Photograph by Rev. Claude L. Pickens

Links to Articles

* Stone Camels and Clear Springs: The Salar's Samarkand Origins by Jianzhong Ma, et al.

* Exiled by Definition: The Salar of Northwest China by David S G Goodman

* Northwest China: the Salar and Economic Activism by David Goodman

* The Muslim Nations of the North-west by Anthony Garnaut

* China’s Vulnerability to Minority Separatism by June Teufel Dreyer

* Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism? By Dru C. Gladney

* Physical Anthropology and Ethnicity in Asia: The Transition from
Anthropometry to Genome-based Studies by A. H. Bittles, et al.

* Genetic Polymorphisms of 15 STR in Chinese Salar Ethnic Minority Group by J. Zhu, et al.

* Evolution and Migration History of the Chinese Population Inferred from Chinese Y-Chromosome Evidence by Wei Deng, et al.

* Molecular Evidence for the Temporal Stratification of Chinese Genetic Diversity by M. Black, et al.

* The Origins and Genetic Structure of Three Co-resident Chinese Muslim Populations: the Salar, Bo'an and Dongxiang by Wei Wang, et al.

The Salar language has two large dialect groups. The divergence is due to the fact that one branch was influenced by the Tibetan and Chinese languages, and the other branch by the Uyghur and Kazakh languages. Salar is not a written language. There are reported similarities with Turkmen. (Turkmen is the national language of Turkmenistan.). Amazingly, speakers of Salar and Turkish can generally understand each other to a large degree, even though one ethnic group lives in Central China and the other in Anatolia, thousands of miles away. Linguistic evidence points to a possible western Turkic, Oghuz origin of the Salar.

Turkmenistan is a Turkic country in Central Asia. The name Turkmenistan is derived from Persian, meaning "land of the Turkmen". The name of its capital, Ashgabat, is derived from Persian as well, loosely translating as "the city of loveliness".

The Koran
(in English)

* Chinese Mosques

* Chinese Islamic Cuisine

* Muslim Chinese Martial Arts

* Xiao'erjing (小兒經)

Origins
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Flag of Great Seljuq Empire

The Oghuz were a group of loosely linked nomadic Turkic peoples. A clan of this nation, the Seljuks, embraced Islam and in the eleventh century invaded Persia, where it founded the Great Seljuk Empire. The Ottoman dynasty, who gradually took over Anatolia after the fall of the Seljuks, toward the end of the thirteenth century, led an army that was also predominantly Oghuz. The name Oghuz is derived from the word ok, which means "arrow" or "tribe". The depiction of an archer shooting an arrow was the flag of the Seljuk Empire, founded by the Oghuz Turks in the 10th century.

A Seljuk Prince

The Art of the Seljuq Period in Anatolia (1081–1307) by MetMuseum.org

Xinjiang

Xinjiang is home to several Muslim Turkic groups including the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Salars and the Kazakhs, and a few Indo-European Iranic groups, such as the Tajiks and the Sarikolis/Wakhis (often mis-identified as Tajiks). Other PRC minority ethnic groups include Hui Chinese, the Mongols, the Russians, the Xibes, and the Manchus.

* Xinjiang: China Pre- and Post-Modern Crossroad by Dru Gladney

Qinghai

Qinghai was only relatively recently made a province of China. The area, historically called Kokonor in English until the early 20th century, lies outside of China proper and has been an ethnic melting pot for centuries, mixing Han Chinese, Mongol, Tibetan, and Turkic influences.

* Xunhua Salar Autonomous County

Gansu

Situated along the Silk Road, Gansu was an economically important province, and a cultural transmission path as well. Temples and Buddhist grottoes such as those at Mogao Caves ('Caves of the Thousand Buddhas') and Maijishan Caves contain artistically and historically revealing murals. Many parts of the province saw heavy fighting during the Muslim Rebellion of 1862-77.

SALAR

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

The Salar people (撒拉族) are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They numbered 104,503 people in the last census of 2000 and live mostly in Qinghai (in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County 循化撒拉族自治縣 and Hualong Autonomous County of the Hui Nationality 化隆回族自治縣), in Gansu (in Jishishan Autonomous County of the Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Nationalities 積石山保安族東鄉族撒拉族自治縣) and in Xinjiang (in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture 伊犁哈薩克自治州).

Their ancestors were migrating Oghuz Turks who intermarried with the Tibetans, Han Chinese, and Hui. They are a patriarchal agricultural society and Muslims.

History

The Salar people had resided in China's Qinghai Province since the beginning of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty during the early 13th century. During the time of Genghis Khan's conquest, they were known as the Salyr tribe of Khorasan. One Salyr chief agreed to submit his lieutenants Aqman and Qaraman as mercenaries to the Mongol army. In this way, these Turkmen Salyrs were spared the destruction which was brought upon the Khwarezmian Empire by the Mongol army. Forty years after Genghis Khan's conquest of Khwarezm, the Salyr lietenants Aqman and Qaraman also joined the Mongols in the Seige of Diaoyu in Sichuan, a Song Dynasty stronghold. Afterwards, Qaraman and his folowers left Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan and settled in the region of Qinghai in what is known today as the Xunhua County. His followers still retained their Turkic language which is now known as the Salar language.

Tilla-Kari Medressa in Samarkand

According to Salar tradition, during the fourteenth and fifthteenth centuries their ancestors, possibly from an Oghuz tribe of the Seljuk Turk, left Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan and eventually settled in their present location in Gansu province. Over the course of their history, the ancestors of the Salar are believed to have merged with Tibetans, Han Chinese and Mongolians to form the present-day Salar.

In 1781, Qing armies crushed a Salar uprising with the results being disastrous for the Salar. As much as 40% of their entire population was killed in the revolt.

The Muslim Rebellion

The Dungan Revolt was a religious war. It also known as the Hui Minorities' War and the Muslim Rebellion. The term is sometimes used to refer to the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan as well. It was an uprising by members of the Hui and other Muslim ethnic groups in China's Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces, as well as in Xinjiang, between 1862 and 1877.

The purpose of this uprising was to develop a Muslim country in the western bank of Yellow River (Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia excluding the Xinjing province). Some people say it was directed against the Qing Dynasty, but there is no evidence at all showing they intent to attack the capital of Beijing. The uprising was actively encouraged by the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion. When it failed, it instigated immigration of some of the Dungan people into Imperial Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Before the war, the population of Shaaxi province was about 13 million, minimum 1,750,000 are Dungan (Hui). After the war, the population dropped to 7 million, 150,000 fled, left to between 50,000, the rest are died in ten years. Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, was the Holy city of Dungan (Hui) in China before the revolt. But once-flourishing Chinese Muslim communities fell 93% in the revolt in Shaaxi province. Between 1648 and 1878, around twelve million Hui and Han Chinese were killed in ten unsuccessful uprisings.

Salar Culture

The typical clothing of the Salar very similar to other Muslim peoples in the region. The men are commonly bearded and dress in white shirts and white or black skullcaps.

The young single women are accustomed to dressing in Chinese dress of bright colors. The married women utilize the traditional veil in white or black colors.

They have a musical instrument called the Kouxuan. It is a string instrument manufactured in silver or in copper and only played by the women.

The Salars have been in Qinghai Province, China since the Mongol Yuan period. For centuries they've maintained their Oghuz language remarkably similar to the Turkmen language spoken in the Qaraqum.

However, culturally they have strictly conformed to the Naqshbandi ways of their Hui coreligionists. Therefore many nomadic Turkmen traditions have been lost, and Turkmen music was forbidden. More secular minded Salars have resorted to appropriating Tibetan or Moghol (a Qinghai Mongolic Muslim group) music as their own.

Since the early 2000s, a Turkist revival has been gaining some awareness throughout the 300,000 strong Salar community in Qinghai. They have re-surrected the Dede Korkut Destani, Oghuz Han Destani as their own national narrative, and also translated the late Turkmenbashi's work "Ruhnama" into both Salar and Chinese.

The Book of Dede Korkut

The Book of Dede Korkut (e-book) is the most famous epic story of the Oghuz Turks (also known as Turkmens or Turcomans). The book's mythic narrative is part of the cultural heritage of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, as well as to a lesser degree Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Dede Korkut is a heroic dastan (legend) which starts out in Central Asia, continues in Anatolia and Iran, and centers most of its action in the Azerbaijani Caucasus.

For the Turkic peoples, especially people who self-identify as Oghuz, it is the principal repository of ethnic identity, history, customs and the value systems of the Turkic peoples throughout history. It commemorates struggles for freedom at a time when the Oghuz Turks were a herding people. the term 'Oghuz' was gradually supplanted among the Turks themselves as Turkmen, 'Turcoman', from the mid tenth century on.

The Book of Dede Korkut by Anonymous, Geoffrey Lewis (Translator)

Islam in China

Islam in China has a rich heritage. China has some of the oldest Muslim history, dating back to as early as 650, when the uncle of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Sa`ad ibn Abi Waqqas, was sent as an official envoy to Emperor Gaozong. Throughout the history of Islam in China, Chinese Muslims have influenced the course of Chinese history.

Islam was first brought to China by an envoy sent by Uthman, the third Caliph, in 651, less than twenty years after the death of prophet Muhammad. The envoy was led by Sa`d ibn Abī Waqqās, the maternal uncle of the Prophet himself. Emperor Gaozong, the Tang emperor who received the envoy then ordered the construction of the Memorial mosque in Canton, the first mosque in the country. It was during the Tang Dynasty that China had its golden day of cosmopolitan culture which helped the introduction of Islam. The first major Muslim settlements in China consisted of Arab and Persian merchants. The term Hui originated from the Mandarin word “Huihui,” a term first used in the Yuan dynasty to describe Central Asian, Persian, and Arab residents in China.

By the time of the Song Dynasty, Muslims had come to dominate the import/export industry. The office of Director General of Shipping was consistently held by a Muslim during this period. In 1070, the Song emperor Shenzong invited 5,300 Muslim men from Bukhara, to settle in China in order to create a buffer zone between the Chinese and the Liao empire in the northeast. Later on these men were settled between the Sung capital of Kaifeng and Yenching (modern day Beijing). They were led by Prince Amir Sayyid "So-fei-er" (his Chinese name) who was reputed of being called the "father" of the Muslim community in China. Prior to him Islam was named by the Tang and Song Chinese as Dashi fa ("law of the Arabs") (Tashi or Dashi is the Chinese rendering of Tazi--the name the Persian people used for the Arabs). He renamed it to Huihui Jiao ("the Religion of the Huihui").

It was during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, (1274 - 1368), that large numbers of Muslims settled in China. The Mongols, a minority in China, gave Muslim immigrants an elevated status over the native Han Chinese as part of their governing strategy, thus giving Muslims a heavy influence. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims immigrants were recruited and forcibly relocated from Western and Central Asia by the Mongols to help them administer their rapidly expanding empire. The Mongols used Persian, Arab and Uyghur administrators to act as officers of taxation and finance. Muslims headed many corporations in China in the early Yuan period. Muslim scholars were brought to work on calendar making and astronomy. The architect Yeheidie'erding (Amir al-Din) learned from Han architecture and helped to design the construction of the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, Khanbaliq, which was in the location of present-day Beijing.

During the following Ming Dynasty, Muslims continued to be influential around government circles. Six of Ming Dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang's most trusted generals were Muslim, including Lan Yu who, in 1388, led a strong imperial Ming army out of the Great Wall and won a decisive victory over the Mongols in Mongolia, effectively ending the Mongol dream to re-conquer China. Additionally, the Yongle Emperor hired Zheng He, perhaps the most famous Chinese Muslim and China's foremost explorer, to lead seven expeditions to the Indian Ocean, from 1405 and 1433. However, during the Ming Dynasty, new immigration to China from Muslim countries was restricted in an increasingly isolationist nation. The Muslims in China who were descended from earlier immigration began to assimilate by speaking Chinese dialects and by adopting Chinese names and culture. Mosque architecture began to follow traditional Chinese architecture. This era, sometimes considered the Golden Age of Islam in China, also saw Nanjing become an important center of Islamic study.

The rise of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) made relations between the Muslims and Chinese more difficult. The dynasty prohibited ritual slaughtering of animals, followed by forbidding the construction of new mosques and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Qing rulers belonged to the Manchu, a minority in China, and employed the tactics of divide and conquer to keep the Muslims, Hans, Tibetans and Mongolians in conflict with each other. These repressive policies resulted in five bloody Hui rebellions, most notably the Panthay Rebellion, which occurred in Yunnan province from 1855 to 1873, and the Dungan revolt, which occurred mostly in Xinjiang, Shensi and Gansu, from 1862 to 1877. The Manchu government then committed genocide to suppress these revolts, killing a million people in the Panthay rebellion, several million in the Dungan revolt and five million in the suppression of Miao people in Guizhou. A "washing off the Muslims" (洗回, xi Hui) policy had been long advocated by officials in the Manchu government.

In 1911, the provinces of Qinhai, Gansu and Ningxia fell to Muslim warlords of the family known as the Ma clique. During the Cultural Revolution, mosques were often defaced, destroyed or closed and copies of the Quran were destroyed along with temples, churches, monasteries, and cemeteries by the Red Guards. The government began to relax its policies towards Muslims in 1978. Today, Islam is experiencing a modest revival and there are now many mosques in China. There has been an upsurge in Islamic expression and many nation-wide Islamic associations have been organized to co-ordinate inter-ethnic activities among Muslims.

* Wary of Islam, China Tightens a Vise of Rules by Edward Wang

Ethnic Groups: Muslims live in every region in China. The highest concentrations are found in the northwest provinces of Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia, with significant populations also found throughout Yunnan province in southwest China and Henan Province in central China. Of China’s 55 officially recognized minority peoples, ten groups are predominately Muslim. The largest groups in descending order are Hui (9.8 million in year 2000 census, or 48% of the officially tabulated number of Muslims), Uyghur (8.4 million, 41%), Kazak (1.25 million , 6.1%), Dongxiang (514,000, 2.5%), Kyrgyz (161,000), Salar (105,000), Tajik (41,000), Uzbek , Bonan (17,000), and Tatar (5,000). However, individual members of traditionally Muslim ethnic groups may profess other religions or none at all. Additionally, Tibetan Muslims are officially classified along with the Tibetan people, unlike the Hui who are classified as a separate people, even though they are indistinguishable from the Han. Muslims live predominantly in the areas that border Central Asia, Tibet and Mongolia, i.e Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai, which is known as the "Quran Belt".

Muslims in China by Aliya Ma Lynn

Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang by James A. Millward

Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China by Jonathan N. N. Lipman

Oghuz Turks

Map of Central Asia

The Oghuz (variously known as Ghuzz, Guozz, Kuz, Oguz, Oğuz, Okuz, Oufoi, Ouz, Ouzoi, Torks, Uguz, Uğuz, and Uz) were a group of loosely linked nomadic Turkic peoples. In the ninth century the Oghuz Turks from the Aral steppes drove the Pecheneg Turks of the Emba region and the River Ural toward the west. In the tenth century they inhabited the steppe of the rivers Sari-su, Turgai, and Emba to the north of Lake Balkhash of modern day Kazakhstan. A clan of this nation, the Seljuks, embraced Islam and in the eleventh century invaded Persia, where it founded the Great Seljuk Empire.

Similarly, in the eleventh century a pagan Oghuz clan—referred to as Uzes or Torks in the Russian chronicles—overthrew Pecheneg supremacy in the Russian steppe. Harried by another Turkic horde, the Kipchaks—a branch of the Kimaks of the middle Irtysh or of the Ob—these Oghuz penetrated as far as the lower Danube, crossed it and invaded the Balkans, where they were either crushed or struck down by an outbreak of plague, causing the survivors either to flee or to join the Byzantine imperial forces as mercenaries (1065).

The Oghuz seem to have been related to the Pechenegs, some of whom were clean-shaven and others of whom had small beards. According to the book Attila and the Nomad Hordes, "Like the Kimaks they set up many carved wooden funerary statues surrounded by simple stone balbal monoliths." The authors of the book go on to note that "Those Uzes or Torks who settled along the Russian frontier were gradually Slavicized though they also played a leading role as cavalry in twelfth and early thirteenth century Russian armies where they were known as Black Hats.... Oghuz warriors served in almost all Islamic armies of the Middle East from the eleventh century onwards, in Byzantium from the ninth century, and even in Spain and Morocco." In later centuries, they adapted and applied their own traditions and institutions to the ends of the Islamic world and emerged as empire-builders with a constructive sense of statecraft.

Linguistically, the Oghuz are listed together with the old Kimaks of the middle Yenisei of the Ob, the old Kipchaks who later emigrated to southern Russia, and the modern Kirghiz in one particular Turkic group, distinguished from the rest by the mutation of the initial y sound to j (dj).

The term 'Oghuz' was gradually supplanted among the Turks themselves by Türkmen, 'Turcoman', from the mid tenth century on, a process which was completed by the beginning of the thirteenth.

The Ottoman dynasty, who gradually took over Anatolia after the fall of the Seljuks, toward the end of the thirteenth century, led an army that was also predominantly Oghuz.

Name: The name Oghuz is derived from the word ok, which means "arrow" or "tribe". The depiction of an archer shooting an arrow was the flag of the Seljuk Empire, founded by the Oghuz Turks in the 10th century.

The designation of "Oghuz" was given to a series of Turkic tribes in Central Asia who had united into a new confederation. This socio-political union led to the emergence of a new larger inter-tribal Turkic entity, the Oghuz. The Oghuz gradually grew larger as various other Turkic tribes united during the Göktürk Empire in the 6th and 7th centuries.

Oghuz is not an ethnic name, and it can be simply translated into "Turkic tribes." The "Oghuz Turk branch" or "Western Turk branch" is one of the traditional six branches of the modern Turkic peoples. The "Oghuz branch" is a geographical and historical designation, not a separate ethnic term since the Turkic peoples of the world share the same ethnic roots.

