Az · Turkic Atlas

The Az lived in the mountain country between the western Sayan and the Altai.^[1] The Göktürk inscriptions name them beside the Kırgız and the Türgeš. A man of the Az guides Tonyukuk’s army over the Kögmen. The Az are set in order together with the Kırgız. Kül Tegin takes the chief of the Az with his own hand.^[2]

The guide of the Kögmen

Tonyukuk meant to strike the Kırgız before the three enemy khans could join. He had heard that only one road led over the Kögmen and that snow had closed it.^[3] He asked for a guide and found a man of the Az. “My own land is Az,” the man said. There was a halting place, he said, and one could go along the river Anı, where a single horse could pass.^[3] For ten nights the army worked along the mountainside through the drifts. The guide had led it wrong, and he was cut down.^[4] That a man of the Az knew the pass suggests that his country lay near the Kögmen. The text names no place for it.

Under the Türgeš and under the Göktürks

In the Kül Tegin inscription, the Az have a ruler whom an overlord has put over them. At Bolču, Kül Tegin takes “the Türgeš khan’s minister, the governor of the Az” with his own hand.^[5] The governor bears the title tutuk. Some scholars derive it from the Chinese dudu, “military governor”.^[1] The Az were therefore subject to the Türgeš khan.

After that, the Göktürks dealt with the Az twice. The Kırgız khan Bars Beg had fallen in the campaign over the Kögmen. Then the khan says that “we set the Az and the Kırgız in order, and came home.”^[5] Later the Az became enemies. Kül Tegin, then thirty-one, fought them at the Black Lake. He rode the white Alp Šalčı and took the iltäber of the Az with his own hand. “The Az people ceased to exist there,” the inscription says.^[6] Bilge Khan’s own record of his campaigns has a damaged passage in which he brings the Az into submission again. The passage follows the campaign over the river Kem against the Chik.^[7] Under the Uyghurs, the word turns up again. The Tariat inscription of Bayanchur Khan has az buyruk among the great ones of the khan. Its editor translates this as Az ministers.^[8] The north face of the same stone lists the khan’s cavalry as the Nine Tatars, the Az and the Tongra.^[9]

The text calls the brown horse that Kül Tegin rode in two battles against the Nine Oguz az yagız. The translation gives this as the “brown Az horse”.^[5] The text does not say whether it was a horse of the Az or only bears the word.^[5]

The word az

Az is also an Old Turkic word for “few”. The working translation of the Kül Tegin inscription takes it in this sense where the khan says that he made “the few many”. It takes the word as the ethnonym where it stands beside the Kırgız or names a governor.^[5] This choice decides whether a passage is about a people or about a number. The inscription gives no sign.

Location and descent

Some scholars place the Az south-west of the Kirghiz, between the Sayan range and the Altai, because the inscriptions name them several times with the Kırgız and once with the Türgeš.^[10] Others put them in the western Sayan and western Tuva.^[1]

There are three theories about their descent. The first connects them with the Iranian As and with an Azi people that the Muslim geographers place near the Čigil and the Türgeš. The second regards them as a Turkic people. The third regards them as a Ketic people, comparable to the Assans.^[1] A further suggestion is that the Az, with the Chik and others, went into the making of the Tuvans.^[11]

Two theories concern the name rather than the people. The first identifies the Az as the dominant tribe of the Yenisei Kirghiz and the Chinese title aco of their ruler as a rendering of the tribal name. The second rejects this, because the Chinese text does not attach the title to a clan name.^[12] The articles on Are and the Kirghiz Khaganate treat the title. A third view counts the Az, with the Chik, among the dependants whom the Kirghiz called Kyshtym.^[13] None of these theories is settled, and the inscriptions give the Az no more than the lines above.

References

^ a b c d Golden 1992, p. 142
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 270, 286
^ a b Tonyukuk inscription
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 286
^ a b c d e Kül Tegin inscription
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 270
^ Bilge Khan inscription; Ross 1930, p. 873
^ Saadettin 1995, p. 75
^ Aydın 2013, p. 18
^ Barthold 1927, p. 14
^ Golden 1992, p. 415
^ Mokeev 2019, p. 31
^ Kocobekov 2015, p. 16

Sources

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
V. V. Barthold, Kirgizy: istoričeskij očerk [Киргизы: исторический очерк] (1927)
E. Denison Ross (after Vilhelm Thomsen), The Orkhon Inscriptions; The Tonyukuk Inscription. Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen's Final Danish Rendering (1930)
Anvarbek Mokeev, Yenisey ve Altay Kırgızlarında siyasi unvan olarak aco ve idi terimlerinin menşesi ve anlamı (2019)
Muratbek Kocobekov, Kırgızların Sayan-Altay Bölgesi'ndeki Komşuları (2015)
Gömeç, Saadettin, Terhin Yazıtı'nın Tarihi Açıdan Değerlendirilmesi (1995)
Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
Erhan Aydın, Tariat Yazıtı’nın kuzey yüzünün 5. satırı üzerine yeni okuma ve anlamlandırma önerileri (2013)