Inal

Inal is a title that Rashīd ad-Dīn gives to the princes of the Kirghiz in his account of the tribes of southern Siberia before the Mongol conquest. He names idi as the title of their famous and respected nobles.^[1] A modern study holds that the scattered Kirghiz princes of the Yenisei and the Altai bore the title inal after the great state ended in the first quarter of the tenth century. In the old Turkic states, the study holds, the title stood below khan and tegin.^[2] The study takes the rank from a work of the seventeenth century, the genealogy of the Turkmen by Abū l-Ghāzī, and not from a text of the early Turkic states.^[2] Outside the Kirghiz the word is recorded for the Kimek, whose chief Gardīzī calls Yinal yabgu. It is also recorded for the Oghuz, whose yabgu had a deputy that Ibn Faḍlān names the Lesser Yinal.^[3]

Name tablets on the donor paintings of Bezeklik in the oasis of Turfan give the title in Old Uyghur. On a group of three men in long coats from temple 1, two of the three tablets carry the word inal, and the middle one is scratched out.^[4] The best preserved is read särinč buga inal körki ol, “this is the likeness of the inal Särinč Buga”. The left one is read möngü k(?) inal ning körki bu ärür, with a doubtful letter after möngü.^[4] The title thus stands on tablets of painted donors as well as in the Kirghiz, Kimek and Oghuz reports. The date of the painting is uncertain.^[4]

Three scholars, S. E. Yakhontov, G. P. Suprunenko and R. Alimov, take the Chinese 阿熱 to be a writing of this title. I. L. Kyzlasov and Mokeev answer that aco and inal are two titles, since inal serves only for the head of a principality.^[5] Mokeev takes the use of inal and idi side by side in the thirteenth century as proof that the two were not one title.^[6]

References

^ Mokeev 2019, p. 33
^ a b Mokeev 2019, p. 30
^ Gardīzī ca. 1050, p. 203,209; Ibn Fadlan; Golden 1992, p. 203,209
^ a b c von Le Coq 1913, pl. 38
^ Mokeev 2019, p. 31–32,34
^ Mokeev 2019, p. 34

Sources

Ibn Fadlan

Literature

Anvarbek Mokeev, Yenisey ve Altay Kırgızlarında siyasi unvan olarak aco ve idi terimlerinin menşesi ve anlamı (2019)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Gardīzī, زين الأخبار Zayn al-Akhbār (ca. 1050)
Albert von Le Coq, Chotscho. Facsimile-Wiedergaben der wichtigeren Funde der ersten Königlich Preussischen Expedition nach Turfan in Ost-Turkistan (1913)

Unresolved source identifiers: zayn-al-akhbar