Torquay in Rus': Three Myths and One True Story
Turkic border guards in Rus' are surrounded by beautiful tales—about an academic, half a cavalry force, and the sensation of 2024. We examine what is fictional and what is real.
"Torquay in Rus' is an example of how different peoples could not only coexist, but together build a great power."
The quote is attributed to Russian Academy of Sciences academician Alexey Valerievich Naumov. It sounds impressive. The only problem is: there's no such academician. And in recent years, three myths have grown up around this small Turkic tribe. We'll dismantle them and, at the same time, reveal the real Torks.
Who are the Torks really?
First, the facts: without them, it's impossible to distinguish between tale and truth. The Torks were a small Turkic tribe of Oghuz origin, related to the Pechenegs and Cumans. They lived in the same Eurasian steppe, spoke closely related languages, and fought in the same equestrian style. Chroniclers sometimes even called them "Pecheneg Torks," emphasizing their common kinship.
The Torks appear early in Russian sources: as early as 985, the Tale of Bygone Years describes them riding along the coast while Vladimir sailed against the Bulgars in boats. By 1055, when the Cumans first appeared on the southern borders, the Torks were again nearby. And by 1060, the chronicle reports a major campaign by Russian princes into the steppe against the Torks themselves. Caught between two forces (pressed into the steppe by the Cumans and defeated in the 1060 campaign by the Russian princes), this people found themselves on the losing side. Some of them apparently migrated to the Danube, while others remained on the southern borders of Rus'.
This is where things get interesting. The Pechenegs were Rus''s number one enemy: they fought them for generations, and forts were built against them. The Polovtsians acted according to circumstances: sometimes a raid, sometimes an alliance, sometimes a princely wedding. But the Torks chose a third path. Having lost to the most powerful forces in the steppe, they entered the service of the Kievan and Pereyaslavl princes. This was not a one-time peace. The Torks received land and pastures along the Ros River, and in exchange, they guarded the border and went to war.
Thus, a fragment of the Oghuz world became "our own nomads"—a mobile border force, recognizable by Russian scribes and tied to specific lands. They were not a nation in the modern sense.
Myth 1: The academician who never existed
Let's return to the beautiful quote from the beginning. The test is simple: we search for Academician Alexei Valerievich Naumov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a specialist in medieval Rus'. And we don't find him. There is no leading historian of Turkic peoples under this name in scholarship.
But there is Alexey Fedorovich Naumov, Hero of the Soviet Union, tank A commander killed in battle in 1943. He has no connection to the Torks, the chronicles, or the steppe. The substitution of his patronymic from "Fedorovich" to "Valerievich" and the title "Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences" is a classic trope of online mythology: take a real surname, add regalia, and attribute a desired idea to it.
What's a historian to do with this? It's the same as with any quotation without an attribution. No author, no work, no publication, no date—no citation. The idea of different peoples co-constructing a state isn't absurd in itself, but relying on a phantom academic to support it is impossible.
Myth two: "half the cavalry" and black hoods
The second myth is more concrete: supposedly, the Torques made up almost half the cavalry in the retinues of the southern Russian princes. A striking figure. Is it verifiable? No.
Chronicles provide almost no statistics on the ethnic composition of the troops. There is no direct count of "half the cavalry" in the sources: what we have here is a late estimate, given the appearance of an exact fact. The figure is unprovable, and the real role of the Torks is more intriguing than any percentage.
By the 12th century, chronicles introduced the collective name "Black Hoods." This was the name for a group of semi-nomadic Turkic tribes on the southern border: the Torks, Berendeys, Kovuys, and the remnants of the Pechenegs. The name derives from their distinctive hat; the Turkic equivalent is "Karakalpak," or "black hat." This led to a later hypothesis about a relationship with the modern Karakalpaks. However, there is no direct connection, and today this theory is considered outdated and marginal: a sound similarity in itself proves nothing.
