Toquz Oghuz


Toquz Oghuz was a political alliance of nine Turkic-speaking Tiele tribes in Inner Asia, during the early Middle Ages. Toquz Oghuz was consolidated and subordinated within the Turkic Kaganate and remained after the Khaganate fragmented.
Oghuz is a Turkic word meaning "community" and toquz means "nine". Similarly the Karluks were also known as the Uch-Oguz – uch meaning "three". The root of the generalized ethnical term "oghuz" is og-, meaning "clan, tribe"; which in turn, according to Kononov, descends from the ancient Turkic word ög meaning "mother". Initially the oguz designated "tribes" or "tribal union", and eventually became an ethnonym.
The Toquz Oghuz were perhaps first mentioned in the Orkhon inscriptions written in the 730s. They were mentioned as "my own people" by Bilge Qaghan: "Tokuz-Oguz people were my own people. Since Tengri and earth became in disorder them, they revolted against us.". It is also mentioned in Kul Tigin inscriptions that the Göktürks and Toquz Oghuz were fighting five times in a year. The nine tribes were named in Chinese histories as the Huihe, Pugu, Hun, Bayegu, Tongluo, Sijie, Qibi, A-Busi and Gulunwugusi. The first seven named – who lived north of the Gobi Desert – were dominant, whereas the A-Busi and Gulunwugu emerged later and were accepted on an equal footing with the others some time after 743. The A-Busi apparently originated as a sub-tribal group within the Sijie and the Gulunwugu as a combination of two other tribes.
Turkologist Yury Zuev proposes that the Toquz Oghuz tribe Sijie may be a Chinese rendition of an endonym from Turkic root igil, meaning "many". As such, Zuev controversially links the Sijie to the Uokil and the Augaloi in Transoxania.