The Turkic term ''oğuz'' or ''oğur'' (in z- and

r-Turkic The Oghuric, Onoguric or Oguric languages (also known as Bulgar, Pre-Proto-Bulgaric or Lir-Turkic and r-Turkic) are a branch of the Turkic language family. The only extant member of the group is the Chuvash language. The first to branch off from ...

, respectively) is a historical term for "military division, clan, or tribe" among the

Turkic peoples The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging to ...

. With the

Mongol invasions The Mongol invasions and conquests took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, creating history's largest contiguous empire: the Mongol Empire ( 1206-1368), which by 1300 covered large parts of Eurasia. Historians regard the Mongol devastatio ...

of 1206–21, the Turkic

khaganate A khaganate or khanate was a polity ruled by a khan, khagan, khatun, or khanum. That political territory was typically found on the Eurasian Steppe and could be equivalent in status to tribal chiefdom, principality, kingdom or empire. Mongo ...

s were replaced by Mongol or hybrid

Turco-Mongol The Turco-Mongol or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 14th century, among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The ruling Mongol elites of these Khanates eventually a ...

confederations, where the corresponding military division came to be known as '' orda''.

Background

The 8th-century Kül Tigin stela has the earliest instance of the term in

Old Turkic Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic language, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of the Turkic languages, found in Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions dating from about the eighth to the 13th century. It is the old ...

epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

: ''Toquz Oghuz'', the "nine tribes". Later the word appears often for two largely separate groups of the

Turkic migration The Turkic migrations were the spread of Turkic tribes and Turkic languages across Eurasia and between the 6th and 11th centuries. In the 6th century, the Göktürks overthrew the Rouran Khaganate in what is now Mongolia and expanded in all direct ...

in the early medieval period, namely: * Onogur "ten tribes" *

Utigurs Utigurs were Turkic nomadic equestrians who flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the 6th century AD. They possibly were closely related to the Kutrigurs and Bulgars. Etymology The name ''Ut(r)igur'', recorded as , and , is generally con ...

Kutrigurs Kutrigurs were Turkic nomadic equestrians who flourished on the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the 6th century AD. To their east were the similar Utigurs and both possibly were closely related to the Bulgars. They warred with the Byzantine Empire an ...

* Uyghur The stem ''uq-, oq-'' "kin, tribe" is from a Proto-Turkic ''*uk''. The Old Turkic word has often been connected with ''oq'' "arrow"; Pohl (2002) in explanation of this connection adduces the Chinese ''T'ang-shu'' chronicle, which reports "the khan divided his realm into ten tribes. To the leader of each tribe, he sent an arrow. The name f these ten leaderswas 'the ten '' she'' ', but they were also called 'the ten arrows'." the "arrows" connection was first reported by

Édouard Chavannes Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes (5 October 1865 – 29 January 1918) was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion, and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian'' ...

, ''Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turcs) occidentaux'', 1900.Walter Pohl, ''Die Awaren: ein Steppenvolk im Mitteleuropa, 567-822 n. Chr'', C.H.Beck (2002), , p. 26-29. An ''oguz'' (''ogur'') was in origin a military division of a

Nomadic empire Nomadic empires, sometimes also called steppe empires, Central or Inner Asian empires, were the empires erected by the bow-wielding, horse-riding, nomadic people in the Eurasian Steppe, from classical antiquity (Scythia) to the early modern era ...

, which acquired tribal or ethnic connotations, by processes of

ethnogenesis Ethnogenesis (; ) is "the formation and development of an ethnic group". This can originate by group self-identification or by outside identification. The term ''ethnogenesis'' was originally a mid-19th century neologism that was later introdu ...

References

*Karoly Czeglédy, ''On the Numerical Composition of the Ancient Turkic Tribal Confederations'', Acta Orient. Hung., 25 (1972), 275-281.

Background

References

Further reading

See also