Odile Kommer, Salvatore Liccardo, Andrea Nowak

Odile Kommer: Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Salvatore Liccardo: Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Andrea Nowak: Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna

This article1 examines ethnonyms for Persians in Medieval Latin, Greek, and Arabic sources. These ethnonyms are part of ethnic terminologies which changed over time and varied in different regional contexts. The ethnonyms for Persians are approached in different textual genres from a combination of historiographical, philological, and social anthropological perspectives. In the first part, the investigation of Persians in Late Antique source material sets out from the Tabula Peutingeriana and examines the entries on the map which refer to the Persians, highlighting both their ethnic and political meanings. The second part deals with source material on medieval South Arabia. First, it focuses on the texts of the tenth-century Yemeni scholar al-Hamdānī and his use of a set of ethnonyms for the Persian minority population, of which each term evokes a different association. This is followed by an analysis of the early thirteenth-century account of Persian traveler Ibn al-Mujāwir, in which the roles and meanings of ethnonyms for Persians in different narrative units are discussed. This case study shows that there are interdependencies between ethnonyms and other means of identification, such as language, lifestyle, place of dwelling, kinship, descent, and the division of the world into different spatial and ideological realms. The case of the Persians illustrates how the authors under discussion used ethnonyms as part of narrative strategies which support processes of selfing and othering.

Keywords: ethnonyms, ethnicity, historical geography, Alexander narrative, Late Antiquity, (Early) Middle Ages, South Arabia, Tabula Peutingeriana, Persian

This article focuses on the study of ethnonyms in medieval sources from Mediterranean Europe and Southern Arabia, or historical Yemen, through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. In our understanding, ethnonyms are group designations which express ethnic differentiation. Thus, the terminological distinctions of collective groups never refer to bounded ethnic categories, nor are they fixed in their application. In this article, the case of “the Persians” serves as an example of the construction of identities through the use of ethnonyms by authors with different regional, temporal, and stylistic backgrounds in their historiographical, geographical, or cartographical accounts, as well as in literary narratives from medieval Mediterranean Europe and Southern Arabia.2 Broader categories of comparison are necessary, which are representative of various academic disciplines, including history, philology, and social anthropology.3 By thoroughly examining the sources, we have identified the following often interrelated key concepts and used them as additional categories of comparison: myths, notions of space, use of terminology, and (pseudo-)etymology.

We argue that the medieval authors under scrutiny employed ethnonyms as conceptual tools, and that ethnonyms were thus made meaningful. The Arabic sources for this case study on ethnonyms for “Persians” include two historical works by the tenth-century Yemeni scholar al-Hamdānī and a travelogue by the early thirteenth-century Persian author Ibn al-Mujāwir. The Latin and Greek source material includes the Tabula Peutingeriana and literary sources from Late Antique and Early Medieval authors.

Myths, Notions of Space, and Environmental Determinism

Myths often feature elements of great narratives which meet a universal human need for the expression of particular conditions. In this sense, they can function as a code of understandings of the world. In mythical narratives, the self and the other interact, as do human and divine elements. Furthermore, mythical narratives contain a processual element, which Angelika Neuwirth calls “myth[s] in a broken form.”4 In these narrative processes, the authors employ popular literary topoi with which they provide meaningful contributions to broader discourses.5 In the context of the analysis of ethnonyms and collective processes of identification it becomes evident that the medieval authors’ narrative strategies not only include mythical features, but that these mythical features are often linked to notions of space. In their accounts, real and imagined places, the distinction between center and periphery, environmental determinism, and spaces and places of collective memory function as unifying or separating elements. For example, a people’s ethnogenesis is constructed through processes of selfing and othering, often in reference to a certain place. As we argue in this article, ethnonyms obtain their various meanings precisely in this interplay of factors.

The Biblical-Quranic founders and ancestors of the South Arabians, together with environmental and climatic conditions, are the central elements of a mythically narrated moment in which the formation process of not only a town, but a South Arabian existence is explained. Environmental determinism is the notion that the physical environment exerts a determining influence on human societies and cultures. In South Arabian mythical narratives, the influence of planetary and stellar constellations on people and climates is particularly emphasized. The notion of environmental determinism was borrowed from Hellenistic Greek discourses and has later been applied in many regions of the world. It has often been used to suggest that some peoples are more advanced than others. In the beginning of his Ṣifat jazīrat al-ˁarab, al-Hamdānī introduces the division of the world into seven “climates” (ˀaqālīm, sg. iqlīm) in accordance with the Ptolemaic idea.6 He locates Sanaa and South Arabia in the first climate and marshals different arguments to prove that the first climate is the best and, therefore, its inhabitants are also more advanced. According to the myth, the descent from Sām (Shem) through Qaḥṭān (Joktan) and Sanaa as the initial place of settlement in South Arabia are substantiated. The narrative strengthens the authenticity of the South Arabians, as well as the qaḥṭānīyūn and their South Arabian identity, by which they differentiated themselves from the North Arabians, the ˁadnānīyūn.

Although largely following Ptolemy’s view, al-Hamdānī disagrees with him concerning a climatic region named by Ptolemy after the Ethiopians (al-ḥabasha), to which Yemen (South Arabia) is also assigned.7 It is particularly the terminological designation of this area as that of the Ethiopians which al-Hamdānī rejects. South Arabia and northeast Africa competed for power for centuries. Al-Hamdānī’s use of the term al-ḥabasha refers to the territory and the dynasty of Aksum, which was a threat to the South Arabian kingdom of the Ḥimyar, and, in the third century, gained control over Yemen. In the sixth century, the ḥabasha were finally expelled from South Arabia with the help of the Sasanian army. Al-Hamdānī takes a stance not only against the subsuming of Yemenis and Ethiopians in a geographical and terminological sense, but also against the idea of shared physical and personal characteristics. Ptolemy describes the area, ranging from the equator up to the middle of the Hijaz (the western part of the Arabian Peninsula), as being extremely exposed to the sun, which causes black skin-color, dark, frizzy, and thick hair, and the (allegedly) hot or even “uncivilized” temperament of its inhabitants. Al-Hamdānī argues against this, saying that the ḥabasha are only a minority in this area and that the skin color of the inhabitants of the region varies greatly. From the perspective of skin color, some of the inhabitants of the region are in strong contrast to the ḥabasha. He identifies the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and of China (al-ṣīn) as such people, located at the edge of this zone. Obviously, al-Hamdānī dislikes the idea of subsuming the South Arabians and the Ethiopians under the same climatic zone, which would imply that they were similarly affected by environmental conditions and therefore share some characteristics. African ancestry was generally associated with inferior status by Arab authors, often related to racial stereotypes.8 Both the regional history of South Arabia and the desire to see the two ethnic categories as separate motivate al-Hamdānī to make these contentions.

The necessity of drawing a distinction between the ḥabasha and the ˁarab (“Arabs”) is also expressed in a mythical tale recounted by Ibn al-Mujāwir in his Taˀrīkh al-Mustabṣir.9 According to the story, the territory of the ḥabasha was originally connected to the territory of the ˁarab through a stretch of dry land, an empty valley which reached from Suez to Bab al-Mandab. Dhū l-Qarnayn,10 the mythical hero figure Alexander the Great, then opened up Bab al-Mandab so the seawater would pour forth, flood the valley, and form the Red Sea. By creating the Red Sea, Alexander the Great intended to separate the two regions and grant each people their own territory under their own rule, so that the violent conflict between the ḥabasha and the ˁarab would finally come to an end. Alexander’s intentions notwithstanding, the ḥabasha did not cease invading South Arabia and besieging its inhabitants until much later in history.

 

 

Anthropogeography, Terminology, and the Affective Dimension of (Pseudo-)Etymology

In Late Antique and Early Medieval Latin and Greek literature, ethnonyms played a central role in authors’ sense of place. While cartographic representations of the world seem to have been uncommon,11 geographical knowledge was spread through numerous geographical treatises. Being purely textual, these works reflect an image of the world as the product of the totality of names of places and peoples. Thus, ethnonyms constitute a fundamental part of the conceptualization of space. Their importance for the Roman and post-Roman sense of place, as well as their longevity, made ethnonyms a central instrument in authors’ attempts to understand and organize a shifting ethnic landscape. Ethnonyms served both to contextualize the gentes dwelling on the periphery of the Roman world and to support coeval political agendas.

Medieval Arabic geography, more precisely the classical school of the tenth century, was primarily concerned with cartographical material which depicted the (Islamic) world. These maps were accompanied by rather short explanatory commentaries.12 Ibn Ḥawqal revised, rewrote, and expanded the literary commentary of the work of his predecessor al-Iṣṭakhrī and thereby crafted a geographical treatise of considerable breadth, the Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ (The Book of the Image of the World).13 Ibn al-Mujāwir copied a section from this work for his South Arabian travelogue, in which Ibn Ḥawqal defines “the homeland of the Arabs,” diyār al-ˁarab.14 This section offers an example of how an ethnonym was used in an internal differentiation within the Islamic world. To define “the homeland of the Arabs,” the author takes into account elements of physical geography, i.e. mountains, landscapes, seas, deserts, and steppes, but also administrative districts and tribal territories. The ethnonym for “Arabs” is combined with the word diyār – diyār al-ˁarab. In the text and on the map, the word diyār is used again, but together with several tribal names to signify tribal territories. The meaning of the word diyār indicates that the sense of place is shaped by social and political interaction. Dār, the singular of diyār, means “dwelling, abode, house” and is often part of compound words that take on abstract meanings, e.g. dār al-aman “house of safety” and dār al-ḥarb “house of war.” These expressions refer to places/territories which are defined by military conflicts and peace treaties.15 In the expression diyār al-ˁarab, the ethnonym is used to represent the home of a large ethnic group that in itself is not homogenous; this home is further structured through a geographical and tribal terminology.

Moreover, ethnonyms can be loaded with stereotypical qualities and values. In such cases, ethnonyms take on an affective dimension which has an impact on the way they are used or influences social encounters with the respective group. If ethnonyms are applied in this manner, categorical projections of positive or negative ascriptions are made to the respective group. The affective substance of an ethnonym is particularly interesting from the perspective of the distinction between self-ascription and the ascription by others. Even though ascriptions by others can have neutral or positive connotations, they frequently entail negative characteristics and fuel processes of othering.16 While some ethnonyms do not have an obvious disparaging tone, many of the names used by Roman rhetoricians and historians have a strong affective value. When they refer to people’s looks, for instance in the case of the Lombards (who were given this name because of their long beards17) or way of life, for instance the Arabes Scenitae (who were given this name because they dwelled in tents18), ethnonyms can highlight the “barbaritas” of distant peoples and reinforce Roman attitudes towards non-Romans.

Fantastic pseudo-etymologies, a specialty of the author and traveler Ibn al-Mujāwir, can add affective value to ethnonyms and give new connotations to a group’s name. The author explains that the Arabs call the inhabitants of the highland of Ẓafār and those of the islands Soqotra and al-Masīra al-saḥara, “the sorcerers,” since, as he claims, al-siḥr, “sorcery,” is their innate characteristic. This attribution conveys a strong sense of otherness which stands in close relation to the theme of insularity. Perceived as self-contained worlds due to their remoteness, islands inspired all kinds of ideas about the other.19 These stories could be used to evoke a sense of normalcy and self-affirmation among the readership.20 It is also possible that in this case the author misinterpreted the Arabic designation for the South Arabian Sḥeri-speakers,21 since in Arabic the root consonants s-ḥ-r bear the meaning “magic” or “sorcery.”

Resorting to synonyms, i.e. literary or archaic versions of the same name, Latin and Greek authors could adapt their ethnic terminology according to the political and cultural climate. The use of antiquated ethnonyms to describe Late Antique gentes, as in the case of the Goths (which were often designated as Scythians or Getae), was not only a matter of style. By repeating ancient ethnic denominations, writers could flaunt their literary knowledge, but they also drew the attention of their readership to older narratives concerning the peoples in question. This literary strategy could be considered a sort of “defense mechanism.”22 In other words, it reinforced the belief that the new ethnonyms (such as “Goths”) did not prove the existence of new peoples. This rhetorical device clearly shines through Synesius of Cyrene’s speech addressed to the emperor Arcadius. In an attempt to urge the emperor to pursue a more aggressive policy against the Goths, Synesius considers the new ethnonym a forgery made by the barbarians to frighten the Romans, to make them believe that another foreign nation had sprung from the soil.23

In what follows, we show how ethnonyms, considered as conceptual tools, were used together with the above exemplified key concepts to form distinctive discourses in the particular case of the Persians. In Part I of the case study, Salvatore Liccardo analyzes the way in which Persians are portrayed on the Tabula Peutingeriana. Since the Tabula Peutingeriana represents a compendium of Greco-Roman geographical and cartographical knowledge, a study of the visual and written representations of the Persians on the map will serve to highlight both the adaptability and diffusion of ethnonyms, which shaped and supported a specific ethnic discourse or political agenda. In Part II, Odile Kommer studies how the Yemeni author al-Hamdānī applies different ethnonyms for Persians and how this relates to strategies of selfing and othering in the context of interethnic relations between the tribal majority population of the Yemen and local Persian minorities. Her contribution is based on an analysis of al-Ḥasan al-Hamdānī’s Kitāb Ṣifat jazīrat al-ˁarab and Kitāb al-Jawharatayn al-ˁaṭīqatayn al-māˀiˁatayn min al-ṣafrāˀ wa-l-bayḍāˀ, Arabic sources written in Yemen in the tenth century. Andrea Nowak examines how Ibn al-Mujāwir, in his thirteenth-century travelogue Taˀrīkh al-Mustabṣir, traces the presence of the Persians in Yemen throughout its history and along the travel route. Since the travel genre presents a rich blend of styles and topics, it provides different narrative units in which ethnonyms are charged with meaning. Furthermore, Part II offers an example of how an Arabic exonym which predominantly conveyed negative ideas about a (Persian) other later became a neutral and, eventually, positive connoted Persian self-ascription.

The Case of the Persians Part I – Late Roman Empire

According to C. R. Whittaker, the Tabula Peutingeriana is “the only certain map, in any sense that we would recognize it, to survive from antiquity (…) although preserved in a medieval copy.”24 The map was intended to represent the entire inhabited world (in Greek oἰκουμένη), from the Atlantic Ocean in the West to India in the East. Despite its impressive size (6.75 m long and 32-34 cm high), the copy in our possession is, however, incomplete, since it is missing the western extremity, grosso modo, corresponding to the west coast of North Africa, the Iberian peninsula and most of the British Isles. While the history of this copy is rather clear,25 the dating of its archetype remains a topic of heated debate. For the purpose of this article, suffice it to say that there is a certain degree of academic consensus on the dating of the last redaction of the Tabula to the Late Antique period, more specifically to the first half of the fifth century.26 Among the several thousand writings on the Tabula Peutingeriana, a handful concern the Persians. These elements of the map represent the focus of the present analysis, which aims to highlight the essential connection between sense of place, ethnographic reasoning, and imperial political discourse.

References to Persians consist of regional names, city names, and ethnonyms. Although these entries are not particularly abundant, the Persian world appears to occupy a significant place in the imagination of the mapmakers. The most visible entry, PERSIDA (10B5–11C3),27 designates a vast territory stretching from the Tigris to the Indus River. Though it is located in a somewhat peripheral area which the mapmakers knew only partially, Persia differs in no way from any other region. As in the case of the Roman provinces, the map’s coverage focuses primarily on the street network and the urban centers. The only significant difference is represented by the use of the Persian unit of itinerant distance, the parasang, instead of the Roman mile.28

Regarding the presence of other territorial names, the Tabula includes also the rubric PARRIA (11C1–11C2), indicating the region of Parthia. The size and position of this caption seem to reflect its relation to the term PERSIDA. One name, Parthia, clearly represents a subcategory of a bigger entity, Persia, which encompasses a much larger number of cities and streets. Turning one’s attention to city names, one can find the illustrious urban centers of Ctesiphon (capital of the Sasanian Empire), Ecbatana (capital of Media and subsequently one of the seats of the Parthian kings), and Persepolis (royal residence of the Achaemenes).29 Both the entry for Ecbatana and the entry for Persepolis contain a specific reference to the ethnic component of these cities. Ecbatana is called “Ecbatana of the Parthians,” and Persepolis is defined as the “Persian commercial hub.” The coexistence of Persians and Parthians on the map mirrors the ethnic reasoning of Late Antique writers, who often used Parthi and Persae as synonyms.30 Although several sources mention the shift of power from the Arsacid to the Sasanian Empire,31 in Roman accounts Persians and Parthians appear as part of the same ethnic entity, sharing customs and ethnographical stereotypes.

The ethnonym “Persian” recurs on the Tabula on two other occasions.32 Halfway between the regions of Mesopotamia and Persia, squeezed in a complex and confused fluvial system, there are the entries TROGODITI PERSI (10B5) and FLVMEIPERSI (10B5). They are examples of ethnic “double names.” Within this category fall ethnonyms composed of a known ethnic denomination and a second textual element which serves to specify the group in question. In most cases, these double names represent a particular ethnic subgroup belonging to a larger gens. For example, the entries ESSEDONES SCYTHAE (11A3) and ROXULANI SARMATE (7A5) refer to specific groupings ascribed to the broader ethnicities of Scythians and Sarmatians. In other cases, a textual element matched with an ethnic umbrella term can hint at something more than a simple subgroup. It can evoke the geography of a people’s dwelling, their way of life, their physical appearance, and their political structure, or it may even recall a literary figure.33 In the case of the entries TROGODITI PERSI and FLVMEIPERSI, the double names, placed a few centimeters away from each other, represent two groups which share the same ethnic origin: they are both considered Persians. Although one can only speculate about their exact meaning, an analysis of these entries will serve to highlight both the ethnographic knowledge and the political agenda of the authors of the map.

The inscription FLVMEIPERSI represents the most enigmatic case. As the inscription exists today, on the only surviving copy of the map, the legend is obscure. It could be that the term reflects the mapmakers’ decision to coin a neologism in order to emphasize the exotic nature of this people. Another possibility is that the ethnonym is unintelligible, because one or more different hands involved in the transmission did not understand and, therefore, did not reproduce a previously existing abbreviation. For a better understanding, it is necessary to propose a significant emendation of the inscription FLVMEIPERSI.34

Although any interpretation of this legend is simply a more or less informed conjecture, one could suppose that the term Flumei refers to an unspecified Flumen. Emended as Fluminei Persae, the inscription would mean “the Persians of the River.” This explanation has some advantages. It is close to the text and seems to reflect the location of the inscription, which is stretched out in close proximity to a watercourse. Additional perspectives can be gained by looking at other double names on the Tabula Peutingeriana that seem to allude to the specific geographical area inhabited by a given ethnic subgroup. For instance, the legend PARALOCAESCYTHAE (10A4) has been interpreted as referring to Scythians living on the coast of the Caspian Sea,35 while the inscription RVMI SCYTHAE (11A1) arguably refers to another group of Scythians dwelling near the River Rhymmus.36 Finally, the map also has the legends VAPII (1A2) and VARII (1A3), which plausibly relate to two ancient Germanic ethnonyms with their typical ending (“varii”).37 If Amsivarii and Chasuarii were the correct reading of the terms on the Tabula, these two terms would be another two ethnonyms on the map that may have been derived from the name of a river, since there is a connection between Amsivarii and the river Ems, as well as between the Chasuarii and the river Hase.38

However, the Fluminei Persae would differ slightly from the aforementioned cases, because the name is an allusion not to a specific river but to an unnamed one.39 A look at the Cosmographia of Julius Honorius,40 a geographical treatise which is roughly coeval to the Tabula Peutingeriana, might help find a more equivalent example. In one of the different catalogues which constitute this work, one finds the ethnonym Fluminenses gens.41 Based on its position in the text (after the Feratenses and the Barzufulitani, but before the Quinquegentiani) and its content, Philippe Leveau has proposed interpreting this name as referring to a specific group of Mazices, a people of Mauretania Caesariensis, which lived next to the River Chelif.42 Since the Tabula Peutingeriana and the Cosmographia are similar, both in terms of chronology and the ethnonyms employed,43 the Fluminenses could represent an analogous case to the FLVMEIPERSI and therefore support the interpretation of the map’s legend as referring to the “Persians of the river.”

On the basis of this reasoning, one could hypothesize that TROGODITI PERSI and FLVMEIPERSI were used by the mapmakers to designate two ethnic groups living in two different environments. The “Persians of the River” could represent the inhabitants of the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, while the “Persian Troglodytes” could be the dwellers of the Zagros Mountains. However, the ethnic “double name” TROGODITI PERSI carries a meaning broader than a simple geographical characterization.

The last consideration introduces a subject central to this section of this article: the analysis and contextualization of the legend TROGODITI PERSI. Albeit less obscure, this inscription is also unclear. First, the text needs a small emendation: the inclusion of an ‘l’ in the term Trogoditi, which should read Trog<l>oditi. The unusual location of the legend is also problematic. In the segments representing the eastern and far eastern lands, the depiction of both physical and urban landscapes is often inaccurate. Nevertheless, the discrepancy between the content of the inscription TROGODITI PERSI and its position is particularly striking, because of the ethnographic tradition and evocative power connected to the term “troglodytes.” While Greek and Roman geographers used this term in connection with various ethnic groups living on the fringe of the inhabited world, most frequently in Ethiopia, the authors of the map put the cave dwellers next to a meander of the Tigris, making the homeland of this people anything but peripheral. In contrast with the comparative absence of cities and roads typical of the northern periphery of the ecumene, here city names and streets proliferate.

Nonetheless, this abundance of details is not the result of precise geographical knowledge of the region. The depiction appears chaotic and in some cases utterly wrong. The Mesopotamic fluvial system is far from being exact. The river Tigris, for example, has many incongruous characteristics. First, it gushes from a small mountain chain and then crosses another much longer one. Later, it flows into a neighboring river, the morphology of which is even more bewildering,44 and finally, after twisting with the latter, it flows into a circular inland body of water, named Palvdes (10C3). The number and location of cities and roads reflect a picture just as baffling. A few place names are written twice in two different positions of the map. This is the case with Sinjar, present on the map as Singara (10B5) and Sirgora (10C4, without a symbol), and Ain Sinu, on the map as Zagvrae (10B5) and Zogorra (10C4).45 As they doubled names, the mapmakers also doubled the relative routes (Singara-Hatris and Lacvs Beberaci-Singara). In addition to this confusion, one should mention the atypical position of the caption in question, which, due to the lack of space and the large amount of neighboring physical and urban elements, is vertical rather than horizontal.46

What is more perplexing about the entry TROGODITI PERSI is its content. The juxtaposition of the name “troglodytes” with the ethnonym Persians is unique. Late Antique Latin and Greek texts reflect a nuanced image of the Persians, who represented a sort of counterpart to the Roman world despite often being considered morally inferior.47 Accurate historical information, longstanding ethnic stereotypes, and literary metaphors and commonplaces interweave in the works of Late Antique writers, even in the writings of authors like Ammianus Marcellinus, Procopius, and Agathias, who either travelled to the eastern frontier or had (or claimed to have had) personal contact with Persians and access to Persian documents.48 Even if the depiction of Persians could vary according to author and political climate, Roman persons of letters shared a profound interest in this gens. The fourth-century historian Ammianus Mercellinus represents one of the most glaring examples of this fascination. In his historical work, known as the Res Gestae, he inserted a large number of excursuses which contain information primarily of a geographical and ethnographical nature. The section dedicated to the Persians, included in book 23 right before the account of Julian’s Persian expedition, is by far the longest.49 Since the chronology of this work (380s) is not very distant from the last redaction of the Tabula Peutingeriana, a brief analysis of Ammianus’ Persians highlights the extent to which the entry in question deviates from or converges with the opinions of his contemporaries.

