Jankent
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Jankent (Dzhankent, Yangikent, Eni-Kent, Djanikand, Yenikent, Yanikand, all meaning ''New Town'' in Turkic; al-Karyat al-hadith, Dihi Naw, Shehrkent) is a deserted town east of the
Aral Sea The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan to its north and Uzbekistan to its south, which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up into desert by the 2010s. It was in the Aktobe and Kyzylorda regions of Kazakhst ...
in modern
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
. It is known from Arab writings of the 10th century AD as the capital of the steppe empire of
Oghuz Turks The Oghuz Turks ( Middle Turkic: , ) were a western Turkic people who spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in Central Asia ...
. Archaeological research has provided information about the appearance of the town and confirmed the date, but also points to earlier origins.


Description

Jankent is located on the left bank of the lower
Syr Darya The Syr Darya ( ),; ; ; ; ; /. historically known as the Jaxartes ( , ), is a river in Central Asia. The name, which is Persian language, Persian, literally means ''Syr Sea'' or ''Syr River''. It originates in the Tian Shan, Tian Shan Mountain ...
, about southwest from the town of Kazaly (formerly Kazalinsk), in the Kazaly district of
Kyzylorda Kyzylorda ( , formerly known as Kzyl-Orda (), Ak-Mechet (Ак-Мечеть), Perovsk (Перовск), and Fort-Perovsky (Форт-Перовский), is a city in south-central Kazakhstan, capital of Kyzylorda Region and former capital of the ...
province in Kazakhstan. Today, it is a scheduled monument marked by the ruins of walls which are up to high in places and enclose an area of in the dried-out river delta of the Syr-Darya. Visible elements of the lay-out include: a broadly rectangular wall circuit orientated east-west, given a T-shaped appearance by an eastern ‘cross-bar’; a regular lay-out in the western half of the interior; gates in the eastern and western walls; a separately enclosed ‘citadel’ in the north-western corner; a semicircular annexe attached to the northern wall; and a low mound outside the east gate suggesting an external structure.


Historical evidence

Arab geographers of the 10th century (
Al-Masudi al-Masʿūdī (full name , ), –956, was a historian, geographer and traveler. He is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotus of the Arabs". A polymath and prolific author of over twenty works on theology, history (Islamic and universal), geo ...
,
Al-Idrisi Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti, or simply al-Idrisi (; ; 1100–1165), was an Arab Muslim geographer and cartographer who served in the court of King Roger II at Palermo, Sicily. Muhammad al-Idrisi was born in C ...
) mention a town of the Oghuz called Jengi-Kent, two sources (
Ibn Rustah Ahmad ibn Rusta Isfahani (), more commonly known as ibn Rusta (, also spelled ''ibn Roste''), was a tenth-century Muslim Persian explorer and geographer born in Rosta, Isfahan in the Abbasid Caliphate. He wrote a geographical compendium known ...
and
Ibn Hawqal Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (), also known as Abū al-Qāsim b. ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born in Nisibis, Al-Jazira (caliphal province), Upper Mesopotamia; was a 10th-century Arab Muslim writer, geographer, and chronic ...
) even call it the seat of the Oghuz
Yabgu Yabghu (,Entr"𐰖𐰉𐰍𐰆 [yabγuйабғұ"in "Ethno-Cultural Dictionary" ''Türik Bitig'' ), also rendered as Jabgu, Djabgu or Yabgu, was a state office in the early Turkic states, roughly equivalent to viceroy">Turkic peoples">Turkic stat ...
(khan of second rank). As early as the 1920s, the orientalist V.V. Bartold identified Jankent as the site of the historical Jengi-Kent. The town is also identified as the home town of the Kazakh cultural hero, Korkyt Ata, the reputed inventor of the traditional two-stringed lute (''kobyz'').


Archaeological evidence

Jankent was first mentioned by Russian army topographers in the early 19th century, and visited in 1867 by the orientalist P. Lerkh. In 1946, a team of the Chorasmian Expedition surveyed the site and photographed it from the air. On the basis of the lay-out of the site and the finds collected during this visit, the director of the expedition, S.P. Tolstov, dated Jankent to the 1st – 11th centuries AD. Two other members of the expedition, N.I. Igonin and B.V. Andrianov, drew up an improved plan of Jankent in 1963. Systematic excavations have been carried out at Jankent since 2005 by various teams, mainly the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology,
Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
(IEA RAN, Moscow) with Korkyt Ata State University of Kyzylorda (Kazakhstan) and the
University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (; ), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The University of Tübingen is one of eleven German Excellenc ...
(Germany); and the Margulan Institute of Archaeology, Kazakh Ministry of Education and Science (MON), later its commercial branch ‘Archaeological Expertise’ (Almaty, Kazakhstan), with Pavlodar State University (Kazakhstan).


Lower town

In the centre of the town, essential discoveries in Trench P1 included a built-up area (living quarters) with a lay-out in Central Asian style along a street, and a possible metal workshop, all dated to the 9th/10th centuries on the basis of coin finds. Later excavations in this area since 2011 have been carried out to a greater depth, revealing several building phases of earlier date.


Citadel

At the junction of the citadel wall and northern town wall (Trench P2), occupation layers with complex stratification were found by the Russian-Kazakh-German team down to a depth of more than from the current top of the citadel wall. Radiocarbon dates from this trench produced a range of (cal.) AD 786/923 to 961/1095. The extension of the trench at the top of the citadel wall since 2012 has uncovered semi-circular towers on the wall. In 2019, a 9th/10th century pottery vessel from the outside of the northern base of the citadel wall was found to contain three eggs with Arabic writing on them. Fieldwork in the interior of the citadel (Trench P3) by the Almaty and Pavlodar teams has reportedly uncovered only two layers of 9th/10th century date, the lower one of which produced building remains and a street. Lack of detailed publication precludes an independent verification of these claims.


