Were the cumans really occupying that territory in 1100??

**Zenith_Zenith** · August 04, 2011, 01:47 PM

I found this:

http://www.euratlas.net/history/euro...Northeast.html

And I know that this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Premongol-Kipchak.png

is the Kipchak-Cuman confederation.

So I wonder... is there an error in SS regarding history, or I got things wrong?

**Serbian Hussar** · August 04, 2011, 03:43 PM

That second picture is right I guess. It was my guide for my submod.

**Zenith_Zenith** · August 04, 2011, 05:45 PM

the fact with the second picture is that there are not only cumans there. "Kipchak" is not the same as "Cumans".

Anyway, the current position of the cumans make it hard to expand in the europe (eg to invade bulgaria). And we know that Bulgaria was formed (the second time) with cuman intervention, and that the cumans were a problem for the Roman Empire. In the current situation, the cumans are not threat for anybody in the regions near bessarabia, wallachia, bulgaria, but instead a good target for its enemies.

**Caesar Clivus** · August 04, 2011, 06:36 PM

Quote from "Medieval Russia" by Janet Martin:

The Torks were soon displaced, however, by the more aggressive Polovtsy, also known as Cumans or Kipchaks

**Gogolometro** · August 04, 2011, 09:32 PM

First map is not very acurate. At 1100 cumans, the black ones already dislocated pechenegs in Wallachia and Moldavia. Second, again is not very acurate, because cumans/kipchaks was not like Russian Federation a coherent federation with one ruler and a clear dominance.
For example here cumans was the military elite, a war aristocracy who teach romanians how the hell we must fight the next 4-5 centuries, fast, mobile, guerilla warfare.
And they was never more like normans in Britannia. A ruling class minority, a elite tribe like pechenegs, goths or gepids before.

**Ichon** · August 04, 2011, 11:07 PM

Most of the time Kiphacks/Cumans are considered one tribe or group as references to them often use the names interchangeably. However by some burials and other evidence they do seem to be two different groups but by 1100 were already merging into 1 group. Its difficult to give exact estimates of most steppe nations/groups borders as they often changed by 100s of miles from season to season and there were few towns where they settled to give definite map borders. There were often towns in the lands they claimed from which they exacted tribute and traded with IE- Venice/Genoese colonies, Volga river towns, Black Sea Coastal towns...etc. The other part is that sometimes they could go on very deep raids from their claimed territory and if they successfully pushed out the inhabitants in the following seasons smaller tribes or parts of the tribe would move into the new area and leave few behind. That process usually led gradually west or SW. So Turkic migrations that Cumans/Kiphacks are sometimes considered the leading edge of (as Pechenegs are one of the earliest westward moving Turkic groups and Cumans followed directly behind) also went into Persia, Caucuses and Anatolia then finally Balkans.

That wiki map gives about the maximum extent of the Cuman/Kipchak range at the height of their power which you might say was lands they controlled but its not the same as a centralized state controlling land with settlers paying taxes and there being relatively marked and constant borders. Before they entered western history their are few records and they could have come from as far east as Manchuria or more in modern Mongolia. Even by the end of the 1100s probably vast majority of Cumans were already west of the Volga and even slight majority might have been west of the Dnieper by 1200.