Keraites


The Keraites were one of the five dominant Mongol or Turco-Mongol tribal confederations in the Altai-Sayan region during the 12th century. They had converted to the Church of the East in the early 11th century and are one of the possible sources of the European Prester John legend.
Their original territory was expansive, corresponding to much of what is now Mongolia. Vasily Bartold located them along the upper Onon and Kherlen rivers and along the Tuul river. They were defeated by Genghis Khan in 1203 and became influential in the rise of the Mongol Empire, and were gradually absorbed into the succeeding Turco-Mongol khanates during the 13th century.

Name

In modern Mongolian, the confederation is spelled Хэрэйд,. In English, the name is primarily adopted as Keraites, alternatively Kerait, or Kereyit, in some earlier texts also as Karait or Karaites.
One common theory sees the name as a cognate with the Mongolian хар/khar and Turkic qarā for "black, swarthy". There have been various other Mongol and Turkic tribes with names involving the term, which are often conflated.
According to the early 14th-century work Jami' al-tawarikh by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, Mongol legend traced the clan back to eight brothers with unusually dark faces and the confederation they founded. Kerait was the name of the leading brother's clan, while the clans of his brothers are recorded as Jirkin, Konkant, Sakait, Tumaut, Albat.
Other researchers also suggested that the Mongolian name Khereid may be an ancient totem name derived from the root Kheree for "raven".

History

Origins

The Keraites first enter into history as the ruling faction of the Zubu confederacy, a large alliance of tribes that dominated Mongolia during the 11th and 12th centuries and often fought with the Liao Dynasty of northern China, which controlled much of Mongolia at the time.
It is unclear whether the Keraites should be classified as Turkic
or Mongol in origin. The names and titles of early Keraite leaders suggest that they were speakers of a Turkic language, but coalitions and incorporation of sub-clans may have led to Turco-Mongol amalgamation from an early time.
They consisted of eight Mongolic tribes, including the Khereid, Jirkhin, Khonkhoid, Sukhait, Albat, Tumaut, Dunghaid and the Khirkh.
The Khereid tribe is called both Mongolian and Turkic by different accounts. All of Khereid tribal names being explainable in Mongolian language and all of tribal names
end with Mongolic plural suffix "d" and singular suffix "n". Plural suffix "d" and singular suffix "n" being popular among the Mongol tribes.
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani says in the Jami' al-tawarikh :
They are first noted in Syriac Church records which mention them being absorbed into the Church of the East around AD 1000 by Metropolitan Abdisho of Merv.

Khanate

After the Zubu confederacy broke up, the Keraites retained their dominance on the steppe right up until they were absorbed into Genghis Khan's Mongolian state.
At the height of its power, the Keraites khanate was organized along the same lines as the Naimans and other powerful steppe tribes of the day.
A section is dedicated to the Keraites by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, the official historian of the Genghisid court in Persia, in his Jami' al-tawarikh.
The people was divided into a "central" faction and an "outer" faction. The central faction served as the khan's personal army and was composed of warriors from many different tribes with no loyalties to anyone but the Khan. This made the central faction more of a quasi-feudal state than a genuine tribe. The "outer" faction was composed of tribes that pledged obedience to the khan, but lived on their own tribal pastures and functioned semi-autonomously. The "capital" of the Keraite khanate was a place called Orta Balagasun, which was probably located in an old Uyghur or Khitan fortress.
Markus Buyruk Khan, was a Keraite leader who also led the Zubu confederacy. In 1100, he was killed by the Liao Dynasty.
Kurchakus Buyruk Khan was a son and successor of Bayruk Markus, among whose wives was Toreqaimish Khatun, daughter of Korchi Buiruk Khan of the Naiman.
Kurchakus's younger brother was Gur Khan. Kurchakus Buyruk Khan had many sons. Notable sons included Toghrul, Yula-Mangus, Tai-Timur, Bukha-Timur.
In union with the Khitan they became vassals in the Kara-Khitai state.
" in Le Livre des Merveilles, 15th century.
After Kurchakus Buyruk Khan died, Ilma's Tatar servant Eljidai became the de facto regent. This upset Toghrul who had his younger brothers killed and then claimed the throne as Toghrul khan who was the son of Kurchakus by Ilma Khatun, reigned from the 1160s to 1203. His palace was located at present-day Ulan Bator and he became blood-brother to Yesugei. Genghis Khan called him khan etseg. Yesugei, having disposed of all Tughrul's sons, was now the only one in line to inherit the title khan.
The Tatars rebelled against the Jin dynasty in 1195. The Jin commander sent an emissary to Timujin. A fight with the Tatars broke out and the Mongol alliance defeated them. In 1196, the Jin Dynasty awarded Toghrul the title of "Wang". After this, Toghrul was recorded under the title "Wang Khan" .
When Timujin attacked Jamukha for the title of Khan, Toghrul, fearing Timujin's growing power, plotted with Jamukha to have Timujin assassinated.
In 1203, Timujin defeated the Keraites, who were distracted by the collapse of their own coalition.
Toghrul was killed by Naiman soldiers who failed to recognize him as the former was fleeing from a defeat against Genghis Khan.

