Göktürk wave (5th – 8th c.) Tiele and Turk The earliest Turks mentioned in textual sources are the
Xinli (),
Gekun (), and
Tiele (), the last of which possibly transcribes endonym
*Tegreg '[People of the] Carts', recorded by the Chinese in the 6th century. According to the
New Book of Tang, Tiele may be a mistaken form of
Chile/
Gaoche, who themselves may be related to Xiongnu and
Dingling. Many scholars believe the Di, Dili, Dingling, and later Tujue mentioned in textual sources are all just Chinese transcriptions of the same Turkic word
türk, yet Golden proposes that
Tujue transcribed *
Türküt while
Dili,
Dingling,
Chile,
Tele, &
Tiele transcribed *
Tegreg. in 568The first reference to
Türk or
Türküt appears in 6th-century Chinese sources as the transcription
Tūjué (). The earliest evidence of
Turkic languages and the use of
Turk as an endonym comes from the
Orkhon inscriptions of the
Göktürks ( ) in the early 8th century. Many groups speaking Turkic languages never adopted the name
Turk for their own identity. Among the peoples that came under Göktürk dominance and adopted its political culture and lingua-franca, the name
Turk was not always the preferred identity. Turk, therefore, did not apply to all Turkic peoples at the time, but only referred to the
Eastern Turkic Khaganate, while the
Western Turkic Khaganate and Tiele used their own tribal names. Of the Tiele, the
Book of Sui mentions only tribes which were not a part of the First Turkic Khaganate. There was not a unified expansion of Turkic tribes. Peripheral Turkic peoples in the Göktürk Empire like the
Bulgars and even central ones like the
Oghuz and
Karluks migrated autonomously with migrating traders, soldiers and townspeople.The precise date of the initial expansion from the early homeland remains unknown. The first state known as
Turk, giving its name to the many states and peoples afterward, was that of the Göktürks (
gök 'blue' or 'celestial', however in this context
gök refers to the direction 'east'. Therefore, Gökturks only denoted the Eastern Turks in the 6th century. In 439, the head of the
Ashina clan led his people from
Pingliang (now in modern
Gansu province,
China) to the
Rouran seeking inclusion in their confederacy and protection. His tribe consisted of famed metalsmiths and was granted land near a mountain quarry that looked like a helmet, from which they got the name Turk/Tujue . In 546, the leader of the Ashina,
Bumin, aided the Rouran in putting down a Tiele revolt. Bumin requested a Rouran princess for his service but was denied, after which he declared independence. In 551, Bumin declared himself Khagan and married Princess Changle from
Western Wei. He then dealt a serious blow to the Rouran Khaganate the next year, but died soon after. His sons,
Issik Qaghan and
Muqan Qaghan, continued to wage war on the Rouran, finishing them off in 554. By 568, their territory had reached the edges of the
Byzantine Empire, where the
Avars, possibly related to the Rouran in some fashion, escaped. In 581,
Taspar Qaghan died and the khaganate entered a civil war that resulted in two separate Turkic factions. The Eastern Khaganate was defeated by the
Tang dynasty in 630 while the Western Khaganate fell to the Tang in 657. In 682,
Ilterish Qaghan rebelled against the Tang and founded the
Second Turkic Khaganate, which fell to the
Uyghurs in 744.
Bulgar after the fall of
Old Great Bulgaria in the 7th century The
Bulgars, also known as the
Onogur-Bulgars or Onogundurs, occupied the Black Sea
Kuban steppe zone sometime during the 5th century. It would be in 480, while serving as allies of Byzantine
Emperor Zeno, that the Bulgars are first mentioned.
John of Nikiû (fl. 680–690) wrote about
Vitalian (Roman general and consul, died 520) in his "Chronicle of John, bishop of Nikiu": "Vitalian withdrew into the province of Bulgaria." By the 7th century, they were under the rule of the
Avars, who they revolted against in 635 under the leadership of
Kubrat. Prior to this, Kubrat had made an alliance with
Heraclius of the Byzantine Empire. He was baptized in 619. Kubrat died in the 660s and his territory,
Old Great Bulgaria, was divided between his five sons. One of them, the elder brother
Batbayan stayed and was subjugated by the
Khazars. Another one,
Kotrag, following the death of his father, began to extend the influence of his Bulgars to the
Volga River. He is remembered as the founder of
Volga Bulgaria. Another of the sons named
Kuber headed to
Pannonia where he revolted against the Pannonian Avars and migrated to
Thessalonika by 679.
