Sygnak, the hillfort

"The importance of the hillfort of Sygnak for studying the history of the people is great: it was the capital of Desht-i Kypchak (XI-XIII centuries), Ak Orda (XIV-XV centuries), the Kazakh Khanate (XV-XVI centuries)" [Zholdasbayev, 2010, p. 82]. According to K.A. Akishev, Sygnak is the second hillfort after Otrar in terms of its scientific significance [Akishev, 1972, p. 207].

Sygnak is a vivid material evidence in the history of the rooting of Islam. Archaeologists have excavated mosques, madrassas, khanaka and mausoleums. The famous preacher of Islam was Sunak-ata and his descendants. Sheikh Baba Sygnaki and Husam al-Din al-Hussein al-Sygnaki were famous descendants of Sygnak [Zholdasbayev, 2010, p. 87]. There is a legend that the representatives of the Sunak family are descendants of the inhabitants of Sygnak, who left the city at its desolation. Sacred value, certainly, has Sygnak's tomb - a cult place, memory of which keeps a history. "The graves and tombs of all Uzbek khans from the Shibanovs, whose yurts were close to Turkestan in the olden days, are located in Sygnak itself and in its district..." ... of the famous Desht khans, the coffin of everyone who was about to die was necessarily delivered to Sygnak, and a building similar to a dome was erected over his grave," writes Ruzbikhan [Ruzbikhan].

In Sygnak are buried such famous personalities in history, as, for example, Khan of Ak Orda Erzen, famous Sheibanids, as well as the founder of the "Ulus Shibana", or "the state of nomadic Uzbeks", Abu-l-Khair Khan. The activities of Abu-l-Khair and his dynasty are connected with the most important events related to the formation of statehood among the Uzbeks and Kazakhs. It should also be noted that the Sheibanids played a key role in the fall of the Timurid power in Central Asia and, as a consequence, created the prerequisites for the unification of India under the rule of the Moguls, a side branch of the expelled Timurid people.

The name of the city is well known from written sources and coins minted here in the XIV century. The city of Sygnak was first mentioned in the sources of the X century, and in the XI century it was named Mahmud Kashgarian among the cities of Oguzes. In the XII century Sygnak became the capital of the Kypchak state association. The Arab geographer Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Idrisi, the author of one of the largest and most interesting geographical works of the Middle Ages, "Nuzkhat al mushtak fiikh birah al-afak" ("Entertainment of the exhausted in wanderings in the regions"), written by order of Sicilian king Roger II (1098-1154), reported: "The cities of the Oguzes are numerous; they stretch one after another to the north and east. They have impregnable mountains and impregnable fortresses there, where their princes hide and where they store their food supplies. There are people (appointed by the princes) who protect this land... The main city of theirs (Guz tribe)..." [MITT, 1939].

Al-Idrisi's information is corroborated by other no less well-known medieval authors. In the XI century Mahmud Kashgari wrote that the Oguzes called the Syr Darya "the river uguz", and he classified Sauran, Sygnak, Sutkent, Karachuk and Karnak as the cities of Guzes. His map shows the area of "guz towns" south of the Karachuk Mountains in the Middle Syrdarya basin [MITT, 1939]. The XIII century historian Juweini has a description of the defeat of the city by the Mongols in 1220 in retaliation for the resistance. He writes that a detachment of Juchi/Zhoshy moved down the Syr Darya River, taking one city after another. Juchi was accompanied by two local merchants, Hassan Khoja and Ali Khoja. Hassan Khoja was sent to Sygnak to persuade the residents to surrender, but the residents killed the traitor and resisted. It was only after a seven-day assault that Sygnak was taken, and the entire population was slaughtered.

Life in the cities of Syr Darya was suspended for a long time, some of which remained in the ruins. Plano Karpini, who was passing through the ruined cities of the lower reaches of the Syr Darya after 25 years, wrote in his diary: "In this land we found countless destroyed cities, destroyed fortresses and many devastated villages".

However, Sygnak was able to be reborn and achieve his former greatness. How do you know if the Sygnak people' freedom and contempt for their enemies contributed to this? It is not without reason that one of the poems cited by Ruzbikhan [Ruzbikhan] said:

In the past, this country was free from worries,

It was the whereabouts of knowledge people,

The author of the essay "Nihaya" came from it;

It was the interpreter of Hidai's difficult places.

If we had to live on a share of our lives,

We'd be sygnaks for the second time, too.

Academician V.V. Bartold (1869-1930) during his trip to Istanbul wrote these verses from the manuscript of the medieval poet Fazl Allah ibn Ruzbikhan, a native of Sygnak. It was the work "Mihmanname-i Bukhara" ("Notes of the Bukhara guest"), which was kept in the library of Nur-Osmaniya. V.V. Bartold passed the poems to the Russian scientist, researcher of Central Asia and Kazakhstan A.Yu. Yakubovsky (1886-1953), who used them as an epigraph to his article "Ruins of the city of Sygnak".

