Occupational hazards of the middleman minority

 Echoes, Folkways  2 Responses »
Jul 212011
 

An interesting segment in China’s cosmopolitan empire: the Tang dynasty (Lewis, 2009):

By the ninth century, the Uighurs’ domination of the money-lending profession in Chang’an had become notorious, and these foreigners were universally despised for their arrogance and contempt for Chinese law. In the early decades of the ninth century, as prices steadily rose, many Chinese businessmen and officials fell into debt to the Uighurs and were forced to pledge land, furniture, slaves, and even sacred relics or family heirlooms to their Turkic creditors. When a Uighur murdered a Chinese merchant in broad daylight, he was helped to escape by his chief while the Chinese government stood by helpless. (170)
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Qitayliq blacksmiths of Turkic Siberia

 Unlikely Peregrines  No Responses »
Jul 012011
 

V.J. Butanaev writes:

Also interesting here is the shared phrase for ‘skilled master blacksmith’ — Xakas/Shor xɨdat us, Kyrgyz kɨldat usta, as well as Yakut kɨtat basxɨ ‘protector spirit of blacksmiths’, in which the first word literally denotes ‘Chinese’. The presence of this metaphor in Xakas, Kyrgyz and Yakut for signifying blacksmith skills suggests that the ancestors of these peoples either received their blacksmiths or their blacksmith training from China. The migration of the Yenisei Kirghiz southward and the Yakut northward out of South Siberia took place, probably, already during the Mongol period, since xɨdat (<'Khitan') derives from the Mongol word for China (cf. contemporary Khalkha Mongolian xjatad ‘China’).


This is especially interesting when you consider how the metallurgical prowess of the Türks had, by the sixth century, already famously situated them as the “blacksmith slaves” of the Jou-jan/Juan-juan/Rou-ran Kaghanate (against whom, under the leadership of Bumin, they successfully revolted with the assistance of the Wei Dynasty), and how the Yenisei Kirghiz appear to be described as working meteoric iron by the time of their appearance in Tang records. More on this later.

Butanaev, V.J. (2004). Linguistic Reflections of Xakas Ethnohistory, in E.J. Vajda (Ed.), Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia (pp. 215-34). Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins.