Turkmen people

Islam's presence had been felt throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Iran, and Central Asia less than after its propagated by the Prophet Muhammad in the deserts of Arabia during the early seventh century.

Arab military forces had conquered the Indus Delta region in Sindh in 711 and established an Indo-Muslim state there.

Sindh had become an Islamic outpost where Arabs established trade links with the Middle East and were later joined by teachers or sufis, but Arab influence is hardly felt in the rest of South Asia.

By the end of the tenth century, dramatic changes had taken place when the Central Asian Turkic tribes accepted both the message and mission of Islam.

These warlike people first began to move into Afghanistan and Iran and later into India through the northwest.

Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030), who was also known as the "Sword of Islam," had mounted seventeen plundering expeditions between 997 and 1027 into North India, annexing Punjab as his eastern province.

The invaders' effective use of the crossbow while at a gallop gave them a decisive advantage over their Indian opponents, the Rajputs.

Mahmud's conquest of Punjab foretold ominous consequences for the rest of India, but the Rajputs appear to have been both unprepared and unwilling to change their military tactics, which ultimately collapsed in the face of the swift and punitive cavalry of the Afghans and Turkic peoples.

Al-Muqaddasi, writing in the second half of the tenth century that the Karluks and Oghuz Turks are called Turkmen, is the to record the use of this etymology.

Some modern scholars have proposed that the element -man/-men acts as an intensifier, and have translated the word as "pure Turk" or "most Turk-like of the Turks".

Among Muslim chroniclers such as Ibn Kathir, who will flourish in the fourteenth century, the etymology will be attributed to the mass conversion of two hundred thousand households in 971, causing them to be named Turk Iman, which is a combination of "Turk" and "Iman" (faith, belief), meaning "believing Turks", with the term later dropping the hard-to-pronounce hamza.

Aall of the Western or Oghuz Turks have historically been called Türkmen or Turkoman; today, however, the terms are usually restricted to two Turkic groups: the Turkmen people of Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Central Asia, and the Turkomans of Iraq and Syria.

One group of nomadic Ghuzz, or Oguz, Turkmen tribes, led by a chief named Seljuq, had during the tenth-century migrations of the Turkish peoples from Central Asia and southeast Russia split off from the bulk of the Tokuz-Oghuz, a confederacy of nine clans long settled between the Aral and Caspian Sea, and in 985 set up camp on the right bank of the lower Syr Darya (Jaxartes), in the direction of Jend, near Kzyl Orda in present day south-central Kazakhstan.

Here, in 985, Seljuq had converted to Islam.

The biblical names of his four sons—Mikâîl (Michael), Isrâîl (Israel), Mûsâ (Moses), and Yûnus (Jonah)—suggest previous acquaintance with either Khazar Judaism or Nestorian Christianity.

According to some sources, Seljuq had begun his career as an officer in the Khazar army.

The Seljuq clan has played a part in the frontier defense forces of the Iranian Samanid dynasty, which is now on the verge of collapse.

David III of Tao, the Georgian Bagratid lord of the Armenian-Iberian borderlands, having given crucial assistance to Basil II against the rebel commander Bardas Skleros in 979, had been granted parts of the Armeno-Georgian marchlands that centered on Thither Tao / Tayk, as well as several northern districts of western Armenia, including Theodosioupolis (Karin; now Erzurum, Turkey), Basean, Hark’, Apahunik’, Mardali (Mardaghi), Khaldoyarich, and Ch’ormayari.

However, David’s rebuff of Basil in Bardas Phokas’ revolt of 987 had evoked Constantinople’s distrust of the Caucasian rulers.

After the failure of the revolt, David had been forced to make Basil II the legatee of his extensive possessions.

Irregular groups of Turkmen warriors (also called Oguz, Ghuzz, or Oghuz), originally from Central Asia, have begun to move into Azerbaijan and to encroach upon the Armenian polities of Vaspurakan, …

The Fatimid military is based largely on the Kutama Berber tribesmen brought along on the march to Egypt, and they had remained an important part of the military even after Tunisia began to break away.

After their successful establishment in Egypt, local forces have also been incorporated into the army, though they are to remain a relatively minor part of the Fatimid forces (and of succeeding dynasties as well).

A fundamental change had occurred when the Fatimid Caliph attempted to push into Syria in the later half of the tenth century.

The Fatimids had been faced with the now Turkish-dominated forces of the Abbasid Caliph and had begun to realize the limits of their current military.

