Chik

The Chik lived on the upper Yenisei, between the river and the Sayan mountains.^[1] They are known from Bilge Khan’s account of his own campaigns, where they stand beside the Az and the Kırgız. They also appear on the Uyghur stone of Šine-Usu.^[2]^[3]

Bilge Khan’s campaign over the Kem

Bilge Khan was twenty-six when the Chik became his enemies together with the Kırgız. He campaigned against them over the river Kem. He fought at Orpin and beat their army.^[2]^[3] The next sentence is damaged. It says that the Az were brought into submission again.^[2]^[3] At twenty-seven the khan marched against the Kırgız. He broke a way through snow lying to a lance’s depth, crossed the Kögmen range and fell on them in their sleep.^[2]^[3]

The campaign against the Chik may date to 709, the year before the campaign against the Kırgız.^[4] The inscription gives no year.^[5]

Under the Uyghurs

The Šine-Usu stone of Bayanchur Khan records wars with or involving the Nine Tatars, the Chik, the Karluk, the Basmıl and the Türgeš, among other peoples.^[6] It may record clashes of the Uyghurs with the Chik and the Kirghiz on the Yenisei in 750 and 751. The stone would then name a Kirghiz khan.^[7] Parts of the stone are not well preserved.^[6]

Location

The Göktürks crossed the Kem for the campaign but are not said to have crossed the Sayan. For that reason the Chik may have lived south of the Sayan, on the streams that form the headwaters of the Yenisei.^[4] Alternatively they lived between the upper Yenisei and the Sayan. It notes that they are usually named together with the Az and the Kırgız.^[1] Modern accounts also name the upper Yenisei basin in central South Siberia as the domain of the Kırgız and Chik tribes. The runiform epitaphs found there are mostly in the same script as the Orkhon stones.^[8]

Later interpretations

No source describes the Chik, their language or their customs.^[5] Three remarks concern their later fate. The first counts them, with the Az, among the Turkic and other dependants whom the Kirghiz called Kyshtym.^[9] The second sees them as one of the groups that went into the making of the Tuvans.^[10] Archaeology adds the third: the local Tuvan population of the Uyghur age, most likely the Chik, had a culture of Old Turkic character.^[11] The Chik rest on these two inscriptions and on the readings of them.

References

^ a b Golden 1992, p. 143
^ a b c d Bilge Khan inscription; Ross 1930, p. 873
^ a b c d Tekin 1968, p. 276
^ a b Barthold 1927, p. 14
^ a b Bilge Khan inscription
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 158
^ Barthold 1927, p. 15
^ Erdal 2004, p. 4,7
^ Kocobekov 2015, p. 16
^ Golden 1992, p. 415
^ Savinov 1978, p. 210

Sources

Bilge Khan inscription

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)
Muratbek Kocobekov, Kırgızların Sayan-Altay Bölgesi'ndeki Komşuları (2015)
D. G. Savinov, Etnokul'turnye svjazi enisejskich kyrgyzov i kimakov v IX–X vv. [Этнокультурные связи енисейских кыргызов и кимаков в IX–X вв.] (1978)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)