Furi

The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam of 982 names a tribe Fūrī among the Kirghiz peoples.^[1] They belong to the Kirghiz, the text says, but live east of them and do not mix with the other groups. The Ḥudūd calls them man-eaters and merciless. It says that the other Kirghiz do not know their language and take them for savages.^[1] A town where the Kirghiz khan lives, written K.m.jkath, lies on this side of the Furi. See Kemijkat.^[1]

Gardīzī and Marvazī

The geographer Gardīzī, whom the commentary on the Ḥudūd quotes, describes a road east from the Kirghiz to the Furi. It has two variants: a desert road of three months, and a more northerly road of two months through forests, marshes and many streams.^[2] Wild people live in the marshes. They do not mix with others and do not understand their languages. They dress in skins and live on game. Their families go with them on campaign. They destroy their booty and keep only the arms of the enemy. If the Kirghiz take one of them prisoner, he refuses food. They hang their dead in trees to rot.^[2]

Marvazī gives the name Fūrī in a list of tribes between China and the Kirghiz.^[3] Elsewhere he describes wild people in thickets and forests “on this side of the Khirkhiz, in the direction of Chinānjkath”. They do not understand other men’s language, dress in skins and bind their dead to trees.^[4] This direction differs from that of the Ḥudūd and Gardīzī, which put the Furi east of the Kirghiz.

The three accounts are one witness. The Ḥudūd, Gardīzī and Marvazī go back to the lost work of Jayhānī. The likeness among them is therefore the likeness of one source.^[5]

Furi, Quri and Kurykan

The commentator takes the wild people of Gardīzī for the Furi and places them near Lake Baikal. He reads the name as Qūrī and sets it beside the Quri that Rashīd ad-Dīn names among the tribes near the lake.^[6] He also reports an identification of Qūrī with the Chinese Gulikan. In the Göktürk inscriptions the Gulikan follow the Kirghiz as the Kurıkan.^[7] The reference literature counts the identification as very likely. It calls the form of the name problematic, since the sources possibly give a Qun as well.^[8] The Kurykan article sets out the Chinese and inscriptional evidence.

In Kyrgyz scholarship the name Furi is said to have developed into Kurıkan by way of Hori. The Furi-Kurykan are counted among the peoples that entered the Kirghiz union and influenced the growth of the Kirghiz state.^[9] The Ḥudūd itself says that the Furi belonged to the Kirghiz and did not mix with the other groups.^[1] The sources do not say how the Furi stood to the Kirghiz khan.^[10]

References

^ a b c d Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 97
^ a b Minorsky 1970, p. 283
^ Minorsky 1942, p. 26
^ Minorsky 1942, p. 31
^ Minorsky 1955, p. 262
^ Minorsky 1970, p. 283–284
^ Minorsky 1970, p. 284
^ Golden 1992, p. 143
^ Kocobekov 2015, p. 18–19
^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam

Sources

Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam

Literature

V. Minorsky, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, "The Regions of the World": A Persian Geography 372 A.H. – 982 A.D., translated and explained, with the preface by V. V. Barthold, 2nd ed. (1970)
V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī on China, the Turks and India (1942)
V. Minorsky, Addenda to the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (1955)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Muratbek Kocobekov, Kırgızların Sayan-Altay Bölgesi'ndeki Komşuları (2015)
V. V. Barthold, Kirgizy: istoričeskij očerk [Киргизы: исторический очерк] (1927)