Bilge Qaghan was the fourth Qaghan of the Second Turkic Khaganate. His accomplishments were described in the Orkhon inscriptions.
The Old Turkic script was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.
The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.
Tonyukuk was the baga-tarkhan and adviser of four successive Göktürk khagans – Ilterish Qaghan, Qapaghan Qaghan, Inel Qaghan and Bilge Qaghan. He conducted victorious campaigns against various Turkic and non-Turkic steppe peoples, such as Tölis, Xueyantuo, Toquz Oguz, Yenisei Kyrgyz, Kurykans, Thirty Tatar, Khitan and Tatabi as well as the Tang dynasty. He was described as a kingmaker by historians such as E. P. Thompson and Peter Benjamin Golden.
The Kipchaks or Qipchaks, also known as Kipchak Turks or Polovtsians, were Turkic nomads and then confederation that existed in the Middle Ages inhabiting parts of the Eurasian Steppe.
The Kutadgu Bilig or Qutadğu Bilig, is an 11th century work written by Yūsuf Balasaguni for the prince of Kashgar. The text reflects the author's and his society's beliefs, feelings and practices with regard to quite a few topics and depicts interesting facets of various aspects of life in the Kara-Khanid Khanate.
Old Turkic is the earliest attested form of the Common Turkic languages, first found in Second Turkic Khaganate then in Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions. In marked contrast to Middle Turkic, the geographic extent of (East) Old Turkic is rather confined, being limited mainly to East Turkistan and Mongolia. In terms of the datability of extant written sources, the period of Old Turkic can be dated from slightly before 720 AD to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Orkhon Turkic and Old Uyghur are considered to be dialects of East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic being the earliest attested dialect of (East) Old Turkic. There is a difference of opinion among linguists with regard to Karakhanid Turkic, some classify it as another dialect of East Old Turkic, while others prefer to include Karakhanid among Middle Turkic languages; nonetheless, Karakhanid is extremely close to Old Uyghur so much so that a single grammatical description will fit both of them. East Old Turkic and West Old Turkic together comprise the Old Turkic proper. East Old Turkic is the oldest attested member of the Siberian Turkic branch of Turkic languages, and several of its now-archaic grammatical as well as lexical features are extant in the modern Yellow Uyghur, Lop Nur Uyghur and Khalaj ; Khalaj, for instance, has (surprisingly) retained a considerable number of archaic Old Turkic words despite forming a language island within Central Iran and being heavily influenced by Persian. Old Uyghur is not a direct ancestor of the Modern Standard Uyghur language ; the contemporaneous ancestor of Modern Uyghur was one of the Middle Turkic languages, later giving rise to Chagatai literary language.
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 Türgesh or Türgish were a Turkic tribal confederation. Once belonging to the Duolu wing of the Western Turkic On Oq elites, Türgeshes emerged as an independent power after the demise of the Western Turks and established a khaganate in 699. The Türgesh Khaganate lasted until 766 when the Karluks defeated them. Türgesh and Göktürks were related through marriage.
The Chigil were a Turkic tribe known from the 7th century CE as living around Issyk Kul lake area. They were considered to be descended from the tribe Chuyue, who were of mixed Yueban-Western Turkic origins.
The Orkhon inscriptions (also known as the Orhon inscriptions, Orhun inscriptions, Khöshöö Tsaidam monuments, or Kul Tigin steles are two memorial installations erected by the Göktürks written in the Old Turkic alphabet in the early 8th century in the Orkhon Valley in what is modern-day Mongolia. They were erected in honor of two Turkic princes, Kul Tigin and his brother Bilge Khagan.
Nushibi was a Chinese collective name for five tribes of the right (western) wing in the Western Turkic Khaganate, and members of "ten arrows" confederation found in the Chinese literature. The references to Nushibi appeared in Chinese sources in 651 and disappeared after 766. The Nushibi tribes occupied the lands of the Western Turkic Khaganate west of the Ili River of contemporary Kazakhstan.
Okunev culture, sometimes also Okunevo culture, was a south Siberian archaeological culture of pastoralists of the early Bronze Age dated from the end of the 3rd millennium BC to the early of the 2nd millennium BC in the Minusinsk Basin on the middle and upper Yenisei. It was formed from the local Neolithic Siberian forest cultures, who also show evidence of admixture from Western Steppe Herders and pre-existing Ancient North Eurasians.
Tatar was one of the five major tribal confederations (khanlig) in the Mongolian Plateau in the 12th century.
Bars Bek or Inanch Alp Bilge, was a first khagan of the Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate.
Orkhon Turkic, is the first stage of Old Turkic, known as the oldest Turkic literary language preceding Old Uyghur. It is generally used for the language in which the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions are written.
Uyuk-Tarlak II is an inscription erected by Yenisei Kyrgyz. It was found by Aspelin in 1888 on a slope two kilometres away from the river Tarlak, Tuva. The stone was transported to the Minusinsk Museum of Regional History in 1916 and catalogued under the number 20. It measures 183 x 33 centimetres.
The Silver Deer of Bilge Khan is a 7th- or 8th-century silver and silver-gilt artifact extracted from the tomb of Bilge Qaghan, the burial complex of the fourth Qaghan of the Second Turkic Khaganate. It was discovered in 2001 during excavations carried out in Orkhon Valley, at the future Bilge Khan Monumental Grave Complex, located about 400 km (250 mi) from Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar, between the Orkhon River and Khosho Tsaydam Lake.
The As or Az were a Turkic people from the Eastern and Southern Altai and are associated with the Türkic period Kudyrge culture in the Altai. According to L.P. Potapov, the names of the Telengit seoks suggest that the As tribe was a part of the Turkic Tiele, and is certainly connected with the modern-day Altai population. The As left the runic Kalbak-Tash II inscription which was written in Turkic language.
The Uyuk-Turan Inscription is an inscription estimated to be dated to the 8th-9th centuries, possibly created during the Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate. It was discovered in the steppes near the Uyuk-Turan river valley, around the city of Turan in the Republic of Tuva. The inscription, which is recognized as a part of a larger group of inscriptions known as the Yenisei Inscriptions, is written in the Orkhon Turkic language using the Old Turkic runic script. Yenisei inscriptions are type of monument stones erected for deceased statesmen. The tradition of erecting monument stones in memory of the deceased was commonly observed among the Göktürks. However, archaeologist Ivor Kormushin suggests that after the Göktürk Khaganate, the tradition of erecting monument stones for important statesmen continued among the Uyghurs, which is why the Uyuk-Turan Inscription is believed to have been written after the Orkhon Inscriptions which is also written in Old Turkic. The monument itself is a Deer stone, erected circa 1000 BCE, and the textual inscription was made secondarily in the 8th-9th century CE.
