The barbarian’s periphery of Byzantine Empire (some arguments about the origin of Turk’s tribes)

Abstract

This article describes some of barbarians in the northern periphery of the Byzantine Empire. The barbaric periphery of Byzantium in the early Middle Ages was quite diverse. World historiography is rich in research on Western European barbarians. There are still many questions about the nomadic peoples that appeared at different times on the territory of the Dnieper, the Black Sea and the Danube, and their relations with the Byzantine Empire in the early Middle Ages. Oriental scholars research the northeastern nomads separately, while the medieval Byzantine scholars focus on problems related to the inner life of the Empire. The foreign policy focus is mainly directed at the closer barbarians who established themselves in the territory of the West. However, there are many questions about cooperation between the Turkic nomads and romans during the period of their active contacts. Official diplomatic missions between two civilized worlds, thanks to the sources that describe embassies, allow us to see not only relations between empires, but also some ways of life, social structure and political organization in nomad’s states. In the context of the analysis of active contacts between the romans and the nomads, we turn to the problem of the origin of «barbarians»and their contacts with the Byzantines. The ethnogenesis of some Turkic peoples and their migration from northeast to southwest still raises more questions in the world historiography than answers. Our attempt to understand this situation is based mainly on Roman-Byzantine written evidence. A deliberately chosen analysis of the subjective Byzantine view of the origin of Turkic nomads clarifies some confusing situations regarding the researching of intercivilizational processes in Europe during the last period of the Great Migration.