Oghuz Turks in the Account of a Mamluk Historian
Gazi University, Ankara
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Abstract |
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The Oghuz Turks, a major Turkish tribal group, certainly left their mark on world history, and a great deal has been written about their history and tribal organization. This paper focuses on the presentation of the Oghuz Turks by one of the outstanding chroniclers of the Mamluk period, Badr al-D
n Ma
m
d al-
Ayn (d. 855/1451), author of the famous Iqd al-Jum
n, in another of his works, namely al-Sayf al-Muhannad f srat al-Malik al-Mu
ayyad ‘Shaykh al-Mamd’. This work has an exceptional place among the Mamluk histories on account of the information it gives about the Oghuz tribes and their distinctive tamghas. Following a translation of the relevant passages, al- Ayn's information is compared with what is known from other sources and the results of the comparison presented in a table. The question of al-Ayn's sources is raised and answered on the basis of textual evidence, and the differences between al-Ayn's presentation and his sources are explained. The paper concludes that al-Ayn's work constitutes important, new source material for what we know about the Oghuz Turks—in particular about their tamghas—and sheds light on the historiography of the Mamluk period, especially the commitment of Mamluk historians to recording and transmitting information from earlier sources.