The Bulgars and the Steppe Empire in the Early Middle Ages

the ‘inside’ other 119

this adoration goes back to the oldest cults of Sun and Moon and
later on—of Heaven.^132 Thus white marked the own while black—the
foreign, a contradiction typical for the ancient man that has the task to
make hierarchies (i.e. the own is better). Here it is worth mentioning
that the main sacred (imperial and aristocratic) colors in China of the
T’ang dynasty were purple and yellow, while in the Byzantine Empire
purple, white and golden yellow has had the highest sacred value.^133 In
comparison, among the Turks and Uighurs the dove-gray/dove-blue
was the most adored as color of Heaven, i.e. Tengri; until now this can
only be guessed for the Bulgars and the Khazars.^134

II.3. The Otherness of those (aristocrats) professing non-state religion

Unlike the Byzantines, for example, the nomads were not afraid of
the otherness based on religious reasons as they did not assume any
exclusive religion. It is interesting to present a few examples of attitude
towards representatives of the elite whose faith was different from the
official one in the khaganate. Some of them are typologically united
in the group of the “barbarian” rulers and chiefs visiting Constanti-
nople, among them the Rus’ princess Olga (tenth century), and more
important, particularly for this research, nomadic chiefs such as Grod,
Gyula, Bulchu, Kegen, Tirah etc.^135 Here attention will be paid to Grod
(sixth century) and Qubrat (seventh century), the first one viewed by
many scholars as a Bulgar chief in the lands to the north of the Black
and Azov Seas, although he is called a “Hun” in the sources. Qubrat,
on the other hand, was the founder of “Old Great Bulgaria”. In John
Malalas’ (491–578) words, Grod, “the ruler of the Huns who lived
close to the Bosporus arrived” in Constantinople in 527 (or 528) and

(^132) Fedotov 2004, 261. For the white color see also, Zhukovskaia 1988, 158. ‘Black’
is the marker of the North and in this aspect color-codifying follows that of the space
and vice versa, which in fact follows archaic logic. For the meaning of the color-
codifying and the semantics of ‘white’ and ‘black’ in Antiquity, in general, see Kupur
[Cooper] 1993, 232 f., 235 f.
(^133) For the color code in clothing and for the monopoly over ‘red’ and ‘yellow’,
respectively, in T’ang China as well as over ‘purple’ in Byzantium of Justinian I see,
Liu 1998, 16–17, with the literature cited there. 134
For instance, ‘(sky)blue’ in Western Europe became important color from the
point of view of symbolism not until twelfth century—for this see, Pastoureau 2000;
also see his book “Couleurs, images, symboles” (Paris, 1989).
(^135) Details see in, Ivanov 2001, 16–39, with the literature cited there.