Tip: Today, it should be noted that after the demise of the ancient Turkic tribes, in the vast area from Central Asia to West Asia, only the language that can make the Turkic-speaking peoples still identify with the "Turks" is the language. In addition to pulling some "Turks" who are not Turks, this also throws the valuable qualities of the ancient Turks who worship heroes into the long river of history early.
The Turks are the collective name of ethnic groups active in the Mongolian plateau and Central Asia in history, and are also another important nomadic people in the northwest and northern steppe regions of China since the Xiongnu, Xianbei and Ruoran.
Now, some so-called scholars have taken the concept of Turks a little too far, and in their "scholarship", about 182 million people around the world who speak Turkic languages are called Turkic or descendants of Turks. These "Turkic" or "descendants of Turkic peoples" are located in more than a dozen countries and regions, they are not a people, but a collective name for many ethnic groups that use Turkic languages, mainly including Turks, Turkmens, Kazakhs, Salars, Tatars (Tatars in Xinjiang and surrounding areas), Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Yakuts, and so on.
This practice is like a modern person doing DNA, suddenly finding that there is a little "element" of the Huns in his genes, and claiming to be a Hun. The fact is that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in human cells, and there are 22 pairs of chromosomes that are basically the same as chromosomes in men and women, called autosomals; the 23rd pair of chromosomes have obvious differences in morphology and size, which are related to the sex determination of people, called sex chromosomes. These 23 pairs of chromosomes must be paired and passed on in each generation, and the "element" of the Huns can only indicate that the ancestors of a certain patrilineal ancestor on the ancestors may be the Huns, which is clearly a concept that cannot be beaten by eight rods. You can't say that you are a Hun, and forget that your genes come more from your parents, grandparents, grandparents and grandparents.
This is what genes want to tell people, as for language, Turkic languages, belonging to the Altaic language family, there are a large number of loanwords from Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Mongolian and Tibetan, which also shows that Turks cannot be a single racial concept, can not be "generalized" by Turkic languages in general. This kind of performance is like the ancestors of human beings from Africa, so everyone goes there to hold a certain petrified piece of human origin, crying father and mother. Too unnecessary and ridiculous.
The ancient Turkic people spoke mainly Turkic. The real Turks first referred only to Ashina, and the other Turkic-speaking peoples were the Tiele, which were two peoples, but because of the common language, some people "confused" into one nation.
Tiele is an ethnic group in the north and northwest of ancient China. Also known as Di Li, Ding Zero, Shu Le, Gao Che, its distribution east to the Daxing'an Mountains west to the upper reaches of the Irtysh River. In 546 AD, the Turks unified the Tiele tribes and established the Turkic Khanate. Later, the Turkic Khaganate carried a large number of nomadic tribes from the desert across the Altai Mountains to conquer Central Asia and Eastern Europe, so the Tiele people spread to Eastern Europe. This was the westward migration of the Turks.
In the Sui Dynasty, Tiele belonged to the Eastern and Western Turks, and there were individual tribes in the west who began to cultivate. Between 605 and 611, Tiele established tribal alliances based on the two departments of Qifu and Xueyantuo. Among the northern Tiele tribes in the early Tang Dynasty, Xue Yantuo and Hui Were the strongest, and jointly built a khanate, and the leader of Xue Yantuo, Yi Nan, was made a khan, and was enthroned by Tang to help Tang destroy the Eastern Turks. In 646, Tang destroyed the Xueyantuo Khanate and placed the governor's mansion and prefecture in various parts of Tiele. After the rise of the Turkic Khaganate, it was heavily ruled by the Turks. In 744, after the fall of the Hui, the Turks established a khanate. In 840, the Uighur Khaganate was destroyed by the Uighur Khaganate and the tribes migrated. This was the westward migration of the Tiele or Uighurs, many of whom were Turkic.
The two westward migrations enabled the two peoples to absorb a lot of local culture, especially West Asia, from Central Asia, and the Turkic language, which could have been called Turkic-Uighur, directly lost the Uighur component, or in other words, included the Uighurs in the ranks of the Turks.
The Turks first lived with the Tiele people on the Yenisei River, learning smelting from the latter. Jiankun is the Tang Dynasty called Pgas, the Turks in these groups of people first have a written language, Jiankun is the red-haired and blue-eyed Caucasian, the main body of tiele in the same period is the yellow race, the Turks are also yellow people. Thus, before the rise of the Mongols, the distribution area of The White and Yellow races in North Asia was roughly bounded by the Yenisei River in western Siberia, which was caucasian and the yellow sphere of influence to the east. Similar skin color, even the same, and similar language give the Turks and the Tiele people the advantage of natural integration, so there is also the Tiele people's saying that "the customs are more or less the same as the Turks".
