Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom

The trefoil of the Bird's Eye View

Lev Gumilev

{47}

1. Tribes of the Great Steppe from Eighth to Tenth Centuries (176 KB)

4. The Dark Century (861-960)

End of a Century

The history of Middle Asia is clear and understandable only up to 861. [+1] Then, as a result of a fierce war, all the states and powers of East Asia were obliged to restrict themselves to their own territories. The Tibetans returned to their plateau; the Chinese retreated behind their Wall, the Uighurs established themselves firmly in the oases of the Western Territory, [+2] the Khitan [+3] ensured their independence by an eight tribe union in Western Manchuria and the remnants of the Turkut settled in the Mountain Altai. The Great Steppe became deserted and for half a century was the theatre of war between Uighurs and Yenisei Kirghiz who had not managed to establish themselves there. Or rather, they evidently did not particularly seek this. Used to a settled life in the bountiful Minusinsk basin, the Kirghiz saw the Mongol steppes simply as a place for military feats the aim of which was the spoils of war. When the desert lay between the Kirghiz troops and the Uighur camps, the Uighur women and children hid in the fortresses inherited from the Chinese military settlers, the war became profitless to the Kirghiz and gradually died down, although it did not officially cease.

The Uighurs quickly accustomed themselves to their new homeland, where they mingled with the local population of the rich oases of Turf an, Karashar and Kucha and transmitted their famous name to their descendants. From the end of the ninth century it was the settled inhabitants of the Tianshan foothills, essentially a new people, consisting of merchants, craftsmen and cultivators, who {48} came to be called Uighurs; this people in no way recalls the warlike nomads whose name it had acquired and bore. The new state was officially recognised by China in 874, [+4] despite the defeat inflicted by the Tangut on the Uighurs.

Tianshan Uighuria stretched southwards to Lobnor, westwards to the Manas and the Kucha oasis. [+5]

Uighur legal documents published by S.E. Maslov show that leasing, credit, the slave trade and debt slavery, taxes and dues, usury and interest, formal deals and witnessed signatures existed in tenth- to thirteenth-century Turfan. [+6] Uighur literature of this period is rich only in translations. The Uighurs translated from Syriac, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan, but left almost nothing themselves. Evidently there was such great intermingling that a hybrid culture was formed in Turf an. The historical tradition of ancient Uighuria was broken.

The political history of the Uighurs at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century is obscure and unknown. There is vague mention that the Uighurs took the towns of Aksu and Barskhan from the Karluk; in the latter the ruler was a Karluk, but the inhabitants sided with the Dokuz-Oguz, [+7] i.e. the Uighurs. But soon the Kirghiz took Aksu, as a continuation of the war with the Uighurs, one must suppose, and Uighur aggression to the west ceased.

Probably there was also an attempt to expand eastwards, since Ganzhou again belonged to the Uighurs in 924.

Briefly, the Uighurs inherited the Chinese possessions of the Western Territory and converted the forepost of Chinese penetration to the west into a bulwark of Middle Asia both against the Muslim and against the Chinese, both of whom grew steadily weaker.

The defeat of the Tibetan army in 861 was the last triumph of the Tang Empire. [+8] From that time it decayed more or less rapidly, but steadily. The Tabghach, the warlike frontier landholders who set their own protege on the throne in 618, fused with the mass of the {49} people over three hundred years, but the traditional Chinese never sympathised with the Tang dynasty despite its advances to all classes of the population. Ethnic psychology alone played no small part in that. Since the fall of the Tang dynasty has been analysed economically, socially and politically more than once and in detail, [+9] we shall dwell only on the ethnopsychological factor which has been noted only by one author, N.I. Konrad, who called this phenomenon "the Chinese Renaissance" or "humanism". [+10]

Let us remember that the Tang emperors, seeking to create a general Asiatic Empire, readily supported religions coming from the west: Buddhism, Christianity and sometimes even Manichaeism. In the imperial theatre at the Court Indian and Sogdian dancers, performing half-naked, achieved success; to the true Chinese this seemed monstrously unseemly. One might think, what importance could this have for officials who had a Confucian education if, in its leisure time, the court diverted itself with exotic ideas and aesthetics; but let us only recall our eighteenth-century Old Believers and their attitude to decolletage. At different periods people feel and behave differently, and imperial caprice shocked even loyal officials, pushing them towards acts of opposition. Let us take just one case as an example: [+11] in 819 a bone supposed to be from the Buddha's finger was brought from India to Chang'an, the luxurious capital of China. The Emperor himself took part in a solemn ceremony to meet the relic and then the Confucian philosopher Han Yu submitted a note in which he wrote: "He, the Buddha, is dead, you know, and long ago. This is only a rotten bone. How can it be in the palace? How can the Son of Heaven worship dust?" The philosopher fell into disgrace, but he wrote knowing what was in store. The impulse of ethnic self-definition, a sort of medieval chauvinism was stronger than good sense and the desire for a career.

