In the S. Caucasus, Huns appeared as companions of Masguts, about 2nd c. AD, undoubtedly passing by the Aral Basin, where they joined Masguts (Massagets). In the merry-go-around of the nomadic coalitions, the Kayi Huns supplanted Massagets (Masguts, Alans), or Massagets (Masguts, Alans) supplanted Kayi Huns at the head of the Northeast Caucasian Türkic tribes. Then Savirs supplanted  Kayi or Masguts, and became an umbrella term in the Byzantine-Persian confrontation, then Huns supplanted Savirs and became a dominating force in the Caucasus till in the 8th c. the Arabs decimated them, forcing them to ally with Khazars. From then on, the North Caucasian Türkic tribes appear under the umbrella term of Khazars, with Bulgar and Suvar magnates continuing running the Khazar Empire. Ca. 1030 the NE Caucasus principalities discovered that they are on their own, and established a Kumyk Shauhalate that survived till 1867. From then on, under a gentle touch of the Russian domination, Kumyk fate tapered down into utter insignificance, with aspirations raised and quashed. On today's scale, demographic numbers are minor, and they were minor throughout the history, making the sizes, small and large, true only in relation to each other. Tracing back the present Kumyk population of 500,000 to its origin in the 2nd c. AD would bring it down to about 30,000 people (about 15-fold increase); breaking that into 3 components eyeballs each component at 5,000-strong of both sexes, makes the male portion about 2,500, and makes the combined military strength of about 6,000 cavalry. Still, the number of 3,000 cavalry far exceeds the cavalries of the great powers of the time, the Roman and Byzantine empires. On the background of the relatively prominent numbers of the Caucasus Huns, the statement of the Khazar Kagan that Khazar tribe was small is telling, the initial Khazar tribe of the 7th c. might have numbered not more than a couple thousands, constituting some 1-2% of the population of the Khazar Kaganate.

Ethnically, there was nothing linear in the E. Caucasus. The three-dimensional turbulence mixed distinct elements, amalgamating and stratifying distinct nuclei. Inevitably, initially different Türkic languages had to level out into numerous Sprachbunds, and areal Sprachbunds had to melt down into an alloyed Sprachbund. By the time the Arab conquests waned, with the leading Türkic tribes reduced and dispersed, it becomes viable that theretofore insignificant North Caucasus tribe Kom or Kamak came out ahead as a leading tribe of the reformulated Hunnic principality. Like the politonym Huns that covered diverse Türkic tribes, the de facto umbrella term Kumyk is likely also a politonym, applied to the area and population of the newly formed alliance of the Türkic tribes. The alliance survived for over a millennium, largely due to its democratic nature, succumbing only to the merciless hands of the Stalinist regime. The autonomous nature of its constituents helped to preserve individuality of each tribe till the Stalinist time, with a fairly common Sprachbund encompassing distinct Buinak, Khasavryut, Targu, and Piedmount dialects, and a distinct vernacular of the Kayi Huns (Kaitags). Much less individuality had survived the winds of time the genetic distinction: centuries of admixtures and amalgamations wreck havoc with the statistics of the population genetics

The brief but spectacular work of Kemal Aliyev fills the gap left over by Kumyk neighbors and masters, each one creating their own version of history addressing Kumyks “from outside”, and rather from the side that has a vested interest in distorted information about Kumyk history. It appears that the paper was started during the Stalinist time, when the social organization of the economic life, like the accent on the “feudal nation”, was deemed to be the fundamental, and the use of categorical labeling, however unjustified, was a prime display of deep penetration into the thicket of the life past. Many pages in the history of the Caucasus peoples are jammed and smeared. Wild guesses of alien scientists are taken seriously, instead of studying aboriginal folklore and genealogies. Whatever its shortcomings or staple lingo, the factual part undoubtedly deserves high accolades.

. The posted dateline is illustrative of the reigning confusion, same events are repeated with different dates, dating not only varies between sources, but at times also gets inverted, with effects preceding causes. Historical synopses on the background of specific events are notable for their omnivorousness, with the Khazars, Bulgars, Huns, Savirs, Masguts, Kayi, Kök Türks and Western Türks indiscriminately thrown in, all in in a single pile, and further tainted with notoriously inaccurate dates that roam wildly and often conflict with individual histories of neighboring states and nations. Errors in esteemed but inaccurate sources get rebroadcasted and recited. Usual for the timelines, it is almost all about political events, leaving out the subjects of people, demography, ethnology, and culture. In spite of being mostly political, the timeline prudently skips some major modern political events directly connected with the Kumyk history, like the abolition of the senatorial Council of Nationalities in the Russian parliament, or the stellar progress on the ethnic dilution within the Kumyk area.

Three points from the Kumyk history, related to Kazan and Shauhal, attract attention. First, according to the Kumyk folklore, Kazan was a Hunnic tribe. In the N. Caucasus the name Kazan is ubiquitous, connected with the toponym Endirey. The other term Kazan is in the Itil-Kama basin. The presence of the name Kazan in two localities separated by great distance corroborates the thesis established archeologically, that the Eastern Huns at some point split into two prongs, one in the Itil-Kama basin, and the other in the Aral basin. It also makes the etymology of Kazan “cauldron” a figment of folk etymology. The second point is the etymology of the term Shauhal. Shauhal is a local distortion of the term Sulifa recorded in the Chinese chronicles with the same semantics of “viceroy”. The variety of phonetical forms for the term Shauhal confirms that, it illustrates a chain of further distortions, like the form Shamkhal(ate). The third point is, the presence of the term Sulifa among the Caucasus Bulgars and Bu-ku (Bul-gu) tribe of the Chinese chronicles allows to corroborate the thesis that Bulgars and Bu-ku are one and the same tribe. The nearly simultaneous dates of the first references to the Bulgar Sulifa and the Bu-ku Sulifa lets credence to the thesis that Bulgars were extracts from the Balkh valley who were forced to migrate, and fled both east and west.

Posting notes and explanations, added to the text of the author, are shown in (blue italics) in parentheses and in blue boxes, or highlighted by blue headers. The unusual spelling forms are translated to pronounceable English and shown in parentheses in (blue italics): Khwarazm (Horezm) etc.

The problem of the Kumyks' ethnogenesis and ethnic history has largely been examined. The author examined in detail the problem of their origin and related theory and hypothesis, in his article “Origin of Kumyks in Soviet ideology and historiography” (Kumyk Scientific and Cultural Society, KSCS: Proceedings, No 5, 2001, pp. 4-19, Makhachkala).

Obviously, it must be addressed considering all tribes and ethnic groups that could participate in the formation of the Kumyk nation, and with a comprehensive study of issues related to the ethnogenetic processes in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe for more than three thousand years.

Combination of available ethnographic materials with anthropologic, linguistic, and historical materials allows to conceptually formulate our the following provisions about direction and nature of the ethnic processes that influenced formation of the early feudal Kumyk nation.

First. The origin and development of the Old Kumyk ethnos rightfully lie in the vast region of the north-western Caspian steppes from the Lower Itil in the north to the Alan gate (Darial) in the south-west and the Hunnic (Caspian) gates (Targu, Derbent) in the south-east, that from the ancient times was a special historic and ethnographic region comprising a settled agricultural and a nomadic zone. The region was characterized by a specific economic-cultural type - settled irrigated agricultural economy, especially in the interfluvials of the Terek and Sulak, Sulak and Ulluchai.

The reassertion is based on the Turko-Mongolian hypothesis of the Hungarian Turkologist J. Nemeth. He advanced this hypothesis in 1912-1914 after a detailed study of languages and history since ancient times of the Hungarians, Balkars, Karachais, Kumyks, Bashkirs, Tatars and other peoples of the Eastern Europe. To substantiate his hypothesis, the scientist pointed out that “according to linguistic traces, the earliest putative Türkic territory lays in the western Asia. The Türkic tribes apparently should not be separated from the Uralic tribes, and there are no reasons to attribute the original territory of the Uralic tribes to the Central Asia or the East Asia.

Subsequently, the concept was supported by other respected scientists (Turkologist A. Zaionchkovskii, historian and linguist 3. M. Yampolsky, anthropologist V.P. Alekseev, linguists Sh. Shiraliyev, M. Zakiev, scholar and writer O. Suleimenov, Karachai-Balkarian historians K . Laipanov, I. Miziev and others).

