14 Facts About Pechenegs

Pechenegs were mentioned as Bjnak, Bjanak or Bajanak in medieval Arabic and Persian texts, as Be-ca-nag in Classical Tibetan documents, and as Pacanak-i in works written in Georgian.

In Mahmud Kashgari's 11th-century work Diwan Lughat al-Turk, Pechenegs were described as "a Turkic nation living around the country of the Rum", where Rum was the Turkic word for the Eastern Roman Empire or Anatolia, and "a branch of Oghuz Turks"; he subsequently described the Oghuz as being formed of 22 branches, of which the Pecheneg were the 19th.

Pechenegs are mentioned as one of 24 ancient tribes of Oghuzes by 14th-century statesman and historian of Ilkhanate-ruled Iran Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in his work Jami? al-Tawarikh with the meaning of the ethnonym as "the one who shows eagerness".

Mahmud al-Kashgari, an 11th-century man of letters who specialized in Turkic dialects argued that the language spoken by the Pechenegs was a variant of the Cuman and Oghuz idioms.

Pechenegs suggested that foreign influences on the Pechenegs gave rise to phonetical differences between their tongue and the idiom spoken by other Turkic peoples.

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The Pechenegs are thought to have belonged to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic family, but their language is poorly documented and therefore difficult to further classify.

Pritsak says that the Pechenegs' homeland was located between the Aral Sea and the middle course of the Syr Darya, along the important trade routes connecting Central Asia with Eastern Europe, and associates them with Kangars.

At the time at which the Pechenegs were expelled from their country, their princes were, in the province of Irtim, Baitzas; in Tzour, Kouel; in Gyla, Kourkoutai; in Koulpei, Ipaos; in Charaboi, Kaidoum; in the province of Talmat, Kostas; in Chopon, Giazis; in the province of Tzopon, Batas.

Pechenegs proposes that an 8th-century Uighur envoy's report, which survives in Tibetan translation, contains the first certain reference to the Pechenegs.

Pechenegs who left their homeland settled between the Ural and Volga rivers.

Originally, the Pechenegs had their dwelling on the river Atil, and likewise on the river Geich, having common frontiers with the Chazars and the so-called Uzes.

The Pechenegs were so successful that they drove out the Magyars remaining in Etelkoz and the Pontic steppes, forcing them westward towards the Pannonian plain, where they later founded the Hungarian state.

The fortunes of the Rus'-Pecheneg confrontation swung during the reign of Vladimir I of Kiev, who founded the town of Pereyaslav upon the site of his victory over the Pechenegs, followed by the defeat of the Pechenegs during the reign of Yaroslav I the Wise in 1036.

Pechenegs were last mentioned in 1168 as members of Turkic tribes known in the chronicles as the "Chorni Klobuky ".