From Tengriism to Islam: How the Turks Became Muslim
Turkic peoples left the steppe’s sky-god faith for Islam over centuries, people by people: Talas 751, the Karakhanids, the Oghuz and the Seljuks.
Table of Contents
The Turks did not become Muslim on a single day. It took about eight centuries, from the 7th to the late 15th, one people and one ruler at a time.
Most Turkic peoples of the steppe, the wide grassland of Central Asia, honoured Tengri, the sky, as their one god. Muslims first met them in the 7th and 8th centuries. The turning points named most often are the battle of Talas in 751; Satuk Buğra Han, a ruler of the Karakhanids, a Turkic dynasty of Central Asia; and the Seljuks, a Turkic dynasty that founded a great state in 1040.
The short version
Not one date: a slow change, people by people.
- Before Islam: most steppe Turks honoured Tengri, the sky god. Others followed Buddhism, Manichaeism, Judaism or Christianity.
- First contact: the 7th and 8th centuries, in Transoxiana, the land beyond the Amu Darya river. After the battle of Talas in July 751, Turks and Arabs turned from fighting to friendship.
- The Karakhanids: their ruler Satuk Buğra Han became Muslim about 920, in one account (932, 940 and 945 are also given). Muslim chroniclers record 200,000 tents of Turks becoming Muslim in 960: a round figure, not a count.
- The Oghuz and the Seljuks: the Seljuk leader Selçuk Bey became Muslim at Cend, in 961 or 985 depending on the source. The Seljuk state was founded in 1040.
- The last to turn: the Kipchaks, a steppe people, until the 14th century, and the Uyghurs of East Turkestan from the 14th century until the late 15th.
- Why: trade with Muslim merchants, the teaching of scholars and Sufis, and rulers who chose Islam first.
The steppe, century by century, a map that moves
Transoxiana (Mâverâünnehir in Turkish, from the Arabic for “the land beyond the river”) is the country between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, two rivers that run into the Aral Sea, in today’s Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and southern Kazakhstan. Sufis are Muslim mystics; a dervish is a Sufi who lives simply, and a sheikh is a master who guides a group of them.
Eleven stops, 7th to 15th century
The steppe and the faith, stop by stop
MountainsSeas and lakesRiversSand
- 7th–8th century
First meetings in Transoxiana
After the battle of Nihavend in 642, Turks and Muslims meet. Islam begins to spread among Turks in Transoxiana in the time of the commander Qutayba b. Muslim. Sul-Tegin of Dihistan declares himself Muslim before the caliph, and equal treatment under the caliph Umar b. Abd al-Aziz speeds the spread.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü» · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
- July 751
Talas: an Arab army meets a Chinese one
On the Talas river, east of today’s Evliya-Ata, an Abbasid army and a Tang Chinese army fight for five days. The Karluks, a Turkic people of the region, probably strike the Chinese from behind on the last day. Afterwards Turks and Arabs turn from fighting to friendship, and Islam spreads fast among Turks.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TALAS SAVAŞI
- 893
The Samanids take Talas
Ismâil b. Ahmed, ruler of the Samanids, a Muslim dynasty of Transoxiana and Khorasan, marches east from Bukhara to protect Transoxiana from raids by non-Muslim Turks, and takes Talas. A great church there becomes a mosque. Mosques, tombs and ribats (roadside inns) are built at Bukhara, Özkent, Taşkent, Sayram and Otrar.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SÂMÂNÎLER; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
- About 920–922
Two rulers choose Islam
Satuk Buğra Han, a Karakhanid prince, becomes Muslim at Artuç, near Kashgar, and takes the name Abdülkerim: in 920 in one account, in 932, 940 or 945 in others. In 922 the ruler of the Volga Bulgars asks the caliph for scholars and builders; his state is the first Turkic state to make Islam its state religion.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SATUK BUĞRA HAN; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
- About 960
A crowd of tents
