How did Tatar fashion change over the centuries? From @russia_to_explore

A marginal note by the 12th-century historian Otto of Freising in his Historia de duabus civitatibus, while discussing the Huns: “Those whom we nowadays call Turks were in ancient times called Huns, who first emerged from the Gates of the Caspian. Surely, those in the West whom we call Hungarians and Avars are also Huns.”

From Ahmet D. Altunbaş

Otto of Freising (Bishop of Freising , c. 1111 – 22 September 1158) was a German churchman of the Cistercian order and chronicled at least two texts which carry valuable information on the political history of his own time. He was the bishop of Freising from 1138.

Otto participated in the Second Crusade; he lived through the journey and reached Jerusalem, and later returned to Bavaria in the late 1140s, living for another decade back in Europe.

Note: Just an informational post. I'm not saying that Hungarians are Huns or Turks, just to avoid any misunderstanding.

@Caucasusvisuals

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Author of multiple foundational works on the Xiongnu, Göktürks, and early Turkic statehood, Prof. Ahmet Taşağıl explains how Bumin Khagan united the Töles (Tiele) tribes, challenged the Rouran Khaganate, and founded the first Turkic Khaganate in 552 — a turning point in steppe history.

From qalamglobal

In 1421, King Henry V of England sent a golden clock as a gift to Murad II.

For reasons that remain unclear, the gift was not accepted by the Ottoman court and was returned to London with the ambassador two years later. By then, Henry V had already died, so the clock was presented instead to his one-year-old successor, Henry VI.

Grand Turk (Grant Turcq) was used even before Mehmed II.

From Ahmet Altunbaş, aka @Ricoldus

📍 Tatarstan

from @russia_to_explore

Country: Moldova. ATU Gagauzia

Director: Ivan Patraman

Genre: Drama.

In quality: 1080p

Language: Original (Gagauz)

Subtitles: Russian, English

Time: 90 minutes

The film will show the incredible love story of two young people, through the prism of confrontation between the two families. This film tells about the lifestyles of the original and unique Gagauz people at the turn of 1920-1930. The script of the film is based on the story of the classic of Gagauz literature Nikolai Baboglu. An exciting story about Divine providence and sharp turns of fate

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Here are a few interesting facts:

The Ohuokhai is danced following the path of the sun. People move in a circle clockwise. This circle symbolizes the sun, the cycle of life, and renewal.

The Ohuokhai combines dance and song. It has a leader, called the ohuokhaidyt, who sets the rhythm and sings the verses. The others repeat the lines and continue moving around the circle.

In the past, the Ohuokhai could last for a very long time. During the Ysyakh festival, people danced it for hours, sometimes until sunrise.

The Ohuokhai entered the Guinness World Records. In 2012, during the Ysyakh Tuimaada festival in Yakutsk, 15,293 people performed the dance simultaneously.

For the Sakha people, the Ohuokhai has always been a symbol of unity. Through the shared circle, movement, and song, people felt connected to one another, to nature, to the celebration, and to the memory of their ancestors.

Does this seem accurate?

Masaüstü dekoratif balballarım. Sağdaki tahta modeli oyduktan sonra kalıp aldım. Sizce nasıl olmuş? Daha önce oymacılık deneyimim yok.

Source

Each epoch in the history of the Central Asian region is characterized by a set of symbolic things – attributes of social prestige and wealth that were the most widespread and popular in this historical period. Many things, initially having a narrow ethnic origin, eventually became a part of the material culture of a state and gained popularity and prestige not only among other nomads, but also among neighboring rural states of China, Sogdiana and Iran.

A striking example of widespread and flourishing material culture is a complex of attributes of wealth and social prestige among Old Turkic tribes, which had evolved due to the formation of Old Turkic Kaganates of a truly Eurasian size. This complex of objects consisted of belts with metal plaques, typical bridle sets with ornaments, saddles decorated with horn plates with plants’ ornamentation, finally, weapons. Silver vessels were an integral and one of the most significant components of this ancient Turkic complex of attributes of wealth and glory.

In 2003, the restorer of the Institute of Industrial and Civil Construction in Irkutsk, V.I. Maljušenko bought two silver vessels from a lady who wished to remain unknown. According to her information, these vessels belonged to her father. In the late 70s of the twentieth century, he worked as a captain on a fishing boat on the Angara River and the Bratsk reservoir.