In the middle of the XIII century Sygnak under the name of Sgnah was mentioned only once in the list of cities visited by the Armenian king Getum I on his way to Mongolia. In the second half of the XIV century the city became the capital of Ak Orda. Sygnak was ruled by the khans Erzen, his son Mubarak Khoja, Uruskhan and Tokhtamysh. There was a mint here, and intensive construction was carried out.After Tokhtamysh's unsuccessful struggle with Timur, the city was captured by the grandson of Timur Ulugbek, who tried to establish himself on the Syr Darya, but suffered a defeat in 1423 and was thrown back to Central Asia by the troops of Barak, the grandson of Urus Khan. It is clear from the above mentioned what importance Sygnak played, located on the border with the constantly bubbling, turbulent steppe. It is possible to reign here only on the condition that Sygnak and the fertile plain around the city, inhabited and maintained by farmers, are in possession.

Not only political and strategic, but also a large economic center was Sygnak. In XVI-XVIII centuries it belonged to the Kazakhs and was the largest city in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya. This is the evidence of Ruzbikhan's trade activity: "... merchants of the possessions and localities of Desht-i Kypchak up to the limits of the river Yedil (Volga - Author's note)... made the town of Sygnak a place of their warehouses and brought here goods. Merchants of Turkestan, Maverannahr from the East - up to the limits of Kashgar, Khotan bring to Sygnak the goods of these countries and make trade transactions and exchange with people of Desht. As these trade transactions are the place where merchants from different countries and good, and merchandise there in abundance" and "...from the trustworthy people of that country it became known that in the past and previous epochs in this landscaped possession and the country abundant joys there were so many residents and inhabitants, that every day in the markets fried five hundred camels and in the evening in the bazaars there was not a single piece. Indeed, this land is capable of such an arrangement. The irrigation canals of its cultivated fields are all brought out of the river Seyhun" [Ruzbihan].

Sygnak hillfort has the form of an irregular pentagon. In its topography, the Shakhristan with the citadel, located in the south-eastern part, is distinguished. The height of the rampart above the surrounding area sometimes reaches 6-7 m, the remains of 15 towers in the form of large hillocks, towering above the rampart at 1.5 m. The towers are located on each corner, one of which is on the very corner and the other two are on both sides of the corner tower, 40-50 m from the corner. The height of the hillfort is 4-5 m higher than the surrounding area. The outer slopes of the rampart are rather steep, while the inner slopes are quite distant. The area of the citadel is 7.2 ha, it is the most fortified part of the hillfort. The height of the rampart, which has become a fortress wall, reaches 6-7 m. Three round towers protruding outward were functioning in five corners. The dimensions of the sides of Shakhristan are as follows: the northern one - 250 m, the western one - 360 m, the southern one - 250 m and the south-eastern one - 450 m, the north-eastern one - 350 m. The total area of the settlement is 40.1 hectares. There were two entrances to the territory of the ancient settlement - in the centers of the western and northern sides. The entrance to the citadel, reinforced by two sections of walls protruding 20 m, is arranged in the eastern wall closer to the north-eastern corner.

Archaeologists have excavated several fundamental buildings made of burnt bricks (mausoleums, madrassas, mosques), located both in the territory of Shakhristan and outside the city walls. In the vicinity of the fields were cultivated, irrigated with canals from the Syr Darya Tomen-Aryk and Buzgil-Uzak, as well as ditches from the mountain rivers flowing down from Karatau - Mynbulak, Chulak, Arslandy, Kyzyl-Tala, Kelte-Chagiz, whose beds are still preserved in the area of the hillfort. The Sunak-ata canal passes through the southern, southwestern and western sides of the village of Tomenaryk, and near the village of Sunak-ata it is divided into two branches. The first passes on the eastern side of the village, while the second passes on the southwestern and western sides of the village and further reaches the medieval hillfort Sygnak. Mainly water supply to the medieval hillfort Sygnak and its surroundings was carried out through the canal Sunak-ata (medieval Tomen-Aryk). Historian Ruzbikhan writes that the residents of Sygnak, apart from agriculture, handicrafts and trade, are engaged in hunting. "The steppes around Sygnak are covered with grass and trees, where like sheep herds of wild goats, rams and other animals graze. Residents hunt them in summer and prepare meat for winter; game here is extremely cheap" [Ruzbikhan]. Nowadays, there is a dry steppe around the hillfort, covered with saxaul and thorny bushes. Low hillocks with burnt brick and tiles indicate the remnants of architectural structures, which were probably many in the vicinity of Sygnak.

In 1901 a member of the Turkestan archeological amateur group V. Kallaur examined and photographed the remains of the beautiful mausoleum of the XIV-XV centuries Kok-Kesene. In 1914 the building collapsed, and when in 1927 the orientalist A.Yu. Yakubovsky inspected the hillfort, and the mausoleum preserved only the foundations of the southern arch portal and a pile of ruins. "It was enough to resort to several blows of the tesha, - writes A.Yu. Yakubovsky, - as a large number of sky blue, blue, white tiles opened. Watering on them is of very high quality... Sky blue color of watering, being excellent in its tone from Samarkand and Bukhara tiles, is not inferior to the best of them ... A large piece of tiled mosaic was also found with sky blue, white, blue, yellow and red inserts. Finally, a piece of carved non-irrigated terracotta brick was also found on the surface. A quick inspection was enough to say that Kok-Kesene was a magnificent building on tile decoration" [Yakubovsky, 1929].

Kok-Kesene is one of the central mausoleums of the huge necropolis of Sygnak, on which noble people, khans, sultans of the Kazakh khanate and the State of nomadic Uzbeks rest. Sygnak is a monument of history and culture of national importance. In 2012, it was included in the preliminary list of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites as a component of the serial transnational Silk Roads nomination.