They are referred to as "Western Turks" because they moved west from other Turkic peoples after the Göktürk empire collapsed, and because the majority of the areas in which they inhabit today (except Turkmenistan and the Turkmen Sahra) are west of the Caspian Sea, while those referred to as "Eastern Turks" live east of the Caspian Sea.

Origins: In 178-177 BC, the Xiongnu shan-yü Mao-tun subdued a people called Hu-chieh, west of Wu-sun. The early pronunciation of this transliteration suggests that they were Oghur/Oghuz.

The original homeland of the Oghuz, like other Turks, was the Ural-Altay region of Central Asia known as Turkestan or Turan, which has been the domain of Turkic peoples since antiquity.

Tūrān (Persian: توران) is the ancient Iranian name for Central Asia, literally meaning "the land of the Tur". The original Turanians are the Tuirya Iranian people. of the Avesta age. According to the Shahnamehs account, at least 1500 years later after the Avesta, the nomadic tribes who inhabited these lands were ruled by Tūr, who was the emperor Fereydun's elder son. The association with Turks is also primarily based on the Shahnamehs geographical account where Turkification of Central Asia was partially completed during that time.

Tur/Turaj (Tuzh in Middle Persian) is the son of emperor Fereydun in ancient Iranian mythology. In the Shahnameh, he is identified with the Turks although culturally, there is no relationship between Turanians of the Shahnameh and the culture of ancient Turks. In 19th century and early 20th century discourse, now obsolete, Turan was primarily an ideological term designating Turkic, Ugric languages, Uralic languages, and even Dravidian people(Southern Turanian Group) and people more or less indiscriminately, implying a common ancestry and common culture of the various ethnicities in question.

Although their mass-migrations from Central Asia occurred from the 9th century onwards, they were present in areas west of the Caspian Sea centuries prior, although smaller in numbers and perhaps living with other Turks. For example, the Book of Dede Korkut, the historical epic of the Oghuz Turks, was written in Central Asia at least from the ninth and tenth centuries.

According to many historians, the usage of the word "Oghuz" is dated back to the advent of the Huns (220 BC). The title of "Oghuz" (Oguz Khan) was given to Mau-Tun, the founder of the Hun Empire, which is often considered the first Turkic political entity in Central Asia.

Also in the 2nd century BC, a Turkic tribe called O-kut or Wuqi 呼揭, 呼得, 乌揭, 乌护 who were described as a western hostility of Huns (referred to in Chinese sources, Shiji, 110 and Suishu, 84) were mentioned in the area of the Irtysh River, in present-day Lake Zaysan. It must be noted that the Greek sources used the name Oufi (or Ouvvi) to describe the Oghuz Turks, a name they had also used to describe the Huns centuries earlier.

A number of tribal groupings bearing the name Oghuz, often with a numeral representing the number of united tribes in the union, are noted.

The mention of the "six Oghuz tribal union" in the Turkic Orhun inscriptions (6th century) pertains to the unification of the six Turkic tribes which became known as the Oghuz. This was the first written reference to Oghuz, and was dated to the period of the Göktürk empire. The Oghuz community gradually grew larger, uniting more Turkic tribes prior and during the Göktürk establishment.

Prior to the Göktürk state, there are references to the Sekiz-Oghuz ("eight-Oghuz") and the Dokuz-Oghuz ("nine-Oghuz") union. The Oghuz Turks under Sekiz-Oghuz and the Dokuz-Oghuz state formations ruled different areas in the vicinity of the Altay mountains. During the establishment of the Göktürk state, Oghuz tribes inhabited the Altay mountain region and also lived in northeastern areas of the Altay mountains along the Tula River. They were also present as a community near the Barlik River in present-day northern Mongolia.

Their main homeland and domain in the ensuing centuries was the area of Transoxiana, in western Turkestan.

This land became known as the "Oghuz steppe," which is an area between the Caspian and Aral Seas. Ibn al-Athir, an Arab historian, declared that the Oghuz Turks had come to Transoxiana in the period of the caliph Al-Mahdi in the years between 775 and 785. In the period of the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun (813–833), the name Oghuz starts to appear in the works of Islamic writers. By 780, the eastern parts of the Syr Darya were ruled by the Karluk Turks and the western region (Oghuz steppe) was ruled by the Oghuz Turks.

Turkish Group, Azerbaijani Group, Turkmen Group, Salar

Language: The Oghuz languages may be broken down into three main groups, based on geography and shared features:

a Western group, including
- Turkish, including Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish, and the language of the Meskhetian Turks
- Azerbaijani, including the northern and southern varieties of Azerbaijani, the languages of the Iraqi Turkmen of Iran and Iraq, Qashqa'i, and Afshar
an Eastern or Turkmen group, including Turkmen, Khorasani Turkish, and the Oghuz dialect of Uzbek
a southern group, including dialects of Iran (Kashkay, Sonqori, Aynallu etc.) and Afghanistan (Afshar).

An outlying language, Salar, is spoken by about 70,000 people in China.

Two languages, Crimean Tatar and Urum are historically Kypchak languages, but have been so heavily influenced by Oghuz languages that it is difficult to classify them definitively as either Oghuz or Kypchak.

The extinct Pecheneg language is probably Oghuz, but as it is poorly documented, it is difficult to further classify it within the Oghuz family.

Social Units: The militarism that the Oghuz empires were very well known for was rooted in their centuries-long nomadic lifestyle. In general they were a herding society which possessed certain military advantages that other societies did not have, particularly mobility. Alliances by marriage and kinship, and systems of "social distance" based on family relationships were the connective tissues of their society.

In Oghuz traditions, "society was simply the result of the growth of individual families". But such a society also grew by alliances and the expansion of different groups, normally through marriages. The shelter of the Oghuz tribes was a tent-like dwelling, erected on wooden poles and covered with skin, felt, or hand-woven textiles, which is called a yurt.

Their cuisine included yahni (stew), kebabs, Toyga çorbası (lit. "wedding soup;" a soup made from wheat flour and yogurt), Kımız (a traditional drink of the Turks, made from horse milk), Pekmez (a syrup made of boiled of grape juice and helva made with cornflour), tutmac (noodle soup), yufka (flattened bread), katmer (layered pastry), chorek (ring-shaped buns), bread, clotted cream, cheese, milk and ayran, as well as wine.

Social order was maintained by emphasizing "correctness in conduct as well as ritual and ceremony." Ceremonies brought together the scattered members of the society to celebrate birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Such ceremonies had the effect of minimizing social dangers and also of adjusting persons to each other under controlled emotional conditions.

Patrilineally related men and their families were regarded as a group with rights over a particular territory and were distinguished from neighbours on a territorial basis. Marriages were often arranged among territorial groups so that neighbouring groups could become related, but this was the only organizing principle that extended territorial unity. Each community of the Oghuz Turks was thought of as part of a larger society composed of distant as well as close relatives. This signified "tribal allegiance." Wealth and materialistic objects were not commonly emphasized in Oghuz society and most remained herders, and when settled they would be active in agriculture.

Status within the family was based on age, gender, relationships by blood, or marriageability. Males as well as females were active in society, yet men were the backbones of leadership and organization. According to the Book of Dede Korkut which demonstrates the culture of the Oghuz Turks, women were "expert horse riders, archers, and athletes." The elders were respected as repositories of both "secular and spiritual wisdom."

Homeland in Transoxiana: In the 8th century, the Oghuz Turks made a new home and domain for themselves in the area between the Caspian and Aral seas, a region that is often referred to as Transoxiana, the western portion of Turkestan. They had moved westward from the Altay mountains through the Siberian steppes and settled in this region, and also penetrated into southern Russia and the Volga.

In his accredited work titled Diwan Lughat al-Turk, Mahmud of Kashgar, a Turkic scholar of the 11th century, described the Karachuk Mountains which are located just east of the Aral Sea as the original homeland of the Oghuz Turks. The Karachuk mountains are now known as the Tengri Tagh (Tian Shan in Chinese) Mountains, and they are adjacent to Syr Darya.

The extension from the Karachuk Mountains towards the Caspian Sea (Transoxiana) was called the "Oghuz Steppe Lands" from where the Oghuz Turks established trading, religious and cultural contacts with the Abbasid Arab caliphate who ruled to the south. This is around the same time that they first converted to Islam and renounced their shamanist belief system. The Arab historians mentioned that the Oghuz Turks in their domain in Transoxiana were ruled by a number of kings and chieftains.

It was in this area that they later founded the Seljuk Empire, and it was from this area that they spread west into western Asia and eastern Europe during Turkic migrations from the 9th until the 12th century. The founders of the Ottoman Empire were also Oghuz Turks.

Transoxiana ("河中“ in Chinese) / Ma Wara'un-Nahr (Arabic: ما وراء النهر) / Farārood (Persian: فرارود) is the ancient name used for the portion of Central Asia corresponding approximately with modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and southwest Kazakhstan. Geographically, it means the region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers.

The name Transoxiana stuck in Western consciousness because of the exploits of Alexander the Great, who extended Greek culture into the region with his conquests of the 4th century BC; Transoxiana was the most northeastern point of the Hellenistic culture, and in fact kept a hybrid Greek/Persian/Chinese/Buddhist culture, dubbed 'Serindian', until the Islamic invasion.

During the Sassanid Empire, it was often called Sogdiana, a provincial name taken from the Achaemenid Empire, and used to distinguish it from nearby Bactria (Bactria is basically what is now northern Afghanistan).

The Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, who visited the neighbouring countries of Bactria and Parthia along with Transoxiana in 126 BC, made the first known Chinese report on this region.

In Sassanid times, the region became a major cultural and scientific center due to effective royal authority and the wealth derived from the Northern Silk Road. Many Persian nobles and landlords escaped to this region after the Muslim invasion. Following the Arab conquest, the area became known as Ma wara'un-Nahr (Arabic, "what is beyond the river").

Transoxiana's major cities and cultural centers are Samarkand and Bukhara. Both are in the southern portion of Transoxiana, and the majority of the region was dry but fertile plains. Both cities remained centers of Persian culture and civilization after the Islamic conquest of Iran, and played a crucial role in the revival of Persian culture with establishment of the Samanid dynasty.

The region was conquered by Qutaybah ibn-Muslim between 706 and 715 and loosely held by the Umayyads from 715 to 738. This conquest was consolidated by Nasr ibn-Sayyar between 738 and 740. It was under the Umayyads from 740-748; and under the Abbasids after 748.

Genghis Khan invaded Transoxiana in 1219 during his conquest of Khwarazm. Before his death in 1227, he assigned the lands of Western Central Asia to his second son Chagatai, and this region became known as the Chagatai Khanate. In 1369 Timur (commonly called Tamerlane or Timur the Lame; video), of the Barlas tribe, became the effective ruler while continuing the ceremonial authority of Chagatai Khan's dynasty, and made Samarkand the capital of his future empire. Transoxiana was known to be flourishing in the mid 14th century prior to invasion by Timur.

Travels in Transoxiana: In the Lands Over the Hindu Kush and Cross the Amu Darya by Jaswant Singh

Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 by John Darwin

Fabric Merchant at the Samarkand Market

Samarkand

Samarkand (Uzbek: Samarqand, Самарқанд; video), is the second-largest city in Uzbekistan and the capital of Samarqand Province.The city is most noted for its central position on the Silk Road between China and the west and for being an Islamic centre for scholarly study. The Bibi-Khanym Mosque remains one of the city's most famous landmarks. The Registan was the ancient centre of the city. It is located at the altitude of 702 meters. In 2001, UNESCO inscribed the 2750-year-old city on the World Heritage List as Samarkand - Crossroads of Cultures.

Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, prospering from its location on the trade route between China and Europe (Silk Road). At times Samarkand has been one of the greatest city of Central Asia. Founded circa 700 BC it was already the capital of the Sogdian satrapyunder the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia when Alexander the Great conquered it in 329 BC (see Afrasiab, Sogdiana).

The Greeks referred to Samarkand as Maracanda. In the 6th Century it was within the domains of a Turkish kingdom.

At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came under Arab control. Under Abbasid rule, the legend goes, the secret of papermaking was obtained from two Chinese prisoners from the Battle of Talas in 751, which led to the first paper mill in the Islamic world to be founded in Samarkand. The invention then spread to the rest of the Islamic world, and from there to Europe.

From the 6th to the 13th century it grew larger and more populous than modern Samarkand and was controlled by the Western Turks, Arabs (who converted the area to Islam), Persian Samanids, Kara-Khanid Turks, Seljuk Turks, Kara-Khitan, and Khorezmshah before being sacked by the Mongols under Genghis Khan in 1220 . A small part of the population survived, but Samarkand suffered at least another Mongol sack by Khan Baraq to get treasure he needed to pay an army with. The town took many decades to recover from these disasters.

In 1365 a revolt against Mongol control occurred in Samarkand.

In 1370, Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane, decided to make Samarkand the capital of his empire, which extended from India to Turkey. During the next 35 years he built a new city and populated it with artisans and craftsmen from all of the places he had conquered. Timur gained a reputation as a patron of the arts and Samarkand grew to become the centre of the region of Transoxiana. During this time the city had a population of about 150,000.

In 1499 the Uzbek Turks took control of Samarkand. The Shaybanids emerged as the Uzbek leaders at or about this time.

In the 16th century, the Shaybanids moved their capital to Bukhara and Samarkand went into decline. After an assault by the Persian king, Nadir Shah, the city was abandoned in the 18th century, about 1720 or a few years latter.

Samarkand-Crossroads of Cultures

The Silk Road, Samarkand

The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics by Edward H. Schafer

From Samaria to Samarkand: The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel by David A. Law

Map of Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan (Uzbek: O‘zbekiston Respublikasi or Ўзбекистон Республикаси), is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south. Once part of the Persianized Samanid and later Timurid empires, the region was conquered in the early 16th century by Uzbek nomads, who spoke an Eastern Turkic language. Most of Uzbekistan’s population today belong to the Uzbek ethnic group and speak the Uzbek language, one of the family of Turkic languages.

History of Uzbekistan

Early History: The first people known to have occupied Central Asia were Iranian nomads who arrived from the northern grasslands of what is now Uzbekistan sometime in the first millennium B.C. These nomads, who spoke Iranian dialects, settled in Central Asia and began to build an extensive irrigation system along the rivers of the region. At this time, cities such as Bukhoro (Bukhara) and Samarqand (Samarkand) began to appear as centers of government and culture. By the fifth century B.C., the Bactrian, Soghdian, and Tokharian states dominated the region. As China began to develop its silk trade with the West, Iranian cities took advantage of this commerce by becoming centers of trade. Using an extensive network of cities and settlements in the province of Mawarannahr (a name given the region after the Arab conquest) in Uzbekistan and farther east in what is today China's Xinjiang Uygur Auton-omous Region, the Soghdian intermediaries became the wealthiest of these Iranian merchants. Because of this trade on what became known as the Silk Route, Bukhoro and Samarqand eventually became extremely wealthy cities, and at times Mawarannahr was one of the most influential and powerful Persian provinces of antiquity.

The wealth of Mawarannahr was a constant magnet for invasions from the northern steppes and from China. Numerous intraregional wars were fought between Soghdian states and the other states in Mawarannahr, and the Persians and the Chinese were in perpetual conflict over the region. Alexander the Great conquered the region in 328 B.C., bringing it briefly under the control of his Macedonian Empire.

In the same centuries, however, the region also was an important center of intellectual life and religion. Until the first centuries after Christ, the dominant religion in the region was Zoroastrianism, but Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Christianity also attracted large numbers of followers.

Early Islamic Period: The conquest of Central Asia by Islamic Arabs, which was completed in the eighth century A.D., brought to the region a new religion and culture that continue to be dominant. The Arabs first invaded Mawarannahr in the middle of the seventh century through sporadic raids during their conquest of Persia. Available sources on the Arab conquest suggest that the Soghdians and other Iranian peoples of Central Asia were unable to defend their land against the Arabs because of internal divisions and the lack of strong indigenous leadership. The Arabs, on the other hand, were led by a brilliant general, Qutaybah ibn Muslim, and they also were highly motivated by the desire to spread their new faith (the official beginning of which was in A.D. 622). Because of these factors, the population of Mawarannahr was easily conquered. The new religion brought by the Arabs spread gradually in the region. The native cultures, which in some respects already were being displaced by Persian influences before the Arabs arrived, were displaced farther in the ensuing centuries. Nevertheless, the destiny of Central Asia as an Islamic region was firmly established by the Arab victory over the Chinese armies in 750 in a battle at the Talas River.

Under Arab rule, Central Asia retained much of its Iranian character, remaining an important center of culture and trade for centuries after the Arab conquest. However, until the tenth century the language of government, literature, and commerce was Arabic. Mawarannahr continued to be an important political player in regional affairs, as it had been under various Persian dynasties. In fact, the Abbasid Caliphate, which ruled the Arab world for five centuries beginning in 750, was established thanks in great part to assistance from Central Asian supporters in their struggle against the then-ruling Umayyad Caliphate.

During the height of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eighth and the ninth centuries, Central Asia and Mawarannahr experienced a truly golden age. Bukhoro became one of the leading centers of learning, culture, and art in the Muslim world, its magnificence rivaling contemporaneous cultural centers such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba. Some of the greatest historians, scientists, and geographers in the history of Islamic culture were natives of the region.

As the Abbasid Caliphate began to weaken and local Islamic Iranian states emerged as the rulers of Iran and Central Asia, the Persian language began to regain its preeminent role in the region as the language of literature and government. The rulers of the eastern section of Iran and of Mawarannahr were Persians. Under the Samanids and the Buyids, the rich culture of Mawarannahr continued to flourish.

