TITLE OF THE ANCIENT TURKS: “KAGAN” (QAGAN) AND “ZHABGU” (YABGU)

Abstract

The Turks managed to create a huge empire. Territory – from the Altai mountains in the east to the
Black Sea in the west, from the upper Yenisei in the north to the upper Amu Darya in the south. At the
beginning of the VI century, the territory of Kazakhstan came under the authority of the Turkic Kaganate.
Turkic Kaganate is the first state in Kazakhstan. Its basis was the union of Turkic-speaking tribes, which
was headed by the kagan. The state, based on tribal traditions, was based on military-administrative
management. It was part of a system of relations with such major states of the time as Iran and Byzantium.
China was a tributary of the kaganate. The title in many cultures played the role of an important
indicator of the international prestige of the state. As is known, only members of the Ashin clan had the
sacred right to supreme power in the Turkic Kaganate. Possession of one or another title, occupation of
one or another place in the political and state structure of society, depended on many circumstances,
the main of which was belonging to a particular tribe in a tribal union, clan in a tribe, etc. Social determinants
(titles, ranks, positions), as the most significant components of ancient Turkic anthroponomy,
contained complete information about the social status of the bearer of a given name, its origin and
membership in a particular layer of society, data on its place in the political structure of society and
the administrative structure . The political and military organization of Turkic society in many respects
continued the traditions of previous state formations of the Huns. In linguistic terms, most of them are
borrowings – mainly from Sogdian, Chinese and Tibetan languages.