K. Menges, examining separately the Altai and the Indo-European groups - on the one hand, and the Indo-European-Altaic - on the other hand, also comes to a conclusion that these linguistic groups come from the same origin, and are extracts from the Caspian and Pontic steppes (from the southern Russia) before the second half of the fourth millennium BC.

Thus, it can be asserted that the formation of tribes of the Kumyk feudal nation mainly occurred in the North-East and Central Caucasus, and in the north-west of the Caspian littoral, known in the Armenian and Syrian sources from the 4th c. as a Caucasian Hunniya (“the kingdom of the Huns,” “Hunnug-Undria”, “Honistan”). Accordingly, from that time (5th c.) a large area of the northern-western Caspian steppes from the Lower Itril (Volga) in the north to the Alanian gate (Darial) in the south-west, and the Hunnic gate (Targu) in the south-east became known as a “country of Huns” (“Hunnug-Undria”) - the Caucasus Hunniya.

Second. . The base of the early feudal Kumyk nation forming during 2nd-9th centuries, forged:

A - the local, old population (from the 3rd century BC) that lived in that etnic-areal zone called “Caspian-Scythian-Kumyk tribes”, and first of all mentioned in 79 AD by Plinius (Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus, (23 AD –  79 AD)) the North Caucasus tribes Kom or Kamak and Oran, connected with the Türkic-speaking groups of the Cimmerian-Scythian-Sarmatian world and identified by scientists with the Kumyks (S. Bronevsky, A. Bakikhanov, Z.V. Togan, F. Kyrzyoglu, S . Tokarev, L. Lavrov, G. Geibullaev, P.M. Magomedov, S. Sh. Gadjiyev, S.M. Aliyev, A. Kandaurov, and others).

In that connection is important to note that the Chinese sources in the 3rd-4th centuries mentioned among the Hunnic tribes of the west wing the ancient Kumyks under their own ethnonym.

B - Hunnug-Undurs, who formed the core of the Bulgars, and the groups close to them (Savirs, Barsils, etc.) in the 4th-5th cc. tribal alliance of the “Hunnic circle” (13 Türkic tribes), listed beyond “The Caspian Gates” in the 6th c. by Zacharias Rhetor, i.e. in the Caucasian Hunnia.

This layer, along with the first, is the main binding element in their complex ethnogenesis. That was reflected not only in ethnonymy, but in the endonym of the Kumyk nationality - K'umuk.

According to K. Kadyradjieva's opinion, Genetically, the name ascends to the endonym of the Huns. For the first time the ethnonym Kumyk appeared in the Caucasus in a distorted transcription by the 5th c. Armenian historian Yegishe (Yeghishe Vardapet) in the form “Hunnug-Undur” (M.I. Artamonov) meaning “Hunnug tribe”.

Formation of the Hunnic (Hunnug-undur) tribal alliance, its separation from the nomadic belt of the North-Western Caspian littoral stiffened the division of the European Huns (“Huns of Attila”) into two branches: sedentary Caucasian-Pontic (ancestors of Kumyks, Balkars, Karachais, Karaites, Crimean and some of the Itil Tatars) and the nomadic Caspian from which subsequently crystallized the Kipchak tribes (Nogais, Kazakhs, Kirgizes).

C - the Iranian-Türkic-speaking ethnic groups ascending to the Scythian-Sarmatian world of the Eurasian steppes, who played an important role in the history of the peoples of Eurasia, the Caucasus. These, apparently, are Gels, Uties, Aorses.

D - Caucasian-speaking ethnic groups (their early medieval ethnonyms are not known to science), whose history is rooted in hoary antiquity of the Caucasus.

From the foregoing follows our main conclusion: Kumyks are a poly-substrate Türkic people, formed by amalgamation of several ethnic components with the leading binding role of the ancient Türkic component. Notably, our scientists solidly refuted a hypothesis circulating among Dagestanists on the “Ibero-Caucasian substrate” of the Kumyk language (see N.Kh. Olmesov Question of “Ibero-Caucasian substrate” in the Kumyk language//KNKO: Proceedings, 2001, No 1 (5), pp. 21-26).

Third. It is known that formation of any ethnic entity require a presence of an aggregate of ethno-forming ethno-constituting factors (conditions for the emergence, existence, and development). Let us dwell on their concrete historical significance in relation to the ethnogenesis of the Kumyks.

Relatively stable ethnic territory. The tribes that formed the Kumyk nation in the early Middle Ages (4th-9th centuries) already had a common area - different sources called it the “kingdom of the Huns” (“Hunistan”), or “Hunnug-Undria”.

Within the Caucasian Hunnia in the first half of the first millennium AD had started the processes of ethnic condensing and a consolidation of the Kumyk ancestors toward formation of an early feudal nation. This process continued within the framework of the Khazar Kaganate (558-1064), and the kingdom of Semender (9th-11th cc.) that formed in the period of weakening and disintegration of the Kaganate. The ethnic names of the ancient Kumyks surface with the emergence of these states, usually in two meanings:

a) a specific ethnonym, ascending to the endonym of the leading tribe (i.e. “Hunnug-Undur” (Kumuks);
b) a collective appellation, used for the same leading tribe and for the other tribes of that state (Caucasian Hunniya) with their own endonyms (Zacharias Rhetor).

The Turkisms, preserved in “History of Agvans”, a written monument of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century, and those recorded in other S. Caucasian written sources of the 5th-11th centuries, allowed scientists to demonstrate that the languages ​​of the Savir-Khazar alliance in the north-eastern Caucasus and in the northern Azerbaijan, were of the Kipchak type.

It was found that the Huns – Kangars, Savirs, Khazars, Akatsir and Hunnug-Undur, i.e. the main ethnic members of the Caucasian Hunnia, were Kipchak-lingual (see.: V. Gukasyan, N.Z. Gadjiev, A.I. Aliyev, D. Sheikh -Ali, K. Kadyradjiev, M. Zakiev, T. Akhmedov, J. Nemeth, A. Zaionchkovsky, T. Kowalski, D. Hangishiev, N. Olmesov). The American Turkologist P. Golden, on the base of direct analysis of all available factual and theoretical material, in his two-volume work about Khazars (1980) also irrefutably proves the common Türkic language of the Khazars.

Thus, it may be deemed established that the dominant language for all tribes of the Kumyk ethnic base was an “Old Kumyk”, the “Hunnic” language (with tribal dialects) of a mixed Kipchak-Oguz type, which underlay creation and development of the runic writing (“Hunnic Türkic script”) and into which, as is known, still in the early 6th c. was translated the Christian Scripture.

Creation of an alphabet and script in the 6th century tells that still in that period existed a shared Common Türkic language.

In that language from tribal epics formed a common Turk heroic epos that came down to us in various versions (Adjiev A.M., Kumyk folklore in the context of ethnogenesis and Kumyk ontogenesis//KNKO: Proceedings, 2001. No 1 (5) p. 27-32;. Aliyev K.M., Great Prince Alp Ilitver. Epic biography of the ruler of the Caucasian Huns (Hunnug-Undur)//Newspaper “Yoldash/Times”, July 22, 2011).

The state-political factor

Obviously, various states existed in a space where were formed the ethnic components, the socio-cultural, and other traditions of the Kumyk people. For example, the Hun state, the Western Türkic Kaganate that emerged in the 6th c. and absorbed a part of the present Dagestan, evidenced by the sources and numerous archaeological finds. The Türkic Kaganate doubtlessly influenced formation of the Kumyk people. At the same time, to a degree she was an ancestral home of other Türkic peoples (Balkars, Karachaies, Crimean Tatars).

Individual components of the people formed in the Hun Empire (3rd c. BC - 98 BC), and in the 4th c. AD “the first known to us Türkic state of the Attila's Huns in the south of Russia”, and in the Türkic Kaganate (6th c.) that emerged after her collapse, and in the Great Bulgaria (7th c.), Khazar Kaganate (6th-11th cc.). These states contributed to the traditions, cultural and ethnic components of the Caucasian Hunnia.

A more careful analysis of the period up to the 4th c. would certaily detect the states that influenced formation of the Kumyk ancestors, but it seems the best to hold the Caucasian Hunnia as a first known Kumyk (Hunno-Bulgarian) state in their ethnic North-Eastern Caucasus territory. This state, known in different historical periods under different names - Hunnug-Undria, Honistan, Semender Kingdom - Jindan and Khazaria, played an important ethnos-forming role.

