Disputes about the Resettlement of Kyrgyz from Yenisei to Tian Shan

How did the Kyrgyz appear in Tian Shan?

A special place in the study of the monuments of oral folk art, religion, and social structure of the Turkic-speaking peoples of Siberia and Central Asia is held by academician V. V. Radlov, whose work marked an era in the history of world Turkology (Kononov, 1972, p. 103). He expressed his views on the history of the Kyrgyz and valuable information about their clan-tribal composition in the article "On the Kirghiz" (Radloff, 1863). Noting the similarity of several ethnonyms of the Altaians and Kyrgyz, he simultaneously doubted the plausibility of some researchers' statements regarding the late resettlement of the Kyrgyz from Yenisei and Altai to Tian Shan. Based on a detailed study of Kyrgyz folklore, V. V. Radlov concluded that if the Kyrgyz had resettled from Yenisei to Tian Shan at a later time, this event would have been reflected in the monuments of oral folk art. From this thesis, he suggested that the Kyrgyz migrated from the Minusinsk Basin to Tian Shan during the rise of the Kyrgyz Khaganate in the 9th-10th centuries or during the Mongol conquest of Central Asia in the 13th century (Radloff, 1863).

A significant contribution to these questions was made by the outstanding orientalist V. V. Bartold, who, based on a comparative analysis of information from various written sources, wrote the first summarizing historical work on the political and ethnic history of the Kyrgyz from ancient times to the end of the 19th century (Bartold, 1963). V. V. Bartold also leaned towards the migration version, linking the formation of this people with the resettlement of Yenisei Kyrgyz to Tian Shan.

However, considering the contradictions and fragmentary nature of the information from written sources, he allowed the possibility of several stages of movement of Yenisei Kyrgyz to Tian Shan. He attributed the first wave of movement to Tian Shan to the mid-9th century. In his opinion, this process was associated with the persecution of the Uyghurs who had gone to Eastern Turkestan, and it occurred through the Kuldja region.

However, in polemics with N. A. Aristov, V. V. Bartold emphasized that the information from "Hudud al-Alam" and "Zayn al-Akhbar" by Gardizi is so detailed that if the Kyrgyz had compactly resided in Semirechye in the 9th-10th centuries, we would certainly have information about this. In another of his works, V. V. Bartold further emphasizes the brevity of the Kyrgyz's stay in Tian Shan in the 9th century (Bartold, 1968, p. 72). In his opinion, the next stage of the Kyrgyz's resettlement to Tian Shan may be associated with the movement of the Khitans and Mongols to the west, although he notes that there are no direct sources to confirm this. In his last work dedicated to the history of the Kyrgyz, V. V. Bartold particularly emphasizes that before the 15th century, there can be no talk of any mass resettlement to Tian Shan (Bartold, 1963). Thus, although he allowed the possibility of several stages of the resettlement of the Kyrgyz to Semirechye starting from the 9th century, he believed that only the last mass stage of migration of Kyrgyz tribes in the 15th century played a decisive role in the formation of this people in Tian Shan.

A.N. Bernshtam, E. Maanaev, and other researchers present the process of resettlement of Kyrgyz tribes from Yenisei to Tian Shan as a permanent phenomenon and believe that the first wave of migration of the Kyrgyz began as early as the turn of the new era in the general flow of movement of nomadic tribes of the Huns to the west (Bernshtam, 1955; Maanaev, 1963). Then, starting from the 9th century, this process intensified and gradually faded during the Mongol era. In his ethnogenetic constructions about the origin of the Kyrgyz people, A.N. Bernshtam, relying on the hypotheses of his predecessors, put forward the idea of multi-stage migration of Kyrgyz tribes from Siberia to Tian Shan:
a) as part of the Huns (47 BC);
b) during the Turkic Khaganates (6th-10th centuries);
c) at the initial stage of the "Kyrgyz great power" in the mid-9th century. However, in his opinion, the number of Kyrgyz tribes in the territory of Tian Shan even during the Mongol conquest was still not sufficient for the formation of a nationality there (Bernshtam, 1956).

Despite his adherence to the migration concept in his early works, A. N. Bernshtam concluded at the end of his life that the process of forming the Kyrgyz people continued even in the post-Mongol period, when new ethnic groups joined the tribes. Therefore, he believed that only in the 16th century, after the collapse of the Mogolistan state, did the process of forming this people in Tian Shan come to an end. Based on this, he considered that "the Kyrgyz are the heirs and successors of all the cultural achievements of their predecessors in Tian Shan, part of which entered the composition of the modern Kyrgyz people" (Bernshtam, 1959, pp. 21, 22). Unfortunately, this important conclusion of A.N. Bernshtam remains overlooked by many historians who regard him merely as a consistent supporter of the migration theory.

O. Karaev, Yu. Khudyakov, and T. Choroev hold the view that the ancestors of modern Kyrgyz moved from Yenisei to Tian Shan in the mid-9th century, during the era of "Kyrgyz great power" (Questions of Ethnic History... 1989, pp. 35, 52-54). This concept, which emerged in the 19th century, consists of three main propositions:
a) the Kyrgyz people formed in ancient times on the Yenisei, when the ethnonym "Kyrgyz" first appears in sources;
b) the Yenisei Kyrgyz strengthened and developed their statehood and in the 9th century seized the territory of Central Asia, incorporating it into the Kyrgyz Khaganate;
c) soon after the creation of the khaganate, a significant part of the Yenisei Kyrgyz left their homeland for unknown reasons and resettled to Tian Shan, where they have lived ever since. Thus, these authors advocate for the complete identity of the Yenisei and Tian Shan Kyrgyz.

History of the study of the origin of the Kyrgyz people