Gazi Baradj Tarihi – The annals of Gazi-Baradj 1229-1246 AD
There is no God except Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger!
… By the grace of God, by the resolve of seid Djagfar, I, his Bakhshi Iman, strang on a string of this narration the pearls of our Bulgarian historical stories, ”Ghazi-Baradj Tarihi“, written from the words of Kan and Emir Ghazi-Baradj by his Tebir Ghazi-Baba Hudja, ”Bu-Yurgan Kitaby“ by seid Mohammedjar, ”Sheikh-Gali Kitaby” by mullah Ish-Mohammed…, and also the words and documents of the Seid Djagfar archive…, to preserve the memory of the deeds of our great Bulgar people… I shall not be a judge for the described, for I did not see it and only God knows, had it been so or not.
Written by the Ghazi-Baba. Narrated by Ghazi-Baradj.
Chapter 1. Ancient history of Bulgars (ca.?? – 360 AD – 378 AD)
The beginning of our beginnings is in the tribes of Imen and Sind. Gabdulla ibn Michael Bashtu wrote that people of the Imen tribe lived in isolated families on both sides of the river Amul which was teeming with snakes, and engaged in fishery, hunting and gathering of fruits. Because of the fear of snakes, people did not dare to cross the river and fished off the bank. And only one of them, Boyan, run a ferry, and the snakes did not bother him. And as he alone was a link between the families of both sides, and excelled in bravery and honesty, people elected him as a leader.
When Boyan grew old and, in addition, fell ill, his sons abandoned him to the mercy of fate. Then he started asking Almighty to give him a son for help. The Creator cast ashore at his stilt house a huge fish from the whose left ear, like a snake, came out his younger son Idjik. After death of Boyan, the women of the tribe began having stillborns, and Idjik, having gathered men, at first left with them to the possessions of his brother Laish, and then to the Hon mountains. There, he became a ruler due to the bravery of Imens, who were excellent bow archers.
The Kytai Türks, who subordinated to him, ate half-baked meat and never washed in water, for they were descendants of the wolf Chin, and they strove to have louses like him. If the louses were too annoying for the Kytais they, like the wolves, killed them with their teeth. The wives and girls of the Kytai Türks copulated freely with any man whenever possible. The Imens could not stand to see this kind of people. Taking from the Kytais several girls who did not get accustomed to the filth and fornication of their mothers, the Imens, led by Idjik, began to move from one Türkic settlement to another in order not to see for long periods the vile life of Kytais.
The mountains had no big rivers suitable for navigation, and the Imens were going on foot. But it was hard, and Idjik told his people to learn to ride the horses, which the Kytai Türks had. Idjik ordered the people to assemble and have food and tribute prepared prior to his arrivals. During his stay, he was making assignments, judged, and was giving instructions. These gatherings were called djiens… To live with the Türks, the Imens had to know their language…
When the girls grew up, the Imens, who brought them up in their own way, took them as wives and called themselves and their descendants Hons. Because of fastidiousness, they never grew close to the Kytais, and those hated them in return. Afraid of the mutinies, Idjik took all Türkic arms makers, dressed his people and their horses in iron armour, and forbade the Kytais to have weaponry and to wear chain armours. He ordered to send the worst troublemakers of this tribe into raids against the Hin, so that they would attack Hins instead of Hons…
During the Idjik’s heir Tigane, nicknamed Hin-Batyr for his numerous victories over the Hins, the pressed Hinian Khan sent messengers to Kytai Türks and ordered to tell them: ”When your ancestors lived under our power, its burden was barely felt. Now you are ruled by a small tribe of the Hons, and instead of helping us against them you struggle for them against us. Are you clever? Destroy the Hons, and return again under our kind power!” Hearing the appeal of the Hinian Khan, the Kytais attacked the camp of Hin-Batyr at night and killed all the Hons there.
