Cumans (
Byzantine Greek: Κο(υ)μάνοι,
Ko(u)manoi; ;
Turkic:
kuman / plural kumanlar) were a nomadic
Turkic people who inhabited a shifting area north of the
Black Sea known as
Cumania along the
Volga River. They eventually settled to the west of the Black Sea, influencing the politics of
Bulgaria,
Serbia,
Hungary,
Moldavia, and
Wallachia.
Cuman is an
exonym for the western
Kipchak tribes living in Central
Europe and the
Balkans.
The Cumans were nomadic warriors of the
Eurasian
steppe who exerted an enduring impact on the medieval Balkans. The basic instrument of Cuman political success was military force, which none of the warring Balkan factions could resist. As a consequence, groups of the Cumans settled and mingled with the local population in various regions of the Balkans. According to some historians Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (
Asenids,
Terterids, and
Shishmanids), and the Wallachian dynasty (
Basarabids)." However, in the case of the
Asenids and
Basarab dynasties, all Medieval documents refer to them as
Vlach (
Romanian) dynasties, so most historians attribue a Romanian origin to the dynasties. They also played an active role in Byzantium, Hungary, and Serbia, with Cuman immigrants being integrated into each country's elite.
The people known in Turkic as
Kipchaks were the same as the Polovtsy of the Russians, the Komanoi of the Byzantines, the Qumani (Cumans) of the Arab geographer
Muhammad al-Idrisi, and the Kun (Qoun) of the Hungarians. According to Gadrisi, they originally formed part of the group of
Kimak Turks who lived in
Siberia along the middle reaches of the
Irtysh River, or along the
Ob River. The Kimaks and the
Oghuz were closely related."
Etymology
It is a known fact that the Cumans called themselves "Kipçak", but the origin of this word is not clear. Several sources have tried to explain this,
Olzhas Suleimenov in his book
Az i Ya proposes the theory that the word "kipçak" came from their tribal
tamga (sign or emblem) that is represented by two sticks or two knives (iki pıçak). The modern tamga of the Qıpşaq tribe among the Kazakhs looks like two sticks but it is called "qos alıp" (double
alīf). This name probably was changed due to islamisation.
Another explanation is a combination of the words "Qu" or "Ku" (bright) and "Saq" (ethnonym, probably
Sakae/
Scythian).
The Russian word "polovtsy" (Пóловцы) has many different explanations. The most common is that it means "blonde" since the old Russian word "polovo" means "straw". The German word for Cumans was "Folban" (blonde). Another explanation was given by O. Suleymenov as "men of the field, steppe" from the Russian word "pole" - open ground, field, not to be confused with "polyane" (cf. Greek "polis" - city). A third explanation of the word was also made by O. Suleymenov which stated that the name "polovtsy" came from a word for "blue-eyed," since the
Serbo-Croatian word "plav" literally means "blue".
History
Asia in 1200 AD, showing the Cumans and their neighbors.
Originally inhabiting the prairies of southern
Siberia and northern
Kazakhstan the Cumans entered the grassland of Eastern Europe in the 11th century, from where they continued to assault the
Byzantine Empire, the
Kingdom of Hungary, and
Rus.
Ladislaus I of Hungary defeated the Cumans who attacked the Kingdom of Hungary in 1089.
In 1091 the
Pechenegs, a
semi-nomadic Turkic people of the prairies of southwestern
Eurasia, were decisively defeated as an independent force at the
Battle of Levounion by the combined forces of a
Byzantine army under Byzantine Emperor
Alexios I Komnenos and a Cuman army under Togortok and Maniak. Attacked again in 1094 by the Cumans, many Pechenegs were again slain. The remnants of the Pechenegs fled to Hungary, as the Cumans themselves would do a few decades later: fearing the
Mongol invasion, in 1229, they asked asylum from
Béla IV of Hungary.
In alliance with the
Bulgarians and
Vlachs during the
Vlach-Bulgar Rebellion by brothers Asen and Peter of
Tarnovo, the Cumans are believed to have played a significant role in the rebellion's final victory over Byzantium and the restoration of Bulgaria's independence (1185). The Cumans were allies with Bulgarian emperor
Kaloyan in the
Bulgarian-Latin Wars.
Although the Cumans initially had managed to defeat the Great Prince
Vladimir Monomakh of Kievan Rus in the 12th century (at the
Battle of the Stugna River) later they were defeated by the combined forces of Russian principalities leaded by Monomakh and forced out of the Rus borders to Caucasus. Many Cumans at that time resettled into Georgia were they achieved prominent positions and helped Georgians to stop the advance of Seljuks. After the death of warlike Monomakh in 1125 Cumans returned to the steppe along the Rus borders.
Like most other peoples of medieval
Eastern Europe, they put up resistance against the relentlessly advancing
Mongols, but they were finally crushed in 1238. Previously, in 1229, they had asked for asylum from king Béla IV of Hungary, who in 1238 finally offered refuge to the remainder of the Cuman people under their leader
Kuthen (Hungarians spelled his name Kötöny). Kuthen in turn vowed to convert his 40,000 families to Christianity. King Béla hoped to use the new subjects as auxiliary troops against the Mongols, who were already threatening Hungary. The king assigned various parts of central Hungary to the Cuman tribes. A tense situation erupted when Mongol troops burst into Hungary. The Hungarians, frustrated by their own helplessness, took revenge on the Cumans, whom they accused of being Mongol spies. After a bloody fight the Hungarians killed Kuthen and his bodygards, and the remaining Cumans fled to the Balkans. After the Mongol invasion Béla IV of Hungary recalled the Cumans to Hungary to populate settlements devastated by war. The nomads subsequently settled throughout the
Great Hungarian Plain. Throughout the following centuries the Cumans in Hungary were granted various rights, the extent of which depended on the prevailing political situation. Some of these rights survived until the end of the 19th century, although the Cumans had long since assimilated with Hungarians.
