The Tuhsis were a medieval Turkic-speaking tribe, who lived alongside the Chigil, Yagma, and other tribes, in Zhetysu and today southern

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 ...

Origins

Tuhsi were considered remnants of the Türgesh people. Turkologist Yury Zuev noted a nation (國) named 觸水昆 (Mand. ''Chùshuǐkūn'' < *''t͡ɕʰɨok̚-ɕˠiuɪ^X-kuən'') in Jiu Tangshu, so he reconstructed 觸水昆 as *''Tuhsi-kun''; however, Nurlan Kenzheakhmet noted that

Tongdian The ''Tongdian'' () is a Chinese institutional history and encyclopedia text. It covers a panoply of topics from high antiquity through the year 756, whereas a quarter of the book focuses on the Tang dynasty. The book was written by Du You from ...

's authors transcribed the same ethnonym as 觸木昆 (Mand. '' Chùmùkūn'' < *''t͡ɕʰɨok̚-muk̚-kuən''), the name of a Duolu Turk tribe, also transcribed as 處木昆 (''Chǔmùkūn'' < ''t͡ɕʰɨʌ^X-muk̚-kuən''). It's unclear whether the ethnonym Tuhsi is of Turkic origin. Tuhsi may be connected to

Cuman The Cumans or Kumans were a Turkic nomadic people from Central Asia comprising the western branch of the Cuman–Kipchak confederation who spoke the Cuman language. They are referred to as Polovtsians (''Polovtsy'') in Rus' chronicles, as " ...

clan Toqsoba, if ''Toqsoba'' did not derive from Common Turkic ''toquz'' "nine" and ''oba'' "clan". Hungarian orientalist Karoly Czeglédy compares the name Tuhsi to that of a medieval Eastern Iranian-speaking Alano-As tribe ''Duχs-Aṣ'', located in the North

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

by ibn Rustah, and proposes that Tuhsis had been of Iranian-speaking As origins.

Culture

By the 11-century, Tuhsis led a nomadic lifestyle amongst the

Turkic peoples Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West Asia, West, Central Asia, Central, East Asia, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members ...

and on the steppe, possessed a Turkic culture, and their language belonged to the Turkic language family. According to

Karakhanid The Kara-Khanid Khanate (; zh, t=喀喇汗國, p=Kālā Hánguó), also known as the Karakhanids, Qarakhanids, Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids (), was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the early 13th century. Th ...

lexicographer Mahmud of Kashgar, contemporary Tuhsis were Turkic-speaking

monoglots Monoglottism (Greek language, Greek μόνος ''monos'', "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα , "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to m ...

; after carefully analyzing linguistic materials collected from Tuhsi dialect, he praised the Tuhsi Turkic dialect, among others, for being "pure" and "most correct", both in terms of accent and vocabulary.Maħmūd al-Kašğari. "Dīwān Luğāt al-Turk". Edited & translated by Robert Dankoff in collaboration with James Kelly. In ''Sources of Oriental Languages and Literature''. (1982). Part I. p. 82-84

Notes

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References

Turkic peoples of Asia