10 Som Barsbek

Barsbek — also rendered Bars Bek or Bars-bey — was an 8th-century Türgesh leader who organized resistance against simultaneous pressure from the Tang dynasty to the east and the Umayyad Caliphate to the west. His ability to play these powers against each other gave the Türgesh a generation of relative autonomy in the Syr Darya and Ferghana regions. The Kyrgyz Republic has issued a series of silver commemoratives honoring figures from the pre-Russian, pre-Mongol Turkic past — a deliberate cultural project that accelerated after independence.