The Pechenegs (/ˈpɛtʃənɛɡ/) or Patzinaks[note 1] were a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia who spoke the Pecheneg language. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Pechenegs controlled much of the steppes of southeast Europe and the Crimean Peninsula. In the 9th century the Pechenegs began a period of wars against Kievan Rus', and for more than two centuries launched raids into the lands of Rus', which sometimes escalated into full-scale wars.
Ethnonym
The Pechenegs were mentioned as Bjnak, Bjanak or Bajanak in medieval Arabic and Persian texts, as Be-ča-nag in Classical Tibetan documents, and as Pačanak-i in works written in Georgian.[1]Anna Komnene and other Byzantine authors referred to them as Patzinakoi or Patzinakitai.[1] In medieval Latin texts, the Pechenegs were referred to as Pizenaci, Bisseni or Bessi.[1]East Slavic peoples use the terms Pečenegi or Pečenezi (plural of Pečeneg), while the Poles mention them as Pieczyngowie or Piecinigi.[1] The Hungarian word for Pecheneg is Besenyő; the Romanian term is Pecenegi.[1]
According to Max Vasmer and some other researchers the ethnonym may have derived from the Old Turkic word for "brother-in-law, relative” (baja, baja-naq or bajinaq; Azerbaijani: bacanaq, Kyrgyz: baja, Turkmen: baja and Turkish: bacanak), implying that it initially referred to an "in-law related clan or tribe".[1][2]Peter Golden considers this derivation by no means certain.[3]
In Mahmud Kashgari's 11th-century work Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, Pechenegs were described as "a Turkic nation living around the country of the Rum", where Rum was the Turkic word for the Eastern Roman Empire or Anatolia, and "a branch of Oghuz Turks"; he subsequently described the Oghuz as being formed of 22 branches, of which the Pecheneg were the 19th.[4]
Pechenegs are mentioned as one of 24 ancient tribes of Oghuzes by 14th-century statesman and historian of Ilkhanate-ruled Iran Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in his work Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh ("Compendium of Chronicles") with the meaning of the ethnonym as "the one who shows eagerness". The 17th-century Khan of the Khanate of Khiva and historian Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur mentions the Pechenegs as bechene among 24 ancient tribes of Turkmens (or Oghuzes) in his book Shajara-i Tarākima (“Genealogy of the Turkmen") and provides for its meaning as "the one who makes".
Three of the eight Pecheneg "provinces" or clans were collectively known as Kangars.[5] According to Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the Kangars received this denomination because "they are more valiant and noble than the rest" of the people "and that is what the title Kangar signifies".[5][6] Because no Turkic word with a similar meaning is known, Ármin Vámbéry connected the ethnonym to the Kirghiz words kangir ("agile"), kangirmak ("to go out riding") and kani-kara ("black-blooded"), while Carlile Aylmer Macartney associated it with the Chagatai word gang ("chariot"),[7] semantically related to the Turkic Gaoche.[8]
Omeljan Pritsak proposed that the name had initially been a composite term (Kängär As, mentioned in Old Turkic texts) deriving from the Tocharian word for stone (kank) and the ethnonym As, suggesting that they were Tocharian-speaking or at least formed a confederation consisting of Tocharian, Eastern Iranian and Bulgaric Turkic elements. Their connection with Eastern Iranian elements is hinted at in the remark of al-Biruni regarding a people that "are of the race of al-Lān and that of al-Ās and their language is a mixture of the languages of Khwarazmians and the Badjanak.".[9]
If the latter assumption is valid, the Kangars' ethnonym suggests that (East) Iranian elements contributed to the formation of the Pecheneg people but Spinei concedes that Pechenegs were of "a predominantly Turkic character... beyond any doubt".[10][11] This may be mirrored in the Old Rus translation of Josephus Flavius (ed. Meshcherskiy, 454) which adds "the Yas, as is known, descended from the Pecheneg tribe." On the basis of their fragmentary linguistic remains, scholars view them as Common Turkic-speakers, most probably Kipchak (Németh, followed by Ligeti)[12] or Oguz (Baskakov).[13]Hammer-Purgstall classifies the Chinese Kangju and Byzantine Kangar as purely Turkic name variants of the Kangly;[14] however, Wang Pu's institutional historical work Tang Huiyao apparently distinguishes the Kang(ju) from the Kangheli (aka Kangly).[15]Menges saw in Kang-ar-as the plural-suffix -as, and Klyashtorny the Turkic numerus collectivus -ar-, -er-.[16][17]
Mahmud al-Kashgari, an 11th-century man of letters who specialized in Turkic dialects argued that the language spoken by the Pechenegs was a variant of the Cuman and Oghuz idioms.[18] He suggested that foreign influences on the Pechenegs gave rise to phonetical differences between their tongue and the idiom spoken by other Turkic peoples.[19] Anna Komnene likewise stated that the Pechenegs and the Cumans shared a common language.[18] Although the Pecheneg language itself died out centuries ago,[20] the names of the Pecheneg "provinces" recorded by Constantine Porphyrogenitus prove that the Pechenegs spoke a Turkic language.[21] The Pechenegs are thought to have belonged to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic family, but their language is poorly documented and therefore difficult to further classify.[22]
Composition
Byzantine emperor Constantine VIIPorphyrogennetos lists eight Pecheneg tribal groupings, four on each side of the Dnieper river, reflecting the bipartite left-right Turkic organization. These eight tribes were in turn divided into 40 sub-tribes, probably clans. Constantine VII also records the names of eight former tribal leaders who had been leading the Pechenegs when they were expelled by the Khazars and Oghuzes. Golden, following Németh and Ligeti, proposes that each tribal name consists of two parts: the first part being an equine coat color, the other the tribal ruler's title.[23]
The Erdim, Čur, and Yula tribes formed the Qangar/Kenger (Greek: Καγγαρ) and were deemed "more valiant and noble than the rest".
^Possibly not an equine coat color; cf. Ottoman Turkish قاپو kapu "door, gate, Porte", Hung. kapu "gate, entrance, door". If so, this tribe was the guardians of the Pechenegs to the west.[24]
According to Omeljan Pritsak, the Pechenegs are descendants from the ancient Kangars who originate from Tashkent. The Orkhon inscriptions listed the Kangars among the subject peoples of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. Pritsak says that the Pechenegs' homeland was located between the Aral Sea and the middle course of the Syr Darya, along the important trade routes connecting Central Asia with Eastern Europe, and associates them with Kangars.[26]
The whole of Patzinakia is divided into eight provinces with the same number of great princes. The provinces are these: the name of the first province is Irtim; of the second, Tzour; of the third, Gyla; of the fourth, Koulpeï; of the fifth, Charaboï; of the sixth, Talmat; of the seventh, Chopon; of the eighth, Tzopon. At the time at which the Pechenegs were expelled from their country, their princes were, in the province of Irtim, Baïtzas; in Tzour, Kouel; in Gyla, Kourkoutai; in Koulpeï, Ipaos; in Charaboï, Kaïdoum; in the province of Talmat, Kostas; in Chopon, Giazis; in the province of Tzopon, Batas.