The period of its existence (over 500 years) was the most effective in terms of the Kumyk ethnogenesis. There, within the Caucasian Hunnia, befell ethnic concentration, stabilization and integration of the Kumyk ancestors.

There, “the Huns, a Türkic-speakers, as correctly observed A.V. Gadlo, were a catalyst of consolidation. They are a dominant group, albeit not uniform. Its formation, judging from the sources, took a long time and besides Türkic included also an Iranian ethnic component and, apparently, the local highland aristocracy”.

Essentially, the the ethnogenetic process there went by two paths:

1. Consolidation of the linguistically and culturally kindred Türkic (Hunno-Bulgar) tribes around the Hun (Kumyk) tribal community and formation of the Türkic nation with its own language.

2. The natural assimilation of the Iranian- and Caucasian-speaking tribes by the Türkic-speaking tribes due to a relatively long historical period of their dominant position, from the first centuries of our era to the 7th-9th cc.

After collapse of the Khazar Kaganate, in her territory formed three states: Crimean, Itil, and Caucasian Khazarias (Djindan).

Formation of Djindan (Semender Kingdom) as an independent Kumyk state, a heir to the “Hun Kingdom”, happened only after 940. The ethnic process there was especially intense and specific - it was a formative process of the early feudal Kumyk nation with its own common language, culture, and territory.

Particularly intense the ethnic integration of the Old Kumyk tribes into the early feudal nation was centered around the Türkic (Hunnic) towns (Varachan, Semender, Anji, Targu, Belenjer), where the old tribal differences lost their importance in new conditions. They become the bearers of the urban culture, urban civilization, characteristic of the Hunnic tribes.

Of particular note here is the role of the Djindan kings' capital Anji-Targu-Semender as a single administrative, commercial, and cultural center, which has become a civilizing focus of the Kumyk Muslim radiancy. There, the kings built the first Muslim mosques, as correctly noted Acad. W.W. Bartold.

In that period, the ethnopolitical self-identification of the Kumyks included such elements as belonging to the Muslim Ummah, allegiance to the ruler of their state - Selifans (Shauhal, Sulifa), knowledge of the origin of its people and language. Is no coincidence that with that period, 10th-11th cc., is related the emergence of the lasting Kumyk ethnonym in the form “Kumuk” (“Komuk”, “Gumik”), genetically related to the “Hun”/“Kun” (an allophone of English kin “kindred”) and “Hunnug”. Andto this period apparently belongs the birth of the sagas about Anji (“Anji-name”).

The backbone of the emerging Kumyk (“Djindan”) consciousness , apparently was a sense of common affiliation with a single centralized territorial-political body, the kingdom of theSemender kings - Selifans (Shauhals), and with the Khazar Empire, where Djindan was a confederate. It is also no coincidence that at the turn of the 9th and 10th cc. were formalized the ethnogenetic traditions (genealogies), ascending Kumyks to the biblical Kamar, Kamak, the son of Japheth.

The religious factor (Tengriizm, Christianity, Judaism, Islam).

All four religions impacted the ethnos-forming process in the Caucasus Hunnia, and shaped the Kumyk culture. The monotheistic Tengriizm that defined the face of the Eurasia for many centuries (i.e. millennia) until the Islamic “revolution” of the (Kipchak Khanate) Golden Horde Uzbek Khan, remained a halfway between reverence and a world religion, having failed to establish an independent sphere of influence during the Middle Ages. And the Tengriizm of the Kumyk ancestors and of other Türkic peoples has been supplanted by the world's religions: in the beginning by Christianity at Alp Ilitver (7th c.), by Judaism at the Khazar king Bulan (7th c.), and finally by Islam at the Semender Selifa king (Sary-Kan (Khan, Kaan, Kagan), 9th c.), apparently under the influence of the Seljuks.

However, it should be noted that Kumyks encountered Islam still in 734. Not incidentally many sources name that year as the date of Kumyks' initial adoption of Islam. Indeed, Islam became the Kumyks' “constitutive element” and “a nursery of civilizing”. Adoption of Islam, of course, accelerated and completed consolidation of the Kumyk ethnos.

