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TURKIC-SPEAKING PEOPLES 801
In the area between the basins of the Volga and Don rivers, the Turkic Khazars
had established a khanate which, with the assistance of Byzantium, dominated
the area until the eleventh century, when the Kipchak Turks defeated and assimilated
the Khazars. Meanwhile, west of the Khazars the Turkic Bulgars had
advanced to the western shore of the Black Sea, where most were Slavicized by
their sedentary subjects within two centuries. Some, however, were able to
maintain their Turkic speech, which was subsequently altered and augmented
by later influxes of Turks.
A new and important element was injected into the Turkic migrations by the
Arabs, whose armies marched into Central Asia in the eighth century, captured
Samarkand and Bukhara and imposed Islam on the subject peoples. Their proselytizing
was continued under the Islamic Seljuk confederation, composed of
Ogiiz Turks, which dominated most of Turkestan from the eleventh century to
the Mongol conquest of the area in the early years of the thirteenth century. The
Ogiiz Turks, constituting the second important wave of Turks, held sway over
Persia, Transcaucasus, Mesopotamia and much of Asia Minor by the end of the
eleventh century.
The northern element of the Ogiiz, the Pechenegs, was soon displaced by the
third wave of Turks, that of the Kipchaks, whose position in Central Asia and
in the Volga basin was strengthened by their alliance with the Mongols, who
advanced their conquests to the gates of Vienna. The establishment of the mainly
Turkic Golden Horde at the border of Europe and Asia, the conquests of Tamerlane
(Timur Lenk, or Timur the Lame) and his successors and the establishment
of the Moghul dynasty in India were fundamentally extensions of the expansionism
initiated by Gengis Khan and those who succeeded him.
The period between the thirteenth century, when the Altaian alliance burst
into the heart of Europe, and the fifteenth century, when the empire of Tamerlane
was at its height and the Ottomans conquered Byzantium and the Balkans,
constitutes the high-water mark in the geopolitical fortunes of the Turks. Their
subsequent history is largely one of retrenchment from national independence
movements and subjugation at the hands of the revivified empires of Russia,
China and Persia.
In terms of their inner structure and borrowings from other languages, the
various languages of the Turks can be divided into an eastern and a western
branch. The languages of the western branch, being products of overlapping
migrations, exhibit copious evidence of the intermixture of Turkic dialects and
of extensive borrowings from Arabic, Persian and Russian. The western branch
may be divided into four groups, here designated the Bulgar, Ogiiz, Kipchak
and Karluk groups.
The Bulgar group is represented today by only one living language, Chuvash.
The Chuvash live along the middle course of the Volga and in various localities
of western Siberia. The Chuvash are not Muslim.
The Ogiiz group of Turkic languages originated in the second wave of Turks
to enter Central Asia and eastern Europe. The Ogiiz probably arrived in Central