Shajara-i Tarākima

Shajara-i Tarākima is also a significant literary work, as it describes numerous Turkmen folk legends, tales, etymologies of ethnonyms, proverbs and sayings.

Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur was the Khan of Khiva and a prominent historian of the Turkic peoples, who wrote his works in Chagatai language.

[4] Shajara-i Tarākima roughly follows Rashīd ad-Dīn’s already Islamized and Mongolized (post-conquest) version about the origin of Oghuz Khan and Turkmens.

The account begins with descent from Adam to Noah, who after the flood sends his three sons to repopulate the earth: Ham was sent to Hindustan, Sam to Iran, and Yafes was sent to the banks of the Itil and Yaik rivers.

Twenty-four grandsons from the first wives of the sons of Oghuz Khan were the ancestors of the 24 oldest and main Oghuz-Turkmen tribes and the heads of the so-called "Aimak".