Naiman, Argyn, Kangly, Ysty: each tribe on a line of its own

Naiman: the only tribe whose main line is eastern

Among the Kazakh tribes Naiman stands apart. It is the only tribe whose main paternal line is O2, the line of East Asia: half the men of the tribe belong to it.

The tribe's three main lines — O2, C2 and R1b — parted tens of thousands of years before the name Naiman was first spoken, so the tribe has not one founding ancestor but at least three. Of the three, only one is the main line of the Mongols — C2.

The closest paternal kin of the Naiman outside the Steppe live in Korea and China. Half the Naiman stand on O2, the line of one Korean in three, and the Naiman branch inside it is young: its common ancestor lived in the 17th century. The branches of the world tree nearest to it are there too, and the ancestor shared with them lived 3,700 years ago, three thousand years before the Naiman khanate. The line itself is far older and wider: more than half of Han Chinese men belong to it, as many among the Manchus, and two fifths of the Han descend from just three men who lived on this line five to seven thousand years ago. Westward into the Steppe it thins with every people — Uyghurs, Mongols, Kalmyks — and among Kazakhs a few percent remain:

In the other tribes there is far less of it than among Naiman:

Tore 11%, Ysty 8%, Jalayir 7%, Zhetiru 7%.

The east is in more than the Naiman chromosome. The tribe's name is the Mongolian word for “eight”, and in the 12th century the Naiman held the west of Mongolia: the lands between the Altai and the Khangai, along the Black Irtysh, next door to the Uyghurs. It was a khanate with a golden seal and the Uyghur script. In 1204 Genghis Khan defeated Tayang Khan, took the keeper of the Naiman seal, the Uyghur Tatatunga, into his service and had him teach the princes the Uyghur script. Tayang's son Küchlüg went west to the Kara-Khitai of Zhetysu, married the gurkhan's daughter and in the end took his place. The Kazakh Naiman are descendants of those Naiman.

By the shezhire the four sons of Tolegetai gave their names to the four divisions of Naiman: Tortuyl, Karakerei, Sadyr, Matai. Among Karakerei, Matai and Sadyr the main line is O2:

From the Karakerei came Kabanbai batyr, Abylai's commander in the wars with the Dzungars — the army called him Daraboz, “the peerless”, and the name of his clan still stands before his own: Karakerei Kabanbai. And when a Naiman names his clan — Karakerei, Matai, Sadyr — he names his paternal line as well: in all three it is the eastern one, the line that came to the Kazakh steppe together with the name “eight”.

Argyn: the descendants of Meiram on one line

What is rare about Naiman is where its line came from. What is rare about Argyn is that almost no one in the world has its line at all.

Argyn is the largest tribe of the Middle Zhuz, and half its men stand on G1.

G1 is an old line, 18,200 years old, and one of the rarest: most peoples on Earth do not have it at all. Its first trace is the Iranian and Armenian highlands, but even there it is scarce: a few percent among Iranians and Armenians, and 40% only among the Hemshin on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. At the other end of Eurasia, in the Kazakh steppe, the same line is not a rare mark but the main line, though only inside one tribe: in the corpus G1 is 4%, and two thirds of its carriers are Argyn:

Sary-Uisin 14%, Tore 11%, Oshakty 5%.

The line is ancient, yet the Argyn branch inside it is young: its common ancestor lived 650 years ago, in the 14th century, and the nearest branch of the world tree split from it 4,800 years ago. The tribe's second line, R1a, is built the same way: it too has an Argyn branch of its own, 600 years old. The tribe has at least two founders.

In that same century the first names appear in the history of the Argyn. The tribe's battle cry is “Akzhol”, the name of a bi — a judge — under Khan Tokhtamysh. Karakozha, from whom the Argyn trace their descent, stood among the guards of Tokhtamysh.

The shezhire divides the Argyn in two: the descendants of Meiram, called the Bes Meiram, and the descendants of Momyn. On G1 stand the descendants of Meiram:

By the shezhire they share one ancestor, and they share one line.

Two clans of the other half, Babasan of the Atygai and Tobykty, do not stand on G1.

From the Karakesek came Kaz Dauysty Kazybek, bi under Tauke Khan and three khans after him. His word settled the disputes of the Middle Zhuz.

Kangly: the Siberian sister of the American line

G1 is rare everywhere. Q, on the contrary, is the line of nearly all the men of whole peoples — only those peoples live across the ocean.

