18. Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe, Gumilev

Part four. Acts of the Mongols in the XII century, XVII. Background and characters. 106. FRIENDS AND FOES OF THE GREAT STEPPE

The superethnos, conventionally called by us "Hunnic"[1], included not only Huns, Xianbians, Tabgachs, Turkuts and Uighurs, but also many neighboring ethnic groups of different origin and diverse cultures. The mosaic of the ethnic composition did not prevent the existence of an integrity that opposed itself to other superethnoses: ancient China (IX century BC - V century AD) and early Medieval China - the Tang Empire (618-907), Iran with Turan (250 BC - 651 AD), the caliphate, i.e. Arab-the Persian superethnos, Byzantium (Greek-Armenian-Slavic integrity)[2], and Romano-Germanic Western Europe; Tibet stood apart, which, in combination with Tangut and Nepal, should also be considered as an independent superethnos, and not the periphery of China or India.

All these superethnic entities interacted with the Great Steppe, but in different ways, which greatly influenced the nature of culture and variations of ethnogenesis of both steppe and surrounding superethnoses. What was the difference between these contacts? Solving the task with traditional techniques is simple, but useless. You can list all the wars and peace treaties, as well as tribal strife, which, by the way, has already been done, but this will be a description of the ripples on the surface of the ocean. After all, states are at war, i.e. social wholes, not ethnic groups, wholes of natural origin, as a result of which they are more conservative. Wars often take place within the ethnic system, and a "bad peace" persists with outsiders, which is not always better than a "good quarrel". Therefore, it is advisable to choose a different path.

Complimentarity is the mechanism on the basis of which the destinies of interacting ethnic systems, and sometimes individual persons, are not just passed, but carried out. Let's clarify this concept.  Positive complimentarity is an unaccountable sympathy, without trying to rebuild the partner's structure; it is accepting him as he is. In this variant, symbioses and incorporation are possible. Negative complimentarity is an unaccountable antipathy, with attempts to rebuild the structure of the object or destroy it; this is intolerance. In this case, chimeras are possible, and in extreme collisions - genocide. Neutral is tolerance caused by indifference; well, let it be, there would be only benefit, or at least there would be no harm. This means a consumer attitude towards a neighbor or ignoring him. This option is typical for low levels of passion voltage.

Complimentarity is a natural phenomenon that does not arise by order of the khan or sultan and not for the sake of merchant profit. Both can, of course, correct the behavior of contacting persons guided by considerations of benefit, but cannot change a sincere feeling, which, although at the personal level and is as diverse as individual tastes, but at the population level it acquires a strictly defined meaning, because frequent deviations from the norm are mutually compensated. Therefore, the establishment of mutual likes and dislikes between superethnoses is legitimate. The easiest way is to get confused in the little things and lose the thread of Ariadne - the only thing that can lead out of the maze of contradictory information, variations and random coincidences. This thread is a selection of political collisions and zigzags of worldviews at the personal level, because the sources were the authors, i.e. people, and superethnoses are systems three orders of magnitude higher.

The ancient Chinese treated the Huns with undisguised hostility.[3] This was especially clearly manifested in the IV century, when the Huns, pressed by drought, settled in Ordos and Shanxi, on desiccated fields abandoned by farmers. The Chinese mocked the steppe people so much that they brought them to revolt. The Chinese treated the Tibetans and Xianbians in the same way; they did not spare the Mestizos, but since there were many of them, they survived near the ruins of the Great Wall, on the border between the steppe and Chinese superethnoses.

The passionate push of the VI century they aggravated this dislike, turning it into enmity. The renewed Chinese of the Bei Qi and Sui dynasties exterminated the last descendants of the steppe dwellers, and they raised the Tang Dynasty on the shield and retained the old tribal name - tabgachi, although they began to speak Chinese [4].

