Ötüken
Ötüken was the name of a wooded and mountainous landscape in Central Asia , which was revered as sacred by the early Turkish tribes and had mythical significance. According to tradition, people sacrificed to the gods or made important decisions here. The rule over this sacred landscape served the Turkish Khaghans as a legitimation of their rule.
The Tonyukuk inscription, the oldest of the Turkish Orkhon inscriptions , located Ötüken between the Tian Shan and the Orkhon basin.
After the Islamization of the Turks, the landscape lost its religious significance. Mahmud al-Kashghari described Ötüken in his Diwān Lughāt at-Turk as an area in the Tatar deserts near the Uighurs . In the attached map, however, he located it near the headwaters of the Irtysh .
In the 13th century, Ötüken appeared in the form of Ätügän or Itügän as the name of an earth and fertility goddess among the Mongols.
Today Ötüken is a male Turkish given name and has an ideal meaning for the Turkish nationalist Ülkücü movement .
Individual evidence
- ^ Kreiser and Neumann: Brief history of Turkey. Stuttgart 2003, p. 20
- ↑ Ötüken in the name dictionary of the Turkish language (Turkish).
literature
- CE Bosworth : Article “ÖTÜKEN” in: Encyclopaedia of Islam ; Suffer. Digital edition