Due to the adoption of Islam, the Kumyks ancestors got involved into the Islamic world, which determined the future of the nation and the traits of its civilization. Moreover, through the Kumyks, the Islamic religion decisively entrenched in the North Caucasus.

All these factors led to the formation among Kumyks by the 9th c. of a common national consciousness, i.e., a cognizance of belonging to a new, higher socio-political organism - a nation.

The above-mentioned factors (conditions), each to a different extent, resulted in the formation of the early medieval Kumyk nationality.

Fourth. The process of forming of the Kumyk people and its language covers a period that lasted from the 2nd c. BC. to 9th-11th cc. Undoubtedly, that long ethnogenetic process passed through several stages.

On the issue of the starting point of the Kumyk ethnogenesis, scientists express a variety of views, at times conflicting. A developed periodization of the Kumyk ethnogenesis does not yet exist in the today science.

An ethnographer S.A. Tokarev, allowing a presence at the Kumyks of “an ancient Pre-Türkic layer (apparently, Scytho-Sarmatian), connected their ethnogenesis with the first half of the first millennium AD, particularly with the people Kam or Kamak, mentioned by Plinius in the 1st c. AD. Acad. W.W. Bartold and his colleague A. Kermani believed that the initial stage of Kumyk ethnogenesis falls on the second half of the first millennium AD, and regarded Kumyks as poly-substrate people (Bulgars, Khazars, Cumans), settled in the North Caucasus and the Dagestan steppes between 5th and 12th cc. The authors of the fundamental work “Peoples of the Caucasus” also concur: “Formation of the Kumyk people began in the second half of the first millennium AD”. The contemporary researchers count Kumyks, along with Balkars, Karachaies and Ossetians, as the descendants of the Türkic-speaking Cimmerian-Scythian-Alanian tribes and the creators of the Nart epic.

Let's try to elucidate periodization of the Kumyk ethnogenesis.

First step. It falls to the beginning of the Kumyk ethnogenesis and it can be called a period of embryonic development, or the “Hun” era. It covers the 3rd-1st cc. BC. During that period, the primary differentiation of the ancient Türkic tribes linguistically falls into two broad groups. The dominant tribe in that period is the royal clan Hyuen (Гюен), which produced the entire ruling dynasty of the (Caucasian) Huns and to which ascend the rulers of the European Huns (“Attila's Huns”).

Second phase. It covers the period of 1st. c. BC. - 3rd c. AD. In the North Caucasus and Dagestan in the 1st c. becomes visible an ethnogenetic process of forming, from the initial tribal nucleus, the Kumyk ethnos named in Plinius Kam or Kamak. Kumyk (Kamak) is a Hunnic tribe, which, according to the “Oguz-name”, was to be a guardian of the Caspian Gates still during the reign of the Oguz Khan, rightly identified with Mode Kagan of the Chinese sources. This is indirectly confirmed by the Plinius' information that already in his time the Caspian Gates were called “Kuman Gates”, i.e., Kamaks (Kumyks). Apparently, the significance and role of Kamaks among other southern tribes was due to the presence in the Caucasus of the Kumyk toponym named by Plinius.

Third stage. It covers the period of 4th-7th centuries AD. During that period many Türkic southern tribes unite into a first known to us Türkic state of the Attila Huns, a concretion of 13 Hunnic (Türkic) tribes in the lands north of Derbent. There appears the first in the Caucasus Türkic state of the ancestors of Kumyks, Balkars, and Karachaies, known in the Armenian sources as Honistan (“Kingdom of the Huns”), which for simplicity is called Caucasian Hunnia. Is taking place an ethnic stabilization of the Kumyk ancestors with the leading binding role of the Hunnug-Undur tribe, begins the formation of the early feudal Kumyk nation, which came into close contact with the Iranian- and Caucasian-speaking tribes.

Fourth stage. It covers the 7th-10th centuries, associated with Khazar domination in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe and initial penetration and spread among the Kumyks of the world religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This is an initial stage of geopolitical separation, of forging a primary (political) core, of forging the early medieval Kumyk nationality. By the end of that period, instead of the Khazars, become frequent expressions of the stable Kumyk ethnonym in the form “Kumuk”. The disappearance of the Khazars' name and the “appearance instead of the name “Kumyk” was connected with the adoption of Islam” and the formation of the “Khazar-Kumyk ethnos”.

