From God of Heaven to king of men: Popular Islam among Turkic tribes from Central Asia to Anatolia

Abstract

The expansion of Islam among Turkic tribes and their conversion to the new faith was the result of a long process of development in which dervishes as well as merchants played an important part. The phenomenon started in Central Asia and spread throughout the Turkic-speaking areas. The settlement of the Turks in countries originally Iranian, such as Turkestan and Transoxania, was due to the collapse of the empire of the Orkhon Turks and to the decline of the Uighurs who were driven out of present Mongolia in the ninth century by the Kyrgyz. Turkic-speaking people mingled with populations of Iranian stock, among which the Sogdians held an important cultural place. In the town centres of Transoxiana and Turkestan, Iranian and Turkic cultures coexisted for some time, but soon the predominance of the Turkic language and the progressive turkisation of the people changed the aspect of those regions. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, a period of transition, both Turkic and Sogdian were spoken. Mahmud of Kashgar, who wrote in the eleventh century, tells us that the people of Balasaghun, Talas (Tiraz), Beyze and Istijab spoke Sogdian and Turkic.' He also says that the people who lived in the region of Argu (Turkestan) spoke a hybrid language and that those who lived between Bukhara and Samarkand were turkised Sogdians. He refers to them as Sogdak.2 The facts described by Mahmud of Kashgar are corroborated by an inscription in present-day Mongolia: in the towns of Turkestan and Transoxania the population was Turkic and Iranian and the people spoke both Turkic and Sogdian.' Turkestan and Transoxiana were countries of religious syncretism; the people had known Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Nestorianism. These creeds were adopted mainly by the population of the towns. During the Samanid period (ninth and tenth centuries), however, Islam became prominent in the towns of Transoxiana, especially after the conversion of the Karakhanids. In the towns, Islamic culture was easily assimilated. The inhabitants became Muslims: In the country and the steppes, however, the nomadic tribes went on leading their traditional way of life. Though they were progressively becoming sedentary, mainly for reasons of material comfort - such as the need to find pastures for their herds and set up trade relationships with civilised countries - they main­ tained the customs of their ancestors. When they embraced Islam it was in the form of a syncretic religion that can be described as 'islamised shamanism'. Among the tribes, dervishes and merchants contributed to the propagandisation of the new faith.