The wife of Hin-Batyr, before she was surrounded by the enemies, managed to throw her son in a big cauldron into the river Dulo. Her hands and legs were chopped off, and she died in great pains. Michael Bashtu in ”Shan kyzy dastany” tells that a deer, which came to the watering-place, caught the cauldron with his horns and took the boy to the Jeti-Su. There the Khan Mar of Masguts sheltered him and brought him up. He was named Gazan, married Mar’s daughter, and began to call his clan Dulo also Marduan-Dulo. Meanwhile, the Hons in the other camp has already elected Khazar a new Khan.
Learning about it, Gazan together with Masguts, who he called Badjanaks, invaded the Khazar Kaganate. The Hons immediately switched to the side of Gazan, and Khazar fled to the Kytai Türks and became their leader. Gazan repelled the Hins to beyond the river Kuban-su and sat there his banner, a felt red sphere with multi-coloured ribbons on a spear. It was the Masgutian image of the Alp Elbegen, a winged dragon snake which the Hons worshipped. The Masguts called Elbegen Baradj.
The Hons, who had their own image of Elbegen, did not like it, and demanded that Gazan replaced the Masgutian banner with the Idjik’s banner. The Khan did not agree and forbade even to talk about it. The Hons suffered this humiliation for 400 years and accumulated a hatred to the Masguts surrounding the clan Dulo. At last, during the Gazan’s successor Djilki, the Hons’ patience burst and most of them joined the Hazar’s descendant Dugar, supported by the Kytais and Türkmen. Besides it, Dugar had the support of the Bashkorts who were a mix of the Masguts and Urmians and spoke an Urmian language.
Their pastures were to the north of the Badjinaks and west of the Hon mountains. Between the Hon mountains and the Kuban desert, to the north from the Hin, the Kyrgyz followed the vegetation. When Dugar invaded the possessions of Djilki and defeated him, some Masguts fled to the Kyrgyz-Kangly. When Dugar subdued these Kyrgyzes, a part of them, led by Saban, left to the Badjanaks and there merged into the Saban or Badjinak people. The Sabans began to speak the Kirghiz language, but its more noble version, as it was affected by the language of the Masguts.
The Kirghiz, spoken by the Kumans, Oimeks and other descendants of the Kyrgyzes, who are also called Kypchaks, after the Kirghiz leader Kypchak, the brother of Saban who subordinated to Dugar, sounds rough because of the influence of the Kytai Türks’ speech. Later the Sabans subordinated to Dugar, and took so much from the language of his Türkmen that some people began to count them as a Türkmen tribe. And the borrowing of the loanwords happened because of the entry to the Sabans of several Türkmen clans… The defeated Djilki also was forced to subordinate to Dugar.
Very soon, however, not putting up with humiliation, Djilki rose, but was defeated again and killed. His son Bulümar fled, with loyal Hons and Masguts, to the west. No expression of sympathy did he find anywhere, because who needs the defeated and deprived? Besides, nobody liked the claims for domination of the proud Bulümar. While passing the Jeti-Su, most of the Masguts fell behind the Hons …
Bulümar wanted to remain in the Jeti-Su, but the Türkmen tribe objected to it. These Türkmens were the descendants of some Kyrgyzian and Türkish people who came with Saban to the Masguts’ land and gradually multiplied.
They are very beautiful and speak pleasant dialect. The Türkmens are very caring and kind in the kinsmen’s circle, but beyond it they are very proud and quick-tempered, and in their alliances, they are rather not loyal. In addition, they did not care to submit to anybody and did not respect their elected leaders too much.
In Bulümar, they saw a threat to their independence and consequently began to threaten him with a war. The Khan was forced to depart to the Bashkorts, who sheltered the Hons and they received the name ”Sebers” (“allies”) from the Bashkorts. The Türks called the Bashkorts Ugyrs, they were as headstrong as the Türkmens. They worshipped Alp Baradj, but called him Madjar. In their beliefs, Madjar was the patron of Life… Yakub son of Nugman (likely Yakub ibn Nugman – Translator’s Note) wrote that in the beginning, Baradj lived on the mountain Kaf and then, when the Alps blocked the land from the sun by a wall, he flew to the desert Kuman, and then went to the Bashkorts.
