The Turkics, or Turkic-speaking peoples, are various peoples speaking languages belonging to the Turkic subgroup of the Altaic language family. They are associated primarily with Asia, where they established a number of empires over the centuries, starting in the sixth century
C. E.; however, some among them migrated westward into Europe and played a part in European history, especially with regard to the Ottoman Empire, which extended deep into Europe. The extreme western portions of two nations founded by Turkic peoples, Turkey and Kazakhstan, are located in what is considered Europe (see Turks: nationality).
Little is known about the origins of the Turkic people, which presumably occurred in Asia. The apparent linguistic connection between Turkic and Mongolic indicates possible origins in north-central Asia. some scholars maintain that the Turkic language itself first split into different languages in about 300 b. c.e. The name Turkics is possibly derived from the Chinese T’u-chueh.
The Turkic and Mongolic languages make up the Altaic language family (a non-indo-European family). Hundreds of Turkic tribes and their languages have mixed with one another over the centuries and classification is difficult. According to one system of classification, there are four branches of Turkic: Northwestern, southwestern, Northeastern, and southeastern. The Northeastern (also called North or Siberian) and southeastern (also called East or uighur-Chagatai) branches comprise languages spoken in Asia. A number of Northwestern (also called West, Kipchak, or Ogur) and Southwestern (also called South or Oguz) languages and dialects were spoken in Europe, some of them now extinct. some scholars classify Chuvash as Northwestern Turkic along with Bulgar and Khazar; others classify them as their own branch of Altaic. The oldest historical records regarding Turkic culture—the Orhon inscriptions comprising texts found at Kosho-Tsaidam on the Orhon (Orkhon) Gol (River) in Mongolia—date only to the early eighth century C. E. They reveal the earliest known Turkic alphabet, the Gokturk alphabet (similar to a runic script), developed by the Gokturks, a confederation of Turkic tribes in the sixth to eighth centuries. With the spread of Islam a majority of Turks began to use the Arabic alphabet. The Turkic tribes who played a direct part in European history were of the Northwestern or Southwestern groups.
Early Turkic Migrations into Europe
Among those considered the earliest Turkic peoples to migrate to Europe were the Bulgars, in
The latter part of the fourth century, who entered Europe with the Huns. The Huns themselves were possibly a Turkic-speaking people as well, although they may have originally been Mongolic-speaking. The Avars, who created a European empire in the sixth century, were also possibly Turkic by origin.
Medieval Chinese texts relate that by the sixth century a nomadic Turkic people had established an empire in central Asia stretching from Mongolia to the Black sea (thus including part of Europe). Known to the Chinese as T’u-chueh (or Tujue) and in other texts as Gokturks or Kokturks (Gok-Turks or Kok-Turks, for celestial Turks), they maintained a confederation of nomadic tribes from 552 to 745. At times during this period the Gokturks were under Chinese sovereignty.
After the breakup of the Gokturk Empire, largely as a result of internal conflict, other Turkic peoples rose to dominance in central Asia and eastern Europe. Among them in the east were the Uygurs (or Uighurs, known to the Chinese as Huihe), who became dominant in central Asia in the eighth century and, retained their power until the end of the 12th century? when they were overrun by the Mongols.
Meanwhile the western Gokturk Empire split into two—some among the Bulgars, led by the Dulo clan, and the Khazars, led by the Asena clan, who had previously ruled the Gokturk Empire. By 670 the Khazars had dispersed the Bulgar confederation; some among the Bulgars migrated to central Europe and founded the First Bulgarian Empire in 679, becoming ancestral in part to modern Bulgarians (see Bulgarians: nationality). By the second half of the eighth century the Khazar Empire extended from the Caspian sea and Black sea (including the Crimean Peninsula) as far north as the Ural Mountains and as far west as the Dnieper River and Kiev in present-day Ukraine. In the late ninth century the Pechenegs, pressured by the Khazars and other steppe peoples, migrated westward. In the 10th century, they controlled the territory north of the Black sea between the Don and Dnieper Rivers in present-day southwestern Russia and eastern Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula. In the 11th century some Pechenegs lived along the Lower Danube in present-day Romania. From the late 11th through the 12th century the Kipchaks were the most powerful people on the eastern European steppes. That name was also applied generally to all the Northwestern Turkic-speaking groups. some of them migrated to central Europe, especially to present-day Hungary in 1245, where they were known as Cumans.
