Civitas on the Move: The City and State For the Nomads of Northern Eurasia

Aleksander Paroń

The category presented in the title of this study is of fundamental significance for the western world as the word civitas in the Latin language can mean both a “city” and a “state”.The nouncivismeaning “citizen”, i.e. a person who enjoys full political rights within a given community, is also closely related to it. For a Westerner, the creation of the city and the state,both forms of human communal existence, is a sign of the high level of development of a particular community, itscivilizing.

It would seem that the city, however defined, is a phenomenon which would be completely alien to nomads. The expression “city in the steppe” seems to have the quality of an oxymoron. The lack of urban centers, or even any other fixed settlements is one of the main characteristics of the nomads occurring in the best known descriptions. In the famous Scythian logos of Herodotus, the author ascertains:

Sima Qian (c. 145- c. 85 BCE), who lived three centuries later and is the father of Chinese historiography, wrote in his description of the Xiongnu nomadic tribes:

The credibility of the above sources is only slightly disavowed by the fact that the information about the lack of fixed settlements among the steppe inhabitants was a part of their descriptive strategy whose main goal was emphasizing the nomadic lifestyle and, as in the case of Herodotus, further cultural consequences. The emphasis on nomadism as the maindifferentia specificaof the steppe inhabitants sometimes led to incongruities in descriptions of their characteristics written by strangers, which will be discussed below. The point is that aversion to fixed settlements and cities is also confirmed in the opinions expressed by the –admittedly few – distinguished steppe inhabitants.