The Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder (who lived in the 1st century AD), mentions "a fortress, the name of which is Cumania, erected for the purpose of preventing the passage of the innumerable tribes that lay beyond" while describing the "Gates of Caucasus" (Derbent, or Darial Gorge),.

[60] The Syrian historian Yaqut (1179–1229) also mentions the Qun in The Dictionary of Countries, where he notes that "(the sixth iqlim) begins where the meridian shadow of the equinox is seven, six-tenths, and one-sixth of one-tenth of a foot.

[citation needed] The Cumans entered the grasslands of the present-day southern Russian steppe in the 11th century AD and went on to assault the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Pereyaslavl and Kievan Rus'.

In the following years, when knights of the First Crusade were passing through the empire, Byzantium offered the Cumans prestige titles and gifts in order to appease them; subsequently good relations ensued.

King Coloman and his army crossed the Carpathian Mountains and laid siege on Przemyśl, which prompted David Igorevich, an ally of Volodar Rostislavich, to persuade the Cumans, under Khan Boniak and Altunopa, to attack the Hungarians.

A variant of the oldest Turkic chronicle, Oghuzname (The Oghuz Khan's Tale), mentions the Cumans fighting the Magyars, Rus', Romanians (Ulak), and Bashkirs, who had refused to submit to their authority.

[5]: 81 In alliance with the Bulgarians and Vlachs,[80] the Cumans are believed to have played a significant role in the uprising led by brothers Asen and Peter of Tarnovo, resulting in victory over Byzantium and the restoration of Bulgaria's independence in 1185.

[83] The Cumans who remained east and south of the Carpathian Mountains established a county named Cumania, which was a strong military base in an area consisting of parts of Moldavia and Wallachia.

[73] As the Mongols were approaching Russia, Khan Köten fled to the court of his son-in-law, Prince Mstislav the Bold of Galich, where he gave "numerous presents: horses, camels, buffaloes and girls.

In 1238, after Mongol attacks on Cumania, King Béla IV of Hungary offered refuge to the remainder of the Cuman people under their leader Khan Köten, who in turn vowed to convert his 40,000 families to Christianity.

[13]: 186 [62]: 173  After the invasion, King Béla IV, now penniless and humiliated after the confiscation of his treasury and loss of three of his border areas, begged the Cumans to return to Hungary and help rebuild the country.

On May 6, 1745, due to the cooperation between the Cumans and Jasz people, as well as their material strength of their communities, they were able to officially buy off their freedom by paying off more than 500,000 Rhenish florins and by arming and sending to camp 1000 cavalry.

Şentlensing sening adıng Düşsün sening könglügüng Neçik-kim cerde alay kökte Bizing ekmegimizni ber bizge büt-bütün künde İlt bizing minimizni Neçik-kim biz iyermiz bizge ötrü kelgenge İltme bizni ol camanga Kutkar bizni ol camannan Sen barsıng bu küçli bu çin iygi Tengri, amen.

Şenlensin senin adın Hoş olsun senin gönlün Nasıl ki yerde ve tüm gökte Bizim ekmeğimizi ver bize büt bütün günde İlet bizim minimizi Nasıl ki biz boyun eğeriz bize emir gelince İletme bizi hiç kötülüğe Kurtar bizi her kötülükten Sen varsın bu güçte bu yücelikte Tanrım, amin.

[112] Other Cumans lived a more dangerous life as highlanders on the fringes of the empire, possibly being involved in a mixture of agriculture and transhumance, acting as a buffer between Nicaean farmers and Turkic nomads.

During the election of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to the regency in 1258, after the consultation of Latin mercenaries, the Cumans present at the court offered their opinion on the matter in "good Greek".

An act from the archive of the Lavra of Athanasios mentions Cuman Stratioti (mercenaries from the Balkans) in the region of Almopia who received two douloparoikoi in 'pronoia' (a Byzantine form of feudalism based on government assignment of revenue-yielding property to prominent individuals in return for military service) some time before 1184.

As they were close to the Kievan Rus' principalities, Cuman khans and important families began to slavicize their names—for example, Yaroslav Tomzakovych, Hlib Tyriievych, Yurii Konchakovych, and Danylo Kobiakovych.

Rubruk gives an eyewitness account of a man who had recently died: the Cumans had hung up sixteen horses' hides, in groups of four, between high poles, facing the four points of the compass.

The Cuman Mamluks in Egypt were, in general, more heavily armed than Mongol warriors, sometimes having body armour and carrying a bow and arrow, axe, club, sword, dagger, mace, shield, and a lance.

[23][138][106]: 255 The commonly employed Cuman battle tactic was repeated attacks by light cavalry archers, facing and shooting to the rear of the horse, then a feigned retreat and skilled ambush.

[99] The Cumans in Christian territories were baptized in 1227 by Robert, Archbishop of Esztergom, in a mass baptism in Moldavia on the orders of Bortz Khan,[139] who swore allegiance to King Andrew II of Hungary.

While the written sources predominantly emphasize a fair complexion (e.g. Adam of Bremen referring to them as "the blond ones") the craniometric and genetic data, as well as contemporary art, support the image of a people highly heterogenous in appearance.

Unlike the written sources, paintings and miniatures from between the 12th and 14th century (close in time to the settlement of Cumans to Central Europe) tend to support the picture of a mixed population that is suggested by the craniometric and genetic analyses.

Fair complexion, e.g. red hair and blue or green eyes, were already noted by the Chinese among the Qincha (Kipchak), while the Tiele (to whom the Qun belonged) were not described as foreign looking, i.e. they were likely East Asian in appearance.

As the Cumans ceased to have a state of their own, they were gradually absorbed into Eurasian populations (certain families in Hungary, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Turkey, Romania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tatars in Crimea).

[citation needed] N. Aristov linked the Kumandins—and the Chelkans—to the ancient Turks, "who in the 6th–8th century AD created in Central Asia a powerful nomadic state, which received ... the name Turkic Kaganate".

[9]: 156 [138] Mamluks in the empire retained a particularly strong sense of Cuman identity, to the degree that the biography of Sultan Baibars, as reflected by Ibn Shaddad, focused on his birth and early years in Desht-i-Kipchak ("Steppe of the Kipchaks"/Cumania), as well as enslavement and subsequent travels to Bulgaria and the Near East.

However, by the time the Cumanians left the Trans-Carpathian steppes and settled in Hungary, they had acquired several more westerly genetic elements, probably from the Slavic, Ugric, and Turkic-speaking peoples who inhabited the regions north of the Black and Caspian Seas."

[184] A majority of mitochondrial DNA lines belonged to the North East Asian haplogroups C or D with also a large minority of west Eurasian lineages such as U. Cumans appear as one of the civilizations that players can play as in the 2019 strategy game Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.