Ancient Rus was on the border of two worlds - the western, inhabited, and the eastern, wild. On the left hand of Kiev lay Europe - with cities, trade, monastic libraries and a single Christian faith. On the right hand stretched the Steppe, along which wild hordes roamed, differing in their dialect and appearance, but not intentions. They all came to rob and kill.
Rus and Byzantium were the first Europeans to face the Pechenegs. It was the 9th century. Until that time, the people of the Pechenegs had not yet gone so far to the west. It was formed from a mixture of the Turkic tribes of the Oghuz and Kipchaks, who migrated from Siberia, from the Irtysh, to the Aral Sea, and the Kangars, who lived in the Syr Darya basin before. There, in this Central Asian smelter, the Siberian Turks found themselves among a population alien to them, and almost without exception Muslim.
Settlers
The only people close in their way of life were the Kangars. Of course, the settlers began to enter into tribal unions and marry. It took a century and a half for ethnic boundaries to be completely blurred. The tribes grew, they roamed the vast territory between Khorezm and the Volga. But a climatic catastrophe struck, and new warlike settlers - the Khazars and Kimaks - moved to the west, from the depths of steppe Asia. The eastern Oguzes, the closest relatives, also stepped on their heels. From the Aral steppes it was necessary to get out even further west - to the Volga Levedia, where the Ugric tribes had lived for a long time.
The Ugrians preferred to flee, and the newcomers from the east settled across their territory - between the Urals and the Volga. In the east, their lands bordered on the Kimaks and Oguzes, in the south - with the Khazar Kaganate, in the west - with the ancient Russian Kiev state.
The eastern neighbors also tried to move to the west. But the Pechenegs, or, as they were called in Byzantium, the Patients, had nowhere to move - the scattered Slavic tribes unexpectedly quickly gained statehood. And if a nomadic tribe can still be driven off the land, then the state cannot be moved just like that. If the Pechenegs had come to the Kiev lands a century earlier, they would still have been able to take away someone else's territory. But at the end of the 9th century this was no longer possible. This is how the era of wars, reconciliation, semi-friendship and dynastic marriages between Kiev and the Pechenegs began.
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Kindred with blue eyes
The customs of these newcomers were the simplest: their whole life was determined by the movement behind their herds, which were both currency and a means of subsistence. Meat and milk, that is, everything that is needed for food, was provided by livestock. Leather and wool were used to manufacture clothing and footwear. The newcomers did not build permanent dwellings - their houses were made of felt and moved on carts. Easy to install, easy to assemble. They did not cultivate the land, did not grow cereals or vegetables. If they didn't have enough food, they simply raided their neighbors. The attacks were swift and merciless. Everything that could be carried away was carried away. Everything that cannot be carried away was destroyed. People were taken prisoner. There were two ways out of this captivity: either assimilation and assimilation to the conquerors, or selling on the slave market. For sale, slaves were taken to the Khazars, although they were at enmity with them, or even further south.
When the Pechenezh raids on the Slavs began, the nomads quickly realized the advantage of the new captives over all the previous ones: tall, strong, fair-skinned. And what women! Delight!
The conquerors themselves were small, dark-skinned, almost yellow-faced, narrow-eyed, black-haired. But not complete Mongoloids, as one might think. They had a mustache and beard, which they even cut.
Of course, no portraits of the Pechenegs have survived. All chroniclers emphasize, however, that their appearance was disgusting. That is, unusual for Europeans.
Presumably, the Pechenegs called themselves "Kangly" or "Kangyuy", the Chinese also called them. True, scientists doubt that the Kangyuis have anything to do with the Pechenegs. And the naming "Kangly" is correlated with the name of another people - the Kangars. A reference to the Kangars, as the original self-name of the Pechenegs, can also be found in the writings of the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. True, those Pechenegs with whom the Byzantines dealt preferred to call themselves pacinaks. And the steppe in which they roamed was called Patsinakskaya, or Padzinakskaya. Translated from the Turkic "padzinak" or "pacinak" means "son-in-law" or "brother-in-law". Simply put - a relative.