Fifth. Ethnogenesis, as is known, involves settling of a question of the linguistic continuity, i.e., the continuity of the ethno-glottogenetic process, a formation of the language.

Currently, most Turkologists are unanimous that “all the languages of the Türkic peoples who lived in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus contain to varying degrees the elements of the Hunnic language (i.e. of the Khazar, Bulgarian), Oguz and Kipchak languages (Hangishiev J. M. Ethnogenesis of Kumyks in the light of linguistic data//KNKO: Proceedings, 1 (5), pp. 19-20), and that the Kipchak group of the Türkic languages belongs to the West Hun branch of that language family”. Now also has been proved that the “language in the kingdom of the Huns” was “one of the Türkic languages of the Savir-Khazar alliance” and, as was shown above, the language was of the Kipchak type. The “Hunnic” and Kumyk languages are traceable in ascendance and continuity. N.A. Baskakov, for example, justly indicates that the core of the Kumyk language rests on the “common historically laid Bulgarian and Khazar... features.” Another Turkologist, M.A. Habichev, comes to quite definite conclusion of the comparative study of languages: “There are no reasons to depict the history and language of these people (Kumyks, Balkars, etc. - K.A.) as a continuation of the solely Kuman history and language, because many linguistic facts of the Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, and Crimean Tatar languages are older than the ancient language of the Kuman dictionary.” Prof. J.. Hangishiev asserted on this subject more specifically. According to his chronology, the core of the Kumyk language formed within the Khazar state in the 7th-10th centuries, it formed on the Khazar-Bulgar substrate, with further subsequent layering on the core of the Oguz-Kipchak superstratum”.

With the foregoing on the history of the Kumyk glottogenesis, i.e. the formation of the language, in our opinion can be discerned the following four periods:

First centuries AD - 4th century. The existence of separate tribal languages (dialects) of the Huns (Kamaks, Hunnug-Undur, Khazars, Bulgars, etc.) in the territory of the North Caucasus.

5th - 6th cc. Formation and functioning of a supra-dialectal “ancient Türkic language” and the ancient Türkic literature.

6th-9th cc. Based on the ancient Türkic language, formation of a regional Old Kumyk (“Hun”) language within the Caucasian Hunnia (“kingdom of the Huns”, “Djindan”). Creation runic-based script (“Hunnic Türkic writing”), translation of the Christian Scriptures (the Bible) into that language.

9th-13th cc. Functioning of common language of the Kumyk early feudal people. Adoption of the Arabic alphabet, along with Islam, development of literature.

13th-15th cc. Formation of the Old Kumyk literary language (“Turki” of the North Caucasus) of the feudal Kumyk people.

* * *

As demonstrated our analysis, by the time the late Kipchak (11th c) penetrated to the North Caucasus, and the Tataro-Mongols arrived in the 13th-14th cc., the result of the ethnic process there had been nearly unambiguous: the process of the Kumyk ethnogenesis was completed, has formed the feudal Kumyk people, with a single common language and script, with a common territory (a state), ethnic identity, and a permanent self-appellation Kumuk. Therefore, Kumyks succeeded in preserving their ethnic identity (ethno-immanence) for all subsequent time, during the birth and existence of the great power of that time, the Kipchak Khanate (aka Golden Horde), and during the era of its collapse in the 1443/1444 Kumyks succeeded in reviving and fortifying their independent statehood as the “Shevkal kingdom” (Targu Şavhallıgı, 1443 - 1867)- “Devlet Al-Şawhaliyan”. But that is a topic for another special study.

In conclusion are cited the words of Professor Ahmed Djaferoglu:

“Kumyks are innately native Türkic people, which formation began in the 7th century as a result of amalgamation of two mighty branches of the Oguz-Kipchak Türkic ethnos in the Khazar territory. So, they fused into a Kipchak-Oguz nation long before the Mongol conquest of the Caucasus. The Kumyk life, their cultural-economic types, their language and the dialects they use today, carry all the traits and traces of such their origin and development. The existing in the Soviet science hypothesis about their foreign origin is not substantiated scientifically and historically.”

Kamil Aliyev.
Yoldash /17.10.2014 9:33