Turkification: In the ninth century, the continued influx of nomads from the northern steppes brought a new group of people into Central Asia. These people were the Turks who lived in the great grasslands stretching from Mongolia to the Caspian Sea. Introduced mainly as slave soldiers to the Samanid Dynasty, these Turks served in the armies of all the states of the region, including the Abbasid army. In the late tenth century, as the Samanids began to lose control of Mawarannahr and northeastern Iran, some of these soldiers came to positions of power in the government of the region, and eventually they established their own states. With the emergence of a Turkic ruling group in the region, other Turkic tribes began to migrate to Mawarannahr.

The first of the Turkic states in the region was the Ghaznavid Empire, established in the last years of the tenth century. The Ghaznavid state, which ruled lands south of the Amu Darya, was able to conquer large areas of Iran, Afghanistan, and northern India during the reign of Sultan Mahmud. The dominance of Ghazna was curtailed, however, when large-scale Turkic migrations brought in two new groups of Turks who undermined the Ghaznavids. In the east, these Turks were led by the Qarakhanids, who conquered the Samanids. Then the Seljuk family led Turks into the western part of the region, conquering the Ghaznavid territory of Khorazm (also spelled Khorezm and Khwarazm).

Seljuk (Arabic: السلاجقة, Turkish: Selçuk; also Seldjuk, Seldjuq, Seljuq) was the eponymous hero of the Seljuks. He was the son of a certain Duqaq surnamed Timuryaligh -of the iron bow- and either the chief or an eminent member from the Kınık tribe of the Oghuz Turks. In about 985 the Seljuk clan split off from the bulk of the Tokuz-Oghuz, a confederacy of nine clans long settled between the Aral and Caspian Seas, and set up camp on the right bank of the lower Syr Darya (Jaxartes), in the direction of Jend, near Kzyl Orda in present day south-central Kazakhstan where they were converted to Islam.

The biblical names of his four sons -Mîkâîl, Isrâîl (Arslan), Mûsâ, and Yûnus (Jonah)- suggest previous acquaintance with either Khazar Judaism or Nestorian Christianity. Seljuk died approximately in 1038 and was sacrified in a tomb.

Under Mikail's sons Toghrul and Chaghri the Seljuks migrated into Khurasan. Ghaznavid attempts to stop Seljuks raiding the local Muslim populace led to the Battle of Dandanaqan on 23 May 1040. Victorious Seljuks became masters of Khurasan, expanding their power into Transoxiana and across Iran. By 1055 Toghrul had expanded his control all the way to Baghdad, setting himself up as the champion of the Abbasid caliph, who honored him with the title sultan. Earlier rulers may have used this title but the Seljuks seem to have been the first to inscribe it on their coins.

Map of the Great Seljuq Empire

The Great Seljuq Empire was a medieval Sunni Muslim empire established by the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks that once controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. From their homelands near the Aral sea, the Seljuqs advanced first into Khorasan and then into mainland Persia before eventually conquering eastern Anatolia. Their advance marked the beginning of Turkic power in the Middle East.

The Seljuq empire was founded by Tugrul Beg in 1037 after the efforts by the founder of the Seljuq dynasty, Seljuq Beg, back in the first quarter of the 11th century. Seljuq Beg's father was in a higher position in the Oghuz Yabgu State, and gave his name both to the state and the dynasty. The Seljuqs united the fractured political scene of the Eastern Islamic world and played a key role in the first and second crusades. Highly Persianized in culture and language, the Seljuqs also played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition.

List of Emperors of the Great Seljuq Empire:

Seljuk Beg (named after)

Tuğrul Beg (1037 - 1063) (the founder)

Alp Arslan (1063 - 1072)

Melik Şah I (1072 - 1092)

Mahmud (1092 - 1094)

Barkiyaruq (1094 - 1105)

Melik Şah II (1105)

Mehmed (1105 - 1118)

Ahmed Sanjar (1118 - 1153)

Attracted by the wealth of Central Asia as were earlier groups, the Seljuks dominated a wide area from Asia Minor to the western sections of Mawarannahr, in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq in the eleventh century. The Seljuk Empire then split into states ruled by various local Turkic and Iranian rulers. The culture and intellectual life of the region continued unaffected by such political changes, however. Turkic tribes from the north continued to migrate into the region during this period.

In the late twelfth century, a Turkic leader of Khorazm, which is the region south of the Aral Sea, united Khorazm, Mawarannahr, and Iran under his rule. Under the rule of the Khorazm shah Kutbeddin Muhammad and his son, Muhammad II, Mawarannahr continued to be prosperous and rich. However, a new incursion of nomads from the north soon changed this situation. This time the invader was Chinggis (Genghis) Khan with his Mongol armies.

Mongol Period: The Mongol invasion of Central Asia is one of the turning points in the history of the region. That event left imprints that were still discernible in the early twentieth century. The Mongols had such a lasting impact because they established the tradition that the legitimate ruler of any Central Asian state could only be a blood descendant of Chinggis Khan.

The Mongol conquest of Central Asia, which took place from 1219 to 1225, led to a wholesale change in the population of Mawarannahr. The conquest quickened the process of Turkification in the region because, although the armies of Chinggis Khan were led by Mongols, they were made up mostly of Turkic tribes that had been incorporated into the Mongol armies as the tribes were encountered in the Mongols' southward sweep. As these armies settled in Mawarannahr, they intermixed with the local populations, increasingly making the Iranians a minority. Another effect of the Mongol conquest was the large-scale damage the warriors inflicted on cities such as Bukhoro and on regions such as Khorazm. As the leading province of a wealthy state, Khorazm was treated especially severely. The irrigation networks in the region suffered extensive damage that was not repaired for several generations.

Map of the Chagatai Khanate in the Late 13th Century (by MapMaster)

The Chagatai Khanate was a Mongol and later more Turko-Islamic in language and culture khanate of the Mongol Empire that comprised the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, second son of the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, and his descendents and successors.

At its height in the late 13th century, the Khanate extended from the Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea to the Altai Mountains in the border of modern day Mongolia and China.

The khanate lasted in one form or another from 1220s until the late 17th century, although the western half of the khanate was lost to Tamerlane in the 1360s. The eastern half remained under Chagatai khans who were, at times, allied or at war with Timur's successors. Finally, in the 17th century, the remaining Chagatai domains fell under the theocratic regime of Apaq Khoja and his descendants, the Khojijans, who ruled East Turkestan under Jungar and Manchu overlordships consecutively.

Genghis Khan's empire was inherited by his third son, Ögedei, the designated Great Khan who personally controlled the lands east of Lake Balkash as far as Mongolia. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was accorded the northern Mongolian homeland. Chagatai, the second son, received Transoxania, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in modern Uzbekistan, and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almalik near what is now Kulja in northwestern China. Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire was endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Turkic subjects.

Rule of Timur: Following the death of Chinggis Khan in 1227, his empire was divided among his three sons. Despite the potential for serious fragmentation, Mongol law maintained orderly succession for several more generations, and control of most of Mawarannahr stayed in the hands of direct descendants of Chaghatai, the second son of Chinggis. Orderly succession, prosperity, and internal peace prevailed in the Chaghatai lands, and the Mongol Empire as a whole remained strong and united.

In the early fourteenth century, however, as the empire began to break up into its constituent parts, the Chaghatai territory also was disrupted as the princes of various tribal groups competed for influence. One tribal chieftain, Timur (Tamerlane), emerged from these struggles in the 1380s as the dominant force in Mawarannahr. Although he was not a descendant of Chinggis, Timur became the de facto ruler of Mawarannahr and proceeded to conquer all of western Central Asia, Iran, Asia Minor, and the southern steppe region north of the Aral Sea. He also invaded Russia before dying during an invasion of China in 1405.

Timur initiated the last flowering of Mawarannahr by gathering in his capital, Samarqand, numerous artisans and scholars from the lands he had conquered. By supporting such people, Timur imbued his empire with a very rich culture. During Timur's reign and the reigns of his immediate descendants, a wide range of religious and palatial construction projects were undertaken in Samarqand and other population centers. Timur also patronized scientists and artists; his grandson Ulugh Beg was one of the world's first great astronomers. It was during the Timurid dynasty that Turkish, in the form of the Chaghatai dialect, became a literary language in its own right in Mawarannahr--although the Timurids also patronized writing in Persian. Until then only Persian had been used in the region. The greatest Chaghataid writer, Ali Shir Nava'i, was active in the city of Herat, now in northwestern Afghanistan, in the second half of the fifteenth century.

Map of the Timurid Dynasty

The Timurids were a Persianate Central Asian Sunni Muslim dynasty of originally Turko-Mongol descent whose empire included the whole of Central Asia, Iran, modern Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as large parts of India, Mesopotamia and Caucasus. It was founded by the legendary conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) in the 14th century.

In the 16th century, Timurid prince Babur, the ruler of Ferghana, invaded India and founded the Mughal Empire, who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent until its decline after Aurangzeb in the early 18th century, and its eventual demise by the British Raj after the Indian rebellion of 1857.

The origin of the Timurid dynasty goes back to the Mongolian nomadic confederation known as Barlas, who were remnants of the original Mongol army of Genghis Khan. After the Mongol conquest of Central Asia, the Barlas settled in Turkistan (which then became also known as Moghulistan - "Land of Mongols") and intermingled to a considerable degree with the local Turkic and Turkic-speaking population, so that at the time of Timur's reign the Barlas had become thoroughly Turkicized in terms of language and habits. Additionally, by adopting Islam, the Central Asian Turks and Mongols also adopted the Persian literary and high culture which has dominated Central Asia since the early days of Islamic influence. Persian literature was instrumental in the assimilation of the Timurid elite to the Perso-Islamic courtly culture. Timur was also steeped in Persian culture and in most of the territories which he incorporated, Persian was the primary language of administration and literary culture. Thus the language of the settled "diwan" was Persian, and its scribes had to be thoroughly adept in Persian culture, whatever their ethnic origin

The Timurid state quickly broke into two halves after the death of Timur. The chronic internal fighting of the Timurids attracted the attention of the Uzbek nomadic tribes living to the north of the Aral Sea. In 1501 the Uzbeks began a wholesale invasion of Mawarannahr (Transoxiana).

Map of Central Asia in Around 1450

The Uzbeks are a Turkic people of Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Smaller diaspora populations of Uzbeks from Central Asia are also found in Iran, Turkey, North America, and Western Europe.

Although Altaic infiltration into Central Asia had started early, as late as the 13th century AD when Turkic and Mongol armies finally conquered the entire region, the majority of Central Asia's peoples were Iranic peoples such as Sogdians, Bactrians and, more ancient, the Saka–Massagetae tribes. It is generally believed that these ancient Indo-European-speaking peoples were linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups while the sedentary population finally adopted the Persian language, the traditional lingua franca of the eastern Islamic lands. The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process. This process was dramatically boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region.

Genetic Origins: The modern Uzbek population represents varying degrees of diversity derived from the high traffic invasion routes through Central Asia. According to recent Genetic genealogy testing from a University of Chicago study, the Uzbeks cluster somewhere between the Mongols and the Iranian peoples.

From the 3d century B.C., Central Asia experienced nomadic expansions of Altaic-speaking oriental-looking people, and their incursions continued for hundreds of years, beginning with the Hsiung-Nu (who may be ancestors of the Huns), in ~300 B.C., and followed by the Turks, in the 1st millennium A.D., and the Mongol expansions of the 13th century. High levels of haplogroup 10 and its derivative, haplogroup 36, are found in most of the Altaic-speaking populations and are a good indicator of the genetic impact of these nomadic groups. The expanding waves of Altaic-speaking nomads involved not only eastern Central Asia—where their genetic contribution is strong, as is shown in figure 7d—but also regions farther west, like Iran, Iraq, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, as well as Europe, which was reached by both the Huns and the Mongols. In these western regions, however, the genetic contribution is low or undetectable (Wells et al. 2001), even though the power of these invaders was sometimes strong enough to impose a language replacement, as in Turkey and Azerbaijan (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). The difference could be due to the population density of the different geographical areas. Eastern regions of Central Asia must have had a low population density at the time, so an external contribution could have had a great genetic impact. In contrast, the western regions were more densely inhabited, and it is likely that the existing populations were more numerous than the conquering nomads, therefore leading to only a small genetic impact. Thus, the admixture estimate from northeast Asia is high in the east, but is barely detectable west of Uzbekistan.

The Uzbek population, according to this study, shows substantial Caucasoid admixture. The Uzbeks display a much closer genetic relationship with Turkic roots traits than with Iranic populations to the south and west. Another study out of Uzbekistan corroborates this genetic evidence as to the origins of the modern Uzbeks and other regional Turk peoples:

These migrations are reflected in the DNA, too, and it is clear that despite the majority of modern Central Asians speaking Turkic languages, they derive much of their genetic heritage from the conquering Mongol warriors of Genghis Khan.

The Turkic people as a whole share common languages and many common cultural traits, but do not have common origins. The Uzbeks are descended to a large degree from Turkic invaders whose invasions span literally millennia from the first millennium CE with the early migrations of the Göktürks to later invasions by the Uzbeks themselves during the early and mid period of the 2nd millennium. Throughout the centuries, these migrating Altaic peoples began to outnumber the native Iranian people of Central Asia and appear to have assimilated the vast majority through intermarriage, while mainly the Tajiks survived albeit with some Turk intermingling as well. Thus, in the case of Uzbekistan and most other Central Asian states, it was not only a process of language replacement, such as what took place in Turkey and Azerbaijan, but also a mass migration and population replacement that helped to shape the modern Turk people of Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states.

* A Genetic Landscape Reshaped by Recent Events: Y-Chromosomal Insights into Central Asia by Tatiana Zerjal, et al.

* DNA Analysis Tracks Silk Road Forbears by Ivan Noble

* Where West Meets East: The Complex mtDNA Landscape of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor by Lluís Quintana-Murci, et al.

Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarkand, Sixth Edition by Calum MacLeod, Bradley Mayhew

Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA)

Central and Northern Asia: R1a1a frequencies vary widely between populations within central and northern parts of Eurasia, but it is found in areas including Western China and Eastern Siberia. This big variation is possibly a consequence of population bottlenecks in isolated areas and the large movements of Turco-Mongols during the historic period. For example, exceptionally high frequencies of R1a1a (R-M17 or R-M198; 50 to 70%) are found among the Ishkashimis, Khojant Tajiks, Kyrgyzs, and in several peoples of Russia's Altai Republic. Although levels are comparatively low amongst some Turkic-speaking groups (e.g. Turks, Azeris, Kazakhs, Yakuts), levels are very high in certain Turkic or Mongolic-speaking groups of Northwestern China, such as the Bonan, Dongxiang, Salar, and Uyghurs. R1a1a is also found among certain indigenous Eastern Siberians, including: Kamchatkans and Chukotkans, and peaking in Itel'man at 22%.

Europe: In Europe, R1a, again almost entirely in the R1a1a sub-clade, is found at highest levels among peoples of Eastern European descent (Sorbs, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians; 50 to 65%). Levels in Hungarians have been noted between 20 and 60% The Balkans shows lower frequencies, and significant variation between areas, for example >30% in Slovenia, Croatia and Greek Macedonia, but <10% in Albania, Kosovo and parts of Greece. In the Baltic countries R1a frequencies decrease from Lithuania (45%) to Estonia (around 30%).

R1a1 was present in Europe at least 4600 years ago, as demonstrated by Y-DNA with the Y-SNP marker SRY10831.2 extracted from the remains of three individuals near Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, discovered in 2005. The discovery demonstrated the appearance of R1a1 with Corded Ware culture in Central Europe.

There is a significant presence in peoples of Scandinavian descent, with highest levels in Norway and Iceland, where between 20 and 30% of men are in R1a1a. Vikings and Normans may have also carried the R1a1a lineage westward; accounting for at least part of the small presence in the British Isles.

In Southern Europe R1a1a is not normally common but it is widespread and found in significant pockets. Scozzari et al. (2001) found significant levels in the Pas Valley in Northern Spain, and also the areas of Venice, and Calabria in Italy.

Origins and Hypothesized Migrations of R1a1a: Most discussions of R1a origins concern the dominant R1a1a (R-M17 or R-M198) sub-clade. There are two foci of high frequency of R1a1a, one in South Asia, near North India, and the other in Eastern Europe, in the area of the Ukraine. Until 2009 claims regarding the oldest R1a populations varied greatly between different articles, with Eastern Europe and South Asia being the main contenders. Such studies generally look at the STR haplotypes of each major population of R1a positive men. (These are the same markers mentioned above as being useful in trying to discover potential new branches within the R1a1a family tree.) Higher variation of STR haplotype in any particular region is normally seen as an rough indicator that a haplogroup has been present longer in that region. In order to gain more insight, the STR haplotypes are also often examined in detail, looking for clusters of more or less related male lines.

In 2009, several large studies of both old and new STR data, including Mirabal et al. (2009), Underhill et al. (2009), and Klyosov (2009) concluded that not only are there are two separate "poles of the expansion" with similar ages, but also that of these two poles, Asian R1a1a is apparently older than European R1a1a. The data is therefore said to be more consistent with Asian origins for R1a1a, as opposed to European origins, with a particular focus remaining upon South Asia

Central Eurasian Origin Proposals: Cordaux et al. (2004) argued, citing data from 3 earlier publications, that R-M17 (R1a1a) Y chromosomes most probably have a central Asian origin. Central Asia is still considered a possible place of origin by Mirabal et al. (2009) after their larger analysis of more recent data. However these authors do not clearly distinguish the case being made for Central Asia for the case being made for Asia, particularly South Asia, more generally.

Recently, looking at Chinese STR data not included in other studies Klyosov (2009) concluded that the common source of Indian and European R1a must be somewhere near the modern Chinese ethnic groups known as the Hui, Bolan, Dongxiang and Sala and approximately 20,000 years ago, possibly somewhere near southern Siberia.

Steppe Cultures: From the late Neolithic and into the Iron Age, archaeologists recognize a complex of inter-related and relatively mobile cultures living on the Eurasian steppe, part of which protrudes into Europe. Many of these are in turn associated with the dispersal of Indo-European languages, the most recent dispersal being the one which led to the Indo-Iranian family of languages becoming the dominant modern languages of regions from Kurdistan to Western China, including such civilizations as Persia and India. (With the Slavic and Baltic languages considered to represent a relatively closely related branch.)