It is interesting that the Pechenegs distinguished between the “Turkic Pechenegs” and the “Khazar Pechenegs”, and this depended not only on which part of the steppe zone they lived in and to whom they obeyed or whom they served, but also on their origin. Apparently, the Pechenegs from different clans had ethnically different ancestors. For a couple of centuries of communication with the Slavs, the ethnic element has increased even more. From white-skinned Slavic slaves, completely white-skinned children were born. Perhaps that is why some chroniclers noted European features among the nomads, who should have been complete Mongoloids. Even sometimes blue eyes, that's how it happens …
Raiders
From the banks of the Volga, the Pechenegs tried to move to the generous southern steppes. And they moved closer and closer to the borders of the Kiev state. There were two waves of these Pechenezh invasions. One went straight to the west. The other is to the southwest. The first ones reached the Kiev lands, and then their movement stalled. The latter safely bypassed Kiev from the south and ended up in the Crimea. And then they went to the Eastern Carpathians and settled on the territory of modern Hungary, founding another Padzinakia. There they formed eight fems (regions): Irtim, Tsuras, Gila, Kulpei, Haravoi, Kostu, Hoponi, Tsopon. Moreover, to fight the Hungarians, they were used in 895 by the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon, who did not want the latter to settle near his border. The Pechenegs honestly worked out their reward - they drove the Magyars from the Black Sea region further west, to the Pannonian Plain.
The first clash with Kiev took place, according to some sources, back in 875, before the capture of Kiev by Oleg. But the second mention of the Pecheneg raids on Kiev is already quite reliable - 915 and 920 years. Under Prince Igor Kiev suffered several times from the raids of a nomadic enemy. However, the same Igor, 24 years later, entered into a military alliance with the Pechenegs, as Simeon had done earlier, to attack the Bulgarian (Bulgar) kingdom, which was at that time in alliance with Byzantium. The Pechenegs were conscientious mercenaries: for a good pay they were ready for anything. However, if they were suddenly promised a higher reward, they immediately forgot about their former ally. This is exactly what happened with the unfortunate prince Svyatoslav, who hired the Pechenegs for his Byzantine campaign. The Byzantine emperor assigned a higher fee to the Pechenezh Khan Kura. As a result, Kurya ambushed Svyatoslav, killed him, and made a cup for wine out of the skull. Nothing personal. Just business.
Dust under the hooves
Svyatoslav, killed by Kurei, managed to help the Pechenegs great - he destroyed the Khazar Khaganate. And it became much calmer in the steppe. But on the other hand, the Pechenezh khans became confident that it was they, the most powerful and glorious, who were making the steppe history. For more than half a century they lived in this great delusion. The princes themselves also helped the Pechenegs to believe in their own invulnerability. Vladimir did not succeed in breaking them completely. Yaroslav used them for fratricidal civil strife, and when the resource was completely depleted and the Pechenegs, emboldened, went to storm Kiev - he completely defeated them in 1036. The Pechenegs no longer wanted to tempt fate and fight with Kiev. On the contrary, they began to seek protection from Kiev.
After all, new settlers appeared in the steppe - the Polovtsians. By this time, of the many Pechenegs, only 13 tribes remained. The Kiev princes tamed them with cash infusions, and dynastic unions, and even partially converted them to Christianity. However, not everyone wanted to believe in Christ. The Pechenegs of Khan Tirakh unanimously adopted Islam. And in the Pechenezh environment, a terrible religious discord began. Those who wanted to become Christians even fled to Byzantium, and hordes of convinced pagans and Muslims wandered along the Black Sea steppes, with whom Byzantium had to wage a half-century war.
In 1091, the Byzantines managed to defeat the Pechenegs who had unexpectedly crossed the Danube. Moreover, it was not some small military detachment, but several tribes with full belongings, women and children. Almost all of them were killed. The Romans won the victory only because they hired to help themselves the same nomads - the Polovtsians. The surviving Pechenegs managed to escape and disperse among the other steppe inhabitants. And some remained in the Byzantine army. They no longer considered themselves either steppe dwellers or nomads. They crossed the line between savagery and civilization, becoming primarily Christians and preferring to forget about their origins. This is how the history of this people ended.
Nikolay KOTOMKIN