Mongol Empire and dispersal

Genghis Khan married his son Tolui to one of Toghrul's nieces, the Nestorian Christian Sorghaghtani Bekhi, the younger daughter of Tooril's brother Jakha Khambu. Tolui and Sorghaghtani Bekhi became the parents of Möngke Khan and Kublai Khan.
The remaining Keraites submitted to Timujin's rule, but out of distrust, Timujin dispersed them among the other Mongol tribes.
Rinchin protected Christians when Ghazan began to persecute them but he was executed by Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan when fighting against his custodian, Chupan of the Taichiud in 1319.
Keraites arrived in Europe with the Mongol invasion led by Batu Khan and Mongke Khan. Kaidu's troops in the 1270s were likely mostly composed of Keraites and Naimans.
From the 1380s onward, Nestorian Christianity in Mongolia was destroyed, on the one hand due to the Islamization under Timur and on the other due to the Ming conquest of Karakorum.
The remnants of the Keraits by late 14th century lived along the Kara Irtysh. These remnants were finally dispersed in the 1420s in the Mongol-Oirat wars fought by Uwais Khan.
Mongolian Christians sought refuge under the leadership of Tokhtamysh, and they appear to have lost all contact with their mother church after the schism of 1552. Many were absorbed into other churches, some adopted Islam, while still others became Judaizers.

Nestorian Christianity

The Keraites were converted to Nestorianism, a sect of Christianity, early in the 11th century.
Other tribes evangelized entirely or to a great extent during the 10th and 11th centuries were the Naiman and the Ongud.
Rashid al-Din, the official historian of the Mongol court in Persia, in his Jami al-Tawarikh states that the Keraites were Christians. William of Rubruck, who encountered many Nestorians during his stay at Mongke Khan's court and at Karakorum in 1254–1255, notes that Nestorianism in Mongolia was tainted by shamanism and Manicheism and very confused in terms of liturgy, not following the usual norms of Christian churches elsewhere in the world. He attributes this to the lack of teachers of the faith, power struggles among the clergy and a willingness to make doctrinal concessions in order to win the favour of the Khans.
Contact with the Catholics was lost after the Islamization under Timur, who effectively destroyed the Church of the East. The Nestorian Church in Karakorum was destroyed by the invading Ming dynasty army in 1380.
The legend of Prester John, otherwise set in India or Ethiopia, was also brought in connection with the Nestorian rulers of the Keraites. In some versions of the legend, Prester John was explicitly identified with Toghril, but Mongolian sources say nothing about his religion.

Conversion account

An account of the conversion of this people is given in the 12th-century
Book of the Tower by Mari ibn Suleiman, and also by 13th-century Syriac Orthodox historian Bar Hebraeus where he names them with the Syriac word ܟܹܪܝܼܬ.
According to these accounts, shortly before 1007 AD, the Keraite khan lost his way during a snowstorm while hunting in the high mountains of his land. When he had abandoned all hope, a saint, Sergius, appeared in a vision and said, "If you will believe in Christ, I will lead you lest you perish." The king promised to become Christian, and the saint told him to close his eyes and he found himself back home. When he met Christian merchants, he remembered the vision and asked them about the Christian religion, prayer and the book of canon laws. They taught him "the Lord's Prayer, Lakhu Mara, and Qadisha Alaha." The Lakhu Mara is the Syriac of the hymn Te Deum, and the Qadisha Alaha is the Trisagion. At their suggestion, he sent a message to Abdisho, the Metropolitan of Merv, for priests and deacons to baptize him and his tribe. Abdisho sent a letter to Yohannan V, the Catholicos or Patriarch of the Church of the East in Baghdad. Abdisho informed Yohannan V that the Keraite khan asked him about fasting, whether they could be exempted from the usual Christian way of fasting, since their diet was mainly meat and milk.
Abdisho also related that the Keraite khan had already "set up a pavilion to take the place of an altar, in which was a cross and a Gospel, and named it after Mar Sergius, and he tethered a mare there and he takes her milk and lays it on the Gospel and the cross, and recites over it the prayers which he has learned, and makes the sign of the cross over it, and he and his people after him take a draft from it." Yohannan replied to Abdisho telling him one priest and one deacon was to be sent with altar paraments to baptize the king and his people. Yohannan also approved the exemption of the Keraites from strict church law, stating that while they had to abstain from meat during the annual Lenten fast like other Christians, they could still drink milk during that period, although they should switch from "sour milk" to "sweet milk" to remember the suffering of Christ during the Lenten fast.
Yohannan also told Abdisho to endeavor to find wheat and wine for them, so they can celebrate the Paschal Eucharist. As a result of the mission that followed, the king and 200,000 of his people were baptized.

Legacy

After the final dispersal of the remaining Keraites settling along the Irtysh River by the Oirats in the early 15th century, they disappear as an identifiable group. There are various hypotheses as to which groups may partially have been derived from them during the 16th or 17th centuries.
According to Tynyshbaev, their further fate was closely linked to that of the
Argyn.
The name of the Qarai Turks may be derived from the Keraites, but it may also be connected to the names of various other Central Asian groups involving qara "black". Kipchak groups such as the Argyn Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz Kireis have been proposed as possibly in part derived from the remnants of the Keraites who sought refuge in Eastern Europe in the early 15th century.