The origin of the Kara-Kirghese, Levshine says, is
lost in the night of fable and of Turkish history. That
they are one of the ancient peoples of Central Asia he
argues because in 569 a .d . a Kerkhiz or Kirghiz slave
(if this do not mean Cherkess or Circassian, as some
think) was given by Dizabul, a Central Asian khan,
to a Constantinopolitan envoy returning to Justin II.
Abul-Ghazi mentions the power of the Kirghese
anterior to the times of Jinghiz Khan, placing their
location between the rivers Selenga and Ikar-
Mourane* Chinese historians of the seventh century
knew them as Khakas, inhabiting a wide extent of
country, and in intimate relations with the Chinese,
Arabs, and people of Eastern Turkistan. In the
tenth century the might of the Khakas declined, and
they disappear from history. It is not improbable,
Mr. Howorth thinks, that by Khakas, or Hakas, the
Chinese meant the Oghuz Turks of the Arab geographers,
called Odkhoz by the Nubian geographer.
These were apparently the ancestors of the Kazaks,
and were, like the latter, divided into three Hordes.
In the thirteenth century we again meet with
Kirghese, called by the Chinese K i-li-k i-tsi. The
movements among the nomad tribes between the
tenth and thirteenth centuries seem to have cut the
Inner Horde, perhaps 150,000.” These numbers, however, seem to me
too small, for according to Kostenko and the numbers I gave in previous
chapters, they stand thus :—
Akmolinsk . . 339,003
Ferghana . . . 126,006
Semipolatinsk . . 489,134
Zarafshan . . . 695
Semirechia . . 59S>237
Amu-daria . . . 31,385
Syr-daria . . . 7° 9>37° I 2,290,830
* Levshine then gives the discussions upon this by Fischer and
Klaproth, Part I I ., Chap. i., p. 119, upon which Valikhanoff, p. 271,
throws further light in treating of the Dikokamenni Horde, whilst
Dr. Schuyler puts their many pag es in few words. Vol. ii., p. 136.
Kirghese in two, the greater portion being where the
Kara-Kirghese now are, and the remainder in Siberia,
on the upper waters of the Yenesei. This latter portion
disappeared apparently in the eighteenth century,
partly conquered by the Russian colonists, and partly
cut off by or absorbed into the Kalmuks. A t the
end of the century the Kara-Kirghese were subject to
the Chinese. Subsequently they came under the
dominion of Khokand, but in 1842 they made themselves
practically independent until, as I have shown
in a former chapter, the disputes of the different
tribes* especially those of Bogu and Sary-Bagysh,
caused them, one after another, to ask to be taken
under Russian protection. Reclus gives their number
at from 350,000 to 400,000.
Concerning the origin of the Kazaks, sometimes
called Kirghese-Kazaks, Levshine gives no less than
seven traditions, the first of which makes them emigrants
from the Crimea, and the O . . third affirms that
their ancestors lived on the banks of the Euphrates*
If this latter were true, it would help to throw light
upon Kirghese customs now obtaining, which were
known to the great-grandchildren of Abraham. From
the Euphrates this tradition says they were driven by
the Turks on the land of the wild Kirghese, to whose
khan they submitted, and since he employed them
only as “ Kazaks ” for fighting his enemies, they
got the name of Kirghese-Kazaks-Ilf.£., Kazaks of
the Kirghese Khan. Other traditions make them
descended from the Turkish tribes of Central Asia
and Siberia, that is, from the Ghuz or Oghuz of the
Arabs, of whom the Comans of the Russian steppes
and the original unsophisticated Turkomans were
branches, which is the explanation favoured by
v o l . 1. 20