Wood and Woodworking

Wood was scarce in much of the steppe and was worked all the same. The sources name timber for building, planks for coffins, gilded pillars at a court, wooden cups and figures, and woods that were traded. They name no carpenter and no wood-carver.

Timber for building

The Han Shu tells how the Xiongnu planned to build. The young chanyu Huyandi was afraid of a Han attack. His counsellor Wei Lü proposed to dig wells, build walls and raise towers to store grain, and to have Chinese guard them. The Xiongnu dug several hundred wells and felled several thousand timbers, and then the plan was dropped.^[1]

The memorial of Kül Tegin on the Orkhon stood on timber as well. Two wooden beams were laid horizontally along the walls in every cut of the pit, to hold the sides, and wooden posts stood upright in the corners.^[2] The roof of the memorial hall rested on sixteen wooden pillars, and every pillar stood on a hewn stone base.^[3] A pavilion on four wooden pillars once stood over the stele, as the post holes show.^[4] In the Altai the square enclosures of the memorials of the Türkic age have postholes with the remains of wooden pillars at their centre.^[5]

At the court of Sizabul, as Istemi is called in Menander, the Roman envoys of 569 came to a dwelling with gilded wooden pillars, where a couch of beaten gold stood on four golden peacocks.^[6] The pillars show that the court of the khan could use gilded wood. They do not show who made them.

Planks, coffins and saddles

Wood was costly where it was rare. At the aristocratic cemetery of Takhiltyn Khotgor in western Mongolia the elite of the Xiongnu were buried in decorated coffins of wooden planks. The planks of larch, in a largely treeless mountain region, must have been imported at great effort and expense.^[7] A woman of the local elite at Shombuuzyn Belchir lay in a decorated wooden coffin together with parts of a wooden cart.^[7]

In the Altai the graves of the Kok-Pash type contained wooden coffins under rectangular mounds, and the graves of the Bulan-Koby and Kok-Pash types held saddles with a wooden base.^[8] At the Kokel burial ground in Tuva, which is preserved exceptionally well, objects of wood and birch bark were recovered.^[9]

Cups, vessels and figures

Ibn Faḍlān, who travelled to the Volga in 922, describes the burial of an Oghuz man.^[10] The Oghuz dig a large pit like a house, dress the dead man in his tunic with belt and bow, and put a wooden cup filled with nabidh in his hand. They leave a wooden vessel with nabidh in front of him and set him down in a sitting position. They place a roof over him and above it a dome of clay. They hang the heads, feet, skins and tails of the sacrificed horses on wooden stakes.^[10] When a man has killed an enemy in battle, they carve wooden statues, as many as he killed, and set them on his grave.^[10]

Kashgari’s dictionary names some of the tools and wooden things of the eleventh century. They include the carpenter’s axe, a wooden plate and a piece of wood for tightening a load. They are treated in the article on felt, cloth, leather and wood in the dictionary.^[11]

Woods in the Hudud

The Hudud al-ʿĀlam names two woods that were traded. The country of the Kirghiz sends out much musk, furs, khadang wood and khalanj wood, and knife handles.^[12] The district of Chach, in the Tashkent oasis, produces great quantities of khalanj wood and bows and arrows made of khadang wood.^[13] The text does not say what trees the two woods came from. The bows and arrows of Chach show that one of the woods served the bowyer. The composite bow had a core of wood.^[14]

Open points

The sources say nothing about how the wooden planks, pillars and vessels were cut and joined, or whether the steppe peoples had carpenters of their own. The one trade term that survives is the carpenter’s axe of the eleventh century.

References

^ Han Shu, juan 94
^ Jisl 1963, p. 391
^ Jisl 1963, p. 394
^ Jisl 1963, p. 392
^ Konstantinov 2018, p. 14
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 121
^ a b al. 2023, p. 3
^ Konstantinov 2018, p. 12
^ Sadykov 2021, p. 5
^ a b c Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 75
^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 325, 341
^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 96
^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 118
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 222

Sources

Literature

Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)
Juhyeon Lee et al., Genetic Population Structure of the Xiongnu Empire at Imperial and Local Scales (2023)
Nikita Konstantinov; Vasilii Soenov; Synaru Trifanova; Svetlana Svyatko, History and culture of the early Türkic period. A review of archaeological monuments in the Russian Altai from the 4th–6th century AD (2018)
Timur Sadykov; Gino Caspari; Jegor Blochin; Sandra Lösch; Yulija Kapinus; Marco Milella, The Kokel of Southern Siberia: New data on a post-Xiongnu material culture (2021)
Lumír Jisl, Kül-Tegin anıtında 1958'de yapılan arkeoloji araştırmalarının sonuçları (1963)
M. Canard, La relation du voyage d'Ibn Fadlān chez les Bulgares de la Volga (1958)
R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
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)