After the founding of islam in Arabia by Muhammad in the seventh century, Arab armies, traders, and missionaries began spreading the new religion to neighboring peoples. Many Turkic peoples were introduced to islam in the eighth-ninth centuries. Over the centuries Islam became the dominant religion among them. Some Turkic groups converted from their pagan religion to Christianity, however, and others, notably the Khazars, to Judaism.
At the beginning of the 11th century the Seljuk Turks began consolidating their power. The Seljuks were Oguz Turks (that is, of the Southwestern Turkic-speaking group), related to Turkic peoples known as Torks who had migrated to eastern Europe. The Seljuks had been employed as mercenaries by the Abbasids, an Arabic dynasty, but eventually rebelled. They conquered both present-day Iran and Iraq, entering Baghdad in 1055, and overran Syria. In 1071 the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines of the Eastern Roman Empire at the Battle of Manzikert, after which waves of Oguz tribesmen settled in Asia Minor; they eventually occupied most of it and conquered surrounding areas as well. By the late 11th century the Seljuk Empire stretched from the Amu Darya, a river in central and western Asia, south to the Persian Gulf and from the Indus River west to the Mediterranean Sea. The Seljuk ascendancy and harassment of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem and their threatening of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, helped prompt the Crusades, the military expeditions by European Christians to the Near East through the late 13th century
In the early 13th century the Mongols united under the leadership of Genghis Khan, and subsequent khans carried out campaigns of conquest throughout much of Asia, seizing all the Seljuk state in Asia. They also broke up the Kipchak confederation in 1239. The Mongols established the Kipchak khanate four years later.
The Mongol conquests set in motion migrations and realignments of Turkic people that continued for several centuries. One of the outcomes was a merging of Mongol and Turkic cultures; Turkic elements, including the Islamic religion, became dominant among various groups in eastern Europe and central and western Asia, and some of them became known as Tatars.
Turkic peoples, in their weakened state, along with other Eurasian peoples, became a source of slaves for the expanding Muslim world. Known as Mamluks (or Mameluks or Mamelukes, Arabic for one who is owned), they served in Arabic armies, in which eventually they earned positions of authority They became influential in the Near East and North Africa, especially in Egypt, and founded a state that endured from 1250 to 1517. At its greatest extent it stretched from Arabia, Syria, and Egypt to parts of Libya and Nubia. The Mamluk presence in Arabic history led to the compilation of Turkic-Arabic dictionaries.
By the 14th century the Mongol Empire had weakened as a result of internal conflicts as well as resistance from conquered peoples. One Turkic provincial governor at Samarkand in the region of Turkestan (part of present-day Uzbekistan), Tamerlane (Timur the Lame), who claimed descent from Genghis Khan (to increase his influence, it is thought), with an army composed of Turks and Turkic-speaking Mongols, created an empire in southern and southwestern Asia in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. In the 1390s he captured European territory between the Caspian and Black Seas as well as Russian territory and eventually even occupied Moscow. In 1398 he abandoned his western conquest to invade India. In 1402 he returned to the west to battle the Ottoman Turks, a subgroup of Seljuks, at Angora (modern Ankara) in Asia Minor, forcing them to end their siege of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), ruled by the Byzantines. Tamerlane died in 1405 during an expedition to conquer China.