Ammianus never explicitly defines the Persians as barbarians,50 yet his judgment of them cannot be considered positive. Century-old ethnographic stereotypes influenced the description of their physical features, temperament, and habits. In its desire to emulate more ancient and authoritative authors, such as Herodotus and Ptolemy, Ammianus’ digression resembles a display of erudition rather than a report of new information about Persian society. Although he seems well aware of the complexity and vastness of the Persian Empire, which is considered a patchwork of diverse peoples and disparate environments, Ammianus does not make any clear distinction among the subjects of the King of Kings when he lists the alleged virtues and vices of the Persians.51 Among their many moral flaws, he mentions their unrestrained lust (which explains why they have numerous concubines and as many wives as they can support), their effeminate posture, their vanity, and their cruelty. Ammianus’ remarks on king Sapor II (309–79) are everything but flattering: he is greedy, quick-tempered, rough, pompous, treacherous, and dishonest. Yet, Persians do not know pederasty, and they do not engage in obscene behavior, such as urinating in public. They are also extremely frugal when it comes to food and particularly disciplined on the battlefield.52

In other words, Ammianus stresses the Persians’ otherness, emphasizing their effeminacy, their licentiousness, and their cruelty, all typical traits of eastern barbarians according to Greco-Roman ethnography,53 but he also recognizes some praiseworthy aspects of their way of life, distancing himself in a few instances from the older historical tradition.54 To conclude, although the Persians share some characteristics with other barbarians and are often depicted in negative terms, they are a unique interlocutor for the Romans, an alius orbis55 representing another, although not equal, civilization. The judgment that shines through the pages of the Res Gestae seems to contradict the entry on the Tabula Peutingeriana, which puts the Persians unambiguously in the realm of the barbaricum.

However, the unusual connection of the Persians with the “troglodytes” appears less strange if one broadens the scope of the primary sources taken into consideration. While Ammianus attributes barbaric habits to Persians but never explicitly calls them barbarians, other Late Antique sources do define them as such. For example, a register of provincial, urban, and ethnic names dating to 314, the so-called Laterculus Veronensis,56 does not imply any difference between Persians and other barbaric groups. The ethnonym Persae is included in a list of gentes barbarae who spread under the authority of Roman emperors.57 For the author of this catalogue, there is no substantial difference between Persians and other barbaric groups, like Saxons, Vandals, and Goths.

One can recognize the same reasoning in a certain number of inscriptions dedicated to the emperor Julian and found in the eastern part of the empire.58 These inscriptions praise the emperor for his military, civic, and religious policies. Julian is celebrated as liberator orbis Romani, as restaurator templorum, and as recreator curiarum et rei publicae. Regarding Julian’s success over external enemies, the inscriptions contain the cognomina devictarum gentium Alamannicus, Francicus, Germanicus, and Sarmaticus.59 In a few cases, the emperor is hailed with more comprehensive victory titles, such as debellator omnium barbararum gentium, extinctor barbarorum or νικητὴς παντὸς ἔθνους βαρβαρικοῦ.60 In texts from the eastern provinces, the term barbari would likely indicate primarily the Persians, who represented the major threat in the area.61 This seems to be the most logical conclusion concerning at least two inscriptions from the Roman province of Phoenicia,62 where the text presents both cognomina, referring to individual groups of western barbarians, and the generic title extinctor barbarorum. The cognomina devictarum gentium allude to successes accomplished by Julian at the Rhine frontier in 355–58, while the pompous title extinctor barbarorum reflects the propaganda implemented by Julian and his supporters in the months preceding the Persian campaign.63

Although it does not contain the term barbari, an episode in Ammianus’ account of the Persian campaign represents one of the closest examples to the disparaging entry on the Tabula Peutingeriana. In front of an army that was increasingly demotivated and in need of supplies due to the effective scorched-earth policy of the Persians, Julian ordered some prisoners to be brought before the army and harangued his troops as follows: “Behold what those warlike spirits consider men, little ugly dirty goats; and creatures who, as many events have shown, throw away their arms and take to flight before they can come to blows.”64

The description refers to undernourished and unkempt prisoners, yet it repeats and amplifies negative stereotypes of Persians in general. The animal metaphor serves to highlight their physical repugnance and their cowardice on the battlefield. This tirade reflects the intolerant attitude towards everything that was not Roman, an attitude which formed an integral part of the political discourse supported and spread by Julian and his court.65

Libanius, a teacher of Greek rhetoric in Antioch who was a friend of and advisor to the emperor, was among the most prominent spokespersons of this anti-Persian rhetoric.66 In his orations, Persians are repeatedly and explicitly called barbarians.67 In Embassy to Julian, Libanius ascribes two quintessential barbarian vices to the Persians: the disdain for blood ties and the lack of mercy. Prone to violent outbursts, Persians act like wild beasts, while Julian is a Greek who rules over Greeks, and therefore follows a superior moral code of conduct.68 The Greek-Persian dichotomy follows the opposition human-inhuman. The political ideology supported and spread by Julian and his pagan collaborators tended to stress the Hellenic nature of Roman power.69 As stated more than once by Julian himself, Romans and Greeks belong to the same γένος: the Greeks civilized the Romans and the latter acquired, preserved, and spread the Greek religion and political institutions.70 In the political message of Julian and Libanius, the more the Romans resembled the Greeks, the more the Persians took the role of barbarians par excellence.

Although particularly evident in the works of Julian and his court, this attitude towards the Persians was not exclusive to their political and cultural discourse. Judgments of the Persians went hand in hand with the contemporary political situation. Since the rise of the Sasanian Empire in 224, Romans and Persians were in almost constant conflict.71 Mesopotamia, Syria, and Armenia were the main war zones. In a Roman world which looked on the Persians with renewed apprehension, the narrative of Alexander the Great enjoyed a period of revival. The Latin rendition of the Alexander Romance represents one pivotal example of this new interest in the figure of Alexander.72 This text, whose author is traditionally identified as Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius, consul in 338, contributed greatly to the diffusion and longevity of the myth of Alexander in medieval Europe. The Macedon and his deeds in the East represented a model for any Roman emperor who had to confront the Persian threat. If Julian was the most enthusiastic emulator of Alexander,73 other emperors aspired to follow in his footsteps.74 These are the premises on which a text known as the Itinerarium Alexandri (the latest possible date of which is 345) rests.75 Dedicated to Constantius II, this work exploits the myth of Alexander for contemporary political exigencies. Alexander’s expedition is presented both as an archetype and as an omen for the emperor, who had just started his campaign against the Persians. Significantly, the revival of the Alexander narrative also finds expression on the Tabula Peutingeriana. References to Alexander’s deeds play a central role in the map’s portrayal of the eastern lands. The campaigns of the Macedonian king are evoked through the numerous cities that bear his name (founded during or after Alexander’s reign),76 the mention of the Indian elephants,77 and especially two isolated symbols (the “altars of Alexander”), which, marking the limits of Alexander’s expeditions, define the edges of the inhabited world.78 Thus, it appears that the Alexander narrative enjoyed a period of renewed interest in Late Antiquity, a phenomenon that could be interpreted as closely linked to the contemporary political climate. The account of Alexander’s Persian campaign provided a story in which the Persians played the role of the main antagonist, who eventually succumbs, and thus the narrative served to reassure a Roman public worried about the aggressive Sasanian policy.

In light of the above, it is now possible to contextualize the entry TROGODITI PERSI on the Tabula Peutingeriana, which at first glance appears so bizarre. Contrary to the more nuanced judgment of influential historians, such as Ammianus and Procopius, the imperial discourse, influenced by the renewed popularity of the Alexander narrative, described the Persians in clear-cut negative terms. The Tabula Peutingeriana, or at least its last version, appears as the product of Roman imperial ideology. With Italy covering one-third of the map and Rome located in its center,79 the map represents the ecumene seen through the lens of Roman geography and political discourse. Moreover, the myth of Alexander, which offers a particularly disparaging image of the Persians, evidently informs the depiction of the East on the Tabula. To conclude, although the Tabula Peutingeriana represents the only instance in which the Persians are described as “troglodytes,” this legend can be interpreted as an extreme example of Late Antique anti-Persian rhetoric, which, fuelled by the political tensions at the time, repeated and adjusted themes of Alexander’s narrative and perpetuated the most derogatory stereotypes of the Persians.

The Case of the Persians Part II – South Arabia

The basis of the analysis in this article on South Arabia in the tenth century is the writings of al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad b. Yaˁqūb al-Hamdānī (280–334 AH/894–945), a distinguished scholar, poet, and public figure. As one of Yemen’s minority groups, the Persians offer an example of al-Hamdānī’s adaptation of ethnic terminology, analyzed in consideration of its historical and ethnographic context. Applying ethnonyms in order to differentiate social categories is a universal strategy of othering. In the case of the Yemeni author, it becomes obvious that these strategies can only be understood in relation to simultaneous selfing processes, that they are primarily local, and that they are always contextual. An understanding of othering as the construction of an imagined other through the differentiation of this other from the self (often in a pejorative way) reveals a close link between this strategy and the concept of ethnicity itself, since processes of ethnic differentiation are generally based on constructions of precisely these kinds of dichotomies. The following terminological examination will clarify this.

Al-Hamdānī applies different ethnonyms to Persians in his writings: al-abnāˀ, al-furs, and al-ˁajam. Their etymological meaning and the context in which they are used in the sources are the basis of interpretation regarding the social implications of the terms and the author’s discursive strategies. Processes of selfing and othering concerning South Arabians and Persians are significantly shaped by tribal ideologies in al-Hamdānī’s account. However, his use of the different terms is fluid and cannot be clearly categorized. In spite of sectarian conflicts and continuous power struggles, particularly in the ninth and tenth centuries80 (when al-Hamdānī was writing), there is a remarkable element of continuity, most clearly expressed in the consistent use over long periods of time of tribal names and toponyms, which resist political ruptures and changes.81 This element of continuity must not be ignored in the study of tribal identities and social environments in the Yemeni highlands. The case of the Yemeni Persians further supports the argument. For many centuries, their main area of settlement remained the city of Sanaa and the surrounding region, and their most characteristic ethnonym al-abnāˀ appears consistently in the sources for about 600 years between the sixth and twelfth centuries.82

This main term for Persians (and also the term used most by al-Hamdānī), al-abnāˀ (“the sons”) in the abridged or abnāˀ al-furs (“the sons of the Persians”) in the complete form, clearly refers to the descendants of Persians, who came to Yemen at the end of the sixth century, when it fell under Sasanian rule.83 They were not regarded as “real Persians,” since they were born in Yemen and often had Yemeni mothers.84 Hence, the significance of the term is deeply rooted in the Yemeni local context and history. Al-Hamdānī mentions al-abnāˀ several times, particularly in his Kitāb Ṣifat jazīrat al-ˁarab (Geography of the Arabian Peninsula).85 Among them were prominent personalities, individual inhabitants of towns or villages, and larger groups of the population. The designation al-abnāˀ creates a terminological relation to the tribal population of Yemen. It has the same meaning as banū (“sons”), which is a term for members of a tribal group and can be part of the tribal name. Hence, the two terms abnāˀ and banū are equivalent designations with regard to meaning, yet they are distinct markers of social groups, which is highly interesting from the perspective of an analysis of the constructions of identity and interethnic relations. Both terms are part of group designations which imply kinship references. Through banū a connection to genealogy is expressed, which marks an important factor of tribal identities. However, not every tribal group shares such an identity-establishing genealogical record or is composed of a mixture of different genealogical backgrounds. Yet the addition of banū to the tribal name conveys the impression of having one shared genealogy.86

Al-furs appears either as additional part in the construction with abnāˀ, e.g. abnāˀ al-furs, or can otherwise be applied as an ethnonym by itself. Al-Hamdānī used al-furs partly synonymously with al-abnāˀ for people of Persian descent. The following example is a passage on Persians from the mining city of al-Raḍrāḍ, who came under attack and had to flee the town. It shows that al-furs is the term applied to descendants of Sasanian Persians but also of Persians who came to Yemen in later periods (under the Umayyads and the Abbasids). It seems they worked in the mine and therefore were called furs al-maˁdin (“Persians of the mine”). Some of them had a background in Sanaa, including houses [manāzil] and estates [ḍiyāˁ], to which they could return. Furthermore, those who returned to Sanaa are identified by names, which all contain banū, followed by a Persian word as the first syllable,87 and the same ending syllable [ōye], which was very common to Persian names even if probably pronounced differently88:

 

When Muḥammad b. Yuˁfir was killed and these qabāˀil89 fell into distress because of that, some of them acted unjustly against its inhabitants, killed among them and ransacked them. Who remained flew, and they were dispersed in the bilād [country]. A qawm [body of men/women] of them went to Ṣanˁāˀ who had a footing there from times of old and dwelling houses and property. Its inhabitants were all from al-Furs [the Persians], from those who came there during the jāhiliyya [pre-Islamic times], in the days of the Banū Umayya [Umayyads] and the Banū al-ˁAbbās [Abbasids]. They were called Furs al-maˁdin [Persians of the mine]. Who is in Ṣanˁāˀ of them are Banū Sardōye, Banū Mihrōye, Banū Zanjōye, Banū Bardōye, and Banū Jandōye.90

Al-furs is also a general designation for Persians beyond the Yemeni context, which refers to a territory, namely the bilād fāris (“Persia”). Fāris, “Persia,” was used in Achaemenid (559-330 BCE) and Sasanian (224-651 CE) times and designated both the Persians as an ethnic group and their homeland. In early Arabic sources, the term fārs/fāris was applied both in the narrow sense to the Persian province of Fars and in a wider sense to the whole Persian territory. As an ethnonym for Persians, al-furs was much more common than fāris.91 Al-furs can be opposed to other ethnonyms, such as al-ˁarab (“the Arabs”) or al-rūm (“the Byzantines”). Having the qualities of a typical ethnonym, al-furs cannot be combined with these alternative categories, since, when used in the same context, they are mutually exclusive.92 It is used in this sense by al-Hamdānī, for example in listings of people or lands, but since the focus of his writing is South Arabia, such lists are only marginal and little explanation of them is provided. One corresponding example is a passage from the Kitāb al-Jawharatayn al-ˁaṭīqatayn al-māˀiˁatayn min al-ṣafrāˀ wa-l-bayḍāˀ (The Book on the Two Noble Metals Gold and Silver) on the mining business in Yemen: “The merchants from among the Iraqis [al-ˁirāqīyīn], Persians [al-furs], Syrians [ash-shaˀmīyīn], and Egyptians [al-miṣrīyīn] carried away the silver of Yemen at that time, and they gained through it significant profit.”93 Here, Persians are listed with other agents active in the mining business. In this context, al-furs is in line with the other foreign categories, and there is no indication of any closer relation to Yemen. On the contrary, there is some sign of a tie to the foreign lands to which the silver was “carried away” by the merchants.

Another designation that can be applied to Persians is al-ˁajam (pl. aˁājim). Al-Hamdānī mentions it more rarely than al-abnāˀ and al-furs. Where it appears in the text, it is sometimes not clear whether it actually refers to Persians or to non-Arabs. This ambivalence is caused by the historical use of the term. ˁAjam has its etymological root in ˁujma, “impure speech,” and is opposed to faṣāḥa, “highly eloquent, clear speech.” Even pre-Islamic poetry drew a distinction between al-ˁarab and al-ˁajam. In the context of the Islamic conquests, it was used in order to distinguish between “Arabized” populations and “pure” or “real” Arabs.94 The etymology and semantic evolution of this collective term are comparable to those of the Greek term βάρβαροι, and it was primarily associated with the neighboring Persians. The affective value attributed to the word was at times inspired by claims of Arab superiority due to their more civilized and refined culture.95 In Yemen of the tenth century, al-ˁajam could have functioned as general designation for non-Arabs, could have meant non-Arabic speakers, or could have been an ethnic designation for Persians. Al-Hamdānī, for example, writes about abnāˀ aˁjam,96 which can be translated as “offspring of non-Arab descent” or “offspring of Persian descent.” In later sources, such as Ibn al-Mujāwir’s Taˀrīkh al-Mustabṣir, al-ˁajam was explicitly used for Persians. The Shuˁūbīya movement in the time of the ‘Abbasids97 questioned Arab superiority and strove to revalue the role of the aˁājim, which mostly but not exclusively meant the Persians. Fostered by these developments, ˁajam as the initially pejorative identification of others by Arabs became a neutral term of ethnic differentiation. With its novel quality of an ethnic group designation for Persians, it was eventually used as self-ascription.98 Moreover, the term could also be used to denote a territory, i.e. bilād al-aˁājim (“non-Arab lands”).99 Thus, ˁajam in its various forms is the most unspecific of the terms in question. It stresses distinctiveness without qualifying or defining it. It can be assumed that the Yemeni readers were able to discern, at least in some matters, whether al-ˁajam meant Persians or non-Arabs, but al-Hamdānī’s intention in using this term might have been less to identify the other and more to evoke a sense of it.

In order to explore ethnonyms for Persians in South Arabia in a later medieval period, this case study draws on Ibn al-Mujāwirs Taˀrīkh al-Mustabṣir (The Historiography of the Sharp-Sighted), a travelogue from the early thirteenth century. The author, to all appearances a native of Khorasan, Persia and native Persian-speaker, visited South Arabia at least three times between 1220 and 1230. He shows great interest in the history and topography of the Arabian Peninsula, but mainly focuses on the topic of trade and commerce, which leads to the assumption that he was most likely a businessman himself.100 In a copious style, he combines his own observations and those of informants and transmitters with an abundance of storytelling, including local myths and legends as well as Quranic themes and his own dreams, creating a rich mix of genres. Thus, the analysis of ethnonyms in this source focuses on their roles and meanings in these different narrative units and also their etymology and historical context.

In Taˀrīkh al-Mustabṣir, the abovementioned terms al-furs and al-ˁajam are used synonymously and are equally eligible to designate people of Persian origin or descent, meaning either Persians who came to Yemen from Persia or their Yemeni offspring. It is clear that the term ˁajam refers to no other ethnicity than Persian. ˁAjam as used by Ibn al-Mujāwir has no negative connotation whatsoever and bears no reference to its Greek/Arabian etymology of “impure speech.” The author even uses the term al-ˁAjamīya to refer to the Persian language when quoting a Persian saying given by his contemporary Yemeni Persian-speakers. Although furs and ˁajam are used interchangeably, the term ˁajam is used slightly more often in the text. When in opposition to other typical ethnonyms, especially ˁarab, the term ˁajam is preferred, maybe because of its phonetic similarities or because al-ˁarab wa-l-ˁajam had been coined as a pair of opposites since pre-Islamic times. The following quotation shows how ˁajam qualifies as a term that clearly designates Persians as an ethnic group in distinction to others:

 

They are a people descended from Ham, son of Noah – peace be upon him. Moreover they are not Arabs [ˁarab], Persians [ˁajam], Indians [hind], Abyssinians [ḥabash], Turks [turk] nor Nabateans [nabaṭ], but they have a language all of their own which is used [only] among themselves.101

In this passage, the author recounts one of his dreams about a mystic valley and its inhabitants near the city of Medina. In this case, it is obvious that “Persian” serves as an ethnic category that is dissociated from any distinct historical timeframe.

Whenever the frequently used phrase “it was built by the Persians” or its variation, “a construction of the Persians,” is used, the question arises how an approximate historical period can be determined. Ibn al-Mujāwir provides his readership with a hodological rather than a chronologically organized narrative, meaning that he structures his writing according to the stops on his itinerary (towns, cities, historical sites). He shows a pronounced tendency to attribute the erection of impressive building structures such as fortifications and mosques and even the founding of whole towns to the Persians, whether these edifices or settlements still existed, were in ruins, or were gone altogether. Flipping this causality around, he interprets the remains of constructions as indications of Persian presence in major cities and various other towns in earlier history. If at all, he gives only vague time specifications, e.g. “when the Pharaonic rule came to an end,” “in the days of the Persians,” and “under Persian rule.” One can either try to reconstruct at least a tentative timeframe from the context and compare it with other historical records to determine whether the building in question was or could have been of Persian making, or one can use additional information given on the building materials, location (e.g. the center or the periphery of the town), and other architectural features to determine Persian workmanship.102 Particularly in the case of Aden, it seems most likely that expressions like “the days of the Persians” refer to the period of Sasanian rule in the sixth century. Roxani Margariti notes that “Al-Marzūqī103 conveys the tradition that Aden always came under the jurisdiction of Yemen’s rulers.”104 On some occasions, Ibn al-Mujāwir supports his statements by saying that the information was revealed to him in a dream, hence it was a divinely inspired vision (manām or ruˀyā), which can be understood as strong proof.105 A legend like that of Alexander the Great, a mythical figure who also appears in the Quran, might also serve as evidence. In spite of the fact or, perhaps, precisely because of the fact that such narratives defy clear historical substantiation, they attain a strong effect. The following may serve as a prime example:

 

When Dhū l-Qarnayn [Alexander the Great] released the sea from Jabal Bāb al-Mandab and it flowed out, all the area around Aden dried up. […] When the Persian rulers [mulūk al-ˁajam] took over Aden they saw this exposed area and were afraid for the town, that someone coming to conquer might lay siege to it. Then they made an opening on the side near to Jabal ˁImrān and released the sea over it. The sea poured forth, descending until it drowned the whole exposed area around Aden. Aden became an island. […] The new-made sea was called Buḥayrat al-Aˁājim and was known by their name for all times.106

Here, the plural form aˁājim is part of the hydronym buḥayrat al-aˁājim. Ibn al-Mujāwir never uses the word aˁājim as a term to designate the Persians. It occurs only twice in the text, the second time in a piece of Arabic poetry which he quotes. Mulūk al-ˁajam might refer to the Sasanian rulers, but the fact that this story connects to the legend of Dhū l-Qarnayn creates a certain level of ambiguity. Such ambiguities are characteristic of Ibn al-Mujāwir’s writing and do not necessarily undermine the author’s discourse. If anything, they create narrative tension and draw more attention to what seems to be the author’s intention, namely to point out the momentousness of Persian influence in medieval Yemen.

One group of Persians which is datable and clearly distinguishable from other Persians throughout the text are al-furs min ahl Sīrāf, “the Persians of the people of Siraf.” The ancient city of Siraf, situated on the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf, was a seaport and early Islamic trade center. In 997, it was left in ruins by an earthquake which lasted for seven days. The people of Siraf, whose merchants had already been traveling back and forth to the Red Sea, then immigrated to the coastal regions in the area.107 Ibn al-Mujāwir introduces the ahl Sīrāf early in his account when dealing with the history of the seaport Jeddah.108 A group of contemporary Yemeni Persians tells him the story of their Sirafi ancestors who fortified the city by enclosing it with a massive wall. They then dug a huge moat around it so that the seawater would pour into it and run around the town until it flowed back into the sea. Thus the city of Jeddah resembled an island amidst the sea. The incredible number of a thousand reservoirs, built to guarantee a secure supply of drinking water, adds a fantastic element to the story. After approximately 80 years of prosperous community life, the Persians were forced out of Jeddah by the Arabs, and they immigrated to other islands and coastal cities in the region yet again.

Another tale which features the ahl Sīrāf speaks to their pride and wealth as merchants.109 The same story appears in Ibn al-Baṭṭūṭa’s Riḥla, who visited Aden about a hundred years later, probably around 1330.110 In Ibn al-Mujāwir’s account the protagonists are the Sirafi Persians. Two slave-boys of two Sirafi merchants are sent to the market to bid for fish. The slaves start bidding for the only fish available until the price exceeds 1,000 Dinars and one of them buys it. When he brings home the fish, his master is so pleased with him that he sets him free and provides him with 1,000 Dinars sustenance. The other slave who returns to his master empty-handed is severely punished. In Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s version the fish is a ram, but the masters who send their slave-boys are not associated with any particular ethnic group, but rather with the social group of Adeni traders in general.111

As to the etymology of the name Aden, Ibn al-Mujāwir states that it was derived from the word maˁdin, more specifically from maˁdin al-ḥadīd, “the iron mine,” and that it was called ākhuri sangīn “an empty, or rather, stony cratch” by the Persians.112 This is clearly a reference to the Persian mining activities in Yemen and a further example of how the author uses different tools to point out the strong impact of Persian presence in medieval Yemen.

