The Turkic term ''oğuz'' or ''oğur'' (in z- and r-Turkic, respectively) is a historical term for "military division, clan, or tribe" among the

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

. 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 1260 covered large parts of Eurasia. Historians regard the Mongol devastati ...

of 1206–21, the Turkic khaganates were replaced by

Mongol Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family of M ...

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 ass ...

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

Background

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

Old Turkic Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...

epigraphy: ''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 peoples, Turkic tribes and Turkic languages across Eurasia between the 4th and 11th centuries. In the 6th century, the Göktürks overthrew the Rouran Khaganate in what is now Mongolia and expanded in ...

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

Kutrigurs The Kutrigurs were a Turkic nomadic equestrian tribe 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 Byzan ...

Uyghur Uyghur may refer to: * Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia (West China) ** Uyghur language, a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Uyghurs *** Old Uyghur language, a different Turkic language spoken in the Uyghur K ...

Saragurs The Saragurs or Saraguri (, , Šarağurs) were a Turkic nomadic tribe mentioned in the 5th and 6th centuries. They may be the Sulujie (蘇路羯, ''suoluo-kjɐt'') mentioned in the Chinese '' Book of Sui''. They originated from Western Siberia and ...

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 introduce ...

References

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

Background

See also

References

Further reading