48 articles
Religions
Beliefs, cults and practices.
- Shamanism Practice of a ritual specialist who enters a trance to treat the sick, foretell the year and deal with spirits, recorded on the steppe since the Xiongnu. Tengrism grew out of it and rests on it. 8 articles → Read the article
- Tengrism Modern name for the sky-centred religion of the Old Turkic peoples. Its attested core is Tengri, the fortune he grants, and the sacred Earth-and-Water. 33 articles → Read the article
- Turkic Mythology Stories of origin, divine powers and the order of the world among the Turkic peoples. Its oldest figures are the she-wolf of the Ashina, the tree of the succession, Heaven, Earth-and-Water and Umay. 16 articles → Read the article
- Buddhism among the Göktürks One khan was converted by a captive Chinese monk in the 570s. He built a monastery, sent for sutras and fasted, and no one of his house followed him. 0 articles → Read the article
- Manichaeism The religion of Mani, carried by the Sogdians to China and the steppe and adopted by the Uyghur khan at Luoyang in 762 and 763. 2 articles → Read the article
- Church of the East The Syriac church of the Persian world, called Nestorian. Sogdians carried it to China and the Turks; a metropolitan see of the Turks existed by about 782. It lasted in Semirech'e into the 1300s. 0 articles → Read the article
- Islam The religion of the Arab conquerors, which reached the Oxus in the eighth century. It came to the Turkic peoples from the south, through the cities of Transoxiana, and not by conquest from the west. 0 articles → Read the article
Image credits
- Buddhism among the Göktürks: Armoured horsemen on both sides of a city gate, wall painting from the Buddhist cave temples of the Kucha region.
- Shamanism: A shaman of the Minusinsk Tatars (Khakas) in ceremonial dress with covered face, holding his drum, photographed between 1900 and 1915. Photographer unknown; Wellcome Collection, Public domain ↗
- Tengrism: A modern illustration in the manner of the present-day revival, a jaw harp over a spoked wheel among figures in the style of steppe rock art.
- Turkic Mythology: Ulukayın, the world tree, in a modern illustration. © Emre-E Yavuz 2026
- Animism: A sacred cairn (obo) near Alkhanai mountain in Transbaikalia, the stones whitewashed and the birches around it hung with blue ribbons, photographed in 2000. Photograph: William Craft Brumfield, 2000; Library of Congress, no known restrictions.
- Burial and the balbal: A weathered stone figure at its stone setting on the steppe near Burd, Övörkhangai, in central Mongolia. Monuments of this kind are commonly called balbals; strictly, the balbals are the rough stones set in a line from the grave. Photograph: Mongolia Expeditions, 2011, CC BY 3.0.
- Church of the East: Wall painting from a ruined temple at Qocho, read as a Palm Sunday procession and dated 683–770 CE. Berlin. Photograph: Daderot, 2014, CC0.
- Kam (Turkic Shaman): A Tuvan shaman with his frame drum before a felt yurt, photographed about 1900. It shows the practice as ethnographers recorded it among the Turkic peoples of southern Siberia, thirteen centuries after the Göktürks. Photograph: unknown Russian photographer, about 1900; Hamburgisches Museum für Völkerkunde. Public domain.
- Peri: A peri at a spring in a modern illustration: the shape the being takes in later Turkic storytelling, not in any source of the khaganates. © Emre-E Yavuz 2026
- Stone Figures: A Turkic stone statue in the Ancient States Gallery of the National Museum of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar. Photograph: Gary Todd, 2017, CC0.
- The three worlds: The tiered cosmos in a modern illustration: Uçmag above, the earth in the middle, Tamag below, the world tree through all three. © Emre-E Yavuz 2026
- Ulukayın (Turkic World Tree): Ulukayın in a modern illustration: the birch at the centre of the world, its crown among the stars. © Emre-E Yavuz 2026