Paul Pelliot originated the proposal that the Book of Sui—a 7th-century Chinese work—preserved the earliest record on the Pechenegs.[28] The book mentioned a people named Bĕirù, who had settled near the Ēnqū and Alan peoples (identified as Onogurs and Alans, respectively), to the east of Fulin (or the Eastern Roman Empire).[28][29][30]Victor Spinei emphasizes that the Pechenegs' association with the Bĕirù is "uncertain".[29] He proposes that an 8th-century Uighur envoy's report, which survives in Tibetan translation,[31] contains the first certain reference to the Pechenegs.[29] The report recorded an armed conflict between the Be-ča-nag and the Hor (Uyghurs or Oghuz Turks) peoples in the region of the river Syr Darya.[29][32]
The Turkic Khaganate collapsed in 744 which gave rise to a series of intertribal confrontations in the Eurasian steppes.[36] The Karluks attacked the Oghuz Turks, forcing them to launch a westward migration towards the Pechenegs' lands.[36] The Uighur envoy's report testifies that the Oghuz and Pecheneg waged war against each other already in the 8th century, most probably for the control of the trade routes.[36] The Oghuz made an alliance with the Karluks and Kimaks and defeated the Pechenegs and their allies in a battle near the Lake Aral before 850, according to the 10th-century scholar, Al-Masudi.[36] Most Pechenegs launched a new migration towards the Volga River, but some groups were forced to join the Oghuz. The latter formed the 19th tribe of the Oghuz tribal federation in the 11th century.[36][2]
The Pechenegs who left their homeland settled between the Ural and Volga rivers. According to Gardizi and other Muslim scholars who based their works on 9th-century sources, the Pechenegs' new territory was quite large, with a 30-day-walk extension, and were bordered by the Cumans, Khazars, Oghuz Turks and Slavs.[37][38]
The same sources also narrate that the Pechenegs made regular raids against their neighbors, in particular against the Khazars and the latter's vassals, the Burtas, and sold their captives.[39][40] The Khazars made an alliance with the Ouzes against the Pechenegs and attacked them from two directions. Outnumbered by the enemy, the Pechenegs were forced into a new westward migration.[9][29][41] They marched across the Khazar Khaganate, invaded the dwelling places of the Hungarians, and expelled them from the lands along the Kuban River and the upper course of the river Donets.[37][41] There is no consensual date for this second migration of the Pechenegs: Pritsak argues that it took place around 830,[39] but Kristó suggests that it could hardly occur before the 850s.[42]
The Pechenegs settled along the rivers Donets and Kuban.[39] It is plausible that the distinction between the "Turkic Pechenegs" and "Khazar Pechenegs" mentioned in the 10th-century Hudud al-'alam had its origin in this period.[39] The Hudud al-'Alam—a late 10th-century Persian geography—distinguished two Pecheneg groups, referring to those who lived along the Donets as "Turkic Pechenegs", and to those along the Kuban as "Khazarian Pechenegs".[9] Spinei proposes that the latter denomination most probably refers to Pecheneg groups accepting Khazar suzerainty, implies that some Pecheneg tribes had been forced to acknowledge the Khazars supremacy.[29]
In addition to these two branches, a third group of Pechenegs existed in this period: Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Ibn Fadlan mention that those who decided not to leave their homeland were incorporated into the Oghuz federation of Turkic tribes.[2][39]
Originally, the Pechenegs had their dwelling on the river Atil (Volga), and likewise on the river Geïch, having common frontiers with the Chazars and the so-called Uzes. But fifty years ago the so-called Uzes made common cause with the Chazars and joined battle with the Pechenegs and prevailed over them and expelled them from their country, which the so-called Uzes have occupied till this day. [...] At the time when the Pechenegs were expelled from their country, some of them of their own will and personal decision stayed behind there and united with the so-called Uzes, and even to this day they live among them, and wear such distinguishing marks as separate them off and betray their origin and how it came about that they were split off from their own folk: for their tunics are short, reaching to the knee, and their sleeves are cut off at the shoulder, whereby, you see, they indicate that they have been cut off from their own folk and those of their race.
However, it is uncertain whether this group's formation is connected to the Pechenegs' first or second migration (as it is proposed by Pritsak and Golden, respectively).[2][39] According to Mahmud al-Kashgari, one of the Üçok clans of the Oghuz Turks[44] was still formed by Pechenegs in the 1060s.[39]
Alliance with Byzantium
Sviatoslav enters Bulgaria with Pecheneg allies,[45] from the Constantine Manasses Chronicle.
