According to Marquart, the name Kīmāk is derived from Iki-Imäk, "the two Imäk", probably referring to the first two clans of the federation. However, Golden stated that the /k/ > ∅, resulting in Kimek > İmek, was indeed attested in several Medieval Kipchak dialects. On the other hand, Pritsak attempted to connect the Kimek with the Proto-Mongolic Kumo of the Kumo Xi confederation ; Golden judges Pritsak's reconstruction "highly problematic", as Pritsak did not explain how Quomâġ might have produced Kimek; still, Golden considers the connection with the Proto-Mongolic world seriously. Mahmud al-Kashgari does not mention any Kimek, but Yamāk. Kashgari further remarked that Kara-Khanids like him considered Yemeks to be "a tribe of the Kipchaks", though contemporary Kipchaks considered themselves a different party. The ethnonym Yemäk might have been transcribed already in the mid 7th century by Chinese authors as 鹽莫 Yánmò < Middle Chinese *jiäm-mâk, referring a Tiele group who initially inhabited northwestern Mongolia before migrating to north of Altay Mountains and Irtysh zone. Though many scholars, including Golden, identified Kimeks with Yemeks, Tishin disputed that identification by pointing out that the Medieval Kipchak dialectal sound-change /k/ > ∅ had not yet happened in the mid-7th century Old Turkic. To Tishin, Yemeks were simply the most important of tribal groups whose representatives met at the Irtysh valley, where the diverse Kimek tribal union emerged, according to Gardizi.
History
In the Western Turkic Khaganate two Chuy tribes, Chumukun and Chuban, occupied a privileged position of being voting members of the confederation's Onoq elite, but not their kins Chuyue and Chumi. A part of the Chuyue tribe intermixed with the Göktürks' remnants and formed a tribe called Shatuo, which lived in southern Dzungaria, to the west of Lake Barkol. The Shatuo separated from the Chuyue in the middle of the 7th century. Until very recently, Chigils are a well known ethnic group, listed in censuses taken in Tzarist Russia and in the 20th century. After the disintegration in 743 AD of the Western Turkic Kaganate, a part of the Chuy tribes remained in its successor, the Uyghur Kaganate, and another part retained their independence. During the Uyghur period, the Chuy tribes consolidated into the nucleus of the tribes known as Kimaks in the Arab and Persian sources. Lev Gumilyov associated one Duolu Chuy tribe, Chumukun 处木昆 with the Kimeks as both coincidentally occupied the same territory, i.e. Semirechye, and that Chumukun were known only to Chinese and Kimek only to Persians & Arabs.. The head of the Kimek confederation was titled Shad Tutuk, i.e. "Prince Governing, or Ruling”. By the middle of the eighth century, the Kimeks occupied territory between the Ural River and Emba River, and from the Aral sea and Caspian steppes, to the Zhetysu area.
Kimek Khanate
After the 840 AD breakup of the Uyghur Kaganate, the Kimeks headed a new political tribal union, creating a new Kimek state. Abu Said Gardizi wrote that the Kimak federation consisted of seven tribes: Kimeks, Eymür, Tatars, Bayandur, Kipchak, Lanikaz and Ajlad. Later, an expanded Kimek Kaganate partially controlled the territories of the Oguz, Kangly, and Bagjanak tribes, and in the west bordered the Khazar and Bulgar territories. The Kimaks led a semi-settled life, while the Kipchaks were predominantly nomadic herders. In the beginning of the eleventh century the Kipchak Khanlyk moved west, occupying lands that had earlier belonged to the Oguz. After seizing the Oguz lands, the Kipchaks grew considerably stronger, and the Kimeks became dependents of the Kipchaks. The fall of the Kimek Kaganate in the middle of the 11th century was caused by the migration of Central Asian Mongolian-speaking nomads, displaced by the Mongolian-speaking Khitan state of Liao, which formed in 916 AD in Northern China. The Khitan nomads occupied the Kimek and Kipchak lands west of the Irtysh. In the eleventh to twelfth centuries a Mongol-speaking Naiman tribe displaced the Kimeks and Kipchaks from the Mongolian Altai and Upper Irtysh as it moved west. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries Kimek tribes were nomadizing in the steppes of the modern Astrakhan Oblast of Russia. A portion of the Kimeks that left the Ob-Irtysh interfluvial region joined the Kipchak confederation that survived until the Mongol invasion, and later united with the Nogai confederation of the Kipchak descendants. The last organized tribes of the Nogai in Russian sources were dispersed with the Russian construction of zaseka bulwarks in the Don and Volga regions in the 17th-18th centuries, which separated the cattle breeding populations from their summer pastures. Another part of the Nogai were deported from the Budjak steppes after Russian conquest of Western Ukraine and Moldova in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Ethnolinguistic belonging
According to C. E. Bosworth and R. Turaeva the Kimek tribe was Turkic. According to R. Preucel and S. Mrozowki and S. Divitçioğlu, the Kimek tribe was Tungusic.
Genetics
A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined the remains of Kimek male buried in Pavlodar Region, Kazakhstan ca. 1350 AD. He was found to be carrying the paternal haplogroup R1b1b and the maternal haplogroup A. It was noted that he was not found to have "elevated East Asian ancestry".
