The Oghuz Turks (Middle Turkic: , ) 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 ( or Türkmân) by the 13th century.Lewis, G. The Book of Dede Korkut. Penguin Books, 1974, p. 10.
The Oghuz confederation migrated westward from the Jetisu 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.Grousset, R. The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press, 1991, p. 148.
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,Grousset, R. The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press, 1991, p. 186. where they were stopped by a plague and became mercenaries for the Byzantine imperial forces (1065).Hupchick, D. The Balkans. Palgrave, 2002, p. 62. 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,Lewis, p. 9. besting other local Oghuz Turkish states.Selcuk Aksin Somel, (2003), Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, p. 217 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.Colin Imber, (2002), The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650, p. 95 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.Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, "Turkomans", in Alexander P. Kazhdan, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford University Press, 1991). The name "Oghuz" fell out of use by 13th century.
Linguistically, the Oghuz belong to the Common Turkic speaking group, characterised 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 .Golden, Peter B. An Introduction to the History of Turkic Peoples (1992). p. 21-22
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.D. T. Potts, (2014), Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, p. 177 Byzantine sources call Oghuz Turks Uzes (, ).Omeljan Pritsak, "Uzes", in Alexander P. Kazhdan, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Origins
According to historians and linguists, the Proto-Turkic language originated in Central-East Asia,: "Most linguists and historians agree that Proto-Turkic, the common ancestor of all ancient and contemporary Turkic languages, must have been spoken somewhere in Central-East Asia (e.g. Róna-Tas, Reference Róna-Tas1991, p. 35; Golden, Reference Golden1992, pp. 124–127; Menges, Reference Menges1995, pp. 16–19)." potentially in Altai-Sayan region, Mongolia or Tuva.: "The ultimate Proto-Turkic homeland may have been located in a more compact area, most likely in Eastern Mongolia": "The best candidate for the Turkic Urheimat would then be northern and western Mongolia and Tuva, where all these haplogroups could have intermingled, rather than eastern and southern Mongolia..." Initially, Proto-Turkic speakers were potentially both hunter-gatherers and farmers, but later became nomadic pastoralists.:"To sum up, the palaeolinguistic reconstruction points to a mixed subsistence strategy and complex economy of the Proto-Turkic-speaking community. It is likely that the subsistence of the Early Proto-Turkic speakers was based on a combination of hunting–gathering and agriculture, with a later shift to nomadic pastoralism as an economy basis, partly owing to the interaction of the Late Proto-Turkic groups with the Iranian-speaking herders of the Eastern Steppe." 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 neighbouring peoples such as Iranian, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic and Yeniseian peoples, and others.: "Moreover, Turks do not all physically look alike. They never did. The Turks of Turkey are famous for their range of physical types. Given the Turks' ancient Inner Asian origins, it is easy to imagine that they once presented a uniform Mongoloid appearance. Such traits seem to be more characteristic in the eastern Turkic world; however, uniformity of type can never have prevailed there either. Archeological evidence indicates that Indo-Europeans, or certainly Europoid physical types, inhabited the oases of the Tarim basin and even parts of Mongolia in ancient times. In the Tarim basin, persistence of these former inhabitants' genes among the modern Uyghurs is both observable and scientifically demonstrable.32 Early Chinese sources describe the Kirghiz as blue-eyed and blond or red-haired. The genesis of Turkic ethnic groups from earliest times occurred in confederations of diverse peoples. As if to prove the point, the earliest surviving texts in Turkic languages are studded with terms from other languages.""Some DNA tests point to the Iranian connections of the Ashina and Ashide,133 highlighting further that the Turks as a whole 'were made up of heterogeneous and somatically dissimilar populations'.134 Geographically, the accounts cover the regions of Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Xinjiang, the Yenisei zone and the Altay, regions with Turkic, Indo-European (Iranian [Saka] and Tokharian), Yeniseic, Uralic and other populations. Wusun elements, like most steppe polities of an ethno-linguistic mix, may have also played a substratal role.": "Both Chinese histories and modern dna studies indicate that the early and medieval Turkic peoples were made up of heterogeneous populations"
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 neighbouring 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 (or Mau-Tun),Bichurin, N. Ya., "Collection of information on peoples in Central Asia in ancient times", vol. 1, Sankt Petersburg, 1851, pp. 56–57Taskin V. S., transl., "Materials on history of Sünnu", 1968, vol. 1, p. 129 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 (LHC: *ʔɔ-gɨat) or Hūjiē 呼揭 (LHC: *xɔ-gɨat), of a people hostile to the Xiongnu and living immediately west of them, in the area of the Irtysh River, near Lake Zaysan.Shiji, c. 90 BC: 110. Golden suggests that these might be Chinese renditions of *Ogur ~ *Oguz, yet uncertainty remains.Golden, Peter B., "Oq and Oğur ~ Oğuz", Turkic Languages, 16/2 (2012), pp. 155–199 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.Torday, L., Mounted Archers: The Beginnings of Central Asian History. The Durham Academic Press, 1997, pp. 220–221.
Yury Zuev (1960) links the Oghuz to the Western Turkic tribe 姑蘇 Gūsū < (MC *kuo-suo) in the 8th-century encyclopaedia TongdianDu You et al. Tongdian, vol. 199 (or erroneously Shǐsū 始蘇 in the 11th century Zizhi TongjianSima Guang et al. Zizhi Tongjian, vol. 199). Zuev also notes two parallel passages: one from the 8th-century Taibo Yinjing (太白陰經) "Venus's Secret Classic" by Li Quan (李筌) which mentioned the 三窟 ~ 三屈 "Three Qu" (< MC *k(h)ɨut̚) after the 十箭 Shí Jiàn "Ten Arrows" (OTrk 𐰆𐰣:𐰸 On Oq) and Jĭu Xìng "Nine Surnames" (OTrk 𐱃𐰸𐰆𐰔:𐰆𐰍𐰔 Toquz Oğuz);Li Quan, Taibo Yinjing "Vol. 1-3", Zhejiang University Library Copy. p. 99 of 102 or Shoushange congshu 守山閣叢書 version p. 51 of 222 and another from al-Maṣudi's Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, which mentioned the three hordes of the Turkic Ġuz.Al-Masudi Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems vol. 1 p. 238-239. translated by Aloys Spreger Based on those sources, Zuev proposes that in the 8th century the Oghuzes were located outsides of the Ten Arrows' jurisdiction, west of the Altai Mountains, near lake Issyk-Kul, Talas river's basin and seemingly around the Syr Darya basin, and near the Chumul, Karluks, Qays, Quns, Śari, etc. who were mentioned by al-Maṣudi and Sharaf al-Zaman al-Marwazi.Zuev, Yu. "Horse Tamgas from Vassal Princedoms" (Translation of Chinese composition "Tanghuiyao" of 8–10th centuries), Kazakh SSR Academy of Sciences, Alma-Ata, 1960, p. 126, 133–134 (in Russian)
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 (Hungarians) as neighbours of the Pechenegs.