Despite the different etymologies of al-furs, al-ˁajam and al-abnāˀ, and although there are some tendencies in al-Hamdānī’s texts, which at first glance suggest preferences for one or the other term depending on the context, these South Arabian sources from the tenth century show that no clear-cut distinctions between the three terms can be made. The range between al-abnāˀ, al-furs, and al-ˁajam varies in terms of their othering potential. The relatedness of the terms abnāˀ and banū can be interpreted as minor differentiation and could even be read as a strategy of selfing, e.g. al-abnāˀ refers to the Yemeni Persians, understood as part of the author’s own society, in contrast to al-furs, which refers to the Persian Persians, not understood as part of Yemeni society. Of course, the differentiation between abnāˀ and banū, or Persians and Yemeni tribesmen respectively, continues. Otherwise the ethnonym would not make sense. Consequently, the three ethnonyms for Persians in Yemen, which al-Hamdānī uses, combine different levels of selfing and othering. Yet the flexibility of how they are used underlines the fluid character of ethnic categorizations in medieval South Arabia. Genealogy and descent were major factors of tribal belonging and ethnic naming, as the case of the abnāˀ shows. What becomes evident is that in the case of the abnāˀ, the construction of identity for the (Arab) self and the (Persian) other follows patterns of tribal belonging and genealogical descent. The abnāˀ are addressed as sons/offspring of an ancestral group or referential figure, like Yemeni tribesmen, but this ancestral reference is an ethnic other: the furs (abnāˀ al-furs). In al-Hamdānī’s writings, ˁajam and its variant forms bear, according to its etymology, the highest othering potential. Yet the affective dimension of the term gradually lost its meaning of “impurity” in its practical applications over time. Also, the term became increasingly limited to designating something or someone as “Persian,” rather than referring to a non-Arab or non-Arabic other. Ibn al-Mujāwir, in all probability a native Persian and an author of the early thirteenth century, also uses the terms furs and ˁajam to designate Persians in the Yemeni context, and a third term which refers to a certain group of immigrants, al-furs min ahl Sīrāf. Furs and ˁajam are used synonymously and are predominantly to be understood as ethnic terms which identify people of Persian descent. Both furs and ˁajam convey no additional information as to social status or the historicity of a group, unless they are combined with other compounds which indicate either rulership or geographical origin, e.g. mulūk al-ˁajam or al-furs min ahl Sīrāf. Ibn al-Mujāwir’s writing is characterized by fluid transitions between the historical report, mythical narratives, fantastic stories, and genuine observations, a style that creates ambiguity, which can be interpreted as part of the author’s narrative strategy. The text consistently highlights the Persians’ presence in South Arabia, and building structures serve as the main indicator in the emerging discourse of Persian self-authentication. The ethnonyms al- furs, al-ˁajam and (al-furs min) ahl Sīrāf are all suitable to praise the outstanding accomplishments of Persians and thereby portray them as an ethnic group who is more advanced in comparison to others. Thus, all three terms have the same selfing potential. This is also where it becomes most evident that over time the term ˁajam not only lost its original pejorative meaning, but eventually acquired a positive affective value, being used as a Persian self-ascription.

Conclusion

This comparative study shows that ethnonyms function as conceptual tools, which authors can strategically use in their narratives. Drawing on Latin, Greek, and Arabic source material, we presented the particular case of the Persians as an illustration that ethnonyms are dynamic and adaptable, that they shape processes of selfing and othering, and that they support ideologies and political agendas. Ethnonyms and, more generally, ethnic terminology can serve to accentuate or reduce the hiatus between the self and the other. The case study shows that constructions of Persians as the other in interethnic relations varied greatly over the course of time.

The legends that refer to the Persians on the Tabula Peutingeriana are a mixture of erudite citations, ill-informed guesses, and ethnographic commonplaces. While Late Antique Greek and Latin authors have conveyed a nuanced view of the Persians and their empire, the inscription TROGODITI PERSI on the Tabula represents a vivid example of ethnic polemic in the service of Roman imperial propaganda.

TROGODITI PERSI on the Tabula Peutingeriana portrays the Persians as an extreme opposite to the Roman (self-)understanding of (Roman) “civilization.” Around the time of the advent of Islam, Arabs developed a comparable notion of “non-Arabs” (al-ˁajam or al-aˁājim), from which they marked themselves off. In the case of the Roman map, the point of reference for distinction was the dwelling place and way of life, whereas the Arabs referred to language. For them, Arabic was the divine language, and it was closely linked to the holy script of the Quran, which distinguished the Arabs from all non-Muslims and non-Arabs. Persians were among the first non-Arabic speakers whom the Arabic-speaking Muslims conquered in the seventh century. Until the tenth and thirteenth centuries, ˁajam was more and more closely associated with (and even adapted by) the Persians, and less closely associated with non-Arabs in general, or the inability to speak Arabic properly. In Latin sources, the terminological designations for Persians did not change significantly between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. However, perceptions of the Persae varied between notions of them being “barbarous” in the fullest sense to them being “civilized,” or even similar and comparable to the Romans.

In the South Arabian context of the tenth century, the local term al-abnāˀ created a zone of transition between the Yemeni self and notions of the Persian other. Al-Abnāˀ could be combined or exchanged with the transregional terms al-furs and al-ˁajam to appropriate new meanings. In this interplay of local and transregional ethnonyms, it was possible either to enhance the role of the Persian minority as an integral part of the Yemeni society or to express a stronger sense of its otherness and separation. In the early thirteenth century, the Persian author Ibn al-Mujāwir used the terms al-furs and al-ˁajam to elevate the Persians as a civilization in the context of South Arabian history. A strong element of storytelling, together with references to elements of construction as evidence of civilizational accomplishments, built the framework through which he engaged in a discourse of Persian self-authentication.

Acknowledgments

The research for this article was funded by a DOC-team-fellowship provided by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. We would like to thank Johann Heiss, Walter Pohl, Stephan Prochazka, Danuta Shanzer, and Ekkehard Weber for their support and advice during the preparation of this article and the preceding research phase.

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Some Thoughts on the Translation and Interpretation of Terms Describing Turkic Peoples in Medieval Arabic Sources*

Zsuzsanna Zsidai

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities

The identification of the various peoples who lived on the medieval Eurasian Steppe has always been an engaging problem among scholars of the early history of this territory. The Arabs came into contact with Central Asian peoples from the beginning in the seventh century, during the course of the Islamic conquest. Hence, one finds many details about the peoples of the Steppe in the Arabic sources.

The Arabic geographer Ibn Rusta mentions the Hungarians among the Turkic peoples in the beginning of the tenth century. However, according to the Arabic sources, there were many Turkic tribes or peoples in different regions, such in Ferghana, Khorasan, Transoxania, Samarqand, and near Armenia. Based on this fact, the term “Turk” can be interpreted in different ways. My aim is to indicate some of the difficulties concerning the translation and interpretation of the terms referring to peoples or tribes, such as “jins” and “qawm,” and to give some examples of occurrences of the ethnonym “Turk” in medieval Arabic texts.

I begin with a discussion of the relevant methodological questions and then argue that the designation “Turk” should be used more cautiously as a group-identifying term in the wider context of the early Medieval world of the Eurasian Steppe.

Keywords: Turks, ethnonyms, Eurasia, Arabic sources

Introduction

The Arabs conquered Central Asia in several waves of attacks and finally overthrew the Chinese forces at the Talas river in 751, so they annexed Transoxania to the Caliphate. First, one must highlight the importance of contacts between various peoples and cultures in Eurasia and the long-durée changes that shaped the history of the region. However, this would go beyond the framework of this paper. We can find traces of the meeting of Arab and Eurasian peoples and cultures in the archaeological heritage but also in the medieval Islamic geographical and historical literature. These sources contain very important information about the early medieval history of these territories and their peoples, but one must keep in mind that, if we seek to arrive at an understanding of the wider context of the region’s history, we need to consider the Turkic, Chinese, Uighur, and Persian sources as well.1 Many of the Steppe peoples who lived in different regions (such in Ferghana, Khorasan, Transoxania, Samarqand, and near Armenia), are referred to as Turks in the Medieval Islamic texts. It is therefore sometimes difficult to identify the various “Turkic” peoples in the sources. My research focuses on early Hungarian history (by which I mean the period before the eleventh century), to which this issue is relevant because the Hungarians were referred to in the sources primarily as Turks, but the “Turk problem” is a very important and fascinating question in the wider context of the world of the early Medieval Eurasian steppe too. In the following, I would like to emphasize that as an Arabist, I will examine these questions on the basis of Arabic sources exclusively. One must begin with the first question: who were the peoples referred to as Turks in the sources, and which parts of the Steppe did they inhabit?

If we speak of Turkic peoples, even if we take into consideration their skills in military affairs and their emergence into the politics of the Islamic caliphate during the centuries following the Arabic conquest, it is interesting to see how the nomadic, barbarian, and pagan Turkic peoples became the defenders of Islam and the Caliphate. Yehoshua Frenkel correctly points out that the image of the Turks has changed over time, and he assumes that descriptions of the Turks in Arabic sources can be divided into two main periods, the early stage contacts (ca. 650–830, when the peoples of the Steppe were characterized as barbarians) and the later period (830–1055), during which their image evolved into that of the noble savage.2 He analyzes the second period in his article using a wide array of sources. His examinations and recent translations3 of texts about the Turkic peoples are very important and highly valuable, giving some insights into their history and showing their main characteristics in the medieval Arabic texts. Nevertheless, many questions remain concerning shifts in the descriptions of the Turks in the Arabic sources. Hopefully, future studies will pay attention to this subject as regards the early Islamic age, too.

The Question of Group-identifying Terms

Before speaking of the problem of the identification of these peoples,4 one must raise questions related to the usefulness and limitations of group-identifying terms in general. This is a very complex problem, which concerns not only the translation of words, but also interpretations which are subjects of the fields of history and anthropology. If one reads about Turkic or any other kinds of peoples in the Medieval Arabic geographical or historical works, one finds many expressions and sentences resembling the following two examples:

 

“at-turk ummatun ʿaẓīmatun kathīratu al-ajnāsi wa al-anwāʿi kathīratu al- qabāʾila wa’l-afkhādhi”

“The Turks are a great people and consist of many kinds and varieties, many tribes and sub-tribes”);5 (Trans. Minorsky)

“wa fīhi ayḍan jinsun min al-ṣaqāliba” 6 (“and [in the Caucasus] [dwells] a kind of Slavic peoples too”). “Wa’l-majghariyya jinsun min al-turk” 7 (“The Hungarians are a kind of Turkic people”).

But the question arises, which social/ethnic groups/tribes or peoples are mentioned among the Turkic peoples by the authors?8 When reading about the early Hungarians or any other kind of Turkic peoples, this can be confusing, even if one keeps in mind that the identification of ethnicity is another general issue.9 In order to further an examination of the categories of “Turkic” peoples, it is essential to consider the interpretation of the word “jins,” and other terms which are used in the medieval Arabic texts to designate peoples or tribes should also be interrogated. I list the most specific terms found in the sources.

I would like to begin by emphasizing that a full discussion of the problem of “tribes” lies beyond the scope of my research and this paper. However, it is important to summarize the main methodological questions, which are strongly connected with the focus of this inquiry, namely the questions relating to translations and interpretations of words and terms designating various social groups in our written sources. The problem of tribe and its translations may be too broad and complicated in part because it demands interdisciplinary work from the fields of philology, anthropology, and history, which would be a complex undertaking.10 It has become almost a commonplace in anthropology that the main problem of the tribe is that it is a “magical word,”11 and it is hard, if not impossible, to define what it means exactly.12 The meaning of “tribe” can be quite different and can shift over time, depending on a wide variety of factors, such as territory, the exact period of time in question, or the origins of the author and whether or not the term is used to denote a particular fluid society.13 This also means that in most cases, it is a difficult to translate and interpret the terms or nouns describing groups, peoples, or tribes, and in some ways, the mapping of these social groups, if they can be mapped at all, is strongly connected with the ethnographers’ (or translators’) fictions.14 Despite the serious methodological issues, it might be worth taking into consideration the anthropologists’ notes and considering how their findings could be used in historical research. Of course, many methodological problems arise, for instance the question of extrapolation of sources,15 such as the case of the word “īlāt.” This word has been applied to the tribal, pastoral, nomadic population, but it is not found in the medieval Persian records.16

Surprisingly, it was social anthropologist David Sneath who raised the problem of the interpretation of these terms some years ago and suggested that “specialists in other fields” should think about the problem of translations.17 While Sneath is not a philologyst, he recognized this fundamental issue concerning the Mongol era and Persian texts, and he found that the word “qawm” in Rashīd al-Dīn’s work does not mean “tribe” or “lineage.”18 With regards to the interpretation of group-identifying terms, I assume that his arguments are persuasive. Christopher P. Atwood also emphasizes that there is no comprehensive study of the terms used to designate various groups in Rashīd al-Dīn’s work. For example, the word “qawm” seems to be regularly applied to any Turco-Mongol social group, so it is not possible to specify its meaning. At the same time, he points at the difficulties of the simultaneous usage that were common with reference to the interpretation of his material as ethnographical research into the Pre-Chinggisid Mongols, which is a very important observation.19

There are articles demonstrating the unambiguousness of the usage of words like “peoples” or “tribes” in various sources. A few decades ago, Richard Tapper mentioned the problem of interdisciplinary studies in this field, and he emphasized that historians and philologists translate and interpret words like “qabīla”,” ṭāʾifa”,” qawm” as tribes many times but without knowing how they were actually used by the authors.20 To my knowledge, there is also no comprehensive study examining the terms mentioned in various sources and originating from different regions, like the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, or Central Asia. However, in the field of Oriental studies, recently some articles raised this issue concerning interpretations of tribe in written sources from the perspective of the representation of communities,21 or they examined the terms used to designate nomadic peoples.22 In a recent article, Johann Heiss and Eirik Hovden analyzed and compared the terms describing tribes or social groups in al-ʿAlawī’s (ninth-tenth century) and al-Hamadhānī’s (tenth century) works, and they found that al-­ʿAlawī used mostly the term “ʿashīra” when speaking of tribes or groups of peoples, while interestingly, this word is not found in al-Hamadhānī’s genealogical work. They highlighted that al-ʿAlawī was of north Arabian origin, while al-Hamadhānī belonged to the south Arabian peoples, and this may have been one of the reasons why they used different terms to describe various social groups.23 The general use of group-identifying terms in the case of Turkic or other peoples differs significantly from this, and I would like to add some examples from the Arabic sources describing Turkic peoples and point out some difficulties concerning the translations of group-identifying terms. Of course, it is impossible to understand how Turks identified themselves on the basis of the Arabic sources, as these sources are external and they depict these peoples mostly as nomads, barbarians, or infidels,24 but this could be the subject of another paper.

 

Jins

In the medieval Arabic sources, one finds many terms designating Turkic peoples, such as jins, umma, qawm, qabīla, and ṭāʾifa. The lexicons of Régis Blachère or Edward William Lane or even simply Ibn al-Manẓūr’s dictionary give a good idea of the diversity of meanings of these words. The most common word one finds in these descriptions of nomadic Turkic peoples is jins. This term basically means a kind or class within a higher-order thing, for example in the case of animals and peoples:

 

”al-ḍarbu min kulli shaʾyin, wa huwa min al-nāsi wa min al-ṭayri…”

”[this word means the] kind of everything, such as the [kind of] people or birds…”

 

In this sense, the modern Arabic dictionary later also gives “nation” as one possible meaning. Jins might be a loanword from the Greek γένος and Latin genus (though these terms do not have the same meaning), and it usually refers to a species within a genus.25 “Jins” can also refer to pagan or barbarous peoples, or other ethnic groups.26 If one takes a closer look at the geographical sources, one sees that the term “jins” can designate smaller or larger groups of people, including Turks, Chinese, Indian peoples, or Slavs:

“jinsun min al-turk,” [they are]a kind of Turkic peoples;

“ajnāsi al-turk,” groups of Turkic peoples;

“jinsun min al-saqāliba,” a kind/group of Slavic peoples;

“wa ajnāsun min al-turk badū yusammūna al-w.l.n.d.riyya,”27 and [some] kinds of the nomadic Turks called al-w.l.n.d.riyya

 

This word is translated many times as race28 or tribe, but the word race should not be used anymore, especially in these kinds of translations, and “jins” usually denoted a group or kind of peoples, which is very common in the geographical literature. For example, al-Masʿūdī (†H 345/956) writes the following in his Kitāb al-tanbīh:

 

The fifth group of peoples (ummatun)29 consists of [various] kinds of Turkic peoples (ajnās al-turk), and among them are the kh.r.l.khiyya, the ghuzz and kīmāk, and the ṭughuzghuz and the khazar. [The Khazars] are called sabīr in Turkish and al-khazarān in Persian, and they are a kind of Turkic peoples (jinsun min al-turk) who are settled [people], and their name was Arabized. It is related that the Khazars and other [kinds of Turkic peoples] have one common language, and they have one king.30

As one sees, the term “jins” refers here to a larger group or a kind of Turkic peoples. At the same time, in the work of al-Marwazī, V. Minorsky translated the word “jins” in some places as tribes, but it is possible that the author meant tribes:

 

”wa ʿan al-yasār al-Ṣīn ʿindā maṭlāʿi al-shamsi al-ṣayfi khalqun kathīratun fīmā bayna al-Ṣīn wa al-khirkhīz wa hum ajnāsun lahā asāmin mithla Abrmr (?), Ḥwrnyr (?), Tūlmān (?), F.rāḥnklī (?), Yāthī (?), Ḥynāthī (?), Būbūʿnī (?), B.nkū (?), Fūrī (?).”

”To the left of China towards the summer sunrise, between China and the Kyrgyz, there is a large population. They are tribes with names such as Abrmr (?), Ḥwrnyr (?), Tūlmān (?), F.rāḥnklī (?), Yāthī (?), Ḥynāthī (?), Būbūʿnī (?), B.nkū (?), Fūrī (?).” (Trans. by Minorsky)

V. Minorsky noted that the transcription of these names is conventional and cannot be relied upon, but this is another problem concerning the interpretation of the sources related to the history of these peoples.31

It is also hard to determine what kind of social or relational connection this word had. An interesting example of the use of term “jins” is found in the work of Ibn al-Athīr (†1233), in which he contends that the Tatars wanted to ally with the Kipchaks against the Alans in 1222, and they based their argument on the “fact” that they and the Kipchaks originated from the same “jins”, but the Alans did not. As one later sees, the Tatars used this only as a reason to attack the Kipchaks.32 Here the word “jins” seems to refer to a kind of kinship connection between the Kipchaks and the Tatars, but we know little of this, and in the end, obviously, it meant nothing to the Tatars. Emphasis in this case can be placed rather on the argument itself: how did they make friends out of their enemies, and how did they use this during the negotiations?

 

Umma

Another term which is often found as a designation of different kinds of peoples is the plural of word umma: umamun. The word “umma” refers primarily to the Muslim religious community, but of course, it can have different meanings in various sources. Michael Cooperson examined uses of the term “umma” on the basis of al-Masʿūdī’s work. He suggests that the term was used to denote peoples, nations, or communities as well, and its attributes were in flux. If one is speaking of larger communities, such as nations, one could mention the Persians, the Byzantines, the Chinese peoples, Turks etc. among the major umam of the ancient world in the historical and geographical literature. Cooperson also assumes that al-Masʿūdī was well aware of the difficulties of the reconstruction of each umma’s history.33 Heiss and Hovden concluded that in the singular, “umma” meant mostly the universal Muslim community, and in the plural (umamun) referred to the many peoples from different part of the world and among them to the Muslim community’s pagan and heterodox enemies. They give an example from al-Idrīsī’s (†1165) work, in which the author used this term to designate peoples along the East African coast or the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.34 One finds instances of this in other sources too, for example when we read the following about the Turkic peoples in al- Marwazī’s work:

 

“wa minhum khirghiz wa hum ummatun kathīratun,” and among [the Turks] there are the Kyrgyz people, who are a great people”

“wa ʿalā yamīn hāʾulāi al-kīmākīya thalāthu umamin yaʿabudūna al-nayyirān wa’l miyāha” and on the right side of these Kimeks, there are three kinds of peoples who adore the sun and the moon and the waters”35 (Trans. by Minorsky)

It is worth noting that he uses the words “umam” and “ajnās” (i.e. as plural forms) quite often, but it is not clear what the difference is between these terms exactly. In another passage, al-Masʿūdī mentions the Burtās people as “ummatun ʿaẓīmatun min al-turk,” or “a community or group from the Turkic peoples.”36 As one can see, this word denoted primarily larger or smaller groups of peoples out of the Muslim communities in terms of Turkic peoples.

 

Qawm

The other term designating larger or smaller groups is qawm or aqwām in the plural. This word can be found in an array of geographical works. For example, al-Marwazī mentions the Magyars as “qawmun min al-turk,” or “the Majgharī are a Turkish people” in V. Minorsky’s translation, which is the same in Ibn Rusta’s work, though he refers to them as a “jins”, not as a “qaum”.37 In another passage, he writes about the Pechenegs:

 

“wa’l-bajnākīyya qawmnun sayyāratun,” or “the Pechenegs are wandering people.”38 Ibn Faḍlān also uses this term in his work: “baladu qawmin min al-atrāk yuqālu lahum al-bāshghird,” or “the land of a kind of Turkic peoples called Bashkirs.”39

Qabīla

There are other words which the authors used primarily to refer to smaller groups of peoples, such as tribes. One of these words is qabīla (in the plural qabāʾilu). As Heiss and Hovden highlight, this is not a term denoting exclusively Arabs, though one finds other mentions of non-Arab peoples, mainly in travelers’ accounts, in which they write about non-Arab-or Islamic lands.40 This is the case with the Turkic peoples too. For example, Ibn Faḍlān refers to the Oghuz peoples as “tribes”: “qabīlatun min al-atrāk yuʿrifūna bi’l-ghuzziya,” or “a tribe of Turkic peoples known as Oghuz.”41 He also mentions the tribes of infidel peoples:

 

“fa-baynakum wa bayna hadhā al-baladi alladhī tadhkurūna alfu qabīlatin min al-kuffār, or “and between you and the land, which you have mentioned, there are one thousand tribes of infidels.”42

But this word can be found in many other works too, including for instance Ibn al-Faqīh al-Hamadhānī’s description:

 

“wa Yājūj wa Mājūj arbʿa wa ʿishrūna qabīlatan fa-kānat qabīlatun minhum al-ghuzzw wa hum al-turk,” or “And Gog and Magog had 24 tribes (?) and there was a tribe (?) among them, the Oghuz, and they are the Turks.”43

Ṭāʾifa

Another term which was widely used to designate tribes in the Arabic sources is ṭāʾifa (pl. ṭawāʾifu). This basically means a part of something (“juzʾun min al-shayʾi”) and also a group of people (”jamāʿatun min al-nāsi”) numbering less than one thousand,44 and in this sense, as since it designates a smaller group of peoples, the word can be translated as tribe. This word describes many groups of peoples or tribes in the Middle East and Central Asia, and it has been studiously analyzed in the anthropological scholarship. For example, the term “qawm” and “ṭāʾifa” are widely used today in Iran and Afghanistan and they can refer to various levels of the social organization of a group of peoples like tribes, groups, and the like.45

This word can denote Turkic peoples in the Arabic geographical literature, for example in al-Bīrūnī’s or Ibn Faḍlān’s works:

 

“wa ḥawlahu (al-baḥr al-khazar) ṭawāʾifu min al-turk wa-al-rūs wa-al-ṣaqlab,” or “and around the (Caspian Sea) dwell groups of the Turkic, Rūs and Slavic peoples”; 46

“wa raʾynā ṭāʾifatan minhum taʿbudu al-ḥayyāta wa ṭāʾifatan taʿbudu al-samaka wa ṭāʾifatan taʿbudu al-karākīya,” or “and we saw a group of them, which worshiped the snake, a group, which worshiped the fish, and [another ] group, which worshiped the cranes.”47

Thus, this term can refer to tribes or different kinds of peoples in the sense of the Arabic word nawʿ at the same time.

