Sabir people

The Sabirs (Savirs, Suars, Sawar, Sawirk among others; Greek: Σάβιροι,[1]) were a nomadic Turkic equestrian people who lived in the north of the Caucasus beginning in the late-5th–7th century, on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, in the Kuban area,[2] and possibly came from Western Siberia.

[9] Gyula Németh and Paul Pelliot considered Turkic etymology for Säbir / Sabïr / Sabar / Säβir / Sävir / Savar / Sävär / Sawār / Säwēr from the root *sap- 'to go astray', i.e. the 'wanderers, nomads', placed in a group of semantically similar names: Qazar, Qazaq, Yazar, and Qačar.

[28] In 504 and 515, they held raids around the Caucasus, which was the Sasanian northern frontier during the rule of king Kavadh I, causing problems to the Persians in their war against the Byzantine Empire.

[36] In 551, some Sabirs were allied to Bessas in the successful attempt to wrest Petra from the Persians, meanwhile, other four thousand led by Mihr-Mihroe were part of the unsuccessful siege of Archaeopolis.

[46] The Syriac translation of the Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor's Ecclesiastical History (c. 555) in Western Eurasia recorded thirteen tribes, including the sbr (Sabir).

[47] The Armenian and Arabic sources placed them in the North Caucasus, near Laks, Alans, Filān, Masqat, Sāhib as-Sarīr and the Khazar town Samandar.

[48] He mentioned them last time in connection with the Byzantine conquest in Caucasian Albania during the reign of Tiberius II Constantine (578–582),[33] but the large sums were not enough to stop them to rejoin the Persians.

[51] There is no reliable information supporting the view of Mikhail Artamonov, who has claimed the intermixing of the Sabirs and Khazars was facilitated by their common Bulgar ethnicity, or that they were Turkicized Ugrians.

[54] The intimate ties between the Hungarians and the Sabirs led Lev Gumilev to speculate that rather than Oghuric they may have been Ugric speakers (both terms being of the same etymological origin).

[50][4] A number of Caucasian toponyms derive from their name; Šaberan, Samir, Samirkent, Sabir-xost, Sibir-don, Sivir-don, Savir, Bila-suvar, Sebir-oba, Sevare, Suvar,[23] and as well as the subdivisions Sabar and Sabur/Sabïr of the Kyrgyzes.