The Tuhsis were a Middle Turkic tribe, who lived alongside the Chigil, Yagma, and other tribes, in Jetisu and today southern Kazakhstan.
Origins
Tuhsi were considered remnants of the Türgesh people.
[Gumilyov, L. Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The trefoil of the Bird's Eye View Ch. 5: The Shattered Silence (961-1100)][Pylypchuk, Ya. "Turks and Muslims: From Confrontation to Conversion to Islam (End of VII century - Beginning of XI Century)" in UDK 94 (4): 95 (4). In Ukrainian] Turkologist
Yury Zuev noted a nation (國) named 觸水昆 (Mand.
Chùshuǐkūn < *
t͡ɕʰɨok̚-ɕˠiuɪX-kuən) in Jiu Tangshu,
[ Jiu Tangshu vol 194 lower][Zuev Yu.A., "Horse Tamgas from Vassal Princedoms (translation of Chinese composition "Tanghuiyao" of the 8th to 10th centuries)", Kazakh SSR Academy of Sciences, Alma-Ata, 1960, pp. 124 (in Russian).] so he reconstructed 觸水昆 as *
Tuhsi-kun; however, Nurlan Kenzheakhmet noted that
Tongdian's authors
[ Tongdian vol. 199] transcribed the same ethnonym as 觸木昆 (Mand.
Yueban < *
t͡ɕʰɨok̚-muk̚-kuən), the name of a
Duolu Turk tribe, also transcribed as 處木昆 (
Chǔmùkūn <
t͡ɕʰɨʌX-muk̚-kuən).
It's unclear whether the ethnonym Tuhsi is of Turkic origin.[Minorsky, V. "Commentary" on "§17. The Tukhs" in Ḥudūd al'Ālam. Translated and Explained by V. Minorsky. p. 300] Tuhsi may be connected to Cuman clan Toqsoba, if Toqsoba did not derive from Common Turkic toquz "nine" and oba "clan".[Golden, Peter B. "The Polovci Dikii" in Harvard Ukrainian Studies Vol. 3/4, Part 1. pp. 296-309] Hungarian orientalist Karoly Czeglédy compares the name Tuhsi to that of a medieval Eastern Iranian-speaking Alans-As[Abaev, V.I.; Bailey, H.W. (1985). "ALANS". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. I, Fasc. 8. pp. 801–803][Alemany, Agustí (2000). Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation. BRILL. p. 1-7] tribe Duχs-Aṣ, located in the North Caucasus by ibn Rustah, and proposes that Tuhsis had been of Iranian-speaking Asioi origins.[Golde, P.B. (1992) "An Introduction to the History of the Turkic peoples", Turcologia 9. p. 53]
Culture
By the 11-century, Tuhsis led a nomadic lifestyle amongst the
Turkic peoples and on the steppe, possessed a Turkic culture, and their language belonged to the
Turkic languages language family. According to
Karakhanid lexicographer Mahmud of Kashgar, contemporary Tuhsis were Turkic-speaking
monoglots; after carefully analyzing linguistic materials collected from Tuhsi dialect, he praised the Tuhsi Turkic dialect, among others, for being "pure" and "most correct", both in terms of accent and vocabulary.
[Maħmūd al-Kašğari. "Dīwān Luğāt al-Turk". Edited & translated by Robert Dankoff in collaboration with James Kelly. In Sources of Oriental Languages and Literature. (1982). Part I. p. 82-84]
Notes