However, there are also differences in the "datong": first of all, the Tiele people "only after the husband is married, he will go to the wife's house, wait for the milking men and women, and then return to the house", which means that after the Tiele people get married, they have to stay in the wife's home for a period of time, and wait for the wife to give birth to the child before taking them back to their own home. Secondly, the Turkic burial customs have seated burial and cremation, while the Tiele people "bury the dead", "this is different".
Today, with regard to the ancient Turks, people probably know that in addition to burial customs, they used wolves as totems (this we have specifically discussed in previous texts, in fact, the so-called wolves are dogs, ancient Turks may be from Inuyasha, once active in the area of present-day Shaanxi and Gansu), worship the sun and the earth, worship the Zoroastrianism of Central Asia, and later believe in Buddhism. There are still "succession marriages" in marriage customs, and there are no exceptions for foreign marriages.
In addition, the supreme leader of the Turkic Khaganate was called "Khan" and had supreme power; the officials were divided into twenty-eight grades in turn. The Turkic military system was closely related to its nomadic and hunting economic life; its army could be roughly divided into three types, the guards, the string-controlling men, and the Takumi; the military establishment was combined with the tribal organization, and the subordinate relationship between its chiefs and the tribesmen and the father-son patriarchal customs made the army organization stable and strong in combat effectiveness. The simple and harsh provisions of the early Turkic penal code indicate that the time was already in a private society centered on men.
In addition to these, the Turks seem to have a distinctive feature, that is, the worship of heroes, even standing still, sometimes willing to die under the sword and gun of heroes.
Ear cutting is a common burial custom among steppe nomads as a way to express the sadness of farewell. In 649, after the death of Emperor Taizong of Tang and Li Shimin, according to the Zizhi Tongjian, "hundreds of people who entered the dynasty and paid tribute to the dynasty, wept when they heard the mourning, cut their hair, shaved their faces, cut their ears, and spilled blood on the ground." Among these people were the Turkic royal family Ashina Sher, as well as the Tiele people Qifu Heli, who not only cut off their ears and faces, but also asked the imperial court to kill them and bury them for Tang Taizong.
Although Emperor Gaozong of Tang did not agree to the request of Ashina She'er and Qifu Heli, in 655, Ashina She'er died and was still buried with Zhaoling; so did Qiyuan Heli, who, after his death in 677, was posthumously given the title of Auxiliary General and Governor of Hezhou, and was also buried in Zhaoling. From this, we can see the worship of heroes by some Turks and Tiele people. Previously, the experience of QiFu Heli seemed to be more touching.
Born into the family of Tiele Khan, He Li was the grandson of Theimo Khan of Geren Yi Bu Shi Mohe and the son of Mohe Rutle Qige. Tiele was a nomadic people in the north at that time, and because of frequent conflicts with Tuguhun, they moved to live around Atami (present-day Lake Issyk-Kul). When his father died when he was nine years old, he succeeded him as Khan and was demoted to the rank of Grand Qian Lifa.
In 630, after the Tang Dynasty destroyed the Eastern Turks, the Tiele forces gradually became stronger. In 632, Qifu HeLi and his mother led more than a thousand of their tribe (more than 6,000) to Shazhou (present-day Dunhuang, Gansu) to surrender to the Tang Dynasty, and Emperor Taizong of Tang placed them between Gansu and Liang prefectures (in present-day Zhangye and Wuwei, Gansu), appointed Qifu He Li as the general of the left leading army, and made his mother Lady of Guzang Commandery and his brother Qifu Shamen the governor of Helan Prefecture.
According to the Zizhi Tongjian Volume 196, in 642, the Tang Tai Sect sent Qifu He Li back to Liangzhou Province to appease his tribe. At that time, Xue Yantuo (originally one of the Tiele tribes, formed by the merger of Xue and Yantuo) was powerful, and the Qifu Heli tribe wanted to submit to Xue Yantuo, and Qiyuan Heli said with great surprise: "The Tang Dynasty Heavenly Son treated us so kindly, why did he defect?" The people of the Qifu Heli tribe said, "The old lady and the governor have already been to Xue Yantuo before, so why don't you go there?" Qifu Heli said, "Shamen honors the old man, and I will be loyal to the emperor and resolutely not go with you." ”
The tribesmen of Qifu Heli bundled up Andi Heli and sent them to Xueyantuo, where they were thrown in front of the shingle khan (Ichizo Bija Khan) YiYi's tooth tent. Qifu He Li straightened his legs, pulled out his saber and shouted to the east: "How can any loyal martyrs of the Tang Dynasty be insulted by you, and the sky is clear, I hope you will know my true heart." (If there are Tang martyrs who have been subjected to the court of reconquest, heaven and earth, sun and moon, may I know my heart!) So he cut off his left ear and swore no. In the end, it was the Tang Tai Sect that sent people to Xue Yantuo, and on the condition of peace, exchanged for Qifu Heli.