Alcek was allegedly a son of Kubrat and led the Bulgars to Ravenna that later settled the lands of the
Longobard Kingdom in the villages of
Gallo Matese,
Sepino,
Boiano and
Isernia in the
Matese mountains of
southern Italy.
Asparuh was the first ruler of the
First Bulgarian Empire., the first state that the Roman empire recognised in the Balkans and the first time it legally surrendered claims to part of its Balkan dominions. In 680 the Byzantine Emperor
Constantine IV (r.668–685), having recently
defeated the Arabs, led an expedition at the head of a huge army and fleet to drive off the Bulgars but suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of Asparuh
at Onglos, a swampy region in or around the Danube Delta where the Bulgars had set a fortified camp. The Bulgars advanced south, crossed the
Balkan Mountains and invaded
Thrace. In 681, the Byzantines were compelled to sign a humiliating peace treaty, forcing them to acknowledge Bulgaria as an independent state, to cede the territories to the north of the Balkan Mountains and to pay an annual tribute.
Khazar around 650 AD The origin of the Khazars is unclear. According to
Al-Masudi, the Khazars were called
Sabirs in Turkic. Dunlop (1954) suggests a relation to
Uyghurs, some of whom might have migrated west before 555 CE. Because imperial Chinese sources linked Khazars to Göktürks, others believe the Khazars were founded by
Irbis Seguy, the penultimate ruler of the Western Turkic Khaganate, since the ''
Hudud al-'Alam'' says the Khazar king descended from the Ansa, which has been interpreted as Ashina. By the mid-7th century, the Khazars were located in the
North Caucasus, where they fought against the
Umayyads constantly.
Kyrgyz According to the
Book of Tang, the Yenisei Kyrgyz were tall, red-haired, pale-faced, and green-eyed; black-eyed Kyrgyz were claimed to be descendants of Han general
Li Ling, presumably including the Kyrgyz Khagans who claimed such descent. It also notes that Kyrgyz women outnumbered men, both men and women wore tattoos, and they made weapons which they gave to the Turks. They practiced agriculture but did not grow fruits. The Kyrgyz lived west of
Lake Baikal and east of the
Karluks. According to the
Book of Sui, the Kyrgyz chaffed at the domination of the First Turkic Khaganate. The Uyghur Khaganate also made war on the Kyrgyz and cut them off from trade with China, which the Uyghurs monopolized. As a result, the Kyrgyz turned to other channels of trade such as with the
Tibetans,
Arabs, and Karluks. From 820 onward, the Kyrgyz were constantly at war with the Uyghurs, until 840, when the Uyghur Khaganate was dismantled. Although the Kyrgyz managed to occupy some of the Uyghur lands, they had no great effect on the geopolitical configuration around them. The Chinese paid no heed to them other than to award them with some titles and reasoned that since the Uyghurs were no longer in power, there was no reason to maintain relations with the Kyrgyz any longer. The Kyrgyz themselves seemed to lack any interest in occupying the former territory of the Uyghurs in the east. By 924, the
Khitans had occupied
Otuken in the territory of the former Uyghur Khaganate.
Turgesh In 699, the
Turgesh ruler
Wuzhile founded a khaganate stretching from
Chach to
Beshbalik. He and his successor
Saqal campaigned against the Tang dynasty and their Turkic allies until 711 when the resurgent Second Turkic Khaganate crushed the Turgesh in battle. Turgesh remnants under
Suluk re-established themselves in
Zhetysu. Suluk was killed by one of his subordinates in 737 after he was defeated by the
Umayyads. The Tang took advantage of the situation to invade Turgesh territory and took the city of
Suyab. In the 760s, the Karluks drove out the Turgesh.
Karluk in 1006 The Karluks migrated into the area of
Tokharistan as early as the 7th century. In 744, they participated in the Uyghur Khaganate's rise by overthrowing the Second Turkic Khaganate, but conflict with the Uyghurs forced them to migrate further west into Zhetysu. By 766, they had pushed out the Turgesh and took the Western Turkic capital of Suyab.
Islam began spreading in the Karluk tribes during the 9th century. According to the ''Hudud al-'Alam'', written in the 10th century, the Karluks were pleasant nearly civilized people who participated in agriculture as well as herding and hunting. Al-Masudi considered the Karluks to be the most beautiful people among the Turks, being tall in stature, and lordly in appearance. By the 11th century, they had integrated a considerable number of
Sogdians into their population, resulting in speech that to
Mahmud al-Kashgari, sounded slurred. The Karluks,
Chigils, and
Yagmas formed the Kara-Khanid Khanate in the 9th century, but it's unclear whether the leadership of the new polity fell to the Karluks or the Yagmas.