Other Terms and the Problems of Interpretations

There are other words like “jīl” which can also stand for smaller or larger groups of people or tribes, but it is only rarely used in descriptions of the Turkic peoples. Blachère suggested it refers primarily to larger groups of peoples, like the Chinese, the Turks, etc. as is mentioned in Ibn Manẓūr’s dictionary,48 but Lane found that “jīl” can also refer to tribes, and in al-KÁshgharī’s DīwÁn one finds the same assertion, although no Turkic word is given as an equivalent of this term.49 It is worth noting that the term ʿashīra (pl. ʿashāʾir), which can denote smaller sub-tribes of qabīla,50 is rarely used in the sources to denote Turkic peoples, and indeed I myself have not seen it used once to denote Turkic peoples.

On the basis of the examples mentioned above, one can conclude that the translation of these words can be very difficult and uncertain, which means that ultimately the translation is an interpretation of the terms. One comes across several examples of this when reading about the history of the Eurasian Steppe, because in the sources there are various words which are consistently

translated as tribe. For instance, there is a fascinating article about the people of Nūkarda, and there are some places where the translations of “tribes” are confusing. The author, Turkologist Peter Golden, translates both “jins”51 and “jīl” as tribe.52 However, if one takes a closer look at the given text, one sees that these words could denote larger groups of peoples, or at least they could refer to different kinds of peoples that were described by al-Masʿūdī there. “al-jīlu al-awwalu minhum yuqālu lahum bajnā, thummā yalīhi ummatun thāniyatun yuqālu lahā bajghird, thumma yalīhā ummatun yuqālu lahā bajnāk … talīhā ummatun ukhrā yuqālu lahā Nūkarda.” He translates this as follows: “The first tribe is called bajnā. Near to them is the second people, who are called bajghird, and near them is a people, the bajnāk, … near them is the last of these peoples, the Nūkarda .”53 I would venture the contention that it is not immediately obvious that, when using the word ”jīl”, he meant tribe, as the text is a listing of the peoples living in the Caucasus. The other thing is that ummatun ukhrā does not mean the last of these peoples, but rather can be translated as follows: “[they are followed by] another [group of] peoples called Nūkarda.”54 One notices the same thing if one also reads the translation of anwāʿ (kinds, sorts, species) as tribes,55 though they do not have this meaning.56 Here the author quotes al-Masʿūdī’s historical work, in which he mentioned the Black Sea: “al-burghār wa al- rūs wa bajnāk, bajghird wa hum thalāthatu anwāʿin min al-turk.”57 He translates as follows: “The Burghar, the Rus, the *Pacänǟ, the Päčǟnak and the Bajğird, (the latter) are three tribes of the Turks.”58 The word nawʿ cannot mean tribe here, so they are three kinds of Turkic peoples. Moreover, al-Masʿūdī wrote about the Baḥr Nītas in the first instance, describing them as the sea of the people of Burghar, the Rus, the *Pajänä, the Päjänak, and the Bajğird. Golden, however, assumes that he is speaking of three tribal organizations.59 I would suggest that the sentence should be translated as follows: “And as the astrologers from among the holder of astrological tables and other [astrologers] among the elders say, the sea of al-Bulghar and al-Rūs [and B.j.nÁ and B.j.n.Ák and Bgh.r.d—and they are three kinds of the Turkic peoples] is the Sea of Nīṭ.sh. (the Black Sea)”60 Adding to this, al-Masʿūdī mentions the Burghar as a kind of Slavic people using the term “nawʿ” (nawʿ min al-Ṣaqāliba) in his geographical description, which does not denote tribes there.61 Finally, in the same article there is a sentence in which one finds the word “jins”, but it has not been translated at all.62 The article is still highly valuable, but the translator thus can confuse the reader, even if he also correctly noted later, in another passage, that he is uncertain as to how to translate the word “jins”.63 In the recent translations of excerpts about Turkic peoples in the Arabic sources, Frenkel found the translation of these group-identifying words as hard as in the case of Ibn al-Faqīh al-Hamadhānī’s work.64

In conclusion, how these terms are translated is important. If one examines the history of the Steppe peoples, it does matter whether they are referred to as peoples or tribes, especially if one seeks to analyze their state/tribal organization.65 Unfortunately, in most cases one does not find descriptions of these terms that are as detailed and clear as the ones found in the Arabic-Turkish dictionary of al-Kashghārī, in which he describes them quite precisely.66 On the basis of the abovementioned examples, and because these words denote tribes or particular fluid social groups, I would like to argue that we should use “jins”, “qabīla”, “qawm”, or “ṭāʾifa” etc. as group-identifying terms more cautiously in the wider context of the early medieval world of the Eurasian Steppe. Moreover, one also has to consider that it is not possible to apply “modern” (or Western) terms like nation for the description of the communities of the medieval (and eastern) Steppe. With regards to the Arabic sources, Heiss and Hovden have recommended further comparisons and analyses of various texts from different regions in a historical context which would be based on source criticism.67 I can only highlight the importance of their suggestion as it concerns the sources on the Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe.

The Ethnonym Turk and Problems with Its Use

In the following, I raise the problem of the interpretation of the ethnonym Turk. Narratives of early Hungarian history (i.e. the period before the eleventh century) offer many examples of the problems with the use of this term because of the scarcity of sources and also because the early Hungarians were nomadic, so they were mentioned as Turks not only in the Islamic sources but very often in Latin and Greek sources too. Studies on the so-called Turkic peoples are popular, but there are few works and little research on the history of the Turks which rely on the Arabic sources before and by the time of early Islam because this period of the Turkic people’s history is poorly documented. The problem has been discussed in the international research,68 however, and it is clearly important to consider carefully how the sources use the term “Turk” (i.e. to which groups of people or peoples do they apply it).69 If one only takes the English translation of al-Ṭabarī’s chronicle (Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk) into account, one will have difficulties regarding the identification of “Turks.”70 Apart from the chronicle of al-Ṭabarī, one could also mention the case of the Khalaj Turks. According to an article by Miklós Maróth, who examined this question on the basis of the al-Balkhī tradition, the Khalaj Turks lived between the steppe of al-Dāwar and Ghazna. Maróth agrees with al-Khwārizmī’s conclusion that they were the descendants of the Hephthalites if it was true that the Hephthalites were Turkic.71 But this assumption is related to the problem of the Hephthalites (hayāṭila in the Arabic sources), which is another interesting subject of debate among scholars at the moment.72

With respect to early Hungarian history, which is strongly connected to the history of the Eurasian Steppe, unfortunately in some cases it is far from clear that a given source which mentions “Turks” has any connection to the history of the early Magyars, and this raises the problem of “Turk” as an ethnonym, too.73 One example is found in an interesting passage in Ibn Rusta’s work, which derives from Hārūn ibn Yaḥyā, who lived in Constantinople and described the Byzantine Empire and its neighbors. The passage in question goes back to the second half or the end of the ninth century. Hārūn ibn Yaḥyā mentions Turks as guards of the emperor.74 On the basis of an analysis of the De administrando im­perio (DAI), which was edited by Emperor Constantine VII of Byzantium (913–59) in the middle of the tenth century, and the work of Ibn Rusta, Joseph Marquart concluded that these Turks were Turks from Ferghana (Φαργάνοι). However, he quoted another passage from the DAI in which the term “Turks” (Τοῦρκοι) refers to the Turks of Ferghana, the Khazars, and other soldiers who might have been Hungarians.75 Some historians have concluded that this fragment refers clearly to the early Hungarians, but I do not see any clear evidence in support of this conclusion.76

Another example of the misinterpretation of ethnonyms is the case of Samanid IsmÁÝÐl ibn Aḥmad’s raids against Taraz in 893. Al-TabarÐ’s account of this event is mentioned in the historical sources on the Hungarian conquest because some of the Hungarian historians and archaeologists thought it was this raid which caused the Pechenegs’ raid against the Hungarians, which may have prompted the Hungarians to migrate into the Carpathian Basin in 896.77 If one takes a closer look at the sources, however, one sees that al-Mascūdī’s work, in which he wrote more about the raids and fights on these territories, unfortunately has been lost, and no sources have been found describing this raid as the starting point of an eastern-western migration of the Karlukhs towards to the Oghuz people who dwelled near the Aral Sea. Instead, according to the sources, part of the Karlukh people moved to Kasghar, and this city lies not to the west, but to the southeast of Taraz. Moreover, if we look at the map of this raid as it is reconstructed in the secondary literature, there is no clear explanation why Bukhara would have been the starting point of the raid. Al-NarshakhÐ writes that the Samanid emir returned to Bukhara with the captives and booty, but there is no mention in any of the sources of the specific site from where the raid was launched, so in all likelihood, this argument was based only on the fact that IsmÁÝÐl ibn Aḥmad was the emir of Bukhara by that time.78 Unfortunately, the abovementioned problems of translation and interpretation notwithstanding, one of the most important migration hypothesis concerning the early Hungarians is based on this argument. After having studied the related sources, however, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot consider this raid the starting point of a greater migration, at least not in the case of the Hungarian conquest. Rather, it was in all probability an important event in a longer border fight between the pagan Turkic/Nomadic peoples and the Caliphate. These fights are important from the perspective of the history of the steppe, and I find Deborah G. Tor’s argument interesting. Tor contends that there are not many notes on these raids against the Turks because these fights resulted in great losses and deficits for the Caliphate.79 Whatever the truth is, it would be worthwhile to reevaluate our sources with regards to the Arabic conquest of Central Asia as well. Apart from the problems of the sources on the early history of the Hungarians, the use of ethnonyms is confusing in other texts too. Sometimes, a name does not refer to a people but rather to the territory where they live, for example al-Iṣṭakhrī mentioned the name Burṭās (who were described by al-Mascūdī as Turkic peoples as well)80 as an “umma” and later as “nÁhiye”: “Burṭās is the name of a region (nāḥiya), like the Rūs, and the Khazar and the Sarīr, which are all the names of countries (mamlaka) and not the names of cities or peoples.”81 However, the term Khazar was used to denote peoples in the beginning of the same work: “as regards Khazar, it is the name of this kind of peoples (innahu ismun li-hadhihi al-jinsi min al-nÁsi).”82 Claus Schönig has also noted the ambiguousness of term Turk in al-KÁshgharÐ’s DÐwÁn, and he concludes that the term Turk denoted 1) the Turkic people as a whole, 2) the non-Oghuz peoples (in remarks on the Oghuz dialect), and 3) a part of the core population of the Karakhanid state, i.e. the Čigil.83

Further examples of the use of the term “Turks” could be listed, but they would not add to the core argument of my inquiry. Another important factor is the question of the “Turkicization” and Islamization of the territory where “Turks” had lived earlier. A decade ago, Sören Stark published a book which examined this question from the perspectives of archaeology and history,84 and in a later article he noted a problem concerning the early Turkic archaeological material and the interaction between the inhabitants of early medieval pre-Muslim Transoxania. He also noted that, “[t]he actual status of these earliest influences [viz. the middle of the first millennium A.D.] from the Turkish steppes in Transoxania is still poorly understood and consequently a matter of considerable dispute between archaeologists, historians and linguists.”85 In conclusion, each use of the term “Turk” must be interpreted in a wider historical and geographical context, and it is obviously not easy to define which kinds of Turkic peoples were described in the chronicles or the geographical descriptions. Hence, as noted above, historians must be careful with the translations of these ethnonyms.86 The term “Turk” can refer to various kinds of peoples and also tribes, subtribes, or clans, which are mainly nomadic in the Arabic sources. Historians must also keep in mind that the term does not have anything to do with the ethnicity in itself, especially if we speak of the early medieval history of the Steppe.

In my assessment, further study of the uses of ethnonyms like “Turk” is necessary, as is further study of the migration of early nomadic peoples in the historical context of the Eurasian Steppe. This question is interesting not only from the perspective of early Hungarian history, but also as regards the early medieval history of the Steppe. There is still room left for Orientalists, Antropologists and Historians in this field of these studies.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

 

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al- Bīrūnī, Abū al-Raiḥān Muḥammad Ibn-Aḥmad. ḲÁnūn al- Masʿūdī. Edited by Z. V. Togan. New Delhi: Government of India Publ. 1937.

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* This article was written with the support of the MTA BTK MŐT 28.317/2012 project. I’m grateful for the advice of my teachers and colleagues, and I’d like to thank Miklós Maróth, Walter Pohl, László Tüske, Stephan Procházka, György Szabados, Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek, and Dávid Somfai Kara for their advice.

 

Magyar – A Name for Persons, Places, Communities

György Szabados

Consulting Historian, King Saint Stephen Museum, Székesfehérvár/Director of László Gyula Institute

With a name, we identify a community. But if we consider how people assigned and used names in the early Middle Ages, we are confronted with limits and problems. On the one hand, communities were organized in several ways, and the different kinds of identities (e.g. person, state, clan, ethnic group) can be confusing and thus can be confused. On the other hand, the history of a name and the object it denotes can lead in different directions: a name could identify more peoples or groups, and conversely, a single ethnic group could have many denominations. “Magyar” is now the vernacular name of the Hungarians who first emerged as a distinct group in the ninth century, but this noun appeared much earlier and not in a group-identifying function. Around the year 530, a Kutrigur-Hunnic king lived who was mentioned as “Muageris” by Byzantine authors. Some scholars have observed the similarity between the name “Muageris” and the ethnonym “Magyar.” Another Byzantine work (De Administrando Imperio ca. 950) enumerates the “clan of Meger” among the “Turk” [Hungarian] clans, and centuries later the Hungarian gestas and chronicles mention “Hetumoger,” “het Mogor” as “seven Hungarians.” If one compares the Byzantine sources with internal sources, it is possible that King “Muageris” can be inserted into the frame of the written data. The noun “Magyar” had four coherent functions. It was used as 1) a personal name, “Muageris” and “Magor,” the latter of whom was one of the forefathers of the Hungarians according to their original ethnic myth; 2) a toponym for the ancient homeland, i.e. the Hungarian chronicles use “Magor” for “Scythia” or “Magoria” to refer to part of “Scythia”; 3) the name of one of the leading clans, the clan of “Meger”; and 4) an ethnic name, i.e. “Hetumoger” or “het Mogor” as ‘seven Hungarians’.

Keywords: Hungarian ethnonym, functions of the name “Magyar”, king Muageris, medieval historiography

Introduction

To name a community is to identify it, or at least to try to identify it. But if we examine the processes of naming in the early Middle Ages, we are confronted with many limits and problems.1 On the one hand, communities were organized in several ways, and the different kinds of identities (whether one belongs to a state, a clan, or an ethnic group) can often be confused.2 For instance, the inhabitants of the Avar Khaganate, i.e. the state or the steppe-empire of the Avars, were not automatically parts of the Avar ethnic community,3 as many immigrating groups had been integrated under Avar rule in the Carpathian Basin during the existence of the aforementioned khaganate (568–ca. 822).4 On the other hand, the history of a name and its denoted object can lead in different directions, since one name could identify several peoples and, conversely, several names could be used to denote a single ethnic group.

Why was a single ethnic group referred to by different names in the texts? The pool of authors was so strikingly diverse from the perspectives of the eras in which they lived, their origins (where they lived), and their literacy (cultural/religious determinations) that the various names do not form one big organic logical system; only “subsystems” can be revealed in different sources. The following examples illustrate the divergences among and diversity of the ethnonyms. Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium (886–912) enumerates the Turks [Hungarians] among the “Scythian nations” (Σκυθικὰ ἔθνη).5 Leo’s son Emperor Constantine VII (913–959), in his compiled didactic work (De Administrando Imperio), registered an older ethnic name.

 

The nation of the Turks [Hungarians] (Τούρχων ἔϑνος) had of old dwelling next to Chazaria, in the place called Lebedia after the name of their first voivode, which voivode was called by the personal name of Lebedias, but in virtue of his rank was entitled voivode, as have been the rest after him. Now in this place, the aforesaid Lebedia, there runs a river Chidmas, also called Chingilous. They were not called Turks (Τοῦρχοι) at that time but had the name Sabartoi asphaloi (Σάβαρτοι ἄσφαλοι), for some reason or other.“6

 

In the first part of the tenth century two other important sources presented the diversity of the terms used to designate ethnicities. The Annals of Fulda revealed an “overwriting” process speaking of “Avars, who are called Hungarians” (Avari, qui dicuntur Ungari).7 On the other hand, two Muslim authors, Ibn Rusta and Gardīzī, assert that “The Magyars are a race of Turks…”8 One could enumerate further examples, but these cases clearly demonstrate that it is impossible to build one big logical system of Hungarian ethnonyms. However, Gyula László may well have offered a convincing answer to the question with which I began this paragraph. Since the Hungarians appeared as Magyars, Onogurs, Bashkirs, Turks, Savartoi, or Savards, etc. in the sources, at one time all these names were understood as referring to a single ethnic entity, the Magyars, but it is highly likely that they (the Magyars) emerged from a fusion of peoples which earlier had separate identities.9 In order to approach at least one subsystem of possible correlations of names and the named, one must invert the question and ask not “how many names can be used for one people,” but rather “how many meanings belong to one name.”

The Meanings of “Magyar”

The Hungarians who called themselves Magyars in their own vernacular can be differentiated first in the ninth century, but this noun was used much earlier and not in a group-identifying function. When three authors, namely Johannes Malalas († after 570), Theophanes the Confessor (†817), and Georgios Kedrenos (mid-eleventh century) discuss the political relations of the Eastern Roman Empire with its neighbours, their chronicles report on an internal struggle among the Huns in the Black Sea region during the first imperial year of Justinian I (527–565). Although Johannes Malalas lived earlier, the text-tradition of his work is more problematic than Theophanes’ Chronographia (Malalas’ chronicle survived in later and corrupted texts, and especially from the aspects of the onomastic data: the forms of the foreign names are not reliable), and it is worth reading Theophanes’ version of the incident. Kedrenos compiled his Synopsis from the Chronographia, so this is another reason to turn to Theophanes.10

 

In the same year [527/528 AD], the king of the Huns near Bosphoros, called Gordas, joined the emperor, became Christian, and was baptized. The emperor received him, provided him with many gifts, and sent him back to his own country to guard Roman territory and the city of Bosphoros… After the king of the Huns, who had become a Christian, returned to his own country, he found his brother and told him of the emperor’s love and liberality and that he had become a Christian. He then took the statues that the Huns worshipped and melted them down, for they were made of silver and electrum. Enraged, the Huns united with his brother, went away and killed Gordas and made his brother Mouageris king in his place. Then, in the fear that the Romans might seek him out, they fell suddenly on the city of Bosphoros and killed the tribune Dalmatius and his soldiers. At this news the emperor sent out the ex-consul John the grandson of John the Scythian and son of the patrician Rufinus, with a large Scythian force, and at the same time directed against the Huns Godilas… and the general Badourios. On hearing this, the Huns fled and disappeared.11

 

The texts contain the Οὗννοι ethnonym and the versions of the king’s name as follows: Μοῦγελ (Johannes Malalas), Μουαγέρην (Theophanes), and Μοαγέρα (Georgios Kedrenos).12 Since the second half of the nineteenth century, scholars have debated whether the name of this person is in close connection with the “Magyar” ethnonym;13 in his philological analysis, Gyula Moravcsik gives an answer to this question which is rather “more” than “less” positive. He also defines these Huns as Kutrigurs and emphasizes the relation with another Byzantine source concerning a people who must have been the Hungarians.14

In his didactic compilation, the so-called De Administrando Imperio, after telling of how the Kabars were defeated by the Chazars and joined the Hungarians, Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus enumerates the leading clans of the “Turks” [Hungarians] in the following manner (ca. 950):

“The first is the aforesaid clan (γενεά) of the Kabaroi, which split off from the Chazars; the second, of Nekis; the third, of Megeris (Μεγέρη); the fourth, of Kourtogermatos; the fifth, of Tarianos; the sixth, Genach; the seventh, Kari; the eighth, Kasi.”15

It is worth noting that in this context the De Administrando Imperio uses the meaning “the clan of Megyer” instead of “the clan [called] Megyer,” therefore a genitive structure of the noun and the clan demonstrates a closer denominating relation; otherwise a “clan Megyer” could mean a distant and an institutionalized connection within the phrase.

Several times in the history of the Eurasian Steppe, the name of a ruler became the name of a community (clan, folk, empire), e.g. Seljuq, Nogai, Osman, and Chagatai.16 These examples are important from the perspective of this discussion, because they prove that the person → group system of naming was part of this wide cultural “commonwealth.” It is more important, however, to examine the Hungarian sources containing the occurrences (and the types of occurrences) of the proper noun “Magyar.”

First, the most important features of early Hungarian history must be summarized briefly, because the age of the surviving texts does not necessarily inform us of the first recorded use of the term. Several times, earlier texts contain secondary data or secondary (perhaps transcribed, misunderstood) versions of a story, and later codices sometimes contain the more original variation of a concrete component of the ancient tradition.17

The basic and most detailed narrative of the mythical and historical past is found only in the text which was written in the Angevin Era. The first chapter of this chronicle reveals unambiguously the fact of the earlier histories, as well:

 

In the year of our Lord MCCCLVIII on the Tuesday of the week of His ascension [15 of May in 1358] this chronicle was begun concerning the deeds of the Hungarians in ancient and most recent times, whence they came and how they fared, their victories and their bravery, compiled from diverse old chronicles, preserving what in them is true and utterly refuting what is false.18

Thus, this chronicle was compiled on the basis of several older works. The reconstruction of the older texts contains details of which we remain uncertain because when the continuation (in which the original version is changed, misunderstood, and reinterpreted) was finished, the earlier texts were no longer extant. Its earliest source was the so-called Ancient Gesta, which has not survived, but its existence has been verified, and its text has been partially reconstructed on the basis of a comparison of the available sources. The first Gesta was continued several times by unknown authors during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to the most persuasive theory, the Ancient Gesta was made during the reign of King Andrew I (1046–60), and Bishop Nicholas, who appears in Chapter 90, was its author.19 There is a wide divergence of the opinion among scholars concerning the phases and authors between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. The oldest surviving member of these historiographical processes is the Gesta Hungarorum (Deeds of Hungarians), written and compiled by Master Simon of Kéza ca. 1285, during the reign of King Ladislas IV (1272–90). He is the first Hungarian historian whose name we know for certain. Since only an excerpt of his chronicle has survived, we must use later texts to reconstruct the complete (or at least more detailed) version. During the Angevin Era, the literate clericals produced two groups of the chronicle-composition. First, an unknown Franciscan friar of Buda constructed a text when King Charles I (1301–42) ruled Hungary, and as the continuance of his work was later printed in Buda in 1473, this circle of the text is named the Chronicle of Buda. In the time of King Louis I (1342–82), a longer history was compiled. It began to be written on May 15, 1358, and I cited the introduction has above. It was attributed to Márk of Kált, a cleric of the royal court and the canon warden of the Royal Basilica in Székesfehérvár. The most representative copy of his work is the codex of the Illuminated Chronicle.20

Recording the ancient tradition: it cannot be simplified to a linear process because of an “irregular actor.” An anonymous author, Master P., formerly the Notary of King Béla III (1172–96), wrote his Gesta Hungarorum on “the genealogy of the kings of Hungary and of their noblemen” (“genealogiam regum Hungariae et nobilium suorum”) in the early 1200s.21 The most important difficulties from the perspective of our inquiry can be summarized as follows: the Anonymous Notary and Simon of Kéza both read the older chronicles or gestas, Simon of Keza adopted parts from the Anonymous Notary, and some fragments of their additions got into the corpus of the Illuminated Chronicle.22

According to the chronology of the surviving histories, we have to look into the Gesta Hungarorum written by the Anonymous Notary. His prologue contains relevant data, as he explains the aim of his work, which is to narrate:

 

how the seven leading persons (VII principales persone), who are called the Hetumoger, came down from the Scythian land, what that Scythian land was like, and how prince Álmos was begotten and why Álmos, from whom the kings of Hungary trace their origin, is called the first prince of Hungary, and how many realms and rulers they conquered and why the people coming forth from the Scythian land are called Hungarians in the speech of foreigners but Magyars in their own (in sua lingua propria Mogerii vocatur).23

 

The anonymous author shows here an adequate awareness to draw a distinction between the external and vernacular forms. In his prologue, the phrase Hetumoger (“seven Hungarians”) was used in a political sense to refer to the seven highest leaders (who chose one of their own as a monarch), but without a number, the noun Moger refers to the whole speech community. Unfortunately, his explanations were distorted by scholastic explications and (mis)interpretations, as the following example illustrates:

 

Scythia is then a very great land called Dentumoger… On its eastern side, neighboring Scythia, were the peoples Gog and Magog (fuerunt gentes Gog et Magog), whom Alexander the Great had walled in… The first king of Scythia was Magog, son of Japhet, and this people were called after him Magyar (gens illa a Magog rege vocata est Moger).24

This error is the result of the mixing of different traditions. Medieval histories shared an essential characteristic feature: the authors had to integrate stories of the origo gentis into the Biblical tradition. In this case, Moger’s name was similar to Magog, who appears on the one hand as the second son of Japheth (Gen 10,2) and, on the other, with Gog as a warrior in Satan’s army (Revelations 20,7). The Biblical etymologies of the ethnonyms were elaborated by Isidore of Seville (†636), the last of the Fathers of the Church. With regards to our case, we read, “Magog, from whom people think the Scythians and the Goths took their origin.”25

It is a little ironic that the phrase Hetumoger itself was criticized some decades later. Soon after the seven captains of the conquering Hungarians were enumerated, the text of the chronicle from the Angevin Era contains the following:

 

The other clans, who by descent were of equal standing with those of the captains, made their dwelling-places wherever seemed good to them. When therefore it is said in some chronicles that the aforesaid seven captains entered Pannonia and alone settled and populated Hungary, whence come the clans of Akus, Bor, Aba and other noble Hungarians since none of these were strangers but had all come forth from Scythia. They adduce no other reason than that it is common to speak of the seven Hungarians. If the Hungarians numbered only these seven with their families, and not numerous families with their wives, sons, daughters, servants and maids, is it possible that these seven should take possession of the kingdom? It is impossible.26

 

The scholars attribute this argumentation to Ákos of the clan Ákos, a noble clerical in the court of King Stephen V (1270–72).27 His gesta-continuation did not survive in its original form. A few fragments of his work were incorporated into the chronicles during the process of composition. Ákos offers another explanation concerning the meaning of the “seven Hungarian,” but his reasoning did not result in a positive solution. On the contrary, his etymology is quite tragic and contains nothing that might be characterized as glorious. In the time of Great Prince Toxun (ca. 950–72), a Hungarian army was defeated in Thuringia and the Duke of Saxony killed all its warriors. Only seven Hungarians were left alive. The duke ordered that their ears be cut off and sent home to tell of the fate of their military campaign. Since these seven Hungarians chose life without pride and chose not to be killed with the others, they were deprived of all their property and were separated from their families. These mutilated survivors were sentenced to go begging from tent to tent. There is an important difference between the two groups of chronicles when they name the seven beggars. The Chronicle of Buda calls them “het Mogor/Magiar and Gok/Gyak” (a corrupted version of “seven mourning Hungarians”), but in the Illuminated Chronicle one finds the word “Lazari.”28 Ákos misunderstood the old concept of “seven Hungarians,” as he thought that these seven people were the people who became the forefathers of the Hungarian elite. Actually, in the earlier records he was not considered kin to the seven leading Hungarian clans. Thus, the misinterpretation was completed with the injured vanity of a nobleman with pure “Scythian” origins. Since the Anonymous Notary and Master Ákos represented both aspects of the Hungarian aristocracy, the traces of wider and deeper historical interest can be found in other texts with further relevant data.

