The Kyrgyz of today live in the Tian Shan and speak a language very close to Kazakh. A descent from the Yenisei Kirghiz would therefore need a migration, a change of language and changes of physical type.[1] L. R. Kyzlasov separates the modern Kyrgyz entirely from the Yenisei people, whose descendants he finds in the Khakas. He has the Kyrgyz of the Tian Shan come from northern Mongolia in the early Mongol age. Svat Soucek follows him.[2] S. M. Abramzon has the Kyrgyz take shape in the eastern Tian Shan between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. He denies a mass migration from the Yenisei. K. I. Petrov has their language form on the upper Yenisei and in the southern Altai in a Kipchak milieu.[3] A survey of the problem finds no evidence for a mass migration to the Tian Shan. It holds that the name must have come from the Yenisei group. It cannot say whether the name came as an ethnonym or as a political name.[4]

Mustafa Kalkan argues that the Kirghiz were moved to the Tian Shan from the time of the Xiongnu on. Yu. S. Khudyakov and A. Yu. Borisenko close with the claim that the descendants of the Old Kyrgyz could reclaim the mountains of Tengir-Too and restore their statehood in the Kyrgyz Republic. Both are positions of the national historiography of Kyrgyzstan.[5] A history of the Yenisei Kirghiz of 2002 says that the people continued on the upper Yenisei. It says that their link with the Kyrgyz of the Tian Shan is unclear.[6] It notes that some scholars see the beginnings of a movement to the northern slopes of the Tian Shan as early as the first century BC. They see a stronger movement in the eighth to tenth centuries and later stages in the Mongol age. The history adds that the theories conflict.[6] The Kirghiz were caught up in the Mongol wars of succession. Some movements of Kirghiz are thought to have begun in them.[6]

The graves of the Yenisei Kirghiz of the ninth and tenth centuries form a chain from the Minusinsk basin through Tuva, the Altai and eastern Kazakhstan to the eastern spurs of the Tian Shan.[7]

The runiform script enters the argument as well. Some hold that the script belonged to the Kirghiz alone and not to the Turks at large. They point to the inscriptions found in Kyrgyzstan and to the name Kirghiz in the texts.[8] More than twenty runiform inscriptions had been found in the Talas region by 1993.[8] A count of about 2000 gives more than thirty for Kyrgyzstan as a whole.[9]

The origin of other peoples of the upper Yenisei is argued from clan names. Igor Kormushin, who reads the Yenisei epitaphs, holds that the Tuvan clan names Tülüş, Ondar and Kırgıs are certainly linked with the old Töles, the On Uyghur and the Kirghiz.[10] In his account, Ket and Samoyed speakers lived in Tuva in early times. They passed over to a Turkic language.[10] They formed one people.[10] Mikhail A. Chertikov, citing V. Ya. Butanaev, holds that most Khakas descend from Yenisei Kirghiz who returned from Dzungaria. The Kirghiz had moved to Dzungaria in 1703 and 1706.[11] The debate on the name of the Khakas raises the same question.

References

  1. ^ Golden 1992, p. 404
  2. ^ Golden 1992, p. 404–405
  3. ^ Golden 1992, p. 405
  4. ^ Golden 1992, p. 406
  5. ^ Kalkan 2005, p. 77,109; Khudyakov 2021, p. 77,109
  6. ^ a b c Drompp 2002, p. 486
  7. ^ Savinov 1978, p. 213
  8. ^ a b Cumagulov 1993, p. 101
  9. ^ Çetin 2000, p. 69
  10. ^ a b c V. 2000, p. 257
  11. ^ Çertikov 2013, p. 35, 39

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Mustafa Kalkan, Kırgız Boylarının Yenisey'den Çıkarılmaları ve Coğrafî Dağılımları (2005)
  • Yu. S. Khudyakov; A. Yu. Borisenko, Localization of the Kyrgyz Residence Areas in Southern Siberia and Central Asia within the Periods of late Antiquity, Early and High Middle Ages (2021)
  • 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)
  • Michael R. Drompp, The Yenisei Kyrgyz from Early Times to the Mongol Conquest (2002)
  • Çetin Cumaguloviç Cumagulov, Vilhelm Thomsen'in Çalışmaları ve Kırgızistan'da Bulunan Göktürk Yazıtları (1993)
  • Çumagulov, Çetin, Göktürk Harfli Yazıtların Kırgızistan’daki Araştırılması, Muhafazası ve Bugünkü Durumu (2000)
  • Kormuşin, İgor V., Kuzey Tuva Öğök-Turan Vadisindeki Göktürk Anıtlarının Bazı Özellikleri (2000)
  • Mihail Anatolyeviç Çertikov, Yenisey Kırgızlarının Etnik Grubu Olarak Fu-Yu Kırgızları (2013)

Related

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Peoples
Yenisei Kirghiz

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Yenisei Kirghiz and the Kyrgyz.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/historiography/yenisei-kirghiz-and-the-kyrgyz/

Last revised: 8 November 2026