The Tang Empire is similar to the kingdom of Alexander the Great, but not in the phase of ethnogenesis, but in the idea. Just as Alexander wanted to unite the Hellenic and Persian cultures and create a single ethnos from them, so Tai-tsung Li Shimin tried to combine the "Celestial Empire", i.e. China, the Great Steppe and Sogdiana, relying on the charm of humane power and enlightened Buddhism. It would seem that this grandiose experiment should have succeeded, since the Uighurs, Turks and Sogdians, who were pressed by the Arabs, were ready to sincerely support the empire. But Chinese loyalty was hypocritical, as a result of which the Tang Dynasty fell in 907, and the Tabgach ethnic group was exterminated in less than one century (X century).[5]

But traditions have outlived people. The baton of the "third force", equally alien to both China and the Steppe, was picked up in the east by the Khitan, and in the west, more precisely, in Ordos - by the Tanguts. Both of them repeatedly smashed China and brutally fought in the north: the Khitan - with the Tsubu (Tatars), the Tanguts - with the Uighurs, "so that the blood flowed like a murmuring stream" [6].

However, when the passionate push of the XII century lifted the Mongols over Asia, the conquered Tanguts, Khitans and Jurchens survived, and became subjects of the Mongol Khans, and the Uighurs and Tibetans received privileges and became rich. When the Chinese of the Ming dynasty won, the Tanguts were gone, and the Western Mongols - the Oirats - barely fought back in the XV-XVI centuries.

But the Chinese cannot be considered villains! They considered their historical mission to be civilizing, accepting into their superethnos those who were willing to turn into a Chinese. But in the case of stubborn resistance, the compliment became negative. The Turks and Mongols had to choose between losing their lives and losing their souls.

The Iranian group of ethnic groups - Persians, Parthians, Chionites, Alans, Ephthalites - constantly fought with the Huns and Turkuts, which, of course, did not endear them to each other. The exception was the enemies of the Sarmatians - the Scythians, from whom, as the discoveries of P.K. Kozlov and S.I. Rudenko showed, the Huns borrowed the famous "animal style" - the image of predatory animals on the hunt for herbivores. (wolves) But, alas, the details of the history of such an ancient period are unknown.

In the VI century, the Khazars became allies and true friends of the Turkyuts, but the fall of the Western Turkyut khaganate and the coup in Khazaria did not allow the Khazars to realize a favorable opportunity and develop a victory over the Persians and Chionites, thanks to which both managed to recover.

Nevertheless, the influence of Persian culture on the Great Steppe took place. Zoroastrianism is not a proselytizing religion, it is only for noble Persians and Parthians. But Manichaeism, persecuted in Iran, the Roman and Chinese Empires and in early Christian communities, found shelter among the nomadic Uighurs and left traces in Altai and Transbaikalia. The supreme deity retained his name - Hormusta (not Aguramazda at all), which, combined with other details, indicates the congeniality of the ancient Iranians and ancient Turks. The victory of the Muslim Arabs changed the color of time, but before the XI century. Iranian ethnic groups - Dalemites, Saks and Sogdians - defended their culture and traditions in the fight against the Turks. They died heroically, without tarnishing their ancient glory: the Arabs and Turks retained a deep respect for the Persians, so there is no reason to consider the Turkic-Persian compliment negative.

The relations of the Turks with the Arabs in the Middle East have developed somewhat differently. Muslims demanded a change of faith: at that time it meant that the Kok-Tengri (Blue Sky) had to be called Allah (the Only One). The Turks willingly accepted such a replacement, after which they occupied important positions if they were Ghoul slaves, or received pastures for sheep if they remained free pastoralists. In the latter case, there was a symbiosis, with mutual tolerance and even respect, although the cultured Persians found the Turks "rude".

Sharp collisions arose only in extreme cases, for example, during the suppression of uprisings of the Zinja or Karmats, during wars with the Dalemites and during palace coups. But even here many Arabs and even Persians preferred Turks to sectarians and robbers. And when the Seljuk Turkmens drove the Greeks beyond the Bosphorus, and the Mamluk Cumans threw the Crusaders into the Mediterranean, mutual understanding was restored, and the renewed superethnos found the strength to assert itself.

Byzantium interacted with nomads in two ways: in their homeland, the Greeks used the help of the Turkyuts in the VII century, the Pechenegs in the X century, the Polovtsians in the XI-XIII centuries, in a foreign land, where Nestorians who emigrated from Byzantium converted many Mongol and Turkic tribes to Christianity, some settled Uighurs and some Khorezmians, and Orthodox missionaries baptized Bulgaria Serbia and Russia, there was no longer a restrained symbiosis, but an incorporation: the baptized Turks were accepted as their own. The last Polovtsy, betrayed by the Hungarians, found refuge from the Mongols in the Nicene Empire.