Muslim chroniclers put the number of Turks who became Muslim in 960 (349 in the Muslim calendar) at 200,000 tents. It is a chronicler’s figure, not a count. By then the Karakhanids hold the Chu valley, with Balasagun as their centre, and Kashgar.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; KARAHANLILAR · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
- 10th century
The Oghuz and Cend
The Oghuz, a Turkic people whose towns Yenikent and Cend lay on the lower Syr Darya, meet Muslim merchants, dervishes and sheikhs. Their commander Selçuk Bey settles at Cend, on the border between Turkic and Muslim lands, and becomes Muslim: 961 in one account, 985 in another. Their yabgu (ruler) follows in 1002. Muslim Oghuz are called Türkmen.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SELÇUK BEY; OĞUZLAR; TÜRKMENLER
- 1040
Dandanakan: the Seljuk state
At Dandanakan, a trading town between Sarakhs and Merv, the Seljuks under Tuğrul and Çağrı beat the Ghaznavids in open battle. The Great Seljuk state dates from this year. By now most Oghuz are Muslim, and as they settle, many give up horse meat.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: DANDANAKAN SAVAŞI; SELÇUKLULAR; OĞUZLAR
- 1043–44
10,000 tents near Balasagun
In 1043–44 (435) a Turkic group of 10,000 tents, about 50,000 to 60,000 people, living near Balasagun and Kashgar becomes Muslim under the Karakhanid ruler Arslan Han Süleyman. From now the great majority of Turks are Muslim.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; KARAHANLILAR
- 1069–1074
Two books in Turkic
Yûsuf Has Hâcib of Balasagun finishes the Kutadgu Bilig, “the knowledge of becoming happy”, at Kashgar, and in 1069–70 gives it to the Karakhanid ruler Tavgaç Uluğ Buğra Han. A few years later Kâşgarlı Mahmud writes the first dictionary of Turkic, with a map of the Turkic world.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: KUTADGU BİLİG; DÎVÂNÜ LUGĀTİ’t-TÜRK
- 1166
Ahmed Yesevî
Ahmed Yesevî, a Sufi teacher and poet from Sayram or Yesi (today Turkestan), dies in 1166 (562). He taught in Turkish, and his followers carry his path, the Yeseviyye, through Central Asia. By Timur’s order his tomb is rebuilt on a grand scale, from 1396.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: AHMED YESEVÎ; YESEVİYYE; AHMED YESEVÎ KÜLLİYESİ
- 14th–15th century
The last to turn
Islam spreads on the Kipchak steppe, the grassland north of the Aral and Caspian seas, until the 14th century. In East Turkestan the Chagatai ruler Tarmaşirin becomes Muslim in 1326, Islam spreads among the Uyghurs, and by the late 15th century all of them are Muslim.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; UYGURLAR
Positions are rough and no borders are drawn; the circled dots (Dihistan, Cend, Dandanakan) are the least certain. Colours follow Kâşgarlı Mahmud’s map: mountains red, seas green, rivers blue, sands yellow. Where dates differ, the card shows each one.
The faith of the steppe, Tengri and the sky
Before Islam, most Turkic peoples of the steppe looked to the sky. The sky was Tengri (also written Tanrı), and the faith built on it is called the sky-god belief. The word tengri has been in use since the time of the Eastern Huns, a steppe people of the 3rd century BC, and where it comes from is not known.
- One god
- Tengri is one god, the creator. The order of the world, the shape of society and a person’s fate all hang on him.
- No picture
- He has no human or animal form, and no divine marriage with a goddess, as in the old Sumerian, Greek and Roman beliefs.
- For everyone
- He is not the god of one tribe: the inscriptions read as speaking of a god for all.
- Victory
- Rulers believed that their victories came through the sky god’s favour.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TANRI; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
The oldest voice
The Orkhon inscriptions are stone monuments in central Mongolia, near an old bed of the Orkhon river. They were set up for the prince Kül Tigin (732) and for his brother, the ruler Bilge Kağan (735), of the second Göktürk state. They are the oldest and finest examples of Turkish prose and public speech, in an old script of 38 letters.
