Tuz Köl of the Karluks

The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam of 982 names a salt lake in the country of the Khallukh.^[1] The translator and the literature equate the Khallukh with the Karluks.^[2] The lake is called Tuz Köl, which is Turkic for “Salt Lake”.^[3] The article on salt sets the notice beside the other reports of salt in the Turkic lands.

The two notices

The first notice stands in the chapter on seas and lakes, which lists eleven salt lakes. Tuz Köl is the tenth.^[4] It lies in the land of the Khallukh and is ten farsangs long and eight broad.^[4] Salt forms in it, and from it comes salt for seven Khallukh tribes.^[4]

The second notice stands in the chapter on the Khallukh country, in its list of places. By Tüzün-ʿArj, it says, is the lake Tuz Köl, from which seven tribes of the Khallukh procure their salt.^[5] The entry before it names the village Tüzün-Bulagh, on the frontier between the Khallukh and the Yaghma.^[5] The text names none of the seven tribes.^[3] It gives no distance from Tüzün-ʿArj to the lake.

Identification

The Ḥudūd lists Issyk-Köl as the eleventh salt lake. It is thirty farsangs long and twenty broad, lies between the Chigil and the Toghuzghuz, and has the town of Barskhan on its shore.^[4] Three proposals for Tuz Köl stand beside this entry.^[6]

Vasily Barthold, in his preface to the translation, took Tuz Köl and Issyk-Köl for the same lake. He held that the different sizes given for the two did not rule this out.^[7] Vladimir Minorsky, the translator, rejected the equation. In his commentary he says that the areas and the positions of the two lakes differ. Tuz Köl lies within the limits of the Khallukh, and Issyk-Köl lies between the Chigil and the Toghuzghuz.^[8] Issyk-Köl is only slightly brackish. An abundant supply of salt from it is therefore highly improbable.^[8] Gardīzī, he notes, nevertheless calls Issyk-Köl “salt”.^[8] From the order of the entries Minorsky places Tuz Köl west of Issyk-Köl, near the places Tüzün-Bulagh and Tüzün-ʿArj.^[8]

Zeki Velidi Togan, whom Minorsky calls A. Z. Validi, proposed the lake Boro-dabasun. It lies east of Issyk-Köl, between the headwaters of the Tekes and the Kegen, and is strongly salt.^[8] A Russian description of 1913, which Minorsky quotes, says that it yielded 40,000 poods of salt a year. The Kirghiz and the Russian settlements round Issyk-Köl used it, and some of it went to China.^[8] Minorsky found the lake too far east to lie within the limits of the Khallukh.^[8]

Minorsky himself preferred the Shor Köl, a “Salt Lake” on the southern slope of the Tian Shan, about 140 kilometres north-east of Kashgar and south of the Taushqan.^[8] He quotes a traveller of 1905 who calls it a sheet of salt rather than of water. The people collect the salt, carry it as far as Kashgar and use it as it comes, without cleansing.^[8] The same traveller found that the lake once stood 350 feet higher.^[8] Minorsky takes this to account for the size that the Ḥudūd gives.^[8]

A survey of the Turkic peoples repeats the notice of the Ḥudūd. It names the lake and leaves it unplaced.^[3] Which lake the Ḥudūd means is therefore not settled.^[6]

Reliability of the notice

The Ḥudūd was finished in 982.^[9] Its notices on the Turkic peoples rest in part on an older geography, that of Jayhānī.^[10] Which notices go back to it is argued. The notice on Tuz Köl therefore describes the tenth century. It does not show that the Karluks, or anyone before them, took salt from the lake in the age of the Göktürks.

References

^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 54,98
^ Minorsky 1970, p. 28,197; Golden 1992, p. 28,197
^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 197
^ a b c d Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 54
^ a b Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 98
^ a b Minorsky 1970, p. 28,184
^ Minorsky 1970, p. 28
^ a b c d e f g h i j k Minorsky 1970, p. 184
^ Minorsky 1970
^ Minorsky 1955, p. 262–263

Sources

Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam

Literature

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)
V. Minorsky, Addenda to the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (1955)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)