The PECHENEGS A semi-nomadic people of Turkic stock, emerging out of Central Asia from the 7th century
CE. Their Qagans were apparently Manichaean refugees from Transoxiana, and may have had a connection to the Oghuz. In control of much of the land between the Don and the lower Danube by the 10th century, they forced the Magyars before them into central Europe and were harried incessantly by the Khazars behind them. Slowly driven southward by the Russians, they repeatedly raided Thrace, and were in almost continual conflict with the Byzantines (who referred to them as "Patzinaks"). Their power was broken once and for all in 1092, by a combined Byzantine-Cuman army, but they did not completely disappear before about 1200. They are fairly poorly documented, and the
following list is very fragmentary.
The first eight entries, from Choban to Tolmach, represent local tribes or septs...
CHOBAN Batahan............................................mid 900's
followed by...
Bula
CHOR Kyugel.............................................mid 900's followed by...
Kuerchi
ERTIM (Erdem) Baichamid..............................................900's followed by...
Yavdy
GYULA Korkutkhan.........................................mid 900's followed by...
Kabukschin
KAPAN Yazy...............................................mid 900's
KARABAI Kardukhm...........................................mid 900's
KUKHEI Ipa................................................mid 900's followed by
Sura
TOLMACH Kortan.............................................mid 900's followed by...
Boru Khan
KANGARAS
Kurya........................................fl. 970's-980's
Kurya seems to have established some manner of dominence over much if not all of the Pecheneg people...
Metiga..........................................fl. c. 988
Kuchug.............................................fl. 990's
Rodaman.........................................fl. c. 1000
Ilday..............................................fl. 11th century
Tyrach......................................fl. 1040's-1050's
??
Temir......................................fl. c. 1175-1200 I cannot forebear from mentioning that Kurya is notorious for having a drinking goblet made of Knyaz Svyatoslav of Kiev's skull, following his demise in battle, 972. This use for enemy skulls seems to have been something of a tradition on the steppes; Herodotus mentions the same custom among the Scythians in the same region, 1500 years before Kurya.