Oghuz Turks
The Oghuz Turks were a western Turkic people who spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in Central Asia. Today the Turkmen, Azerbaijanis and Turks are descendants of Oghuz Turks. The term Oghuz was gradually supplanted by the terms Turkmen and Turcoman by the 13th century.
The Oghuz confederation migrated westward from the Jeti-su area after a conflict with the Karluk allies of the Uyghurs. In the 9th century, the Oghuz from the Aral steppes drove Pechenegs westward from the Emba and Ural River region. In the 10th century, the Oghuz inhabited the steppe of the rivers Sari-su, Turgai and Emba north of Lake Balkhash in modern-day Kazakhstan.
They embraced Islam and adapted their traditions and institutions to the Islamic world, emerging as empire-builders with a constructive sense of statecraft. In the 11th century, the Seljuk Oghuz clan entered Persia, where they founded the Great Seljuk Empire. The same century, a Tengriist Oghuz clan, also known as Uzes or Torks, overthrew Pecheneg supremacy in the frontier of the Russian steppes; those who settled along the frontier were gradually Slavicized; the almost feudal Black Hat principality grew with its own military aristocracy. Others, harried by the Kipchak Turks, crossed the lower Danube and invaded the Balkans, where they were stopped by a plague and became mercenaries for the Byzantine imperial forces. Oghuz warriors served in almost all Islamic armies of the Middle East from the 1000s onwards, and as far as Spain and Morocco.
In the late 13th century after the fall of the Seljuks, the Ottoman dynasty gradually conquered Anatolia with an army also predominantly of Oghuz, besting other local Oghuz Turkish states. In legend, the founder Osman's genealogy traces to Oghuz Khagan, the legendary ancient ancestor of Turkic people, giving the Ottoman sultans primacy among Turkish monarchs. The dynasties of Khwarazmians, Qara Qoyunlu, Aq Qoyunlu, Afsharids and Qajars are also believed to descend from the Oghuz-Turkmen tribes of Begdili, Yiva, Bayandur, Kayi and Afshar respectively.
Name and language
The name Oghuz is a Common Turkic word for "tribe". By the 10th century, Islamic sources were calling them Muslim Turkmens, as opposed to those of Tengrist or Buddhist religion; and by the 12th century this term was adopted into Byzantine usage, as the Oghuzes were overwhelmingly Muslim. The name "Oghuz" fell out of use by 13th century.Linguistically, the Oghuz belong to the Common Turkic speaking group, characterized by sound correspondences such as Common Turkic versus Oghuric and Common Turkic versus Oghuric. Within the Common Turkic group, the Oghuz languages share these innovations: loss of Proto-Turkic gutturals in suffix anlaut, loss of except after, becoming either or lost, voicing of to and of to, and becomes.
Their language belongs to the Oghuz group of the Turkic languages family. Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari wrote that of all the Turkic languages, that of the Oghuz was the simplest. He also observed that long separation had led to clear differences between the western Oghuz and Kipchak language and that of the eastern Turks. Byzantine sources call Oghuz Turks Uzes.
Origins
According to historians and linguists, the Proto-Turkic language originated in Central-East Asia, potentially in Altai-Sayan region, Mongolia or Tuva. Initially, Proto-Turkic speakers were potentially both hunter-gatherers and farmers, but later became nomadic pastoralists. Early and medieval Turkic groups exhibited a wide range of both East Asian and West-Eurasian physical appearances and genetic origins, in part through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranian, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic and Yeniseian peoples, and others.In early times, they practiced a Tengrist religion, erecting many carved wooden funerary statues surrounded by simple stone balbal monoliths and holding elaborate hunting and banqueting rituals.
During the 2nd century BC, according to ancient Chinese sources, a steppe tribal confederation known as the Xiongnu and their allies, the Wusun defeated the neighboring Yuezhi and drove them out of western China and into Central Asia. Various scholarly theories link the Xiongnu to Turkic peoples and/or the Huns. Bichurin claimed that the first usage of the word Oghuz appears to have been the title of Oğuz Kağan, whose biography shares similarities with the account, recorded by Han Chinese, of Xiongnu leader Modu Shanyu, who founded the Xiongnu Empire. However, Oghuz Khan narratives were actually collected in Compendium of Chronicles by Ilkhanid scholar Rashid-al-Din in the early 14th century.