The oldest version of the Hungarian ethnic origin-myth was written by Simon of Kéza. The story of the wonderful deer begins with an obligatory Biblical influence but continues as an authentic ethnic origin-myth. So, the giant Ménrót (Menrot gigans) – son of Thana of the seed of Japheth – “entered the land of Havilah (terram Euilath), which is now called Persia, and there begot two sons, Hunor and Mogor, by his wife Eneth.”29 One day, the brothers went hunting in the Meotis marshes, and they began to pursue a deer, but it disappeared out of sight. Hunor and Mogor saw that the land was well suited for grazing cattle, so they asked their father’s permission to move into the Meotis marshes, which bordered their Persian homeland. They entered the Meotis marshes and remained there for five years. In the sixth year, they came out and discovered the wives and children of the sons of Belar, and the brothers seized them. Two daughters of Dula, prince of the Alans, were also seized. Hunor married one of them, Mogor the other, and all Huns were the descendants of these women. They remained in the marshes, and they grew into a very powerful people, and the land was not large enough to contain or feed them.30

The myth appeared in the fourteenth-century chronicles, too. The Chronicle of Buda contains onomastic forms similar to Kéza’s: the giant Nemproth, Eneth, and their sons Hunor and Mogor, “from whom the Huns or the Hungarians descended (ex quibus Huni sive Hungari sunt egressi).” The Illuminated Chronicle changes Nemproth into Magor/Magog [!], because Nemproth was the son of Chus, who was the son of Cham, the damned son of Noah (Gen 10, 6–8). Avoiding the disgraceful ancestry and returning to the strict genealogy of Japheth, Márk of Kált replaced Nemproth with Magor/Magog, and this Magog, Japheth’s second son, “upon his wife Enee begat Magor and Hunor, after whom the Magyars and the Huns are named (ex coniuge sua Enee genuit Magor et Hunor, a quo Magari et Huni sunt nominati).”31

Continuing the story, as Hunor’s and Magor’s descendants became a mighty nation (gens validissima), they had to seek new lands, so they sent scouts to Scythia to explore its land, and when they received the good news, they decided to move there with their children and their herds.32

Framing the geographical conditions of Scythia, the name Magyar appears in another function. Simon of Kéza gave us this enigmatic description:

 

In fact, the Scythian realm has a single border, but administratively it is divided into three kingdoms, namely Barsatia, Dencia, and Mogoria. (Sciticum enim regnum comprehensione una cingitur, sed in regna tria dividitur principando, scilicet in Barsatiam, Denciam et Mogoriam.) As well, it has 108 districts (provincias) representing 108 families (progenies), which were divided among the sons of Hunor and Mogor long ago, when they invaded Scythia.33

The three “kingdoms” are mentioned in the latter chronicles of the Angevin Era as Bascardia, Dencia (or in its misread form, Bencia), and Magoria/Mogoria.34 Comparing this tradition with the Gesta Hungarorum by Anonymous, we find a significant difference: his Scythia is equal with Dentumoger which seems to have two components (Dentu ~ Dencia? and Moger ~ Mogoria/Magoria) confronting the image of a tripartite Scythia (Barsatia/Bascardia, Dencia and Mogoria/Magoria) found in the chronicles. The version of the “three kingdoms of Scythia” probably contains the primordial tradition.35 However, the geographical function of the noun Magyar appears again in the chronicles, but in a more antinomic situation. The second entry of the Hungarians in Pannonia begins with the origin-myth of the ruling dynasty, when in the ancient land Eleud from Eunodbilia begat a son named Álmos (Almus). The place of his birth was “Magor” according to the Chronicle of Buda, but according to the Illuminated Chronicle, it was “Scythia.”36

As we can see, the noun Magor appeared in following mythical and historical roles: forefather of the Magyars, denominator of a leading clan and an ethnic community, and toponym referring to a homeland, from where the Hungarians came and occupied the Carpathian Basin. The most problematic function is the last one, because in its case the contradictions did not arise from a disturbing influence caused by two different traditions, as was the case with the similarity of two personal names, the original Hungarian Magor and the Biblical Magog. On contrary, the incoherence of the toponyms remained within the circle of the native written tradition. Thus Magor (and its variations) occurred in three situations: 1) it meant the whole of Scythia (Magor in the Chronicle of Buda, Scythia in the Illuminated Chronicle, Chapter 26); 2) it meant half of Scythia, if Dentumoger in the Gesta Hungarorum by the Anonymous Notary (Chapter 1, 3, 5) is composed of Dentu ~ Dencia? and Moger ~ Mogoria/Magoria; and 3) it meant one-third of Scythia, since it was enumerated among its three kingdoms (Barsatia/Bascardia, Dencia, and Mogoria/Magoria in the Gesta Hungarorum by Simon of Kéza, Chapter 6, the Chronicle of Buda, and the Illuminated Chronicle, Chapter 6).37 Two circumstances may explain this kind of dubiousness or inconsistency: the complicated and often uncertain relationships of the early Hungarian historiography, which I briefly discussed above, and the fact that the toponymical function of this noun is secondary to its role as an ethnonym.

Thus, Magor appeared primarily as a forefather of the Magyars, i.e. the denominating ancestor of the whole ethnic community. However, this phenomenon is not so simple and clear, and we cannot claim to have found a satisfying and unambiguous answer. First, we have to face the fact that the role of the mythical forefather has been duplicated. How did Hunor become part of this story? Was he an original character, or did he become part of the myth later? From the philological point of view, Gyula Moravcsik thought the second alternative more realistic. According to Moravcsik, Magor’s mythical companion was the result of a misreading of a phrase: the author of the Ancient Gesta read “Hunorum rex” in an abbreviated form “Hunor[um] rex,” and he was led astray by the absence of the -um plural genitive ending, so he transformed the Hun ethnonym into a character and created the ancestor of the Huns.38 However, this argumentation cannot be supported by the comparative ethnology. Attila Mátéffy emphasized that the sub-feature of two brothers can basically be found in the origin myths of the Turkic peoples.39 Forasmuch the language of the myth cannot be entirely translated into the language of the history, we have to recognize that forcing their “confrontation” cannot result an unambiguous answer to the question raised above. E.g. Muageris was a king of the Huns, and he had a brother, but his brother’s name was Gordas, and they became enemies.

Although myth and history should not be mixed, we cannot separate them hermetically, as both consist of texts referring to the basis of a common identity. Mihály Hoppál’s statement on the nexus of these two phenomena is worth citing:

 

The folklore texts, thus the texts of myths, are the ‘long-term memory of culture’… an ethnic community can from time to time repeat the past, the history of the origin things, the world, and the group itself, i.e. its prehistorical history. Myths intermediate between the two. Therefore, the investigation of myths of mythological systems may indirectly be employed to draw conclusions concerning prehistory.40

Conclusion

Considering all mentioned data and used methodologies, we can participate in the investigation of the connection between Muageris, the historical king of the Huns, and Magor, the mythical ancestor of the Hungarians. It must be emphasized again and again that there are many complexities and ambiguities which nourish a sense of uncertainty, including the lack of data, the diverse functions of the nouns, and the diverse forms of the names. It is worth noting that the names Magor, Moger, Muageris etc. are found in strange linguistic milieus. From the perspective of the Byzantine historians, the name of the Hun king was basically an external proper noun, and although the name “Magyar” was a vernacular word for the Hungarian chroniclers, they wrote their works in Latin using letters with foreign origins to record this name, and both the Greek and the Latin texts were transcribed several times, thus there were several occasions to misunderstand and miswrite the words. Nevertheless, to the question of whether the name of King Muageris is closely connected to the “Magyar” ethnonym my answer is yes. And there is one more argument which merits mention and which offers further persuasive evidence in support of this conclusion: the historical (King Muageris) and the mythical (Magor) settings are the same: the northern region of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Thus, we have evidence not only from the field of onomastics, but also from the perspective of geography. Moreover, this similarity is found in sources which were unquestionably independent, since the Byzantine authors and the Hungarian chroniclers were separated by space, time, and language. Therefore, the figure of Magor could retain at least the influence of the memory of King Muageris. Drawing on Reinhard Wenskus’ convincingly elaborated theory on the “seed of tradition” (“Traditionskern,” i.e. the notion that a dominant group/elite constructs the highest political unity and legitimizes this process with its own origin myth, which later determines the identity of the whole community),41 I offer a possible reconstruction. King Magyar (Muageris/Magor) may have been the ancestor of a clan (Meger), which more than three centuries later, under its leader Álmos, organized a steppe-state, and ultimately this ancestor became the name used to designate a whole nation.

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László Koppány Csáji

University of Pécs (Hungary), Department of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology

This paper constitutes an attempt to unravel the complexity of ethnic levels and ethnonyms, and to outline the roles of “origin,” “language,” “locality,” and “social solidarity” in the ethnic identities of the Hunza, using the methods of anthropological studies on ethnicity, discourse analysis and cognitive semantics. The former kingdom of Hunza (now in the Pakistani controlled Kashmir). It is not obvious what one can call the ethnic level in Hunza. Ethnonyms do not have set definitions. There are overlapping categories of ethnic and quasi-ethnic perspectives. The notion that an ethnic group is based on a strict unit of origin, language, and territory seems to be false. Ethnic levels appear in constantly changing registers of personal knowledge, which only partially overlap. However, the discourse in which the inhabitants of Hunza express and experience their ethnic perceptions is an existing communicational frame, even if it contains relatively fluid and constantly changing elements of narratives, experiences, emotions, and values. The notion of Hunzakuts is seemingly a politonym, but it is also a local unit. The Burusho, Dom, Xik, Shina etc. are seemingly language based endonyms, but kinship, cultural relations, historical coexistence, administrative frames, language, and religiosity can all influence these ethnic perspectives. I delineated the essence of my explanation in a table, showing the complexity of ethnonyms used in social interactions. A native speaker has all these concepts in his or her mind, and in any particular situation, the relevant meanings are called forth. Ethnic identity is a set of different attachments, as frames of a person’s ethnic perceptions and behavior. Ethnicity is a kind of knowledge: participating in a discourse, sharing more or less common narratives, emotions, experiences, and values. Ethnicity is also a recognition: placing someone in the social environment, and it is also the foundation for meaningful and relevant relations. Finally, ethnicity is a practical tool of communication: ethnic perceptions and categories appear in conversation nearly always for a particular purpose.

Keywords: Hunza, Burushaski, Shina, Bericho, Wakhi, Pakistan, ethnicity, ethnonym, discourse analysis, cognitive semantics, nationalism

Introduction

When I arrived in the northern areas of Pakistan, I met a Wakhi-speaking man (a driver) in Gilgit, who introduced himself as a Hunzakuts (as an ethnic identity). He took me to Hunza, where I conducted anthropological fieldwork. My Hunzakuts hosts always mentioned him as an (ethnically) Wakhi driver, while my hosts referred to themselves sometimes as Burusho and other times as Hunzakuts. The driver took me to Sost (a town in Upper-Hunza), where his family told me they were Xiks, which was translated to English as Tajik.1 The outwardly confusing usage of the terms Burusho, Xik, Tajik, Hunzakuts, and Wahki focused my attention on the study of ethnic identity in Hunza. I realized that the categorization is much more complex than it seems at first, and the terms used in different situations depend on who refers whom, and what the particular context of the conversation is.

In recent decades, ethnicity studies have been dealing with questions like: are there definite categories (ethnonyms) of ethnic groups referring to members with existing collective “identities” (primordialism); or is the ethnic perspective rather a discourse, recalling patterns, emotions, and narratives from a constantly changing knowledge register (constructivism)? This paper is based on anthropological fieldwork,2 and it constitutes an attempt to outline the roles of “origin,” “language,” “locality,” and “social solidarity” in the ethnic identities of the Hunza. I use methods borrowed from anthropological studies on ethnicity, including discourse analysis and cognitive semantics. I focus both on endonyms and exonyms, but I also consider the historical background and the current political context, since the former kingdom of Hunza now belongs to the Pakistani controlled territory of Kashmir.3

Theoretical Frame and Methodology

The study of ethnicity became one of the most important fields of social anthropological studies with the release of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ famous essay, published as a small booklet, Race and History (1952). According to Lévi-Strauss, ethnicity and even ethnocentric attitudes are natural phenomena of humankind, as cultural diversity requires distinctions and categorization.4 He argues that ethnicity is an instinctive response to recognition of cultural diversity. The book Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, edited by Frederik Barth and published in 1969, became another milestone. In his introduction, Hunza stresses that ethnic differences are emphasized (symbolically expressed and verbalized) at the boundaries of the ethnic groups, so ethnicity is based on social interaction.5 He argues that ethnic patterns and cultural reactions are based on interactions between social groups. Later, Rogers Brubaker wrote his famous work Ethnicity Without Groups,6 in which he reflects on the idea of Fredrik Barth, adding new aspects to the study of ethnicity and adopting a critical approach to “groupism.” Brubaker states that ethnic identity is not an objective, substantial frame into which one is born. According to his concept, “ethnic perception” is called forth by situations, so ethnicities are “not things in the world but perspectives on the world.”7 Brubaker contends that ethnicity is, rather, a discursive and fluid phenomenon, and its narratives and values depend on the personal emotions and the given situation in which it emerges.

We can distinguish the phenomenon of “ethnicity” from “nationalism,” although Anthony D. Smith emphasizes that the division is relative.8 Whether it had roots in the past or not, nationalism is a modern phenomenon, claiming legal self-determination (autonomy) for the presumed community: the nation. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Rangers suggested that national frames are invented cultural constructions.9 Clifford Geertz claimed that nationalism is one of the modern ideologies, and it penetrates society as a political endeavor.10 Benedict Anderson used the term “imagined community” for a nation, identifying it as a constructed frame of modern political ideology.11 Brubaker emphasizes that ethnicity and nationalism should be approached not as some primordial form of identity or attachment, but rather “in terms of practical categories, cultural idioms, cognitive schemas, discursive frames, organizational routines, institutional forms, political projects, and contingent events.”12 Unlike nationalism, ethnicity is based on an instinctive ability to realize differences between social groups, based mostly on kinship or other discursive social units. This is why ethnicity can be built on several cognitive categories which mix origins (kinship), religious community, and legal and other distinctions (like language, locality etc.). Ethnicity can be described in a much more complex way, since (despite the one-level kind of nationalism, which claims only one unit, the nation, as a legitimate identity) ethnic terminology can use controversial and overlapping emic terms.

As a cultural and social anthropologist, I conduct fieldwork involving long-term participant observation among the social groups which I study, and I learn their languages to the extent that I am able during the given time frame of the research projects. For the present case study, I conducted my fieldwork in Hunza from June 2001 until September 2001, but I returned to the region in 2005, and since then I have remained in email communication with some of my friends there, so I frequently share information with my local informants (I must thank them for all the nuances to which they have drawn my attention). I extended my studies with interviews and I have also drawn on the scholarship on Hunza and the languages spoken there.

Throughout this paper, I often use the local Burushaski language emic terms for social and cultural phenomena, and for this reason, I use the orthography of Stephen R. Willson,13 which differs from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), but may be read more easily by non-linguists and used for later studies about Hunza. When a particular emic term is not taken from the Burushaski language, I note this.

Site and Setting: Hunza

As a geographical territory, Hunza is located at the border between China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It is formed by Hunza, the only river which cuts across the Karakorum mountains in the Pakistani-controlled area of Kashmir. The former kingdom, also known as Hunza, was mostly on the right (north and west) side of the river.14 However, in some of the southern and northern parts of Hunza, the territory contains the opposite side of the bank. On the left (south and east) side of the Hunza River lies the former kingdom of Nagér (also called Nagyr or Nagar in some of the secondary literature). As the neighboring community of Hunzakuts, the Nagér residents are called Nagérkuts.15 Their folklore heritage is very similar to that of the Hunzakuts, and most of them also speak the Burushaski language (like another community in Yasin valley,16 far to the west, in the Hindu Raj mountains).17 They also call themselves Burusho. According to the 1998 Pakistani census, 46,665 persons lived in Hunza and 51,387 people in Nagér.

Most of the inhabited territory of the Hunza basin is below 3,000 meters, but around Hunza there are 33 peaks rising to altitudes of more than 7,300 meters.18 Only the high grasslands, which are used to feed cows, yaks, horses, buffalos, and goats in summertime, are higher, between 3,300 and 4,200 meters high. The famous Karakoram Highway,19 which links China and Pakistan, was the first road to reach the region in 1978. It crossed the Chinese border in 1982, and it was opened to foreigners in 1986.20 Until then, the area was accessible only through very high passes which were unsuitable for motor vehicles. Due to the mountainous landscape, in a wider sense the Hunza region is divided into many smaller valleys. The Chapursan Valley borders Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor, the Boiber Valley is located on the Chinese border, and the Shimshal Valley, which extends towards Baltistan, is near the ceasefire line between India and Pakistan, in the middle of the disputed Kashmir area.

In Burushaski, Hunzakuts (or in some dialects Húnzukuts) is both a singular and plural term for the inhabitants of Hunza.21 The Hunza society is based horizontally and territorially on khans,14 or local communities centered around fortified villages. While there are several khans, the first established khans are at the center of the Hunza society: Baltit (Karimabad), Altit, and Ganesh, which altogether (including all the cultivated land but excluding the summer pastures) comprises less than 30 square kilometers. The Hunza Kingdom extended its borders to the north and to the south, along the Hunza River in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,22 so today Hunza constitutes a much larger territory than before.23 Hunza society is built on the kinship system (as descent groups) and the khan system (as local groups). The region was traditionally divided among the khans (fortified hilltop towns and the surrounding territories). Before the twentieth century, Hunzakuts were not allowed to settle out of a khan. In the twentieth century, villages were established around the khans, since under British rule raids by the Nagérkuts were no longer a danger.24

There are many works about the Hunzakuts’ culture, their irrigation system, customs, shamanistic worldview and rituals, history, and language(s). Hunza receives an average of 130 millimeters of rain per year,25 so it is necessary to construct and maintain water-channels from the rivers of the Karakorum glaciers for agriculture.26 This centuries-old irrigation system brings the water supply and makes agriculture possible. As natives of the former kingdom, Hunzakuts are proud of their culture and of the fact that they are able to survive and cultivate their traditions in a highland mountain-desert environment. The concept of “one thousand years of independence” is also an element of the “Hunza-brand,”27 and it is given particular emphasis when this “brand” is presented to tourists, who began to come to the region from all over the world since the Karakorum Highway made the area more accessible.28

The Role of Language, Locality, and Social Structures as the Foundations of Ethnic Levels in Hunza

It is not obvious how one might recognize “the” ethnic level in Hunza, if one were to insist on looking for a one-level model. As a consequence, “the” ethnic terms are also uncertain. Several more or less overlapping local, linguistic, social, and religious categorization can be observed, seemingly with contradictions. In the secondary literature on ethnos and ethnicity, the most common named potential principles are29 language, locality, “origin” (descendance), and social solidarity. I demonstrate in the following that these principles of criteria yield recognitions of different sets of people. Inhabitants of Hunza certainly use terms based on locality or language or political order etc., but the “groups” to which they seek to refer do not overlap. Furthermore, the same word can refer to different people depending on context.

In some situations, Burusho seems a widely used we/they distinction, i.e. someone is referring to linguistic difference, although whether this word in the given situation means the Burushaski speakers in Hunza, Nagar, Yasin, or simply all of them depends on the context in which it is being used.

Locality is another foundation of ethnic categorization. The former kingdoms of Nagér and Hunza form the most important local frames of ethnic identities, but I have heard inhabitants of Hunza refer to Hunzakuts as their common local identity many times, and I participated in a conversation in Ganesh, in which a Burusho man said “the Hunzakuts’ musicians are the Bericho people, who are from the South.” Even if Bericho are usually regarded as a part of the Hunzakuts, in this context Hunzakuts referred to Burusho (and opposed to Bericho), so Burusho people sometimes use the word Hunzakuts to mean “Burusho speakers of Hunza.” Wakhi people, most of whom live in “Upper Hunza” (the territory north of Karimabad), rarely refer to themselves as Hunzakuts, but when they are out of Hunza (e.g. in Gilgit) they identify themselves as Hunzakuts in their interactions with Shina speaking locals.

Hunzakuts never supposed that they had common origin, even if the image of the “thousand-year-old Hunza kingdom” is a core part of the narrative of Hunza identity. On the one hand, they refer to this as a shared element of the cultural history of the Hunzakuts, but on the other, everyone knows that the origins of Hunza society are very diverse. The people(s) of Hunza often give expression to their pride in their cultural and linguistic diversity (“multi-colored unit”), particularly in interactions with foreigners and as part of political events, and this multicultural frame is also part of the “Hunza identity” and semantic frame.30 The increasingly important indigenous discourse31 does not exclude the narratives of “later waves.” I have heard many times that the “Burusho people are indigenous in Hunza,” but on some occasions I also heard that “the highest status of Burusho people is the Diramiting phratry (the Tharákuts and Waziírkuts clans), who came from Gilgit” and became the ruling class. The Bericho, a subgroup of the Hunzakuts, are a conspicuously collecting frame, into which any occupational group or family to settle in Hunza was integrated, so I heard many times that the “Bericho are from all around the Indian subcontinent or from even more distant regions.”