The Cumans who remained scattered in the prairie of what is now southwest Russia joined the
Golden Horde khanate and their descendants became assimilated with local
Tartar populations.
The Cumans who remained east and south of the
Carpathian Mountains established a country named Cumania, in an area consisting of
Moldavia and
Walachia. The Hungarian kings claimed supremacy on the territory of Cumania, among the nine titles of the Hungarian kings of the
Árpád and
Anjou dynasties were
rex Cumaniae.
The Cuman influence in the region of Wallachia and Moldavia was so strong that the earliest Wallachian rulers bore Cuman names (Tihomir and Bassarab I). In lack of convincing archaeological evidence of a Cuman civilisation, however, it appears the Cumans did not constitute the majority of local population, but they made up part of the ruling elite in Wallachia. As in case of Bulgaria, this ruling elite was gradually assimilated by the majority population they governed, which became Romanian.
Basarab I, son of the Wallachian prince
Tihomir of Wallachia obtained independence from Hungary at the beginning of the 14th century. The name Basarab is considered as being of Cuman origin, meaning "Father King".
It is generally believed that the Bulgarian mediaеval dynasties
Asen,
Shishman and
Terter had at least some Cuman roots.
Culture
Robert de Clari described Cumans as nomadic warriors, who did not use houses, or farm, but rather lived in tents, and ate milk, cheese and meat. The horses had a sack for feeding attached to the
bridle, and in a day and a night they can ride
seven days of walking (Mansio), they go on campaign without any baggage, and when they return they take everything they can carry, they wear
sheepskin and were armed with composite bows and arrows. They pray to the first animal they see in the morning.
Religion
In the 13th century, the Western Cumans adopted
Roman Catholicism (in Hungary they all later became
Calvinist) and the
Gagauzes Pravoslav/Orthodox, while the Eastern Cumans converted to
Islam. The Catholic
Diocese of Cumania founded in
Milcov in 1227 and including what is now
Romania and
Moldova, retained its title until 1523. It was a suffragan of the
Archdiocese of Esztergom in Hungary.
Legacy
While the Cumans were gradually absorbed into eastern European populations, their trace can still be found in placenames as widespread as the city of
Kumanovo in the Northeastern part of the
Republic of Macedonia; a Slavic village named Kumanichevo in the Kostur (Kastoria) district of Greece, which was changed to
Lithia after Greece obtained this territory in the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest,
Comăneşti in
Romania, and
Comana in
Dobruja (also
Romania).
As the Mongols pushed westwards and devastated their state, most of the Cumans fled to the Bulgarian Empire as they were major military allies. The Bulgarian Tsar Ivan-Asen II settled them in the southern parts of the country, bordering the Latin Empire and the Thessallonikan Despotate. Those territories are present-day Turkish Europe and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The Cumans also settled in Hungary and had their own self-government there in a territory that bore their name,
Kunság, that survived until the 19th century. There, the name of the Cumans (
Kun) is still preserved in county names such as
Bács-Kiskun and
Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok and town names such as
Kiskunhalas and
Kunszentmiklós.
The Cumans were organized into four tribes in Hungary: Kolbasz/Olas in the big Cumania around Karcag, and the other three in the lesser Cumania.
The other Cuman group in Hungary is the
Palóc group, the name deriving from the Slav Polovetz. They live in northern Hungary and current Slovakia and have a specific dialect. Their Cuman origin is not documented as is the other two Cuman territories, but their name derives from the above word. They have a very special "a" sound close to Turkish "a", unlike Hungarian pronunciation.
Unfortunately, the Cuman language disappeared from Hungary in the 17th century, possibly following the Turkish occupation. Their 19th century biographer, Gyárfás István, in 1870 was of the opinion that they originally spoke Hungarian, together with the
Iazyges population. Despite this mistake, he has the best overview on the subject concerning details of material used.
In addition, toponyms of
Cuman language origin can be found especially in the Romanian counties of
Vaslui and
Galaţi, including the names of both counties.
In the countries where the Cumans were assimilated, family surnames derived from the words for "Cuman" (such as
coman or
kun, "kuman") are not uncommon. Traces of the Cumans are the Bulgarian surnames Kunev or Kumanov (feminine Kuneva, Kumanova), its Macedonian variants Kunevski, Kumanovski (feminine Kumanovska), and the widespread Hungarian surname Kun. This name was also used as a magyarized version of the Jewish-German name
Kohn/Cohen, like for the communist leader
Béla Kun. The names "Coman" in Romania and its derivatives however do not appear to have any connection to the medieval Cumans, as it was unrecorded until very recent times and the places with the highest frequency of such names has not produced any archaeological evidence of Cuman settlement.
[Spinei, Victor. The Cuman Bishopric - Genesis and Evolution. in The Other Europe: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans. Edited by Florin Curta and Roman Kovalev. Brill Publishing. 2008. p. 64]The Cumans appear in Rus culture in the
The Tale of Igor's Campaign and are the Rus' military enemies in
Alexander Borodin's
opera Prince Igor, which features a set of "
Polovtsian Dances".
See also
