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, the name of a Mongolic tribal grouping. Their earliest attestation is in the 8th century Ork̲h̲on Turk inscriptions in which the Otuz Tatar (“Thirty T.”) are noted (KT, e14, sl) together with other Proto-Mongolian peoples (the Ḳitan, Tatabi̊) as rebellious subjects of the Türk Empire. Elsewhere (BḲ, e35), the Toḳuz Tatar (“Nine T.”) are reported as allies of the Og̲h̲uz who were defeated by Bilge Ḳag̲h̲an (Tekin, Orhon yazitlari , see also runic fragments from Tuva and K̲h̲akasia, Vasil’ev, Korpus , 33-4; Kljaštornyj, Das Reich , 75) and in the late 740s b…

¶ I. History. 1. The pre-Islamic period: the first Turks in history and their languages. Towards 540, on the northern fringes of China, the nomadic empire of the Z̲h̲ouan-z̲h̲ouan (proto-Mongols?) dominated the lands of Mongolia and some neighbouring zones. Its Ḳag̲h̲an or ruler had as his vassals notably the chiefs of two important tribal confederations, those of the Türks, in the northern Altai, and the equally Turkish-speaking one of the “High Waggons” (Chinese Kao-kiu) in the Selenga basin (the northern part of central Mongolia).…

, Russ. Ty̲u̲men’, the name of a town, previously called Čimgi-Tura on the Tura river in Western Siberia and of a subgrouping, the Tümenli , of the Siberian Tatars (who in 1926 numbered 22,636). The toponym derives, probably, from the Činggisid administrative-fiscal unit tümen (< Turk. tümen “10,000” < Tokhar. A. tmān , B. tmāne , an early borrowing in Mongol where it came to designate a military unit of 10,000 (Clauson, Dictionary , 507-8; Spuler, Goldene Horde , 303, 333, 377; Nasonov, Mongoli̊ , 98 ff. [see …

, the Russian rendering of Tat. Bas̲h̲k. Tiptär , a social term and subsequently ethnonym, the “people of the register” (< Pers. < Arab, …

, the name of one or more cities in Western Eurasia.…

(Turkic Toḳuz Og̲h̲uz “the Nine Og̲h̲uz”), the name of a Turkic tribal confederation that was used in often chronologically confused Muslim accounts as the general designation of the Uyg̲h̲urs until the late 5th/11 th century.…

, also tark̲h̲ān , a high-ranking Inner Asian title of considerable antiquity. It probably entered Arabic from Sog̲h̲dian trg̲h̲ʾn or Middle Pers. trk̲h̲ʾn < Turk, tarḳan (pl. in Mongolian tarḳat ), which appears to have been part of the imperial titulature that the Turks inherited from the Jou-jan empire. Its etymology is unclear. Attempts have been made to link it with the Hsiung-nu Shan-yü (Archaic Chin. * dânhwâh ), the tide of their supreme ruler (Pulleyblank, 91). It is also noted among the Hephthalites, another pre-Türk polity derivi…

(also Ṣayram, etc.), the name of a town in present-day Kazak̲h̲stan, some 7-8 miles east of Čimkent, on the Ari̊s river, a tributary of the Syr Darya. Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī (ed. and tr. Dankoff, ii, 241; repeated in the Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Ras̲h̲īdī , tr. Ross, 171), in the earliest reference to it under this name, identifies it as the “White City which is called Isbīd̲j̲āb” [see isfīd̲j̲āb, in Suppl.]. In Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī’s day (i, 84) its inhabitants spoke “both Sog̲h̲dian and Turkic.” It is to be distinguished from a city of the same name in Eastern Turkistan (located…

, a nomadic people in the South Russian steppes who flourished in the early Islamic period. The K̲h̲azar tribal union emerged in the course of the 6th century A.D. in the aftermath of a series of migrations of nomadic peoples from Inner and Central Asia. With the collapse of the European Hun state in 454 A.D., some of the nomadic elements of Attila’s horde withdrew to the Pontic steppe zone. They were joined here, ca. 463 A.D., by waves of Og̲h̲ur tribes which had been driven from Western Siberia and the Kazak̲h̲ steppe by the Sabirs who, in turn, had been forced to migrate to the Kazak̲h̲ steppe from their Central Asian homeland by the expansion of the Avar (Juan-juan, Uar-Hun) ¶ tribal confederation (on the history of these migrations, see K. Czeglédy, A nomád népek vándorlása napkelettöl napnyugatig (“The Migrations of nomadic peoples from East to West”), Budapest 1969). The Sabirs themselves arrived in the North Caucasian steppelands and Volg…

, the name of a river in Western Siberia from which Toboli̊ḳ , the ethnonym of a subgrouping of the Siberian Tatars derives, as does also the name of the Russian city Tobol’sk built (1587) near Sibir, the capital of the Sibir Ḵh̲ānate [see sībīr ]. The Tobol Tatars, together with the Tümenli , constitute one of the principal subgroupings of the Siberian Tatars along with the Tara, Baraba, Tomsk and Buk̲h̲arli̊ḳ groupings. The Toboli̊ḳ presently number about 50,000 and live interspersed among Russian, Siberian Buk̲h̲ārān and Ḳazan Tatar settlements along the Irti̊s̲h̲ river, from Tara to Tobol’sk and on the Tobol. They descend from the Ḳipčaḳ Turkic and Turkicised population of the eastern regions of the …

, the designation of Western Siberia first used in sources for the Čingizid era of the 13th and 14th centuries. From this the modern Russ. Сибирь (and thence “Siberia” in European and other languages) derives. The origins of this toponym are unclear. A connection with the Sabirs, a Turkic nomadic grouping which formed part of the K̲h̲azar state (cf. the Suwār in Volga Bulg̲h̲aria) and who may have occupied some parts of this region before moving to the Volga zone in the early 6th century A.D., has been suggested (Patkanov, Über das Volk der Sabiren , 258-77). Sabir ( Säbir …

, sing. Ṣaḳlabī, Ṣiḳlabī, the designation in mediaeval Islamic sources for the Slavs and other fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned peoples of Northern Europe (see A.Z. Velidi Togan, Die Schwerter der Germanen , 19-38). 1. The Ṣaḳāliba of Northern and Eastern Europe. The actual name was a borrowing from Middle Greek Σλάβος, “Slav.” this, in turn, is to be connected with the self-designation of the Slavs, …

, occasionally Rūsiya , the Arabic rendering (and thence into other Islamic languages) of Eastern Slavic Poycb ( Rus ’). This was the designation of a people and land from which modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus’ derive. The rapid ethnic, political and social evolution of this term and the people(s) which it denoted during the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries produced a series of temporally multi-layered, occasionally contradictory notices in the classical Islamic geographical literature. In contemporary Byzantine sources it appears as ‘Ρῶς (which may, indeed, be the source of the Arabic form, Barthold, Arabskie isvestiy̲a̲ o rusak̲h̲ ), cf. also ‘Ρωσσία

, a Turkic tribal confederation of mediaeval central and western Eurasia. Their ethnonym appears in our sources as Tibet. Be-ča-nag , Arabo-Persian Bd̲j̲nāk , Bd̲j̲ānāk , Bd̲j̲ynh , Georg. Pačanik-i , Arm. Pacinnak , Greek Πατζινακῑται, Πατζινάκοι, Rus’. Pečeneg’ Lat. Pizenaci , Bisseni , Bysseni , Bessi , Beseneu , Pol. …