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Turkmenistan
Formation of the Turkmen Nation
During the Mongol conquest of Central Asia in the thirteenth
century, the Turkmen-Oghuz of the steppe were pushed from the
Syrdariya farther into the Garagum (Russian spelling Kara Kum)
Desert and along the Caspian Sea. Various components were nominally
subject to the Mongol domains in eastern Europe, Central Asia,
and Iran. Until the early sixteenth century, they were concentrated
in four main regions: along the southeastern coast of the Caspian
Sea, on the Mangyshlak Peninsula (on the northeastern Caspian
coast), around the Balkan Mountains, and along the Uzboy River
running across north-central Turkmenistan. Many scholars regard
the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries as the period of
the reformulation of the Turkmen into the tribal groups that exist
today. Beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing into
the nineteenth century, large tribal conglomerates and individual
groups migrated east and southeast.
Historical sources indicate the existence of a large tribal
union often referred to as the Salor confederation in the Mangyshlak
Peninsula and areas around the Balkan Mountains. The Salor were
one of the few original Oghuz tribes to survive to modern times.
In the late seventeenth century, the union dissolved and the three
senior tribes moved eastward and later southward. The Yomud split
into eastern and western groups, while the Teke moved into the
Akhal region along the Kopetdag Mountains and gradually into the
Murgap River basin. The Salor tribes migrated into the region
near the Amu Darya delta in the oasis of Khorazm south of the
Aral Sea, the middle course of the Amu Darya southeast of the
Aral Sea, the Akhal oasis north of present-day Ashgabat and areas
along the Kopetdag bordering Iran, and the Murgap River in present-day
southeast Turkmenistan. Salor groups also live in Turkey, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan, and China.
Much of what we know about the Turkmen from the sixteenth to
nineteenth centuries comes from Uzbek and Persian chronicles that
record Turkmen raids and involvement in the political affairs
of their sedentary neighbors. Beginning in the sixteenth century,
most of the Turkmen tribes were divided among two Uzbek principalities:
the Khanate (or amirate) of Khiva (centered along the lower Amu
Darya in Khorazm) and the Khanate of Bukhoro (Bukhara). Uzbek
khans and princes of both khanates customarily enlisted Turkmen
military support in their intra- and inter-khanate struggles and
in campaigns against the Persians. Consequently, many Turkmen
tribes migrated closer to the urban centers of the khanates, which
came to depend heavily upon the Turkmen for their military forces.
The height of Turkmen influence in the affairs of their sedentary
neighbors came in the eighteenth century, when on several occasions
(1743, 1767-70), the Yomud invaded and controlled Khorazm. From
1855 to 1867, a series of Yomud rebellions again shook the area.
These hostilities and the punitive raids by Uzbek rulers resulted
in the wide dispersal of the eastern Yomud group.
Data as of March 1996
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