Here he was hospitably met by the people and with hostility by Chirmysh, the leader of the Bashkorts, who considered the Swan (Türk. Kyi – Translator’s Note) to be his ancestor and wanted Bashkorts to worship Swan. Eventually, the biy treacherously wounded Baradj, and he fled to the Kuman desert, and cursed Chirmysh. Soon after that Chirmysh died with terrible pains, and the Bashkorts became convinced that the Snake was the Khan of the Life, Madjar…
When they sheltered Bulümar, Dugar tried to attack them treacherously under a cover of the night. However the cranes’ cries warned Bashkorts about the danger, and they left with their chattel to the West together with the Hons. But they followed Bulümar for not too long and dropped behind him because they disliked the pretensions of the Khan for the power… Prominent among them were two clans, Ura and Baygul. From them, the Hons acquired the habit to pronounce the word ” Kan” as ” Khakan”…
In the Idel country, by the river Agidel, Hon’s movement paused for a while, for here was also the state of the Honish clan Bulyar… The last Utigian’s ruler of Bulyar, Djoké-Utig, carelessly burnt the Baradj’s nest to please his wife, a Murdasian, who demanded him to erect in this place a city. In the fire, all children of the Baradj, except for one, died, and he fled to another place, and on parting told Djoké-Utig: ”I was always a patron of the Hons, and I shall stay a patron. But you, for your malicious act, will die of a sting of my last son, and all your children will be killed”.
But this Bek not only did not get frightened but, on the contrary, by new advice of his wife started to search in the tombs of the ancestors for the Hinian treasures. And when he opened one tomb, from the land, instead of the human remains, showed up the bones of a horse. It was a warning sign of Tangra, but Djoké-Utig did not heed this it and continued to search. Then from under the bones crept out a Snake, the son of Baradj, and bit the Bek, and he immediately died… His children began to wrangle among themselves, and then, not wishing to give the power to one of them, gave the Khanate to Bulümar…
When the Kan went further, they followed him and all, except for Baksu, perished in battles. Baksu, afraid of the Baradj curse, took in thirty girls as wives and had seventy sons from them. But once the Galidjians attacked him in the Anchian lands, and killed him together with all his sons…
The famine forced the Kan to go to the West. Being forced to leave the headquarters of the Idel or Old Turan state, Bulümar with his… crossed the river Agidel, called Atil by Bashkorts, in honour of the Masgutian hero Atillé or Atilkush. Local Kara-Masguts, also called Saklans, tried to prevent this but were defeated and fled to Buri-chai led by their biy Boz-Urus.
But Bulgars, subjects to the Kara-Masguts, joined Bulümar who raised the indigenous Baradj banner of the Ases, the red felt sphere with a bunch of multi-coloured ribbons above it. And it should be said that seid Yakub told about the antiquity of Bulgarian tribe in the ”Kadi Kitaby”, based on the ”Khazar tarihi” of Abdallah bine Michael Bashtu: ”… Kamyrs are a branch of the Sinds.
They were nicknamed so because they believed in the tale of the creation by the Almighty of the pra-mother Kamir-Abi from the dough. Kamyrs esteemed her so that they were giving her name to the boys also. They did not tolerate that other Sinds began to carve the stone images of the Supreme Sindian deity, Tara or Tangra, as a blasphemous human, instead of the sharp-tipped stone mountain of Samar with smooth flat slopes and returned from Sind to the former place on the river Samar by the mountain Samar.
Their area began to be called Turan… However, when one part of Turans began to make Tara of pure gold, and another from clay, the third part left them and settled in another district, called Samar in honour of the former habitat. They began to be called Samars, and all remaining were called Masguts…
The Sinds called “Samar” the most beautiful and high mountains from which was rising the sun.
To the West went those who called images “tarvil”. They were also called Ases or Armans.
On the way, migrants weakened and were left by the others at the foothills of the Kaf mountains in Azerbaijan. Later they were attacked by Masguts who for a while subordinated them, turning them to slaves. A part of the abandoned Ases, not taking the oppression, fled to the Saklanian steppes to the north where they received a name “Koly”, i.e. “slaves”. They were also called “Askoly”.
