Aco

The Xin Tang Shu says that the Kirghiz call their lord 阿熱, Are, and that the ruling clan took its name from the word.^[1] Turkish and Russian scholarship identifies it with the title aco. Anvarbek Mokeev regards it as the highest rank of the Kirghiz before the title of khan came into use.^[2] Once the Uyghurs weakened, the Chinese text has the ruler call himself khan. It goes on calling him Are.^[1] According to one account, the Kirghiz ruler lost the title of khan in 758. In this account, he bears only aco, a title unknown among other Turkic peoples.^[3]

Four explanations of the word have been proposed. Some see in it a Chinese writing of the title inal. Others take it for a Samoyedic word asse, “father”. Others take it for the name of the Az tribe. A fourth group identifies it with the Turkic idi, “lord”.^[4] A fifth view finds no Old Turkic word that corresponds to it and no other evidence for it. It allows that the word was no more than the name of the ruler.^[5] The Chinese give it as the ruler’s title and as his clan name. On the Karabalghasun stele, they call the Kirghiz ruler of the same age khan. This conflict of accounts is a further reason to take it for a proper name.^[6] The same two characters stand in a Chinese report of 931 as the name of a Turk. The right form of the name seems to be A-shu.^[7]

The Kazakh scholar A. Margulan adopted the meaning “father”. By his account, aco first named the head of a large patriarchal family. It became the title of a ruler when the state arose.^[8] E. V. Sevortyan finds two parallel senses of ace and ece in the Orkhon and Yenisei texts: “rich man” or “lord”, and “woman”. He holds the first to be the more common.^[9] Mokeev finds the word in the Kül Tegin inscription as well, in the phrase eçüm apam, “my forefathers”. There it would mean “father”.^[9]

Mokeev rejects the derivation from a tribal name. The Xin Tang Shu says that the Kirghiz lord is called aco. It says that the leaders of tribes are named after their tribes. The lord’s title therefore cannot come from a tribal name.^[10] He also reports two objections of I. L. Kızlasov. The derivations from inal and from Az give two words that share no sound.^[10] Furthermore, inal named the head of a principality in the Turkic states, never the head of a state.^[10]

References

^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Mokeev 2019, p. 28–29
^ Khudyakov 2021, p. 115
^ Mokeev 2019, p. 31–33
^ Drompp 2005, p. 37,177; Golden 1992, p. 37,177
^ Drompp 2002, p. 482
^ Drompp 2005, p. 37
^ Mokeev 2019, p. 31
^ a b Mokeev 2019, p. 33
^ a b c Mokeev 2019, p. 32

Sources

Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Anvarbek Mokeev, Yenisey ve Altay Kırgızlarında siyasi unvan olarak aco ve idi terimlerinin menşesi ve anlamı (2019)
Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Michael R. Drompp, The Yenisei Kyrgyz from Early Times to the Mongol Conquest (2002)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
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)