Geneticists believing that they see evidence of R1a1a gene-flow from the Eurasian Steppe to India have frequently proposed the involvement of these Steppe cultures, Indo-European languages, and possibly with specific cultural traits such as Kurgan burials and horse domestication. All of these are generally felt to originate in the specifically European part of the steppes, which stretches as far west as the Ukraine.

* DNA Genealogy, Mutation Rates, and Some Historical Evidence Written in Y-Chromosome, Part II: Walking the Map by Anatole Klyosov

* Y-Chromosome Distribution Within the Geo-linguistic Landscape of Northwestern Russia by Sheyla Mirabal, et al.

* Independent Origins of Indian Caste and Tribal Paternal Lineages by Cordaux et al.

* The Genetic Link of the Viking – Era Norse to Central Asia: An Assessment of the Y Chromosome DNA, Archaeological, Historical and Linguistic Evidence by David K. Faux

Map of Krasnoyarsk

* Ancient DNA Provides New Insights into the History of South Siberian Kurgan People by C. Keyser, et al.

Abstract: To help unravel some of the early Eurasian steppe migration movements, we determined the Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplotypes and haplogroups of 26 ancient human specimens from the Krasnoyarsk area dated from between the middle of the second millennium BC. to the fourth century AD. In order to go further in the search of the geographic origin and physical traits of these south Siberian specimens, we also typed phenotype-informative single nucleotide polymorphisms. Our autosomal, Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA analyses reveal that whereas few specimens seem to be related matrilineally or patrilineally, nearly all subjects belong to haplogroup R1a1-M17 which is thought to mark the eastward migration of the early Indo-Europeans. Our results also confirm that at the Bronze and Iron Ages, south Siberia was a region of overwhelmingly predominant European settlement, suggesting an eastward migration of Kurgan people across the Russo-Kazakh steppe. Finally, our data indicate that at the Bronze and Iron Age timeframe, south Siberians were blue (or green)-eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired people and that they might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim Basin civilization. To the best of our knowledge, no equivalent molecular analysis has been undertaken so far.

* Geographical Distributions of Y-chromosomal Haplogroups P*(xR1a), R1a, and J from Male Demography in East Asia: A North–South Contrast in Human Population Expansion Times by Yali Xue, et al.

Haplogroup P (M45) is contains the patrilineal ancestors of most Europeans and almost all of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It also contains approximately one third to two thirds of the males among various populations of Central Asia and Southern Asia.

Haplogroup P is a branch of Haplogroup K (M9). It is believed to have arisen north of the Hindu Kush, in Siberia, Kazakhstan, or Uzbekistan, approximately 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

The descendant haplogroups of P include Q (M242) and R (M207).

Besides the typically European/South Asian Haplogroup R and South-Central Siberian/Native American Haplogroup Q, other patrilines derived from Haplogroup P-M45 are labeled for sake of convenience as Haplogroup P* and are reported to have been found at low to moderate frequency among modern populations of Central Asia, Siberia, East Asia, and the Russian Far East. There is a conspicuous presence of Haplogroup P* on the Isle of Hvar in the Adriatic Sea off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, which may be due to historical immigration of Avars from Central Asia. There have also been reports of Haplogroup P* from samples of Ashkenazi Jews, Native Americans, and some populations of South Asia and Oceania, but it is not entirely clear whether these were truly Haplogroup P* or rather instances of a haplogroups derived from Haplogroup P, such as Haplogroup R2 or Haplogroup Q.

Haplogroup J (Y-DNA) is believed to have arisen roughly 30,000 years ago in Southwest Asia (31,700±12,800 years ago according to Semino et al.. 2004).

Haplogroup J is found in greatest concentration in Southwest Asia. Outside of these regions, haplogroup J has a moderate presence in Southern Europe (especially in central and southern Italy, Greece, and Albania), Central Asia, and South Asia, particularly in the form of its subclade J2-M172. Haplogroup J is also found in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, particularly in the form of its subclade J1-M267. Subclades J2a and J2a1b1 are found mostly in Greece, Anatolia, and southern Italy.

J1: Haplogroup J1, defined by the 267 marker is most frequent in the Arabian Peninsula Yemen (76%), Saudi (64%), Qatar (58%), and Dagestan (56%). J1 is generally frequent amongst Arab Bedouins (62%). It is also very common among other Arabs such as those of the southern Levant, i.e. Palestinian Arabs (38.4%), in Algeria (35%), Iraq (68%), Tunisia (31%), Syria (30%), Lebanon (19%), Egypt (20%), and the Sinai Peninsula. The frequency of Haplogroup J1 collapses suddenly at the borders of Arabic speaking countries with mainly non-Arabic speaking countries, such as Turkey (9%) and Iran (9.5%).

J2: Haplogroup J2 is found in the highest concentrations in the Fertile Crescent and is found throughout the Mediterranean (including Southern Europe and North Africa), the Balkan peninsula, the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau and into Central Asia. More specifically it is found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Israel, Greece, Italy, the Balkans and the eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, and most frequently in Lebanese 30% (Wells et al. 2001), Iraqis 29.7% (Sanchez et al. 2005), Syrians 29%, Sephardic Jews 29%, Kurds 28.4%, Iranians 24%.

J*: Haplogroup J* includes all of J except for J1 and J2. J* is rarely found outside of the island of Socotra, where it is quite frequent at 71.4%. Haplogroup J* has also been found with lower frequency in Oman, Ashkenazi Jews, Pakistan, Greece, the Czech Republic, and several Turkic peoples.

Turkic Peoples

The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia who speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. These peoples share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people and includes existing societies such as the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Turkish people, as well as historical societies such as the Xiongnu, Kipchaks, Eurasian Avars, Bulgars, Huns, Seljuks, Khazars, Ottomans and Timurids. (also see the List of Turkic states and empires)

Many of the Turkic peoples have their homelands in Inner Asia, where the Turkic peoples originated from, but since then Turkic languages have spread, through migrations and conquests, to other locations including present-day Turkey. While the term Turk may refer to a member of any Turkic people, the term Turkish usually refers specifically to the people and language of Turkey.

Geographical Distribution: The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and to northern edges of South Asia and Arabia (the Middle East).

Some 180 million people have a Turkic language as their native language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, or Anatolian Turkish, the speakers of which account for about 40% of all Turkic speakers. More than one third of these are ethnic Turks of Turkey, dwelling predominantly in Turkey proper and formerly Ottoman-dominated areas of Eastern Europe and West Asia. The remainder of the Turkic people are concentrated in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus, China, northern Iraq and northern and northwestern Iran.

At present, there are six independent Turkic countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. There are also several Turkic national subdivisions in the Russian Federation including Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Khakassia, Tuva, Yakutia, the Altai Republic, the Altai Krai, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachayevo-Cherkessiya. Each of these subdivisions has its own flag, parliament, laws, and official state language (in addition to Russian).

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China and the autonomous region of Gagauzia, located within eastern Moldova and bordering Ukraine to the north, are two major autonomous Turkic regions. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea within Ukraine is a home of Crimean Tatars. In addition, there are several Turkic-inhabited regions in Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Bulgaria, F.Y.R. Macedonia, Greece, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and western Mongolia.

In the age of nationalism, Turkic speakers were among the first Muslim people to take up Western ideas of liberalism and secular ideologies. Pan-Turkism first sprang up at the end of the nineteenth century in the Russian Empire and was advanced by leading Turkic intellectuals like Crimean Tatar İsmail Gaspıralı, Azerbaijan philosophers like Mirza Fatali Akhundov and Tatar Yusuf Akçura, as a reaction to Panslavist and Russification policies of the Russian Empire. The first fully democratic and secular republics in the Islamic world were Turkic: the ill-fated Idel-Ural State established in 1917, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918 (both annexed and absorbed by the Soviet Union), and in 1923 Republic of Turkey. In 1991 Azerbaijan became an independent Azerbaijan Republic.

The Turks in Turkey are over 55 million to 70 million worldwide, while the second largest Turkic people are the Azerbaijanis, numbering 20.5 to 33 million worldwide; most of them live in northwestern Iran ("Iranian Azerbaijan") and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Turkic Roots: The first historical text to mention the Turks was from the standpoint of the Chinese, who mentioned trade of Turk tribes with the Sogdians along the Silk Road. The Xiongnu mentioned in Han Dynasty records may have been Proto-Turkic speakers, followed by the Hun hordes of Attila that tried to conquer Europe. On the other hand, recent genetics research dated 2003 confirms the studies indicating that the Turkic people originated from the same area and therefore are possibly related with the Xiongnu.

The rock art of the Yinshan and Helanshan is dated from the 9th millennium BC to 19th century. It consists mainly of engraved signs (petroglyphs) and only minimally of painted images. Ma Liqing compared the petroglyphs (which he presumed to be the sole extant example of possible Xiongnu writings), and the Orkhon script (the earliest known Turkic alphabet) recently, and argued a new connection between both of them.

Excavations conducted between 1924–1925, in Noin-Ula kurgans located in Selenga River in the northern Mongolian hills north of Ulan Bator, produced objects with over twenty carved characters, which were either identical or very similar to that of to the runic letters of the Turkic Orkhon script discovered in the Orkhon Valley.

The first recorded use of "Turk" as a political name is a sixth-century reference to the word now pronounced in Modern Chinese as Tujue. It is believed that some Turkic tribes, such as Khazars and Pechenegs, probably lived as nomads for many years before establishing a political state (Göktürk empire). Turkic peoples originally used their own alphabets, like Orkhon and Yenisey runiform, and later the Uyghur alphabet. The oldest inscription was found near the Issyk river in Kyrgyzstan and has been dated to 500 BC. The traditional national and cultural symbols of the Turkic peoples include the star and crescent, used as a symbol of Turks since pre-Islamic times when they practised Shamanism; wolves, a part of Turkic mythology and tradition; as well as the color blue, iron, and fire.

Four hundred years after the collapse of northern Xiongnu power in Inner Asia, leadership of the Turkic peoples was taken over by the Göktürks. Formerly an element of the Xiongnu nomadic confederation, the Göktürks inherited their traditions and administrative experience. From 552 to 745, Göktürk leadership bound together the nomadic Turkic tribes into an empire, which eventually collapsed due to a series of dynastic conflicts. The great difference between the Göktürk Khanate and its Xiongnu predecessor was that the Göktürks' temporary khans from the Ashina clan were subordinate to a sovereign authority that was left in the hands of a council of tribal chiefs. The Khanate received missionaries from the Buddhists, Manicheans, and Nestorian Christians, but retained their original shamanistic religion, Tengriism.

Migrations: The Turkic peoples and the related groups migrated west towards Eastern Europe, Iranian plateau and Anatolia (Turkic Migration). Turks or Turkish people are among those who migrated early from what is known today as Mongolia to modern Turkey but also among the late-arrival peoples; they also participated in the Crusades. After many battles they established their own state and later created the Ottoman Empire; their tactics were all-out sieges and invasions

History of the Turkic Peoples: It is generally believed that the first Turkic people were native to a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia. Some scholars contend that the Huns were one of the earlier Turkic tribes, while others support either a Mongolic or Finno-Ugric origin for the Huns. Otto Maenchen-Helfen's linguistic studies also support a Turkic origin for the Huns.

The main migration of Turkic peoples occurred between the fifth and tenth centuries AD, when they spread across most of Central Asia and into Europe and the Middle East.

The precise date of the initial expansion from the early homeland remains unknown. The first state known as "Turk", giving its name to the many states and peoples afterwards, was that of the Göktürks (gog = "blue" or "celestial") in the 6th century AD. The head of the Asena clan led his people from Liqian (in modern Yongchang County, China) to the Rouran seeking inclusion in their confederacy and protection from China. His tribe were famed metal smiths and were granted land near a mountain quarry which looked like a helmet from which they got their name 突厥 (tūjué). A century later their power had increased such that they conquered the Rouran and set about establishing their Gök Empire.

Later Turkic peoples include the Karluks (mainly 8th century), Uyghurs, Kyrgyz, Oghuz (or Ğuz) Turks, and Turkmens. As these peoples were founding states in the area between Mongolia and Transoxiana, they came into contact with Muslims, and most gradually adopted Islam. However, there were also (and still are) small groups of Turkic people belonging to other religions, including Christians, Jews (see Khazars), Buddhists, and Zoroastrians.

Turkic soldiers in the army of the Abbasid caliphs emerged as the de facto rulers of most of the Muslim Middle East (apart from Syria and Egypt), particularly after the 10th century. The Oghuz and other tribes captured and dominated various countries under the leadership of the Seljuk dynasty, and eventually captured the territories of the Abbasid dynasty and the Byzantine Empire.

Meanwhile, the Kyrgyz and Uyghurs were struggling with one another and with the Chinese Empire. The Kyrgyz people ultimately settled in the region now referred to as Kyrgyzstan. The Tatar peoples conquered the Volga Bulgars in what is today Tatarstan, following the westward sweep of the Mongols under Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The Bulgars were thus mistakenly called Tatars by the Russians. Native Tatars live only in Asia; European "Tatars" are in fact Bulgars. Other Bulgars settled in Europe in the 7–8th centuries, exchanging their original Turkic tongue for what eventually became the Slavic Bulgarian language. Everywhere, Turkic groups mixed with the local populations to varying degrees.

As the Seljuk Empire declined following the Mongol invasion, the Ottoman Empire emerged as the new important Turkic state, that came to dominate not only the Middle East, but even southeastern Europe, parts of southwestern Russia, and northern Africa.

The Ottoman Empire gradually grew weaker in the face of maladministration, repeated wars with Russia and Austro-Hungary, and the emergence of nationalist movements in the Balkans, and it finally gave way after World War I to the present-day republic of Turkey.

The Mughal Empire (Turkish: Babür İmparatorluğu) was a Muslim dynasty that at its greatest territorial extent ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, then known as Hindustan, and parts of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan from the early 16th to the mid-18th century. The Mughal dynasty was founded by a Chagatai Turkic prince named Babur (reigned 1526–30), who was descended from the Turkic conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) on his father's side and from Chagatai, second son of the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan, on his mother's side. The Mughal dynasty was notable for the ability of its rulers, who through seven generations maintained a record of unusual talent, and for its administrative organization. A further distinction was the attempt of the Mughals to integrate Hindus and Muslims into a united Indian state.

Language: The Turkic alphabets are sets of related alphabets with letters (formerly known as runes), used for writing mostly Turkic languages. Inscriptions in Turkic alphabets were found from Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan in the east to Balkans in the west. Most of the preserved inscriptions were dated to between 8th and 10th centuries AD.

The earliest positively dated and read Turkic inscriptions date from ca. 150, and the alphabets were generally replaced by the Uyghur alphabet in the Central Asia, Arabic script in the Middle and Western Asia, Greek-derived Cyrillic in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, and Latin alphabet in Central Europe. The latest recorded use of Turkic alphabet was recorded in Central Europe's Hungary in 1699 AD.

The Turkic runiform scripts, unlike other typologically close scripts of the world, do not have a uniform palaeography as, for example, have the Gothic runes, noted for the exceptional uniformity of its language and paleography. The Turkic alphabets are divided into four groups, the best known of them is the Orkhon version of the Enisei group.

The Turkic language family is traditionally considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family. The Altaic language family includes 66 languages spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia.

The various Turkic languages are usually considered in geographical groupings: the Oghuz (or Southwestern) languages, the Kypchak (or Northwestern) languages, the Eastern languages (like Uygur), the Northern languages (like Altay and Yakut), and divergent languages (like Chuvash). The high mobility and intermixing of Turkic peoples in history makes an exact classification extremely difficult.

The Turkish language belongs to the Oghuz subfamily of Turkic. It is for the most part mutually intelligible with the other Oghuz languages, which include Azeri, Gagauz, Turkmen and Urum, and to a varying extent with the other Turkic languages.

Ethnic Subdivisions:

Altays (Oirots)
Azerbaijanis
Balkars (along with Karachays, speakers of the Karachay-Balkar language)
Bashkirs
Bulgars
Chulyms
Chuvashs
Crimean Tatars
Dolgans
Gagauz
Iraqi Turkmen
Karachays (along with Balkars, speakers of the Karachay-Balkar language)
Crimean Karaites
Karakalpaks
Karapapak
Kazakhs
Khakas
Khazars
Kipchaks (Cumans)
Kizilbashs (Descendants of the 7 Turkic tribes who formed the Kizilbash-army)
Krymchaks (speak a modified form of Crimean Tatar)
Kumyks
Kyrgyz
Meskhetian Turks
Mohajirs (Only some of them)
Nogais
Qashqai
Salar
Shor
Tatars
- Volga Tatars (or Kazan Tatars, or simply Tatars)
- Crimean Tatars
  - Nağaybäklär
  - Baltic Tatars
- Siberian Tatars
- Lipka Tatars
Tofalars
Turkmens
Turks of Turkey (see also Ottoman Turks or Seljuk Turk)
- Turkish Cypriots
Tuvans
Uyghur
Uzbeks
Yakuts
Yörüks
Yugur

Sometimes the above list is grouped into six branches: the Oghuz Turks, Kipchak, Karluk, Siberian, Chuvash, and Sakha/Yakut branches. The Oghuz have been termed Western Turks, while the remaining five, in such a classificatory scheme, are called Eastern Turks.

One of the major difficulties perceived by many who try to classify the various Turkic languages and dialects is the impact Soviet and particularly Stalinist nationality policies—the creation of new national demarcations, suppression of languages and writing scripts, and mass deportations—had on the ethnic mix in previously multicultural regions like Khwarezm, the Fergana Valley, and Caucasia. Many of the above-mentioned classifications are therefore by no means universally accepted, either in detail or in general. Another aspect often debated is the influence of Pan-Turkism, and the emerging nationalism in the newly independent Central Asian republics, on the perception of ethnic divisions.

