52 chapter one
century.^136 In the fourth–sixth century, a troubled period in China, a
considerable number of Chinese, aristocrats included, settled in Gao-
chang. Aft er the conquest of the region the Turks tried to reduce the
Chinese cultural infl uence there by imposing their own signs. Such
measures were also taken because of the strategic importance of the
region.^137 Later I shall return to this ‘war of the symbols’ between the
Turks and the local ruler.
Most probably the administrative reforms of the Western Turkic
Ton Yabgu khan (618–630) played a considerable role in the distribu-
tion of the Turkic costume and the special types of waistbands. Th ese
reforms helped the Turks to incorporate the aristocrats of the con-
quered Middle Asian tribes under the khaganate’s management by
giving them Turkic titles, names, etc.^138 However, the local Sogdian
(most of all) fashion styles also exercised some infl uence on the Turkic
costume as evidenced by a number of wall paintings in Afrasiab and
Panjikand.^139 According to S. Yatsenko, nowadays it is not possible to
fi nd any (sic) traces of infl uence of the costume of the southern sed-
entary agricultural empires on the clothes of the aristocrats-nomads
from either the artifacts from the graves or the grave sculptures. It is
possible that this is partially due to the ritual character of these assem-
blages in which the foreign was hardly allowed. However, there are
some exceptions—attractive small accessories such as fi bulae, etc.^140
Th e Bulgars also paid great attention to the distinctive features of
their costume both during the pagan period and aft er. Th e information
about this provided by Constantine VII Porphyrogenetus and Bishop
Liutprandus of Cremona, both living in the tenth century, was alluded
to several times^141 and leaves no room for doubt that the Bulgars wore
their “skaramangii” as late as the tenth century in order to be dis-
tinguished from the Byzantines or other peoples from the East and
West. Th e Madrid copy of the Chronicle of John Skylitzes provides a
certain number of miniatures depicting Bulgars of noble origin which
present characteristic features of aristocratic costumes that were typi-
(^136) For this legend see, Kliashtornyi 1964, 103–104.
(^137) Yatsenko 2000b, 363.
(^138) Yatsenko 2001, 10.
(^139) Lobacheva 1979, 25, ill. 1; Al’baum 1975, ill. 5, fi g. 5; Belenitskii and Raspopova
1980, 213–218; Yatsenko 2001, 12.
(^140) Yatsenko 2001, 13–14.
(^141) See Tapkova-Zaimova 1951, 299; Stepanov 1998, 250. With more details in,
Atanasov 1999.