And the migrants from Idel, who made the farthest to the West, were called Bulgars…
In a new place, first of all, they erected a huge mountain in honour of Tara and called it and the country Samar. And this country of Kaf-Bulgars reached blossom during the Khan Kamyr-Batyr. The descriptions of his life in the book of menly Abdallah, are reminiscent of the biography of Jusuf…
But after his death some of the Samars polluted water with sewage, forgetting that it was also considered sacred because it reflected their deity Tara. The incensed deity decided to flood all land of Samara for this sin, but in the beginning, warned people with a terrible voice. From this voice trembled the land and fell all leaves from the trees. The part of Samars, frightened, left further to the West and was called, in memory of the apparition, “Agathirs”, that is the people of the trees.
They reached Misr where they also lived for some time and build many mountains, Samars or Djuketaus. Among the remaining was one clan of Samars, who did not offend the water. The Almighty had mercy on him and granted him a ship for the rescue, and then flooded all of Samar. When the water again subsided at will of Tangra, the ship remained on the top of the Samar mountain, and the saved clan, calling itself “Nau” (“New”), disembarked to the land. This clan became gradually numerous and started to worship both the mountain and the ship. But some of it once became upset and pulled down the ship, believing that nothing should be on the sacred Djuketau prayer-mountain.
And inside of this and other Samar mountains, they made caves where they put the dead people. And if a husband died his wife was immured alive in the cave with him, and if the wife who won a wedding duel over the husband died, her husband was immured alive in the cave together with her body.
When the ship was pulled down from the mountain, the majority of Samars condemned its originators for exile. The condemned went on the ship and, crossing the Saklan sea, settled in Djalda and in the adjoining steppes. And a famous fighter Targiz or Tarsiz ruled over them…
The migrants called “Kimmerians”, the deformed form of “Kamyrs”, began to worship him after his death. And in his memory, it is said, during the djien they jumped over the swords set in the ground with the tip-up.
Then here came the Idelian Bulgars and expelled some, and for the past insults subdued other Kimmerians… A part of the Bulgars, together with a subject to Idel Kypchaks, pursued the escaping Kimmerians and, finding there Masguts, began to clobber them too.
When they returned, the Bulgars learnt that those Kypchaks, who settled in the Saklan, intermixed with the Kimmerians and began to worship Targiz.
Then they expelled them for it to the rivers Deber and Shir. And from the Bulgars who raided the Samar, came the Uruses, and from the Shir’s Targizians came the Murdases…
And the Agathirs were expelled from Misr by the Arabs and left to the Saklanian steppe … But here Kols met them quite unfriendly and made them their slaves… And the Ases who stayed in Samar under the name of As Bulgars eventually, too, left to Yana Idel, to the lake Kaban and to Azerbaijan where they reunited with the local Bulgarian Türks… Then the Persians moved one thousand Yana Idel Türks, a part of which was Armand, to Khorasan…
Then came from the Turan a part of Masguts, who departed from the others to the Tang-Alan (“Stone Field”) steppe and thus received the name “Alan” (“fields”). And we, despoiling “Tang” into “Sak”, began to call them Saklans. And these Saklans, absorbing the Murdases and Agathirs, defeated their enemies, Kols, and seized the steppe of the defeated… And they also began to be called Kara-Masguts, in contrast to their relatives, the Ak-Masguts, who stayed in the Türkistan. And the Kypchak steppe, spread from the Sula to Agidel, began to be called Saklan…, and all descendants of the Ases living there were called Saklans or Alans…
Later the Almanians of the Galidj tribe came to the Buri-chai from the Sadum and pressed the Saklans, who were called “Uruses” by the name of their leader Urus. And they pressed because the Saklans started a war with the part of the Bulgars who moved from Azerbaijan to the Burdjan… And when they crossed Idel, these Bulgars immediately joined the Hons …
Urus tried to kick out the Sadimians from the banks of Buri-chai, but was defeated and killed. Then the Saklans-Uruses submitted to Hons and incited Bulümar to attack the Galidjians.