They speak of sky and earth together: üze kök teŋri asra yağız yér, “above the blue sky, below the dark earth”. Bilge Kağan says he revived and fed a dying people “by the favour of Tanrı”.
The sky god was not the whole of the belief. Six more parts belong to it, each tied to a place in a steppe camp.
The old belief
A steppe camp, six parts of the faith
- Sky
The sky: Tengri
Tengri is the sky and the god of the sky. Kök Tengri means “Sky Tengri”: kök (gök) is the Turkic word for sky and for blue, and one scholar, Hikmet Tanyu, reads it as an adjective, “great, sublime”. The sun and the moon had sky-god names too: Kün Tengri and Ay Tengri.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TANRI; TÜRK, «Din»
- Earth and water
Mountains, rivers and forests
The inscriptions speak of yer-su, “earth-water”: holy places (ıduk means sacred) such as mountains, rivers and forests. Mountains mattered most. Iduk-Ötüken, the holy land at the heart of the Turkic states, was a place of this kind. Fire, earth and some trees had an owner (iye), a spirit that looked after them.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Din»
- Birch and Umay
The birch and Umay
In the Book of Dede Korkut, a collection of Oghuz tales, the birch (kayın) has a special place in the life of all Turks. It is believed to have been sent down from the sky together with Umay, the protector spirit of children.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: DEDE KORKUT
- Kut
Kut, the sky’s gift
Kut comes from the sky. In Altai belief a person’s soul, the kut, is in the sky. Early Turkic rulers believed that the sky god had charged the khagan (the ruler) with governing the world, and this belief was called kut. With Islam it came to be read as “Allah’s share” or decree.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: ŞAMANİZM · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
- Ancestors
Ancestors and offerings
The spirits of dead ancestors could bring good or harm, and were honoured with offerings. The oldest act of worship was the sacrifice of an animal, first of all to the sky god; rags tied to trees were a bloodless offering. Among the Oghuz in 921 the dead were buried with their clothes and belongings, and their horses were slaughtered and eaten at a funeral meal.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Din»; OĞUZLAR
- The kam
The kam and the wise people
Kam is the word for a shaman among the Tatars and the Altai Turks; a shaman deals with spirits. The historian of religion Harun Güngör holds that the old Turkic faith was not shamanism, and that the kam was not an authority of its own. Ibn Fadlan, who crossed Oghuz land in 921, saw neither temple nor religious man, but wise people who healed, foretold, judged whether an undertaking was lucky and led rites.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Din»; ŞAMANİZM; OĞUZLAR
About the name and the graves
“Tengriism” is a modern name. Movements that call themselves tengrizm today, in Kyrgyzstan and among the Altai and the Tatars, are not the old sky-god belief.
Graves tell the same story: tomb structures called kurgans date from the Hun period, and the Göktürks built memorial complexes for Kül Tigin, Bilge Kağan and the statesman Tonyukuk.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TANRI; TÜRK, «Mimari»
Not one faith, Buddha, Mani, Moses and Christ among the Turks
Not every Turkic people followed the sky god before Islam. Several took up a faith of their neighbours.
- Buddhism
- Followed in the Göktürk state. Some Uyghur communities were Buddhist too: the Uyghurs of Koço, in East Turkestan, did not give up Buddhism until the end of the 14th century.
- Manichaeism
- A religion founded in ancient Iran by Mani in the 3rd century, which no longer has followers. The Uyghur ruler Bögü Kağan formally adopted it.
- Judaism
- The Khazars, a Turkic people of the steppe north of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, took it up. In the 10th century their khagan was Jewish and treated people of other faiths with tolerance.
- Christianity
- Taken up by the Pechenegs, the Cumans and the Bulgars. Uyghur writing includes Christian works, and the Nestorian church brought the word çalap (çelebi), one of the Turkic names for God, which survives today only in some place names.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: UYGURLAR; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; TÜRK, «Din» · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
First meetings and Talas, the 7th and 8th centuries
The first Muslims the Turks met came from the south and the west. Five steps led up to the battle that people often name first.