The Ottoman Empire
The tribal ancestors of the Ottoman Turks were among the last Turkic peoples to migrate to Asia Minor from central Asia. In time they became subjects of the Seljuks, who employed them as frontier guards against the Byzantines. In 1290 Osman I proclaimed Ottoman independence from the weakened Seljuks (hence the alternate
Murad (Amurath) IV, sultan of the Turks, 1612-40, surveys the building of the obelisk in this 17th-century portrait. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-98779])
Tribal name Osmanli) and began a concerted campaign in Asia Minor against the Byzantines, capturing Bursa shortly before his death in about 1326. In 1362 Murad I triumphed against the Byzantines at Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey, in Europe). Under Bayezid Murad’s son the Ottomans defeated the SERBS and their allies at Kosovo in present-day southwestern Serbia and, in 1396, the Hungarians and their allies at Nicopolis (modern Nikopol) in present-day northern Bulgaria. In 1397 Bayezid besieged Constantinople (when Tamerlane’s invasion out of the east changed the outcome).
The Ottoman Empire was fragmented for a time, but Mehmed, Bayezid’s son, reunited it, and his successors, Murad II and Mehmed II, secured additional territory. In 1444 Murad II defeated a European army of crusaders at Varna in present-day eastern Bulgaria. In 1453 Mehmed led an attack on Constantinople, taking the city, which the Ottomans renamed Istanbul. By the end of the 15th century the Ottomans had secured other Byzantine outposts. In the early 16th century they had also defeated the Mamluks and secured Syria and Egypt. By the mid-16th century under Suleiman (see sidebar), who expanded the empire into Hungary, northern Africa, and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the Ottoman Empire included much of southeastern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa—from Vienna in Austria to the Indian Ocean and from Tunis to the Caucasus Mountains.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the Ottomans fought a series of depleting wars against Poland, Austria, and Russia and lost holdings in Hungary and north of the Black Sea in Ukraine and Russia. Russia continued to expand southward, leading up to the Crimean War of 1854-56, in which Great Britain and France supported the Turks against the Russians. Meanwhile, African nations regained territory. In two successive Balkan Wars in 1912-13 Turkey lost more European territory to Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Albania. The empire continued to decline until its dissolution after World War I (1914-18). The republic of Turkey was formally proclaimed in 1923, with only a tiny portion remaining in Europe.
Citizens of the nation of Turkey, which is situated in both Asia and Europe, consist of Osmanli and Seljuk descendants as well as descendants of other groups who made up the Ottoman Empire.
The Kazakhs, thought to be mostly descendants of Kipchaks, also became the principal
Suleiman: The lawgiver
Suleiman (also Suleyman) was born at Trabzon in present-day Turkey in 1494, the son of Selim I. He became emperor as Suleiman I.
In 1521 Suleiman captured Belgrade, at that time a Hungarian city, and the next year he forced the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, a military and religious order, from the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea. In 1526 in another invasion of Hungary he killed King Louis II and defeated his forces at the Battle of Mohacs, and then in 1529 he unsuccessfully besieged Vienna. Among his later conquests were the cities of Tabriz and Baghdad in present-day Iran. Suleiman concluded a treaty with Francis I of France against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which allowed French access to commerce with the eastern Mediterranean countries. The Ottomans, with an expanded navy, eventually dominated the Mediterranean Sea. Suleiman again invaded Hungary in 1541, making central Hungary a part of the Ottoman Empire. He had additional military successes in Persia. His navy also partnered with France to pillage Nice and the Italian coasts. Over the next years he continued to lead campaigns to secure and expand his holdings in the Near East, the Balkans, and northern Africa. He died in Hungary in 1566 in an attempt to seize Szigetvar.
Suleiman was an excellent military strategist, administrator, and diplomat, whose legislative reforms earned him the title Kanuni, or “Lawgiver.” He was a patron of the arts and architecture who built strong fortresses and embellished Islamic cities. Sinan, the great Turkish architect, worked under his orders. The sciences also flourished during his reign. His favorite wife was Roxelana (or Khurems); her son, Selim II, succeeded Suleiman, known as the Magnificent, on his death in 1566.
