Karluks

The Karluks (also Qarluqs, Qarluks, Karluqs, Old Turkic: 𐰴𐰺𐰞𐰸, Qarluq, Para-Mongol: Harluut, simplified Chinese: 葛逻禄; traditional Chinese: 葛邏祿 Géluólù ; customary phonetic: Gelu, Khololo, Khorlo, Persian: خَلُّخ, Khallokh, Arabic: قارلوق Qarluq) were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribal confederacy residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh (Black Irtysh) and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains in Central Asia around the 5th-8th centuries, CE.

The majority of Uzbeks and Uyghurs indeed descend from Karluk tribes, and their languages are part of the Karluk subgroup, making them linguistically and historically distinct from other Turkic peoples like Kazakhs (Kipchak) or Turkmens (Oghuz).

A section of the Hazara people are considered to be descended from the Karluks.

Karluks were known as a coherent ethnic group (with autonomous status within the Göktürk khaganate and an independent one in their subsequent states of the Karluk yabghu, Karakhanids and Qarlughids) before being absorbed in the Chagatai Khanate of the Mongol Empire, which would soon be Karlukified and eventually birthed the future Karluk imperial states like the Timurid Empire, Moghulistan, and Mughal Empire.

They were also called Uch-Oghuz meaning "Three Oghuz". Despite the similarity of names, Mahmud al-Kashgari's Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk wrote: "Karluks is a division of nomadic Turks. They are separate from Oghuz, but they are Turkmens like Oghuz." Ilkhanate's Rashid al-Din Hamadani in his Jami' al-tawarikh mentions Karluks as one of the Oghuz (Turkmen) tribes. İbrahim Kafesoğlu (1958) proposes that Türkmen might be the Karluks' equivalent of the Göktürks' political term Kök Türk.