The First Question Is What Counts As Central Asia. Most Everyone Agrees That the Former Soviet -Stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
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The first question is what counts as Central Asia. Most everyone agrees that the former Soviet -stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan) are Central Asian. Mongolia usually gets into that list as well, as does Uyghuristan/East Turkestan/Xinjiang (depending on how much you like the Chinese). Beyond that, however, you start getting disagreements- does Afghanistan count? The northern (primarily Uzbek/Tajik) parts of it? What about the Turkic and Mongolic autonomous republics along Russia's border with the -stans (Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Tuva, Altai, Sakha)? What about formerly Central Asian peoples now displaced from the region (Tatars, Turks, Azeris, Manchu, Hungarians at a stretch)? And even within the core region, there are huge differences, ethnically and linguistically, between the Persians (including Tajiks, Wakhi, and so on) and Turko-Mongols (almost everyone else); within the Turko-Mongolic group there are distinctions between Mongolic peoples and Turkic peoples, and further subdivisions within each of those. Of course you can incorporate that variety into the setting, or not, but there's a huge amount of complexity that isn't fully recognised. Another big question is the rough time period you're setting it in. In particular, the coming of Islam changed regional beliefs and customs greatly- although the practice of shamanism didn't really go away, it was absorbed into the framework of Islam, and Muslim beliefs and tropes were incorporated into regional traditions. Almost all the great Central Asian epics (Manas, Alpamys, Korkut Ata/Dede Qorqut, Köroğlu/Körgöl, and so on and so forth) are set in a post-Islamic context, and the heroes claim Islamic values, but magic of one kind or another continues to pervade the setting, and is not seen as inherently evil by any means; on the contrary, the heroes often have latent magical powers, or have close contact with magical beings (Alpamys Batyr and Manas both have magical talking horses, for example). Speaking of magic Let bards rejoice- magic, music, and storytelling were closely interlinked in Central Asian culture (the word "bakhshy", or a dialect variant thereof, means 'shaman' in Kazakh and 'troubadour' in Turkmen- originally, the word had both meanings, but it solidified into different uses in different contexts). It is generally believed across the region that humans aren't inherently magical, but can theoretically call upon spirits - nature spirits, ancestor spirits, jinni (post-Islam), or whatever else - and that those spirits can then perform what might be called magic. Calling the spirits is generally done via music (as is banishing them), with a combination of chants, wordless vocalisations, jaw harps, drums, and string instruments (of which there are a huge variety, played in a variety of ways by different people in different contexts). On a more meta level, there are fundamental distinctions between short stories about heroes (of which [YouTube] Кыдырали мен Каракат (Ханзада).flv provides an amusing modern interpretation), and the great epic cycles (dastan, or jyr, depending on where you live). The shorter stories, as anon said, are generally fairly simple in structure, with a hero (usually identifiable by some distinctive trait, such as the ability to run as fast as the wind (Zhelayak), or drink lakes dry) confronting a monster or the hero of a neighbouring group, beating the tar out of it, and getting the girl. The longer epics have some of the same features (semi-magical heroes, confrontations with local peers, and acquisition of beautiful women), but they occur in a much larger context, often opposition to a much larger external enemy (typically Persia for the Turkmen, China for the Kyrgyz, and Russia or the Junghars for the Kazakhs). The threat of the external enemy forces the hero to unite the 'nation' (wrong word, but there isn't really an equivalent for "eл" in English) to defeat them (which usually involves more defeating of local heroes, who are acknowledged as worthy opponents and sometimes incorporated into the main hero's forces). The enemy is defeated, the hero has children and dies, the tribes fragment again, and the cycle repeats (several Central Asian epics, most famously Manas, are traditionally told as inter-generational sagas, in which the story repeats (with minor variations) for each generation's great hero). Turkish, or Turkic languages/dialects, have been written in everything from runic (Orkhon script), through Uyghur, Arabic, and Sogdian scripts, plus the Georgian, Armenian, and Greek alphabets, all the way to (variant) Latin and (variant) Cyrillic. Turks are adaptable enough to use whatever script is most contextually useful for their language (and it helps that 'Turk' has traditionally been a very fluid identity, so lots of people writing in Turkish originally