In order to further a more nuanced understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of the ethnic terminology in use in Hunza, I identify the following elements as potential distinguishing features among different groups (which could be characterized as “ethnic” groups):religions, spoken languages, political frames, descent groups, social stratification and solidarity, and territorial/local subgroups of Hunza. Each of these elements has some impact on the ethnic perspective, but none of them could be chosen as “the” ethnic level.

 

Hunza is widely characterized, both in Hunza and by people living beyond its bounds, as “an Ismaili territory.” Hunzakuts identity is strongly connected with Ismaili Islam32 in many situations. The tourist brand of Hunza is also built on “Ismailism.” All inhabitants of Hunza, Nagér and Yasin adopted Islam several centuries ago. The peoples of Hunza were converted in the sixteenth century,33 but they retained many of their earlier beliefs. Most Hunzakuts converted to (or were converted from) Ismaili Islam from their former Shia faith at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today, the population is predominantly Ismaili in Hunza and Yasin, but a strong minority (around 10-15 percent) is Shiite/Shia (Shía)34 and a very small minority (1-2%) is Sunni.35 The Shia (Shi’ite) minority live in religious endogamy and often in local units in Ganish, Dorkhan, Garelt, and parts of Aliabad and Murtazabad. Once, a Shia Hunzakuts told me that they are the “proper” Hunzakuts “who did not leave their faith.” He meant that other Hunzakuts converted from their Shia faith to Ismaili Islam. Endogamy functions as a survival strategy: this is how they try to keep their religious identity relatively untouched by the majority of Ismailis.

Most Shia people live in the southern parts of Hunza and some in Central Hunza (in Ganesh). Most of the Shias in Hunza self-identify as members of the Shina people (see below), except those who live in Central Hunza. Shinas live in the neighboring territories (in Nagér and Gilgit) as well, where they form a majority. Burusho people are predominantly Shias in Nagér,36 which is on the opposite side of the Hunza River. There are very few Sunnite Muslims (Sunni) here, and they are (or are regarded as) “newcomers,” who came from places in the south of Pakistan. In a Hunzakuts’ cognitive semantic frame,37 “Sunni Muslim” means nearly the same as Punjabi or Pakistani outlander in Hunza, or at least these notions are strongly connected. I have heard people say “he is a Sunni,” as a reference to a person’s outlander inhabitant status. I have also heard Ismaili and Shia people share many jokes and rumors, laughing at each other’s habits, customs and values, and this has strengthened my conviction that religious identity works very much like ethnic identity in this region38.

There is a rivalry between the Shia and Ismaili people in Hunza, and they form endogamous communities, with rare examples of intermarriage. However, I have only once heard someone say that “Ganish people are not ‘typical’ Hunzakuts, since they are Shia.” This shows the strong connection between religious and ethnic identities and the stereotypes based on these identities.

The Five Languages Spoken in the Geographical Hunza Region

Burushaski (or as it is also called, Misháaski, which means “our way/speech”) is the main (official) language, spoken by virtually everyone who lives in Hunza, whether as the mother tongue or as a second language. Burushaski is said not to be related to any other language in the world.39 Some linguists have tried to demonstrate parallels between Burushaski and some Paleo-Siberian languages (e.g. Ket).40 With a very rough estimation, there are between 30,000 and 40,000 native speakers (Burusho) of Burushaski in Hunza.

Shina (it is an endonym; in Burushaski it is Ṣhenaá) is a Dardic language, related to Khowar, Kalash, Kashmiri, and Kohistani languages. These languages belong to the Indo-European language family.41 Shina speakers form the vast majority in Gilgit, Chilas, the lower Ghizar valley, Haramosh, Diamir, and the Ishkoman region (to the south and west of Hunza). They numbered 2,084,673 according to the 2004 Pakistani census (and nearly 200,000 in India). Shina has many dialects in and around Hunza, such as Astir, Gilgiti, and Kohistani.42 As a Shina diaspora, between 12,000 and 15,000 Shinas live in Hunza. They belong to the Yeshkun, Kamin, and Shin subgroups, and they speak different Shina dialects. Sometimes, Dom (in Burushaski Bericho) is also mentioned as a fourth Shina community. Shins have the highest status among them. Most Shinas are Shia Muslims, but in some villages they are Ismaili (especially to the west of Gilgit, so a bit far from Hunza). The Shina converted to Islam during in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until then, most of them were Hindu (and some were Buddhists).43 I have a Shina friend who sometimes introduces himself as Hunzakuts and sometimes as Shina, depending on the circumstances and audience, and I have the impression that these ethnic identities have never been in contradiction.

 

The Wakhi (in some works: Waqhi) language is related to Tajik and Sarakol (both are in the Pamiri language group, which belongs to the Iranian Branch of the Indo-European language family). They came to Hunza from the north (from Wakhan) and were mostly pastors (herding cows, goats and yaks). Wakhi is an exonym. In Burushaski, the term used is Guitso (beside Wakhi) and the language is called Guíchiski. The Wakhi people are known as Guyits/Guicho or (depending on the territory in which they live in Hunza) Gujali (the Farsi word Wakhani is also in use, alongside the English term Wakhi). The endonym for the people is X̌ik (or Xik zik, and in some sources Khik, Zik or Xik), and the term Xikwar is used as a designation for their native language. The suffix -wor/war refers to the language. It comes from the name of the Amudarja (Oxus) River, which is Waxša in Wakhi. Most of the Wakhi live in Gujal/Gojal, which was occupied by Hunza in the eighteenth century, and Wakhis migrated there later (to preserve their Shia faith in the face of Sunni expansion in Badakshan). They form the majority of the population in Gojal, with between 8,000 and 9,000 people. Wakhis belong to Ismaili Islam in Hunza. They sometimes refer to themselves as Pamiri or Tajik. The Wakhi language is considered as a dialect of Tajik in Tajikistan, and they are counted among the Tajik minorities abroad. Today, Wakhis are settled farmers, who plant grain and vegetables (and potatoes beginning in the 1970s), but some of them continue to practice transhumance (a form of pastoralism that involves moving livestock by a specialized group, from one grazing area to another according to a seasonal cycle; among the Wakhi, this work is done mostly by women).

The Bericho, or in their own language Dom,44 people speak Doma, Domáaki, or Dumaki Beriski (in Burushaski Beriski). Domaaki is a Dardic language45 spoken only in Hunza. It is spoken mostly by the villagers of Berishal (Moominabad) and some in Dorkhal (near Baltit). They number roughly 700, living in approximately 100 households (half of which are in Moominabad, while the others are in other villages).46 The Bericho people are Ismaili Muslims.47 They do not claim a common origin unique to their group. There is evidence that musicians, blacksmiths, and craftsmen who wanted to settle in Hunza in the past were integrated into the Bericho community,48 formed a new lineage, and adopted the Domaki language (in addition to Burushaski as the main regional language). The Bericho own and rent out most of the tractors for plowing nowadays. The current clans of Doms are Majun, Dishil, Ashur, Bak, Gulbeg, and Mishkin).49 Given the similarities between the lifestyles and cultures of the Bericho and Burusho peoples today, many Hunzakuts sometimes call the Bericho “Burusho.”50

 

In addition to the four native languages, there are three other important languages which Hunzakuts learn in schools as languages of interaction with non-Hunzakuts:

Urdu is spoken by the Pakistani administration and today is learned by all Hunzakuts in elementary school. It has been the lingua franca in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir since the 1970s.

As a “traditional” lingua franca in the region, Farsi (Persian) was taught in schools until 1974, and since then, it has remained an educational language for secondary school pupils. Urdu is taught in elementary and secondary school.

Beginning in the 1980s, many Hunzakuts began to learn and use English, parallel to growth in the tourist industry.

Most Hunzakuts speak at least three languages (including their mother tongue). Illiteracy is also very low, since there were schools for children (teaching Farsi) long before the British Empire came to the region in the nineteenth century. Arabic was also used for religious purposes, but it was spoken by only a few people (the religious and cultural elite) in Hunza.

 

There were three political frames for Burushaski-speaking people: one is Hunza, another is Nagér, and the third is Yasin (to the west). All the three territories were independent kingdoms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Hunza and Nagér kingdoms were rivals, and each launched raids against the other.51 The inhabitants of the two areas usually consider themselves enemies even today. There were several small kingdoms in the region: Gilgit, Ishkoman, Yasin, the kingdoms of Baltistan (Shigar, Kapalu, Shkardu etc.), the Chinese administration in Tashkurgan, etc. Foreign sources also called the kingdom of Hunza Biltum, Khajuna, and Kunjut.52

Hunza was in a politically fragmented space until Kashmir’s Sikh maharaja tried to occupy more and more territories of the Karakorum and Hindukush in the nineteenth century, though he failed to do so in Hunza and Nagér. I have heard many narratives (as oral history) about the cruelty of the Sikh army, but it is hard to distinguish between the narratives recently constructed as part of Pakistani propaganda for the Kashmir war (ongoing since 1947) and the real legends (folk narratives), the origins of which lie in the nineteenth century.

After 1892, as a result of the period of the Great Game,53 Hunza and Nagér became semi-independent princely states of the British Empire, and they remained in this status until 1947, when they were integrated into Pakistan. The tham (emic term for king) was from the Ayasho family, but the dynasty lost power in 1974 according to administrative reforms introduced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Today, efforts are being made to strengthen a new political frame: “Pakistan,” which is not widely accepted by the peoples of Hunza as their “real” nation. I have frequently heard the contention that “Hunza, Nagér and Gilgit are occupied territories, and not «natural» parts of Pakistan”. Hunzakuts often demonstrate their independence by listening to music on Indian radio channels, by stressing that although the homeland of polo (a traditional equestrian game in Hunza) is the northern areas of Pakistan, Hunzakuts or members of the Gilgit people are not allowed to play on the national team. I have often heard characterizations of the Sunni majority and the Urdu-speaking administration as the “new colonialists.” So the construction of a Pakistani nation so far has not met with much success in Hunza, even if the schools teach the official “nationalized” education and narratives. Most of the Hunzakuts resist this effort as part of “Sunni propaganda of Pakistan.” Religion, political semi-integration, different cultural roots cause mostly passive resistance to the Pakistani nation-ideology in Hunza. Despite this, I have heard of Hunzakuts introducing themselves in Europe as Pakistani people. Certainly this must have been motivated in part by a consideration of communicative rationality, i.e. an awareness that Hunza is not widely known outside of Pakistan, so they identify themselves abroad as Pakistanis or Hunzakuts from Pakistan.

Hunza and Nagér always found themselves in a fluid political field in recent centuries, and they tried quite successfully to maintain their independence. Just to mention the closest neighborhood in the south, there were the many Baltistani states and Gilgit kingdom. To the west, there was Ishkoman and Ghizar, and further west there was Yasin. In the north, there was the Wakhan part of Badakshan and Tashkurgan, and to the east Little Tibet (Ladakh and Zanskar). The Shina people came from the direction of Gilgit, Wakhis from the north, from Wakhan, and the origins of the Bericho people (according to the oral history) lie somewhere in Baltistan (they were given as a wedding dowry to the thám of Hunza long ago).54

 

Hunzakuts have a patrilineal kinship system. Burusho of the former kingdom of Hunza is traditionally divided into lineages, clans and phratries,55 as a kinship categorization.

The smallest group above the family is qhaanadáan, which means “lineage.” Lineage is a unilineal kinship group, in which the members trace their descent from a person (e.g. from a great-grandfather). Lineages form a changeable set, and sometimes have special names, but they are specifically based on their founder.

The clan (guṭí, plural: guṭénts) contains two or more lineages. A synonymous term is jót qabiilá, which means “small phratry.” Members of a clan cannot easily trace their common ancestor, but they often refer to him as the founder. Clans have names, like Tharákuts, Béegkuts, Mamétkuts, Haríkuts, Faráat, Béegkuts etc. Clans are stabile parts of the kinship system, and exist for many generations.

The term roóm (in some dialects ruúm, but it is also often called qabiila), means phratry. David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer, the noted linguist who undertook research in the late 1920s and 1930s which has since become a mainstay of the secondary literature, identified the Burushaski term ruúm as “tribe.”56 However, recently cultural anthropologists have agreed that this definition is not accurate.57 Summer pastures are shared between the phratries (and not the local units of the khans58). Phratries have special names, like Dirámiting, Buróong, Barátaling, Qhúrukuts etc.59

Bericho, Shina and Wakhi peoples have different kinship systems and social structures, but they are unimportant from the perspective of my inquiry.

 

In addition to the lineage and phratry system, I outline social stratification according to status and solidarity. According to social status, the Hunzakuts’ society is divided vertically into three main levels.

The highest status is the Ayasho family, which belongs to the Tharákuts clan, and, together with the Waziírkuts, forms the Diramiting phratry.60 They have the highest status.61

The second group is the Burusho people, who are often regarded as the so-called “folk”: the native, Burushaski speaking inhabitants of Hunza. According to oral history narratives, they are the indigenous people of the region, and the Diramiting phratry are the conquering rulers of Hunza. The Burusho people are in the middle of the social hierarchy.

The third group is divided into three communities, each of which speaks its own language: Shina, Wakhi and (in the lowest status62), the Bericho.

Since the mid-1970s, the Pakistani administration, and later (since the 1980s), the slowly established tourist industry began bringing more and more people from Pakistan to Hunza, but these people still form only a slight minority of the society. They are considered outlanders, who are not Hunzakuts. As an form of opposition to the Pakistani administration and politics, Hunzakuts still resist sharing the nation concept of Pakistan. Many times, Hunzakuts have told me that “Pakistanis do not consider us equal citizens, as evidenced by the fact that Pakistanis do not let us play on the national Pakistani polo or soccer teams”. However, as noted earlier in this article, Hunzakuts often identify themselves as Pakistani when they are outside Pakistan63.

Ethnicity Emerging in Context

In the preceding section I outlined the main social units and groups in Hunza. In this one, I draw on this and give examples of in-situ conversations in which people use the relevant terms. Basically, I seek to show that one must always consider the context of the given situation. Whether a conversation takes place inside or outside Hunza is one important element, and it is similarly important to take into consideration who is using the exact terms, to whom he or she is referring, and the audience to or with whom he or she is speaking. Contextualization is essential if interpretation is going to be adequate, so I give some examples of the everyday use of the ethnic terminology.

Before beginning to outline the ethnic levels and ethnonyms in Hunza, I must stress that people do not always act from their “ethnic perspective.”64 In some respects, Hunzakuts have a lifestyle (agriculture, working on the irrigation system, animal husbandry) which is very similar to the lifestyles of other Shia and Ismaili peoples in the region of the Karakorum and Hindukush. They have many distinctive customs, some of which can be easily recognized, but cultural differences cannot be equated with ethnicity. As culture is never homogeneous and always changing (as it is a cognition), it can be considered a kind of discourse. Several social, religious, and other orientations (e.g. school, avocation or special interest-based groups) can give frames for different discourse spaces and lead to the emergence of more or less overlapping systems of “culture.” Which is ethnicity, if ethnic roots do not trace the same directions whether according to cultural, kinship (origin), religious, or territorial (local) identities?

As it is theoretically based on the notion of origin, language, and cultural or political coexistence, ethnicity emerges only in some situations, when one or more of these values are affected. On other occasions, religious or social identity provides the foundation of their actual perspective. Kinship can also have an important role, even today. However, ethnic perspective cannot be easily divided from religious, social, local, and kinship cognition. It is the ideology of nationalism, which tries to give a one-level frame of a particular ethnic level, tending to exclude multi-ethnic identities and rule over religious, political, and cultural identities. In Hunza, this “nationalistic turn” has not yet taken place, since Pakistani nationalism has been failed to control ethnic cognitions.65

It was surprising to me that I found a complex terminology for “ethnicity” in the Burushaski language. In the Burusaski language, the word qáum means “ethnic group,” but it can refer to two different categories: (1.) “a traditionally formed community with a common geography, culture, and history,” and (2) “a group of people speaking the same language and living in a similar kinship system.”66 In the case of Hunza, the first term is Hunzakuts qáum, the second (language-based) term is Burusho qáum. Inhabitants of the former kingdom of Nagér (Nagérkuts/Nagarkuts) also belong to the Burusho qáum, but certainly do not belong to the Hunzakuts qáum.

Theoretically, it would be easy to distinguish these meanings of qáum, but sometimes the words Hunzakuts and Burusho mean something different, and some Hunzakuts use other terms for the qáum to which they want to. The speakers of a language do not automatically refer to one qáum, as people normally speak three or more languages (Hunza is a multi-lingual territory), and sometimes they speak Burushaski better than their mother tongue.

Native speakers of the same language can be intermixed according to political frames: if the word Burusho is mentioned in Hunza, people will not automatically think about Nagér and Yasin Burusho people as well. Mostly, the word refers only to the Burusho people in Hunza. In some contexts, the word Burusho even excludes the Burushaski speaking elite and means only the Burushaski speaking Burusho folk in Hunza.

If the word Burusho is mentioned outside Hunza, it often refers to Hunza’s, Nagér’s, and Yasin’s Burushaski speakers, but not exclusively. Sometimes it means simply “those who speak Burushaski,” and sometimes, depending on the context is so the conversation can refer to Burusho in Hunza without drawing any distinctions. Other times, they extend it with the Hunza’s reference adjective: “Hunzakts Burusho.”

The word Hunzakuts is similarly complex. It usually refers to a territorial frame (a local unit of people), but sometimes Hunzakuts means only Burushaski speaking people in Hunza, e.g. when it is mentioned by a Wakhi to another Wakhi outside Hunza.

In the case of Shinas and Wakhis, ethnic considerations are even more complex, as they both have neighboring territories in which they form majorities, thus their presence points out the origins of Hunnza. Shinas in Gilgit and Wakhis in the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan have their own “original homeland.” In most of the conversations I have observed, they consciously stressed their Shina or Wakhi identity, and very rarely mentioned Hunzakuts identity, even if – theoretically – the Hunza regional identity covers all of them as well, and they can also refer to themselves as “Hunzakuts,” especially when they refer to it towards non-Wakhi or non-Shina outsiders. And they are quite proud of both their Hunzakuts and Shina or Wakhi identity. On other occasions, they can simply identify themselves as Shina or Wakhi, within the Shina or Wakhi speaking communities in the northern areas, if they want to stress their community with other Shinas or Wakhis or they want to refer to their language.

The case of the Berichos is a bit different, as they do not have a “homeland,” and they consider themselves traditional Hunzakuts without being a part of the Hunza kinship system. They had semi-slave status until the twentieth century, so they had communal emotions because they were an integrated part of Hunza, occupying a niche of occupations (blacksmith, musician, tractor-owners etc.). I have never heard them saying that they were Burusho, but they referred to themselves as Hunzakuts many times, at least when they were out of Hunza (e.g. in Gilgit).

An ethnonym can refer to a political frame, a language community, or a political and linguistic frame. Ethnic levels are often different when seen from the outside (exonyms) and when seen from the inside (endonyms), so one must also briefly analyze the terms used by people who describe or name these groups from the outside. Non-Hunzakuts often refer to Hunzakuts with the term Hunzas in English or similar terms in other languages.

The admixture of ethnic levels outside Hunza is more confusing. To simplify, Wakhis belong to a Wakhi ethnic group, Shinas to a Shina ethnic group, and so on. But then where do the Burusho or the Hunzakuts belong? How can we consider the Ismaili institutions, which reach towards political and language frames and cause strict endogamy, stricter than the language or even the phratry system? In practice, it is preferable for a Shina woman to marry a Shia Burusho man than to marry an Ismaili Shina. Religious frames can be more important in the case of ethnocentric expressions as well. I have heard many jokes told by Shia Muslims about their Ismaili neighbors, even when they shared the same language. These jokes contained stereotypes, concerning for instance ethnocentric attitudes and behavior. Many cultural patterns are shared by religious groups, but not by linguistic or local ones. A Burusho who is Shia can have many customs and rules in common with a Shia person in Gilgit, more than she/he might with her/his Ismaili neighbors in Hunza. So one cannot forget the region’s cultural and religious diversity when attempting to analyze or interpret these terms.

Levels of Ethnicity and the Relativity of Ethnonyms

In the previous sections I outlined the linguistic and social diversity of Hunza and the local categories which also influence ethnic cognitions. In this one, I summarize the Hunzakuts’ ethnic terminology in a table. The lines of the table list the native language groups and also some geographical and political frames. Each line starts with the subject who is referring to someone (named in the columns). Terms (written in the following columns) show a set of possible emic words for the ethnic or linguistic group (to whom the speakers refer).

To avoid misunderstanding, I have used changes in formatting. Words with normal characters refer to peoples; words in italics are terms for languages spoken by the people in question; the most common words are written with bold letters. As a reduced matrix67 of endonyms and exonyms, the table is based on linguistic differences in Hunza. It is extended with the categories of Pakistani and Nagérkuts as important complementary categories of the locality, but even so, the table is a simplification, since it cannot adequately emphasize the role of locality. This is why I explained the considerations above, to demonstrate that the table can be interpreted only according to the complexity of the social structure of Hunza. The several “synonymous” words in a heading all have different semantic frames and relevance.

I only use English words in the table if I have heard them used in a native conversation, they were explained in ethnographic interviews, or I have data about their usage from written sources. The table demonstrates the multi-dimension of endonyms, exonyms, and politonyms. The variety of ethnonyms in each headings shows that the terms can be used in a given situation according to their relevance. The areal linguistic interactions are also easy to recognize (e.g. from the frequent loan-words).

Conclusions

The notion that an ethnic group is based on a strict unit of origin, language, and territory seems to be false. Ethnic levels appear in constantly changing registers of personal knowledge, which only partially overlap. However, the discourse in which the inhabitants of Hunza express and experience their ethnic perceptions is an existing communicational frame, even if it contains relatively fluid and constantly changing elements of narratives, experiences, emotions, and values. This dialectic set of cognitions explains the very complex ethnic terminology of Hunza.

It is not obvious what one can call the ethnic level in Hunza. Ethnonyms do not have set definitions, and in different situations only the context can help us understanding who a term is being used to designate. There are overlapping categories of ethnic and quasi-ethnic perspectives. I have analyzed the role of language, locality, descendant, and social structure. The first consequence is that, on the basis of these principles, very different groups of people share common ethnic identities.

I explained that the notion of Hunzakuts is seemingly a politonym, but it is also a local unit. The Burusho, Dom, Xik, Shina etc. are seemingly language based endonyms, but kinship, cultural relations, historical coexistence, administrative frames, language, and religiosity can all influence these ethnic perspectives (although none of them can be considered as “the sole and only” ethnic level). I showed that the term Burusho, for example, can mean all Burushaski speakers, but sometimes it means the folk of Hunza (opposed to the Diramiting elite) and sometimes it means Burushaski speakers of Hunza. It is also used, in other contexts, to refer to the distant Burushaski speaking populations of Nagér and Yasin, and there are cases in which it is simplified to the Ismaili Muslims of Hunza and Yasin. A native speaker has all these concepts in his o rher mind, and in any particular situation, the relevant meanings are called forth. The context can be interpreted with the tools of the cognitive semantics.

There are institutions (such as clans and phratries, Ismaili religious community, and local settlement frames like khanats), into which someone is born, so there are groups which allocate ethnic perspectives. Ethnic identity is far from being incidental. It is, rather, a set of different attachments, as frames of a person’s ethnic perceptions and behavior. Ethnicity is a kind of knowledge: participating in a discourse, sharing more or less common narratives, emotions, experiences, and values. Ethnicity is also a recognition: placing someone in the social environment (according to linguistic, local and other difference), and it is also the foundation for meaningful and relevant relations. Finally, ethnicity is a practical tool of communication: ethnic perceptions and categories appear in conversation nearly always for a particular purpose.