Physical Appearance: The Turkic peoples display a great variety of ethnic types. They possess physical features ranging from Caucasoid to Northern Mongoloid in every Turkic country. In western Turkic lands, such as Turkey, Bulgaria, the Crimea, and Azerbaijan, a great many people look "European" and "Mediterranean". In Turkey, people with light-coloured eyes such as blue, green, hazel, or gray and blond or brown hair are common. Caucasoid and Mongoloid facial structure is common among many Turkic groups, such as Kazakhs and Uzbeks. There has been much debate about the racial nature of the original Turkic-speaking ancestors, with some in the past presuming a "Ural-Altaic race" with Caucasoid features at one end of the spectrum and Mongoloid features at the other. There are also the Turks in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan who look like the local population in those countries, but this is probably due to intermixing with the local populations.

* The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity by R. Spencern Wells, et al.

Geographic Distribution of Y-chromosome Haplotypes in Selected Eurasian Populations

The haplotype frequencies in selected populations are shown graphically with related haplotypes combined into common colors.

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

YAP lineage - Haplogroup_DE, Haplogroup D and Haplogroup E. (Haplogroup DE is the original YAP+ haplogroup. Haplogroup DE is an estimated 65,000 years old. The majority of DE male lines can be categorized as being in either haplogroup D, which likely originated in Asia, the only place where it has been found, or haplogroup E, which is believed to have originated either in East Africa or the Near East. The remainder are said to be in the paragroup DE* confirmed cases of which are extremely rare. In a recent study of over 8000 men worldwide including 1247 Nigerians, Haplogroup DE* was observed in only 5 Nigerian males.)

M130 lineage - Haplogroup C (Haplogroup C seems to have come into existence shortly after M168 was introduced, probably at least 60,000 years before present. Although Haplogroup C attains its highest frequencies among the indigenous populations of Mongolia, the Russian Far East, Polynesia, Australia, and at moderate frequency in the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria, it displays its highest diversity among modern populations of India, and therefore it is hypothesized that Haplogroup C either originated or underwent its longest period of evolution and diversification within India or the greater South Asian coastal region.). It represents a great coastal migration along Southern Asia, into Southeast Asia and Australia, and up the Asian coast. It is believed to have migrated to the Americas some 6,000-8,000 years before present, and was carried by Na-Dené speaking peoples into the northwest Pacific coast of America. Some have hypothesized that Haplogroups C and D were brought together to East Asia by a single population that became the first successful modern human colonizers of that region, but at present the distributions of Haplogroups C and D are different, with various subtypes of Haplogroup C being found at high frequency among the Australian aborigines, Polynesians, Vietnamese, Kazakhs, Mongolians, Manchurians, Koreans, and indigenous inhabitants of the Russian Far East and at moderate frequencies elsewhere throughout Asia and Oceania, including India and Southeast Asia, whereas Haplogroup D is found at high frequencies only among the Tibetans, Japanese peoples, and Andaman Islanders, and has been found neither in India nor among the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas or Oceania. Haplogroup C contains the polymorphism, very common in Central Asia, which is believed to be that of Genghis Khan, spread wide during the Mongol conquest of Asia.

M89 lineage - Haplogroup F (This ancient haplogroup may have first appeared in North Africa, the Levant, or the Arabian Peninsula as much as 50,000 years ago: 50,300±6500, Hammer and Zegura 2002; 48,000(38,700-55,700). It is sometimes believed to represent a "second-wave" of expansion out of Africa. However, the location of this lineage's first expansion and rise to dominance appears to have been in ice age Ethiopia or the Middle East or somewhere close to it within South Asia India; all of Haplogroup F's descendant haplogroups also show a pattern of radiation from South Asia (haplogroups H and K) or the Middle East (haplogroups G and IJ). This haplogroup and its subclades contain more than 90% of the world's extant male population, including almost everyone outside of Africa, except for Tibet, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Japan, Polynesia, and communities of indigenous Australians, while also including many men within those regions.

M9 lineage - Haplogroup K (It first appeared approximately 40,000 years ago in Iran or southern Central Asia. Today, haplogroup K and its descendant haplogroups are the patrilineal ancestors of most of the people living in the Northern Hemisphere, including most Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans. Other lineages derived from Haplogroup K are found among Melanesian populations, indicating an ancient link between most Eurasians and some populations of Oceania.)

M45 lineage - Haplogroup P (Haplogroup P (M45) is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. This haplogroup contains the patrilineal ancestors of most Europeans and almost all of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It also contains approximately one third to two thirds of the males among various populations of Central Asia and Southern Asia.)

M173 lineage - Haplogroup R1 (R1 is very common throughout Europe and western Eurasia. Its distribution is believed to be associated with the re-settlement of Eurasia following the last glacial maximum. Its main subgroups are R1a (SRY1532) and R1b (M343).)

M17 lineage - Haplogroup R1a (R1a is a Y-chromosome haplogroup found at high frequency (more than 40%) from the Czech Republic across to the Altai Mountains in Siberia and south throughout Central Asia. R1a arose 15,000 years ago in the vicinity of Ukraine, expanding from either the Ukrainian LGM refuge following the end of the last ice age, or from the Pontic-Caspian steppe as a result of the Kurgan migrations. But some studies question these earlier findings and claim that R1a lineages may have their origins in North India. The expansion of R1a as well as J2 has been associated with the spread of the Indo-European languages

Neighbor-joining Tree of 61 Eurasian Populations, Based on Y-chromosome Biallelic Haplotype Frequencies

Cluster I: Greek, Yagnobi, Armenian, Turkmen, Czeck/Slovak, Orkney, British, Basque
Cluster II: Iranian, Turkish, Kazbegi, Azeri
Cluster III: Tuvinian, Nenets
Cluster IV: Mongolian, Kazak, Cambodian, Dungan, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese
Cluster V: Macedonian, Russian/North, Russian/Tashkent, Ukrainian, Kyrgyz, Tajik/Khojant, Ishkashim
Cluster VI: Bartangi, Hunza, Sinte Roman
Cluster VII: Arab/Bukhara, Tajik/Samarkand, Shugnan, Tajik/Dushanbe, Yadhava, Sourashtran, Kallar
Cluster VIII: Uzbek, Tatar, Karakalpak, Uighur

Nei genetic distances were used in a neighbor-joining analysis. Internal numbers are bootstrap values (1000 replicates); values less than 200 are not shown. Roman numerals denote population clusters described in the text.

* Genetic Polymorphisms of 15 STR in Chinese Salar Ethnic Minority Group by J. Shu, et al.

Abstract: Allele frequency data for 15 STR loci, namely D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818 and FGA, were obtained from a sample of 258 healthy unrelated individuals of Salar population in China. All loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. After comparing, significant differences were found between the Salar and Miao, Uigur, Han, Korean, Belgian, Byelorussian population at some loci. The results demonstrate that the loci are useful for forensic human identification and parentage testing.

* Sequence-length Variation of mtDNA HVS-I C-stretch in Chinese Ethnic Groups by Feng Chen, et al.

NJ Tree of Nine Populations Based on Fst Distance

* Genetic Relationships of Ethnic Minorities in Southwest China Revealed by Microsatellite Markers by Hongbin Lin, et al.

Principal Component Analysis with Normalized Allele Frequencies for the Full-loci Dataset

* Sequence-length Variation of mtDNA HVS-I C-stretch in Chinese Ethnic Groups by Feng Chen, et al.

Principal Component (PC) Map of Nine Populations Based on the Distance Matrix

(Northern Han, Tibetan, Yugur, Bonan, Oroqen, Tu, Salar, Southern Han)

* Genetic Polymorphisms of 15 STR Loci in Chinese Han population living in Xi'an city of Shaanxi Province by Y.M. Wu, et al.

Abstract: Fifteen autosomal STRs loci were analyzed from a population sample of 446 unrelated healthy individuals of Chinese Han population residing in Xi'an city of Shaanxi Province using a multiplex PCR system. We report allele frequencies distribution and statistical parameters for all STR loci, D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818 and FGA. The observed genotype frequencies and expected of genotype frequencies were evaluated by chi(2)-test and the Fisher exact tests. Chi-Square test showed all STR loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (p<0.05). Our studied population data were compared with the previously published population data of other ethnics or areas. After comparing, significant differences were found between Chinese Han population in Xi'an and Korean, Tibetan, Uigur, Chinese Han population in Guangdong Province, Hui population, Chinese Salar, Dongxiang and Tu ethnic minority living in Qinghai Province of China at some loci. The forensic parameters from the data showed high values. The data in the present study can be used greatly for routine forensic application in the region of Xi'an city.

* Polymorphism of DYS287 on Y Chromosome in 28 Ethnic Populations of China by Y. Chen, et al.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the polymorphism of DYS287 among 28 ethnic populations in 9 provinces of China. METHOD: YAP element was detected by Touchdown PCR amplification and 2% agarose gel electrophoresis. RESULTS: YAP+ frequencies in these ethnic populations were as follows: Zang 36.7%, Tu 23.8%, Yi 18.4%, Pumi 11.3%, Tajik 7.4%, Bai 6.7%, Jino 5.1%, Shandong Han 4%, Mulao 2.7%, and Maonan 1.3%. The rest ethnic populations in our study, including Gansu Han, Yunnan Han, Zhuangzu, Daizu, Lizu, Nuzu, Lisu, Naxi, Lahu, Dulong, Hani, Shezu, Weiwuer, Sala, Kerkizi, Dongxiang, Vazu, and Korea didn't carry YAP + element. CONCLUSIONS: Zangzu, Tuzu, Yizu, Pumi, Jino, and Baizu, which belong to Sino-Tibetan language family (Tibeto-Burman Languages), carry a high YAP + frequency. Sala, Tuzu, and Tajik, regarded as Central Asia by origin in history and linguistics, also have a high YAP + frequency. Mulao and Maonan, which origin from "Baiyue" ancient ethnic groups, also have a considerable YAP + frequency.

Haplogroup DE (Y-DNA)

Haplogroup DE is defined by the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutations, or UEPs, M1(YAP), M145(P205), M203, P144, P153, P165, P167, P183.

Haplogroup DE is often referred to by the most well-known unique event polymorphism (UEP) which defines it, the Y-chromosome Alu Polymorphism (YAP). The YAP mutation was caused when a strand of DNA called Alu, which copies itself, inserted a copy into the Y chromosome. A Y chromosome that has the YAP mutation is called YAP-positive (YAP+), and a Y chromosome that does not have the YAP mutation is labeled YAP-negative (YAP-).

Haplogroup DE is an estimated 65,000 years old.

Distribution: The majority of DE male lines can be categorized as being in either Haplogroup D (Y-DNA), which likely originated in Asia, the only place where it has been found,vor haplogroup E, which is believed to have originated in East Africa or the Near East. The remainder are said to be in the paragroup DE*, confirmed cases of which are extremely rare.

In a study of over 8000 men worldwide including 1247 Nigerians, Haplogroup DE* was observed in only 5 Nigerian males (5/1247). However, the study's authors caution that "the apparently paraphyletic status of this haplogroup, and hence the conclusions of nested cladistic analysis, are also likely to be illusory" and that "the only genealogically meaningful definition of the age of a clade is the time to its most recent common ancestor, but only if DE* is paraphyletic does it also become automatically older than D or E in this sense." More recently, one example of DE* was found amongst the Nalu in Guinea Bissau (1/17). The DE* sequence of this individual differs by one mutation from the DE* sequence of the Nigerian individuals. This indicates common ancestry, though the phylogenetic relationship between the two lineages was not determined in this particular study. A 2008 study detected DE* in two individuals from Tibet (2/594).

Haplogroup DE is found in Africa (Haplogroups E and DE*) and East Asia (Haplogroups D and DE*) but is largely absent in between these two regions. The presence of DE across widely separated regions has confounded investigators trying to reconstruct the migration of humans from Africa to Asia. At some time, there was an extinction of DE lineages in West, South and Central Asia. Autochthonous DE lineages are absent in India, an important region in the dispersal of humans in Asia. However DE lineages have been detected in relict populations of the Andaman Islands. Underhill et al. 2007, suggest the possibility that deleterious mutations in some DE carriers may explain the extinction of DE lineages in India.

Tree

This phylogenetic tree of para-haplogroup DE is based on the YCC 2008 tree and subsequent published research.

DE (M1/YAP, M145 [P205], M203, P144, P153, P165, P167, P183)
- D (M174, (021355))
- E (SRY4064, M96, P29, P150, P152, P154, P155, P156, P162)

Turkic Languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.

Turkic languages are spoken by some 180 million people as a native language; and the total number of Turkic speakers is about 200 million, including speakers as a second language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, or Anatolian Turkish, the speakers of which account for about 40% of all Turkic speakers.

Characteristics: The characteristic features of the Turkic languages are vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of noun classes or grammatical gender. Subject Object Verb word order is universal within the family. All of these distinguishing characteristics are shared with the Mongolic and Tungusic language families, as well as with the Korean language, which are by some linguists considered to be genetically linked with the Turkic languages in the proposed Altaic language family, a language family rejected by some linguists though plainly accepted in the Voegelin & Voegelin classification (1977:18-19).

History: The geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia spreads from Turkey in the West to the North-East of Siberia (see picture in the box on the right above).

The first established records of the Turkic languages are the 8th century Orkhon inscriptions by the Göktürks, recording the Old Turkic language, which were discovered in 1889 in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia. The Compendium of the Turkic Dialects ( Divânü Lügati't-Türk), written during the 11th century by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and also includes the first known map of the Turkic speakers' geographical distribution. It mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family.

The Codex Cumanicus (12th - 13th centuries) concerning the Northwestern branch is another early linguistic manual, between Kipchak language and Latin, used by the Catholic missionaries sent to the Western Cumans inhabiting a region corresponding to present-day Hungary and Romania. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to today's Chuvash language, are dated to 13th - 14th centuries.

With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th - 11th centuries), Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, stretching from Siberia (the Sakha Republic) to the Mediterranean (Seljuk Turks). Various elements from the Turkic languages have passed into Hungarian, Persian, Urdu, Russian, Chinese and to a lesser extent, Arabic.

Classification: For centuries, the Turkic speaking peoples have migrated extensively and intermingled continuously, and their languages have been influenced mutually and through contact with the surrounding languages, especially the Iranian, Slavic, and Mongolic languages. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, and as a result, there exist several systems to classify the Turkic languages. The modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich (1922) and are mainly based on the development of *d. However, there are still many elements of questioning for which ongoing research has not yet found an adequate solution.

The Turkic languages may be divided into six branches (Johanson 1998):

Southwestern (Oghuz Turkic)
Northwestern (Kypchak Turkic)
Southeastern (Uyghur Turkic)
Northeastern (Siberian Turkic)
Oghur Turkic
Arghu Turkic

In this classification, Oghur Turkic is also referred to as Lir-Turkic and the other branches are subsumed under the title of Shaz-Turkic or Common Turkic. It is not clear when these two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged.

With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the Northeastern, Kyrgyz-Kypchak and Arghu (Khalaj) groups as East Turkic.

Geographically and linguistically, the languages of the Northwestern and Southeastern subgroups belong to the central Turkic languages, while the Northeastern and Khalaj languages are the so-called peripheral languages.

The Turkic Migration

The Turkic migration was the expansion of the Turkic peoples across most of Central Asia into Europe and the Middle East between the 6th and 11th centuries AD (the Early Middle Ages). Tribes less certainly identified as Turkic began their expansion centuries earlier as the predominant element of the Huns. Their prehistoric point of origin was the hypothetical Proto-Turkic region of the Far East including North China, especially Xinjiang Province and Inner Mongolia with parts of Mongolia and Siberia possibly as far west as Lake Baikal and the Altai Mountains. They may have been among the peoples of the multi-ethnic historical Saka known as early as the Greek writer Herodotus.

Certainly identified Turkic tribes were known by the 6th century and by the 10th century most of Central Asia, formerly dominated by Iranian peoples, was settled by Turkic tribes. The Seljuk Turks from the 11th century invaded Anatolia, ultimately resulting in permanent Turkic settlement there and the establishment of the nation of Turkey. Meanwhile the other Turkic tribes either ultimately formed independent nations, such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan or formed enclaves within other nations, such as Chuvashia. Turkics also survived on the original range as the Uyghur people in China and the Sakha Republic of Siberia, as well as in other scattered places of the Far East and Central Asia.

None of these modern nations formed in the early Middle Ages; in fact, movements of Turkic-speaking populations continued for centuries after, just as they had begun centuries before. The term "migration" applied to so many populations over so long a time period is a mere historical convenience encouraging misconception if not properly understood. It should not be conceived as a displacement of a population from one region to another; such short-term events did occur, but seldom over such distances and for such a long time. Turkic migrations in that sense were not that.

All nomads migrate on a seasonal basis sometimes over quite large distances. In most cases the Turkics merely extended their ranges into other regions at the direction of a multi-tribal hierarchy. The "Turkic empires" were not sedentary states as they are known today although such states descended from them. The imperial hierarchy simply directed the overall movements of all the member peoples and arranged for mutual defense (or aggression). To the sedentary states of the west the Turkic peoples appeared to have very large armies. The entire people on the move was the "army", which descending all at once on a small region was typically irresistible and gave the impression of a "horde." The unstructured connotations of horde are totally false. Member peoples moved into or out of the structure by inclination or as the exigencies of circumstance dictated. Thus, although some Ostrogoths fled the Huns as refugees, most were accepted into the Hunnic structure and remained on location, contributing their own cavalry.

Western historians therefore see the movements of the Turkic nomads as "waves of migration", meaning periodic displacements, a misleading concept. "Turkish migration" either by specific tribes or as a period means many things to many historians. Although certain themes recur frequently in their writings there is no standard of which themes are always to be included or over what period. This article defines a migrational period of the early Middle Ages. It covers the expansion of Turkic languages from the Far East to the vicinity of Europe.

