Historical ethnic group in Caucasus
The
Kutrigurs
were a
Turkic
nomadic equestrian
tribe
[1]
who flourished on the
Pontic?Caspian steppe
in the 6th century AD. To their east were the similar
Utigurs
and both possibly were closely related to the
Bulgars
.
[2]
They warred with the
Byzantine Empire
and the Utigurs. Towards the end of the 6th century they were absorbed by the
Pannonian Avars
under pressure from the
Turks
.
Etymology
The name
Kutrigur
, also recorded as
Kwrtrgr
,
Κουτρ?γουροι
,
Κουτο?ργουροι
,
Κοτρ?γουροι
,
Κοτρ?γοροι
,
Κουτρ?γοροι
,
Κοτρ?γηροι
,
Κουτρ?γουροι
,
Κοτριαγ?ροι
,
has been suggested as a metathecized form of Turkic
*Toqur-
O?ur
, with
*quturo?ur
meaning "nine O?ur (tribes)".
David Marshall Lang
derived it from Turkic
kotrugur
(conspicuous, eminent, renowned).
Few scholars support theories deriving the Kutrigurs from the
Guti/Quti
and the
Utigurs
from the
Udi/Uti
, of ancient
Southwest Asia
and the
Caucasus
respectively, posited by
Osman Karatay
.
Similarly few find
Du?'i
which is a term for the
Bulgars
(some read
Kuchi
) as a root of Kutrigur, posited by
Josef Markwart
.
History
Grousset thought that the Kutrigurs were remnants of the Huns,
Procopius
recounts:
in the old days many
Huns
,
[nb 1]
called then
Cimmerians
, inhabited the lands I mentioned already. They all had a single king. Once one of their kings had two sons: one called Utigur and another called Kutrigur. After their father's death they shared the power and gave their names to the subjected peoples, so that even nowadays some of them are called Utigurs and the others - Kutrigurs.
They occupied the Tanaitic-Maeotic (Don-Azov) steppe zone, the Kutrigurs in the Western part and the Utrigurs towards the East.
This story was also confirmed by the words of the Utigur ruler
Sandilch
:
It is neither fair nor decent to exterminate our tribesmen (the Kutrigurs), who not only speak a language, identical to ours, who are our neighbours and have the same dressing and manners of life, but who are also our relatives, even though subjected to other lords".
The Syriac translation of
Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor
's
Ecclesiastical History
(
c.
555) in Western Eurasia records thirteen tribes, the
wngwr
(
Onogur
),
wgr
(O?ur),
sbr
(
Sabir
),
bwrgr
(
Bur?ar
, i.e.
Bulgars
),
kwrtrgr
(Kutri?urs),
br
(probably
Abar
, i.e.
Avars
),
ksr
(
Kasr
;
Akatziri
?),
srwrgwr
(
Saragur
),
dyrmr
(*
[I]di[r]mar
? <
Ιτιμαροι
),
[14]
b'grsyq
(
Bagrasik
, i.e.
Barsils
),
kwls
(
Khalyzians
?),
bdl
(
Abdali
?), and
ftlyt
(
Hephthalite
). They are described in typical phrases used for nomads in the ethnographic literature of the period, as people who "live in tents, earn their living on the meat of livestock and fish, of wild animals and by their weapons (plunder)".
War with the Byzantines
Agathias
(
c.
579?582) wrote:
...all of them are called in general Scythians and Huns in particular according to their nation. Thus, some are Koutrigours or Outigours and yet others are Oultizurs and Bourougounds... the Oultizurs and Bourougounds were known up to the time of the Emperor
Leo
(457?474) and the Romans of that time and appeared to have been strong. We, however, in this day, neither know them, nor, I think, will we. Perhaps, they have perished or perhaps they have moved off to very far place.
In 551, a 12,000-strong Kutrigur army led by many commanders, including
Chinialon
, came from the "western side of the
Maeotic Lake
" to assist the
Gepids
who were at the war with the
Lombards
.
Later, with the Gepids, they plundered the Byzantine lands.
Emperor
Justinian I
(527?565) through diplomatic persuasion and bribery tricked the Kutrigurs and Utigurs into mutual warfare.
Utigurs led by Sandilch attacked the Kutrigurs, who suffered great losses.
Kutrigurs made a peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire, and 2,000 Kutrigurs on horseback, with wives and children, led by
Sinnion
, entered imperial service and were settled in Thrace.
The friendly treatment of those Kutrigurs was viewed negatively by Sandilch.
In the winter of 558, the remaining large Kutrigur army led by
Zabergan
crossed the frozen Danube and divided into three sections; one raided south as far as
Thermopylae
; while two others the
Thracian Chersonesus
; and the periphery of
Constantinople
.
In March 559 Zabergan attacked Constantinople; one part of his forces consisted of 7,000 horsemen.
The transit of such distances in a short period of time shows that they were mounted warriors,
and compared to the Chinialon's army, Zabergan's raiders were already encamped near the banks of the Danube.
A threat to the stability of the Byzantine Empire according to Procopius, Agathias and Menander, the Kutrigurs and Utigurs decimated one another.
Some Kutrigur remnants were swept away by the
Avars
to Pannonia. By 569 the
Κοτζαγηρο?
