Origin
The Karakhanids were a confederation formed some time in the ninth century of Karluk, Yaghma, Chigil, and other tribes living in Semirechye, Western Tian Shan (modern Kyrgyzstan), and Western Xinjiang (Kashgaria). The name of the royal clan is not actually known; the term Karakhanid is artificial - it was derived from Qara Khan or Qara Khaqan (the word "Qara" means "black") which was the foremost title of the rulers of this dynasty, and was devised by European Orientalists in the nineteen century to describe both the dynasty and the Turks ruled by it. Arabic Muslim sources called this dynasty al-Khaqaniya ("That of the Khaqans"), while Persian sources often preferred the term Al-i Afrasiyab ("The Family of the Afrasiyab") on the basis of the legendary kings (though actually unrelated to the Karakhanids and authentic Turkics) of pre-Islamic Transoxania.
Read more about this topic: Kara-Khanid Khanate
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)