The question of which languages are used in the family is also not incidental, and neither is the question of the society to which someone belongs. These factors can sometimes be changed (by moving out of Hunza, emigration, intermarriage etc.), but there must be a reason for this change. It seems insufficient to consider ethnicity “merely” a changeable discourse, although the ethnic perspective is indeed a constantly changing (and never homogeneous) register of knowledge.

Ethnic identity in Hunza contains the concept of the former Hunza kingdom (the “thousand years of independence”), but it does not suppose or imply any common origin. Inhabitants of Hunza recognize the role of native languages, local communities, and social coexistence. Social and religious differences can lead to expressions of identity that are similar to or part of ethnic perceptions. Inhabitants of Hunza certainly recognize differences in language, and they use several words for the linguistic groups. Despite the linguistic diversity and the current political power of the nation-state ideology of modern Pakistan, Hunzakuts identity survived the collapse of the former kingdom’s administration in 1974. The semantic frame of the word Hunzakuts has certainly undergone a transformation since 1974, and the role of locality has increased. Social solidarity remained an important part of it.

I delineated the essence of my explanation in a table, showing the complexity of ethnonyms used in social interactions. In addition to their (etic) vocabulary meanings, the ethnic terminology (as a set of emic categories) catalyzes other notions, narratives, and emotions. Each word has a cognitive semantical frame, which calls forth emotions, narratives, and values in the given situation by the exact actors.68

After briefly outlining the complexity of the ethnonym-system in Hunza, according to which terms can be recalled on the basis of the given circumstances, I demonstrated the complexity of ethnic levels and perceptions (Table I.). As the diversity and overlapping nature of ethnic perceptions, ethnic discourses, and semantic frames suggests, there is no single, exclusive level of ethnonyms in Hunza. Finally, I emphasize that cognition of “ethnic categories” is not omnipotent. There are considerations in which the national (Pakistan), ecological (social status), religious, or the political attachments seems more relevant than the ethnic ones.

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Who is naming whom?	Burusho (in Hunza)	Shina	Wakhi	Bericho (Dom)	Nagérkuts (Burusho in Nagér)	Pakistani
Burusho (in Hunza)	Burusho Misháaski Burushaski Húnzó Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts Buru / Bru (Biltum Khajuna Kanjut/Kunjut1) (Werchikvar/ Wirchikwor2)	Shenaá Shená Shina Shinaki Húnzukuts (for Shinas in Hunza) Nagérkuts/ Nagarkuts (for Shinas in Nagér)	Guítso/Guicho Gujali/Gojali Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts Guyits Guíchiski Waqhí Xikwor/Xikwar Wakhani	Bericho Béri Bériski Berits Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts Berishal sís Burusho	Burusho Burushaski Nagérkuts	Urdu Panjabi (often extended to all Pakistanis) Pakistani Paki (English loanword)
Shina	Hunzakuts Buru / Bru Burushaski Burusho	Shiná Shinaki Shina Hunzakuts	Húnzukuts Gujali/Gojali Waqhí Wakhi Xikwor, Xikwar Wakhani	Dom Bericho Bériski Domaki Béri Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts	Burusho Nagér/Nagyr Burushaski Nagérkuts Nagiri	Urdu Panjabi (often extended to Pakistanis) Pakistani Paki
Wakhi	Buru Burusho Hunzakuts Burushaski	Shina Shina Shinaki Hunzakuts	Xik zik Zik, Khik Xikwa Wakhíní Húnzukuts Pamiri Tajik	Bériski Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts Bericho Dom	Nagérkuts Nagar/Nagyr Burushaski Buru	Urdu Pakistani
Bericho (Dom)	Buru, Bru, Burusho, Burushaski Hunzúkuts	Shiná Shina Shinaki Hunzakuts	Guítso/Guicho Hunzakuts / Húnzukuts Guíchiski Waqhí Xikwor, Xikwar Wakhani	Dom Doma Domáaki Dumaki Bérits Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts	Burusho Nagér/Nagyr Burushaski Nagérkuts Nagiri	Urdu Panjabi (often extended to all Pakistanis) Pakistani
Nagérkuts (Burusho in Nagér)	Burusho Misháaski Burushaski Werchikvar/ Wirchikwor (for Yasin-Burusho) Buru / Bru	Shenaá/Shená Shina Shinaki Húnzukuts (for Shinas in Hunza) Nagérkuts/ Nagarkuts (for Shinas in Nagér)	Guítso/Guicho Guíchiski Waqhí Xikwor/Xikwar Wakhani	Bericho Béri Bériski Hunzakuts/ Húnzukuts	Burusho Misháaski Burushaski Nagérkuts/ Hanarkuts Werchikvar/ Wirchikwor (for Yasin-Burusho) Buru / Bru	Urdu Pakistani
Pakistani	Hunzakuts Burusho Burushaski Hunzai	Shina Húnzukuts Nagérkuts Nagarkuts	Wakhi/Waqhí Hunzakuts Hunzai Wakhani Tajik	Dom Bericho Domaki Bériski Hunzakuts	Nagari Nagérkuts Burusho Burushaski	Pakistani Urdu etc.
1 The words Biltum, Khajuna, and Kanjut/Kunjut sometimes appear in Burushaski conversations with a connotation concerning their historical roots. 2 Werchikvor/Werchikvar refers to the Burushaski dialect spoken in Yasin.

 

Table I. Endonyms and exonyms in and around Hunza

State-Building, Imperial Science, and Bourgeois Careers in the Habsburg Monarchy in the 1848 Generation: The Cases of Karl Czoernig (1804–1889) and Carl Alexander von Hügel (1795/96–1870)

Wolfgang Göderle
University of Graz
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The article situates itself in the broader context of the transition between the Ancien Régime and the revolutionary year 1848 by exploring the new social spaces opening up for a middle-class in the making from the 1820s onward. It focuses on two representatives of this new class, Karl von Czoernig and Carl Alexander von Hügel, both of whom managed to climb the social ladder between c. 1820 and 1870. Men like Czoernig and Hügel were involved with the events of 1848 in manifold ways. Czoernig, for instance, was a member of the Frankfurt Parliament, while Hügel helped Metternich escape the country and flee to England. Yet in the wider perspective, it was not a few turbulent days in 1848 that made a difference in the lives of the members of the larger emerging middle-class to which these two men belonged. The revolution(s) had another effect on both men’s lives: Hügel made a reappearance as an imperial diplomat and started a second career with a distinctly conservative flavor. The top-ranking civil servant Czoernig, in contrast, ruined his professional career in the long run, although the consequences of his participation in the events of 1848 were not felt until the early 1860s, when dusk fell on neo-absolutist liberalism. This article examines a panorama of new options and opportunities for members of the well-educated bourgeois in an era of transition, and it suggests some conclusions concerning the strategies put to use by the emerging middle-class.

Keywords: Habsburg Monarchy, civil service, middle-class, bourgeoisie, social history, nineteenth century

Who were the men of 1848 in Central Europe?* Was there even such a thing as a generation of 1848? If one seeks answers to these questions, one must dig deeper into the institutional and personal continuities that link the first and second halves of the nineteenth century in the Habsburg Empire. An understanding of these continuities sheds light on processes of state-building and the rise of a bourgeois middle class, the worldviews of which were claiming ground in imperial notions of the modern state.1

The following article proceeds on the assumption that there actually was a generation of 1848, made up roughly of men born between c. 1795 and 1810 who shared a certain horizon of education, experiences, and relationships both with one another and with the state and its institutions. This generation included not only those directly involved with the manifold events in the revolutionary year, but also men whose lives were in many ways affected. Members of the generation of 1848 were not necessarily in favor of more political participation or liberalism. Some, indeed, were strictly opposed, and some were more or less indifferent. Yet (and this is the decisive point) their lives and life choices were affected by the changes that led to and were ushered in by the revolutions, and they all had to deal with 1848 in one way or another. This article relates this generation of 1848 to three aspects that have increasingly received scholarly attention in recent years: (a) the question of networks in an asserted “world of empires” and the (b) production of scientific knowledge, in large part by members of an emerging middle class, specifically in the (c) context of state-building processes.2

This text summarizes the current state of research in an ongoing project which seeks to reconstruct and analyze a collective biography of Central European civil servants between c. 1820 and c. 1870. The endeavor aims to produce a thorough investigation of the personal, professional, and educational backgrounds of these individuals, the process of social change in which they participated, and the manifold networks of which they were a part.3 Here, I will present two men who were active in what was then known as the “Austrian Empire.” Their cases shed light on larger imperial practices and the mid-century construction of imperial spaces.4 At first glance, Czoernig and von Hügel had little in common, apart from the fact that both served the Habsburg Empire at one point or another; however, I argue that together these two men’s careers offer illustrative examples of the field of professional choices, options, and chances to rise in the social hierarchy for members of the middle class in the empire. To a certain extent, their lives complement each other and cover a broader range of the array of bourgeois, or, to a growing extent, middle class backgrounds in the first half of the nineteenth century.5

Christopher Clark characterizes the decade after 1848 as a “European Revolution in Government.”6 I argue that the emerging middle classes in Central Europe and beyond acted as catalyzers in the setup and flow of this process.7 They provided synchronization and know-how transfer across European states and empires, they built and maintained crucial formations of administrative and scientific knowledge, and they laid the foundation stones for what was to become the “modern state” of the 1850s.

Science and the Modern State

The past few years have seen a certain reassessment of the first half of the nineteenth century in Central Europe, although the pre-March decades have received relatively little scholarly attention compared to works on the second half of the eighteenth or the nineteenth centuries.8 A number of studies, however, highlight subtle lines of continuity, showing the elements of the late eighteenth century on which the generation of 1848 could build.9 The rank smell of reactionary rule and philistine Biedermeier is slowly coming off the period between 1815 and 1848 and giving way to a more differentiated and balanced assessment.10

I argue that emerging middle classes in Central Europe and beyond were laying the groundwork for the rebuilding of the political, economic, social, and cultural arena after 1848 during most of the first half of the nineteenth century, gradually replacing older elites in what has been coined the “imperial intermediaries” by Burbank and Cooper.11 Preeminent members of this bourgeoisie were smoothly blending the ambition of the well-educated social riser with the eloquence, manners, and social instinct of older aristocratic elites, whose etiquette and networking habits and skills they were simulating masterfully. The services of these men, whose skills and competences concerning the systematic production and management of knowledge contributed crucially to the shaping of modernity, soon would become indispensable, not only in imperial administrations.

Several aspects of this process deserve attention. First, I direct the scope of my study toward the term “transimperialism,” and I avoid the use of the term “transnational” outside a nationalized context. By using this term, I embrace what has recently been argued by Bernhard Schär, who contends that imperial rule in the nineteenth century created social spaces between European empires, spaces which existed inside and outside Europe, extending across national and imperial borders.12 Transimperial networks allowed for the mobility of members of certain social classes, yet, essentially, they also provided for the circulation of (scientific) knowledge. I relate the study of such networks to the processes of state building by showing how they contributed to the shaping of a new political and administrative arena in Central Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, an arena which continued to exist well after 1848.13

Second, I scrutinize how new manners of the production and distribution of knowledge and novel concepts of how (scientific) knowledge could be used allowed for the social and political participation and rise of a large group of (relative) newcomers.14 The bourgeois experts that made up a considerable part of European state bureaucracies by the middle of the nineteenth century in many cases represent this type of the homo novus; yet at the same time, they formed the nucleus of a social middle class in the making, which created a new social space for people coming from below as well as for déclassés from the former gentry and lower aristocracy. The major resource of people joining this milieu was their education, professional training, and development of practical and theoretical knowledge, which was frequently important to state administration.15 Yet the “bourgeois world” shared a common set of ideas, values, and ambitious goals across many (though certainly not all) social delimitations and imperial and state borders.16 I argue that not only the bourgeoisie but the entire middle class in the making transcended key processes of state-building in Europe and successfully affected the renegotiation of political participation among established and new stakeholders in the middle of the nineteenth century.

And third, I analyze how connections across empires and a new class of imperial bureaucrats worked to build the modern state and how they made the modern state work for them. How was the unprecedented shift in political representation and participation which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, when rulers had to accept parliaments and constitutional rights, related to this?17 Clearly, this shift has to be interpreted in the wider context of a long-term historical process, which started in the late eighteenth century and transformed the entire knowledge base, upon which states operated. During this process, civil servants, members of the lower aristocracy, military land surveyors, bourgeois intellectuals, and skilled workers all over Europe exchanged theoretical and practical knowledge in many different fields, including cartography, statistics, and economy, and acquired a deeper understanding of the fundamental and general problems modern statehood had to tackle.18

This article reconstructs the lives, achievements, failures, and encounters of two representatives of this loose group of essentially middle-class bureaucrats: Karl Freiherr Czoernig-Czernhausen (1804–89) and Carl Alexander Freiherr von Hügel (1795–1870). Both men originated from middle-class backgrounds and spent at least parts of their respective professional careers in the civil (and in the case of Hügel also in the military) service. Both men contributed considerably to creating the scientific discourse of their time in more than one field. And both, Czoernig and Hügel, were known as “literates” as well: they wrote and published books addressing a wider audience. Finally, both men were politically active and well established in the leading class of the Habsburg Empire.

Czoernig was 44 years old in 1848, Hügel was in his early fifties, either 52 or 53 years old, his precise date of birth cannot be determined. In 1848 Czoernig served in the Frankfurt Parliament, while Hügel was helping Metternich to escape from Vienna and to flee to England.19 Neither man has yet received an extensive biography.20 Yet there is a considerable literature on both of them: Czoernig’s life as a top-ranking civil servant in the pre-March era and during neo-absolutism has particularly attracted the attention of historians interested in Central European statistics in the 1840s and 1850s. Hügel’s life has gained the interest of historians of science as a traveler and collector. Other aspects in the lives of these two men have attracted less interest: Hügel’s career as an officer in the service of the Austrian army as well as his activities in the diplomatic service go unnoticed by most historical research. The same applies to Czoernig, whose work as a politician and author has been overshadowed by the role he played in statistics. Only his work as a linguist earned some attention.21

I argue that it requires a broader and more balanced approach towards the lives and activities of persons such as Czoernig and Hügel to better assess and analyze their work and impact in the context of the first half of the nineteenth century. By reading these two figures primarily as scientists and somehow secondarily as civil servant and officer respectively traveler, the more global dimension of their activities is inevitably missed. It can be observed quite frequently that early nineteenth-century characters with a similarly rich portfolio of professional and non-professional activities are categorized and, therefore, analyzed and interpreted exclusively in the context of one category. Yet, it appears quite striking that many public characters of this generation engaged in a surprisingly broad range of activities, which makes it extremely difficult to place them in a single ‘professional’ denomination.22 There were authors working in the civil service, military officers publishing maps in their spare time, and traveling scientists, who later ended up in the diplomatic field.23 Such ‘careers’ were the norm rather than an exception, which prompts the question why this was so. Clearly, the normative categories and logics of the later nineteenth century, when (professional) fields such as politics, civil service, literature and science were more clearly delimited do not fit well for the analysis and description of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Taking this into consideration, I suggest opening up the analytical framework used to describe and analyze bourgeois agency in Central Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. Taking the lives of Karl Czoernig and Carl Alexander von Hügel as illustrative examples, I identify the connections between the different fields of activity in which they engaged in order to come to a broader assessment of the significance of these connections. I start with the observation that the boundaries between different fields in the production and use of knowledge (science, literature, politics, military) were relatively permeable and these fields were overlapping in the period before 1848, which made it possible for agents such as Czoernig and Hügel to move between different arenas and build connections and networks in a Latourian sense. This appears to be a key characteristic of this epoch, yet its consequences have not been given adequate attention in recent scholarship.24

When Czoernig was nominated to serve as head of administrative statistics in the Department of Administrative Statistics (Direktion der administrativen Statistik) in 1841, for example, the procedure was not overtly formalized, and Czoernig’s formal qualifications were not discussed.25 Czoernig was already a well-known and respected authority in terms of the production, administration and distribution of state and public knowledge, yet he was not an academic statistician in the pure sense of the word. On the other hand, at the time, the sphere of work of the position to which he was appointed was not very clearly defined if judged by later standards. 43 years later, on the other hand, when Theodor Inama-Sternegg took charge of more or less the same office, it was of utmost importance that he primarily fulfill the formal scientific qualifications for the job.26 In his case, Inama-Sternegg was a trained statistician, at least to the extent to which one could study statistics in the 1870s and 1880s, but, more importantly, his work was recognized and appreciated by an international yet at the same time still transimperial scientific community of statisticians. Inama-Sternegg’s predecessor, however, had been an experienced and trustworthy high-ranking civil servant, who had served in this position for little more than two years. Before him, Adolf Ficker, a student and protégé of Czoernig’s who had even fewer formal qualifications than Czoernig himself, had been in charge of the office.

The point is that both Czoernig and Ficker could oversee a critical office in charge of state statistics for extended periods of time. Both were experienced men and had enjoyed generalist’s educations: They had undergone a complete course of universalist secondary school education and had also been trained in legal studies. As late as the 1870s, jurists and historians socialized in state administration could well lead statistical offices, even those of the Habsburg Empire, which at the time were among such leading institutions worldwide. Both Czoernig and Ficker played important roles in the most important international board of scientific statistics at the time, the International Statistical Congress. Not only were they renowned and respected experts, they exercised considerable agency and power in the definition and execution of statistical standards. Yet, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that both Czoernig and Ficker followed broad agendas, which went far beyond statistics. Czoernig found the time to write the two most important books on the condition and development of the Habsburg state in the 1850s and Ficker devoted substantial efforts and energy to the development of census statistics that would exclude any reference to language or ethnic belonging.

In the 1870s, this began to change as professional and academic training in statistics became an increasingly compulsory prerequisite for work in the field. Whereas Czoernig and later to a lesser extent Ficker enjoyed the liberty of occupying themselves with a large number of different fields of interest, this became less and less possible in the 1870s. Scientific gatekeepers were put in place to assure that states’ statistical knowledge met certain requirements of objectivity.27 States which failed to comply with this standard risked losing recognition as “modern” states.28

Thus, the nomination of Theodor Inama-Sternegg marked the end of an era in the production of state knowledge. He took office as a statistical scientist, his only secondary occupation being his activity as a university teacher at the department of statistics at the University of Vienna. Inama-Sternegg kept his distance from the state, despite being a high ranking civil servant. He put science first, and his understanding of his role and profession might well be considered symptomatic for a process of crystallization (or in the terminology of Max Weber, professionalization) which had begun in the 1840s and came to an end in the 1880s, when clear borders between different fields of knowledge-related activities (politics, science, literature, civil service) were established. Men like Czoernig and von Hügel not only could and did switch among fields which were far from being clearly delimitated in the era between 1830 and 1860, they were also able to make strategic use of their mobility and agility to act competently in different yet in most cases adjacent or associated fields. Unlike Inama-Sternegg, they did not need to keep ostentatious distance from the state, which gave them authority. Only decades later, in the 1880s, did proximity to the state pose a potential threat to a scientist’s reputation as independent and objective.

Czoernig and von Hügel not only moved between different fields of knowledge and knowledge production. They also circulated among different regional and imperial affiliations. Both men seized opportunities to engage on different levels of the state (in the case of von Hügel, also in different imperial spheres) and oscillate around the states’ inner domains at changing distances. As will be shown, Czoernig proved a highly capable administrator on the provincial level in Lombardy and Trieste as well as on the Central State level in Vienna. Hügel meanwhile proved an officer of great value between Scandinavia and Sicily, and he later continued his career with the Habsburg Empire as an ambassador in Florence and Brussels, after having traveled to South Asia and Oceania, under the protection and to the profit of the British Empire.

Karl Freiherr Czoernig-Czernhausen

Czoernig was born into a bourgeois family in Tschernhausen (today Černousy in the Czech Republic) in northwestern Bohemia in 1804, the son of an administrator of an estate of the family Clam-Gallas.29 His mother was the daughter of a textile manufacturer. After completing grammar school, Czoernig studied law (to be more precise law, governance, and public policy, or Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften) at the universities of Prague and Vienna. Central European scholarship and examination regulations in the early nineteenth century considered law a very broad matter and therefore obliged students to study a comprehensive curriculum, which included many aspects of contemporary political economy and political science.30 Czoernig was an excellent student, with a keen interest in all sorts of statistics, statistical reasoning, and representation of data. Supposedly, while he was still a student at law school, his academic teacher Joseph Ritter von Kudler considered him a “future Dupin of Austria.”31

Having completed his studies, Czoernig joined the civil service in Trieste in 1828. While pursuing his professional career, he started publishing what was then categorized as literature in the widest sense of the word. His Topographisch-historisch-statistische Beschreibung von Reichenberg. Nebst einem Anhange: Die Beschreibung von Gablonz enthaltend successfully combined different forms of knowledge. Czoernig delved into topography, moved on to history, added an extensive chapter on trade and the professions, and finished with “the circumstances and the movement of the population” of the Bohemian town of Reichenberg/Liberec, which was near where he was born and raised. The study was comprehensive, comprising more than 200 pages, yet it was just the first in a long line of similar publications to come. It appeared in 1829. Two years later, in 1831, Czoernig moved from Trieste to Milan, where he integrated well into the intellectual life of the Lombardian capital and soon became the secretary of Governor Count Hartig.32

Czoernig spent almost ten years in Milan, not only as a relatively high-ranking member of the administration, but also as a very productive author, scholar, topographer, and statistician. In sheer numbers, his output was impressive; it included further works on the topography and trade of parts of northern Italy, including again statistical inquiries, but also travelogues and analyses of political events. Czoernig’s work was based to a high degree on original data which he himself had gathered, and it reflects in parts an enormous degree of independent research.33 His social fabric included politicians, scholars, and members of the Lombardian bourgeoisie. Czoernig mastered Italian to a remarkable degree, and the extent to which he was able to integrate into the contemporary intellectual life of Milan has lately been assessed as extremely high.34

In 1841, Czoernig moved to Vienna, where he became head of the Department of Administrative Statistics, then a part of the Court of Auditors (k.k. General Rechnungs-Directorium). At age 36, he had collected a number of distinctions and memberships. He had become a 2nd class Knight of the Ducal Order of St. Louis of Lucca, an Honorary Member of the Milan Brera Academy and the Athenians of Bergamo and Brescia, but also of the Austrian Lloyd, which at the time was a relatively young shipping company (founded only in 1833), but which would soon become a global player. He was a corresponding member of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences, the Patriotic Economic Society of Bohemia, and the Imperial and Royal Moravian-Silesian Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Nature, and Regional Studies. He was also a full member of the Patriotic Association for the Encouragement of Industriousness in Bohemia and the Lower Austrian Trade Association.35 This list might be considered proof of Czoernig’s sociality, yet at the same time it demonstrates the extent of his range of different activities and interests and the social, political, economic, scientific, and artistic network, stretched from northern Italy across the Lower Austrian heartlands of the Habsburg Empire to Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia.

As an administrative statistician, Czoernig started from the beginning. His academic training did not particularly qualify him for the job, yet he had an advantage over better-qualified academics, who might have represented competition for him.36 Czoernig had practical experience and had shown a considerable degree of creativity when it comes to using numbers and numerical descriptions of the social world. He developed a close relationship with his superior Karl Friedrich Kübeck Freiherr von Kübau, which turned out to be useful in the years to come, as Kübeck was able to increase Czoernig’s scope of action. Over the course of the 1840s, Czoernig was busy with the re-dimensioning and reorganization of the Department of Administrative Statistics, which grew considerably in the years leading up to 1848. After 1843, for a time he wrote less, but Czoernig explored new fields of activity and further expanded his network. He became involved with the Capitalien- und Rentenversicherungsanstalt (capital and pension insurance institution), the Vienna-Gloggnitz-Railway, and in particular the administration of the Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft (Danube Steamship Company), which had begun to flourish at the time.37 He also started to climb the ranks of state administration, and by 1846 he had been promoted Hofrath.