In the 9th century, the Byzantines became allied with the Pechenegs, using them to fend off other, more dangerous tribes such as Kievan Rus' and the Magyars (Hungarians).
The Uzes, another Turkic steppe people, eventually expelled the Pechenegs from their homeland; in the process, they also seized most of their livestock and other goods. An alliance of Oghuz, Kimeks, and Karluks was also pressing the Pechenegs, but another group, the Samanids, defeated that alliance. Driven further west by the Khazars and Cumans by 889, the Pechenegs in turn drove the Magyars west of the Dnieper River by 892.
Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria employed the Pechenegs to help fend off the Magyars. The Pechenegs were so successful that they drove out the Magyars remaining in Etelköz and the Pontic steppes, forcing them westward towards the Pannonian plain, where they later founded the Hungarian state.
Late history and decline
By the 9th and 10th centuries, Pechenegs controlled much of the steppes of southeast Europe and the Crimean Peninsula. Although an important factor in the region at the time, like most nomadic tribes their concept of statecraft failed to go beyond random attacks on neighbours and spells as mercenaries for other powers.
In the 9th century the Pechenegs began a period of wars against Kievan Rus'. For more than two centuries they had launched raids into the lands of Rus', which sometimes escalated into full-scale wars (like the 920 war on the Pechenegs by Igor of Kiev, reported in the Primary Chronicle). The Pecheneg wars against Kievan Rus' caused the Slavs from Walachian territories to gradually migrate north of the Dniestr in the 10th and 11th centuries.[46] Rus'/Pecheneg temporary military alliances also occurred however, as during the Byzantine campaign in 943 led by Igor.[note 2]
The heroic deed of the young Kyivite during the siege of Kyiv by the Pechenegs in 968. Andrey Ivanovich Ivanov.[47]
In 968 the Pechenegs attacked and besieged Kiev; some joined the Prince of Kiev, Sviatoslav I, in his Byzantine campaign of 970–971, though eventually they ambushed and killed the Kievan prince in 972. According to the Primary Chronicle, the Pecheneg KhanKurya made a chalice from Sviatoslav's skull, in accordance with the custom of steppe nomads. The fortunes of the Rus'-Pecheneg confrontation swung during the reign of Vladimir I of Kiev (990–995), who founded the town of Pereyaslav upon the site of his victory over the Pechenegs,[note 3] followed by the defeat of the Pechenegs during the reign of Yaroslav I the Wise in 1036. Shortly thereafter, other nomadic peoples replaced the weakened Pechenegs in the Pontic steppe: the Cumans and the Torks. According to Mykhailo Hrushevsky (History of Ukraine-Ruthenia), after its defeat near Kiev the Pecheneg Horde moved towards the Danube, crossed the river, and disappeared out of the Pontic steppes.
Pecheneg mercenaries served under the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert.[48] After centuries of fighting involving all their neighbours—the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, Kievan Rus', Khazaria, and the Magyars—the Pechenegs were annihilated as an independent force in 1091 at the Battle of Levounion by a combined Byzantine and Cuman army under Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Alexios I recruited the defeated Pechenegs, whom he settled in the district of Moglena (today in Macedonia) into a tagma "of the Moglena Pechenegs".[49] Attacked again in 1094 by the Cumans, many Pechenegs were slain or absorbed. The Byzantines defeated the Pechenegs again at the Battle of Beroia in 1122, on the territory of modern-day Bulgaria. With time the Pechenegs south of the Danube lost their national identity and became fully assimilated, mostly with Romanians and Bulgarians. Significant communities settled in the Hungarian kingdom, around 150 villages.[50]
The Pechenegs and contemporary Asian polities circa 1000 CE.