It was not philosophy and ballet, but military reform which {50} impressed wider sections of the population Turkish clothing and weapons were introduced into the army and, consequently, the soldier's training was changed, i.e. his whole everyday style of life was violated and reorganised. This was useful and even essential for war and politics, but for the Chinese people, from the simple peasant to the grandee official, it was foreign and offensive. Everything "barbarian" was so odious for the ultra-patriots that even Taoism and eclectic Confucianism, which showed patience with and interest in the world surrounding China, were also unacceptable to them. For example, the founder of "Chinese humanism" Han Yu writes "What are we to do? I answer: If we do not hinder the teachings of Lao Zi and the Buddha, our teaching will not spread. If we do not put an end to the teachings of Lao Zi and the Buddha, we will achieve nothing. If we turn their monks into lay persons, if we burn their books, if we convert their temples and shrines into dwellings, if we explain the Way of the ancient kings and thus take the people with us, if we care about lonely widows and widowers, about orphans, about the incurably sick and cripples, this will be close to what is needed " [+12]

In his treatise Han Yu bitterly complains that he is "only a professor" [+13]and has no access to power. Yet he is not quite right He succeeded in teaching a whole generation of officials who, after his death, applied his principles in practice. [+14] The results were not long delayed.

As soon as the imperial government welcomed this tendency, it found itself to be in a vice so terrible that it could not escape. Warlike generals were replaced by eunuch officials, they concentrated in their hands the whole administrative power in the capital, as well as enormous wealth. In the provinces military governors achieved the right to transmit their office to their heirs and this made them independent of the central authority. Officials received their posts after taking the examinations, but it was impossible to sit for them without bribery or influential support. Parties struggling with one another were formed, while taxes were exacted from the peasants as payment for all these illegal activities. Everyone became dissatisfied and blood flowed.

In 859-60 in Zhejiang province the peasants, tormented by {51} demands and punishments, rose in a revolt in which up to 30,000 took part It was only put down thanks to the fact that Uighurs and Tibetans, seeking refuge in China from their steppe enemies, were mobilised into the government forces In 868 soldiers in Guizhou rose in revolt and were joined by many peasants, the insurgents seized part of the province of Anhui. The government called out the forces of the Shato and Togon tribes and were again victorious In 874 a new rising overwhelmed the whole of China Its leader, Huang Chao, came from the family of a salt-trader who was too poor to enable his son to take the examinations for office. The details of this rising relate entirely to the history of China, but it is important for our subject that in 881 Huang Chao took Chang'an and proclaimed himself Emperor. With the title he accepted a heavy inheritance - the deep moral decay of the officials, the limitations of the poor peasantry, the treachery of the military commanders In 882 one of his associates, Zhu Wan, betrayed the cause of the rising and accepted from the hands of the Tang emperor the rank of jiedushi, military governor. This gave the government forces a breathing space during which a turning point occurred, the nomads entered the war.

The Shato Turks, the last descendants of the Hun, lived for a long time in Dzungaria, participating in the Tibetan-Uighur wars until, because of differences with the Tibetans, they entered the possessions of the Middle Empire. From 878 they settled in Ordos. Not understanding too much about the deep causes for the Tang Empire's degeneration, they recalled that this dynasty for three centuries, despite the will of its officials, had been well-disposed to the steppe peoples and saw them as people, not as wild animals. [+15] Therefore, at a critical moment, without thinking, they came to its aid. The Tangut, with whom we shall deal below, did the same.

