the ‘outside’ other 33
meadows and are hidden in the sands’ desert through which Heaven
and Earth, e.g. the gods, separated the so-called inside lands from the
outside lands and their land can not be cultivated. Additionally, says
Ban Gou, it is impossible for anybody to rule them as subjects.^66 Such
ideas found in the Chinese written sources and in the Turkic and
Uighur inscriptions, respectively, made L. Gumilev to claim some 40
years ago that the Chinese and the nomads living to the north of them
were not able to fi nd a common language “since their mentalities were
alien to each other”.^67
A certain number of things related to the description above had
already changed in the seventh-ninth century, although the mutual
notion-clichés existing both among Turks and Uighurs towards the
Chinese and in the Middle Kingdom, towards the nomads, maintained
the usual status quo and served as a ground for the existence of stable
mental stereotypes.
Th e nomads were focused on “pumping out” the Chinese resources^68
from a distance. According to S. Jagchid, they achieved it through
exchange practices in which both the Chinese court and the nomadic
(^66) See Jagchid 1991, 64: “Th e barbarians are... human faced but animal hearted... As
for clothing, costume, food, and language, the barbarians are entirely diff erent from
the Middle Kingdom”. Also see, Barfi eld 1989, who speaks about “inner and outer
frontier strategies”. For that same ‘outer frontier strategy’ he speaks also in his “Inner
Asia.. .” (1991, p. 35) where among its elements, he points to “the deliberate refusal to
occupy Chinese land even aft er great victories”. Th e others are the devastating raiding
and incursions aiming at terrorizing the court of China as well as temporally changing
the periods of war and peace in order to force the China’s court to give more generous
allowances to the khagans and advantageous trading privileges as well. 67
Gumilev 1967, 327. Here, there is a signifi cant exception—the emperor T’ai-
tsung (627–649). He took the title of “khagan” following the request of the Eastern
Turks, whom he subdued, for he was well informed about the role of the personal
charisma in the steppes and in the nomadic culture, in general. For this see, Barfi eld
1991, 37–38; Yihong 1997, 179–182. But one must add that this emperor was indeed
a child of a mixed marriage. 68
Barfi eld 1989, 139, 148; Taskin 1975, 149. Barfi eld 1991, 24, 35, also highlights
the main desire and aspiration of the steppe towards the Middle Kingdom; the steppe
usually achieved its goals through manipulation, e.g. through peace treaties with
China which gave chance for a ‘legal’ access to luxurious goods and other important
for the nomads items. Once such a treaty had been concluded, the nomads started to
behave themselves as loyal partners and sometimes even sent troops to one or another
‘originally’ Chinese dynasties which were facing internal or external threats. Here, we
may also add some similar facts that come from the Bulgar milieu, e.g. Omurtag’s help
rendered to the Byzantine basileus Michael II (820–829) against the usurper Th omas
the Slav in 821/2 A.D. and some decades earlier, that of another Bulgar ruler, Tervel,
who in 717–718 A.D. sent an army to the Byzantines in order to help them to rescue
the besieged city of Constantinople; thanks to Tervel’s help the Arabs who were in