page_title: Turkic peoples
section_title: Muslim Turks and non-Muslim Turks
hierarchical_section_title: Turkic peoples / Religion / Religious conversions / Islam / Muslim Turks and non-Muslim Turks
caption_attribution_description: English: Gokturk petroglyphs from Mongolia (6th to 8th cent. AD) Source: http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/museums/ubhist/ubhist15a.jpg
context_page_description: The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethnic groups of Central, East, North and West Asia as well as parts of Europe and North Africa, who speak Turkic languages.
  The origins of the Turkic peoples has been a topic of much discussion. Recent linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest Turkic peoples descended from agricultural communities in Northeast China who moved westwards into Mongolia in the late 3rd millennium BC, where they adopted a pastoral lifestyle. By the early 1st millennium BC, these peoples had become equestrian nomads. In subsequent centuries, the steppe populations of Central Asia appear to have been progressively Turkified by a heterogenous East Asian dominant minority moving out of Mongolia. Many vastly differing ethnic groups have throughout history become part of the Turkic peoples through language shift, acculturation, intermixing, adoption and religious conversion. Nevertheless, certain Turkic peoples share, to varying degrees, non-linguistic characteristics like cultural traits, ancestry from a common gene pool, and historical experiences.
context_section_description: Kara-Khanids performed a mass conversion campaign against the Buddhist Uyghur Turks during the Islamization and Turkification of Xinjiang.
  The non-Muslim Turks worship of Tengri and other gods was mocked and insulted by the Muslim Turk Mahmud al-Kashgari, who wrote a verse referring to them – The Infidels – May God destroy them!
  The Basmil, Yabāḳu and Uyghur states were among the Turkic peoples who fought against the Kara-Khanids spread of Islam. The Islamic Kara-Khanids were made out of Tukhai, Yaghma, Çiğil and Karluk.
  Kashgari claimed that the Prophet assisted in a miraculous event where 700,000 Yabāqu infidels were defeated by 40,000 Muslims led by Arslān Tegīn claiming that fires shot sparks from gates located on a green mountain towards the Yabāqu. The Yabaqu were a Turkic people.
  Mahmud al-Kashgari insulted the Uyghur Buddhists as "Uighur dogs" and called them "Tats", which referred to the "Uighur infidels" according to the Tuxsi and Taghma, while other Turks called Persians "tat". While Kashgari displayed a different attitude towards the Turks diviners beliefs and "national customs", he expressed towards Buddhism a hatred in his Diwan where he wrote the verse cycle on the war against Uighur Buddhists. Buddhist origin words like toyin (a cleric or priest) and Burxān or Furxan (meaning Buddha, acquiring the generic meaning of "idol" in the Turkic language of Kashgari) had negative connotations to Muslim Turks.
caption: Göktürk petroglyphs from Mongolia (6th to 8th century)
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