Kyrgyz

The Kyrgyz are a Turkic, Kipchak-speaking people of the Tian Shan and Zhetysu, their name traditionally explained as the forty tribes united by the epic hero Manas. In 840 they overthrew the Uyghur Khaganate, and their center of power shifted south to Zhetysu, carrying them into the Tian Shan and Xinjiang, where they dominated for roughly two centuries until Khitan and Mongol pressure forced them back.

In 1207 Genghis Khan's eldest son Jochi received their submission without battle, and they remained Mongol vassals until the later fourteenth century. A Kyrgyz khanate formed in the fifteenth century, but Dzungar Oirats ruled them from 1685 until the Qing defeated the Dzungars in 1757, returning tribes taking Qing titles.

Long fire-venerators who burned their dead, they adopted Sunni Islam only from the mid-seventeenth century through Sufi missionaries, keeping shamanic customs.