Who are the Turks? This study spans Central Asia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, & Europe, to explain the origins & the history of the Turkish people up until the present day.

This catalogue accompanies an exhibition devoted to the artistic & cultural riches of the Turkic-speaking peoples. Texts by leading scholars trace Turkic history & cultural development, while artefacts ranging from painting, sculpture, textiles, metalwork & ceramics reflect the artistic influences that the Turks assimilated.

Hugh Pope provides a vivid picture of the Turkish people, descendants of the nomadic armies that conquered the Byzantine Empire and dominated the region for centuries.

A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, focusing largely on the unique melting pot of cultures that this region has produced over millennia. Golden describes the traders who braved the heat and cold along caravan routes to link East Asia and Europe; the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors, the largest contiguous land empire in history; the invention of gunpowder, which allowed the great sedentary empires to overcome the horse-based nomads; the power struggles of Russia and China, and later Russia and Britain, for control of the area. Finally, he discusses the region today, a key area that neighbors such geopolitical hot spots as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.

Volume 2 of The Turks continues from where Volume 1 left off. After the Turks migrated away from the Far East, they came into contact with Islam once they reached the Near East. By mastering their military skills they became the masters of the Islamic world nearly for a millennium. Transitioning from nomadic states of the Eurasian steppes to forming formidable empires, they proved to be part of the evolving world history. In fact, as they stretched their influence into the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, they contributed in the development of Western in addition to the Asian cultures. By controlling the Silk Road - an important historic avenue that allowed not only the transfer of merchandise across the vast territories of Eurasia but also facilitated the transfer of information and cultural traits between the West and the East - the Turks influenced the evolution of the Western civilization for more than a millennium. The Turks will provide you with what you did not know about them. This volume also shows how the Turkish speakers evolved into their present-day demographic state. Today, the Turks live in the republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Furthermore, they are found in multiple autonomous regions across Eurasia and eastern Turkestan in China. Examining the history of the Turks will give you a different perspective in what you learned about the world history. The Turks provides evidence-based history of a nation that proudly displays its Central Asian culture, which transformed into its modern-day form with a fusion multiple traditions from Arabs, Chinese, Greeks, Indians, Persians, and so on.

In The Byzantine Turks, 1204–1461 Rustam Shukurov offers an account of the Turkic minority in Late Byzantium including the Nicaean, Palaiologan, and Grand Komnenian empires. The demography of the Byzantine Turks and the legal and cultural aspects of their entrance into Greek society are discussed in detail. Greek and Turkish bilingualism of Byzantine Turks and Tourkophonia among Greeks were distinctive features of Byzantine society of the time. Basing his arguments upon linguistic, social, and cultural evidence found in a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, Rustam Shukurov convincingly demonstrates how Oriental influences on Byzantine life led to crucial transformations in Byzantine mentality, culture, and political life. The study is supplemented with an etymological lexicon of Oriental names and words in Byzantine Greek.

Turks Across Empires tells the story of the pan-Turkists, Muslim activists from Russia who gained international notoriety during the Young Turk era of Ottoman history. Yusuf Akcura, Ismail Gasprinskii and Ahmet Agaoglu are today remembered as the forefathers of Turkish nationalism, but in the decade preceding the First World War they were known among bureaucrats, journalists and government officials in Russia and Europe as dangerous Muslim radicals. This volume traces the lives and undertakings of the pan-Turkists in the Russian and Ottoman empires, examining the ways in which these individuals formed a part of some of the most important developments to take place in the late imperial era. James H. Meyer draws upon a vast array of sources, including personal letters, Russian and Ottoman state archival documents, and published materials to recapture the trans-imperial worlds of the pan-Turkists. Through his exploration of the lives of Akcura, Gasprinskii and Agaoglu, Meyer analyzes the bigger changes taking place in the imperial capitals of Istanbul and St. Petersburg, as well as on the ground in central Russia, Crimea and the Caucasus. Turks Across Empires focuses especially upon three developments occurring in the final decades of empire: an explosion in human mobility across borders, the outbreak of a wave of revolutions in Russia and the Middle East, and the emergence of deeply politicized forms of religious and national identity. As these are also important characteristics of the post-Cold War era, argues Meyer, the events surrounding the pan-Turkists provide valuable lessons regarding the nature of present-day international and cross-cultural geopolitics.

The Turkic Peoples in World History is a thorough and rare introduction to the Turkic world and its role in world history, providing a concise history of the Turkic peoples as well as a critical discussion of their identities and origins. The "Turks" stepped on to the stage of history by establishing the Türk Qaghanate, the first trans-Eurasian empire in history, in 552 CE. In the following millennium, they went on to create empires that had a profound impact on world history such as the Uyghur, Khazar, and Ottoman empires. They also participated in building the Mongol empire, and these Turko-Mongol empires are credited with shaping the destinies of pre-modern China, the Middle East, and Europe. By treating the history of the Turkic peoples as a process of amalgamation and integration, rather than simply categorizing the Turkic peoples chronologically or geographically, this book offers new insights into Turkic history. This volume is a comprehensive guide for students and scholars in the fields of world history, Central Asian history, and Middle Eastern studies who are seeking to understand the historical roles of Turkic peoples and their origins.

"Written by a group of eminent scholars, it covers subjects that range from the classification of Turkic languages to religion, literature, the arts, and general lifestyle, from the inception of Turkic history documented by Runic inscriptionson the Orkhon River in Mongolia, to the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Republic of Turkey, from the shamanistic cults of Turks in Siberia to Islam, whose standard bearers were the Ottoman Turks confronting Europe in the Balkans and the Mediterranean." - from back cover.