Turkic migration
[1] In the 6th century, the Göktürks overthrew the Rouran Khaganate in what is now Mongolia and expanded in all directions, spreading Turkic culture throughout the Eurasian steppes.
Modern nations with large Turkic populations include Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and Turkic populations also exist within other nations, such as Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and the Sakha Republic of Siberia in Russia, Northern Cyprus, the Crimean Tatars, the Kazakhs in Mongolia, the Uyghurs in China, and the Azeris in Iran.
Proposals for the homeland (Urheimat) of the Turkic peoples and their language are far-ranging, from the Transcaspian steppe to Northeastern Asia (Manchuria).
[3] According to Yunusbayev et al. (2015), genetic evidence points to an origin in the region near South Siberia and Mongolia as the "Inner Asian Homeland" of the Turkic ethnicity.
[4] Similarly several linguists, including Juha Janhunen, Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs, suggest that Mongolia is the homeland of the early Turkic language.
[6] Authors Joo-Yup Lee and Shuntu Kuang analyzed ten years of genetic research on Turkic people and compiled scholarly information about Turkic origins, and said that the early and medieval Turks were a heterogeneous group and that the Turkification of Eurasia was a result of language diffusion, not a migration of a homogeneous population.
In regard to their cultural genesis, the Cambridge Ancient History of China asserts that "from about the eighth century BC, throughout inner Asia horse-riding pastoral communities appeared, giving origin to warrior societies".
These were part of a larger belt of "equestrian pastoral peoples" stretching from the Black Sea to Mongolia, and known collectively to the Greeks as Scythians.
[8] The Huns per se were first documented as a nomadic people, in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, between the 4th and 6th century AD.
[11] The earliest Turks mentioned in textual sources are the Xinli (薪犁), Gekun (鬲昆),[12] and Tiele (鐵勒), the last of which possibly transcribes endonym *Tegreg '[People of the] Carts',[13] recorded by the Chinese 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.
[20] 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 突厥.
[35] 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.
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.
[51] 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 (北褥; LMC: *puǝ̌k-rjwk < EMC: *pǝk-ŋuawk), who had settled near the Ēnqū (恩屈; LMC: *ʔən-kʰyt < EMC: *ʔən-kʰut < *On[o]gur) and Alan (阿蘭; MC: *ʔa-lan) peoples (identified as Onogurs and Alans, respectively), to the east of Fulin (拂菻) (or the Eastern Roman Empire).
[52][53] Victor Spinei emphasizes that the Pechenegs' association with the Bĕirù is "uncertain"; instead, he asserts that an 8th-century Uighur envoy's report, which survives in Tibetan translation,[54] contains the first certain reference to the Pechenegs:[55] the report recorded an armed conflict between the Be-ča-nag and the Hor (Uyghurs or Oghuz Turks) peoples in the region of the river Syr Darya.
[60] Zuev (1960) connects the Oghuzes to the Western Turkic tribe 姑蘇 Gūsū (< MC *kuo-suo) mentioned in the Chinese encyclopedia Tongdian, as well as the 三屈 'Three Qu' (< MC *k(h)ɨut̚) in the 8th-century Taibo Yinjing (太白陰經) 'Venus's Secret Classic' and the three Ġuz hordes mentioned in Al-Masudi's Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems.
According to Rashid al-Din Hamadani, writing much later in the Ilkhanate, Kipchak is derived from a Turkic word which means 'hollow rotted out tree'.
[63] The Kipchaks might have been mentioned as Turk-Kibchak in the 8th century Moyun Chur inscription, though this was uncertain as only the letters 𐰲𐰴 (čq *čaq?)
were readable on the damaged inscription; they were first definitely mentioned in the 9th century by Ibn Khordadbeh, who placed them next to the Toquz Oghuz, while Al-Biruni claimed that the Qun were further east of them.
[65] In the mid-9th century, the Kimek-Kipchak confederation emerged in the northern steppes stretching from Lake Balkhash in the east to the Aral Sea in the west.
[67] Later Turkic peoples include the Khazars, Turkmens: either Karluks (mainly 8th century) or Oghuz Turks, Uyghurs, Yenisei Kyrgyz, Pechenegs, Cumans-Kipchaks, etc.
However, most groups of Turkic people who belonged to other religions, including Christians, Judaists, Buddhists, Manichaeans, and Zoroastrians[citation needed] continued to exist in smaller numbers, up until the Mongol Invasions of Inner and Central Asia..
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.
'[69][70] 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 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.
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.
By early modern times, the name Turkestan has several definitions: 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.