Li Keyong, the young leader of the Shato, [+16] proved to be a talented general In the spring of 883 his troops, supported by the Tangut, defeated the rebels at the river Wei, drove them from the capital and pursued them, cutting down the fugitives Seventeen thousand Shato were enough to break the main forces of Huang Chao In 884 he committed suicide, his force was dispersed and became partisan detachments which resisted the government forces {52} till 901. But the strength and attraction of the Tang dynasty was not restored. As soon as the eunuch officials attempted to renew the old system two military governors carried out a coup d'etat. In 907 the last Tang monarch, the minor, Ai-di, was overthrown, the eunuchs killed and the double traitor Zhu Wen seized power, declaring himself emperor of a new dynasty, the Late Liang. A new period in China's history started from this point; this bears the title of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.

New Rhythms

In describing the period which started in 907, the historian Andre Cordier writes: "it has to be acknowledged that this period in the history of China is of only middling interest. These leaders who thirsted for the imperial title, having no right to it other than the seizure of their neighbours" lands, moved merely by pride, advantage and military prowess without a common idea, coarse, uneducated, superstitious people, fearing nothing other than witchcraft and sorcery, they recall the barons of our feudalism, real predators tracking down their prey to throw themselves on it at the opportune moment, robbing town and country for the booty they accumulated in their castles. Not a single social idea, nor a single moral one, nothing noble, only brute force was the means and plunder and murder the aim of their actions. If they refrained from brutality, it was not from true religious feelings, but from terror of the supernatural forces they did not understand, but whose influence they greatly feared". [+17]

In this description something has been caught faithfully, but the author also failed to note something, looking at events too closely to catch the general pattern. It is scarcely helpful to observe the starry firmament in a microscope. Therefore, we shall deliberately omit a whole series of details which hide the perspective and concentrate attention on the intertwining threads of historical fortunes which condemned China to an unheard of humiliation and the Great Steppe to neglect and conversion into desert, while new states, menacing but ephemeral, arose on both its eastern and western borders; for it was this distribution of forces that was characteristic of the "dark" period of Asia's history.

{53} From the 890s regions of the Yangzi basin began to fall away from the central government, and when the dynasty changed the whole of southern China refused obedience to the new authority. Nine sovereign states were formed in the south, since the rulers of nine regions took the title of wang (king) and di (emperor). On the other hand, in the north the new emperor impressed many influential people. Treacherous and dissolute, deprived both of high intellect and of administrative talent, cowardly on the field of battle, he completely suited his associates, they did not differ from him at all and hoped that, with such a ruler, they too might give rein to their foul instincts. Therefore, no one stood up for the Tang dynasty apart from the Shato whose leader, the "one-eyed dragon" Li Keyong, declared war on the usurper.

Li Keyong relied on the help of the Khitan leader, Ye-lu Ambagan (Ye-lu A-bao-ji), with whom he had concluded an alliance in 905, but he betrayed him and proposed an alliance to Zhu Wen which the emperor proudly refused, deciding that he would suppress the rebellion even without the help of a savage. He then moved two huge armies against the small Ordos, these were scattered by Li Keyong. The Shato went onto the offensive and, despite the death of their leader in 908, were again victorious Li Congke, the son of the "one-eyed dragon" and who was of no less prowess than his father, finished the war successfully by 923 and restored the Tang empire Since he himself took the throne the dynasty is known as the Later Tang. [+18]

Again we see that it was not only the military leaders" ambition and greed that was the cause of war and the rum of China. No, the struggle between the Chinese nationalists who had supported the Liang dynasty and the nomads who had been Sinicized, though not completely so, who went into battle for the idea of the Tang dynasty continued. The line of this struggle passes like a red thread through the whole history of China in the period of the Five Dynasties.

Only by this can one explain the bitterness shown during the war, and even during its last days. One of the Liang commanders, wounded and taken prisoner, rejected the offer by his victor of mercy and high office if he sided with the Later Tang He preferred execution. [+19] One can hardly explain such conduct as egoism Evidently the Chinese had something to fight against, but Cordier is {54} right on another point: there also has to be something to fight for, and this was what was missing. At that time "the soldiers, as if out of mischief, killed one commander and put forward another". [+20] The positive programme of the Chinese chauvinists was the Utopia of the disciples of the "humanist" Han Yu, but although the Shato had no treatises in literary form they had the nomad traditions inherited even from the Hun. Apart from that, not yet having lost their links with the steppe, they attracted the Tatab, Khitan, Tatar and Togon to their banner. [+21] All these tribes had, in their time, been offended by the Chinese. They took no prisoners and themselves did not surrender. That was why they won.