Apparently, a similar positive compliment should have taken place in Ancient Russia. And so it was, as we will soon see.  Unlike Eastern Christians, Western Christians - Catholics - treated the Eurasian steppe quite differently. In this they resemble the Chinese rather than the Persians, Greeks and Slavs. At the same time, it is important that the political conflicts between both superethnoses were episodic and much less significant than the Guelph wars with the Ghibellines (Italy). There was simply a belief that the Huns and Mongols were dirty savages, and if the Greeks were friends with them, then Eastern Christians were "such heretics that God himself was sick." But with the Spanish Arabs and Berbers in Sicily, European knights fought constantly, but treated them with full respect, although Africans deserved it no more than Asians. It turns out that the heart is stronger than the mind.

And finally, Tibet. There were two worldviews in this mountainous country: the ancient Aryan cult of Mitra - bon - and different forms of Buddhism - Kashmiri (Tantrism), Chinese (Chan-contemplation Buddhism) and Indian: Hinayana and Mahayana. All religions were proselytizing and spread in the oases of the Tarim basin and in Transbaikalia. Mahayana Buddhism, was quickly supplanted by Islam, it was established in Yarkend and Khstan, Hinayana Buddhism, peacefully coexisting with Nestorianism, was established in Kucha, Karashar and Turfan, and bon, the religion of Genghis' ancestors and descendants, gained sympathy in Transbaikalia. Bon got along with Christianity, but the Mongols and Tibetans did not accept Chinese teachings, even Chan Buddhism. This cannot be accidental, so with Tibet, the steppe people had a positive compliment.

As we can see, the manifestation of complimentarity does not depend on state expediency, economic conjuncture or the nature of the ideological system, because complex dogmatics are inaccessible to the understanding of most neophytes. And yet the phenomenon of complementarity exists and plays a very significant role in ethnic history, if not decisive. How to explain it? The hypothesis of biofields with different rhythms, i.e. oscillation frequencies, suggests itself. Some coincide and create a symphony, others - a cacophony: this is clearly a natural phenomenon, and not the work of human hands.

Of course, one can ignore ethnic likes or dislikes, but is it advisable? After all, here lies the key to the theory of ethnic contacts and conflicts, and not only the III-XII centuries.

The Turkic-Mongols were friends with the Orthodox world: Byzantium and its Slavic companions. They quarreled with Chinese nationalists and helped the Tang Empire as much as they could, or, what is the same, the Tabgach ethnic group, except when Chinese literates prevailed at the imperial court in Chang'an.

The Turks got along with the Muslims, although this led to the formation of chimeric sultanates, more among Iranians than among Arabs. But the Turks stopped the aggression of Catholic Romano-Germanic Europe, for which they still suffer complaints.

The international situation around the shores of the Caspian Sea was built on these invisible threads before the Mongols' performance. But even after the Mongol campaigns, the constellation changed only in details, by no means fundamental, which can be checked by any reader familiar with elementary universal history.

107. THERE ARE NO INFERIOR ETHNIC GROUPS!

Now that the entire arsenal of ethnological science is in our hands, and we know about the invisible threads of sympathies and antipathies between superethnoses [7], it is time to put an end to the question of the "inferiority" of steppe peoples and refute the bias of Eurocentrism, according to which the whole world is only the barbaric periphery of Europe.

The very idea of "backwardness" or "savagery" can arise only when using a synchronistic time scale, when ethnic groups that actually have different ages are compared as if they are peers. But this is just as pointless as comparing a professor, a student and a schoolboy at one moment, and it doesn't matter on what basis: either by the degree of erudition, or by physical strength, or by the amount of hair on the head, or, finally, by the effectiveness of the game of money.

But if we accept the principle of diachrony - counting by age - and compare a first-grader with a student and a professor when they were also seven years old, then the comparison will have not only meaning, but also a scientific perspective. The same is the case in ethnology. Diachrony will always remind you that the Europeans who are now civilized are old and therefore arrogant and proud of the culture accumulated over the centuries, like all ethnic groups in old age, but it will also remind you that in their youth they were wild Franks and Normans who learned theology and bathing in the bath, from the Moors who were cultured at that time.