In 1848, his Bohemian electoral district nominated him to serve as its representative in the Frankfurt Parliament, although he had not applied for the position. In Frankfurt, he took a moderate conservative stance when he joined the Café Milani fraction. His fellow parliamentarians mandated him to voice their position in a memorandum, which he did before withdrawing from the Parliament and returning to Vienna, where new tasks awaited him. In the course of the reorganization of the state administration in the wake of 1848, his entire department became part of the newly founded Ministerium für Handel, Gewerbe und öffentliche Bauten (Ministry of Trade, Commerce, and Public Buildings). Moving the Department of Administrative Statistics from the Court of Auditors into a Ministry brought Czoernig much closer to the central domains of the modern state. He was promoted to Sections-Chef (head of a department) and thus became a high-ranking civil servant, and he soon had to assume further duties in the ministry. In 1850, he was sent to Trieste, where he worked until 1852 on the construction of a new institution, the Central-Seebehörde (Central Sea Authority). He was also in charge of the Zolldepartment (Customs Department) and the Bauarchiv (building archive). The latter function included responsibility for the further development of the railway and canal network, but also for historical monuments.

Little is known at the moment about how Czoernig managed to deal with the sheer number of duties he had to fulfill, although his overall performance seems to have been more than satisfactory. Waltraud Heindl’s work Gehorsame Rebellen offers some information that is helpful here. She shows convincingly that civil servants in the Habsburg Empire toward the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth were hardly overworked. It is remarkable that the situation in the protestant lands of Central Germany seems to have been quite the contrary at the time.38 Even if one assumes that the situation of civil servants working for the Zentralstellen had not deteriorated significantly by the late 1840s and the early 1850s, Czoernig clearly must have had outstanding organizational skills and must have been quite effective in managing the tasks that he had assumed. In addition to the broad range of activities and duties that he had to deal with in the early 1850s, he was still in charge of the Department of Administrative Statistics. Its composition and the way in which it functioned provide some insight into how Czoernig actually worked. He had been successful in establishing and enlarging the department, which had been founded in 1829 with only a handful of clerks borrowed from the Court of Auditors.39

By the early 1850s, Czoernig had at least two well-qualified and trustworthy men in his department who could take charge of larger tasks and act on their own initiative: Adolph Ficker and Gustav Adolph Schimmer. In 1855, Czoernig published his Ethnographie der österreichischen Monarchie (Ethnography of the Austrian Monarchy) in three volumes, a project he had been working on for fourteen years. The most interesting part of the publication consisted of a comprehensive map featuring the results of what at the time was the most detailed and thorough investigation into the languages spoken in the monarchy. Czoernig had not only collaborated closely with the Militärgeographisches Institut (Department of Military Cartography), which by that time was performing the enormous land survey which had been begun by Emperor Francis II/I almost half a century earlier in 1806,40 he had also made vast use of other resources of the military and the administration by querying civil servants and sending officers out on field research missions. It is thus difficult to draw a dividing line between the realms of the private and the professional in the activities in which Czoernig indulged or involved himself, so difficult, indeed, that these two categories perhaps cannot be applied meaningfully in his case. There are a few similar examples, which highlight the degree to which private resources and state resources were put to use in pursuit of a single goal, for instance the Scheda-Karte (Scheda-map).41 Modern statehood in the making provided an enormous testing ground, and the relationship between this new notion of a state under construction and its bourgeois (civil as well as military) servants had to be defined in an uncountable series of steps and encounters.

The character of Czoernig’s Ethnographie reflected the conditions under which it had been produced. Officially a grand piece of private scholarship, it could not have been written without the support provided by the state, as the gathering of the data it presented reflected an enormous effort on the part of the administration’s and the military’s personnel, achieved most likely not only during the service hours of those involved. The result of this effort was a three-volume magisterial work featuring something between private scholarship, science in the widest sense of the word, and official information and data on Imperial Austria.42 A little later, Czoernig published another piece, Oesterreichs Neugestaltung 1848–1858, in which he used statistics that he had not included in his Ethnographie and defined the Habsburg Empire once more as a state, which was inevitably multinational due to its position at a point where three large peoples met, its topography (which matched the different peoples’ respective characters each in particularly favorable ways), and the degree of profit these three tribes (Volksstämme) gained from each other.43 Not only did Czoernig employ a narrative that interwove the long-term historical development of each of the three tribes he had identified as primordial, he also constructed a massive and integrative narration of 1850s Imperial Austria that legitimized Habsburg rule and central administration on two levels. It was cast as natural insofar as topography was involved, and from the perspective of the social moment, Habsburg rule was characterized as harmonious, since the state in its condition at the time represented the fruit of a long, shared history.

Czoernig’s literary work of the 1850s, which combined rulers’ interests with private scholarship and could, at least in parts, stake claim to scientific objectivity by contemporary standards, offers an outstanding example of how the Bürgertum (bourgeoisie) got involved with the state-building project in the 1850s. Men of Czoernig’s class invested substantial efforts and resources into the modern state in the making, though this could mean significant risk. (I will come back to the strategies that were employed to avert risk a little bit later.)

In the mid-1850s, Czoernig reached the peak of his career. At the head of the statistical department of the states’ central administration, he successfully participated in launching a series of International Statistical Congresses, which allowed for the exchange of statistical data and standards among different countries.44 The first congress took place in Brussels in 1853, the second in Paris in 1855, and in 1857, Vienna became the stage of the international gathering of the most important statisticians of the time.45 The Habsburg Empire’s administrative statistics appear to have been at the top in the 1850s. Yet it is quite likely that statistics were not the focus of Czoernig’s attention at the time.46 His position and responsibilities in the Ministry had a far larger scope, though Czoernig seems to have considered the Department of Administrative Statistics a “center of calculation,” which he used as a resource in order to collect and administrate data and build structured knowledge on the different domains with which he was dealing (infrastructure and buildings, but also financial matters).47 In the first half of the 1850s, Czoernig’s role in the making of the modern state was quite impressive. He was in charge of the setup of a railway system and the drafting of a legal framework for the latter, and as noted before, between 1850 and 1852, he worked in Trieste, where he oversaw the development of the Central-Seebehörde. He was also responsible for practically everything that had to do with the material cultural heritage of the Monarchy and its public building infrastructure.48 His duties went beyond the borders of the Kaiserstaat (Imperial Austria), as he had to take over diplomatic missions as well, for instance financial matters which took him to Amsterdam, Paris, and London in 1854.49

As mentioned earlier, Czoernig blended into the Lombardian bourgeoisie of the 1830s smoothly. He seems to have been no less at ease in the milieus of diplomacy and an emerging international scientific scene. A classically educated polyglot, Czoernig shared a broad background of knowledge and common references with other members of a transimperial bourgeois class, which had grown considerably in the first half of the nineteenth century. Men like the Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet and the Prussian historian and statistician Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert had much more in common with people outside their respective state’s borders than they did with any other large group in their own societies. Between 1830 and 1850, members of this class had become more important for modernizing states, and rulers had become increasingly dependent on these creators and administrators of the knowledge central to the conduct of the state. By the early 1850s, men like Czoernig brokered their respective rulers’ interests among themselves, which appears to have opened new room for maneuver for bourgeois civil servants.50

By the late 1850s, Czoernig’s light began to fade, though most probably not because of any mistakes he had made. In 1859, the Ministry of Trade, Commerce, and Public Buildings was disbanded, and as a consequence Czoernig lost most of his responsibilities, except for the Department of Administrative Statistics, which was again attached to the Court of Auditors, which meant this time that statistics was put at a greater distance from the state’s central authorities. To a certain extent, it was cut off from a lot of the information it had processed in the 1850s. Czoernig managed to set up a new board, the k.k. statistische Central-Commission (Imperial and Royal Central Statistical Committee) in 1863, yet his retirement in 1865 raised suspicions that his withdrawal had to do less with his weakened health (this was his claim) and more to do with disappointment concerning his new and reduced role in the civil service.51 He had been one of the faces of “neoabsolutist” rule,52 and in the years leading up to the Compromise of 1867, the bureaucracy developed a tendency to purge itself of high-profiled protagonists of the rigid era of the 1850s, which grew more and more unpopular.53

Czoernig retired to Gorizia, where he spent the remaining 24 years of his life. He intensified his research into the history, linguistics, and archeology of the region, and he began to pursue his literary ambitions again. When Czoernig died in 1889, he left behind an impressively diverse and rich oeuvre, covering roughly half a dozen of what had by the late 1880s become clearly defined scientific disciplines, a number of works which at the time would have been classified belles lettres or literature, and the fruits of a long and successful career in the civil service of the Habsburg Empire. To a certain extent, Czoernig had been made to pay for his strong exposure during the neoabsolutist 1850s, yet when he died at the age of 85, his contemporaries had difficulty fitting the complexity, richness, and diversity of his career into a single narrative. Czoernig was among the last of his kind. Even Ficker, little more than ten years his junior, enjoyed significantly fewer liberties in his career. The bourgeois class of the 1880s was more structured. Its members had clear professional careers, and they recognized the clear boundaries between one’s occupation and one’s private life.

Carl Alexander Anselm Freiherr von Hügel

Whereas Czoernig’s life has been analyzed from different perspectives, things are very different with von Hügel. There is much less literature on the latter. Born either in 1795 or 1796 in Regensburg, he was the son of a diplomat who had entered the service of the Habsburg emperor in January 1794.54 There, Johann Aloys Joseph von Hügel rose quickly and soon became a plenipotentiary. His son, Carl, enjoyed private tutoring and a Catholic education, before he went to law school in Heidelberg in 1810 or 1811. Two years later, he joined the Hussars of the Austrian Army as an officer and fought in the Napoleonic Wars for two years.55 By the invasion of Paris, Carl von Hügel had reached the rank of a captain. He then took part in the Northern Mission and was sent to Sweden. Hügel seized the opportunity and traveled through Scandinavia and Russia between 1817 and 1818. Supposedly in 1819, he joined the 5th Hussar Regiment, which was then in southern Italy, yet he was stationed in Provence and served as Commandant de place in Arles and Tarascon. In 1821, he participated in the expedition to Naples, which secured King Ferdinand his throne, and he then stayed on in Naples as a Military Attaché of the Habsburg Empire from 1821 to 1824, when he returned to Vienna and quit his position with the army.

Not yet 30 years old, Hügel had spent almost fifteen years abroad, traveling in Europe and Russia. The existing information on him is often ambiguous and unclear. His precise year of birth cannot be determined from the information available in the secondary literature, and further data is either incomplete or inconsistent. His father, Johann Aloys Joseph von Hügel, died in 1825. As the younger son, Carl Alexander, seems to have had some financial resources. After finishing his career with the army, he bought a house in Hietzing, a suburb of Vienna at the time in the vicinity of Schönbrunn Castle. He had gardens planted and a park built around his house, which soon became well known. Over the course of the following years, Hügel began to prepare his most famous journey to southeast Asia and Oceania.56 A horticulturalist of a certain reputation, he was able to expand his knowledge in his field of interest over the years between 1825 and 1830. Yet there seems to have been another aspect to his journey which had to do with his private life. He was engaged to Countess Mélanie Zichy Ferraris, who finally chose Prince Clemens Wenzel von Metternich over him, whom she married in 1831.57

Hügel had left the country in 1830, when he departed for England and then continued on to France. He left Toulon in May 1831 aboard the French naval ship D’Assas. Via Greece and Crete, he traveled to Alexandria, where he arrived in June. Hügel visited Cyprus and then Syria, from where he went to Antioch, Homs, and Palmyra. Finally, he moved on to Baalbek and then to Mount Lebanon, where he contracted cholera. His servant died of the disease, but Hügel recovered and traveled to Bombay via Suez and Aden. He arrived there in 1832. He then went south, after having fallen falling ill again, to Deccan, where he saw Goa and Mysore. Via the Malabar Coast he moved on to Ceylon, where he spent another four months. He then went up the southwest coast of India to Pondicherry and Madras. In autumn 1833, he boarded the English ship Alligator, and traveled to the Indian Archipelago and then to Australia. He then returned to India via New Zealand, Manila, Macao, and Canton, arriving in Calcutta. This was the starting point for what is probably the best-known part of his journey. He took off for the Himalaya Mountains, went on to Cashmere, and headed towards Delhi in 1835 via the land of the Sikhs before he arrived in Bombay again. There he spent another year, and then he went back to England via the Cape of Good Hope and Saint Helena. In the course of the six years of his journey, Hügel had accumulated an immense collection of objects, plants, butterflies, further objects of interest to natural history, and diverse artifacts of ethnographic value, a total of over 30,000 pieces, which he then brought back to Vienna.

Many details of this journey merit discussion in greater detail. With regards to the sources on his trip and on his experiences, one can use his four-volume description of the last part of his journey from Calcutta via the Himalayas, Cashmere, and the Punjab to Delhi and Bombay. A second, smaller book project has dealt with his experiences in the Pacific. In India, Hügel was accompanied for most of his trip by a British delegation, but the “government” did not allow anyone to cross the Sutlej river. Thus, the East India Company granted foreign travelers, to whom these regulations did not apply, considerable support.58 In addition to Hügel, this applied to a number of European travelers, among them the French Victor Jacquemont. Hügel traveled in comfort. His expedition consisted of more than 100 people, among them 60 bearers, but also 37 servants, as well as hunters, gardeners, and people responsible for catching and preserving butterflies.59 He ordered supplies of food to be taken for him in tinned cans, and most of his provisions were sent from Europe. Hügel himself went on horseback, lest the terrain not allow twelve bearers to carry him. He had close contacts in and excellent ties to the colonial administration, and he could make good use of them. Hügel not only collected objects, he also gathered and processed information. He drew maps, and he helped the British acquire certain bits of knowledge they could not get themselves. Thus, he participated in the British colonial project, a good example of transimperial bonding, as described by Bernhard Schär in his study Tropenliebe. He also had support from the British with logistics. Without the infrastructure of the colonial administration and the military and naval presence of the British Empire, it would have been much more difficult for Hügel to make his journey.

Hügel returned to Vienna in 1836, and his collection followed a little later. In 1837, Hügel contacted Kaspar von Sternberg, a former minister under Francis and a renowned connoisseur of the Habsburg Empire’s museal scene in the first half of the nineteenth century. Hügel expressed his wish to sell his collection to the Austrian state. His rich collection contained a large number of duplicates, and therefore appears to have been of considerable value to any large contemporary museum. Duplicates offered a good chance to trade objects with other museums. According to Claudia Schweizer, who studied the exchange between Hügel and Sternberg, Hügel was in urgent need of money once he returned from his journey, as he had spent almost all of his resources. According to the letters, his journey cost him roughly 130,000 fl.60 (I will return to the question of financing bourgeois lifestyles again in the conclusion to this essay.) Hügel finally succeeded in selling his collection to the state, and he spent the eleven years between 1836 and 1847 almost entirely in Vienna, where he continued his pursuit of botany and horticulture. He also started work on his four-volume publication on the Cashmere part of his journey, the first volume of which was published in 1840.

Carl von Hügel’s network and connections are more difficult to trace than those of Czoernig, at least before the 1850s, when he took official positions in the Habsburg Empire and his merits and memberships were published in the Schematismus. In the late 1820s, he was only mentioned there as a Knight of the Order of Leopold, a title which he probably inherited from his father. Yet Hügel’s close links to Metternich and the episode with Sternberg surely give reason to assume that his contacts in the so-called First Society were intact.61 Hügel was an important figure in the establishment of the Horticultural Society in Vienna, which not only collected and cultivated plants, but also created a social space in which a large number of prominent figures met and exchanged ideas and specimens.62 He became the president of the k.k. Gartenbau-Gesellschaft, and the proceedings of this society illuminate the social sphere in which he moved. The Horticultural Society included a large number of leading figures from the political and cultural elite of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In 1847, Hügel was appointed ordinary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and he was then soon engaged in Verona to Elizabeth Farquharson, the significantly younger daughter of British General Francis Farquharson.63 Her father had served in the army of the East India Company, and Hügel had known the daughter as a girl. They met again when she accompanied her father on a visit to Hügel’s villa in Vienna.64

Upon the outbreak of the revolution in March, Hügel helped Chancellor Metternich escape from Vienna to Felsberg and, from there, to The Hague and England, where he spent the following winter.65 Back in the Habsburg Empire, he joined the army and was sent to Radetzky’s headquarters in Lombardy. Over the course of the following months, Hügel was first sent to Tuscany, where he participated in the siege of Leghorn, and then to Naples on a diplomatic mission. Later in 1849, Hügel was charged with further diplomatic duties in Florence, where he was consequently appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Grand Ducal Court of Tuscany and where he was to remain for the next few years. In June 1851, he married his fiancée in Florence, and over the course of the next decade they had three children. In 1859, the family returned to Vienna. Hügel was sent to Brussels roughly a year later, in September 1860, where he was to take up the same position he had held in Tuscany in the Belgian Court. He resumed his studies and his scientific work both in Tuscany and in Belgium, and he published several works in these two places. In 1867, he retired to England, where he lived in Torquay until May 1870, when he left England in order to return to the Habsburg Empire. However, he did not make it back. He died in Brussels on the 2nd of June 1870.

Conclusion

The two men discussed in this article, Karl Freiherr von Czoernig and Carl Alexander Freiherr von Hügel, had extraordinary careers in the first half of the nineteenth century, yet neither of these two careers was particularly unusual against the backdrop of the era. As men of bourgeois backgrounds, they were able not only to consolidate their respective social position, but also to advance in the ranks of a society that was undergoing a significant phase of reconstruction. Their lives reflect the processes of empire-building and state-building which were taking place in the first half of the nineteenth century. Albeit Czoernig and Hügel were (and still are) perceived as “Austrian” civil servants, scientists, and travelers, their respective biographies make evident that things were more complicated than this label implies. Not only does one have to bear in mind the question of what “Austrian-ness” meant in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the Kaiserthum Oesterreich (Austrian Empire) had just replaced the Habsburg part of the Holy Roman Empire, but several other questions arise. The similarities between the two men’s lives provide an illustrative outline of what the Habsburg Empire’s bourgeois classes66 looked like in the latter part of the first half of the nineteenth century, at least in what was later to become Cisleithania: Catholics, socialized in the language and German “culture,” with a standardized grammar school and in some cases university education. The distinction between lower aristocracy and bourgeoisie appears to have been less important than the distinction between lower nobility and aristocracy. At least for Czoernig and Hügel, employment in the imperial service does not seem to have been vital. Both seem to have had other financial resources. The situation was quite different for many other social climbers, mainly of lower middle-class backgrounds, who relied mostly on their education as a resource. Given their milieu, which was not petit bourgeois, Czoernig and Hügel were not exceptional. Franz Adlgasser raises the question of the material situation of men of these classes in his opening essay to the edition of the diaries of Franz Freiherr von Andrian-Werburg.67 Andrian-Werburg’s repeated complaints concerning his financial situation notwithstanding, as Adlgasser points out, he enjoyed a large degree of liberty and never actually had had to work. Andrian-Werburg’s precarious independence appears to be something that applied to many members of this class. Although there is yet not enough evidence to form a final opinion on the material circumstances of Czoernig and Hügel, many hints suggest that both men enjoyed a considerable degree of personal liberty. They seem to have been well-funded, and Hügel at least was not dependent on his professional career for money. He had remarkable financial resources of his own, and this allowed him to travel the world for almost six years.68 Moreover, the 1830s and 1840s presented themselves to men like Andrian-Werburg, Czoernig, and Hügel as an age of opportunity. The long list of possible occupations, accessible in theory to Andrian-Werburg (as noted by Adlgasser), gives an idea of the expansion of bourgeois professional horizons in these two decades, given that a certain social capital was on hand.69

Sources on the activities of associations and societies, which were beginning their activities from the 1830s onwards, illustrate how old and new elites mingled in the rule and administration of the Habsburg Empire. Journals depicting the accomplishments of organizations such as the k.k. Gartenbau-Gesellschaft, the kaiserlich-königliche Geographische Gesellschaft, and the Alpenverein shed light on the formation and spread of a new social rhizome, which became the backbone of modern state-formation after 1848. A closer look at these societies and associations not only reveals a new social fabric in the making, it also focuses attention on the role science played in the process, and it gives a sense of the versatility of the protagonists involved. Over the course of the 1830s, it is difficult to link Czoernig to a single professional career. Was he a civil servant, a man of letters, a scientist, or a statistician? Perhaps even a politician? Czoernig was all of this, yet it is likely that he himself never asked the question in the 1830s, as the different occupations could well exist alongside one another. There was no particular need to narrow things down. The situation is a tad less clear with Hügel, yet essentially the circumstances were similar. As a traveler, he did not focus on a single field of knowledge or interest. He collected objects of interest to botanists, ethnologists, historians, orientalists, and geographers. According to Joseph Vogl, literature and science, which were seen as integral parts of a comprehensive understanding of knowledge, only began to part ways after 1800, and this sheds some light on the development one observes in the two courses of life under scrutiny here.70

Science, in addition to being a profession, was the central element of the European bourgeois project of the nineteenth century. At least in the case of Central Europe, some decisive aspects can be identified here. Its promise of truth and its relevance to the vital projects of modernization (land survey, administration, infrastructure, and welfare) fostered hopes in Czoernig, who believed in the public good, and Hügel, who appears to have been more interested in a universal order of things.

And yet another aspect that deserves attention is the notion of “loyalty.” Hügel is a particularly interesting case here. The long-serving officer in the imperial service of Francis II/I gathered highly valued military intelligence for the East India Company, and he returned into the imperial service of Francis Joseph a mere fifteen years later. It appears to be quite evident that Hügel’s sense of obligation towards the emperor had little to do with more recent ideas of the obligation of a citizen of a nation-state to his “nation.” Like the Sarasin cousins in Bernhard C. Schär’s Tropenliebe, Hügel contributed actively yet indirectly to the further expansion of the British Empire by producing and delivering fundamental knowledge on the geographical and political conditions in the Sikh’s territories in the 1830s.71 Neither Czoernig’s nor Hügel’s life can be sufficiently understood against the backdrop of a modern-state-based or nation-state-based narrative. Their bourgeois lives were closely entangled with the emergence of modern statehood in the Habsburg Empire, yet they also tried to keep a certain distance from the state. Moreover, they do appear to have been prepared for alternative scenarios, which would have suited them less. Hügel, for instance, who spent a total of far more than two decades abroad, could easily have arranged for a life outside the Habsburg Empire. Czoernig left the imperial civil service at 61 and retreated to Görz/Gorizia, on the imperial periphery, where he spent another 20 years. Czoernig and Hügel must both be considered politically active men, with certain agendas on their respective minds, representing certain class interests, particularly the strengthening of political representation. Hügel was pushing his agenda less vigorously than Czoernig, who appears to have become a very prominent figure in early neo-absolutism. Wolfram Siemann provided a brilliant analysis of the long-term strategic thinking of early Modern aristocratic families which contained a number of elements that resemble the scripts put to use by Czoernig and Hügel, including strategic networking, distributing risks, and avoiding dependencies.72

The 1830s and 1840s provided ample opportunities to bourgeois social climbers, and Czoernig and Hügel were able to seize them. Both attained a high degree of geographic mobility, soon became members of a transimperial bourgeois class, and quickly climbed the career ladders in the imperial military and civil service. Yet both men had interests beyond their professional obligations, and they pursued them with an intensity that might appear unusually high, only by contemporary standards, but even by the standards of the later nineteenth century. They contributed to the emergence of the modern state in Central Europe on several levels, for instance as people who performed imperial services (of not only one empire), but also as writers, scientists (in the contemporary sense of the word), and diplomats. Acting cautiously, both men proved capable of taking action on the political stage as well, if necessary. They appear thus as two archetypal members of a very specific and quickly growing social strata in nineteenth-century European history, the heterogenic middling classes. Yet the examples of Czoernig and Hügel show that it is time to broaden our analytical framework when it comes to analyses of the activities and the range of options these people had and put to use in what has frequently been called the birth of the modern state.

 

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* I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, whose detailed and learned feedback helped in many ways to reshape and improve this article. Furthermore, Pieter Judson, who read and revised later versions of the text, was a great help, and his input made a significant contribution to the sharpening of the central argument. And finally, Debbie Coen allowed me to read parts of the manuscript of her next book and to cite from it.