What Happened to the 12 Tribes of the Türks?

[apa]

First of all hi to everyone. I really don't know if this board is still active but I recently found it and wanted to ask the very same question in the title: Is it possible for us to track what happened to the 12 Tribes who formed the Türk Bodun which we knew from PT 1283 after the empire fell? Of course some Ashina Dynasty members can be seen in Khazars etc. but on tribal perspective are some of them joined any Turkic states after that? (Oghuz Yabgu State etc.)

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Hi apa, welcome aboard. Knowledge on these Türk tribes gradually decrease after the fall of their qaghanate in 744. We still see some records about them in the Chinese sources during the 9th-10th centuries, but the final record in 941 states that "they grew too few in number and we then never heard of them again". I wrote a paper on the Türk tribes and you can read its full text from here: steppes.proboards.com/thread/2167/tribes-rks-tujue-kt From what I see, it is not so possible to identify any post-8th century grouping with these twelve Türk tribes; the only exception might be the Bayan Ashide, who might have been the ancestors of Bayat tribe of Oghuz, and the Sheli, who might be the Shari mentioned by al-Marwazi in the 12th century. But we are not entirely certain of these identifications and it is very difficult to say anything concrete. My guess is that while some of their small branches might have migrated westwards to join the Oghuz and other western Turkic peoples, the rest probably stayed in their homelands in modern Inner Mongolia and dispersed among other Turko-Mongol peoples in the region.

[apa]

Thank you for the quick and detailed answer Ihsan. I already read your article for the tribes part only -by the way definitely not entitled to say this, but amazing work! - and it is, along with M. Dobrovits' "The Thirty Tribes of the Turks", the reason I have this curiosity but it seems it is nearly impossible to say anything in this subject with certain clarity.

Apart from this question are there any good articles out there for the origin of the Oghuzs?

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

You're welcome apa, and thank you too Dobrovits' article is also a very good study on this topic. Unfortunately, as you said, it is almost impossible to trace these tribes in the following century.

There are numerous theories and opinions on the origins of the Oghuz, mostly found in books and encyclopedia articles (Encyclopedia of Islam and such). Recently I have completed a book titled Yenisey'den Seyhun'a Türkler: Kırgızlar, Türgişler, Karluklar ve Oğuzlar, in which I examine the origins, names, political history and cultures of these peoples. Of course there is a short chapter in it on the origins of the Oghuz, where I gathered different opinions on the topic and wrote my own The book is currently evaluated at a printing house and I hope that it will be published within a few months. A much shorter version of it, without most of the citations, can also found in my chapter "Kırgızlar, Türgişler, Karluklar ve Oğuzlar" within the book Ötüken’den Kırım’a Türk Dünyası Kültür Tarihi printed this year. Apart from these, I also started writing a book specifically on the origins of the Oghuz, but I had to give it a break due to some other more urgent works. I hope to complete that book within a few years too