Kipchaks
Middle Turkic: kuv ağaç);[1] according to them, inside a hollow tree, their original human ancestress gave birth to her son.
[3] Klyashtorny links Kipchak to qovı, qovuq "unfortunate, unlucky"; yet Golden sees a better match in qıv "good fortune" and adjectival suffix -čāq.
Peter Golden argues that the Ölberli were pushed westwards due to socio-political changes among the para-Mongolic Khitans, such as the collapse of the Liao dynasty and formation of the Qara Khitai, and attached themselves to the eastern Kipchak confederation where they eventually came to form a part of the ruling strata and elite.
Golden identifies the Ölberli with the Qay whom are recorded as the Xi in Chinese sources and Tatabı in Turkic inscriptions, and were of Mongolic or para-Mongolic background - likely stemming from the Xianbei.
[9][10][11] The Kipchaks were first unambiguously mentioned in Persian geographer ibn Khordadbeh's Book of Roads and Kingdoms as a northernly Turkic tribe, after Toquz Oghuz, Karluks, Kimeks, Oghuz, J.f.r (either corrupted from Jikil or representing Majfar for Majğar), Pechenegs, Türgesh, Aðkiš, and before Yenisei Kirghiz.
[14] It is unclear if the Kipchaks could be identified with, according to Klyashtorny, the [Al]tï Sir in the Orkhon inscriptions (薛延陀; pinyin: Xuè-Yántuó),[15][16][17] or with the Juéyuèshī (厥越失) in Chinese sources;[13][18] however, Zuev (2002) identified 厥越失 Juéyuèshī (< MC *kiwat-jiwat-siet) with toponym Kürüshi in the Ezhim river valley (Ch.
[19] Linguist Bernard Karlgren and some Soviet scholars (e.g. Lev Gumilyov[20]) attempted to connect the Kipchaks to the Qūshé ~ Qūshí (屈射), a people once conquered by the Xiongnu; however, Golden deems this connection unlikely, considering 屈射's Old Chinese pronunciation *khut m-lak and Eastern Han Chinese *kʰut źa ~ kʰut jak/jɑk (as reconstructed by Schuessler, 2009:314,70).
[13] As a result, three Kipchak groups emerged:[25] The early 11th century saw a massive Turkic nomadic migration towards the Islamic world.
[26] What is certain is that the two peoples gradually mingled politically and that, from the second half of the 12th century onwards, the names Cumans and Kipchaks became interchangeable to refer to the whole confederacy.
This group, which has an estimated population of over 10 thousand, wandered for a long time to find a suitable place to settle in Thrace.
The presence in Egypt of Turkic-speaking Mamluks also stimulated the compilation of Kipchak/Cuman-Arabic dictionaries and grammars that are important in the study of several old Turkic languages.
When members of the Armenian diaspora moved from the Crimean peninsula to the Polish-Ukrainian borderland, at the end of the 13th century, they brought Kipchak, their adopted Turkic language, with them.
A great number were baptized at the request of Georgian King David IV, who also married a daughter of Kipchak Khan Otrok.
[50] The confederation or tribal union which Kipchaks entered in the 8th- or beginning of 9th century as one of seven original tribes is known in historiography as that of the Kimek (or Kimäk).
[51] 10th-century Hudud al-'Alam mentions the "country of Kīmāk", ruled by a khagan (king) who has eleven lieutenants that hold hereditary fiefs.
While the written sources often emphasize a fair complexion the craniometric and genetic data, as well as some historical descriptions, support the image of a people highly heterogenous in appearance.
[53] An early description of the physical appearance of Kipchaks comes from the Great Ming Code (大明律) Article 122,[54] in which they were described as overall 'vile' and having blonde/red hair and blue/green eyes.
[55][56] Fair complexion, e.g. red hair and blue or green eyes, were already noted by the Chinese for some other ancient Turkic tribes, such as the Yenisei Kirghiz, while the Tiele (to whom the Qun belonged) were not described as foreign looking, i.e. they were likely East Asian in appearance.
Lee and Kuang believe it is likely "early and medieval Turkic peoples themselves did not form a homogeneous entity and that some of them, non-Turkic by origin, had become Turkicised at some point in history.
According to Lee & Kuang, who cite Chinese historical descriptions as well as genetic data, the turcophone "Qirghiz" may have been of non-Turkic origin, and were later Turkified through inter-tribal marriage.
[58] Russian anthropologist Oshanin (1964: 24, 32) notes that the 'Mongoloid' phenotype, characteristic of modern Kipchak-speaking Kazakhs and Qirghiz, prevails among the skulls of the historical Qipchaq and Pecheneg nomads found across Central Asia and Ukraine; Lee & Kuang (2017) propose that Oshanin's discovery is explainable by assuming that the historical Kipchaks' modern descendants are Kazakhs, whose men possess a high frequency of haplogroup C2's subclade C2b1b1 (59.7 to 78%).
