Turco-Mongol tradition

The Turco-Mongol or Turkified Mongols or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 13-14th century among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The ruling Mongol elites of these khanates eventually assimilated into the Turkic populations that they conquered and ruled over, thus becoming known as Turco-Mongols. These elites gradually adopted Islam, as well as Turkic languages, while retaining Mongol political and legal institutions.

The Chinggisid uluses included the Kazakhs, the Shaybanid Uzbeks, the Crimean Tatars, the Manghits/Noghays, and the Chagatayans (including the Moghuls and the Timurids). These groups shared a common language (Turkic), a political ideology based on Mongol traditions, dynastic descent from Genghis Khan, an ethnic identity described as Turco-Mongols or “Mongol Turks” (Türk-i Mughūl), and adherence to Sunni Islam. In the post-Mongol period, these politico-ethnic formations continued to dominate a vast territory stretching from Crimea in the west to the Tian Shan mountains in the east, and from Southern Siberia in the north to Northern India in the south.

The Turco-Mongols founded many Islamic successor states after the collapse of the Mongol khanates, such as the Kazakh Khanate, the Tatar khanates that succeeded the Golden Horde (e.g., Crimean Khanate, Astrakhan Khanate, Khanate of Kazan), and the Timurid Empire, which succeeded the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. Babur (1483–1530), a Turco-Mongol prince and a descendant of Timur, founded the Mughal Empire, which ruled much of the Indian subcontinent. The Turks and Tatars also ruled part of Egypt, exercising political and military authority during the Mamluk Sultanate.

Especially among the successors of Chagatai Khanate, these Turco-Mongol elites of Karluk ethnicities became patrons of the Turco-Persian tradition, which was the predominant culture amongst the Muslims of Central Asia at the time. In subsequent centuries, the Turco-Persian culture was carried on further by the conquering Turco-Mongols to neighbouring regions, eventually becoming the predominant culture of a good part of the ruling and elite classes of South Asia (Indian subcontinent), specifically North India (Mughal Empire), Central Asia and the Tarim Basin (Northwest China) and large parts of West Asia (Middle East).