Seifi Chelebi. "Tavarikh" ("Chronicles"),
Materials from the fund of the Institute of Literature and Art of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. Inv. No. 5176
Nothing is known about the biography of this Ottoman historian. His "Tavarikh" was composed somewhere at the end of the 16th century. In Seifi's work, there are original details about the beliefs, customs, and social structure of the Kyrgyz.
Translation from Turkish by T. I. Sultanov.
Text: On this side of Kashgaria lives a tribe known as the Kyrgyz. They are nomads and of the same kind as the Mongols. This is a numerous tribe. They do not have a khan, but only beks, whom they call kashka1. They are neither infidels nor Muslims. The Kyrgyz live on steep mountains, which have passages in some places. If any king leads an army against them, they send their families deep into the mountains, while they occupy those passages so that no one can pass. Acting like a stone of poison, they cause snow to fall on the armies approaching them and create such cold that the enemy soldiers cannot act with either their hands or feet. Following that, they launch attacks and defeat their enemies. The dead are not buried in the ground but placed in a coffin, which is hung on the growing trees: their bones remain there until they decay and disperse2.
Comments and Notes
1 Kashka — bald, balding; a white spot on a horse's forehead; "jeti kashka" — a collective name for seven small subdivisions of the Kyrgyz tribe Solto; in the epic "Manas," it is used in the sense of "military leader." The latter corresponds to the meaning of kashka in Seifi.
2 Seifi Chelebi borrowed this fact from earlier written sources, for example, from al-Marwazi.
