o - Aceh Books website

800 TURKIC-SPEAKING PEOPLES
on any basis save that of linguistic affinity. Turkic subgroups are distinct and
self-identified. The shamanistic Yakut, engaged in reindeer breeding along the
upper reaches of the Aldan River in eastern Siberia, and the Christian, sedentary
Surguch of Bulgaria possess no distinguishing feature in common other than the
fact that their mutually unintelligible languages are descended from a common
parent language. That language, Proto-Turkic, is related through common descent
to the precursors of the Mongolic and Tungus-Manchu languages. The Turkic,
Mongolic and Tungus-Manchu languages together comprise the Altaic family
of languages, to which Yukagir, Korean, Japanese and the Uralic languages
(Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic) are commonly throught to bear a more distant
relation.
The primordial homeland of the Turks is generally thought to have been in
the eastern portion of the Eurasian plain, approximately in the area now occupied
by the Mongolian People's Republic. Thus, the ancestral Turks would have faced
Tungus and Paleo-Siberian tribes on the north and east, Mongols to the south
and Tocharian and Iranic-speaking peoples on the west.
The present disposition of the Turks is largely the result of a series of migrations
out of the original homeland. One of these movements, that of the Yakut, whose
northward exodus to their present habitat in Siberia probably began in the twelfth
century, is of little consequence to the historiography of the Muslim world. The
other migrations consisted of four overlapping waves of Turks and other Altaic
people, whose penetrations into Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe exerted
an enormous influence on world history. The four migrations were those of the
Huns, the Ogiiz Turks, the Kipchaks and the Mongols.
The Hunnic Empire, which thrust itself westward until checked in France at
the Battle of Catalaunian Fields in A.D. 451, was comprised of numerous ethnic
groups, including Turks, who formed the nucleus of the Bulgar and Khazar states
in the Russian steppe lands between the fifth and tenth centuries. Meanwhile, a
confederation of Turks consolidated power in the area formerly occupied by the
Huns, between the Amur and Irtysh rivers. The westward advance of these Turks
brought them increasingly into contact with Indo-Europeans under the domination
of the Persian Sassanid dynasty. The subsequent history of Central Asia is largely
concerned with the defeat and assimilation of the Bactrians, Sogdians and others
by the Turks, whose westward progress continued without serious interruption,
even though the internal political status of the Turks underwent frequent and
radical alterations. The Tajiks, the former Sogdians, have retained their Persian
speech, but most of the outlying Iranic peoples were assimilated to the language
of the Turks, while at the same time assimilating many of the Turks to their
more sedentary cultures. Even today the extensive intermingling of the western
Turks with Persians is reflected in the predominantly Caucasian features of the
Turks living west of the Amu Darya, as opposed to the mainly Mongoloid features
of the Turks living east of the region. The Persian influence is also manifested
in the strong Zoroastrian substratum underlying the Muslim practices of many
Turks.