50 chapter one
In his work about the reign of Justinian the Great (527–565) Agath-
ias of Myrina (sixth century) explicitly mentions “the uncombed, dirty
and clumsily done hair of the Turks and Avars”.^123 Several decades
later (in 630 A.D.) the same remark was made by Xuanzang, the Bud-
dhist monk-pilgrim who had left a description of Ton Yabgu khan
and his court: the khan was surrounded by his suite consisting of 200
horsemen whose hair was tied in plaits.^124 Ton Yabgu khan, at the
same time, had his long hair loose and tied with a narrow silk ribbon
on the forehead.^125 Of course, the notion of the magic power of the
hair is quite obvious, a notion typical for many pre-modern societies
where hair is regarded a symbol of power, vitality, etc.^126 Indeed, the
Turks had always related hair to qut.^127
Turks also regarded as own signs the specifi c eyebrow style; they
used to put a special substance on the eyebrows in order to make them
lustrous as it was mentioned in ‘Bei-shi’.^128 Most probably the special
way of depicting the eyebrows on some of the Turkic balbals is related
to this tradition.^129 In this type of society distinction was a leading prin-
ciple and each typical feature, which was used and earlier considered a
sign of the own, was apparently exploited accordingly. Probably there
was a certain reason to use the expression “crew-cut heads” in the so-
called “Name List” of the Bulgar khans that has been commented on
many times by scholars and was used when necessary to diff erentiate
the period of Qubrat’s “Great Bulgaria” and its ‘foreword’ from the
one of Asparukh’s Bulgaria on the Danube; the anonymous author of
the extremely laconic (!) “Name List” must have had a reason to stress
on a small detail like this. “Crew-cut heads” lived together with a “man
with hair” in the ‘Steppe Empire’ and this mark was a sign of affi liation
to the latter (i.e., a sign of own).^130
Th e diff erence between the way of belting the garment of the Chi-
nese and the steppe nomads (from left to right and from right to left ,
(^123) Agafi i Mirineiskii [Agathias] 1996, 14 (Bk. I. 3).
(^124) Quoted aft er Gumilev 1967, 164.
(^125) Gumilev 1967, 164.
(^126) For that same practice among the Frankish kings see, Agafi i Mirineiskii [Agath-
ias] 1996, 12–13.
(^127) Traditsionnoe mirovozzrenie 1989, 59, 79.
(^128) For ‘Bei-shi’ see details in, Bichurin 1950, 241 f.
(^129) Sher 1966, 67.
(^130) See Popov 1866, 25–27; Tikhomirov 1946, 81–90; Moskov 1988; Pritsak 1955,
76–77.