Ethnology does not raise questions about who is more cultured: the Huns or the ancient Greeks, the Turks or the Germans, because cultural and creative people today, after 300 years, suddenly turn out to be indifferent inhabitants, and even fifteen hundred years ago, no one knew their names. It is impartial, since the only measure is the level of passionate tension, manifested in the frequency of events, the sequence of which forms a smooth melody of alternating epochs and, finally, a noticeable change of phases of ethnogenesis. You can endlessly find out which is better - a felt yurt, a wooden hut, a marble villa or a stone castle, and never come to a conclusion, because there is no criterion for such a comparison, but comparing the Huns, Hellenes and Germans, for example, by their sacrifice and intensity of passion, it is easy to make sure that in the "young summers" they were equally "fired up", ready to give their lives for their ideals, in "maturity" they fought for freedom, equally shining with intelligence and endurance, and in "old age" their feelings cooled equally and their strength weakened.

"But how can you compare some Huns with cultured Hellenes and civilized Germans? - another reader will be outraged." After all, the Huns are savages, cruel and rude, and the Hellenes are the bearers of the highest ideas, the teachers of all the later philosophers, poets and artists!" We got used to this assessment so much that it began to seem blasphemy to think about its correctness. And if you still think about it? Let us recall how often the usual opinions were refuted by scientific analysis, starting with the question of the shape of the Earth and ending with the law of conservation of energy.

We have already talked about the eternal "savagery" of the Huns and their peers, the steppe peoples, in other works.[8] We will not repeat ourselves. There is nothing much to say about the civility of medieval Germans and French. In the era of the Hohenstaufen and the "fist law", Germany, like France at the end of the Hundred Years' War, was still a very non-university country. And what they will become in the era of obscuration, we can only guess. Therefore, let's compare the Huns, Germany and Hellas by the same ages, counting the latter from the moment of "birth" (as independent ethnopolitical systems) recorded by history. We know that these dates were preceded by a relatively short incubation period, but we will omit it, because the chronology within this period is always inaccurate. But the moments of entering the arena of history are always bright and convex. For the Huns, this is 209 BC, for the German Kingdom - the Treaty of Verdun in 841 - the formation of the German nation on the territory of the "Holy Roman Empire" of the Arelat, French, Lombard, Aquitanian kingdom, and for Hellas the date is vague [9] - VII century BC. This is the "Great Greek Colonization" and the formation of states with written laws. To clarify, let's choose Athens as the standard. Then a similar date of the beginning of formation will be 621 BC, i.e. Dragon laws. Sparta appeared a little earlier, but this inaccuracy can be ignored.

All three ethnic groups have passed the phase of passionate ascent and entered the phase of overheating (akmatic) for a period of about 250-300 years. The Xiongnu - from the creation of the ancestral state in 209 BC to 46 AD - the collapse into the Northern and Southern powers. Germany - from 841 to 1147 - the unsuccessful crusades of Emperor Conrad III in Asia Minor and Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony against the Wends (Polabian Slavs). Athens (the leading subethnos) - from 621 BC to 449 BC - the end of the Greco-Persian War. In the overheating phase, the Huns, who formed a single superethnic system with Xianbi, from 46 to 181 although they fought among themselves, they won victories over all their neighbors: the Han Empire, the Wusuns, the Dinglins and the Alans. In Germany, the Hohenstaufens in the struggle with the popes held out until 1268 and perished, leaving the country in complete disintegration. But the war for the Baltic States has been won. Athens and Sparta, having wasted their strength in the Peloponnesian and Theban wars, became victims of Macedonia (in 337 BC), which was part of the superethnic system of the Greco-Roman world.

In the phase of fracture, which in Asia was complicated by the Great Drought of the third century, the steppe empire disintegrated into small chimeric states. In Germany - the Interregnum and the "fist right", the pressure of the Czechs, which resulted in the Hussite wars, and a brilliant Revival against the background of general degeneration. And so it dragged on until 1436, i.e. until the end of the Hussite wars. And what about Hellas? Thanks to the domination of Macedonia, the Greeks are being "dispersed" all the way to India, the construction of Alexandria and Antioch, the heyday of Hellenism. But the Hellenes and Macedonians themselves were conquered by the cruel Romans. The last stronghold of Hellenism - Corinth was destroyed in 146 BC. In the inertial phase, the Huns were greeted by the Turkuts, who recreated the steppe empire (546-745). The Habsburgs (1438-1918) brought order to Germany, and the Hellenistic states were conquered by Rome (Pergamum - in 130, Pontus - in 63, Syria - in 62 and Egypt - in 30 BC) and experienced this phase together with it, as well as the next - the phase of obscuration. The last Huns - Turks-chateau - in obscuration still performed the last feats and entered homeostasis as a relic - Onguts, or white Tatars. The Greeks and Romans did not succeed.