- 642. The battle of Nihavend. From about the middle of the 7th century, Turks and Muslims are in contact.
- Qutayba b. Muslim. In the time of this Muslim commander, Islam begins to spread among Turks in Transoxiana.
- Umayyad times (661–750). Turks begin to be in the service of Islam. The Umayyads are said not to have wanted the people of Khorasan and Tokharistan to become Muslim, so as to collect more jizya (the tax non-Muslims paid); weak and poor converts came under pressure from Umayyad governors and local lords.
- Umar b. Abd al-Aziz. This caliph treats all his subjects equally, and Islam spreads fast among Turks, above all in Transoxiana. After him the old policy returns, and war between the Türgiş khaganate and the Arabs puts the spread at risk.
- Abbasid times. The caliph Mahdi sends envoys to the Sogdian, Tokharian, Fergana, Ushrusana, Karluk and Dokuz Oghuz (Uyghur) rulers and invites them to Islam. The caliph Ma’mun rewards those who convert, above all in ruling families.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü» · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
- 748. The Chinese general Kao Hsien-chih takes Tokmok, north of the Tian Shan, and has the lord of Tashkent put to death.
- The call. The lord’s son asks the Abbasid commander Abu Muslim and the Karluks for help.
- July 751. An Abbasid army under Ziyâd b. Sâlih meets the Chinese on the Talas river, east of today’s Evliya-Ata. The battle lasts five days.
- The last day. The Karluks, a Turkic people of the region, come from the north and probably hit the Chinese from behind. The Chinese lose.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TALAS SAVAŞI
Makdisî
The Chinese army was over 100,000
- 45,000 killed and 25,000 taken prisoner.TALAS SAVAŞI
Ibn al-Athir
An army of 100,000 besieged Tashkent
- 50,000 killed and 20,000 taken prisoner; the survivors fled to China.TALAS SAVAŞI
Makdisî and Ibn al-Athir are medieval Muslim historians. Chinese sources give the size of their army as 30,000.
What came after Talas
- China withdrew. Tang China gave up its hopes of ruling Western Turkestan; the Turkic peoples were free of Chinese pressure.
- A Karluk state. The Karluks formed a state of their own in 766, in the Tian Shan region.
- Friendship. A century of fighting between Turks and Arabs gave way to friendship. Islam spread fast, and Muslim Turks took posts in the Abbasid army and government.
- Paper. Chinese prisoners made paper at Samarkand, the first place outside China; a paper mill opened in Baghdad in 794.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TALAS SAVAŞI
The Samanid frontier, mosques, merchants and dervishes
The Samanids were a Muslim dynasty that ruled Transoxiana and Khorasan from Bukhara, their capital, from 819 to 1005. Their army was mostly Turkish.
In 893 their ruler Ismâil b. Ahmed marched east to protect Transoxiana from raids by non-Muslim Turks, and took Talas, the capital of the Karluks. A great church there became a mosque.
The Samanids built mosques, tombs and ribats (roadside inns) at Bukhara, Özkent, Taşkent, Sayram and Otrar.
- Merchants
- Traders travelled between the Muslim towns and the Oghuz and Karluk towns of Yenikent, Cend, Huvâre and Talas, and the Turks learned about Islam from them.
- Sufis
- Sufis, Muslim mystics who lived simply and taught, spoke with Turks: Shaqiq al-Balkhi helped them choose Islam, and Ibrahim b. Adham worked to spread it among them.
- Newcomers
- The Samanids took a close interest in migrants from Transoxiana and settled them in newly founded towns.
- Early 10th century
- A crowd of Muslim Turks lived at Sütkent, and about 1,000 tents of Oghuz and Karluks near Fârâb and Tashkent were Muslim.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SÂMÂNÎLER; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; OĞUZLAR
The Karakhanids, Satuk Buğra Han and about 960
- Who
- A Turkic dynasty that ruled Central Asia from 840 to 1212, called the first Muslim Turkic state of Central Asia. A khan is a Turkic ruler.