Ancestral Populations: The earliest Turkic peoples appear as nomadic tribes on the plains of the Far East north of the Great wall of China, which was constructed as a fortified border essentially between the Han Dynasty (though started earlier) and the Xiong-nu. The population ancestral to the Turkic language speakers is thought to have been included in the Xiong Nu of Mongolia or along the upper Yenisei in Siberia (the area of the contemporary Tuvan language), known from historical sources.

The physical characteristics of populations of Turkic language speakers are roughly clustered about two poles, which might be called races depending on the classificatory scheme: eastern and western. The western, Caucasoid or Europoid look applies to Turkic peoples in or near Europe; the eastern or Mongoloid look applies to Turkic peoples of the Far East. In between; that is, Central Asia, the look is mixed.

In trying to answer such questions as what race were the Proto-Turkic speakers neither anthropometric nor genetic studies have been of much assistance to date. What few DNA analyses have been done arrive at the problem as an answer: affinity to primarily western populations in the west, eastern in the east, and a mixture on a gradient from east to west or vice versa in between. These biological circumstances suggest racial evolution over the region is earlier than can be considered in the time of the distribution of languages; i.e., the languages may have evolved among populations that were already mixed.

Concerning the cultural genesis of the Huns, the Cambridge Ancient History of China asserts: "Beginning in 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 known to the Greeks as the Scythians. The Scythians on the west were Iranian, the last of the Indo-Europeans to descend in an unbroken line from the Proto-Indo-Europeans on their original range. The communities of the northern belt north of China were the Proto-Xiongnu. Their mode of life was indistinguishable from that of the other Scyths: nomadic life on horseback, temporary camps in portable yurts furnished with rugs and tapestries richly decorated with the ornate animal style. The period is dated 650-350 BC and runs contemporaneously from the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period through the Warring States Period of Chinese history.

The Warring States Period is the start of the Iron Age in China, some centuries after it began in the west. A previous transitional period, 1000 BC - 650 BC, was entirely within the Bronze Age, contemporaneously with the western Zhou Dynasty and early Spring and Autumn of China. China was expanding then but the Chinese of the northern frontier must have been encountering "aristocratic warrior elites" who were not equestrian nomads but were "increasingly more specialized pastoralists." Their metallurgy was the best of the region and was comparable to that in the west. The Bronze Age did not begin in this region until about 1500 BC, again trailing the west by several centuries, which suggests that Xiong-nu society was being transformed from an earlier non-equestrian pastoral phase by an impulse from the Scythians, who were reaching maximum eastward expansion along the Silk Route.

From about 1500 BC to 1000 BC, contemporaneously with the Shang Dynasty, a mix of pastoralism and agriculture prevailed in Central Asia, south Siberia and the northern zone on the north of China. The population were shepherds and farmers who supplemented their diet by hunting. They were beginning to use bronze weapons. The Bronze Age began about 1500 BC. Before then the northern region was sedentary, agricultural and divided into a number of Neolithic cultures deriving from the Ordos culture, which stretched back into the Palaeolithic. Racial developments are perhaps to be considered in the Ordos and language developments no later than the sedentary Neolithic. By 1500 BC both Turkic and Mongolian languages in some form of diversity or lack of it must have been in place.

An archaeological culture that can be specifically labeled Xiong-nu is found over the northern range in the 650-350 period. Typical of it is the complex of elite burial structures 45 km west of Noyon Ulul in Mongolia. This high-altitude cemetery of wealthy Xiong-nu leaders contained 212 burials at 8 locations in 3 valleys connected by passes. Very likely the Xiong-nu frequented the place only to lay their chieftains to rest.

A single tomb is a burial chamber within a mound accessed by a ramp down. Over the chamber are layers of stone, soil and logs or planks. The chamber is constructed of Larex sibericus. The deceased was interred with a rich endowment of grave goods: felt or woven carpets, silk, jade, semiprecious stones from Central Asia, fine Chinese lacquered ware and gold jewelry. The weaves are those of Bactria (a historical region of Greater Iran) and animal remains include those of the Bactrian camel.

Other complexes like this are scattered over the entire range from the Altai to northern China. The culture represents perhaps the empire of the Huns on the verge of westward expansion. It contradicts the myth of a few obscure tribes about to be uprooted by Chinese expansion. Here in fact is the first Turkic empire.

The Turks of Central Asia by Charles Warren Hostler

The Turkic Speaking Peoples: 2,000 Years of Art And Culture from Inner Asia to the Balkans by Ergun Cagatay (Editor), Dogan Kuban (Editor)

The History of the Seljuq Turks: From the Jami al-Tawarikh by E. Bosworth

Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World by Hugh Pope

The Turks in World History by Carter Vaughn Findley

Turkic Peoples of the World by Margaret Bainbridge (Editor)

Turkestan

Turkestan (literally meaning "Land of the Turks") is a region in Central Asia, which today is largely inhabited by Turkic peoples. It has been referenced in many Turkic and Persian sagas and is an integral part of Turan (though Turan dwarfs Turkestan in area). Oghuz Turks (also known as Turkmens), Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Khazars, Kyrgyz and Uygurs are some of the Turkic inhabitants of the region who, as history progressed, have spread further into Eurasia forming such Turkic nations as Turkey and Azerbaijan, and subnational regions like Tatarstan in Russia and Crimea in Ukraine. Tajiks and Russians form sizable non-Turkic minorities.

It is subdivided into Afghan Turkestan, Russian Turkestan and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (also known as Chinese Turkestan, East Turkestan or Uyghuristan) in the People's Republic of China. The Tian Shan and Pamir ranges form a rough division between the latter two.

Turkestan has a rich history, dating back to the third millennium BC. Many artifacts were produced in that period, and much trade was conducted. The region was a focal point for cultural diffusion, as the Silk Road traversed it.

Turkestan covers the area of Central Asia that corresponded to eastern Scythia, Transoxania and Greater Khorasan in Antiquity, and acquired its "Turkic" character from the 4th to 6th centuries AD with the incipient Turkic expansion. Turkic sagas, such as the Ergenekon legend, and written sources such as the Orkhon Inscriptions state that Turkic peoples originated in the nearby Altay Mountains, and, through nomadic settlement, started their long journey westwards.

Successive external powers have held the region. Greeks, under Alexander the Great, held the area from 327 BC to 150 BC. Huns conquered the area after they conquered Kashgaria in the early 2nd century BC. With the dissolution of the Huns' empire, Chinese rulers took over Eastern Turkestan. Arab forces captured it in the 8th century. The Persian Samanid dynasty subsequently conquered it and the area experienced economic success. The entire territory was held at various times by Turkic forces, such as the Göktürks until the conquest by Genghis Khan and the Mongols in 1220. Khan gave the territory to his son, Chagatai and the area became the Chagatai Khanate. Tamerlane took over the area in 1369 and the area became the Timurid Empire.

Known as Turan to Iranians, western Turkestan has also been known historically as Sogdiana, Ma wara'u'n-nahr (by its Arab conquerors), and Transoxiana by Western travellers. The latter two names refer to its position beyond the River Oxus when approached from the south, emphasizing Turkestan's long-standing relationship with Iran, the Persian Empires and the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.

The region became part of the Russian Empire in the 1860s, and is thus sometimes called Russian Turkestan or the Туркестанский Край (Turkestanskii Krai). After the Russian Revolution, a Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union was created, which was eventually split into the Kazakh SSR (Kazakhstan), Kyrgyz SSR (Kyrgyzstan), Tajik SSR (Tajikistan), Turkmen SSR (Turkmenistan) and Uzbek SSR (Uzbekistan). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these republics gained their independence.

Eastern Turkestan, also known as Chinese Turkestan, was called the Western Regions in Chinese historic records. Turkestan experienced Chinese influence long before Russian influence. The first Chinese military campaigns in Turkestan dates to the Battle of Loulan in the 2nd century BC. From then on, Turkestan was alternately controlled by the Chinese and/or other nomads like the Tujue. The Protectorate of the Western Regions and the Anxi Protectorate were areas of Chinese rule. Turkic peoples, such as Uyghurs started to settle in Turkestan from the 8th century on. It was conquered by the Qing Dynasty in the mid-18th century and was named 新疆, Xinjiang, meaning new frontier. It was taken over by the Republic of China and then the People's Republic of China by which it is now administered as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (新疆维吾尔自治).

* List of Turkic States and Empires

* History of the Turkic Peoples

Pan-Turkism

Turkmen People

The Turkmen (Türkmen or Түркмен, plural Türkmenler or Түркменлер) are a Turkic people found primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan and in northeastern Iran. They speak the Turkmen language which is classified as part of the Western Oghuz branch of Turkic languages family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Salar and Turkoman spoken in Iraq.

Origins: Originally, all Türkic tribes that were not part of the Türkic dynastic mythological system (for example, Uigurs, Karluks, Kalaches and a number of other tribes) were designated "Turkmens". Only later did this word come to refer to a specific ethnonym. The etymology of the term derives from Türk plus the Sogdian affix of similarity -myn ,-men, and means "resembling a Türk" or "co-Türk". A prominent Turkic scholar Mahmud Kashgari also mentions the etymology Türk manand (like Turks). The language and ethnicity of the Turkmen were much influenced by their migration to the west. Kashgari calls the Karluks Turkmen as well, but the first time the etymology Turkmen was used was by Makdisi in the second half of the 10th-century AD. Like Kashgari, he wrote that the Karluks and Oghuz Turks were called Turkmen. Modern scholars agree that the element -man/-men acts as an intensifier, and have translated the word as "pure Turk" or "most Turk-like of the Turks". Among Muslim chroniclers such as Ibn Kathir the etymology was attributed to the mass conversion of two hundred thousand households in AH 349 (971 AD), causing them to be named Turk Iman, which is a combination of "Turk" and "Iman" إيمان (faith, belief), meaning "believing Turks", with the term later dropping the hard-to-pronounce hamza.

Historically, all of the Western or Oghuz Turks have been called Türkmen or derisive Turkoman; however, today the terms are usually restricted to two Turk groups: the Turkmen people of Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Central Asia, and the Turkomans of Iraq and Syria, which are similar but not identical.

During the Ottoman period these nomads were known by the names of Türkmen and Yörük or Yürük (Türkic "Nomad", other phonetic variations include Iirk, Iyierk, Hiirk, Hirkan, Hircanae, Hyrkan, Hyrcanae, the last four known from the Greek annals). These names were generally used to describe their nomadic way of life, rather than their ethnic origin. However, these terms were often used interchangeably by foreigners. At the same time, various other exoethnonym words were used for these nomads, such as 'Konar-göçer', 'Göçebe', 'Göçer-yörük', 'Göçerler', and 'Göçer-evliler'. The most common one among these was 'Konar-göçer' - nomadic Turcoman Turks. All of these words are found in Ottoman archival documents and carry only the meaning of 'nomad'.

The modern Turkmen people descend, at least in part, from the Oghuz Turks of Transoxiana, the western portion of Turkestan, a region that largely corresponds to much of Central Asia as far east as Xinjiang. Oghuz tribes had moved westward from the Altay mountains in the 7th-century AD, through the Siberian steppes, and settled in this region. They also penetrated as far west as the Volga basin and the Balkans. These early Turkmens are believed to have mixed with native Sogdian peoples and lived as pastoral nomads until the Russian conquest of the 19th-century.

History: Signs of advanced settlements have been found throughout Turkmenistan including the Djeitun settlement where neolithic buildings have been excavated and dated to the 7th millennium BC. By 2000 BC, various Ancient Iranian peoples began to settle throughout the region as indicated by the finds at the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. Notable early tribes included the nomadic Massagatae and Scythians. The Achaemenid Empire annexed the area by the 4th century BC and then lost control of the region following the invasion of Alexander the Great, whose Hellenistic influence had an impact upon the area and some remnants have survived in the form of a planned city which was discovered following excavations at Antiocheia (Merv). The Parni invaded the region as the Parthian Empire was established until it too fractured as a result of tribal invasions stemming from the north. Ephthalites, Huns, and Göktürks came in a long parade of invasions. Finally, the Sassanid Empire based in Persia ruled the area prior to the coming of the Muslim Arabs during the Umayyad Caliphate by 716 AD. The majority of the inhabitants were converted to Islam as the region grew in prominence. Next came the Oghuz Turks, who imparted their language upon the local population. A tribe of the Oghuz, the Seljuks, established a Turko-Iranian culture that culminated in the Khwarezmid Empire by the 12th century. Mongol hordes led by Genghis Khan conquered the area between 1219 to 1221 and devastated many of the cities which led to a rapid decline of the remaining Iranian urban population.

The Turkmen largely survived the Mongol period due to their semi-nomadic life-style and became traders along the Caspian, which led to contacts with Eastern Europe. Following the decline of the Mongols, Tamerlane conquered the area and his Timurid Empire would rule, until it too fractured, as the Safavids, Uzbeks, and Khanate of Khiva all contested the area. The expanding Russian Empire took notice of Turkmenistan's extensive cotton industry, during the reign of Peter the Great, and invaded the area. Following the decisive Battle of Geok-Tepe in January 1881, Turkmenistan became a part of the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution, Soviet control was established by 1921 as Turkmenistan was transformed from a medieval Islamic region to a largely secularized republic within a totalitarian state. By 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan achieved independence as well, but remained dominated by a one-party system of government led by the authoritarian regime of President Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in December 2006.

Genetic Evidence: Genetic studies on Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) restriction polymorphism confirmed that Turkmen were characterized by the presence of European mtDNA lineages, similar to the Eastern Iranian populations, but strong northern Mongoloid genetic component observed in Turkmens and Eastern Iranian populations with the frequencies of about 20%. Phenotype diversity can be discerned amongst the Turkmen, who exhibit full continuum between northern Mongoloid and Mediterranean Caucasoid physical types. This most likely indicates an ancestral combination of Iranian groups and Turco-Mongol that the modern Turkmen have inherited and which appears to correspond to the historical record which indicates that various Iranian tribes existed in the region prior to the migration of Turkic tribes who are believed to have merged with the local population and imparted their language and created something of a hybrid Turko-Iranian culture.

Iranian Peoples

Geographical extent of Iranian influence in the 1st century AD. The Parthian Empire (mostly Western Iranian) is shown in red, other areas, dominated by Scythia (mostly Eastern Iranian), in orange.

The Iranian people are a collection of ethnic groups, defined along linguistic lines as speaking Iranian languages. They are spread across the Iranian plateau, stretching from the Hindu Kush to central Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf - a region that is sometimes termed Greater Iran. Speakers of Iranian languages, however, were once found throughout Eurasia, from the Balkans to western China. As Iranian peoples are not confined to the borders of the current state of Iran, the term Iranic peoples is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the citizens of Iran.

The series of ethnic groups which comprise the Iranian peoples are traced to a branch of the ancient Indo-European Aryans known as the Iranians or Proto-Iranians. Archaeological finds in Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East have elucidated some scant information about the way of life of these early peoples. The Iranian peoples have played an important role throughout history: the Achaemenid Persians established one of the world's first multi-national states and the Scythian-Sarmatian nomads dominated the vast expanses of Russia and western Siberia for centuries with a group of Sarmatian warrior women possibly being the inspiration for the Greek legend of the Amazons. In addition, the various religions of the Iranian peoples, including Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, are believed by some scholars to be important early philosophical influences on Judeo-Christianity. Early Iranian tribes are the ancestors of many modern peoples, including Persians, Kurds, Pashtuns and many other groups.

Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Indo-Aryans, Dards (variously considered as Indo-Iranian or within the Indo-Aryan branch), and the Nuristanis in the early 2nd millennium BC, in Central Asia. The area between northern Afghanistan, the Aral Sea and the Urals is hypothesized to have been the region where the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of the Indo-Iranians, in the area of the previous, non-Indo-European Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia.

By the early 1st millennium, Ancient Iranian peoples such as Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka and Scythian tribes spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang.

Eastern Iranians: While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts, the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Indo-Aryans as well as by archaeological finds. Many ancient Sanskrit texts make references to tribes like Sakas, Paradas, Kambojas, Bahlikas, Uttaramadras, Madras, Lohas, Parama Kambojas, Rishikas, Tukharas or Tusharas etc and locate them in the (Uttarapatha) (north-west) division, in Central Asia, around Hindukush range. The Greek chronicler, Herodotus (5th century BC) makes references to a nomadic people, the Scythians; he describes as having dwelt in what is today southern Russia.

It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins, the Sarmatians, who are mentioned by Strabo as the dominant tribe which controlled the southern Russian steppe in the 1st millennium AD. These Sarmatians were also known to the Romans, who conquered the western tribes in the Balkans and sent Sarmatian conscripts, as part of Roman legions, as far west as Roman Britain.

The Sarmatians of the east became the Alans, who also ventured far and wide, with a branch ending up in Western Europe and North Africa, as they accompanied the Germanic Vandals during their migrations. The modern Ossetians are believed to be the sole direct descendants of the Alans, as other remnants of the Alans disappeared following Germanic, Hunnic and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions.

Some of the Saka-Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further south and invade the Iranian plateau and northwestern India (see Indo-Scythians). Another Iranian tribe related to the Saka-Scythians were the Parni in Central Asia, and who later become indistinguishable from the Parthians, speakers of a northwest-Iranian language. Many Iranian tribes, including the Khwarezmians, Massagetae and Sogdians, were assimilated and/or pushed out of Central Asia by the migrations of Turkic tribes emanating out of Xinjiang and Siberia. The modern Sariqoli in southern Xinjiang and the Ossetes of the Caucasus are remnants of the various Saka tribes.

The Persian Empire by Lindsay Allen

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland

Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interaction in Scythia, Athens, and the Early Roman Empire by David Braund (Editor)

Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines by Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Mona Behan

Secrets of the Dead: Amazon Warrior Women by pbs.org

From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail by C. Scott Littleton, Linda A. Malcor

History of Central Asia

The history of Central Asia has been determined primarily by the area's climate and geography. The aridity of the region makes agriculture difficult, and its distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region. Nomadic horse peoples of the steppe dominated the area for millennia.