Inhabitants of a nation in both Asia and Europe, Kazakhstan. Other Asian nations consist of large Turkic populations: Descendants of the Kyrgyz live in Kyrgyzstan; descendants of the Uzbeks live in present-day Uzbekistan (along with Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan, part of Uzbekistan); descendants of the Turkmens in Turkmenistan (and some in Russia and Turkey); and descendants of the seljuks in Azerbaijan. These nations were republics of the soviet Union (UssR) for part of their history and gained independence in 1991. Descendants of the Uygurs live in sinkiang (the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region) in China. Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples also live in Afghanistan.
Numerous other Turkic peoples are dispersed throughout Asia; the majority are Muslims. Modern European Turks—living mostly in Russia but also in Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, and other nations—are the Tatars, Balkars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Gagauz, Karachay, Karaim, Kumyks, and Nogay.
Many of the ancient Turkic tribes lived as nomadic herders on the steppes. Others sowed grains and other crops in steppe regions favorable to agriculture. in some communities Turkic families had specific plots of irrigated and sowed land.
When states formed the Turkics had a system of collecting tribute. Among the Gokturks and Oguzes tax officials known as Amga (or imga) were responsible for collecting goods in their region. The Khazars were known to demand a sword or pelt of ermine from each family of Slavs on a regular basis.
Turkics traded with one another and with other peoples. Arabic traders traveled to Turkic lands—even those far from the main trading routes—to set up bazaars.
Turkic tribes, as were ancient steppe peoples in general, were organized hierarchically along lineage, clan, and family lines. All tribal members were expected to be loyal to the tribe first. Tribal elders played a central role in enforcing traditional laws and customs—known to some Turkic peoples as the Tore—settling disputes, making decisions to protect the tribe. Nevertheless individuals had freedom in managing their private property, in particular land and herds. in tribal confederations the various tribes retained a great degree of autonomy. in the various Turkic empires, especially those extending over vast expanses, provincial governors had great authority.
Nomadic Turkics lived in yurts, light circular tents made of felt stretched over a lattice framework, similar to those of the Mongols. Turkics rarely built fortifications and surrounded cities with walls rarely. After the settling of agricultural villages, which resulted in a sedentary life, fortified cities were constructed.
Many of the steppe Turkic people were master horsemen.
Turkics had a variety of stringed, wind, and rhythm instruments. Among them were the kemenQC, a small violin played as a cello is; the kabak kemane, a three-stringed violin; the ud, like a lute; the tambur, like a mandolin; the kanun, like a zither; the santur, like a dulcimer; the zurna, like an oboe; the kaval, a type of flageolet; the dumbelek, a small drum; the daire, a tambourine; the kudum, a small double drum; the zil, a cymbal; and the Qalpara, castinets.
A long-standing literary form among Turkics is the destan, a poetic account of personalities and events from tribal history, often filled with details about Turkic lifeways.
Before the great majority of Turkics adopted the islamic religion they practiced a pagan religion in which the sky itself was perceived as a god figure, sometimes referred to as God-Sky
Further Reading
Margaret Bainbridge. The Turkic Peoples of the World (London: Kegan Paul, 1993).
Carter vaugn Findley. The Turks in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Daniel Goffman. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Jaason Goodwin. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2000). Charles Warren Hostler. The Turks of Central Asia (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993).
David Hotham. Turks (London: Taylor & Francis, 1972).
Lord Kinross. The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
John Richard Krueger. The Turkic Peoples (London: Taylor & Francis, 1997).
Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, eds. Suleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (New York: Longman, 1995).
Seton Lloyd. Ancient Turkey: A Traveller's History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). Karl Heinrich Menges. The Turkic Languages and Peoples: An Introduction to Turkic Studies
(Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1995). Hugh Pope. Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World (Woodstock, N. Y.: Overlook, 2005). David J. Roxburgh. Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years 600-1600 (London: Royal Academy, 2005). Kemal Silay, ed. Turkish Folklore and Oral Literature: Selected Essays of Ilhan Basgoz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
World History