- Where
- Balasagun, in the Chu valley (today’s Kyrgyzstan), was the capital; Kashgar, in East Turkestan, was another centre.
- Split
- In 1042 the state divided into an eastern and a western part. The east ended in 1211, the west in 1212.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: KARAHANLILAR; BALASAGUN · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
Satuk Buğra Han was the first Karakhanid khan to become Muslim.
- A refugee. A Samanid prince, Ebû Nasr b. Mansûr, flees a quarrel with his brother to Kashgar. The Karakhanid ruler Oğulçak welcomes him and gives him the province of Artuç, where he builds a mosque.
- A visit. Oğulçak’s nephew Satuk goes to Artuç. Under the influence of the prince and of the scholar and Sufi Ebü’l-Hasan el-Kelemâtî, he becomes Muslim with his followers.
- A new name. He takes the name Abdülkerim, takes Kashgar and Atbaşı, builds a mosque at Artuç and works to spread Islam in the western Karakhanid lands.
- Friends. After his conversion the fighting between Samanids and Karakhanids gives way to friendship and cooperation.
- 955. He dies and is buried at Artuç. His tomb is still visited.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SATUK BUĞRA HAN; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; KARAHANLILAR
The earlier date
About 920
- The year 308 of the Muslim calendar, 920, at Artuç.SATUK BUĞRA HAN
- 920–921 in the account of the Turks’ conversion.TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
- 932 and 940 are also reported.SATUK BUĞRA HAN
The later date
About 945
- The year 333, 945.KARAHANLILAR
- 944–945 in the account of the Turks’ conversion.TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
The dream, as a chronicler tells it
The chronicler Ibn al-Athir writes that Satuk dreamed of a person coming down from the sky who told him in Turkish: “Become Muslim, and you will find safety in this world and the next.” In the morning he announced that he had become Muslim.
A collection of legends, the Tezkire of Satuk Buğra Han, mixes old Turkic epic themes with Islamic belief. It is a saint’s legend, not a chronicle, and its tales of his boyhood are judged unlikely.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SATUK BUĞRA HAN; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
The Chu valley
Balasagun lay in the Chu basin, but the exact site of the town has not been settled; one view places it at the ruins of Ak-Peşin. The Burana Tower and the carved stones in these photographs stand in the same valley.
The fight between the faiths was not one-sided. Satuk Buğra Han fought non-Muslim Turks for a long time; in 942 they took Balasagun, and he won it back.
- About 960. Muslim chroniclers put the number of Turks who became Muslim in 960 (349 in the Muslim calendar) at 200,000 tents: the Yağma, Karluk, Çiğil and Tohsı peoples and others under Karakhanid rule. The figure is a chronicler’s, not a count.
- 1043–44. A Turkic group of 10,000 tents, about 50,000 to 60,000 people, near Balasagun and Kashgar becomes Muslim under Arslan Han Süleyman. After this the great majority of Turks are Muslim.
- Letters. Karakhanid Turkic takes the Arabic script, Arabic and Persian Islamic words replace Buddhist ones, and the Qur’an is put into Turkic.
- 1069–70. Yûsuf Has Hâcib of Balasagun presents the Kutadgu Bilig, “the knowledge of becoming happy”, to the Karakhanid ruler Tavgaç Uluğ Buğra Han: 6,645 couplets that set out a philosophy of life for the person, society and the state.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; KARAHANLILAR; KUTADGU BİLİG
The Oghuz and the Seljuks, a people on the move
The Oghuz were a large Turkic people. In the early 10th century they were still bound to the old belief; the Muslim world knew that they believed in a god, whom they called Tanrı (also Uluğ or Bayat). Their ruler was called the yabgu, and the Oghuz Yabgu state was strong in the first half of the 10th century. The Seljuks are named after one of their commanders.
- Selçuk Bey. An Oghuz commander (subaşı) of the Kınık clan.
- The move. After a quarrel with the yabgu, he leaves the Oghuz winter centre, Yenikent, with 100 horsemen and moves to Cend, a town on the lower Syr Darya on the border between non-Muslim Turkic lands and Muslim lands.
- The choice. He tells his people that unless they take on the faith and customs of the people they must live with, they will remain a small isolated community, and announces that he has decided to become Muslim.
- The teachers. He asks the rulers of Zendek, in Khwarazm, and of Bukhara to send people to teach his followers the Qur’an and Islam.
- Cend. Islam spreads fast among his Oghuz, and Cend becomes the centre of the Seljuk lords.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: SELÇUK BEY; TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
About 961
He arrives at Cend
- Probably the year 350 of the Muslim calendar, 961; the dates 925–940, 955 and 985–986 are also given.SELÇUK BEY
985
He becomes Muslim at Cend
- The year 375 of the Muslim calendar, 985. It is called a turning point in Turkish history, in a time when great crowds of Turks chose Islam.TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»
- The followers of his son Arslan moved to the town of Nur, near Bukhara, about 985–86.SELÇUK BEY
- 1002
- The Oghuz yabgu, allied with the Samanid ruler Ismâil b. Nûh, becomes Muslim (392 in the Muslim calendar).
- Türkmen
- The Muslims of Transoxiana call the Oghuz who became Muslim Türkmen. The Oghuz themselves did not take the name for a long time, and from the 13th century it replaced Oğuz. Two views of the word’s origin stand side by side: “Turk-like”, and “Turk of the faith” (Türkü’l-îmân).
- 1040
- At Dandanakan, a trading town between Sarakhs and Merv in today’s Turkmenistan, the Seljuks under Tuğrul and Çağrı beat the army of the Ghaznavids, another Turkic Muslim dynasty, in open battle. The Great Seljuk state dates from this victory. The town was later buried in sand.
- The table
- By then most Oghuz were Muslim. As they settled, they generally gave up eating horse meat.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: OĞUZLAR; TÜRKMENLER; DANDANAKAN SAVAŞI; SELÇUKLULAR
How it happened, the reasons
Scholars have put forward different views on how the Turks became Muslim. The historian Abdülkerim Özaydın concludes that the Turks adopted Islam by their own will, not at sword point, under the effect of many tangled factors.
- Trade and neighbours
- Muslim merchants, dervishes and sheikhs came to the Oghuz towns, and the peace after Talas let Turks and Muslims know each other.
- Teachers
- Scholars and Sufis spoke with the Turks and advised them; the Yesevî path later carried Islam on through Central Asia.
- Rulers first
- When a khagan or a commander became Muslim, the people followed.
- Equal treatment
- The Abbasid caliphs treated converts as equals and rewarded them, where the Umayyads had not always done so.
- A close fit
- The Turks already believed in one sky god. A 12th-century Syriac historian, Michael, wrote that “the Turkish nation believed in one God, and the Arabs’ belief in one Allah was the reason they accepted Islam”.
- A different road
- One scholar, Abdülkadir İnan, says the Turks fought the Arab invasion, not Islam, and became Muslim when the fighting ended.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; OĞUZLAR · Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
What carried over, seven planks of the bridge
The old belief did not vanish without a trace. Some words, titles and customs crossed over, some changed meaning and some were given up. Seven of them are planks in this bridge.
Before and after
The bridge between the steppe and Islam
- God’s name
Tanrı stays, then Allah comes beside it
Tengri, the sky godTanrı, Allah and Hudâ
After the Turks became Muslim they kept using the word Tanrı, but over time Allah and Hudâ took its place. From the late 13th century the poet Yunus Emre uses Tanrı together with Allah, and a century later so does Süleyman Çelebi. In an early 15th-century line-by-line Qur’an translation Allah is rendered as Tanrı, and this lasted about a century; after that, above all in religious texts, Allah replaced it.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TANRI
- Kut
Kut becomes “Allah’s share”
Kut, the sky’s gift to a ruler“Allah’s share” or decree
The early belief that the sky had charged the khagan with ruling the world was called kut. With Islam it came to be read as “Allah’s share” or decree.
Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
- Rule and titles
From il to devlet, and new titles
il and the old titlesdevlet, mülk and new titles
The state was called il in the old Turkic states; after Islam the words devlet and mülk took its place. In the Karakhanid state Arslan Han replaced khakan, Buğra Han replaced yabgu, and İlig Han replaced şad. The Ghaznavid Mahmud was the first Turkic ruler to use the title sultan. The caliph approved the ruler, his name was read in the Friday sermon, and it was stamped on coins.
Turkish Ministry of National Education: history unit 6
- A people’s name
Oğuz becomes Türkmen
OğuzTürkmen
The Muslim Oghuz were called Türkmen; from the 13th century the name replaced Oğuz. The name spread, in the sense of “Muslim Turk”, because this people was the first Turkic people to accept Islam.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRKMENLER; OĞUZLAR
- The table
Horse meat dropped
Horse meat at feasts and funeralsHorse meat given up
The Oghuz of the early 10th century ate sheep, camel and, probably on special days, horse meat, and slaughtered the dead person’s horses for the funeral meal. After they became Muslim and settled, they generally gave up horse meat.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: OĞUZLAR
- Writing
Arabic letters and Islamic words
Old Turkic and Uyghur letters, Buddhist wordsArabic script, Arabic and Persian words
The Karakhanid language took the Arabic script, and Arabic and Persian Islamic words replaced the Buddhist ones. The Qur’an was translated into Turkic. Two great books of the 11th century, the Kutadgu Bilig and Kâşgarlı Mahmud’s dictionary, were written in that new setting.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: KARAHANLILAR; KUTADGU BİLİG; DÎVÂNÜ LUGĀTİ’t-TÜRK
- Music
The kopuz and the baksı
The shaman’s drumThe kopuz in an Islamic form of the old rites
Where shamanism took an Islamic colour, called baksılık among Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Karakalpaks, the baksı begins rites with the kopuz, a stringed instrument, or the dombra. The kopuz is traced to Dede Korkut. In Central Asia it replaced the drum of the Altai shamans.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: ŞAMANİZM
A map of the Turkic world
Kâşgarlı Mahmud, a scholar from the Karakhanid lands, wrote the first dictionary of Turkic, the Dîvânü lugāti’t-Türk, in 1072–74 and presented it to the caliph in Baghdad in 1077. It has the first known map of the Turkic world, with Balasagun at its centre.
Only one copy of the book is known. It was copied on 1 July 1266 and is now in a library in Istanbul; it was found in the years after 1908.
The last to turn, and the teacher of Turkestan
- Kipchak steppe
- The Kipchaks lived on the grassland north of the Aral and Caspian seas. Islam spread among them slowly, until the 14th century.
- East Turkestan
- The Uyghurs came last. The Chagatai ruler Tarmaşirin became Muslim in 1326 and took the name Alâeddin, and Islam began to spread in the Uyghur land. The Uyghurs of Koço did not give up Buddhism until the end of the 14th century, and by the late 15th century all the Uyghurs were Muslim.
- Dervish
- A Sufi, a Muslim mystic, who lives simply and gives time to prayer.
- Sheikh
- A master who guides a group of dervishes.
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: TÜRK, «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü»; UYGURLAR
Ahmed Yesevî
Ahmed Yesevî, who died in 1166, was one of the most important sheikhs for the Turks. He was born at Sayram or at Yesi (today Turkestan, in Kazakhstan), and is called the pîr-i Türkistan, the elder of Turkestan. He wrote hikmet, “wisdom”, short poems in Turkish on religious and moral life, and the Yeseviyye order grew from his followers.
