introduction 9
The majority of the sources concerning the problem under study
originate from the sedentary world: Byzantine, Armenian, Arab, Per-
sian, and Chinese. One needs therefore to recognize the numerous
clichés and the long-lasting stereotypes, before even attempting to
approach this interpretatio sedentarica in order to reach the reality
of the “Pax Nomadica”. Menander the Guardsman, Patriarch Nice-
phoros, Theophanes Confessor, Theophylact Simokatta are some of the
most important historians writing about the nomads, whose works are
going to be analyzed in this book. Further valuable information may
be found in the Responsa of Pope Nicholas I to the questions of the
khan (or prince) of Bulgaria, Boris-Michael (852–889, d. 907), as well
as in the work of the Armenian historian Movses Daskhuranci. I have
included in my analysis the few Khazar sources, especially the mid-
tenth-century correspondence between the Khazar King (khagan-beq)
Joseph and Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish advisor of the Caliph of
Cordoba. The Persian-Arabic tradition is represented by the writings
of Ibn Khordâdhbeh, Ibn Rusta, aṭ-Ṭabarî, Ibn Fadlan, al-Masʿûdî,
Tamîm ibn-Baḥr, and others. Most Chinese sources pertaining to the
problem are chronicles written under the Sui (‘Sui-shu’) and T’ang
(‘Tang shu’) dynasties, between the sixth and the tenth century, to
which one must add the seventh-century travelogue of the Buddhist
monk Xuanzang.
Several inscriptions on stone stellae erected for Bulgar, Turk, and
Uighur rulers are an especially valuable source for the current study.
They are to be regarded and studied as a series of sources, a fact of
great significance for the adequate reconstruction of medieval notions
and ideas. This is certainly the case of the inscriptions on the Madara
Cliff in Bulgaria, of the Chatalar and Philippi inscriptions (all of which
concern the Bulgars), as well as of those from Bugut, Orkhon, for the
Turks, and of the ones found in Tes, Terkhin, Karabalghasun, and
Shine-usu, for the Uighurs.
Equally important is the archaeological evidence, particularly that
of memorial or funerary monuments, especially the Turkic balbals
(“kamennye baby”) and the commemorative temples of Turkic khagans
dated to the first half of the eighth century. Much information about
Self and Other can be extracted from images carved on the grave stel-
lae of the Turkic commemorative temples or on the Madara Cliff (the
Madara Horseman) in Bulgaria, as well as from the frescoes discovered
in Panjikand and Afrasiab in the Turkic-Sogdian contact zone.