Even the Khitan diversion undertaken by Ye-lu Ambagan in 921 could not change the situation at the front. Ambagan was routed and scarcely retained his own possessions, particularly since far from all his fellow tribesmen agreed with him. Of course, here too we see lust for power and greed, stubbornness and vanity, but these emotions noted by Cordier found their expression somewhat differently in China, Manchuria, Ordos and Tibet. People are not pawns on a chess board; they struggle better or worse according to certain nuances they do not themselves perceive, but the historian has no right not to perceive them. Indomitability became the banner of the age, and so the war continued.

A Third Force

The Khitan were a warlike, though not numerous, people. They belonged to the south-east branch of the Mongol-speaking tribes -the descendants of the Xian-bi - and occupied the steppe part of western Manchuria from the river Nonni in the north to the Liao He in the south. At first they were hunters and fishers, but in the seventh to ninth centuries they acquired the skills of cattle-herding from the Turks and borrowed those of agriculture from the Chinese. Without the resources for an independent policy, they were sometimes subject to the Turks and Uighurs, sometimes passed under the authority of the Tang empire only, a few years later, to secede again. However, in the second half of the ninth century, when steppe Uighuria fell and then the rising of Huang Chao bled the {55} Tang power white, the Khitan turned out to be the strongest and most united people of East Asia. The Khitan power was a union of eight tribes ruled by a common leader chosen for three years. History shows that, in fact, this term was not observed. Energetic leaders either perished sooner than it, or continued to make war after it. Nevertheless, such a law existed in principle.

The numerous hunting tribes of the Shivei, ancestors of the Tatars, bordered the Khitan on the north. The Tatab, whom the Chinese called Kumokhi or Xi (Chinese Si), lived in the west, bordering the steppes of present day Mongolia up to lake Dalai-Nur. The Shivei and Tatab were Mongol-speaking people and formed a single ethnic mass with the Khitan. The hunting tribes of the Jurchen (Manchur) dwelt to the east of the Khitan. Here, too, was the Bokhai kingdom which included a mixture of various Korean and Manchurian tribes amalgamated by a civilisation of Korean type. [+22] In the south the Khitan bordered China and, with varying success, continually carried on a small but bloody war with the Chinese on the frontier.

At the start of the tenth century, one of the eight leaders, Yelu Ambagan, was particularly active. After becoming chief leader in his turn, in 903 he made successful raids on the Jurchen and China's north-east frontier, strengthening his forces with Tatab who had joined him. In 904 he repeated his incursion into China, attacking the You region of Hebei and the Amur Shivei. From 905 Ye-lu Ambagan, bought by Zhu Wen, involved himself in the Chinese civil war, at first on the side of the Turkic Shato, then, in 907, on the side of the Liang dynasty.

After accepting luxurious gifts, however, Ambagan did not hasten to the aid of his ally. He preferred the easier war with his Manchurian neighbours, the Tatab and Jurchen. In 906 he struck them a powerful blow, at the same time plundering the Chinese You region. Thanks to this he achieved popularity with the troops and was enable to carry out a coup d'etat in 907 which Machiavelli himself would have approved for its method. The point was that, according to custom. Ye-lu Ambagan had served as leader for three years and should be replaced.

He then gathered the other leaders in a council and cut off their heads which were then set on the frontier. He declared himself {56} "Heavenly Emperor", his wife "Heavenly Empress" [+23] and continued his conquests, subduing the Shivei and Wuwan tribes in Northern Manchuria and the Jurchen in the Maritime region.

Ambagan's further activities amounted to subordinating neighbouring tribes. The Tatab submitted in 911, the Amur Ugi in 915, but final victory over the forest people was only achieved at the end of 919. In 912 Ambagan attempted to take Hebei where the military commander Liu Shou-kuang took it into his head to declare himself emperor. This attempt failed only because his own brothers rose against Ambagan. A year later they were seized, but the campaign did not succeed and meanwhile the Shato claimant, Li Congke, conquered Hebei and captured the usurper Liu Shou-kuang.

