The Kara-Khanid Khanate, also known as the Karakhanids, Qarakhanids, Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids, was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the early 13th century. The dynastic names of Karakhanids and Ilek Khanids refer to royal titles with Kara Khagan being the most important Turkic title up until the end of the dynasty.
Chagatai, also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic, is an extinct Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan, Eastern Turkestan, Crimea, the Volga region, etc. Chagatai is the ancestor of the Uzbek and Uyghur languages. Turkmen, which is not within the Karluk branch but in the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, was nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.
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, much of the populations of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are descendants of Oghuz Turks. Byzantine sources call them Uzes. The term Oghuz was gradually supplanted by the terms Turkmen and Turcoman by 13th century.
Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
The Yemek or Kimek were a Turkic tribe constituting the Kimek-Kipchak confederation, whose other six constituent tribes, according to Abu Said Gardizi, were the Imur, Tatars, Bayandur, Kipchaks, Lanikaz, and Ajlad.
The Karluks were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribal confederacy residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains in Central Asia. Karluks gave their name to the distinct Karluk group of the Turkic languages, which also includes the Uzbek, Uyghur and Ili Turki languages.
The Kayı or Kayi tribe were an Oghuz Turkic people and a sub-branch of the Bozok tribal federation. In his Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, the 11th century Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari cited Kayı as of one of 22 Oghuz tribes, saying that Oghuz were also called Turkomans. The name Kayı means "the one who has might and power by relationship" and the Turkmen proverb says that "people shall be led by Kayı and Bayat tribes".
Otuken or Otugen was the capital of the Xiongnu, First Turkic Khaganate and Uyghur Khaganate. It has an important place in Turkic mythology and Tengrism.
The Oghuz Yabgu State or Oghuz ili was a Turkic state, founded by Oghuz Turks in 766, located geographically in an area between the coasts of the Caspian and Aral Seas. Oghuz tribes occupied a vast territory in Kazakhstan along the Irgiz, Yaik, Emba, and Uil rivers, the Aral Sea area, the Syr Darya valley, the foothills of the Karatau Mountains in Tien-Shan, and the Chui River valley. The Oghuz political association developed in the 9th and 10th centuries in the basin of the middle and lower course of the Syr Darya and adjoining the modern western Kazakhstan steppes.
Yabaku is a fairly enigmatic tribe out of ten prominent Türkic tribes enumerated by Mahmut Kashgari in the list describing the location of the Türkic polities from the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire to the borders of China in the following sequence:
- Bäčänäk;
- Qifčāk;
- Oğuz;
- Yemēk;
- Bašğirt;
- Basmil;
- Qāi;
- Yabāqu;
- Tatār;
- Qirqiz.
The Argyn tribe is a constituent of the Kazakh ethnicity. The Argyn are a component of the Orta jüz. Kazakhs historically consisted of three tribal federations: the Great jüz, Middle jüz, and Little jüz. Karakhanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari glossed Arghu as "ravine between two mountains", because the Arghu country was located between Tiraz and Balasagun.
The Karluk or Qarluq languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family that developed from the varieties once spoken by Karluks.
The Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk is the first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages, compiled in 1072–74 by the Turkic Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud Kashgari who extensively documented the Turkic languages of his time.
Chepni is one of the 24 Oghuz Turkic tribes.
Karakhanid, also known as Khaqani Turkic, was a historical Turkic language developed in the 11th century during the Middle Turkic period under the Kara-Khanid Khanate. It has been described as the first literary Islamic Turkic language. It is sometimes classified under the Old Turkic category, rather than Middle Turkic, as it is contemporary to the East Old Turkic languages of Orkhon and Old Uyghur. Eastern Middle Turkic languages, namely Khorezmian Turkic and later Chagatai are descendants of the Karakhanid language.
The Tuhsis were a medieval Turkic-speaking tribe, who lived alongside the Chigil, Yagma, and other tribes, in Zhetysu and today southern Kazakhstan. Tuhsi were also considered remnants of the Türgesh people. Turkologist Yury Zuev noted a nation (國) named 觸水昆 in Jiu Tangshu, so he reconstructed 觸水昆 as *Tuhsi-kun; however, Nurlan Kenzheakhmet noted that Tongdian's authors transcribed the same ethnonym as 觸木昆, the name of a Duolu Turk tribe, also transcribed as 處木昆. Even so, it's unclear whether the ethnonym Tuhsi is of Turkic origin. Tuhsi may be connected to Cuman clan Toqsoba, if Toqsoba did not derive from Common Turkic toquz "nine" and oba "clan". Hungarian orientalist Karoly Czeglédy compares the name Tuhsi to that of a medieval Eastern Iranian-speaking Alano-As tribe Duχs-Aṣ, located in the North Caucasus by ibn Rustah, and proposes that Tuhsis had been of Iranian-speaking As origins.
Bayat is one of the Oghuz tribes in Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. When Oghuz Turks started to migrate from the Aral steppes to Khorasan in the 11th and 13th centuries, Bayat people spread throughout the region. They are sub-ethnic groups of Turkmens and Azerbaijanis. The Bayats are Muslim and speak a southern dialect of Azerbaijani language in Azerbaijan and Iran, or their own dialect of Turkish in Turkey, and Ersari dialect of Turkmen in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The ancient Turkmen proverb says: "Kayi and Bayat tribes shall lead the people".
Turkic peoples began settling in the Tarim Basin in the 7th century. The area was later settled by the Turkic Uyghurs, who founded the Qocho Kingdom there in the 9th century. The historical area of what is modern-day Xinjiang in China consisted of the distinct areas of the Tarim Basin and Dzungaria. The area was first populated by the Tocharians and the Saka, who were Indo-Europeans and practiced Buddhism. The Tocharian and Saka peoples came under Xiongnu and then Chinese rule during the Han dynasty as the Protectorate of the Western Regions due to wars between the Han dynasty and the Xiongnu. The First Turkic Khaganate conquered this region in 560, and in 603, after a series of civil wars, the First Turkic Khaganate was separated into the Eastern Turkic Khaganate and the Western Turkic Khaganate, with Xinjiang coming under the latter. The region then became part of the Tang dynasty as the Protectorate General to Pacify the West after the Tang campaigns against the Western Turks. The Tang dynasty withdrew its control of the region in the Protectorate General to Pacify the West and the Four Garrisons of Anxi after the An Lushan Rebellion, after which the Turkic peoples and the other native inhabitants living in the area gradually converted to Islam following Arab incursions into Central Asia.
The Tatar were one of the seven original Turkic tribes that made up the Kimek confederation, along with the Imur, Yemek, Bayandur, Kipchak, Lanikaz and Ajlad. The Tatār were the third in order. The Kimek tribes originated in the Central Asian steppes, and had migrated to the territory of present-day Kazakhstan. The Tatar, as part of the Kimek, were mentioned by Gardizi.
Argu, or the Arghu languages, are a branch of Common Turkic languages along with Oghuz, Kipchak, Karluk and Siberian Turkic. Unlike other branches, this group is not multilingual, and the historical Argu language and its descendant Khalaj are the only languages of this group.
