Chigils

The Chigil (Chihil, and also Jigil, Djikil, Chiyal) were a Turkic tribe known from the 7th century CE as living around Issyk Kul lake area. They were considered to be descended from two of the "Six Chuy tribes" of the Chuban, the Chuyue and Chumi. They are known to have been speakers of the Oghuz group of the Turkic languages.

Sinologist Yu. A. Zuev suggests an etymology of the name Chigil from the Chinese transcriptions of the ethnonyms Chigil (Ch. 處月 Chuyue "abode of the Moon [god]") and Chumul (Ch. 處密(or 蜜) Chumi "abode of the Sun [god]"). However, he notes that neither Turkic-Buddhist texts, nor the Turkic-Manichaean literature and other sources containing information about Turkic Manichaeism, do not give a genealogical meaning in reference to the invocation of the Sun and Moon (Turk. kün ay).

The first reference to the Chigils comes from the "History of the Sui dynasty" (581–680, Chji-i < tšįək-iət < chigil).

According to medieval writers, the city of Chigil was at "a distance of a human voice" from Taraz. An 11th-century story by Mahmud Kashgari places the events in the time of the Zu-l-Karnein ("the "Bihorn", Alexander the Great) 4th century BCE:

When the armies of Zu-l-Karnein reached Talas in the Manichean country Argu, a heavy rainstorm formed thick mud. The road became impassable, and angry Zu-l-Karnein exclaimed in Persian: "In chi gil ast?!" – "What is this mud?! We cannot get out of it!" He ordered a building be erected on the spot called Chigil. Turks in the area were called Chigils. Nomadic Turks, who adopted the Chigil type of [long] clothes were also called Chigils, from Djeyhun (Amu Darya) to the Chin (China). ... The nomad Chigil (as well as the Tukhsī) lived near the township of Quyās lying beyond Barsghān and watered by the two Keykān rivers flowing into the Ili ... Another group of the tribe lived in the township of Chigil, near Ṭarāz, and a third one in the villages of the same name near Kāshgar.

Kashghari says that the Oghuz Turks used to call "Chigil" all the Turks between the Oxus and Northern China.

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