Kaganate is a type of government. At the head of such a formation is the kagan, or, according to one interpretation of this title, "khan khans." The term itself is first mentioned in connection with the ancient Mongolian tribe of xianbi nomads.
Originally from China
In the III century BC, one of the tribes stood out from the composition of the ancient union called "Dungu", formed around 1100 BC. Over the course of three centuries, the new association was called differently, and in 330 the Juan Haganate arose.
This state, formed by the xianbi tribe, lasted until 555. In 402, the ruler of the Juan tribes became the first of all to call himself a kagan, thus creating a new title of supreme ruler. According to one of the historical versions, the name of the tribe subject to it is a contemptuous nickname given to them by the Chinese. Zhujani - slowly creeping, or reptiles. No wonder this people wanted to be independent. In this case, the Khaganate is a union of the Juan tribes, which also represented a confederation.
Mighty state
And at the beginning of the VI century, from this formation, in turn, the tribe separated, who wished to be independent. They formed the Avar Kaganate, which lasted from 562 to 823. The territories of modern Slovakia and Croatia, Romania and Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine constituted the area of this state, founded by Kagan Boyan I. Back in 555, the Avars were known as the nomadic people persecuted by the Turks, forced to leave the steppes of western Kazakhstan and move to the remote coast of the Volga. And already in the years 565-566, having rounded the Carpathians from the north, they capture the King of Francs Sigibert I, defeating his army. Contemporaries were so shocked by this fact that they attributed the gift of magic to the Avars. At its peak, the Avar Kaganate extended from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Alps to the Elbe. The Avars achieved such power thanks to the wise and tough rule of the talented leader Boyan I, who ruled the country from its inception in 562 until his death in 602. The cunning and cynical leader, without hesitation, changed allies, destroyed whole tribes to achieve his goal, and as a result even forced the Byzantine emperor Tiberius II to pay him tribute. A kaganate is a rigid dictatorship, and a kagan is a sovereign in the medieval nomadic hierarchy, a person to whom absolutely all power belongs without any restrictions.
Colossus fall
When studying the history of ancient times, there are always several views on the same issue. So, Avars belong to various ethnic groups: to the Mongol-speaking, to the Iranian-speaking, to the Turkic. Representatives of the archaeological school of Hungary, in the territory of which the Avar Kaganate was located, attribute most of the Avars to Caucasians and only a small layer to the Mongoloids. But this smaller part of the population played a dominant role, was the elite of the Avar state. It can be assumed that representatives of the ruling elite did not assimilate with the conquered peoples. Presumptuous Avars received their first defeat near Constantinople in 626. Immediately separate tribes began to separate from the kaganate - the first to run were the Kutrigurs, the modern Bulgarians. In 631, Khan Alcek, ruler of the future Great Bulgaria, withdraws his army from the kaganate after an unsuccessful attempt to seize power. Further Avars only defend and retreat. The Croats ousted them from Dalmatia in 640. Finished by the Kaganate Franco-Avar War, which lasted a very long time. Gradually all enslaved peoples rebelled. And the last Pannonia region allocated by the Franks to the Avars, headed by the already baptized Hagan, was captured by the Hungarians in 899. Avars completely ceased to exist. The once-powerful state that lived for about 3.5 centuries disappeared without a trace.
The state structure of the most powerful kaganates
The question arises of what a kaganate is, how it is built, why it disappears, as a rule, without a trace. Interestingly, the kagan - a man who subsequently possessed absolute power, was elected by the national assembly. In the Khazar and Aavra kaganates, the ruler had a viceroy tudun, who was assigned supervisory, organizational and diplomatic functions, and a yogur, who was probably the high priest. Tribute was collected by representatives of the nobility - Tarkhany. And behind them, according to the hierarchy, came the leaders of the tribes, who played an important role in the country's structure. They took their peoples away from the kaganate. Maybe that’s why this state disappeared from the face of the Earth, which was multi-ethnic.