Relations between the steppe nomads and the settled people in and around Central Asia were marked by conflict. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to warfare, and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily potent people in the world, due to the devastating techniques and ability of their horse archers. Periodically, tribal leaders or changing conditions would organize several tribes into a single military force. A few of these tribal coalitions included the Huns' invasion of Europe, Turkic migrations into Transoxiana, the Wu Hu attacks on China and most notably the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia.

The dominance of the nomads ended in the 16th century as firearms allowed settled people to gain control of the region. The Russian Empire, the Qing Dynasty of China, and other powers expanded into the area and seized the bulk of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union incorporated most of Central Asia; only Mongolia and Afghanistan remained nominally independent, although Mongolia existed as a Soviet satellite state and Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in the late 20th century. The Soviet areas of Central Asia saw much industrialisation and construction of infrastructure, but also the suppression of local cultures and a lasting legacy of ethnic tensions and environmental problems.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, five Central Asian countries gained independence. In all of the new states, former Communist party officials retained power as local strongmen.

Prehistory: Recent genetic studies have concluded that humans arrived in the region 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, making the region one of the oldest known sites of human habitation. The archaeological evidence of population in this region is sparse, whereas evidence of human habitation in Africa and Australia prior to that of Central Asia is well-known. Some studies have also identified this region as the likeliest source of the populations who later inhabited Europe, Siberia, and North America. The region is also often considered to be the source of the root of the Indo-European languages.

As early as 4500 BC, small communities had developed permaneant settlements and began to engage in agricultural practices as well as herding. Around this time, some of these communities began the domestication of the horse. Initially, the horses were bred solely for their meat, as a source of food. However, by 4000 BC it is believed that they were used for transportation purposes; wheeled wagons began making an appearance during this time. Once the utility of the horse as a means of transportation became clear the horses (actually ponies) began being bred for strength, and by the 3rd millennium BC they were strong enough to pull chariots. By 2000 BC, war chariots had spoked wheels, thus being made more manoeuverable, and dominated the battlefields. The growing use of the horse, combined with the failure, roughly around 2000 BC, of the always precarious irrigation systems that had allowed for extensive agriculture in the region, gave rise and dominance of pastoral nomadism by 1000 BC, a way of life that would dominate the region for the next several millennia.

Scattered nomadic groups maintained herds of sheep, goats, horses, and camels, and conducted annual migrations to find new pastures (a practice known as transhumance). The people lived in yurts (or gers) - tents made of hides and wood that could be disassembled and transported. Each group had several yurts, each accommodating about five people.

While the semi-arid plains were dominated by the nomads, small city-states and sedentary agrarian societies arose in the more humid areas of Central Asia. The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of the early 2nd millennium BC was the first sedentary civilization of the region, practicing irrigation farming of wheat and barley and possibly a form of writing. Bactria-Margiana probably interacted with the contemporary Bronze Age nomads of the Andronovo culture, the originators of the spoke-wheeled chariot, who lived to their north in western Siberia, Russia, and parts of Kazakhstan, and survived as a culture until the 1st millennium BC. These cultures, particularly Bactria-Margiana, have been posited as possible representatives of the hypothetical Aryan culture ancestral to the speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages (see Indo-Iranians), and possibly the Uralic and Altaic cultures as well.

Later the strongest of Sogdian city states of the Fergana Valley rose to prominence. After the 1st century BC, these cities became home to the traders of the Silk Road and grew wealthy from this trade. The steppe nomads were dependent on these settled people for a wide array of goods that were impossible for transient populations to produce. The nomads traded for these when they could, but because they generally did not produce goods of interest to sedentary people, the popular alternative was to carry out raids.

A wide variety of people came to populate the steppes. Nomadic groups in Central Asia included the Huns and other Turks, the Tocharians, Persians, Scythians and other Indo-Europeans, and a number of Mongol groups. Despite these ethnic and linguistic differences, the steppe lifestyle led to the adoption of very similar culture across the region.

External Influences: In the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, a series of large and powerful states developed on the southern periphery of Central Asia (the Ancient Near East). These empires launched several attempts to conquer the steppe people, but met with only mixed success. The Median Empire and Achaemenid Empire both ruled parts of Central Asia. Xiongnu Empire maybe seen as the first central Asian empire which set an example for later Tujue and Mongol empire. Following the success of Sino-Xiongnu War, Chinese states would also regularly strive to extend their power westwards. Despite their military might, these states found it difficult to conquer the whole region. When faced by a stronger force, the nomads could simply retreat deep into the steppe and wait for the invaders to leave. With no cities and little wealth other than the herds they brought with them the nomads had nothing they could be forced to defend. An example of this is given by Herodotus's detailed account of the futile Persian campaigns against the Scythians. The Scythians, like most nomad empires, had permanent settlements of various sizes, representing various degrees of civilization. The vast fortified settlement of Kamenka on the Dnieper River, settled since the end of the 5th century BC, became the centre of the Scythian kingdom ruled by Ateas, who lost his life in a battle against Philip II of Macedon in 339 BC.

Some empires, such as the Persian and Macedonian empires, did make deep inroads into Central Asia by founding cities and gaining control of the trading centres. Alexander the Great's conquests spread Hellenistic civilization all the way to Alexandria Eschate (Lit. “Alexandria the Furthest”), established in 329 BC in modern Tajikistan. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his Central Asian territory fell to the Seleucid Empire during the Wars of the Diadochi. In 250 BC, the Central Asian portion of the empire (Bactria) seceded as the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, which had extensive contacts with India and China till its end in 125 BC. The Indo-Greek Kingdom, mostly based in the Punjab but controlling a fair part of Afghanistan, pioneered the development of Greco-Buddhism. The Kushan Kingdom thrived across a wide swath of the region from the Second Century BC to the Fourth Century AD, and continued Hellenistic and Buddhist traditions. These states prospered from their position on the Silk Road linking China and Europe. Later, external powers such as Sassanid Empire would come to dominate this trade.

One of those powers, the Parthian Empire was of Central Asian origin, but adopted Persian cultural traditions. This is an early example of a recurring theme of Central Asian history: occasionally nomads of Central Asian origin would conquer the kingdoms and empires surrounding the region, but quickly merge into the culture of their conquered peoples.

At this time Central Asia was a heterogeneous region with a mixture of cultures and religions. Buddhism remained the largest religion, but was concentrated in the east. Around Persia, Zoroastrianism became important. Nestorian Christianity entered the area, but was never more than a minority faith. More successful was Manichaeism, which became the third largest faith. Many Central Asians practiced more than one faith, and almost all of the local religions were infused with local shamanistic traditions.

Turkic expansion began in the 6th century, and following the Göktürk emipre, Turkic tribes quickly spread westward across all of Central Asia. The Turkic speaking Uyghurs were one of many distinct cultural groups brought together by the trade of the Silk Route at Turfan in Chinese Central Asia. The Uyghurs, primarily pastoral nomads, observed a number of religions including Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity. Many of the artifacts from this period were found in the 19th century in this remote desert region of China.

In the eighth century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central Asia. The Arab invasion also saw Chinese influence expelled from western Central Asia. At the Battle of Talas an Arab army decisively defeated a Tang Dynasty force and for the next several centuries Middle Eastern influences would dominate the region.

Return of Indigenous Rule: Over time, as new technologies were introduced, the nomadic horsemen grew in power. The Scythians developed the saddle, and by the time of the Alans the use of the stirrup had begun. Horses continued to grow larger and sturdier so that chariots were no longer needed as the horses could carry men with ease. This greatly increased the mobility of the nomads; it also freed their hands, allowing them to use the bow from horseback. Using small but powerful composite bows, the steppe people gradually became the most powerful military force in the world. From a young age, almost the entire male population was trained in riding and archery, both of which were necessary skills for survival on the steppe. By adulthood, these activities were second nature. These mounted archers were more mobile than any other force at the time, being able to travel forty miles a day with ease.

The steppe peoples quickly came to dominate Central Asia, forcing the scattered city states and kingdoms to pay them tribute or face annihilation. The martial ability of the steppe peoples was limited, however, by the lack of political structure within the tribes. Confederations of various groups would sometimes form under a ruler known as a khan. When large numbers of nomads acted in unison they could be devastating, as when the Huns arrived in Western Europe. However, tradition dictated that any dominion conquered in such wars should be divided among all of the khan's sons, so these empires often declined as quickly as they formed.

Once the foreign powers were expelled, several indigenous empires formed in Central Asia. The Hephthalites were the most powerful of these nomad groups in the sixth and seventh century and controlled much of the region. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the region was divided between several powerful states including the Samanid dynasty, that of the Seljuk Turks, and the Khwarezmid Empire.

The most spectacular power to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. Using superior military techniques, the Mongol Empire spread to comprise almost all of Central Asia, as well as large parts of China, Russia, and the Middle East. After Genghis Khan died in 1227, most of Central Asia continued to be dominated by the successor Chagatai Khanate. This state proved to be short lived, as in 1369 Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region.

Even harder than keeping a steppe empire together was governing conquered lands outside the region. While the steppe peoples of Central Asia found conquest of these areas easy, they found governing almost impossible. The diffuse political structure of the steppe confederacies was maladapted to the complex states of the settled peoples. Moreover, the armies of the nomads were based upon large numbers of horses, generally three or four for each warrior. Maintaining these forces required large stretches of grazing land, not present outside the steppe. Any extended time away from the homeland would thus cause the steppe armies to gradually disintegrate. To govern settled peoples the steppe peoples were forced to rely on the local bureaucracy, a factor that would lead to the rapid assimilation of the nomads into the culture of those they had conquered. Another important limit was that the armies, for the most part, were unable to penetrate the forested regions to the north; thus, such states as Novgorod and Muscovy began to grow in power.

In the fourteenth century much of Central Asia, and many areas beyond it, were conquered by Timur (1336-1405) who is known in the west as Tamerlane. It was during Timur’s reign that the nomadic steppe culture of Central Asia fused with the settled culture of Iran. One of its consequences was an entirely new visual language that glorified Timur and subsequent Timurid rulers. This visual language was also used to articulate their commitment to Islam. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The region then became divided among a series of smaller Khanates, including the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Khanate of Kashgar.

Conquest of the Steppes: The lifestyle that had existed largely unchanged since 500 BC began to disappear after 1500. An important change in the world economy in the fourteenth and fifteenth century was brought about by the development of nautical technology. Ocean trade routes were pioneered by the Europeans, who were cut off from the Silk Road by the Muslim states that controlled its western termini. The trade between East Asia, India, Europe, and the Middle East began to move over the seas and not through Central Asia. The disunity of the region after the end of the Mongol Empire also made trade and travel far more difficult and the Silk Road went into steep decline.

An even more important development was the introduction of gunpowder-based weapons. The gunpowder revolution allowed settled peoples to defeat the steppe horsemen in open battle for the first time. Construction of these weapons required the infrastructure and economies of large societies and were thus impractical for nomadic peoples to produce. The domain of the nomads began to shrink as, beginning in the fifteenth century, the settled powers gradually began to conquer Central Asia.

The last steppe empire to emerge was that of the Dzungars who conquered much of East Turkestan and Mongolia. However in a sign of the changed times they proved unable to match the Chinese and were decisively defeated by the forces of Qing Dynasty. In the eighteenth century the Qing emperors, themselves originally from the far east edge of the steppe, campaigned in the west and in Mongolia with the Qianlong Emperor taking control of Xinjiang in 1758. The Mongol threat was overcome and much of Inner Mongolia was annexed to China. The Chinese dominions stretched into the heart of Central Asia and included the Khanate of Kokand, which paid tribute to Peking. Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang did not become provinces of the Chinese empire, but rather were directly administered by the Qing dynasty. The fact that there was no provincial governor meant that the local rulers retained most of their powers and this special status also prevented emigration from the rest of China into the region. Persia also began to expand north, especially under the rule of Nadir Shah who extended Persian dominion far past the Oxus. After his death, however, the Persian empire slowly crumbled and was annexed by Britain and Russia.

The Russians also expanded south, first with the transformation of the Ukrainian steppe into an agricultural heartland, and subsequently onto the fringe of the Kazakh steppes, beginning with the foundation of the fortress of Orenburg. The slow Russian conquest of the heart of Central Asia began in the early nineteenth century, although Peter the Great had sent a failed expedition under Prince Bekovitch-Cherkassky against Khiva as early as the 1720s. By the 1800s, the locals could do little to resist the Russian advance, although the Kazakhs of the Great Horde under Kenesary Kasimov rose in rebellion from 1837 - 46. Until the 1870s, for the most part, Russian interference was minimal, leaving native ways of life intact and local government structures in place. With the conquest of Turkestan after 1865 and the consequent securing of the frontier, the Russians gradually expropriated large parts of the steppe and gave these lands to Russian farmers, who began to arrive in large numbers. This process was initially limited to the northern fringes of the steppe and it was only in the 1890s that significant numbers of Russians began to settle farther south, especially in Zhetysu (Semirechye).

* History of Central Asia

The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. 'Barbarian' and Nomad by Andrew Bell-Fialkoff (Editor)

The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia by Rene Grousset

Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1700 by Erik Hildinger

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron

Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 by Janet L. Abu-Lughod

Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present by Jeff Sahadeo (Editor), Russell Zanca (Editor)

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

E-book: The History of Herodotus by Herodotus — Volume 1, volume 2

Prehistory of the Silk Road

Iranian and Scythian Connections: The expansion of Scythian Iranian cultures stretching from the Hungarian plain and the Carpathians to the Chinese Kansu Corridor and linking Iran, and the Middle East with Northern India and the Punjab, undoubtedly played an important role in the development of the Silk Road. Scythians accompanied the Assyrian Esarhaddon on his invasion of Egypt, and their distinctive triangular arrowheads have been found as far south as Aswan. These nomadic peoples were dependent upon neighbouring settled populations for a number of important technologies, and in addition to raiding vulnerable settlements for these commodities, also encouraged long distance merchants as a source of income through the enforced payment of tariffs. Soghdian Scythian merchants played a vital role in later periods in the development of the Silk Road.

Chinese and Central Asian Contacts: From the 2nd millennium BC nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand and Khotan to China. Significantly, these mines were not very far from the lapis lazuli and spinel ("Balas Ruby") mines in Badakhshan and, although separated by the formidable Pamir Mountains, routes across them were, apparently, in use from very early times.

The Tarim mummies, Chinese mummies of non-Mongoloid, apparently Caucasoid, individuals, have been found in the Tarim Basin, in the area of Loulan located along the Silk Road 200 km east of Yingpan, dating to as early as 1600 BC and suggesting very ancient contacts between East and West. It has been suggested that these mummified remains may have been of people related to the Tocharians whose Indo-European language remained in use in the Tarim Basin (modern day Xinjiang) of China until the 8th century.

Some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk have been found in Ancient Egypt from 1070 BC. Though the originating source seems sufficiently reliable, silk unfortunately degrades very rapidly and we cannot double-check for accuracy whether it was actually cultivated silk (which would almost certainly have come from China) that was discovered or a type of "wild silk," which might have come from the Mediterranean region or the Middle East.

Following contacts of metropolitan China with nomadic western border territories in the 8th century BC, gold was introduced from Central Asia, and Chinese jade carvers began to make imitation designs of the steppes, adopting the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (descriptions of animals locked in combat). This style is particularly reflected in the rectangular belt plaques made of gold and bronze with alternate versions in jade and steatite.

Persian Royal Road: By the time of Herodotus (c. 475 BC) the Persian Royal Road ran some 2,857 km from the city of Susa on the lower Tigris to the port of Smyrna (modern İzmir in Turkey) on the Aegean Sea. It was maintained and protected by the Achaemenid Empire (c.500–330 BC) and had postal stations and relays at regular intervals. By having fresh horses and riders ready at each relay, royal couriers could carry messages the entire distance in 9 days, though normal travellers took about three months. This Royal Road linked into many other routes. Some of these, such as the routes to India and Central Asia, were also protected by the Achaemenids, encouraging regular contact between India, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. There are accounts in Esther of dispatches being sent from Susa to provinces as far out as India and Cush during the reign of Xerxes (485–465 BC).

History of the Silk Road

Hellenistic Era: The first major step in opening the Silk Road between the East and the West came with the expansion of Alexander the Great's empire into Central Asia. In August 329 BC, at the mouth of the Fergana Valley in Tajikistan he founded the city of Alexandria Eschate or "Alexandria The Furthest". This later became a major staging point on the northern Silk Route.

In 323 BC, Alexander the Great’s successors, the Ptolemaic dynasty, took control of Egypt. They actively promoted trade with Mesopotamia, India, and East Africa through their Red Sea ports and over land. This was assisted by a number of intermediaries, especially the Nabataeans and other Arabs.

The Greeks remained in Central Asia for the next three centuries, first through the administration of the Seleucid Empire, and then with the establishment of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in Bactria. They continued to expand eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus (230–200 BC) who extended his control beyond Alexandria Eschate to Sogdiana. There are indications that he may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), leading to the first known contacts between China and the West around 200 BC. The Greek historian Strabo writes "they extended their empire even as far as the Seres (China) and the Phryni."

Chinese Exploration of Central Asia: The next step came around 130 BC, with the embassies of the Han Dynasty to Central Asia, following the reports of the ambassador Zhang Qian (who was originally sent to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu). The Chinese Emperor Wu Di became interested in developing commercial relationship with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia: "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Dayuan) and the possessions of Bactria (Ta-Hsia) and Parthia (Anxi) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" (Hou Hanshu, Later Han History).

