46 CHAPTER 1
culture hero Rostam, who was the son of Turk. During the tenth century,
Afrasiab was perceived as the leader (primogenitor) of the Turkic tribes and a
fusion occurred between the notion of ancient Iranian-dialect speaking Turan
and the Turks. According to Ferdowsi, Kara Khan, the father of Oghuz Khagan,
was the fourth son of Afrasiab. Thus, according to the Muslim Turko-Persian
beliefs, Afrasiab was one of the children of Japheth, the son of Noah (equiva-
lent to Fereydun).121
Targitaus should also be included in the Noah-Fereydun connection—he
was the first man and ancestor of the Scythians (Scythes was one of his sons).
The genealogical origin of Targitaus ensures the legitimacy of the dynasty,
which, in a similar way as with the Iranians, is derived from the lineage of
Fereydun;122 in the case of Turan it is Afrasiab. It is no coincidence that in the
tenth century Al-Masudi noted that “the Khagan of Khagans” descended from
the Karluks, whose dynasty was connected to Afrasiab and Shana (Ashina).123
The use of the name Togarmah by the Khazar ruler Joseph shows, on the one
hand, the notion of the dynasty’s legitimacy and, on the other, that it belonged
to a certain community that regarding the tenth century could be called Turkic
(but not only) with no reference to the ethnic sense of the term.
For the Arabo-Persian authors from this period, the majority of the peo-
ples living in the north were Turks, but in a theoretical, geographical sense,124
which directly connected them to the descendants of the mythical Tur and
the population of Turan. According to Kh. Korogly, the word “Turk” signified
“a political union of diverse tribes”. As a result of the assimilation of the local
Iranic-speaking population a new ethnic term appeared: “Middle Asian Turks”
who successfully synthesized two cultures—the Iranian and the Turkic one”.125
The scholar believes that the identification of the Turanians with Turks that
inhabited Turkestan and the Turkic Khaganate occurred already at the time
when the nomad Turks arrived in Eastern Turkestan and, by the tenth century,
every author perceived Turan as the habitat of the Turkic tribes. But in the
eleventh century the assimilation process between the local Iranian languages
of Turkmenistan and the Turkic language of the Oghuz was not yet complete.126
121 Korogly 1976, 91–94; Kalinina 2005b, 252.
122 Raevskii, 1985, 144–145 and 1977, 86.
123 Kliashtornyi and Sultanov 2000, 105–106. The genealogical link to Afrasiab applies to
all or almost all of the ruling dynasties from the Middle Syr Darya region, including the
Karakhanids and Seljuqids (Vainberg 1990, 92 and 206).
124 Kalinina 2005b, 253.
125 Korogly 1983, 15.
126 Korogly 1976, 10 and 91.