learned to write in a different language). Linguistic variation across Central Asia makes it impossible to provide single words. eл is Kazakh, because it's the local language I know best; "watan" is more like 'homeland' than 'nation'- it refers to a geographic location, not to the people who inhabit it. I strongly recommend the movie Жayжүpeк Mың Бaлa (translated as "Warriors of the Steppe", I believe), if you can find it with English subtitles. Sergei Bodrov's "Mongol" is also good fun, but largely a product of outsiders (Bodrov is Russian, the actor who plays Temüjin is Japanese), and not quite as authentic. Book-wise, Range of Ghosts is an interesting presentation of a fantasy Central Asia. For non-fiction, René Grousset's "Empires of the Steppe" and Svat Soucek's "A History of Inner Asia" are the classics. Slaves were certainly among the goods traded along the routes, and the steppe-dwellers were always in high demand as mercenaries thanks to their skill (as horse-archers and lancers) and loyalty (although the Seljuks are famous for having overthrown the Arab-Persian caliphate in all but name, Central Asians had a long native tradition of oathsworn bodyguards who would defend their leader to the death, and in small groups, they were generally ferociously loyal to their employer as an individual). But large-scale slavery is simply not an option for pastoral nomads (the cities are a different story), and many other things were also traded, including local animals and animal products as well as precious metals and stones from local sources (virtually all the lapis lazuli in use from ancient times until recent times came from the Pamir region, near the borders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) and high value-add manufactured goods from the civilisations at either end of the silk roads. Besides trade, the nomadic economy was based on herds, and the urban economy mostly on agrarian produce. Slavery and mercenarism were certainly practiced, and we shouldn't pretend the region was a paradise, but they were hardly the foundation of the economy. What can you tell us about the conflict between settlers and nomads? For the most part, the two coexisted, in a state of symbiosis rather than conflict. The nomads provided the settled (urban and agrarian) peoples with animal products, trade goods, and military service, while the settled peoples provided the nomads with vegetable products (flour was a big one) and metalwork (for jewellery as well as arms and armour). There were conflicts, certainly, but they were rarely existential or over land- the settled peoples couldn't use the land the nomads lived on, and the nomads had no need for the land the farmers lived on (this could and did change, due to pressure on the nomads' land from climate change or mass population movements, but it was the norm). An important feature of their relationship was that the settled peoples tended to be ethnically and linguistically Persian/Tajik, while the nomads, after the fall of the Samanid dynasty, were generally Turkic (that division has ceased to apply since the Soviet period, but I don't think anyone's looking at running games in Soviet/post-Soviet Central Asia, as fun as that would also be). However, many people were multilingual, and they rarely had issues with communication. When it did come to actual conflict, it's important to distinguish between the two 'modes' of warfare that the horse-nomads employed, against each other and against settled peoples in Central Asia or on their peripheries. The first was small-scale opportunistic raiding, in search of plunder (especially if trade was not an option, for whatever reason), glory (always a strong incentive), or simple practice (as their oral tradition indicates, the nomads were always aware of the potential threat from external powers, even if there wasn't any immediate danger). This was an annoyance, but caused relatively few casualties, and could be tolerated if necessary. The second mode of warfare was more extreme. The second mode of nomadic warfare occurred when a nomadic group, on some scale (family, encampment, clan, tribe, nation) were no longer able to support their traditional pastoral cycle, whether because of overpopulation, or because the lands they traditionally cycled (pastoral nomads don't wander freely; they usually have quite a fixed cycle of pastures that they move between with the seasons, whether the movement is across the steppe (lateral nomadism, as practiced by the Kazakhs and Turkmen) or up and down hills/mountains (vertical nomadism, as practiced by the Kyrgyz)) were unavailable or no longer capable of supporting them. At these times, the group would move wholesale into the land of the next people over, and displace the existing inhabitants. This happened from time to time on the steppe, especially after particularly nasty droughts, without having a hugely negative impact on anyone- nomads can always move on, and the steppe is big enough to absorb smallish ripples of population movement until things settle down again.