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The eastern steppe, roughly north of the Great Wall of China, and extending westwards as far as the Dzungar basin (1), was dominated by the Uyghur Khaganate. The area of this entity was largely synonymous to that of the ancient Xiongnu and the previous eastern Gokturk khaganate. The latter came to an end in 745, when the Uyghurs killed its last khagan and sent his head to the court of the Tang dynasty in China (2).

Bayankhur khan ascended the throne a few years later, and embarked on a series of campaigns to bring the nomadic peoples of the eastern steppe under his rule. Having friendly relations with the Tang, he encouraged trade, using the profits to build the cities of Ordu-Baliq and Bai-Baliq.

Assisting the Tang emperor against the An Lushan rebellion was very profitable for the uyghurs, for seizing a great ammount of silk. This was not only seized during the sieges of Changan and Luoyang, but also as a payoff from the Tang emperor.

The year 762 became a landmark year for the Uyghur khaganate, for this year the khagan Tengri Bogu officially adopted Manichaeism as the state religion of the country. Culturally, despite living in close proximity of China, the culture was muh more influenced by the region of Sogida than by its southern neighbour. Even the very script used in the Khagante : The Orkhon script and the Uyghur script are thought to be descendants of the Sogdian abjad.

At the western border of the Uyghur khaganate were the lands of the Basmyls – frequently in rebellion against the Uyghurs. The Basmyls have by the end of the 8th century adopted Nestorian Christianity.

The central steppes, bound by the foothills of the Altai in the east, the Caspian Sea to the west , the Tengri mountains (3) and the Jaxartes basin to the south and the Siberian taiga to the north, remain in a rather disunited state of affairs, yet dominated by Turkic clans.

The Zhetysu, or Semirechie region lies between the lake Balkash and the Tengri mountains, being a little more protected region. The area had been ruled by the Turgesh in the early 8th century until the 766. The Turgesh were remnants of a larger Duolu clan, thought to have been linguistically Oghur Turks and they had been Manichean faithful.

In 766 the Zhetysu area was seized by the Karluks, another Turkic tribe. The incoming people remained Tengri pagan, yet within their realm, there were sizeable populations of Manichean (Turgesh and Yagma) and Nestorian (Chigils) faithful.

As for the remaining parts of the central steppe, the lower Jaxartes was held by the so-called Kangar union in the first half of the 8th century. Their origin is unknown, and may have been identical with the Pechenegs, who are known to have occupied the area in the second half of the century. They are thought to have spoken an Oghur language (4). The areas north of the Jaxartes basin , however, were populated by the Kimek clans, who had by this time been manicheized (5). The Kimek language belonged to a different branch of the Turkic languages, known as the Kipchak branch

The areas between the Caspian and the Aral Sea were held by the Oghuz, as for some returned to the Steppe after losin Parthia to the Mihranids. Of course not called as such at this point, but for our readers´reference.

Further northwards, there is a nrrow corridor between the northern edge of the Caspian Sea and the southern end of the Ural mountains, and here, the central steppe region ends and here begins the region of the western steppes.

The area is found north of the Pontic (Black) and Caspian Seas, forming the southern part of eastern Europe, and technically being synonymous to the area known to Greeks as Scythia during the antiquity. Since then, it was also culturally influence by Greeks, who had founded colonies on the entirety of the north Pontic coast.

Historians had been speculating on why all major migrations along the steppe occurred from east to west, and not the other way round, and why the western steppe appeared to be on the recieving end of the horde invasions. One of the answers may the differences in the surrounding environments. Should the eastern steppe face population pressures, the only meaningful target to invade would have been China, yet should this fail due to the unity of China, the surplus populations would continue westwards, as moving into Siberia was not attractive. The western steppe offfers a variety of weaker targets for invasion : the lower Danube, Pannonia, Shirvan, Ruthenia, to name just a few. The tribes at the westernmost edges were exposed to a strong pressure to civlize themselves, or face campaigns of settled neighbours to conform.