Gathering his forces, Ye-lu Ambagan undertook in 916 an attempt to pacify the west - the Turks (Shato), Duhun` (evidently the Uighur Hun tribe who had settled in Chinese possessions after the defeat of Uighuria) and the Dansyan (of whom we shall have much to say later). According to a Khitan court history, the Liao-shi, he succeeded, but in fact he suffered defeat by the Shato and took himself off to Manchuria. [+24] Afterwards the Khitan actively waged war against the Shato, but in a somewhat strange fashion: they plundered and drove into slavery the population of Hebei which consisted not of Shato, but of Chinese. The Shato, standing out against the Khitan, stood as defenders of the Chinese peasants against fierce barbarians. Thus, Ambagan, without wishing it, helped the triumph of the Shato forces and the restoration of the Tang Empire in the form of the Later Tang which took place in 923.

Unsuccessful in the south, Ambagan decided to compensate himself in the steppe. In 924 with a strong force he marched west against the Togon, Dansyan and Zubu. [+25] We may suppose that he sought to seize the possessions of his antagonist - the Later Tang Empire - {57} from the north and press the Shato to strictly Chinese territory. The description of the campaign in the Liao dynasty history is scarcely intelligible. We are told there was a battle by Sukum mountain, but it is unclear where this mountain was and with whom the battle was; a separate detachment was sent against the Zubu commanded by a prince of the blood. The prince and his troop plundered the whole region occupied by the Zubu and conquered the tribes on the Khomushe (the Humusi) (?!) and Feotutshan peaks. [+26]

If we hypothetically suppose that Khomushe is Qamar-daban, it turns out that the Khitan forces devastated the whole of Eastern Mongolia before they reached the ruins of the Uighur capital, Karabalgasun. Ye-lu Ambagan ordered an inscription to be carved in stone there commemorating his feat and returned without even leaving a garrison in the devastated steppe. There was no one to guard it against and no reason to do so. No one wanted it. So Ambagan's forces penetrated to the south of the steppe to Cuanzhou where they captured the tutuk (official) of the town, the Uighur Bilge. The prisoner was released to the Uighur idykut (title of a ruler) with a letter in which Ambagan proposed that the Uighurs should return to their homeland, i.e. the Orkhon valley, since he did not mind whether these lands belonged to the Khitan or the Uighurs. The ruler of Uighuria refused, referring to the fact that his people were accustomed to the new homeland and satisfied with what they had. [+27] The Kirghiz likewise had no claim on the steppe. They had long ago left it and departed to the bountiful Minusinsk basin where they were able to lead a settled life, engage in agriculture and livestock farming, but were not nomadic.

Is it not strange that the steppe, an apple of discord between powerful peoples until the ninth century, suddenly ceased to interest neighbouring powers in the tenth? This question is so important that we shall pay particular attention to it. [+28]

The conquest of the Bokhai kingdom was Ye-lu Ambagan's last {58} success. [+29] Early in 926 the government put itself at the mercy of the conqueror, and in the autumn a rising by the population was put down. The Khitan exterminated the royal house, took the aristocracy to their capital and sent the ordinary people in masses to the uninhabited regions, uprooting them from their homes. Ye-lu Ambagan died at the beginning of 927 leaving his heir, Deguang, not the illusory authority of a leader over a tribal union, but the throne of a large kingdom which had called itself an empire from 916. This newborn empire had much strength and not a few enemies.

The Shato were still the most dangerous opponents of the Khitan. After the defeat of the Liang dynasty, all the south China rulers of regions transferred their allegiance to the renewed Tang dynasty, with the exception of the Shu kingdom (in Sichuan). There were 30,000 troops in Shu, but when the Tang forces arrived in 925 they gave in without fighting. The southern Chinese had forgotten how to fight. But they had not forgotten how to slander and the Tang emperor Li Congke, on the basis of the slanders of those around him, executed his most faithful companions. Only the military leader Li Siyuan escaped. He raised a rebellion against the court eunuchs and favourites. In 926 the troops went over to his side and his own favourites killed the emperor; on entering the capital, Li Siyuan transferred them elsewhere, thus establishing order. Ambagan wanted to make use of his neighbour's troubles and retained the Shato emissary, demanding the concession of Hebei from the Later Tang Empire, but he was refused. [+30] It became clear from this time that a clash between the two Sinicized barbarian empires was inevitable, but Ambagan's death delayed the conflict.

