on the enemies. Dispersed into separate clans and tribes, into communities and families, it could not find within itself sufficient strength to break free from the shackles of the rulers who had destroyed the Kyrgyz state and were trying to exploit its population. But a leader arose who was able to unite the fragmented tribes, gather them into one powerful alliance, and "proud and steadfast" Kyrgyz, as characterized by the Chinese, proved capable not only of throwing off the yoke of foreign rulers - the Turks and Uighurs, but also of conquering their lands, reaching Tian Shan in the west, to China in the south, and to Manchuria in the east. The Kyrgyz military was strong, at the head of which stood a capable and energetic leader, whom we identify with the one mentioned in the inscription on the tombstone, Yaglakar-khan.
However, direct references in Chinese sources that this leader bore the name Yaglakar are absent. In the Chinese history of the Tang dynasty (619-906 AD), there is a narrative about the actions of an energetic Kyrgyz khan, known to the Chinese under the title Pizze Tunge Gin. His mother was from the Karaluk tribe, living to the west of Altai, who conquered Semirechye in 766, and his wife was from the Turkic tribe, who inhabited the Chuy Valley before the arrival of the Karaluks.
The aforementioned khan is associated by the Chinese with the successes of the Kyrgyz in their war against the Uighurs from 840 to 847, who ruled Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan and were trying to seize the land of the Kyrgyz - the Yenisei. Without going into the details of this struggle, which is quite fully described by the Chinese and analyzed by a number of researchers, we will only indicate that the war of the Kyrgyz with the Uighurs ended in a complete victory for the former.
The Kyrgyz were assisted by one Uighur - Gyulu Baga, who even in 839 raised a rebellion against the Uighur khan Zhang-Xin and now indicated to the Kyrgyz the location of his headquarters. The Uighur khan was killed, his sons - heirs, known as tegin, fled, and his wife, the former Chinese princess named Taiko, was taken captive.
Considering the necessity of maintaining friendly relations with China, the Kyrgyz sent Taiko there with special protection. The Uighur khan Uge attacked the caravan, and Taiko only after three years (in 848) managed, after long wanderings, to finally reach China.
The defeated Uighurs fled - part to the Karaluks, part to Tibet and China, while the rest, in the number of 13 clans, declared one of the tegins named Uge their khan, who continued the struggle with the Kyrgyz until August 846, when he died.
It is difficult to determine the beginning of the activities of the one mentioned in the inscription of Yaglakar-khan. However, there are grounds to relate it to the second war (with the Uighurs 821-840), although the possibility that Yaglakar acted already in the first war of the Kyrgyz with the Uighurs in 808-921 cannot be excluded.
When in 839-840 the Kyrgyz defeated the Uighurs, the Kyrgyz leader, identified by us with Yaglakar, ceremoniously declared to the Uighur khan: "Your fate has ended, I will soon take your golden horde, placing before it my horse, raising my banner. If you can compete with me, then come quickly, if you cannot, then rather go away."
After the death of Uge, the one whom we consider Yaglakar moved his headquarters to the Selenga River, restoring diplomatic and trade relations with China. The Chinese emperor Wu-Zun accepted the Kyrgyz embassy with great honor, seating the envoy above the representative of the kingdom of Bokhai (a strong state in Korea).
Following this, the Chinese emperor ordered to send a corresponding embassy to the land of the Kyrgyz and to compile detailed descriptions of their country. It was even proposed to write a portrait of the one whom we consider Yaglakar, and to include his name in the Chinese genealogy of emperors on the basis that he allegedly, along with the Chinese emperors of the Tang dynasty, descends from a common ancestor - the Chinese Lilin (Lilin lived among the Kyrgyz at the turn of the 11th-1st centuries BC).
The conquest of Mongolia by the Kyrgyz is documented not only by Chinese sources but also by an ancient Kyrgyz inscription in honor of the son of Yaglakar. Executed on stone in the Uighur variant of the runic script in the widespread and at that time written language of the Orkhon Turks, this inscription was found in 1909 in the locality of Suji on the Selenga in Mongolia. It contains the following interesting lines:
Uighur Yerimka Yaglakar khan ata kel'tim
Kyrgyz oglu men, Boyla kytlug Yargan men
Kytlug bega Tarikan ora Boyuruk men.
(To the land of the Uighurs, Yaglakar khan my father came, I am the Kyrgyz son (by name) Boyla Kytlug Yargan, I (by title) Kytlug Baga Tarikan and a high Boyuruk.
From the content of this inscription, it can be concluded that the buried person is the son of Yaglakar-khan, the very one most mentioned in Chinese sources as the Kyrgyz leader who conquered Mongolia and defeated the Uighurs.
The name Yaglakar can possibly be divided into two parts "Yagla," "yugla," which in Uighur means "to twist," "to turn," "to whirl," while the word "kar" can be thought to mean "snowy whirlwind," "blizzard." In this name, the force of the avalanche that the Kyrgyz displayed under the leadership of the one whom we consider Yaglakar, when they crossed to Sayan-Altaic and powerfully rolled through Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan, reaching the borders of China in the south and Tian Shan in the west, is symbolically conveyed. It is not by chance that S. E. Malov among the yellow Uighurs noted the tribes - "yaglakar," apparently once under the authority of Yaglakar-khan. The Kyrgyz leader, identified by us with Yaglakar, brought the defeat of the Uighurs to the end, both in the territory of Transbaikalia and in the upper reaches of the Amur, where they fled after the first collision with him, as well as at the walls of China, the border areas of which endured their incessant raids. For his assistance to China, he received a diploma and the honorary Chinese title Zun-in-Xun-y Chen-Min khan.
In 847, this leader died, leaving his people a political rise and cultural flourishing, moving the Kyrgyz to the south and west and bringing them closer to Tian Shan. The title Gunge Gin, he also Yaglakar khan, Zun-in-Xun-y Chen-Min khan, and finally, the legendary Manas left a grand epic cycle to the Kyrgyz people, where his image, as a hero of historical events, became the cornerstone of a narrative that over the centuries was enveloped in legends embodying the hopes of the people for the future, pride in their past.
The Epic of "Manas" - an emotional reflection of reality