Another Turkic state
The Turgesh kaganate did not exist for long - from the beginning to the middle of the VIII century. At the very beginning of the century, the leader of the Turghes, Ushlik, overthrew the Chinese governor and demanded that he recognize himself as the Kagan of the Celestial Empire. He made the capital city of Suyab, in which his stake was located. The entire territory of the new Kaganate included 20 territorial units, each of which had 7 thousand soldiers. They were located in the areas of Chinese provinces and stretched from Beshbalyk to Tashkent. In 705, in view of the threat of the capture of the country by the Arabs, the Kaganate concluded an alliance with China and defeated the Arab troops. The following rulers - Soge, Zheng, Great Suluk, at which the kaganate reached its peak, waged successful wars with both Arabs and China. But after the assassination of Suluk, power began to slip away from the hands of his successors, who were Kutsha and Baga-Tarkhan, Bilge and Tengri-Ilmysh - the last kagan, with the death of which the Turgesh khanate ceased to exist. There were coins of this state with Sogdian inscriptions minted under these rulers.
New in place of old
The
East Turkic Khanate lasted a little longer
. The capital was the city of Orda-Balyk. The history of this nomadic state began in 603 after the collapse of the Turkic Kaganate into Western and Eastern parts. For three decades, the newly formed Eastern Kaganate, which had a common border with China, waged quite successful wars with it, but in 630 the country was again captured by the Turkic empire. After 50 years, the Kok-Türks revolted, as a result of which the Eastern Kaganate was restored under a new name - Kok-Türkic. And again, his troops smashed the army of neighboring China - in 686 under Xinzhou, in 694 - near Lingzhou. The second Kagan Kapagan Mochur, who ruled from 693 to 716, successfully invaded China in 698 and defeated the imperial troops. Following him 6 rulers did not achieve such success. And with the latter, Kulun-bek, the kaganate troops in 745 were defeated by the Uyghur troops of Khan Moyut-Chur. The Kok-Türkic Kaganate with an area of 4 million sq. Km, formed in 682, ceased to exist.
New strong education
The Karluk Haganate, which arose 11 years after the collapse of the Kok-Türkic, is also a Turkic state, and it lasted from 756 to 940. The territory occupied by him included the spaces between the Issyk-Kul and Balkhash lakes, from the middle course of the Syr-Darya to the Dzungarian Alatau. That is, it was within the boundaries of modern Kazakhstan. The roots of the Karluk Haganate grew from the Western part of the Turkic state that had once broken up (in 603). Being a certain period under the strong influence of China, at the beginning of the VIII century, the Karluks (residents of these areas) begin a gradual migration towards the west. They have been known about them since the 5th century. This is also a multi-tribal community - in their composition in the 7th century such tribes as the Bulak, Chigil and Tashlyk joined. On the way, the strengthening detachments of the future new Kaganate won a number of major victories. So, they helped the Arabs in 1950 to triumph in the Talas or Atlah (Talas valley, the city of Atlah), the battle against China (Tang Dynasty). They fought with the East Turkic Khaganate. But the Karluk power, which knew the ups, did not last long. She, too, was absorbed in another Turkic formation - East Turkestan, which in 940 seized the capital of Karluksky Khanate Balasgun. However, part of the population managed to escape across the Ili River, the longest in Semirechye, where they created a new state called the Karluk Khanate. The capital was the city of Kailik.
Sad fate
To the question of what is kaganate, one can answer that this is a purely Asian form of government. Nowhere in Europe or America have there ever been such entities. In Asia, there were quite a lot of them - there was even a Russian Khanate in the Lower Don. He also ended his existence in the middle of the IX century. As history shows, a rather unlucky form of government - all the Khaganates were defeated, and the population of many disappeared without a trace or disappeared among other tribes, such as the Khazars and Avars. But the importance of these Turkic states is very difficult to overestimate.
Thanks to military expansion, the culture of the East was enriched by the achievements of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. Many tribes left China and reached Western Europe, assimilating along the way with the peoples living in these open spaces.