Remarks Pecheneg Paul Pelliot (apud Pritsak, 1975) first proposed that the 7th century Chinese historical
Book of Sui preserved the earliest record on the Pechenegs; the book mentioned a people named Bĕirù (; LMC: *
standard Chinese: ), but started using the title of "Yabgu" instead when remnants of the Uyghur Khaganate fled to them in 840. By the early 10th century, the Kimeks bordered the Oghuz to the south, where the
Ural formed the boundary. According to the ''Hudud al-'Alam'', written in the 10th century, the Kimeks used the title of Khagan. They were the most removed from the sedentary civilization of all the Turks and had only one town within their territory. In the 11th century, the Kimeks were displaced by the Cumans.
Later Turkic peoples in geopolitical context c. AD 800 s, Later Turkic peoples include the Khazars,
Turkmens: either Karluks (mainly 8th century) or Oghuz Turks, Uyghurs, Yenisei Kyrgyz, Pechenegs, Cumans-Kipchaks, etc. As these peoples were founding states in the area between Mongolia and
Transoxiana, they came into contact with Muslims, and most gradually adopted Islam. However, most groups of Turkic people who belonged to other religions, including
Christians,
Judaists,
Buddhists,
Manichaeans, and
Zoroastrians continued to exist in smaller numbers, up until the Mongol Invasions of Inner and Central Asia. in Asia Minor (11th–13th century). In the ten years following the
Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the
Seljuk Turks from Central Asia migrated over large areas of Anatolia.
Turkmens While the Karakhanid state remained in this territory until its conquest by
Genghis Khan, the
Turkmen group of tribes was formed around the core of the Karluks and the more westward Oghuzes. The current majority view for the etymology of the name is that it comes from
Türk and the Turkic emphasizing suffix
-men, meaning 'most Turkish of the Turks' or 'pure-blooded Turks.' Thus, the ethnic consciousness among some, but not all Turkic tribes as "Turkmens" in the Islamic era came long after the fall of the non-Muslim Gokturk (and Eastern and Western) Khanates. Turkic soldiers in the army of the
Abbasid caliphs emerged as the
de facto rulers of much of the Muslim Middle East (apart from
Syria and North Africa) from the 13th century. The Oghuz and other tribes captured and dominated various countries under the leadership of the
Seljuk dynasty, and eventually captured the territories of the Abbasid dynasty and the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile, the Kyrgyz and Uyghurs were struggling with one another and with the Chinese Empire. The Kyrgyz people ultimately settled in the region now referred to as
Kyrgyzstan. The
Batu hordes conquered the
Volga Bulgars in what is today
Tatarstan and
Kypchaks in what is now Southern Russia, following the westward sweep of the
Mongols in the 13th century. Other Bulgars settled in Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, but were assimilated by the
Slavs, giving the name to the
Bulgarians and the Slavic
Bulgarian language. It was under
Seljuq suzerainty that numerous Turkmen tribes, especially those that came through the Caucasus via
Azerbaijan, acquired fiefdoms (
beyliks) in newly conquered areas of
Anatolia,
Iraq and even the
Levant. Thus, the ancestors of the founding stock of the modern
Turkish nation were most closely related to the Oghuz Turkmen groups that settled in the Caucasus and later became the
Azerbaijani nation. By early modern times, the name
Turkestan has several definitions: • land of sedentary Turkic-speaking townspeople that have been subjects of the Central Asian
Chagatayids, i.e.
Sarts, Central Asian
Mughals, Central Asian
Timurids, Taranchi of
Chinese Turkestan, and the later invading
East Kipchak Tatars who mixed with local Sarts and Chagatais to form the
Uzbeks; This area roughly coincides with
Khorasan in the widest sense, plus
Tarim Basin which was known as Chinese Turkestan. It is ethnically diverse, and includes homelands of non-Turkic peoples like the Tajiks,
Pashtuns,
Dungans, and
Dzungars. Turkic peoples of the Kypchak branch, i.e. Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, are not normally considered Turkestanis but are also populous (as pastoralists) in many parts of Turkestan. • a specific district governed by a 17th-century Kazakh Khan, in modern-day
Kazakhstan, which were more sedentary than other Kazakh areas, and were populated by towns-dwelling Sarts The
Salars are descended from Turkmen who migrated from Central Asia and settled in a Tibetan area of Qinghai under Ming Chinese rule. The Salar ethnicity formed and underwent ethnogenesis from a process of male Turkmen migrants from Central Asia marrying
Amdo Tibetan women during the early Ming dynasty. ==See also==