A person who was forced by his own tribe to be so sincere, still has a sincere heart for the Tang Dynasty, and the sincere heart of Qi He Li for the Tang Dynasty is really as he himself said, the heavens and the earth can be learned, the sun and the moon can be expressed, and there are nothing more than two factors in the middle: one is the yearning for the civilization of the Central Plains, and the other is the cult of personality of Tang Taizong.
Like the Turkic royals Ashina Sher and the Tiele, there were more Turks who had a hero worship complex. The Alliance of Weishui, also known as the Alliance of Benqiao, refers to the alliance between Tang Taizong and the invading Eastern Turks Jieli and Tuli. In 626, the Turks attacked Jingyang (泾阳, in modern Jingyang County, Shaanxi), only 40 miles from Chang'an, and the Capital Division shook. In the face of the attacking Turks, Tang Taizong only took Gao Shilian, Fang Xuanling and other six horses to the edge of the Weishui River, and talked with Jieli across the Weishui River. When the Turks saw it, they felt that this was the hero and fell to their knees. The Zizhi Tongjian records that Tang Taizong killed the "alliance of Weishui" between baima and the Turkic khans, and the Turkic soldiers retreated. If this had been on other occasions, Tang Taizong's head would have been difficult to keep.
Xue Rengui, a famous general in the early Tang Dynasty, the story was widely circulated in the folk because of the popular novel "Xue Rengui Zhengdong". In 661, the Hui leader Who had always been friendly with Tang died, and Bisu, who succeeded him, turned to Tang as an enemy. Li Zhizhao's right-hand tun wei general Zheng Rentai was the main general, and Xue Rengui was the deputy general, leading his troops to the Tianshan Mountains to attack the nine surnames of Tiele. The Tiele people relied on the terrain to block the Tang army in the Tianshan Mountains, Xue Rengui went out to fight to pick dozens of people, fired three arrows in a row, and the three enemy generals fell on their horses and died in response, and the enemy army was immediately confused and was killed by the Tang army.
According to the New Book of Tang, the biography of Xue Rengui says that after Xue Rengui shot three people with three arrows, the rest of tiele knights were intimidated by Xue Rengui's divine might, and they all dismounted and asked to surrender. Since then, a song has been circulated in the army saying: "The general's three arrows are fixed on the Heavenly Mountain, and the strong man's long song enters the Han Pass." "The nine surnames tie le declined.
In 681, Xue Rengui was reinstated as the governor of Guagua Prefecture, the right leading wei general, and the inspector of the acting governor of the prefecture. In 682, the Turkic Ashid Yuanzhen invaded hezhou (present-day Taiyuan, Shanxi) and the northern part of shan yu's capital, and then invaded Yunzhou, and Xue Rengui was ordered to conquest. According to the New Book of Tang and the Biography of Xue Rengui, the Turks asked, "Who will Tang be?" "Xue Rengui." The Turks said, "I heard that General Xue liuxiangzhou died and was revived?" Ren Gui saw it, and the Turks looked at each other discolored, got off the Marobai, and fled slightly.
The vernacular passage is: The Turks asked, "Who were the generals of the Tang Dynasty?" He replied, "Xue Rengui." The Turks said, "I heard that General Xue was exiled to Xiangzhou and died, so how can he be revived?" Xue Rengui took off his helmet to meet them, and the Turks were shocked to see them carefully, and they all got off their horses and lined up to worship and gradually fled. The outcome of the war can already be imagined here, and what moves people in the Turks is still the "lower Marobai" after seeing the hero.
Today, it should be noted that after the demise of the ancient Turkic tribes, in the vast area from Central Asia to West Asia, only the only languages that can make the Turkic-speaking peoples still identify with the "Turks" remain. In addition to pulling some "Turks" who are not Turks (for example, the Tiele people we mentioned earlier), they also throw the valuable qualities of heroes worship in the ancient Turks into the long river of history early.
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