The Pechenegs as a group were last mentioned in 1168 as members of Turkic tribes known in the chronicles as the "Chorni Klobuky (Black Hats)".[53] It is likely that the Pecheneg population of Hungary was decimated by the Mongol invasion of Hungary, but names of Pecheneg origin continue to be reported in official documents. The title of "Comes Bissenorum" (Count of the Pechenegs) lasted for at least another 200 years.
In 15th-century Hungary, some people adopted the surname Besenyö (Hungarian for "Pecheneg");[citation needed] they were most numerous in the county of Tolna. One of the earliest introductions of Islam into Eastern Europe came about through the work of an early 11th-century Muslim prisoner who was captured by the Byzantines. The Muslim prisoner was brought into the Besenyő territory of the Pechenegs, where he taught and converted individuals to Islam.[54] In the late 12th century, Abu Hamid al-Gharnati referred to Hungarian Pechenegs – probably Muslims – living disguised as Christians. In the southeast of Serbia, there is a village called Pečenjevce founded by Pechenegs. After war with Byzantium, the remnants of the tribes found refuge in the area, where they established their settlement.[55][56][57][58][59][60]
^Ibn Haukal describes the Pechenegs as the long-standing allies of the Rus', whom they invariably accompanied during the 10th century Caspian expeditions.
^The chronicler explains the town's name, derived from the Slavic word for "retake", by the fact that Vladimir "retook" the military glory from the Pechenegs.
^While his rule's exact end cannot be dated, Kurya was no longer khan by 988.
^Németh, "Die Inschriften," 16, pp. 50-1; Ligeti, "A magyar nyelv," p.362, 506; and Györffy, "A Besenyők nyelve," p.170-91. Cited in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (New Edition), Vol.VIII, Leiden 1994, p.289
^Баскаков, Н. А. Тюркские языки, Москва 1960, с. 126-131.
^Tang Huiyao, "Vol. 72" quote: "康國馬。康居國也。是大宛馬種。形容極大。武德中。康國獻四千匹。今時官馬。猶是其種。……康曷利馬。印宅。" rough translation: "Horses of the Kang nation, which is the Kangju nation. They are a stock of Dayuan horses. In the middle of the Wude era [622 - 626 CE], the Kang nation tributed 4,000 horses. Nowadays, the officials' horses are [probably] of that stock. [...] Kangheli's horses; tamga [resembles] [character] 宅"
^K. H. Menges, Altaic elements, s. 101-104. (cited PDF)
Anna Comnena: The Alexiad (Translated by E. R. A. Sewter) (1969). Penguin Books. ISBN978-0-14-044958-7.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus: De Administrando Imperio (Greek text edited by Gyula Moravcsik, English translation b Romillyi J. H. Jenkins) (1967). Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. ISBN0-88402-021-5.
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Golden, Peter B. (2003). Nomads and their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe: Turks, Khazars and Quipchaqs. Ashgate. ISBN0-86078-885-7.
Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic People. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
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Macartney, C. A. (1968). The Magyars in the Ninth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-08070-5.
Pritsak, Omeljan (1975). "The Pechenegs: A Case of Social and Economic Transformation". Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi. 1. The Peter de Ridder Press: 211–235.
Róna-Tas, András (1999). Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History (Translated by Nicholas Bodoczky). CEU Press. ISBN978-963-9116-48-1.
Spinei, Victor (2003). The Great Migrations in the East and South East of Europe from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Century (Translated by Dana Badulescu). ISBN973-85894-5-2.
Spinei, Victor (2009). The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-Thirteenth century. Koninklijke Brill NV. ISBN978-90-04-17536-5.
1These are traditional areas of settlement; the Turkic group has been living in the listed country/region for centuries and should not be confused with modern diasporas. 2State with limited international recognition.
1 Central Asian (i.e. Turkmeni, Afghani and Iranian) Turkmens, distinct from Levantine (i.e. Iraqi and Syrian) Turkmen/Turkoman minorities, who mostly adhere to an Ottoman-Turkish heritage and identity.
2 In traditional areas of Turkish settlement (i.e. former Ottoman territories).
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