The principal core areas of settlement appear on the lower Idhel river – around the city of Atil (5), in Crimea and at the confluence of the Kama river and the middle Idhel river. The whole western steppes were dominated at this period by the Khazar khaganate, originally restricted to an area between the Caucasus, the lower Don, the lower Idhel and the Caspian and Pontic sea in the first half of the 7th century; yet by the mid-eighth century it had come to extend its rule as far west as the Dniepr, as far east as the sea of Aral, and northwards to the confluence of the Kama and Idhel; the Volgaic Boulghars beyond the two rivers were tributaries of the Khazars by the year 800. The khanate has vassalized much of the western coast of the Caspian Sea : their major cities were located in the northern parts of the Caspian coast, Semender and Balanjar, and they controlled also the city of Derbent. They vassalized the area even further south to the Apsheron peninsula untile the Kura-Araxes estuary (6)

As for the ethnic composition of the Khanate, one must presume that the area was rather multiethnic. The northern slopes of the Caucasus were home to a variety of tribes. The better known were the Alans, living along the Terek, of the east Iranian stock. Their western neighbours were the Circassians, to the southeast, the southern part of the area known as Dagestan was inhabited by a great variety of tribes and peoples. These were however consolidated into a kingdom of Sarir, which embaced the Miaphysite brand of Christianity from Aghbania further south.

The majority populace, however spoke a Turkic language of the Oghur stock : apart from the Khazar people themselves, there were also Sabir, remnants of Huns and Boulghars and others as well. In the northern areas, for example, there were also Uralic peoples: the Mordva people.

As for the religious breakdown, the nobility and royalty of the Khazar khaganate adopted Judaism, which penetrated also among the Alans and peoples of the Volga basin. Zoroastrianism maintained a presence in the Apsheron peninsula and Derbent, while Armenian merchants have built churches in the urban centers of the realm.

The Magyars, originally a Finno-Ugric tribe of the same stock as the Yugric peoples of the Ob river basin are thought to have been the southernmost tribe in this grouping, and moved into the steppe, which drove them far westwards from their original homeland. By the mid 8th century, they quit their homeland near the Kuban river in the borders of Khazaria to move westwards to Levedia , between the lower Dniepr and the Dniestr. They were joined by a group of other Khazar rebels, who entered into historiography as the Kabars.

The Magyars moving westwards resulted in the East-Slavic population of the Prut and Dniester valleys to fortify their settlements. Many of them had by now accepted the authority of Bulgar khagan, ruling over much of the lower Danube areas. The northwestern borders of Bulgaria were thus the Carpathian mountains. The areas beyond the Carpathinas, the Pannonian Sarpatia and ancienty Dacia, remained, at least nominally ruled by the Avars. (7).

As for Crimea, the southern coastal stripe remains settled by Greeks, sujugated to the Rhomaic empire: the rest of the peninsula, populated mostly by Crimean Goths, had to accept Khazar suzerainty, yet they adopted a lot of cultural influences from the neighbouring Ponitc colonies, and as such they can be found fully within the Rhomaic cultural sphere.

Outside of the area controlled by the Khazars remained the Bashkirs, a people found to the west of the southern reaches of the Urals, neighbouring the Volga Boulgharia to the west.
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As for the taiga, the area north of the steppe, the sources for those areas are scarce. The north European taiga continued to be populated by Uralic language speakers, as well as the Ob river valley. A rough division can be seen between the Baltic Finnic peoples in the region of Gulf of Finland, the lakes etc., the Finno-Volgaic peoples, mainly the Mordvinians and the Cheremis, as well as other peoples, such as Muromians, Mescherans and the Merya, and the Finno-Permic peoples west of the northern Ural.

The Samoyedic peoples were inhabiting the Ob river basin, east of the Urals. A large part of the Yenissey basin was populated by the Ket and their relatives. As for the eastern parts of Siberia, they remain populated by hunter-gatherer or reindeer hearding Paleo-Siberian peoples, such as Yukaghir of the Lena basin, or the Chukchi further east.

The areas between the upper reaches of the Ob river and the Tuva are thought to have been the homeland of the Turkic Kyrgyz people. Other Turkic peoples, such as the Kurikans (8) lived in the areas northwest of the lake Baikal. To the east of the mentioned lake dwelt the ancestors of the Evenks




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