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To understand the rugs it is a help to understand the
people who wove them. The Turkmen are great weavers and
are related to the Turks of Turkey as well as the Azeri
of Iran and the Caucasus. I explore how the Turkmen split
off and became the people they are today. Maybe at a
later point I will explore their cousins in Iran the
Caucasus and Turkey.
The Turkmen up to the Modern Era
The Oghuz originated
among the Turkic people in the Tien Shan Mountains where Kyrgyzstan,
southeast Kazakhstan and China come together. There is
Linguistic evidence to show that they were related to the
Kimaks, Kipchaks, and Kirghiz peoples. Some accounts
suggest that the Turkmen are descended from the
Massagetae and Alani Scythian tribes but I dispute that
on he basis of new evidence. If the Turkmen were
descended from the Scythian people we would expect then
to fall into the haplogroup R1 in subclade R1A1 but
instead we see that there is very little incidence of
R1A1 but high incidences of R1 with subclade D4C. This
bears out exactly the Oghuz histories that point to an
origin neat Lake Issyk-Kul. Linguistically and
genetically the Oghuz are Turks of the Altaic group.
By the early 9th century the Oghuz had moved to the area
west of the Aral sea and were raiding as far as the
border of Khorasan. But by the tenth century the Oghuz
constituted a Principality based in Yengi-kent on the
lower Syr Darya near its mouth at the Aral sea.
The Oghuz were a confederation of tribes that were tied
by oath and treaty to the Yagbhu of the Kinik (or Qiniq)
Tribe. While the Yagbhu was the ruler so to speak his
control waxed and waned over the full extent of the
confederation. The 24 tribes of the Oghuz were the Kinik,
Kayi, Bayundur, Yiva, Salir (Salor), Avsar (Afshar),
Bekdili, Bekdüz, Bayat, Yazir, Eymûr (Imreli),
Kara-Bulak, Alka-Bulak, Igdir, Yüregir, Tutirka,
Alayontlu, Döger, Çepni, Peçenek, Çavuldur (Chodor),
and Çaruk.
One could consider the Oghuz a principality but not truly
a sovereign kingdom in that they tended to cooperate with
which ever of its greater neighbors were in ascendancy
and could either help or compel them. They even worked
with the Rus. The Oghuz Yagbhu and Russian Prince
Svyatoslav united to defeat the Khazar in 965. Let us not
however minimize their impact since the Oghuz controlled
an area well east of the Aral sea west to the lower Volga
river and south to Khorasan.
The Oghuz began to settle and cities such as Yengi-kent
and Djand (Yand) gained significance. This created a
dichotomy in the confederation between the settled Oghuz
and the herders. This resulted in punitive measures by
the Yagbhu and his allies to maintain both control and
tax revenue from the less settled parts of the Oghuz
confederation. For many years the Yagbhu was able to keep
things under control and reign in his recalcitrant tribal
people when necessary. Finally late in the tenth century
Duqaq Timuryaligh and his son Seljuk of the Kinik tribe
split with the Yagbhu and left the Oghuz. Duqaq and his
son Seljuk started as virtually bandits existing where
they could graze their herds and by raiding to make ends
meet.
Seljuk was able to build a following
when he discovered Islam. This gave him the impetus
to grow his following exponentially. By using Islam as a
unifying factor the Seljuk declared religious warfare in
the form of raids against the Oghuz. The success of the
raids pulled an increasing number of tribes over to the
Seljuk. The Oghuz were considered Pagan until the middle
twelfth century although the Yagbhu appears to have
converted to Islam in the opening years of the 12th
century. Pushed out of their lands that spanned the Volga
river to the Syr Darya the Oghuz moved south under the
protection of the Ghaznevid Sultan Mas'ud (1031-1041) By
1038 the Seljuk began to move south against their enemy
the Oghuz and take land claimed by Sultan Mas'ud. To stop
the Seljuk and reinforce his hold on Khwarezm Sultan
Mas'ud named Oghuz Yagbhu Shah Malik Khwarezm Shah in
1041.
In
1042 the Seljuk Khan Togrül and his brother Chaghri
drove the Ghaznevids and their Oghuz allies out of
Khwarezm ending the Seljuk Oghuz conflict. Shah Malik
was the last Yagbhu of the Oghuz and the loss at Khwarezm
broke the Oghuz confederation. Shah Malik fled south to Kerman
and then Baluchistan where he was killed. The remnants of
the Oghuz left in Turkestan pushed into the Mangyshlak Peninsula
where the Salor forged a new confederation.
The
Salor Confederation came under increasing pressure in the
16th century with incursions by the Mangit people from
the north. The Confederation held until the 17th
century when the Kalmuk pushed down far in enough into
the Mangyshlak Peninsula to disrupt trade. Faced with
military incursions and an increased desiccation on the
peninsula the tribes began to pull back to the east and
southeast. This destabilized the Salor Confederation
allowing two parts of the Salor, the Saryk and then the
Teke to revolt and end the Salor as a confederation. Thus
beginning the modern Turkmen era.
N.B. The Turkmen people of today are the Nokhurli,
Anauli, Khasarli, Nerezim, Yomud, Teke (Tekke), Goklen,
Salyr (Salor), Saryq, Esari (Arsary/Ersari), and the
Cawdur (Chodor). Before we accept new tribal groupings
such as some people are proposing we would need to figure
out who wove them. For instance the MAD or "Middle
Amu Darya" designation is gaining usage. For someone
to propose a Kizil Ayak
I originally wrote this for Tappeti
Magazine in Italy. http://tappetimagazine.blogspot.com/2008/12/turkmen-up-to-modern-era.html
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