Thus during the reign of Abu Mansur Nizar al-Aziz Billah and Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the Caliph had begun incorporating armies of Turks and later sub-Saharan Africans (even later, other groups such as Armenians will also be used).

The army units are generally separated along ethnic lines, thus the Berbers are usually the light cavalry and foot skirmishers, while the Turks are the horse archers or heavy cavalry (later to be known as Mamluks).

The sub-Saharan Africans, Syrians, and Arabs generally act as the heavy infantry and foot archers.

This ethnic-based army system, along with the partial slave status of many of the imported ethnic fighters, will remain fundamentally unchanged in Egypt many centuries after the fall of the Fatimid caliph.

While the ethnic-based army has been generally successful on the battlefield, it has begun to have negative effects on Fatimid internal politics.

Traditionally, the Berber element of the army had had the strongest sway over political affairs, but as the Turkish element has grown more powerful, it has begun to challenge this, and by 1020 serious riots have begun to break out among the Black African troops who are fighting back against a Berber-Turk Alliance.

The kingdom of Vaspurakan had been divided in 968 on the death of Abusahl-Hamazasp among his three sons, and Ashot-Sahak, as the eldest, had retained the royal title and the suzerainty over his younger brothers.

On his death, royal power had been usurped by the second son, Gurgen-Khachik, who had reigned as King of Vaspurakan until his own death in 1003.

At that point, Hovhannes-Seneqerim, the third son, also withheld power from his nephews and crowned himself king.

His authority is weak, as the result of the successive usurpations, and his realm has been increasingly threatened by Turkmen attacks.

He therefore appeals to the protection of the emperor Basil II, and in 1021 he hands over his entire kingdom in exchange for vast domains in Sebasteia, where he and fourteen thousand of his retainers settle.

The Kingdom of Vaspurakan becomes the imperial theme of Vasprakania or Media.

The apical ancestor of the Seljuqs, a clan of Oghuz Turks moving from the steppes east of the Aral Sea, was their beg, Seljuq, who was reputed to have served in the Khazar army, under whom, circa 950, they had migrated to Khwarezm, near the city of Jend, where they converted to Islam.

The Seljuqs had been allied with the Persian Samanid Shahs against the Kara-khanids.

The Samanids had fallen to the Kara-khanids in Transoxania (992/999), however, whereafter the Ghaznavids had arisen.

The Seljuqs had become involved in this power struggle in the region before establishing their own independent base.

Tughril is the grandson of Seljuq and brother of Chaghri, under whom the Seljuqs wrest an empire from the Ghaznavids.

Very little is known of Chaghri and Tughril's lives until 1025.

Both were raised by their grandfather Seljuq until they were fifteen and fought with Ali Tigin Bughra Khan, a minor Kara-Khanid noble, against Mahmud of Ghazni.

Initially, the Seljuqs had been repulsed by Mahmud and had retired to Khwarezm, but from 1035 to 1037, Chaghri and Tughril have fought against his son and successor Mas'ud I of Ghazni.

In 1037 Tughril and Chaghri lead them in the peaceful takeover of Merv—the Ghaznavid sultan is extremely unpopular in the city.

Later, the Seljuqs repeatedly raid and trade territory with his successors across Khorasan and Balkh and even sack Ghazni in 1037.

The Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud had deposed ithe Buyid emir Majd al-Dawla had in 1029.

Mas'ud I, the son of the Ghaznavid sultan, who wishes to liberate the Abbasids from Buyid control, had proceeded further into western Iran, where he had defeated various rulers, including Muhammad, who had fled to Ahvaz to seek help from the Buyids, but he had quickly made peace with the Ghaznavids and returned as their vassal, having accepted to pay an annual tribute of two hundred thousand dinars.

The Ghaznavids, however, are not able to control those of their conquests that are distant from Ghazni, without trouble.

Muhammad had managed to briefly take Ray from the Ghaznavids in 1030.

In 1035, Mas'ud I again defeats Muhammad, who fled to once again fled to the Buyids in Ahvaz, whence he later flees to northwestern Iran to begin recruiting a powerful force of Turkmens in order to gain his lost regions.

Muhammad, along with his forces, once again occupies Rey in 1037 and 1038.

Muhammad had begun constructing massive defensive walls around Isfahan, which later saves it from the Turkmen nomads who sack and plunder some places in west and central Iran in 1038/39, …

…including the city of Hamadan.