Even with a very cursory comparison, which can be carried out with even greater accuracy if desired, in order to detect similarities in individual details, it is clear that there is no reason to consider the Huns inferior to Europeans, both modern and ancient.

Rather, on the contrary, we must pay tribute to the intelligence and tact of the Huns, Tabgachs and Turks. They treated the surrounding peoples as equals, even if unlike them. They did not create an ideology of peripheral barbarism. And thanks to this, despite the inequality of forces, they withstood the age-old struggle and won, establishing as a principle NOT the extermination of neighbors, but the retention of their territory - the motherland - and their cultural and historical tradition - the fatherland. And that's why they have existed for their 1500 years and left the unconquered Great Steppe as a legacy to the Mongols and the Russians.

The Mongols were not a continuation of the Huns and Turks, either in genetic or ethno-cultural aspects. They had in common only in the ethno-landscape aspect - forest-steppe and steppe, which determined the features of their economy. But their ethnic rise was associated with a new passionate push. It means that they were not the continuers, but the initiators, and the reason for their rise is another fluctuation of the biosphere. Not to describe this phenomenon when it is possible and easy to do is an unforgivable sin before Science. Therefore, let us turn to the dark period of the history of Asia, in order to shed light on it with the help of geography.

108. EASTERN OUTSKIRTS

And now, having described the background, we will introduce the reader to the actors, who in our case will not be persons, but ethnic groups, each of which lived in a strictly limited territory. Tatars who wore a scythe roamed on the right bank of the Argun River, like their Tabgach ancestors[10]. R. Grousse refers them to the Tunguska group [11], but the Mongols explained to them without translators. Next to the Tatars lived the Khonkirats, an ethnic group formed by a mixture of ancient Turkic tribes and Mongols, a large group of which spread from Kerulen to Onon. In the central part of the Great Steppe, on the banks of the Tola and the outskirts of the Gobi, lived the Keraites, the most cultured people among the nomads, and to the west of them - the Naimans, a fragment of the power of the Kara-Kitai (Khitan), taken to the west by Elyu Dashi. The main part of this ethnic group occupied Dzungaria and Semirechye. The Kara-Chinese Gurkhans were subordinated to the Ydykuts of Uighur and the sultans of Central Asia before the Amu Darya, with the exception of Khorezm. From Altai to the Carpathians stretches the Kipchak steppe, in the XII-XIII centuries. by no means resembling a desert. The rivers were full of water, the terraces of the river valleys were covered with thickets of talus, pine forests and groves of alder and birch were not uncommon on the watershed massifs. The dry-loving vegetation of the grass and sagebrush steppes alternated with the more moisture-loving - cereal. From the north, this steppe was closed by a wall of forest, and from the south - a chain of oases.

But these fertile places were so beautiful because the population in them was very rare: Cumans, i.e. Polovtsy, descendants of the western branch of the Dinlin - Kipchaks lived there. The direct descendants of the Dinlins, the Yenisei Kyrgyz, continued to live in the fertile Minusinsk basin, engaged in irrigation farming and sedentary cattle breeding. They still preserved the rich cultural heritage of their ancestors, but abandoned the former militancy that pushed them in the IX century to conquer the expanses of the Great Steppe.

Now a large Mongolian tribe of Oirats is located to the south of them.

On the northern slopes of the Sayan Mountains lived small and disunited "forest peoples", among which were the Ugrians, related to the Ob Ostyaks, and Paleoasiates, close to the Yenisei Ketas, and Turks, and even, perhaps, Samoyed relic people, which can be seen in the mysterious merkits. Of the latter, only "fragments" remained among the Teles, Teleutes, Kireys, Bashkirs and Torgouts[12].

Already in the XIV century. the descendants of the Merkits were called Mongols, but before the conquest they were not among the Mongols [13]. They were counted with equal probability to the Turks and to the Samoyeds; the latter seems more likely, but there is no direct evidence.

