Karluks

The Karluks were a confederation of nomadic Turkic tribes that first appears west of the Altai Mountains, around the Black Irtysh and the Tarbagatai range, and later came to dominate Jetisu (Semirechye) in today's Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Between the seventh and tenth centuries they moved from vassals of the Göktürks and Tang China to rulers of their own state, and they helped form the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The Karluk branch of the Turkic languages, which includes Uzbek and Uyghur, carries their name.

Chinese sources first mention them in 644, calling them the "Lion Karluks". They began as a union of three tribes, the Uch-Karluk, inside the Göktürks' khaganate, led first by an official titled elteber and later by a yabgu. When the khaganate split around 600, they came under the Western Turkic Khaganate. In 650 they submitted to China, and their three tribes were nominally organised as Chinese prefectures. The meaning of the name is disputed: one suggestion is "snowy", while the linguist Marcel Erdal argued for an outsiders' name meaning "the mingled ones".

From the Altai the Karluks spread along the Irtysh and towards the Tian Shan, and by the early eighth century an advance guard had reached the Amu Darya. The Tang dynasty treated them as vassals. Around 745 they joined the Uyghurs and the Basmyl in overthrowing the last Göktürk rulers, but were soon forced into the Uyghur-led confederation. They broke with the Tang in 751, the year Chinese forces were defeated by an Arab army at the Battle of Talas, after which Chinese intervention in western Turkestan ceased.

In 766 the Karluks overran the Türgesh in Jetisu and moved their capital to Suyab. Their state was a loose association of semi-independent towns and districts, each with its own militia; Suyab alone could reportedly field 20,000 warriors. Its wealth came from caravan trade towards China and from the slave markets of the Syr Darya. The population was mixed, with Turkic tribes living alongside Sogdian merchant colonies, and the Karluks were herders, hunters and farmers as well as town dwellers.

The Karluks first followed Tengrism, the old Turkic sky religion. Late in the eighth century they adopted Nestorian Christianity, an important moment for the Church of the East, while the Arab historian Yaqubi reports that a Karluk yabgu converted to Islam under Caliph al-Mahdi (775–785). Trade more than conquest drew them towards Islam, and by the tenth century there were mosques east of Talas. Their towns used several scripts, including Turkic runes, Sogdian and Syriac.

After the Uyghur Khaganate fell in 840, several Muslim historians say leadership among the Turks passed to the Karluk chiefs, who took the title khagan. Around 940 the Yagma seized the Karluk capital Balasagun, and the Kara-Khanid Khanate, built from Karluks, Chigils, Yagmas and others, came to rule both sides of the Tian Shan; its ruler Musa made Islam the state religion in 960. In the twelfth century the Karluks were split between the Karakhanids and the Kara-Khitai. In 1211 the Karluk Arslan Khan submitted to Genghis Khan, and under the Mongol Empire the name fell out of use.

The literary Turkic of the Karluk lands became the basis of Chagatai, the language of the Timurid and Mughal courts. Linguists today group Uzbek and Uyghur in the Karluk branch, and a section of the Hazara people is considered to descend from them.

Our maps draw the Karluks in 700 and 900, an approximate outline in the steppe and mountains of Jetisu and the upper Irtysh, between the Turkic khaganates to the east and the Samanid Empire to the south-west on the later map.