Yasak

Yasak or yasaq, sometimes iasak, (Russian: ясак; akin to Yassa) is a Turkic word for "tribute" that was used in Imperial Russia to designate fur tribute exacted from the indigenous peoples of Siberia.

Origin

The origins of yasak can be traced to a tax collected from native, primarily non-Turkic populations in the Golden Horde. The word yasaq is a Russian variation of the Qazaq/Turk word 'Zhasaq', which has two meanings first one is 'This is what you have to do, it came from the law decree of that time introduced by the Great Shyngys Khan (Genghis Khan)' and another one is ten-men troop, who were the smallest cell in the army, who also came to collect the tribute of 1/10 of profits in favour of the Altyn Orda (Golden Horde), and their name became the shadow of the tribute and in return stayed in European languages under associative name rather than real definition. There is much uncertainty as to the time when the concept of yasak was introduced in Muscovy. It appears likely that the tax was inherited by Muscovy from the Volga khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan - two fragments of the Golden Horde that were subjugated by Ivan IV in the 1550s. These territories were settled by a range of non-Christian peoples who were expected to pay yasak either in kind or cash. The late French scholar of Eurasian history, Renee Grousset, traces "yasaq" (Regulations) back still further in his classic work, The Empire of the Steppes, to the moral code imposed by Genghis Khan on his original horde. The Yasaq continued to be practiced by Mongol hordes until they came under Yellow Church Buddhist (Mongolia, China) and Muslim influences (Golden Horde, Persia, Central Asia) in successive centuries.