On the Karluk Title ‘Çoglan’

Abstract

The Karluks were a Turkic tribe who played a key role in the establishment and collapse of the Kök Türk, Uighur, and Karakhanid states. Archaeological and numismatic documents, inscriptions, Chinese annals, and Arab alongside Persian historical sources provide us information about Karluks. There is an important corpus of historical documents about Karluks in the international literature. This article aims neither to evaluate this corpus nor to introduce any new document about Karluk history. Despite the Karluks being perhaps the most crowded and important tribe in medieval Turkic history after the Oghuzs, Mahmud alKashgari was very reticent about them so much so in fact that he didn't even classify them, or include them in his map for that matter. The word 'Çoglan' is one of eleven kinds of words (alongside ebe, çahşak, ker-, kerit-, oluç, sagur-, serker, sogut, susgak, ügürgen, yuŋ) and one of three titles (alongside köl irkin and sagun) featured in Mahmud al-Kashgari's Diwan, or compendium, that alludes to the Karluks. He did not provide us with any other information about this word, apart from a single explanation, 'name of a Karluk chieftain' Nevertheless, it is intriguing that the word has made its way into his Diwan, even though there are no records of it anywhere prior to the arrival of Islam, and even though there is no information about it beyond the aforementioned explanation. In turn, the purpose of this article, rather, is to clarify the word in question through etymology. Given that we wish to elaborate upon that sentence as much as possible, first, we have given a brief history about who the Karluks are for context. Then, in order to help you understand the subject in greater depth, we have touched upon the hierarchical position of the Karluks within the organizational structure of ancient Turkic states, and within the framework of a historical background.