From the southeast, the Great Steppe was bounded by two mighty states: the Jurchen Empire of Kin (Jin) and the Tangut kingdom of Xi-Xia. To the south lay the Chinese Song Empire, which lost the original Chinese lands of the Yellow River basin in the wars with the Tanguts and Jurchens and turned into a state of exiles who ruled over the surviving remnants of these peoples on the lands once conquered from the peoples of Southeast Asia. The Mongols did not encounter these authentic Chinese until the XIII century and, apparently, did not even know about their existence, because it was not interesting to them. But with the Jurchens and Tanguts, all the nomads of the Great Steppe were on very bad terms. And there is no trace of the former power of Tibet. Every tribe, every monastery, every fortress was wary of its neighbors, but anarchy was not the "mother of order" there. Such was East Asia in the middle of the XII century, when the Mongols entered the arena of history.

109. MONGOLS AND TATARS IN THE XII century.

The northeastern part of Mongolia and the adjacent areas of the Trans-Baikal steppe were divided between Tatars and Mongols. There are two opinions about the tribal name "Mongol": 1. The ancient Meng-gu tribe lived in the lower reaches of the Amur, but, in addition, this was the name of one of the Tatar clans that lived in Eastern Transbaikalia. Genghis Khan came from the Trans-Baikal Meng-gu and, therefore, belonged to the Tatars; the name "Mongol", which came into use only in the XIII century, came from the Chinese hieroglyphs "meng-gu", which means "to receive the ancient". This hypothesis, belonging to the academician V.P. Vasilyev, is not universally recognized. 2. The tribal name "meng-gu" (Mongol) is of very ancient origin, but it is very rare in the sources, although it is by no means mixed with "Dada" (Tatars).

In the XII century the Mongols acted as an independent people. In 1135, when the Jurchen troops reached the Yangtze and smashed the Chinese Song Empire, the Mongols defeated the Jurchen army and, after a twenty-year war, secured the cession of their rights to the lands north of the Kerulen River and the payment of annual tribute in cattle and grain. The Mongol leader was Khaburkhan, Temujin's great-grandfather. This is the most evidential opinion expressed by G.E. Grumm-Grzhimailo. The Mongols' southern neighbors, the Tatars, were more numerous and no less belligerent. Wars constantly arose between the Mongols and the Tatars, but in the middle of the XII century. the Mongols achieved a preponderance in forces. The anthropological type, which we call Mongoloid, was peculiar to the Tatars, as well as the language, which we call Mongolian. The ancient Mongols were, according to the testimonies of chroniclers and the finds of frescoes in Manchuria, a tall, bearded, fair-haired and blue-eyed people. Their descendants acquired their modern appearance by intermarriage with the numerous stunted, black-haired and black-eyed tribes surrounding them, whom the neighbors collectively called Tatars.

To understand the history of the Mongols, it should be firmly remembered that in Central Asia, an ethnic name has a double meaning: 1) the direct name of an ethnic group (tribe or people) and 2) collective for a group of tribes that make up a certain cultural or political complex, even if the tribes included in it are of different origin. This was also noted by Rashid al-Din: "Many clans delivered greatness and dignity in that they attributed themselves to the Tatars and became known by their name, just as the Naimans, Jalairs, Onguts, Keraites and other tribes, who had each their own specific name, called themselves Mongols out of a desire to transfer to themselves the glory of the latter; the descendants of these families imagined themselves from ancient times bearing this name, which in reality was not true"[14].

Based on the collective meaning of the term "Tatars", medieval historians considered the Mongols as part of the Tatars, since until the XII century the hegemony among the tribes of Eastern Mongolia belonged to the latter. In the XIII century, the Tatars began to be considered as part of the Mongols in the same broad sense of the word, and the name "Tatars" disappeared in Asia, but the Volga Turks, subjects of the Golden Horde at the beginning of the XIII century, began to call themselves so. The names "Tatars" and "Mongol" were synonymous because, firstly, the name "Tatars" was familiar and well-known, and the word "Mongol" was new, and secondly, because numerous Tatars (in the narrow sense of the word) made up the advanced detachments of the Mongolian army, since they were not spared and were put in the most dangerous places. Their opponents encountered them there and got confused in their names: for example, Armenian historians called them Mungal-Tatars, and the Novgorod chronicler in (1,234) writes: "In the same summer, according to our sins, I don't know the tongues, no one knows their goodness: who is the essence, and who is the source, and what is their language, and which tribe is the essence, and what is their faith: and my name is Tatars..." It was the Mongol army.

