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On the Westerly Drifting of Nomades, from the Fifth to the Nineteenth Century. Part IV. The Circassians and White Khazars Author(s): H. H. Howorth Source: The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870), Vol. 2, No. 2 (1870), pp. 182-192 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3014425 . Accessed: 19/06/2014 17:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870). http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:51:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 182 HOWORTH-On the WesterlyDrifting of Nomades, XXII. On theWESTERLY DRIFTING of NOMADES,from the Fifthl to the NineteenthCentury. By H. H. HOWORTH,Esq. Part IV. The Circassiansand White Khazars. (PartIII. waspublished inthis volume, pp. 83-95.) By tracingback the various lines of migration,we have at lengthsucceeded in eliminatingfrom the ethnographyof Eu- rope and SouthernAsia a mostperplexing and, in manyrespects, preponderatingelement. We have pushed back the Turks be- yond the Volga and the Oxus. Their historyin that further region,which forms the typical Turkestan,I hope to trace out in a futurepaper. At presentI must commenceto make good my rash proposition,that the Petchenegswere the firstTurks that crossedthe Volga. I call it rash, because it is directlyat issue withthe conclusionsof Dr. Latham, the mostpatient and carefulof English ethnologists,and becauiseit involvesa posi- tion which,so far as I know,is entirelynew. The northernflanks of the Caucasus form,in my opinion,one of the best ethnologicalbarometers that we possess. Its many races are the waifsand strays of invasionsthat have sweptby and throughthe greatmarching-ground of all westerninvaders, the Steppes north of the Caspian Sea and the Euxine. Each body of invaderswho has occupiedthese plains has left a por- tion of its race behind,which remnants have been pressedfor- ward into the mountainsby succeeding invaders. Thus if we peel the mountains,as it were,and removetho successivelayers of populationthat occupythem, we shall have a seriesrepresent- ing, not unfaithfully,the various tribes and races which have occupiedSouthern Russia. Accordingto Magoudi,when the Gusses crossed the Volga, theyentered the land of Kazaria. The Khazars,in the pages of Byzantine,Arabian, and Russian authorities,were the pre- cursorsof the Gusses, or Conians, and the Petchenegs. Our inquirytherefore commences with the Khazars. Who werethe Khazars ? One mistakeby one authormay divertthe reasoning on a wholescience into a viciousand wrongchannel. No better exampleof this factcan be chosenthan the case of the Khazars. Ebn Haoucal's Geography,which was writtenin 976-7, was translatedinto English by Sir Wm. Ouseley. His statements about the Khazaxi, with whom he -wascontemporary, are of course of the highest value. Sir Wm. Ouseley has unfortu- nately mistranslatedthe most importantpassage, and his mis- translationhas been followedby English inquirers. Long ago, the greatestauthority on this branch of Arabian literature, Fraehn,in his " De Chasaris,Excerpta ex scriptoribusArabicis," publishedin theMemoirs of the St. PetersburgAcademy, called This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:51:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions fromntIe Fifthto the NineteenthCentury. 183 attentionto and correctedthis mistake; and the question has been ably discussedby Vivien St. Martin. There can no longer be the slightestdoubt that Sir Wm. Ouseley gave the exact reverseof the meaning of the passage. Ebn Haoucal says the Khazars differedentirely in their language from the Turks. Ouseley made him say they were like the Turks in language. The termTurk is used by Ebn Haoucal in a morelimited sense than by many of his Byzantine and Arabian contemporaries, who apply it indiscriminatelyto the Hungarians,Bulgarians, and to all the various Nornades of the Steppes,in an almost equivalent mannerwith the ancientterm Scyth. Ahmed ben Fozlan also says that the Khazar tonguediffers from the Persian and Turk. The Khazars, as we shall presentlysee, differed fromthe Turks entirelyin theirphysique, their religion,and theirmanners, as theydid, accordingto Ebn Haoucal, in their more importantethnological differentice, as in theirlanguage. If they werenot Turks,what werethey? I cannotbelieve that a race,so veryimportant as theywere for three centuries, should have been wiped out withoutleaving a