{"id":418,"date":"2023-08-06T17:33:20","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T16:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/?p=418"},"modified":"2023-08-06T17:38:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T16:38:10","slug":"turkish-identity-according-to-the-orkhon-inscriptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"Turkish identity according to the Orkhon inscriptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

(\u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a<\/a>) According to Wiktionary, the origin of the word Turk goes back to the word \u201croot\u201d, \u201cancestry\u201d or \u201crace\u201d in the old Turkic, the language of the Orkhon inscriptions. But according to the inscriptions, it\u2019s clear that the term isn\u2019t used as an umbrella term for all the Turkic peoples. It might be similar to how contemporary Mesopotamian Arabic speakers use the term \u201cArab\u201d when they say \u201cour Arabs\u201d referring to their own tribe\u2019s area, but not exactly.<\/p>\n

On the eastern side of the Orkhon inscriptions\u2019 stone, Kul Tigin mentioned the Khagan of the Turuges (T\u00fcr\u00fcge\u0161<\/em>): \u201cThe Tiirgish Khagan was of my Turks, my people. Because of his foolishness, and because he was filled with deceit towards us he was slain and his buyruks and begs were slain.\u201d Which shows that the term Turks here refer to the group that is loyal to the Khagan, and that it doesn\u2019t have a nationalistic or racial indication. Kyrgyzs, Oghuz, Kumans are peoples known to have spoken Turkic languages, but for the Orkhon inscriptions\u2019 authors they\u2019re not Turks.<\/p>\n

The most common term that comes with the word Turk in Orkhon inscriptions is \u2018Begs\u2019, it always mentions \u2018Turkish people and Turkish begs\u2019. The Begs is the plural of Beg which refers to the nobles as if it is important to distinguish between the commoners and the Begs. That reminds me of the Primary Russian Chronicle<\/a> which had also distinguished between people and Boyars very frequently. Ibn Iyas<\/a>, from 16th century Egypt, also refer to the class of the people and doesn\u2019t describe them as one group. That would be similar to say in today\u2019s language: \u2018the people and the managers\u2019 or \u2018people and the doctors\u2019 or \u2018the people and the rich ones\u2019 if we wanted to separate the people based on bureaucratic, scientific, and financial elites.<\/p>\n

The word Turk doesn\u2019t mean Turkic people as we use it today. It doesn\u2019t refer to those who speak Turkic languages and have common traditions and they share the same language family that is clearly different from the Chinese tradition and language, but the inscriptions continuously mentioned \u201cChinese, Kitays and Oghuz\u201d. For example: \u201cIf these three\u2014the Chinese, the Oguzes, and the Kitays\u2014combine, all will be over with us; we are, as it were, fastened to a stone by the Will(?) of Fate\u201d. However, short term alliances with people like the T\u00fcr\u00fcge\u0161 <\/em>was enough to make them \u201cTurks\u201d of the Khagan.<\/p>\n

The translator adds the word \u201cTurk\u201d between two brackets in one of the sentences that was mentioned \u201cwesterners\u201d, but the original text did not dub them as Turks actually, and never used that term in a context except for being the people of the Khagan. The inscription however talked about what shows how the Khagans believe about their similarity between them and the other \u201cTurkic\u201d peoples in today\u2019s measures. For example, he often refers to their rulers as Khagans too, but that also not confirmed, for example \u201cFrom the Tibetan Khagan came a holm\u201d, where they called the Tibetan ruler a Khagan too. The inscription also show that those other peoples have Begs and peoples \u201cbegs and peoples of Tokuz Oguz\u201d, but the Chinese do not have begs.<\/p>\n

Another aspect of the identity concepts gets clarified when talking about the names and the daughters of the Turks become slaves to the Chinese, or about perishing and becoming extinct or few in numbers. \u201cThe sons of the nobles became the bondsmen of the Chinese people, their unsullied daughters became its slaves. The Turkish begs gave up their Turkish names [or titles ?], and bearing the Chinese names [titles ?] of Chinese begs they IE 8 obeyed the Chinese Emperor, and served him during fifty years<\/em>\u201d. The inscription talked about the shame of some Turks who adopted Chinese titles and how their daughters became slaves to the Chinese. But if someone had a Chinese noble title then that means they\u2019re not actually losing their daughters freedom, but it is just a kinship relationship. The inscription on the other side accepted that the Khagan married his daughter to the Kyrgyz Khagan, and that was not a shame. Is that because of the considering the Kyrgyzs ethnically close to the Gokturks?<\/p>\n

Finally, this is not a research about the word Turks and its meaning and evolution, but if the same concept existed among other Turkic peoples by that time, and if everyone calls his allies \u201cTurks\u201d then in the big Turkic conquests, like the Seljukid, probably the invaders mass was a Turkic mass in the view of the invaders, their Khagans\u2019 and the others\u2019. Diwan Lughat Al-Turk of Mahmood Al-Kashgari would probably be the best source about such subject.<\/p>\n

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(\u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a) According to Wiktionary, the origin of the word Turk goes back to the word \u201croot\u201d, \u201cancestry\u201d or \u201crace\u201d in the old Turkic, the language of the Orkhon inscriptions. But according to the inscriptions, it\u2019s clear that the term isn\u2019t used as an umbrella term for all the Turkic peoples. It might be similar to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/\u0643\u062a\u0627\u0628\u0627\u062a-\u0627\u0648\u0631\u062e\u0648\u0646.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarmeriwani.com\/history\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}