Medieval historians divided the eastern nomadic peoples into "white", "black" and "wild" Tatars. The "white" Tatars were nomads who lived south of the Gobi Desert and carried out border service in the Kin (Jurchen) Empire. Most of them were Turkic-speaking Tanguts and Mongolian-speaking Khitans. They dressed in silk clothes, ate from porcelain and silver dishes, had hereditary leaders who studied Chinese literacy and Confucian philosophy.

"Black" Tatars, including Keraites and Naimans, lived in the Steppe, far from cultural centers. Nomadic cattle breeding provided them with prosperity, but not luxury, and subordination to "natural khans" - independence, but not security. The constant war in the Steppe forced the "black" Tatars to live in a heap, fenced off at night with a ring of carts (kuren), around which guards were posted. However, the "black" Tatars despised and pitied the "whites" because they sold their freedom to foreigners for silk rags and bought the fruits of civilization with humiliating, in their opinion, a slavery.

The "wild" Tatars of Southern Siberia hunted and fished: they did not even know the khan's authority and were ruled by elders - biki, whose power was based on authority. They were constantly beset by hunger and need, but they sympathized with the "black" Tatars, who were forced to take care of the herds, obey the khans and reckon with numerous relatives. The Mongols lived on the border between the "black" and "wild" Tatars as a transitional link between them.[15]

And now a small but necessary explanation. In the preliminary work ("The Search for a Fictional Kingdom"), the goal was to criticize these sources in order to establish the sequence of events. This was a purely humanitarian study, and, therefore, it is a step towards a historical and geographical "empirical generalization" that poses the problem of describing a local fluctuation of the biosphere - a passionate push in Mongolia. Therefore, although the mentioned book and the proposed chapter are based on a chronological principle, they do not duplicate, but complement each other.

The first allowed us to establish the course of events, the second gives a natural science explanation. The first did not exhaust the topic, the second would be impossible without the first, like a house without a foundation. Such is the hierarchy of science. Without it, science is helpless, and when used, it is powerful.

110. SHUFFLING

History rarely stands still. Two new ethnoses that redraw the map of Asia - Manchus and Mongols - arose in the XII century from a passionate push - a mutation that changed the stereotype of behavior of the descendants of farmers and pastoralists who settled in the taiga (forest). The ancestors of these warlike peoples were peaceful, and so were their northern neighbors in Siberia and on the Amur. The area of the shock was small - from Primorye to the shores of Selenga, on the meridian of Lake Baikal. Consequently, if this push had not been there, then the eastern strip of the outskirts of the taiga and the Great Steppe would have been an ethnographic continuation of Altai, Siberia and the Amur region. There would be brave, kind, honest, but uncreative and uninitiative people. Their participation in global ethnogenesis would be reduced to repelling aliens, usually unsuccessful, because defense is a worst way of self-defense.

In contrast to the western edge of the Eurasian continent, where the four superethnoses were closely connected with each other by their cultural traditions, way of farming, social relations, and even religions, because Christians considered Allah the Arabic name of the First Person of the Trinity, and Muslims revered Isa and Mariam - Jesus and Mary - as prophets, predecessors Mohammed, on the eastern outskirts of the situation was fundamentally different. The Chinese of the Middle Plain and the nomads of the Great Steppe were so different from each other that they did not adopt each other's cultures. The Kidani were an exception. This is what led them as an ethnic group to their demise.

The secret of the course of events entailing aggravating consequences was, perhaps, not in the sphere of economics or politics, but in the phenomenon of ethnology that influenced people's behavior. The Chinese and nomads differed so much in the stereotype of behavior that they did not want, could not, and did not try to establish contact with each other, and did not look for reasons for it, considering contacts to be meaningless at all. Some details of everyday life were important here.

First of all, the Chinese did not use dairy products, the main food of the nomads, and mutual understanding was absent due to the contempt for such food of some and misunderstanding and irritation about such rejection of others. For a Chinese, all his father's wives are his mothers. For a Hun, for example, or a Turk, there is only one mother, the father's concubines are girlfriends, and the widow of the elder brother becomes his lawful wife, whom he is obliged to support, and feelings do not play a role.