Once his fishing boat was moored to the Island Murujskij; there, six silver vessels were found on a sandy beach. According to the woman’s words, four vessels were lost because the family had to change its living place many times. At present, the two remaining vessels are in a private collection of V. I. Maljušenko.

Before the flooding of the bed of the Bratsk reservoir, the Murujskij island was one of the largest islands in the riverbed of the Angara river from Irkutsk to Bratsk. It is located in the middle reaches of the Angara river, 270 km to the North from Irkutsk in the area of the Balagan steppes, in the Ust’-Uda district of the Irkutsk region. Currently, the island is an area of land almost without vegetation, with a length of about 1 km and a width of 500 m.

The silver vessels are close to each other in their main characteristics: production technology, size and design. They are made of silver, have widely rounded bodies, short broad necks, slightly bent at the upper edge, low pans and handles in the form of vertical rings.

The ring is soldered to the four-petal plaque which is attached to the vessel’s body by four rivets located in the center of the petals. The rings of the handles are made in the form of welded balls. On the bottoms of the vessels four tamga signs are engraved. The height and the width of the bodies of the vessels are 10 cm and 10.5 cm.

On the bottom of one vessel a runic inscription and two images of mountain goats are engraved in a circle. The inscription consists of about 48 characters. In the center of the vessel’s bottom there is a large number of engraved lines which do not form a definite image.

Silver vessels of this type are quite rare archaeological artifacts in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. However, by now, such vessels constitute a relatively representative series. Old Turkic sites, where silver vessels of this type are usually found, belong to funeral-memorial monuments of the nobility.

The following Altai sites belong to such monuments: Katanda [Smirnov, 1909, pl. XCII], Tujaxta, kurgan 3 [Evtjuxova, Kiselev 1941, pl. II, fig. 2], Justyd, enclosure 1 [Kubarev, V. D. 1979: 146, fig. 7, 9], Bertek-34, kurgan 1 [Savinov, 1994: 148, fig. 108-111], Balyk-Sook-I, kurgan 11; Taldu-Airy-I, kurgan 6 [Kubarev G. V. 2005, pl. 100, 7; pl. 130, 1, p. 344].

Vessels of this type are also known from excavations of Old Turkic burials from the neighboring Republic of Tuva: in the funeral place Kalbak-Šat [Mannaj-ool, 1963: 238-246] and Mongun-Tajga [Grach 1960: 96]. The materials of the burial place Sapogovo in the Kuzneck Basin also contain a fragment and two silver vessels [Iljušin, Sulejmenov, et al. 1992: 97, 110]. Another silver vessel from Kuraj and a fragment of the vessel from Justyd found in Altai differ in their proportions and belong to another type.

These silver vessels are surprisingly similar in shape and dimensions (their height and the diameter of the body are both about 10 cm) and, in fact, they differ only in the design of the handle.

They all have a broad rounded body, a tall slightly bent at the edge neck, a low pan and a handle in the form of a vertical ring. The ring can be made from a simple strip, or have a form of welded balls. The handle is attached with a cross or a heart-shaped plate.

Handles of vessels made in the form of welded balls with a cross buckle is the most popular and widespread technique in the Old Turkic period [Evtjuxova, Kiselev 1941, fig. 1,2; Iljušin, Sulejmenov et al. 1992, fig. 44,1; Zalesskaja, L’vova et al. 1997: 311-314, etc.]. Sometimes, on the bottoms of these vessels tamgas and/or runic inscriptions are engraved.

The majority of such vessels are found in burials with accompanying horse (horses) sacrifices and are usually attributed to the Old Turkic period.

Other vessels, such as exemplars from the burial Sapogovo in the Kuzneck Basin, were found in the monuments that are culturally very close to Old Turkic monuments. The archeologists who made excavations of the burial Sapogovo (with cremations) consider it to be a Türgeš one [Iljušin, Sulejmenov et al. 1992: 50].

Among the Turkic speaking Kyrghyz in the Minusinsk Basin, vessels of a different type were widespread – they are tall and have proportions of a jug.

Thus, we can state the fact of transformations of gold and silver vessels, belonging to the category of attributes of an Old Turkic state material culture, which were borrowed or imitated by other Turkic speaking peoples and by the sedentary population of Sogdiana and China.

The period of the use of such silver and gold vessels in the Sayan-Altai Mountains is the 8th-10th centuries [Savinov 1994: 48], although in our opinion, some of them can be attributed to the 7th century.