(Kotzagiroi, possibly Kutrigurs),
Ταρνι?χ
(Tarniach) and
Ζαβενδ?ρ
(Zabender) fled to the Avars from the
Turks
.
Avar Khagan
Bayan I
in 568 ordered 10,000 so-called Kutrigur Huns to cross the
Sava
river.
The Utigurs remained in the Pontic steppe and fell under the rule of the Turks.
Between 630 and 635,
Khan
Kubrat
managed to unite the
Onogur
Bulgars
with the tribes of the Kutrigurs and Utigurs under a single rule, creating a powerful confederation which was referred to by the
medieval
authors in
Western Europe
as
Old Great Bulgaria
,
[23]
or
Patria Onoguria
. According to some scholars, it is more correctly called the Onogundur-Bulgar Empire.
[24]
See also
Notes
- ^
The ethnonym of the Huns, like those of Scythians and Turks, became a generic term for steppe-people (nomads) and invading enemies from the East, no matter of their actual origin and identity.
However, this remains controversial.
References
- ^
The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe, Hyun Jin Kim, (2013, Cambridge University Press), page 256: " Thus in our sources the names 'Kutrigur', 'Bulgar' and 'Hun' are used interchangeably and refer in all probability not to separate groups but one group."
- ^
Golden, Peter Benjamin
(1990). "The peoples of the south Russian steppes".
The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia
. Cambridge University Press. pp. 256?284.
doi
:
10.1017/CHOL9780521243049.011
.
ISBN
9781139054898
.
Sometime about A.D. 463 a series of nomadic migrations was set off in Inner Asia... Archeological and literary evidence permits us to place the homeland of these newcomers, the Oghur tribes, in Western Siberia and the Kazakh steppes... The Oghurs were part of a large Turkic tribal grouping known in Chinese sources as the Tieh-le, who were to be found in Inner Asia as well The fluidity of the situation in the steppes is mirrored in our sources, a kaleidoscope of dissolving and reforming tribal unions... Although some of the antecedents of this important migration are still unclear, there can be no doubt that the 0ghur tribes now became the dominant element in the Ponto-Caspian steppes. The term Oghur denoted "grouping of kindred tribes, tribal union" and figures in their ethnonyms: Onoghur, Saraghur, etc. The language of these Oghur tribes, which survives today only in Chuvash, was distinct from that of Common Turkic. In 480 we find our earliest firm notice on the Bulghars ("Mixed Ones"), a large conglomeration of Oghur, Hunnic and other elements. In addition, we have reports about the activities of the Kutrighurs and Utrighurs who appear in our sources under their own names, as "Huns" and perhaps even as "Bulghars." Their precise relationship to the latter cannot be determined with any certainty, but all three clearly originated in the same Hunno-Oghur milieu.
- ^
Peter B. Golden (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic People. O. Harrassowitz. p. 505
- ^
Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople
,
Historia syntomos, breviarium
- ^
Zimonyi Istvan: "History of the Turkic speaking peoples in Europe before the Ottomans".
(Uppsala University: Institute of Linguistics and Philology) (archived from
the original
Archived
2012-07-22 at the
Wayback Machine
on 2013-10-21)
- Sources
- Golden, Peter Benjamin
(1992).
An introduction to the History of the Turkic peoples: ethnogenesis and state formation in medieval and early modern Eurasia and the Middle East
.
Wiesbaden
:
Otto Harrassowitz
.
ISBN
9783447032742
.
- Lang, David Marshall
(1976).
The Bulgarians: from pagan times to the Ottoman conquest
. Westview Press.
ISBN
9780891585305
.
- Karatay, Osman (2003).
In Search of the Lost Tribe: The Origins and Making of the Croatian Nation
. Ayse Demiral.
ISBN
9789756467077
.
- Zlatarski, Vasil
(1918).
History of the Bulgarian state in the Middle Ages, Volume I. History of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. Part I. Age of Hun-Bulgarian supremacy (679-852)
(in Bulgarian). Sofia: СОФИЯ ДЪРЖАВНА ПЕЧАТНИЦА.
- Grousset, Rene
(1970).
The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia
. The State University of New Jersey.
ISBN
9780813513041
.
- Beckwith, Christopher I.
(2009).
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present
. Princeton University Press.
ISBN
9781400829941
.
- Dickens, Mark (2004).
Medieval Syriac Historians' Perceptions of the Turks
. University of Cambridge.
[
permanent dead link
]
- Dimitrov, D. (1987). "Bulgars, Unogundurs, Onogurs, Utigurs, Kutrigurs".
Prabylgarite po severnoto i zapadnoto Chernomorie
. Varna: George Bakalov – via kroraina.com.
- Golden, Peter B.
(2011).
Studies on the Peoples and Cultures of the Eurasian Steppes
. Editura Academiei Romane; Editura Istros a Muzeului Br?ilei.
ISBN
9789732721520
.
- Curta, Florin
(2015).
"Avar Blitzkrieg, Slavic and Bulgar raiders, and Roman special ops: mobile warriors in the 6th-century Balkans"
. In Zimonyi Istvan; Osman Karatay (eds.).
Eurasia in the Middle Ages. Studies in Honour of Peter B. Golden
. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 69?89.
- Dickens, Mark (2010).
"The Three Scythian Brothers: an Extract from the Chronicle of Michael the Great"
.
Parole de l'Orient
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