Now, after looking around, we have the right to pose an important question: how are we to regard the Khitan state (in the full sense of this word) - as the heir of the nomad powers of Central Asia, or as a peripheral variant of the Chinese empire? The Chinese themselves considered the Khitan barbarians. Wittfogel, in the work already cited, considers them so Sinicized that he combined them in a single cultural circle with China as a provincial empire of which there were then ten. The only distinguishing feature of the Khitan empire, which received the Chinese name of Liao, was that it {59} remained an independent state to the end, while all the others were swallowed up by the national Chinese Song empire in the second half of the tenth century. Was this so?

First of all, we must reject the idea that the Khitan kingdom continued, or tried to continue, the traditions of the kaganates. From a primitive tribal union Khitan became, not a military democratic elem, [+31] but a feudal empire. Not cattle raising, but agriculture became the basic occupation of the population. Writing was borrowed from China, i.e. hieroglyphs were adapted to the agglutinative Mongol language. [+32] To the traditional rejection of Chinese ideology and system of education, a feature of all the steppe dwellers, the Khitan counterposed the acquisition of Chinese culture, winning the services of learned Chinese, and they reinforced this process by the accretion of Bokhai and part of Northern China (Youzhou, now Beijing). It seems that K. Wittfogel is right. But this is not yet all.

The Khitan government carried out a policy of enforced Siniciz-ation and strove to eliminate the remnants of the clan and tribal system and break the power of the tribal aristocracy. Wide sections of Khitan society opposed this policy - aristocrats, people and the tribes included in the state. They either rose with weapons in hand, or simply refused to wear Chinese style dress and learn Chinese characters. It reached the point where, alongside the Emperor's Chinese palace, there was the empress's court at which Khitan custom was observed. [+33] A gulf appeared between the authorities and the people in Khitan. The authorities held the initiative in policy, but the people managed to remain themselves. Both Chinese and steppe Turks were equally foreign to the Khitan people.

The moist but cold climate of Manchuria and the Maritime region determined a particular landscape in these lands, known to the Russian reader from V. K. Arsenev's splendid descriptions. The Mongol, Manchurian and Korean tribes adapted themselves wonderfully to their moist forests and full rivers, as well as to the valleys between the mountains and volcanoes which afforded people a livelihood. In the tenth century the economy of the Far {60} East peoples as we shall call them, as distinct from Chinese and steppe dwellers, was on the rise. Then the possibility of conquest arose, for those remaining at home could easily feed those in the forces.

There were those to be fought, and for some reason! The Tang Middle Empire had seized Liaodong and Korea and envisaged further schemes, for Central Manchuria. All the tribes from the Sungari to the Amur were threatened with enslavement that could only be avoided by combining. Ye-lu Ambagan simply guessed, or, perhaps, understood, where events were leading and seized the initiative.

So, in our opinion, the Khitan state was the van of a particular Far East ethno-cultural complex. It was a fantastic interweaving of the traditions of various tribes and peoples: agricultural (Bokhai), hunting (Jurchen and Shivei), cattle raising (Tatab), and fishing (Ugi), more or less influenced by the Chinese and the nomad Turks. But we should regard this complex not as a periphery of China or the Great Steppe, but as a "third force" for the first time appearing on the stage of world history in the tenth century. China resisted the Khitan as far as it was able, but the Great Steppe was silent. Why?

The Rains Intervene in History

Anticipating the investigation, we have given a brief geographical description of the territory lying between the Great Wall and the huge green barrier of the Siberian taiga which borders the steppes on the north. In the "dark" period with which we are concerned both these barriers were broken. On the one hand, the Central Asian nomads, the Khitan, penetrated into China and settled there, leaving their native steppes; and on the other, the ancestors of the Yakuts, the Kurykan, moved into Siberia.

While the migration of the Khitan fails to evoke the immediate question: why? (after all, the majority of historians do not know the delight of the steppes), the transfer to Siberia demanded an explanation. At first glance it seems that here is a violation of the principle in accordance with which a people seeks to settle in a landscape similar to that in which it was formed. But no, the Kurykan migration took place along the great river Lena on rafts borne by the current and the Kurykan settled on the bordering meadows and in the valleys fringing the clear lakes. However, all the beauties of {61} northern nature failed to make good the loss of the fragrant steppes of the Baikal region conceded by the Kurykan to the Buryats who, in their turn, had left the even drier Trans-Baikal area. [+34]

Let us recall that it was then, too, that the Pechenegs left the Aral