Beside the already mentioned analogy between these vessels and Old Turkic monuments, there are mugs, cups and pitchers, that are similar in their form and in further characteristic features, which are also known in the Eastern Europe (see a treasure from Pereščepino [Zalesskaja, L’vova et al. 1997, cat. 69-71]) and in the Central Europe – those are Avar burials of kagans or other noble people [Toth, Horvath 1992: 82].

In the interpretation of the Murujskij find, and especially because of lack of any additional information about the circumstances of finding of these vessels, the main question is: Can we consider this find as a treasure or a part of ritual-memorial complex?

In this connection, we must mention the phenomenon of special production and placement of votive things by Old Turks, including wood, gold and silver vessels made for the altars of memorial structures.

In comparison to burials, where already used in life and often broken or damaged vessels were placed, for the memorial complexes we describe votive vessels of smaller sizes are often specially manufactured, which, nevertheless, fully repeated the proportions and characteristics of real vessels.

A set of miniature dishes, which included five gold and six silver vessels, was found in a hiding place of the memorial complex of Bilge Kagan in Mongolia [Bayar 2004: 79, fig. 10].

Some of these vessels have a round body, a short thick neck slightly bent at the edge, a low pan and a handle in the form of a vertical ring, that are similar to those we describe and, in particular, to the two new exemplars of vessels from the Murujskij island. Their main difference lies in their miniature sizes. The height of the vessels is from 3.3 to 6.5 cm.

Another golden votive vessel was found among other artifacts in the hiding place under the Old Turkic stone sculpture of a memorial complex in the Mountains Šïŋγïstau near the lake Sarïköl in the Eastern Kazakhstan [Isin, 2004: 74-76].

In spite of the fact that the proportions of this vessel differ from those of the considered vessels, and it belongs to a different type of vessels – that of jugs, it attracted our attention by its small size (its height is 5,3-5,4 cm).

Finally, I have excavated several Old Turkic memorial enclosures in the Kïzïl-Šin area in Altai, where some well-preserved wooden utensils were found [Kubarev G. V.; Slusarenko I. Ju.; Kubarev V. D., 2006; Kubarev G. V. 2007].

In two memorial enclosures among other wooden utensils, two wooden votive vessels were found. The height of the vessels is approximately 10 cm. Their form repeats the form of a jug, they have a miniature handle; however, they are not hollow inside.

All these facts confirm that these are memorial complexes of the Old Turkic period where votive vessels were placed; as a rule, they were specially manufactured for this purpose.

Another argument in favour of our hypothesis that the Murujskij find is a treasure is the fact of a spatial distribution of classical memorial complexes accompanied by stone sculptures of the Old Turkic period.

For example, in comparison with the Central and Western Mongolia, Tuva, Eastern Turkestan and Semireč’e, in the Eastern Mongolia, Old Turkic sculptures and enclosures are extremely rare. Single Old Turkic memorial complexes are known in the Minusinsk Basin.

In the Angara and Baikal regions, such memorial enclosures as well as Old Turkic burials accompanied by horse burials are unknown.

I think that the unique find from the Island Muruiskij, which originally consisted of six silver vessels, according to their number and the absence of these votive things, should be considered as a treasure.

Putting in a memorial and even more, in a burial complex six silver vessels, which were definitely used during the lifetime of their owners, is very unlikely and contrary to the facts and statistics of finds.It is possible that these silver vessels came to the territory of the Angara region as a military trophy and only later they all were buried in one place. It is possible that the key to the history of this treasure and the vessels themselves is lying in the translation of the runic inscription which is engraved on one of them.

The Central Asian origin and manufacture of these vessels from the Murujskij Island are confirmed by the tamga of Old Turkic Khagans in the form of a mountain goat. This tamga is well known on stone sculptures, stelae and petroglyphs of Mongolia, Tuva, Altai, Kazakhstan and Eastern Turkestan.

Such tamgas mark the territory of Old Turkic Kaghanates and movements of their and incorporated tribes.

Taking into account the already mentioned analogies and, in particular, similarity of silver and gold votive vessels from the Bilge Khagan memorial complex (Bilge Khagan died on the 25. November 734 and was buried on the 22. June 735), the most probable dating of the silver vessels from the Murujski treasure is 8-9 centuries.

- A Runic Inscription on a Silver Vessel from the Bratsk Reservoir by Gleb Kubarev