The Tuhsis were a medieval Turkic-speaking tribe, who lived alongside the Chigil,

Yagma The Yagmas (), or Yaghmas, were a medieval tribe of Turkic people that came to the forefront of history after the disintegration of the Western Turkic Kaganate. They were one component of a confederation which consisted of Yagma, the Karluks, t ...

, and other tribes, in

Zhetysu Jetisu ( ) or Semirechye ( rus, Семиречье, p=sʲɪmʲɪˈrʲetɕje) or Heptopotamia is a historical region in Central Asia corresponding to the southeastern part of modern Kazakhstan. Name Jetisu is also transcribed Jeti-Suu (, ), Zh ...

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 Duolu (Wade–Giles: To-lu; c. 603-651 as a minimum) was a tribal confederation in the Western Turkic Khaganate (c. 581-659). The Turgesh Khaganate (699-766) may have been founded by Duolu remnants. There existed several Chinese transcriptions ...

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 Common Turkic, or Shaz Turkic, is a taxon in some classifications of the Turkic languages that includes all of them except the Oghuric languages which had diverged earlier. Classification Lars Johanson's proposal contains the following subgroup ...

''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 ...

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 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 Robert Dankoff is Professor Emeritus of Ottoman & Turkish Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Robert Dankoff was born on 24 September 1943 in Rochester, New York. In 1964, he received a Bac ...

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