The History of Modern Kyrgyz Science

Since ancient times, humans have pondered questions about the origins of everything, the emergence of life, the explanation of death, and so on. Answers to these and other questions were sought and found in everyday life.

Kyrgyz people, like other nations of the world, had their own body of knowledge about the laws of nature, celestial bodies, and the origins of the universe. Everyday experience taught them to treat various diseases in humans and animals. This knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, accumulated over centuries by "nameless scholars," primarily the people. The practical knowledge accumulated throughout the history of the Kyrgyz ethnos served as the foundation for modern scientific knowledge as we know it today. Of course, the level of modern science in Kyrgyzstan is directly related to the socio-economic and political processes of the Soviet era. It was this era that elevated Kyrgyz science to the current heights represented by a cohort of scholars, many of whom are documented in this book. What distinguishes science from empirical knowledge?

Certainly, the ancient inhabitants of Kyrgyzstan, who left drawings on the rocks of Saymaly-Tash and in other locations in the second millennium BC, did not ponder this question. Their drawings of animals, as well as simple solar symbols and others, were the first evidence of an attempt to reflect the spiritual state, faith, and description of the surrounding world of the ancient inhabitants of our region.

Not years, but entire millennia passed before the ancient Semirechye tribes invented their first writing system. Writing, as an attribute of the civilizational development of ancient nomads in Central Asia, dates back to the third century BC. Unfortunately, this writing, samples of which were found during the excavations of the Issyk-Kul mound near Almaty, has not yet been deciphered. It is known to historical science that the same tribes of the northern part of Semirechye inhabited the territory of Kyrgyzstan. They were the Saka-Tigrahauda, a conglomerate of proto-Turkic and Eastern Iranian nomadic tribes.

Another significant event in the history of the development of scientific knowledge was the emergence and spread of alphabetic systems in Central and Inner Asia. As is known, the ancient Semitic people—the Syrians, specifically those of them who, due to their affiliation with the Nestorian branch of Christianity, were forced to emigrate from the Middle East to the east—prompted the emergence of both Sogdian and Orkhon-Yenisei scripts in Central and Inner Asia in the 6th-7th centuries.

Of course, it should not be forgotten that the early medieval Turks included in their runic-like alphabet their own signs, which trace back to pre-alphabetic writings of the proto-Turks (for example, the sign i, T- "arrow" / "ok," which provided the letter sign for the consonant "k," or the sign - "moon"/ай, to denote the consonant "y," etc.).

The Kyrgyz variant of this writing also developed. The Kyrgyz, who restored their statehood on the Yenisei (6th-10th centuries AD), were involved in the development of a special variant of the Orkhon-Yenisei written culture. Representatives of the Yenisei Kyrgyz left a rich collection of epigraphic monuments in the Sayano-Altai region from the 7th to the 12th centuries. Thus, the Kyrgyz became an ethnos that used this writing for a longer period compared to neighboring Turkic peoples. One of the outstanding epigraphic legacies of the Kyrgyz is the Sudzhin monument, which was discovered in 1909 and published in 1913 by G.I. Ramstedt, and later reissued by S.E. Malov and the Turkish scholar H. Orkun.

Thus, the author of the Sudzhin-Davan inscription is a certain Kyrgyz hero and military leader named Boyla Kutlug Yargan, who also served as an officer under another Kyrgyz noble named Kutlug Baga Tarkan Uge. The historical value of this inscription lies in the fact that it is an author's testimony from a Kyrgyz nobleman and commander who faithfully fulfilled the combat task assigned to him on Orkhon land.

In the early Middle Ages, some representatives of Turkic and Kyrgyz nobility studied in China. There are records of a literate Kyrgyz nobleman who ordered a copy of a Buddhist manuscript for himself. An educated stratum was also needed for diplomatic missions. Chinese sources mention that at the beginning of the 8th century, a representative of the Kyrgyz ruler was in Tibet. This coincides with the epigraphic monuments of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, which contain information about a Kyrgyz envoy sent to Tibet from the Kyrgyz Khaganate on the Yenisei. The 10th-century Arab traveler Abu Dulaf described the Kyrgyz as a people with their own writing.

"And then we reached the tribe of the Kyrgyz... They have a temple for worship and a pen for writing... Their language is rhythmic, which they use during worship. Their banner is green... When they worship, they look to the south. For them, Saturn and Venus are considered sacred."
(From "The First Note" of traveler Abu Dulaf).

Indeed, on the territory of Kyrgyzstan, particularly in the valleys of Talas and Kochkor, Orkhon-Yenisei inscriptions have been found. By style, they are closer to the Yenisei (Kyrgyz) variant than to the Orkhon one. It should also be added that under the influence of the Nestorian Syrian colonies, the first Turkic-speaking Christians appeared in Kyrgyzstan, leaving their epitaph monuments. All these writings were the experience of the Kyrgyz in mastering and enriching the cultural achievements of various regions connected by the Great Silk Road.

The next stage in the development of scientific knowledge among the peoples of Kyrgyzstan is associated with the Muslim East. As early as the 9th century, the first mosques appeared in some cities of Kyrgyzstan. With the declaration of Islam as the state ideology of the Karakhanid Khaganate in 960, the territory of present-day Kyrgyzstan was fully integrated into that special world, which is conditionally referred to in science as the "Muslim Renaissance."

A significant contribution to this was made by representatives of the peoples of Central Asia. Among them were great figures: the philosopher al-Farabi, the mathematician al-Khwarizmi, the physician Ibn Sina, the mathematician and astronomer al-Biruni, the mathematician al-Fergani, and others.

The ancestors of the Kyrgyz people—Yusuf al-Balasarghuni, a didactic poet and scholar from Balasaghun, a city near modern Tokmak, as well as Mahmud al-Kashgari (al-Baraskani), a native of a city on the shores of Issyk-Kul, were two bright stars in the sky of scientific thought during the Karakhanid period.

There were also other scholars who contributed to the development of Muslim scholarship. Among them, the Osh jurist (faqih) Omar ibn Musa al-Oshi (died in December 1125) and the Uzgen scholar Ali ibn Sulaiman ibn Dawud al-Khatibi al-Uzqandi were specifically mentioned in the book "Mu'jam al-Buldan" ("Alphabetical List of Country Names") by the Arab encyclopedist Abu Abdullah Shihab ad-Din ar-Rumi al-Hamawi, known by the nickname Yakut (1179—1229).

The periods of the Kara-Khitan rule (1130-1211), and especially the Naiman (Küchlüq Segizdik, 1211-1218) and Mongol domination in Tengri-Too (from 1218 until the abdication of the descendants of Genghis Khan at the end of the century) were not only times of ethnocultural synthesis and mutual influences but also an era of decline for scientific centers, which were part of the eastern periphery of the Muslim Renaissance.

Many madrasas were erased from the face of the earth, libraries were plundered or burned, and in the places of former cities, livestock often grazed.

Gradually, from the second half of the 13th century, thanks to local educated officials serving the Chagatai, the Golden Horde, the state of Haidu, and such local rulers as Sugnak-tegin, the governor of the Semirechye vilayet El-Alargu, the role of science increased.