6 - The Turks and the other peoples of the Eurasian steppes to 1175

Summary

Examination of the art of war among the nomad peoples of the steppe could easily lead to archetypes. Indeed, the sustained similarities between the different descriptions that have survived, from the Xiongnu to the Mongols, are certainly very strong: the type of weapon, the tactic of the ‘Parthian shot’, the small horses, the decimal organisation of the army – over a long period these various elements have contributed to a unified pattern of nomadic warfare. Yet despite these undoubtedly important points of resemblance, the analysis should not be limited to them by ignoring developmental variations and interaction with different contexts and societies. One way to resolve this impasse is to identify the historically coherent periods individually within this continuum, and to restrict sources to this specific group of periods. The Turkish period is one such historical era: the expanses of the steppe were indeed unified during the second half of the sixth century, part of the framework of the trans-Asiatic Turkish empire and its tremendous prestige. At its heart, and then at the heart of the political organisations which it inspired and which succeeded it, we can imagine the existence of political and social lines of transmission which influenced military practices in this geographical zone as a whole. Sooner or later, all the later nomad empires were its descendants; the accent here will therefore fall on military life, in order to tease out the specific characteristics of the Turkish period from the archetype, without recourse to Xiongnu or Mongol sources. But elements of comparison with the Uighur empire which followed it in Mongolia, the Khazar empire which followed it in the western steppes, and finally the Khitan empire which dominated the extreme east from the tenth century, are identified.