A woman in China in those centuries did not work, she gave birth and nursed children and had no rights. In the Great Steppe, a woman did all the housework and was the owner of the house; her husband owned only weapons, because he was supposed to die in the war. The armies of China necessarily relied on a staff of informers, and the Turks, who were in the Chinese service, did not tolerate this and the revealed informers were killed. Representatives of the two great superethnoses could not get along side by side. The optimal solution for making contacts was to live peacefully, but separately. And it wasn't always possible. Therefore, nomads borrowed culture and worldviews from the West, and not from China at all.

The Uighurs borrowed Manichaeism from Iran, the nomads adopted Nestorianism from Syria, and theistic Buddhism from Tibet. True, Buddhism was adopted later, but the principle of borrowing remained the same. From China, only silk was borrowed, and in addition to it - cookies and in some cases porcelain dishes. The only exceptions were the Khitan in Manchuria, some of whom embraced Chinese culture sincerely and enthusiastically. The other part stubbornly adhered to their steppe traditions. And that's what came out of it.

The Khitan were an ancient people who appeared simultaneously with the Huns, Sarmatians and Cumans. They reached the phase of homeostasis - a wise and strong old age, but, carried away by a foreign, Chinese, culture, really charming, turned their khanate into a chimeric Liao empire.

In the XII century. there was a new explosion of ethnogenesis. The Jurchens, who lived on the plain of Ussuri and Sungari, rebelled against the Khitans in 1115 and crushed the Liao Empire by 1125. The cultured Khitan submitted to the victors. And the backward, i.e. uneducated, but not losing their steppe valor, retreated with battles to the Semirechye and there faced the Seljuks, with the great Sultan Sanjar himself! Between 1134 and 1141 there were stubborn battles between the Khitan gurkhan Yelyu Dashi and Sultan Sanjar. Gurkhan was supported by "backward" steppe dwellers. Sultana - the best warriors from Khorasan, Sejestan, Gur, Ghazna and Mazanderan - the forces of the world of Islam that have not yet been squandered - only 100 thousand soldiers. Gurkhan has won! The Sultan fled, leaving his family and 30 thousand brave comrades killed in a fair fight. The Seljuk sultan collapsed after this battle, but the Khitan showed amazing moderation: they imposed a small tribute on the cities of Central Asia and began to graze cattle in the Semirechye and Dzungaria.

So, the ratio of the levels of passionarity, manifested in the degree of combat capability (descending series), is clearly established: Jurchen > Khitan > Seljuks > Greeks and Crusaders > Arabs [16]. But when an even more passionate ethnic group, the Mongols, appeared, events occurred, which will be discussed below.

NOTES

[1] See: Gumilev L.N. Ethnogenesis and the biosphere of the Earth. Issue IV. M., 1987.

[2] Including Georgia.

[3] See: Gumilev L.N.

[4] See: Gumilev L.N. Hunnu; he. The Huns in China. and the ancient Turks.

[5] See: Gumilev L.N. The Search for a fictional Kingdom.

[6] Kychanov E.I. Only letters sound. M., 1965.

[7] See: Gumilev L.N. Ethnogenesis and the biosphere of the Earth. L., 1989.

[8] See: Gumilev L.N. Hunnu; he. The Huns in China; he. Ancient Turks.

[9] The date of the first Olympiad - 776 BC, as well as the date of the foundation of Rome - 753 BC, should be considered legendary. Maybe this is the beginning of the incubation period, but it is difficult to prove it. We will do without these dates.

[10] See: Gumilev L.N. Huns in China.P.41.

[11] Grousset R. Histoire de L'Extreme-Orient. Paris, 1929. P. 404.

[12] See: Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Western Mongolia... Vol. II. p.425.

[13] See: Rashid al-Din. Collection of chronicles (hereinafter: Rashid-ad-Din).Vol.1. Book 1 / Per. L.A. Khetagurova. M.; L., 1952. P. 77.

[14] Rashid-ad-Din. Vol. 1. Book 1. P. 102.

[15] Man-da Bay-lu Sher. And comment. N.C. Munkueva M., 1975. pp. 46-48.

[16] See the synchronistic table

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