Q is the line by which native America is known: almost all the men of the Aymara and the Navajo belong to it, nine in ten among the Maya. Among Kangly 59% of the men belong to it — more than among the Tuvans and the Turkmen — while among Kazakhs as a whole it is 4%.

Q was born in Siberia. From there one of its branches crossed Beringia and became the line of the first Americans, another stayed at home — in the Altai, the Sayan, Mongolia. They parted 15,400 years ago. Among the Turkmen and the Chechens Q is a different one: their branches split off earlier still:

In no other Kazakh tribe is Q the main line:

Tarakty 13%, Shaprashty 5%, Alimuly 5%.

The name Kangly is older than the Kazakhs and older than the Turkic khaganates. In the 2nd century BC the Chinese historian Sima Qian recorded the nomad realm of Kangju to the north-west of Fergana, next to the Wusun — and two thousand years later both names are borne by tribes of the Senior Zhuz. The word “kangly” itself meant “cart”, and the legend of Oghuz explains the name this way: there was nothing to carry the spoils on, so one of the tribes built carts, “for which reason Oghuz gave them the name Kangly, that is, ‘owners of carts’”. Under the Khwarazmshahs the Kangly formed the core of the army, and a Kangly garrison stood in Bukhara when Genghis Khan took the city in 1220. The Kazakh Kangly, though, live where Sima Qian recorded Kangju — between the Syr Darya and the Talas.

By the shezhire Kangly is two houses, Sary Kanly and Kara Kanly, from the two wives of Keldibek, and both stand on Q — Kara Kanly and Omyrtka, the Syr Darya branch of the Sary Kanly:

“Түгел сөздің түбі бір, түп атасы — Майқы би” — “all words have one root, and their forefather is Maiky bi,” Kazakhs say of a contemporary of Genghis Khan, from whom the shezhire traces Kangly. The tribe has one root by the paternal line as well: in both houses the line is the one that stayed in Siberia when its sister went to America.

Ysty: the Senior Zhuz stands on C2, and Ysty does not

Kangly is not the only tribe of the Senior Zhuz whose line is foreign to its neighbours.

In the neighbouring tribes of the Senior Zhuz the main line is C2: among Alban three quarters of the men belong to C2, among Dulat and Shaprashty more than two thirds, among Suan and Oshakty half and more. Among Ysty C2 is 11%, while six men in ten stand on J1, a line that is 3% among Kazakhs as a whole. This one tribe holds 51% of all its carriers in the corpus.

J1 is the line of the Middle East and the Caucasus. Bedouins have one of its highest shares, four men in five, and Yemenis, Dargins and Laks three quarters. In the Caucasus it reaches further north, to the Avars and the Chechens, while in Central Asia there is almost none of it: 12% among the Turkmen, half that among the Uzbeks. Ysty have more of it than the Chechens, and more than any people of Central Asia:

Inside J1 there are two large branches, the Arabian and the Caucasian-Iranian. The Arabian one stands behind the high shares on the Arabian Peninsula and in Mesopotamia, and Ysty do not have it: its marker was found in none of those tested.

In the other tribes J1 is far rarer:

Shaprashty 11%, Uak 8%, Argyn 6%, Oshakty 5%.

By the shezhire Ysty is the son of Zhalmambet and grandson of Baidibek, and the tribe's two clans, Oiyk and Tilik, descend from Zhauatar, the son of Ysty. Both stand on J1:

Among Oshakty, Ysty's brother by the shezhire, the main line is a different one — C2.

Ysty roamed along the Shu and the Talas, along the Ile and Lake Balkhash, along the southern slopes of the Karatau. The tribe's battle cry is “Zhauatar”: going into battle, Ysty called out the name of the ancestor from whom both their clans descend.

Shezhire and the line say the same

Four lines came to the steppe from different directions, and each became the main line of its own tribe. But that is not what makes these tribes alike. In each of the four, the shezhire traces several divisions to one ancestor — and they stand on one line.

The three divisions of Naiman descended from Tolegetai — Karakerei, Matai, Sadyr — are all on the eastern line. Among Argyn the descendants of Meiram stand on G1. Both houses of Kangly, from the two wives of Keldibek, are on Q. Both clans of Ysty, from Zhauatar, are on J1.

The shezhire was memorised and retold for centuries before the first test. In four tribes out of four it agrees with the paternal line.