Town wall

A trench in the kink of the southern town wall (Trench P5) proved that the T-shaped lay-out of the wall circuit was part of the original design, similar to earlier enclosures further south in the neighbouring civilization of
Khorezm Khwarazm (; ; , ''Xwârazm'' or ''Xârazm'') or Chorasmia () is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by t ...
(
Chorasmia Khwarazm (; ; , ''Xwârazm'' or ''Xârazm'') or Chorasmia () is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by ...
,
Khwarazm Khwarazm (; ; , ''Xwârazm'' or ''Xârazm'') or Chorasmia () is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by th ...
). Settlement layers with 7th/8th century pottery were found here under the base of the town wall, confirmed by radiocarbon dates for this trench ranging from (cal.) AD 674/799 to 906/1057. An earlier trench (P4) in the corresponding kink in the northern wall is briefly mentioned, but not documented, in a summary report by the Almaty and Pavlodar teams.


Geophysics, geomorphology, soil science

Since 2011, a team from Moscow State University has applied several non-destructive survey techniques to large parts of the site. The results show that the citadel interior was probably located on a natural elevation. There was a regular lay-out and dense arrangement of buildings across much of the western half of the interior, in contrast to larger building complexes ('estates') in a loose arrangement in the eastern half. The annexe attached to the northern town wall proved to be completely empty. In 2019, a Moscow geomorphology-pedology team carried out mechanical coring on a grid across the site. Preliminary results include deep stratification of cultural layers several metres down found in most cores; the large regular feature on the inside of the northern wall is not an 'estate' (as originally thought), but a massive clay platform; and the substantial structure outside the east gate, hypothesized to be the remains of a
caravanserai A caravanserai (or caravansary; ) was an inn that provided lodging for travelers, merchants, and Caravan (travellers), caravans. They were present throughout much of the Islamic world. Depending on the region and period, they were called by a ...
, are a natural island in a (now dry) river bed dating to before the beginnings of settlement at Dzhankent.


Current state of knowledge

On the basis of their findings since 2011, the Russian-Kazakh-German team suggest that the earliest settlement at this site was founded in the 7th century by a displaced population of the Dzhetyasar culture further upriver.Arzhantseva et al. (2012); Härke, H., Arzhantseva, I.A. and Tazhekeev, A. (2020). The early medieval town of Dzhankent (Kazakhstan): from initial hypothesis to new model. The European Archaeologist 66. 27-34. https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA/Publications/Tea/Tea_66/Research_news/EAA/Navigation_Publications/Tea_66_content/Research_news.aspx This coincided with the beginnings of trading activities along the early medieval branch of the
Northern Silk Road The Northern Silk Road is a historic inland trade route in Northwest China and Central Asia (historically known as the Western Regions), originating in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an (modern day Xi'an), westwards through the Hexi Corrido ...
running through this region. The enclosed town of Jankent was then built in the 9th or 10th century, some time after the arrival of the Turkic Oghuz on the steppes north of the Syr-darya. The town population may have been mixed as the material culture found at the site derives from three different cultural components: Oghuz nomads, sedentary Dzhetyasar culture, and Khorezmian civilization. In the 10th and 11th centuries, the town was the capital of the Oguz Yabgu State, and most likely it also functioned as a trading and craft centre for the largely nomadic population of the polity, being located on the intersection of the
Northern Silk Road The Northern Silk Road is a historic inland trade route in Northwest China and Central Asia (historically known as the Western Regions), originating in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an (modern day Xi'an), westwards through the Hexi Corrido ...
with the north-south caravan route from the
Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...
region to
Khorezm Khwarazm (; ; , ''Xwârazm'' or ''Xârazm'') or Chorasmia () is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by t ...
. The town was abandoned some time between the 12th and 14th century AD for unknown reasons, perhaps because of a shift of the river channels in the Syr-Darya delta, a change in trading patterns, or because of political developments. Other Turkic peoples, the
Kipchaks The Kipchaks, also spelled Qipchaqs, known as Polovtsians (''Polovtsy'') in Russian annals, were Turkic nomads and then a confederation that existed in the Middle Ages inhabiting parts of the Eurasian Steppe. First mentioned in the eighth cent ...
and
Kimeks The Yemek or Kimek were a Turkic tribe constituting the Kimek-Kipchak confederation, whose other six constituent tribes, according to Abu Said Gardizi (d. 1061), were the Imur (or Imi), Tatars, Bayandur, Kipchaks, Lanikaz, and Ajlad. Ethn ...
of the Kimek Kaganate, destroyed the Oghuz polity in the 12th century. Around that time, Selçuk Bey and his
Kınık Kınık () is a municipality and district of İzmir Province, Turkey. Its area is 479 km2, and its population is 28,694 (2022). Composition There are 37 neighbourhoods A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American En ...
tribe headed to Persia to found their own Muslim state which would eventually become the
Great Seljuq Empire The Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire, was a high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. The empire spanned a total area of from Anatolia and the Levant in t ...
.


References


External links

* Great Soviet Encyclopedi
Jankent
{{Central Asian history History of the Turkic peoples Archaeological sites in Kazakhstan