The Chinese were also strongly attracted by the tall and powerful horses in the possession of the Dayuan (named "Heavenly horses"), which were of capital importance in fighting the nomadic Xiongnu. The Chinese subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as Seleucid Syria. "Thus more embassies were dispatched to Anxi [Parthia], Yancai [who later joined the Alans ], Lijian [Syria under the Seleucids], Tiaozhi [Chaldea], and Tianzhu [northwestern India]… As a rule, rather more than ten such missions went forward in the course of a year, and at the least five or six." (Hou Hanshu, Later Han History). The Chinese campaigned in Central Asia on several occasions, and direct encounters between Han troops and Roman legionaries (probably captured or recruited as mercenaries by the Xiong Nu) are recorded, particularly in the 36 BC battle of Sogdiana (Joseph Needham, Sidney Shapiro). It has been suggested that the Chinese crossbow was transmitted to the Roman world on such occasions, although the Greek gastraphetes provides an alternative origin. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy suggest that in 36 B.C., a "Han expedition into central Asia, west of Jaxartes River, apparently encountered and defeated a contingent of Roman legionaries. The Romans may have been part of Antony's army invading Parthia. Sogdiana (modern Bukhara), east of the Oxus River, on the Polytimetus River, was apparently the most easterly penetration ever made by Roman forces in Asia. The margin of Chinese victory appears to have been their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor."

The Roman historian Florus also describes the visit of numerous envoys, included Seres (Chinese), to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BC and 14:

"Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even Scythians and Sarmatians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the Seres came likewise, and the Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours." ("Cathay and the way thither", Henry Yule).

The "Silk Road" essentially came into being from the 1st century BC, following these efforts by China to consolidate a road to the Western world and India, both through direct settlements in the area of the Tarim Basin and diplomatic relations with the countries of the Dayuan, Parthians and Bactrians further west. The Han Dynasty Chinese army regularly policed the trade route against nomadic bandit forces generally identified as the Xiongnu/Huns. Han general Ban Chao led an army of 70,000 mounted infantry and light cavalry troops in the 1st century AD to secure the trade routes, reaching far west across central Asia to the doorstep of Europe, and setting up base on the shores of the Caspian Sea in cooperation with the Parthian Kingdom under Pacorus II of Parthia.

A maritime "Silk Route" opened up between Chinese-controlled Jiaozhi (centred in modern Vietnam, near Hanoi) probably by the 1st century. It extended, via ports on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all the way to Roman-controlled ports in Egypt and the Nabataean territories on the northeastern coast of the Red Sea.

The Roman Empire: Soon after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, regular communications and trade between India, Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, China, the Middle East, Africa and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale. The party of Maës Titianus became the travellers who penetrated farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world, probably with the aim of regularizing contacts and reducing the role of middlemen, during one of the lulls in Rome's intermittent wars with Parthia, which repeatedly obstructed movement along the Silk Road. Land and maritime routes were closely linked, and novel products, technologies and ideas began to spread across the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organized, and protected by the 'Great Powers.' Intense trade with the Roman Empire followed soon, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians), even though the Romans thought silk was obtained from trees. This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Younger in his Phaedra and by Virgil in his Georgics. Notably, Pliny the Elder knew better. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk."

The Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the importation of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered to be decadent and immoral:

"I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes… Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body" (Seneca the Younger (c.3 BC–65, Declamations Vol. I).

The Hou Hanshu records that the first Roman envoy arrived in China by this maritime route in 166, initiating a series of Roman embassies to China.

Medieval Period: The main traders during Antiquity were the Indian and Bactrian traders, then from the 5th to the 8th century CE the Sogdian traders, then afterward the Persian traders.

The unification of Central Asia and Northern India within Kushan empire in the first to third centuries reinforced the role of the powerful merchants from Bactria and Taxila. They fostered multi-cultural interaction as indicated by their 2nd century treasure hoards filled with products from the Greco-Roman world, China and India, such as in the archeological site of Begram.

The heyday of the Silk Road corresponds, on its west end, to the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid Empire Period to Il Khanate Period in the Nile-Oxus section and Three Kingdoms to Yuan Dynasty in the Sinitic zone in its east end. Trade between East and West also developed on the sea, between Alexandria in Egypt and Guangzhou in China, fostering across the Indian Ocean. The Silk Road represents an early phenomenon of political and cultural integration due to inter-regional trade. In its heyday, the Silk Road sustained an international culture that strung together groups as diverse as the Magyars, Armenians, and Chinese.

Under its strong integrating dynamics on the one hand and the impacts of change it transmitted on the other, tribal societies previously living in isolation along the Silk Road or pastoralists who were of barbarian cultural development were drawn to the riches and opportunities of the civilizations connected by the Silk Road, taking on the trades of marauders or mercenaries. Many barbarian tribes became skilled warriors able to conquer rich cities and fertile lands, and forge strong military empires.

The Sogdians dominated the East-West trade after the 4th century CE up to the 8th century CE, with Suyab and Talas ranking among their main centers in the north. They were the main caravan merchants of Central Asia. Their commercial interests were protected by the resurgent military power of the Göktürks, whose empire has been described as "the joint enterprise of the Ashina clan and the Soghdians". Their trades with some interruptions continued in the 9th century within the framework of the Uighur Empire, which until 840 extended across northern Central Asia and obtained from China enormous deliveries of silk in exchange for horses. At this time caravans of Sogdians traveling to Upper Mongolia are mentioned in Chinese sources. They played an equally important religious and cultural role. Part of the data about eastern Asia provided by Muslim geographers of the 10th century actually goes back to Sogdian data of the period 750-840 and thus shows the survival of links between east and west. However, after the end of the Uighur Empire, Sogdian trade went through a crisis. What mainly issued from Muslim Central Asia was the trade of the Samanids, which resumed the northwestern road leading to the Khazars and the Urals and the northeastern one toward the nearby Turkic tribes.

The Silk Road gave rise to the clusters of military states of nomadic origins in North China, invited the Nestorian, Manichaean, Buddhist, and later Islamic religions into Central Asia and China, created the influential Khazar Federation and at the end of its glory, brought about the largest continental empire ever: the Mongol Empire, with its political centers strung along the Silk Road (Beijing in North China, Karakorum in central Mongolia, Sarmakhand in Transoxiana, Tabriz in Northern Iran, Sarai and Astrakhan in lower Volga, Solkhat in Crimea, Kazan in Central Russia, Erzurum in eastern Anatolia), realizing the political unification of zones previously loosely and intermittently connected by material and cultural goods.

The Roman Empire, and its demand for sophisticated Asian products, crumbled in the West around the 5th century. In Central Asia, Islam expanded from the 7th century onward, bringing a stop to Chinese westward expansion at the Battle of Talas in 751. Further expansion of the Islamic Turks in Central Asia from the 10th century finished disrupting trade in that part of the world, and Buddhism almost disappeared. For much of the Middle Ages, the Islamic Caliphate in Persia often had a monopoly over much of the trade conducted across the Old World (see Muslim age of discovery for more details).

Mongol Era: The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1215 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-establish the Silk Road (via Karakorum). The Chinese Mongol diplomat Rabban Bar Sauma visited the courts of Europe in 1287-1288 and provided a detailed written report back to the Mongols. Around the same time, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo became one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China, and his tales, documented in Ptolemaic dynasty, opened Western eyes to some of the customs of the Far East. He was not the first to bring back stories, but he was one of the widest-read. He had been preceded by numerous Christian missionaries to the East, such as William of Rubruck, Benedykt Polak, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, and Andrew of Longjumeau. Later envoys included Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni de' Marignolli, John of Montecorvino, Niccolò Da Conti, or Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveller, who passed through the present-day Middle East and across the Silk Road from Tabriz, between 1325-1354.

The 13th century also saw attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance, with exchange of ambassadors and (failed) attempts at military collaboration in the Holy Land during the later Crusades, though eventually the Mongols in the Ilkhanate, after they had destroyed the Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties, eventually themselves converted to Islam, and signed the 1323 Treaty of Aleppo with the surviving Muslim power, the Egyptian Mamluks.

Disintegration: However, with the disintegration of the Mongol Empire also came discontinuation of the Silk Road's political, cultural and economic unity. Turkmeni marching lords seized the western part of the Silk Road — the decaying Byzantine Empire. After the Mongol Empire, the great political powers along the Silk Road became economically and culturally separated. Accompanying the crystallization of regional states was the decline of nomad power, partly due to the devastation of the Black Death and partly due to the encroachment of sedentary civilizations equipped with gunpowder.

The effect of gunpowder and early modernity on Europe was the integration of territorial states and increasing mercantilism; whereas on the Silk Road, gunpowder and early modernity had the opposite impact: the level of integration of the Mongol Empire could not be maintained, and trade declined (though partly due to an increase in European maritime exchanges).

The Silk Road stopped serving as a shipping route for silk around 1400.

Silk Roads

The Silk Road, or Silk Route, is a series of trade and cultural transmission routes that were central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent connecting East and West by linking traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea during various periods of time. The trade route was initiated around 114 BC by the Han Dynasty (114 BC), although earlier trade across the continents had already existed. Geographically, The Silk Road or Silk Route is an interconnected series of ancient trade routes connecting Chang'an (today's Xi'an) in China, with Asia Minor and the Mediterranean, extending over 8,000 km (5,000 miles) on land and sea. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the great civilizations of China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Indian subcontinent, and Rome, and helped to lay the foundations for the modern world.

As it extends westwards from the commercial centers of North China, the continental Silk Road divides into north and south routes to avoid the Tibetan Plateau.

The northern route travels northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu, and splits into three further routes, two of them passing north and south of the Taklamakan Desert (through modern day Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang) to rejoin at Kashgar; and the other going north of the Tien Shan mountains through Turfan, Talgar and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan).

All routes join up at Kokand in the Fergana Valley, and the roads continue west across the Karakum Desert towards Merv, joining the northern route briefly.

One of these routes turns northwest along the Amu Darya (river) including Bukhara and Samarkand the center of Silk Road trade to the Aral Sea, through ancient civilizations under the present site of Astrakhan, and on to the Crimean peninsula. From there it crosses the Black Sea, Marmara Sea and the Balkans to Venice; another crosses the Caspian Sea and across the Caucasus to the Black Sea in Georgia, thence to Constantinople.

The Persian Royal Road

The Persian Royal Road was an ancient highway built by the Persian king Darius I of Achaemenid Empire in the 5th Century BC. Darius built the road to facilitate rapid communication throughout his very large empire from Susa to Sardis. These couriers could travel 1,677 miles (2,699 km) in seven days. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote, "There is nothing in the world that travels faster than these Persian couriers." Herodotus' praise for these messengers — "neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness of night prevents these couriers from completing their designated stages with utmost speed" — is the inspiration for the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service.

The course of the road has been reconstructed from the writings of Herodotus, archeological research, and other historical records. It began in the west in Sardis (about 60 miles east of İzmir in present-day Turkey), traveled east through what is now the middle northern section of Turkey to the old Assyrian capital Nineveh (present-day Mosul, Iraq), then traveled south to Babylon (present-day Baghdad, Iraq). From near Babylon, it is believed to have split into two routes, one traveling northwest then west through Ecbatana and on along the Silk Road, the other continuing east through the future Persian capital Susa (in present-day Iran) and then southeast to Persepolis.

Because the road did not follow the shortest nor the easiest route between the important cities of the Persian Empire, archeologists believe the western-most sections of the road may have originally been built by the Assyrian kings, as the road plunges through the heart of their old empire. More eastern segments of the road (in present-day northern Iran) are coincident with the major trade route known as the Silk Road.

However, Darius I made the Royal Road as it is recognized today by improving the road bed and connecting the parts together in a unified whole, primarily as a post road; a quick mode of communication using the kingdom's pirradazis, or messengers.

The construction of the road as improved by Darius was of such quality that the road continued to be used until Roman times. A bridge at Diyarbakır, Turkey, still stands from this period of the road's use. The road also helped Persia increase long distance trade, which reached its peak during the time of Alexander of Macedon.

Euclid is said to have replied to King Ptolemy's request for an easier way of learning mathematics that "there is no royal road to geometry". Charles S. Peirce, in his 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' (1878), says 'There is no royal road to logic, and really valuable ideas can only be had at the price of close attention.' Sigmund Freud also famously described dreams as the 'royal road to the unconscious'. The phrase was echoed in a modern context in the essay No Silver Bullet where Fred Brooks said of software engineering improvements: "There is no royal road, but there is a road".

The Persian Road

A road for merchants and
For brigands; a road for those who seek
Their way to Samarkand;
A road for Kurds and nomads; a road, a streak
Of trodden earth that tramps between
Dark mountain walls and over green
Great ocean fields of grass, and by
Squat Persian town and caravanserai;
A road that that camel-hinds and pilgrims planned;
The Road, the Persian Road to Samarkand.

Eric Linklater

The Golden Road to Samarkand

HASSAN:
Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells,
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.
ISHAK:
We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

James Elroy Flecker

* Samarkand as an archetype of romantic exoticism, notably in the work by James Elroy Flecker: The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913; e-book).

* In The Travels of Marco Polo, where Polo records his journey along the Silk Roads, Samarkand is described as a "a very large and splendid city..." Here also is related the story of Christian church in Samarkand, which miraculously remained standing after a portion of its central supporting column was removed (e-book vol. 1, e-book vol. 2).

* In Islamic literature and discussions, Samarkand has taken on a semi-mythological status and is often cited as an ideal of Islamic philosophy and society, a place of justice, fairness, and righteous moderation.

* The markets of Samarkand are referenced to more than once in the 1920 Edith Wharton novel The Age of Innocence (e-book).

* Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, explores the metaphysical significance of the marketplace in a volume of poetry entitle, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, 2002.

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The Book of Dede Korkut

The Book of Dede Korkut by Anonymous, Geoffrey Lewis (Translator)

Islam in China

Muslims in China by Aliya Ma Lynn

Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang by James A. Millward

Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China by Jonathan N. N. Lipman

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Turkish Group, Azerbaijani Group, Turkmen Group, Salar

Travels in Transoxiana: In the Lands Over the Hindu Kush and Cross the Amu Darya by Jaswant Singh

Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 by John Darwin

Fabric Merchant at the Samarkand Market

Samarkand

Samarkand-Crossroads of Cultures

The Silk Road, Samarkand

The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics by Edward H. Schafer

From Samaria to Samarkand: The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel by David A. Law

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List of Emperors of the Great Seljuq Empire:

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Map of Central Asia in Around 1450

* A Genetic Landscape Reshaped by Recent Events: Y-Chromosomal Insights into Central Asia by Tatiana Zerjal, et al.

* DNA Analysis Tracks Silk Road Forbears by Ivan Noble

* Where West Meets East: The Complex mtDNA Landscape of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor by Lluís Quintana-Murci, et al.

Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarkand, Sixth Edition by Calum MacLeod, Bradley Mayhew

Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA)

* DNA Genealogy, Mutation Rates, and Some Historical Evidence Written in Y-Chromosome, Part II: Walking the Map by Anatole Klyosov

* Y-Chromosome Distribution Within the Geo-linguistic Landscape of Northwestern Russia by Sheyla Mirabal, et al.

* Independent Origins of Indian Caste and Tribal Paternal Lineages by Cordaux et al.

* The Genetic Link of the Viking – Era Norse to Central Asia: An Assessment of the Y Chromosome DNA, Archaeological, Historical and Linguistic Evidence by David K. Faux

Map of Krasnoyarsk

* Ancient DNA Provides New Insights into the History of South Siberian Kurgan People by C. Keyser, et al.

* Geographical Distributions of Y-chromosomal Haplogroups P*(xR1a), R1a, and J from Male Demography in East Asia: A North–South Contrast in Human Population Expansion Times by Yali Xue, et al.

Turkic Peoples

* The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity by R. Spencern Wells, et al.

Geographic Distribution of Y-chromosome Haplotypes in Selected Eurasian Populations

The haplotype frequencies in selected populations are shown graphically with related haplotypes combined into common colors.

M173 lineage - Haplogroup R1 (R1 is very common throughout Europe and western Eurasia. Its distribution is believed to be associated with the re-settlement of Eurasia following the last glacial maximum. Its main subgroups are R1a (SRY1532) and R1b (M343).)

Neighbor-joining Tree of 61 Eurasian Populations, Based on Y-chromosome Biallelic Haplotype Frequencies

Nei genetic distances were used in a neighbor-joining analysis. Internal numbers are bootstrap values (1000 replicates); values less than 200 are not shown. Roman numerals denote population clusters described in the text.

* Genetic Polymorphisms of 15 STR in Chinese Salar Ethnic Minority Group by J. Shu, et al.

* Sequence-length Variation of mtDNA HVS-I C-stretch in Chinese Ethnic Groups by Feng Chen, et al.

NJ Tree of Nine Populations Based on Fst Distance

* Genetic Relationships of Ethnic Minorities in Southwest China Revealed by Microsatellite Markers by Hongbin Lin, et al.

Principal Component Analysis with Normalized Allele Frequencies for the Full-loci Dataset

* Sequence-length Variation of mtDNA HVS-I C-stretch in Chinese Ethnic Groups by Feng Chen, et al.

Principal Component (PC) Map of Nine Populations Based on the Distance Matrix

* Genetic Polymorphisms of 15 STR Loci in Chinese Han population living in Xi'an city of Shaanxi Province by Y.M. Wu, et al.

* Polymorphism of DYS287 on Y Chromosome in 28 Ethnic Populations of China by Y. Chen, et al.

Haplogroup DE (Y-DNA)

Tree

Turkic Languages

The Turkic Migration

The Turks of Central Asia by Charles Warren Hostler

The Turkic Speaking Peoples: 2,000 Years of Art And Culture from Inner Asia to the Balkans by Ergun Cagatay (Editor), Dogan Kuban (Editor)

The History of the Seljuq Turks: From the Jami al-Tawarikh by E. Bosworth

Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World by Hugh Pope

The Turks in World History by Carter Vaughn Findley

Turkic Peoples of the World by Margaret Bainbridge (Editor)

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