User:Nostradamus1/Oghuz
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Oghuz (variously Oğuz, Ghuzz, Ouzoi, Uzes, Torks) were a group of loosely linked nomadic Turkic peoples who, in the tenth century, inhabited the steppe of the rivers Sarı-su, Turgai, and Emba to the north of Lake Balkhash.
In the late tenth century, the Persian geography of Hudud al-Alam tells us, what is now the country of the Kırghız*Kazakhs, north of Lake Balkash -that is to say, the steppe of the rivers Sarı-Su, Turgay, and Emba- was inhabited by Turkic peoples: the Oghuz of Ghuzz, known to Byzantine chroniclers by the name of Ouzoi. Linguists rank these Ghuzz -together with the old Kimaks of the middle Yenisei of the Ob, the old Kipchaks who later emigrated to southern Russia, and the modern Kırghiz-in one particular Turkic group, distinguished from the rest by the mutation of the initial y sound to j(dj). These are the same Ghuzz who have been known since the Jenghiz Khan era as Turkmen: our Turkomans.
(Scholars account for the name Turkmen adopted by the Ghuzz, by its augmentative suffix "men", which in the Turkic language has a sense of intensification. Turkmen thus would signify something like "Turk of pure blood", "thoroughbred Turk".)
The Ghuzz of the eleventh century, like the modern Turkmen, formed a group of loosely linked tribes which were often at war among themselves. In the second quarter of the eleventh century, they sought their fortune in southern Russia and in Iran. Russian chronicles first note their appearance in southern Russia about 1054. Harried by another Turkic horde, the Kipchaks -a branch of the Kimaks of the middle Irtysh or of the Ob- these Uzes, as the Byzantines called them (Ouzoi), penetrated as far as the lower Danube, crossed it, and invaded the Balkans, where they were finally crushed (1065). Another Ghuzz clan, that of the Seljuks, moving in another direction, met with a more brilliant fortune: it conquered Persia and Asia Minor.
A question much disputed among Turkologists is whether or not the Uighur should be identified with the Oghuz. This controversy is based upon the following points:
