The Turkic migrations were the spread of Turkic tribes and Turkic languages across Eurasia between the 6th and 11th centuries. In the 6th century, the Göktürks overthrew the Rouran Khaganate in what is now Mongolia and expanded in all directions, spreading Turkic culture throughout the Eurasian steppes. Although Göktürk empires came to an end in the 8th century, they were succeeded by numerous Turkic empires such as the Uyghur Khaganate, Kara-Khanid Khanate, Khazars, and the Cumans. Some Turks eventually settled down into sedentary societies such as the Qocho and Ganzhou Uyghurs. The Seljuq dynasty invaded Anatolia starting in the 11th century, resulting in permanent Turkic settlement and presence there. Modern nations with large Turkic populations include Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and Turkic populations also exist within other nations, such as Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and the Sakha Republic of Siberia in Russia, Northern Cyprus, the Crimean Tatars, the Kazakhs in Mongolia, the Uyghurs in China, and the Azeris in Iran.
Origin theories Proposals for the homeland (Urheimat) of the Turkic peoples and their language are far-ranging, from the Transcaspian steppe to Northeastern Asia (Manchuria). Peter Benjamin Golden listed Proto-Turkic lexical items about the climate, topography, flora, fauna, people's modes of subsistence in the hypothetical Proto-Turkic Urheimat and proposed that the Proto-Turkic Urheimat was located at the southern, taiga-steppe zone of the Sayan-Altay region. According to Yunusbayev et al. (2015), genetic evidence points to an origin in the region near South Siberia and Mongolia as the "Inner Asian Homeland" of the Turkic ethnicity. Similarly several linguists, including Juha Janhunen, Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs, suggest that Mongolia is the homeland of the early Turkic language. According to Robbeets, the Turkic people descend from people who lived in a region extending from present-day South Siberia and Mongolia to the West Liao River Basin (modern Manchuria). Authors Joo-Yup Lee and Shuntu Kuang analyzed ten years of genetic research on Turkic people and compiled scholarly information about Turkic origins, and said that the early and medieval Turks were a heterogeneous group and that the Turkification of Eurasia was a result of language diffusion, not a migration of a homogeneous population. Uchiyama et al argue that since nomadic peoples such as Xiongnu, Rouran and Xianbei share underlying genetic ancestry "that falls into or close to the northeast Asian gene pool", the proto-Turkic language likely originated in northeastern Asia, on the eastern fringes of the Northern Eurasian Greenbelt forest zone. Around 1200 BC, the (hunter-gathering and semi-agricultural) ancestors of the Turkic peoples probably migrated westwards into the steppe of Mongolia, where they adopted a pastoral lifestyle, in part borrowed from Iranian peoples.: "Although current genetic evidence is not adequate to track the exact time and location for the origin of the proto-Turkic language, it is clear that it probably originated somewhere in northeastern Asia given the fact that the nomadic groups, such as the Rouran, Xiongnu and the Xianbei, all share a substratum genetic ancestry that falls into or close to the northeast Asian gene pool (Ning et al., Reference Ning, Li, Wang, Zhang, Li, Wu and Cuiin press; Li et al., Reference Li, Zhang, Zhao, Chen, Ochir, Sarenbilige and Zhou2018)."
Debate about the origins of the Huns
The Huns have often been considered a people with Turkic origins and/or associated with the Xiongnu. However, the precise origins and identity of the Huns are still debated. In regard to their cultural genesis, the Cambridge Ancient History of China asserts that "from about the eighth century BC, throughout inner Asia horse-riding pastoral communities appeared, giving origin to warrior societies". These were part of a larger belt of equestrian pastoralists stretching from the Black Sea to Mongolia, and known collectively to the Greeks as Scythians. The Huns per se were first documented as a nomadic people, in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to the first European sources to mention the Huns, they were then living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of an Indo-Iranian people, the Alans. After entering Europe, the Huns incorporated members of other peoples, such as the Alans, Slavs and Goths.
None or few of the Huns were literate (judging by the accounts of contemporaries such as Procopius).Maenchen-Helfen (1973) page 376. They left no texts and few other linguistic clues to their origins, apart from personal names. Some names, such as Ultinčur and Alpilčur, apparently had endings related to suffixes used in Turkic personal names: Old Turkic -čor, Pecheneg - and Kirghiz -čoro. Some Turkic ethnonyms had cognate endings, such as Utigur, Onogur, and Ultingir. However, other personal names among the Huns appear to have had Iranian, Germanic, mixed or unknown origins.Maenchen-Helfen (1973) pages 441–442.
History Göktürk wave (5th – 8th c.)
Tiele and Turk The earliest Turks mentioned in textual sources are the Xinli (), Gekun (), and Tiele (), the last of which possibly transcribes endonym *Tegreg '[People of the] Carts', recorded by the Chinese in the 6th century. According to the New Book of Tang, Tiele may be a mistaken form of Chile/Gaoche,Xin Tangshu vol. 217a "回紇，其先匈奴也，俗多乘高輪車，元魏時亦號高車部，或曰敕勒，訛為鐵勒。" tr: "Uyghurs, their predecessors were the Xiongnu. Because, customarily, they ride high-wheeled carts. In Yuan Wei time, they were also called Gaoche [High-Cart] tribe. Or called Chile, or mistakenly as Tiele." who themselves may be related to Xiongnu and Dingling.Weishu Vol 103 Gaoche "高車，蓋古赤狄之餘種也，[...] 諸夏以為高車丁零。其語略與匈奴同而時有小異，或云其先匈奴之甥也" tr. "Gaoche, probably the remnant stock of the ancient Red Di. [...] The various Xia [i.e. Chinese] considered them Gaoche Dingling [High-Cart Dingling]. Their language and the Xiongnu's, in brief, are similar though differ a little; or to say it differently, they are the sororal nephews/sons-in-laws of their Xiongnu predecessors"
Cheng, Fanyi. "The Research on the Identification between the Tiele (鐵勒) and the Oğuric tribes" in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi ed. Th. T. Allsen, P. B. Golden, R. K. Kovalev, A. P. Martinez. 19 (2012). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden. p. 87 Many scholars believe the Di, Dili, Dingling, and later Tujue mentioned in textual sources are all just Chinese transcriptions of the same Turkic word türk, yet Golden proposes that Tujue transcribed *Türküt while Dili, Dingling, Chile, Tele, & Tiele transcribed *Tegreg.The first reference to Türk or Türküt appears in 6th-century Chinese sources as the transcription Tūjué (). The earliest evidence of Turkic languages and the use of Turk as an endonym comes from the Orkhon inscriptions of the Göktürks (
) in the early 8th century. Many groups speaking Turkic languages never adopted the name Turk for their own identity. Among the peoples that came under Göktürk dominance and adopted its political culture and lingua-franca, the name Turk was not always the preferred identity. Turk, therefore, did not apply to all Turkic peoples at the time, but only referred to the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, while the Western Turkic Khaganate and Tiele used their own tribal names. Of the Tiele, the Book of Sui mentions only tribes which were not a part of the First Turkic Khaganate. There was not a unified expansion of Turkic tribes. Peripheral Turkic peoples in the Göktürk Empire like the Bulgars and even central ones like the Oghuz and Karluks migrated autonomously with migrating traders, soldiers and townspeople.The precise date of the initial expansion from the early homeland remains unknown. The first state known as Turk, giving its name to the many states and peoples afterward, was that of the Göktürks (gök 'blue' or 'celestial', however in this context gök refers to the direction 'east'. Therefore, Gökturks only denoted the Eastern Turks in the 6th century. In 439, the head of the Ashina clan led his people from Pingliang (now in modern Gansu province, China) to the Rouran seeking inclusion in their confederacy and protection.Wei Zheng et al., Book of Sui, Vol. 84. His tribe consisted of famed metalsmiths and was granted land near a mountain quarry that looked like a helmet, from which they got the name Turk/Tujue .Linghu Defen et al., Book of Zhou, Vol. 50. Wei Zheng et al., Book of Sui, Vol. 84. Li Yanshou (李延寿), History of the Northern Dynasties, Vol. 99. In 546, the leader of the Ashina, Bumin, aided the Rouran in putting down a Tiele revolt. Bumin requested a Rouran princess for his service but was denied, after which he declared independence. In 551, Bumin declared himself Khagan and married Princess Changle from Western Wei. He then dealt a serious blow to the Rouran Khaganate the next year, but died soon after. His sons, Issik Qaghan and Muqan Qaghan, continued to wage war on the Rouran, finishing them off in 554. By 568, their territory had reached the edges of the Byzantine Empire, where the Avars, possibly related to the Rouran in some fashion, escaped.Gao Yang, "The Origin of the Turks and the Turkish Khanate", X. Türk Tarih Kongresi: Ankara 22 – 26 Eylül 1986, Kongreye Sunulan Bildiriler, V. Cilt, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1991, s. 731. In 581, Taspar Qaghan died and the khaganate entered a civil war that resulted in two separate Turkic factions. The Eastern Khaganate was defeated by the Tang dynasty in 630 while the Western Khaganate fell to the Tang in 657. In 682, Ilterish Qaghan rebelled against the Tang and founded the Second Turkic Khaganate, which fell to the Uyghurs in 744.
Bulgar
The Bulgars, also known as the Onogur-Bulgars or Onogundurs, occupied the Black Sea Kuban steppe zone sometime during the 5th century. It would be in 480, while serving as allies of Byzantine Emperor Zeno, that the Bulgars are first mentioned. John of Nikiû (fl. 680–690) wrote about Vitalian (Roman general and consul, died 520) in his "Chronicle of John, bishop of Nikiu": "Vitalian withdrew into the province of Bulgaria."(https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/nikiu2_chronicle.htm) By the 7th century, they were under the rule of the Avars, who they revolted against in 635 under the leadership of Kubrat. Prior to this, Kubrat had made an alliance with Heraclius of the Byzantine Empire. He was baptized in 619. Kubrat died in the 660s and his territory, Old Great Bulgaria, was divided between his five sons.
One of them, the elder brother Batbayan stayed and was subjugated by the Khazars.
Another one, Kotrag, following the death of his father, began to extend the influence of his Bulgars to the Volga River. He is remembered as the founder of Volga Bulgaria.Mercia MacDermott, Bulgarian Folk Customs, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998, , p. 20.
Another of the sons named Kuber headed to Pannonia where he revolted against the Pannonian Avars and migrated to Thessalonika by 679.
Alcek was allegedly a son of Kubrat and led the Bulgars to Ravenna that later settled the lands of the Longobard Kingdom in the villages of Gallo Matese, Sepino, Boiano and Isernia in the Matese mountains of southern Italy.Dillon, John B. "Bulgars". Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz. London: Routledge, 2004.