Bay Balïq

Bay Balïq is the second of the two towns that the Uyghurs raised for themselves in the eighth century. The first is Ordu-Balık on the Orkhon.^[1] Bay Balïq stood on the Selenga, a tributary of the Orkhon, and it was built for the khan Bayanchur.^[2]

In the inscription

The khan names the town himself. The Šine-Usu inscription has him say, on its west side, that he ordered Sogdians and Chinese to build a town called Bay Balïq on the Selenga.^[2] A Turkish edition gives the sentence in the Old Turkic form Sugdak Tabgaç’ka Selene’de Bay-Balık yapıtı birtim and renders it: “I had a town called Bay-Balık built on the Selenga with the Sogdians and the Chinese”.^[3] Both editions put the Sogdians and the Chinese at the work. They are presumed to have acted as supervisors and not as labourers.^[2]

The name means Rich Town, bay being rich and balïq a town.^[1]

The date

The work began in 757.^[1] Ordu-Balık was built about the same time.^[1] The khan reigned in the years of the rebellion of An Lushan, which lasted from 755 to 763.^[4] Both towns were thus finished under one khan. This shows how quickly the Uyghurs took to building towns after founding the khaganate.^[1]

The ruin

Very little is known about Bay Balïq, and what it meant for the Uyghurs is unclear.^[1] The ruin is named only in an old Chinese chronicle and in the Šine-Usu inscription.^[5] The route of the Japanese-Mongolian expedition of 1997 passed the ruin, between Khuntag-Undur and Shiveet Ulaan. A report of the expedition notes that no archaeological work had yet been done on it.^[5]

Some scholars doubt that Bay Balïq could have been a capital. On their view the administrative seat of the Uyghurs, as of the Göktürks before them, lay further south on the Orkhon, near Karakorum or Karabalghasun.^[6]

References

^ a b c d e f Sinor 1990, p. 337
^ a b c Sinor 1990, p. 321
^ Ögel 2000, p. 185
^ Sinor 1990, p. 317
^ a b Ōsawa 2000, p. 280
^ Ögel 2000, p. 259

Sources

Šine-Usu inscription

Literature

Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş I: Türklerde köy ve şehir hayatı (2000)
Takashi Ōsawa, Moğolistan’daki Eski Türk Anıt ve Yazıtlarının 1996–1998 Yılları Arasındaki Yeni İnceleme Sonuçları (Japon–Moğol Ortak Çalışmasının Ön Raporu Olarak) (2000)