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The Kimek or Kimak (Yemek, Yamak, Djamuk) are one of the Turkic tribes known from Arab and Persian medieval geographers and writers as being one of the seven tribes in the Kimak Kaganate in the period of 743-1050 AD. The other six constituent tribes, according to Abu Said Gardizi (d. 1061), were Yamak, Kipchaks, Tatars, Bayandur, Lanikaz, and Ajlad. Medieval Chinese geographers did not know the ethnonym Kimaks, just as the names Chumuhun and Üeban (Pinyin: Yueban) were not known by Arabian and Persian geographers; all these names refer to the same Kimak tribe.^[1] The common name Kimek arose from the union of twin tribes Imi and Imek. No separate tribe was self-described as "Kimek". The names Imi and Imek are named after the river Imi in the valley of the Argun River ("Silver"), a tributary of the Amur, occupied by the Kimeks. Marquart suggested a Turkic etymology as Kimäk Iki Imäk "Two Imeks". Information about the eastern Kimeks always carried the concept of a pair ^[2]

Chinese annals call the tribes Üeban, or "Weak Huns", listing Chumuhun among them. From 155 to 166 AD the Xianbei organized a state, and took over the lands of the Hun empire streaching for 6500 km, from the Ussuri River to the Volga and the Urals. After that, the future Kipchaks, the Dingling, were pushed into the Sayan Mountains and faded from the records. The strongest Huns, with new Ugrian and Caucasian allies, reached Europe, where they dominated the Alans and the Goths. The Üeban, the "weak Huns", remained in Jety-Su and established a princedom that existed until the 5th century AD. While severe defeats from the Huns created their reputation as bandits and robbers among many western European peoples, the Chinese authors characterized them as the most cultured people of all "barbarians"^[3].

In the 2nd century AD the Üeban Huns settled in Tarbagatai, and later spread to Jety-Su. In the 5th century the Üeban Huns were conquered by the Uyghurs, and separated into four tribes: Chuüe, Chumi, Chumugun, and Chuban. Not later than 436 AD the Central Asian Huns in the Jety-Su formed a territory called Üeban, and sent an embassy to China to seek an alliance against the Jujans. A.N. Bernshtam equated these people with the tribe by the name of Chuban, with its related Chuy tribes Chuüe, Chumi, Chumugun, two divisions of Chuban and Shatuo (descended from Chuüe), all of them are descendants of the Huns^[4]. A part of the Chuüe tribe intermixed with the Türküts and formed a tribe called Shatuo, which lived in southern Dzungaria, to the west of Lake Baikal^[5]. The Chuy tribes are known as a consolidated group from the 6th century AD. In the Western Turkic Khaganate the Chuy tribes occupied a privileged position of being voting members of the confederation, same as the Nushibi tribes. The Shatuo Turks separated from the Chuüe in the middle of the 7th century, and presently are a well known ethnic group, listed in the censuses taken in Tzarist Russia and in the 20th century.

After the disintegration, in 743 AD, of the Western Türkic Kaganate, a part of the Chuy tribes remained in its successor, the Uyghur Kaganate (740-840), and another part retained their independence^[6]. During the Uyghur period, the Chuy tribes consolidated into the nucleus of the tribes known as Kimaks in the Arab and Persian sources^[7]. The head of the Kimak confederation was titled Shad Tutuk, i.e. "Prince Governing, or Ruling”^[8]. By the middle of the eighth century, the Kimaks occupied territory between the rivers Yaik and Emba, and from the Aral and Caspian steppes, to the Jety-Su area. After the 840 AD breakup of the Uyghur Kaganate, the Kimaks headed a new political tribal union, creating a new Kimak Kaganate state, a federation of seven tribes, seven Khanlyks. Abu Said Gardizi (d. 1061) wrote that the Kimak federation consisted of seven tribes: Kimaks (Imak, Imek, Yemek), Imi, Tatars, Bayandur, Kipchak, Lanikaz and Ajlad. Later, an expanded Kimak Kaganate partially controlled the territories of the Oguz, Kangly, and Bagjanak tribes, and in the west bordered the Khazarian and Bulgarian territories. The Kimaks led a semi-settled life, while the Kipchaks were predominantly nomadic herders.

In the beginning of the eleventh century the Kipchak Khanlyk moved west, occupying lands that had earlier belonged to the Oguz. After seizing the Oguz lands, the Kipchaks grew considerably stronger, and the Kimaks became dependents of the Kipchaks. The fall of the Kimak Kaganate in the middle of the 11th century was caused by the migration of Central Asian Mongolian-speaking nomads displaced by the Mongolian-speaking Khitan state of Liao, which formed in 916 AD in Northern China. The Khitan nomads occupied Kimak and Kipchak lands west of the Irtysh. In the eleventh to twelfth centuries a Mongol-speaking Naiman tribe displaced the Kimaks and Kipchaks from the Mongolian Altai and Upper Irtysh as it moved west.

Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries Kimak nomadic tribes were coaching in the steppes of the modern Astrakhan Oblast of Russia. A portion of the Kimaks that left the Ob-Irtysh interfluvial region joined the Kipchak confederation that survived until the Mongol invasion, and later united with the Nogai confederation of the Kipchak descendents. The last organized tribes of the Nogai in Russian sources were dispersed with Russian construction of zaseka bulwarks in the Don and Volga regions in the 17th-18th centuries, which separated the cattle breeding populations from their summer pastures. Another part of the Nogai were deported from the Budjak steppes after Russian conquest of Western Ukraine and Moldova in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

• http://www.ozturkler.com/data_english/0001/0001_16.htm The Kimek People

• Faizrakhmanov G., "Ancient Turks in Sibiria and Central Asia" Kazan, 'Master Lain', 2000, ISBN 5-93139-069-3
• Gumilev L.N., "Ancient Turks", Moscow, 'Science', 1967
• Gumilev L.N., "Hunnu in China", Moscow, 'Science', 1974
• Kimball L., "The Vanished Kimak Empire", Western Washington U., 1994
• Pletneva S.A., "Kipchaks", Moscow, 'Science', 1990, ISBN 5-02-009542-7

1. ^ Gumilev, L.N. "Ancient Turks", Moscow, Science, 1967, Ch.27 http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/OT/ot27.htm
2. ^ Ü. Zuev, Early Türks: Sketches of History and Ideology, Almaty, Dayk-Press, 2002, pp. 133-134, ISBN 9985-441-52-9
3. ^ Gumilev, L.N. "Ancient Turks", Moscow, Science, 1967, Ch.15 http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/OT/ot15.htm
4. ^ Gumilev, L.N. "Ancient Turks", Moscow, Science, 1967, Ch.22 http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/OT/ot22.htm
5. ^ Gumilev, L.N. "Ancient Turks", Moscow, Science, 1967, Ch.20 http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/OT/ot20.htm
6. ^ Faizrakhmanov, G. "Ancient Turks in Siberia and Central Asia"
7. ^ S.A. Pletneva, "Kipchaks", p.26
8. ^ Faizrakhmanov, G. "Ancient Turks in Sibiria and Central Asia"

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