The military role of these people was significant even without precise figures. The early Rus' military retinue relied on local warriors and Varangian mercenaries, accustomed to fighting on foot. The steppe forced a change. By the 11th and 12th centuries, Russian retinues increasingly mounted horses, took up the bow, and mastered the saber and lamellar armor. Alongside the familiar chainmail and straight swords, the steppe style emerged. weapon.
The Torques played a dual role in this reorganization. They served as light and medium cavalry: reconnaissance, raids, pursuit, and combat on the open steppe. They also introduced steppe tactics to the Russian military: feint retreats with envelopment, firing from a distance, maneuvering where a frontal assault would have been previously employed. The princes deployed their allied cavalry forward as a screen: the light horsemen engaged and disrupted the enemy's formation, while the heavy retinue delivered the decisive blow.
So we'll set aside the "up to half" figure as unprovable. But without the allied steppe cavalry, Rus''s southern defense simply couldn't have held.
Myth three: the "sensation of 2024" and the real Torchesk
The third myth is the most recent: supposedly, archaeological discoveries in Torchesk in 2024 proved that the Torks preserved their culture but adopted Russian customs. A ready-made headline for a public page. However, Torchesk isn't mentioned in the 2024 archaeological discovery summary. There are Egyptian tombs, Neolithic bread from Çatalhöyük, and Silk Road settlements in Uzbekistan. Torks, Chorny Klobuks, and Porosye are missing. So, there was no sensation.
But Torchesk was there, and story It's quite authentic here. It's the main center of the Torks in the middle reaches of the Ros River, a tributary of the Dnieper. Archaeologists and historians identify a cluster of towns and villages around it, conventionally called "Torkovye." In the 12th century, Torchesk became the capital of a small appanage principality, ruled by appointees of the Prince of Kyiv.
The location was chosen wisely. The Ros Valley blocked the usual routes of steppe raids and offered pastures and shelter in the forest-steppe. By settling Torks and other Black Hoods here, the princes created a living barrier: every raid was met by a network of fortifications and mounted garrisons ready for battle.
Archaeology confirms this picture, albeit cautiously. In the borderland, burial mounds containing steppe implements have been found: stirrups, horse harness fittings, and weapon parts. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to separate Tork artifacts from Berendey or Pecheneg artifacts: these items migrated through trade and war. Therefore, people speak of "black hood complexes" in general.
However, the scale of the settlement is revealed by toponymy. Torchesk, Torchin, and the Torets and Torch rivers, apparently associated with the Torks, are names that outlived the people themselves. External sources are almost useless here: Byzantine, Western, and Muslim authors wrote about major players (the Pechenegs, Cumans, and Mongols), but ignored the Torks as a distinct name. Their history is left to Russian chronicles, land, and map names.
The End of a People: The Mongols and Dissolution
The history of the Torks ends abruptly. In the 1220s–1240s, the Mongols swept across the steppe like a scythe: Volga Bulgaria, the Cuman steppe (Cumania), the Alans, and then the Russian principalities fell. In 1240, they captured Kyiv.
The Black Hoods' border system was one of the first to collapse: Mongol armies marched through its lands. Fortifications like Torchesk were built to counter Polovtsian raids, not the siege machinery of the steppe empire. After Batu Khan's campaign, Torchesk disappears from sources; the last reliable mention is around 1240. Soon, references to the Torks as a distinct group also vanish.
From there, there were three paths. Some perished during the devastation of settlements. Some fled west, to the Danube and beyond, following the Polovtsian nobility. The majority likely assimilated into the population of Rus' and the Golden Horde. Within the Horde itself, the Kipchak language prevailed, and the small tribe merged with the general Turkic sea.
This concludes the three myths that have clung to the Torques. The real Torques have no need for a fake academician, flashy interest rates, or high-profile excavations. What remains of them is what really happened: a century and a half of service on the southern border and a dozen names on the map that we still pronounce. That's enough without fictitious academicians.
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