Sima Qian recorded the name Wūjiē 烏揭 or Hūjiē 呼揭, of a people hostile to the Xiongnu and living immediately west of them, in the area of the Irtysh River, near Lake Zaysan. Golden suggests that these might be Chinese renditions of *Ogur ~ *Oguz, yet uncertainty remains. According to one theory, Hūjiē is just another transliteration of Yuezhi and may refer to the Turkic Uyghurs; however, this is controversial and has few scholarly adherents.
Yury Zuev links the Oghuz to the Western Turkic tribe 姑蘇 Gūsū < in the 8th-century encyclopaedia Tongdian. Zuev also notes two parallel passages:
- one from the 8th-century Taibo Yinjing "Venus's Secret Classic" by Li Quan which mentioned the 三窟 ~ 三屈 "Three Qu" after the 十箭 Shí Jiàn "Ten Arrows" and Jĭu Xìng "Nine Surnames" ; and
- another from al-Maṣudi's Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, which mentioned the three hordes of the Turkic Ġuz.
File:Nasir al-Din Artuq Arslan. AH 597-637 Probably Mardin Dated AH 611. Bareheaded and draped male bust.jpg|thumb|Male bust on a coin of Nasir al-Din Artuq Arslan, an Oghuz Döğer ruler of the Artuqid dynasty, Mardin, dated AH 611
According to Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the Oghuz were nomads, but also had cultivated crops, and the economy was based on a semi-pastoralist lifestyle.
Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos mentioned the Uzi and Mazari as neighbours of the Pechenegs.
By the time of the Orkhon inscriptions "Oghuz" was being applied generically to all inhabitants of the Göktürk Khaganate. Within the khaganate, the Oghuz community gradually expanded, incorporating other tribes. A number of subsequent tribal confederations bore the name Oghuz, often affixed to a numeral indicating the number of united tribes. These include references to the simple Oguz, Üch-Oghuz, Altï Oghuz, possibly the Otuz Oghuz, Sekiz-Oghuz, and the Tokuz-Oghuz, who originally occupied different areas in the vicinity of the Altai Mountains. Golden states Transoxanian Oghuz Turks who founded the Oghuz Yabgu State were not the same tribal confederation as the Toquz Oghuz from whom emerged the founders of Uyghur Khaganate. Istakhri and Muhammad ibn Muhmad al-Tusi kept the Toquz Oghuz and Oghuz distinct and Ibn al-Faqih mentioned: "the infidel Turk-Oghuz, the Toquz-Oghuz, and the Qarluq" Even so, Golden notes the confusion in Latter Göktürks' and Uyghurs' inscriptions, where Oghuz apparently referred to Toquz Oghuz or another tribal grouping, who were also named Oghuz without a prefixed numeral; this confusion is also reflected in Sharaf al-Zaman al-Marwazi, who listed 12 Oghuz tribes, who were ruled by a "Toquz Khaqan" and some of whom were Toquz-Oghuz, on the border of Transoxiana and Khwarazm. At most, the Oghuz were possibly led by a core group of Toquz Oghuz clans or tribes.
Noting that the mid-8th-century Tariat inscriptions, in Uyghur khagan Bayanchur's honor, mentioned the rebellious Igdir tribe who had revolted against him, Klyashtorny considers this as one piece of "direct evidence in favour of the existence of kindred relations between the Tokuz Oguzs of Mongolia, The Guzs of the Aral region, and modern Turkmens", besides the facts that Kashgari mentioned the Igdir as the 14th of 22 Oghuz tribes; and that Igdirs constitute part of the Turkmen tribe Chowdur. The Shine Usu inscription, also in Bayanchur's honor, mentioned the Nine-Oghuzes as " people" and that he defeated the Eight-Oghuzes and their allies, the Nine Tatars, three times in 749.; according to Klyashtorny and Czeglédy, eight tribes of the Nine-Oghuzes revolted against the leading Uyghur tribe and renamed themselves Eight-Oghuzes.
Ibn al-Athir, an Arab historian, claimed that the Oghuz Turks were settled mainly in Transoxiana, between the Caspian and Aral Seas, during the period of the caliph Al-Mahdi. By 780, the eastern parts of the Syr Darya were ruled by the Karluk Turks and to their west were the Oghuz. Transoxiana, their main homeland in subsequent centuries became known as the "Oghuz Steppe".
During the period of the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun, the name Oghuz starts to appear in the works of Islamic writers. The Book of Dede Korkut, a historical epic of the Oghuz, contains historical echoes of the 9th and 10th centuries but was likely written several centuries later.