Keraits

Origins

Ushnitsky claims that most researchers consider the Keraites to be of Mongolic origin. Mongolian origin is supported by Tao Zongyi, Vasily Bartold, Lev Gumilev, Ilya Pavlovich Petrushevsky, Gennady Avlyaev, Boris Zolkhoev, Vadim Trepavlov, Shoqan Walikhanov, Sergei Klyashtorny, Tursun Sultanov, Aleksei Rakushin, Urgunge Onon, Boris Vladimirtsov and others. Vladimirtsov suggested that the Mongolian written language first arose among the Kerait and Naiman tribes before the era of Genghis Khan. Russian researcher Avlyaev believes that the Kerait tribal confederation included, in addition to the Mongolic component represented by the Keraits themselves, Turkic-Uyghur and Samoyedic elements. In Tao Zongyi's c. 1366Nancun Chuogeng Lu, he lists the Keraites among the '72 Mongol peoples'. According to Zolkhoev, this clear designation as a subgroup of the Mongols in the Yuan period, consistent with Rashid al-Din's "Compendium of Chronicles" where they are described as a 'clan of the Mongols,' strongly suggests that the Kerait tribe belonged to the Mongolic-speaking substratum.