Turkoman

Turkoman, or Turkmen, was the medieval name for the Muslim Oghuz Turks. From the tenth century Islamic writers used it for Oghuz converts to Islam, as against the Tengrist Turks of the steppe; by the thirteenth century the Oghuz had adopted it themselves. Their ancestors formed the Oghuz Yabgu confederation between the Aral and Caspian, and in the eleventh century tribes such as the Qınıq followed the Seljuks westward. After Manzikert in 1071 they spread across Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Syria and Iraq, where military settlements guarded the new frontier.

Unlike settled Turkish townspeople, many Turkoman clans kept a semi-nomadic pastoral life, organized in tribes such as the Kayı and Afshar, speaking Old Anatolian Turkish. In 1337 they ranged from the Konya plains to the Pontic coast and Antioch, manpower for the Anatolian beyliks.

Later in the fourteenth century the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu federations built empires over eastern Anatolia, Azerbaijan and Persia, while those absorbed by the Ottomans gradually came to be called Ottomans rather than Turkomans.