By Timur’s order the old complex at Yesi was rebuilt on a grand scale, from 1396. Yesi and its province took the name Turkestan. More on this site: 12 places to visit in Kazakhstan.
Quick answers, and the sources
When did the Turks become Muslim?
Over about eight centuries, from the 7th to the late 15th. The Karakhanid ruler Satuk Buğra Han became Muslim about 920, a mass conversion is dated about 960, the Oghuz and Seljuks followed in the 10th and early 11th centuries, the Kipchaks by the 14th century and the Uyghurs by the late 15th.
Who was Satuk Buğra Han?
The first Karakhanid khan to become Muslim, a nephew of the ruler Oğulçak. He took the name Abdülkerim and died in 955; his tomb is at Artuç near Kashgar. Sources date his conversion to about 920, 932, 940 or 945.
What was Tengri?
The sky and the god of the sky, one god with no picture and no wife, on whom the order of the world and a person’s fate depended. The word is known from the time of the Eastern Huns, in the 3rd century BC.
Is the old belief still practised?
Movements that call themselves tengrizm exist today in Kyrgyzstan and among the Altai and the Tatars, but they are modern and are not the old sky-god belief.
What is a kam?
The word for a shaman among the Tatars and the Altai Turks. The historian of religion Harun Güngör holds that the old Turkic faith was not shamanism, and that the kam was not an authority of its own.
What does Türkmen mean?
The Muslim Oghuz. The Muslims of Transoxiana gave them the name, and from the 13th century it replaced Oğuz. Two views of its origin exist: “Turk-like”, and “Turk of the faith”.
Did the Turks become Muslim by force?
Views differ. The historian Abdülkerim Özaydın concludes that the Turks adopted Islam by their own will, not at sword point, under many factors. One scholar, Abdülkadir İnan, says they fought the Arab invasion, not Islam.
What did the Battle of Talas change?
Tang China gave up Western Turkestan, and fighting between Turks and Arabs gave way to friendship; Islam then spread fast among Turks. Paper-making also reached the Muslim world.
Read the sources
- TANRI, by Harun Güngör — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- TÜRK, section «Din» (Geleneksel Türk Dini), by Harun Güngör — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- TÜRK, section «Türklerin İslâmiyeti kabulü», by Abdülkerim Özaydın — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- TÜRK, section «Mimari», by Ahmet Vefa Çobanoğlu — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- ŞAMANİZM, by Harun Güngör — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- DEDE KORKUT, by Orhan Şaik Gökyay — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- ORHON YAZITLARI, by Mustafa S. Kaçalin — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- OĞUZLAR, by Faruk Sümer — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- TÜRKMENLER, by Faruk Sümer — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- TALAS SAVAŞI, by Ahmet Taşağıl — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- SÂMÂNÎLER, by Aydın Usta — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- SATUK BUĞRA HAN, by Ömer Soner Hunkan — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- KARAHANLILAR, by Abdülkerim Özaydın and others — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- BALASAGUN, by Enver Konukçu — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- SELÇUK BEY, by Abdülkerim Özaydın — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- SELÇUKLULAR, by Faruk Sümer and others — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- DANDANAKAN SAVAŞI, by Ali Sevim — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- KUTADGU BİLİG — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- DÎVÂNÜ LUGĀTİ’t-TÜRK, by Mustafa S. Kaçalin — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- AHMED YESEVÎ, by Kemal Eraslan — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- YESEVİYYE, by Necdet Tosun — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- AHMED YESEVÎ KÜLLİYESİ, by Emel Esin — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- UYGURLAR, by Gülçin Çandarlıoğlu — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, the encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation, checked 25.10.2026
- “6. Ünite: Türklerin İslamiyet’i kabulü ve ilk Türk İslam devletleri” — history teaching unit of the Turkish Ministry of National Education, checked 25.10.2026
Where two sources give different dates, both appear. Figures from chroniclers (200,000 tents; the casualties at Talas) are the chroniclers’ own and are not counts. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, with the author, the date and the licence in each caption.
