Turkoman (ethnonym)

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Turkoman, also known as Turcoman (English: ), was a term for the people of Oghuz Turkic origin, widely used during the Middle Ages. Oghuz Turks were a western Turkic people that, in the 8th century A.D, formed a tribal confederation in an area between the Aral and Caspian seas in Central Asia, and spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. Today, Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Turkmens are largely descended from the Oghuz Turks once called Turkomans. Turkmen, originally an exonym, dates from the High Middle Ages, along with the ancient and familiar name "Turk" (türk), and tribal names such as "Bayat", "Bayandur", "Afshar", and "Kayi". By the 10th century, Islamic sources were referring to Oghuz Turks as Muslim Turkmens, as opposed to Tengrist or Buddhist Turks. The term entered into the usage of the Western world through the Byzantines in the 12th century, since by that time Oghuz Turks were overwhelmingly Muslim. Later, the term "Oghuz" was gradually supplanted by "Turkmen" among...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Author: Benjamin Banayan (rugrabbit.com), photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit "COURT AND COSMOS: The Great Age of the Seljuqs", 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0