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The Qarluq or Karluk (Chinese: 葛邏祿;葛逻禄; pinyin: Géluólù) were originally a nomadic Turkic tribe based at the eastern foot of Altay Mountains in Central Asia. They were closely related and for a time allied with the Orkhon Uyghurs. It was also recorded that they were at one time allied with the Oghuz who lived on their western frontiers.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Post-Gokturk 1.2 Mongol era 1.3 Modern 2 Etymology 3 Notes and references

The Qarluq rose in rebellion in against the Türküt about 745, then the dominant tribal confederation in the region, and established a new tribal confederation with the Turkic Uighur and Basmil tribes.^[1]

In the 766, the Qarluq tribes formed a Khanate under the rule of a Yabghu (prince) after they overran the Turgesh in Semirechye. Famed for their woven carpets in the pre-Muslim era, they were considered a vassal state by the Tang Dynasty after the final conquest of the Transoxania regions by the Chinese circa 744. They remained in the Chinese sphere of influence and an active participant in fighting the Muslim expansion into the area, up until their betrayal of the Tang at the Battle of Talas in 751.

The Qarakhanids (Kara-Khanid), was founded in the 10th century by Satuk, a Turkic convert. His son Musa made Islam the state religion in 960. The empire occupied modern northern Iran and parts of Turkestan. This region remained under Qarakhanid (and for varying periods Seljuq and Qara-Khitai) control until 1206 when it reverted to a Mongol vassal state. They remained an independent vassal until the Mongol invasion of 1221.

After the absorption of the Karakhanid state by the Chagatay Khanate, the ethnonym Qarluk became rarely used. Although a certain Muslim group during the Yuan Dynasty in Turpan was labeled Kara-Hui. The Qarluk Turkic language was the primary basis for the later lingua-franca of the Chagatay Khanate and Central Asia under the Timurid Khanate. It is therefore designated by linguists and historians as the Chagatay Turkic language. But its contemporaries such as Timur-Lenk or Babur, simply called it Turki.

In the 20th century, the geopolitical Great Game among great powers demanded the creation of modern nationalities among Central Asian Turks. The ethnonym Qarluk was not revived. Instead, Uzbek and Uyghur became the two major divisions among speakers of modern variants of the Chagatay Turkic language. Of course, under these two modern nationalities there are subgroups like the Uyghur Dolan, Aynur and several regional populations of the Uzbeks, some of which sharing more similarities with Kipchak groups like the Karakalpaks and Kazakhs or with Iranic Tajiks than with fellow Uzbeks who speak a descendant of the Qarluk Turkic language.

The name Qarluk could be a derivative of Qara^{[citations needed]} (Black) and "-lik" (people of, pertaining to), which literally means "Black folks". It is at different points of time, employed as a label contradistinctive of Sarlik^{[citations needed]}, or "Yellow people". The color-label could be arbitrary, or otherwise describing physical characteristics^{[citations needed]} of two different Turkic populations of east asian (black-haired) and nordic (yellow-haired) features, respectively. Many^{[citations needed]} Turkic confederations, such as the Hunnish ancestors of modern Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz, and the Western Turks employed this black-yellow distinction. This adds to the obscurity regarding the Qarluks' true tribal affiliation. The Qarluks' indentifying with the color black is perhaps attested in the exaltation of this color-symbol in the Karakhanid state.

1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica