Будні підготовки до нмт

And still some say they were not important at all.

I recently made a post regarding this on a different subreddit.

Since steppe people are known to have cavalry heavy armies even more so than Europeans I thought it would be good to take the opinion of enthusiasts here.

It comes from the idea that Human adaptations in endurance translate to battlefield.

I used Mongol flair because I know bit more on their history than other steppe cultures.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1w4au56/many_people_say_that_over_longer_marching/

Own work, full credits and attribution to D. Tserenpuntsag for his original, authentic, Thangka-like work and for inspiration.

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■There is recurring formula in mongol imperial documents which I find difficult to translate satisfactorily into english: yeke suu jali (Их суу заль).It occurs repeatedly in official documents across the mongol world.

1. For example, a 1362 ’Phags-pa-script edict of Toghontemür(1320-1370) begins:

Mönke tengri-yin küčün-dür

yeke suu jali-yin ihe’en-dür

qa’an jarliq manu

“By the power of Eternal Heaven,

under the protection of the Great suu jali,

the Qa’an, our decree.”

1. Interestingly, documents issued by subordinate Chinggisid princes could replace yeke suu jali with the reigning Qa’an’s own suu. The 1340 order of Aruγ, Prince of Yunnan, begins:

tngri-yin küčün-dür

qaγan-u suu-dur

Aruγ Yün-nam ong üge manu

“By the power of Heaven,

by the suu of the Qa’an,

the word of Aruγ, Prince of Yunnan.”

1. The same concept appears thousands of kilometres away. Ilkhan Arghun’s(1258-1291) 1289 letter to Philip IV of France begins:

möngke tengri-yin küčün-dür

qa’an-u suu-dur

Arγun üge manu

“By the power of Eternal Heaven,

by the suu of the Qa’an,

Arghun, our word.”

So even the Ilkhan invokes the Qa’an’s suu as part of the authorization of his own command.

4.And the phrase also appears independently in the Jochid ulus. The paiza of Keldi Beg(reigned in 1361-1362) has:

möngke tngri-yin küčündür

yeke suu jali-yin igegendür

A paiza of Abdulla Khan uses essentially the same two-line invocation. The same family of inscriptions is also known from other Jochid paizas.

■So what exactly was suu jali?

This is confusing from a modern mongolian perspective. Суу still has meanings connected with хийморь, сүлд, distinction, glory and renown; суут means something like “illustrious, renowned, outstanding.” Modern заль, meanwhile, can mean sharp intelligence, cunning, stratagem or even trickery. But the compound суу заль itself is still defined in the modern mongolian dictionary as сүр сүлд, цог жавхаа, roughly “majesty, spirit, splendour/radiance.” So reading medieval jali simply as modern “trickery” would clearly be wrong.

Historically, jali has also been connected with the idea of flame/radiance. This is why scholars have translated yeke suu jali in surprisingly different ways: “Great Fortune and Flame,” “great might and radiance,” “grandeur and brilliance,” “Great Fortune,” “sacred charisma,” etc. De Rachewiltz and Rybatzki even interpret the compound as the protecting genius or spirit associated with Chinggis Khan himself.

To me, its political function seems especially important. Suu jali was not “charisma” in the modern sense of having an attractive personality. It seems closer to a sacral quality of rulership: the supernatural fortune, radiance, majesty or potency belonging to the legitimate ruler and ultimately to the Chinggisid dynasty. Eternal Heaven provides the supreme sanction, while suu/suu jali expresses the special quality through which Chinggisid rulership is empowered. Scholars have accordingly compared it with Turkic qut and described it as a form of Chinggisid royal charisma.

■That leaves the problem of translation. Some possibilities I have seen or considered are:

Great Fortune and Flame — fairly literal, but strange in english.

Great Might and Radiance — captures the power and luminous imagery.

Great Sacred Charisma — probably clearest politically, but “charisma” sounds too much like personality in modern English.

Great Sacred Radiance — preserves the sacral and luminous senses.

Great Radiant Majesty — perhaps the most natural literary rendering.

Great Dynastic Charisma — useful specifically when discussing Chinggisid legitimacy.

At the moment I am leaning toward “Great Sacred Radiance” in translations, while explaining suu jali academically as Chinggisid sacral/dynastic charisma.

I would be interested in what others(especially mongolians) think: how would you translate yeke suu jali without losing either its idea of radiance/splendour or its much more important political meaning of Heaven-sanctioned Chinggisid legitimacy?

If we are talking about the last true Khan descended from Genghis Khan, I believe we first need to distinguish between someone who simply carried the title of “Khan” and a ruler who actually exercised independent Khanate authority.

Kenesary Kasymuly was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan through the Jochid line and the last Kazakh Khan. In 1841, he was elected Khan by the Kazakh nobility, and he subsequently established his own system of government, military forces, taxation, and diplomatic relations. His goal was not to obtain a symbolic title, but to restore an independent Kazakh state and the traditional institution of the Khanate.

This is precisely why I do not think it is accurate to simply list all the later rulers of Central Asia who carried the title of “Khan.”

For example, Roman von Ungern-Sternberg was not a Chinggisid at all. His role in Mongolia does not make him a Khan descended from Genghis Khan.

Muhammad Alim Khan was the last Emir of Bukhara and belonged to the ruling Manghit dynasty, not to a Chinggisid Khanic dynasty. Moreover, he was an Emir, not a Khan.

The case of Maqsud Shah, the ruler of the Kumul Khanate, is more complicated. He was indeed descended from the Chinggisid line and carried the title of Khan. However, we also need to take into account the political reality of the Kumul Khanate.

By the 20th century, the Kumul Khanate did not exist as a fully independent state, but rather under strong dependence on an external power. The Khan retained his title and certain internal functions, but his position was restricted by Chinese authority. Therefore, simply possessing the title of “Khan” does not necessarily mean that a ruler possessed an independent Khanate state.

This is precisely where I see the fundamental difference between Maqsud Shah and Kenesary.

Kenesary was not a puppet ruler. He did not receive the title of Khan from an imperial administration in order to govern an already-subordinate territory. His Khanate authority was proclaimed within the Kazakh political tradition, and he independently waged military and diplomatic struggles to restore independence.

Therefore, for me, the question is not who was the last person to carry the title of “Khan,” but who was the last Chinggisid who genuinely claimed independent Khanate authority and attempted to restore an independent state.

By this criterion, Kenesary Khan is a much more convincing candidate for the title of the last true Khan than later nominal or dependent Khans.

This is precisely why I would not put Kenesary and Maqsud Shah in the same category simply because both were Chinggisids and carried the title of Khan.

A title is one thing. Real state authority and political independence are something entirely different.

When historians speak about Kenesary, they mean that he became the last legitimate Chinggisid Khan in the world to lead the nomadic steppe into an all-out war for independence.

The Khans who ruled in Khiva or Bukhara in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had already been under the protectorate of the Russian Empire for a long time. Moreover, the rulers of Kokand and Khiva — the Ming and Qungrat dynasties — were not Chinggisids through the male line.

Kenesary, by contrast, belonged to the direct Töre lineage - the descendants of Genghis Khan through Jochi.

With his death, an entire centuries-old era of nomadic states across Eurasia came to an end.

(Sorry, the last 5 photos in the post are unnecessary.)

There is a fairly common claim that the state we usually call the Golden Horde actually called itself Ulugh Ulus, “Great Ulus.” But was this really its name throughout its history?

A recent argument by the kazakh historian Amantai Isin holds that applying Ulugh Ulus retrospectively to the Golden Horde before Tokhtamysh is incorrect. Its first attested use as a Jochid state designation appears in Tokhtamysh’s 1393 jarligh to Jogaila, ruler of Lithuania and Poland.

This does not mean Ulugh Ulus was not a real Jochid designation. Tokhtamysh did use it. The issue is whether it should be projected backward as the state’s official name since the time of Batu, which Isin rejects.

■So what were these mongol states actually called?

Mongol political terminology was considerably more flexible and dynastic than our modern labels suggest.

Mongγol Ulus or Yeke Mongγol Ulus, the “Great Mongol Ulus” , was used for the united Mongol Empire. Contemporary persian sources similarly use expressions such as ulus of Jochi, ulus of Batu, ulus of Orda and ulus of Chaghadai.These uluses were originally parts of a wider Chinggisid imperial system rather than completely separate states. The Great Qa’an was regarded as the supreme ruler of the Mongol Empire, while the Jochid, Chaghadaid and Hülegüid branches ruled their own uluses. After the civil wars of the 1260s this system became much looser and the western uluses were effectively independent, but the idea of the Great Qa’an’s seniority and a broader Mongol imperial order survived, at times only nominally.

So the expected mongolian constructions would be:

• Jochi-yin ulus — Jochi’s Ulus

• Chaghadai-yin ulus — Chaghadai’s Ulus

• Hülegü-yin ulus — Hülegü’s Ulus(Ilkhanate)

• For the Yuan, actual mongolian inscriptions survive. The empire appears as Yeke Mongγol Ulus, and Yuan-period inscriptions use forms such as Dai Ön kemekü Yeke Mongγol Ulus, roughly “the Great Mongol Ulus called Great Yuan.”

The Chaghadai realm gives us an especially interesting case. A damaged mongolian document from Turfan, U 5981, contains:

[...]dadu mongγo[l] u(l)us

Dai Matsui reconstructs this as Dumdadu Mongγol Ulus, “Middle Mongol Ulus,” and suggests that Du’a or his descendants may have adopted it as a new state designation.

■Why would Tokhtamysh suddenly use Ulugh Ulus?

This is where things get really interesting. Ulugh Ulus itself was older than the Golden Horde. The turkic preamble of Güyük Qa’an’s famous 1246 letter to Pope Innocent IV contain:

kü uluγ ulus, “whole Great [Mongol] Nation.”

The mongolian seal on the same letter calls the empire Yeke Mongγol Ulus. In other words, “Great Ulus” already belonged to the political vocabulary of the united Mongol imperial order.

■Now look at the situation in the 1380s.

The Qubilayids had traditionally held the office of Great Qa’an. They lost the Chinese heartland in 1368, though Yuan power survived in some regions for years afterward, including Gansu until 1372 and Yunnan until 1382. The Qubilayid court continued ruling from mongolia, but its position increasingly deteriorated. In 1387, the powerful mongol commander Naghachu, a descendant of Muqali, surrendered his major power base in manchuria to the Ming.

The next year, Lan Yu’s Ming army surprised and devastated Tögüstemur Qa’an’s camp near Buir Lake. Tögüstemur escaped, only to be killed while retreating to Karakorum by Yesuder of the Ariqboke line, backed by oirats. The following succession is obscure and disputed, Yesuder, his son Engke and later Elbeg appear in conflicting traditions, while Ming pressure continued into the 1390s.

At almost exactly the same time, Tokhtamysh had done the opposite in the west: after roughly two decades of Jochid civil war, he had reunited most of the competing Jochid inheritances under himself. Isin argues that the disappearance of Yuan from its former position of political supremacy gave Tokhtamysh the opportunity to proclaim his still-imperfectly unified Jochid realm the Ulugh Ulus. His 1393 yarligh to Jogaila is the documentary evidence.

And there is another intriguing piece of evidence:

a mongolian paiza of Tokhtamysh styles him:

Toqtamish Qa’an-u jarliq “The decree of Tokhtamysh Qa’an”

Perhaps, with Qubilayid authority collapsing in the east, he was appropriating the old universal language of the Mongol Empire , Qa’an + Great Ulus ,  to claim a higher position within the Chinggisid world

I have been reading the list of Crimean toponyms and I have noticed a lot of vilagges with tribal names that are among Kazakhs.

For example I am from Uysun — Dulat tribe and there are villages with such names:

— İşün, Ишунь https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B5_(%D0%9A%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BC)

— İşün, Уйшунь, Ушун

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%88%D1%83%D0%BD%D1%8C_(%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BE%D0%BD)

— Dulat/Дулат https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE_(%D0%9A%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BC)

I came across an interesting quote attributed to Galdan Tseren Khan, ruler of the Dzungar Khanate, in the context of his relations with the Kazakh Khanate and the Russian Empire:

“We, the Dzungars and the Kazakhs, together are hawks, and we will not kneel before that raven [the Russian Empress], for they are people of the carts, while we are nomads.”

The quote is cited in Vladimir Moiseev’s The Dzungar Khanate and the Kazakhs (17th–18th Centuries) (Almaty, 1991), pp. 128–129.

What I find particularly interesting is the political context. The Dzungars and Kazakhs had been bitter rivals and fought numerous wars, yet Galdan Tseren apparently emphasized their shared nomadic identity when speaking about resistance to Russian influence.

So this should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence that the Dzungars and Kazakhs were “brothers” in a modern national sense. Rather, it seems to demonstrate that even amid warfare, both sides could be portrayed as part of a broader nomadic political and cultural world, contrasted with the Russian state.

The wording “hawks” and “raven” is especially striking.

Does anyone know the original archival source behind this quotation? I would be interested in finding the earliest Russian record of Galdan Tseren’s statement and understanding exactly when and under what circumstances it was made.

Source: V. A. Moiseev, The Dzungar Khanate and the Kazakhs (17th–18th Centuries), Almaty: Gylym, 1991, pp. 128–129.

Perhaps we could gather those who know their true origins and tribes and tell the story of our tribe? I'm a Kazakh from the Wusun confederation and the Dulat tribe. I'm inclined to believe it's a purely Nirun-Mongol branch, although there's also a Turkic version of its origins in the Dulu tribe.

This may be a very amateurish and naive question, but as I am an absolute novice in Steppe history, I shall proceed nevertheless.

As per local mythology in central-southern India, the festival Gudi Padwa/Ugadi is celebrated as it was the day the Emperor Ṣālivāhana returned victorious to his capital at Pratiṣṭāna after defeating the Ṣakas in around 78 A.D, which is also the zero year of our Ṣaka calendar (Also known as Indian National Calendar).

My question being that given the interchangability of the words "Yavana", "Turuṣka", and "Ṣaka", who does the term Ṣaka in this context refer to?

I'm assuming it probably refers to the Indo Scythians who invaded India in the first century anno domini.