trace behind. Let us appeal, experimentallyonly, to our ethnologicalbarometer, the flanksof the Caucasus. In a previouspaper I have shownthat the Nogays, and other so-calledTartar hordesof the Kuban and the Caucasus, are the descendantsof the Petchenegsand Gusses. If we removethe Nogays, therefore,from our map, we shall perhapsmeet with some clue. The layer of population which lies immediately beyondthe Tartars is that of the Circassians. What, then, is the historyof the Circassians? This question involvesa very difficultanswer, if we are to be guidedby orthodoxtext-books. It is not deniedthat the Circassiansare, and have been, as long as traditionreaches back, the masters and leaders of the Cau- casian Tartars,of the Ossetes, and of their otherneighbours, supplyingthe princelyand governingcaste to all the northern Caucasus. Yet we are taughtto believe that these Circassians have no history,properly so called, and thatwe mustbe content to trace them,perhaps, in the Zychians&c. of the Greekwriters. I cannot believe such a position to be well foumded. Let us trace themback in somiedetail. First,we mustlimit the term Tscherkessian,or Circassian,to the inhabitantsof the two Ka- bardahs,and the Circassiansproper of the mountains,described in detail by Klaproth,under theirvarious tribal names of Bes- lenie, Muchosch, Abasech, Kemurquahe,or Tenurgoi, Hatti- quahe Attigoi, or Hattukai, Bsheduch, Schapschik,Shana, or Shani, and Schegakeh. I exclude entirelythe Abassians, or Abkhassians, classed, I know not on what authority,by Dr. Latham with the Circassians,but most sharply distinguished This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:51:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 184 HOWORTH-Onthe WesterlyDrifting of Nomades, fromthem by Klaproth. These latterhave Circassian princes, and have a fewcustoms and wordsin commonwith their mas- ters,otherwise they are verydistinct, and are really the rem- nants of the occupantsof the Circassianarea beforethe arrival of the Circassians. Having thus limitedthe name Circassianto the Kabardiens and the Circassiansproper of the mountains,let us turnto their history. First,the Kabardiens; the name is as old as the days of ConstantinePorphyrogenitus, as appliedto a large divisionof the Circassiannation. As applied to the districtnow occupied by Kabardiens, it is much more recent. Their ancient seats wereamong the Beschtau,or Five Mountains,the mostnorthern splursof the Caucasus, when in the sixteenthcentury, in the quainitlanguage of Klaproth'stranslator, " The Tscherkessians, wearyof everlastingwar, at length abandonedthe Beschtau,or the Five Mountains, and removednearer to the Terek,where theysettled on the riverBaksan, in the Riissian territory.They had then at their head two princes,the brothersKabarty-Bek, who, quarrellingon accountof this changeof abode,parted, and divided the Tscherkessiannation between them. The elder remainedon the riverBaksan, but the younger,with his fol- lowers,proceeded to the Terek,and thenceafterwards arose the division of their countryinto the Great and Little Kabardah. The princes and usdens (nobles) of the nation professedMo- hammedanism,but the mass of the people and the peasants were Christiansof the Greek persuasion,and had churchesand orthodox priests among them." This story of Klaproth's, obtained by him apparentlyfrom the Count Potocki, is so reasonable, and happened withinsuch a recent period, that it may well be accepted. It is confirmedby the traditionsof the Basians, who relate that they occupied the Kabardahs be- forethe Circassians,and were driveninto the mountainson the arrival of the latter. The subsequenthistory of the Kabar- diens is easily accessible; it would not assist us in our present inquiry. JehosaplhatBarbaro, the Venetian ambassadorto the Persian court in 1474, calls the present Kabardah by that name, accordingto Klaproth. This somewhatantedates the arrival of the Kabardiens. It may be a mistake of Barbaro; for in 1497, in a map made byFredutio of Ancona,found in thelibrary of Wolfenbuttel,the name Cabardi stands somewhatwest of the presentTajanrog. Here it is also found nearly two centuries earlier (about 1312) in some manuscriptmaps preservedat Vienna; in the latter it is spelt Cabari. The upper part of the river Belbek in the Crimea is known as the Kabarda. Lastly, ConistantinePorphyrogenitus places the Cabari on an This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143