The Turkic Kaganate, religion: the mosaic of history

To answer unequivocally the question about the religion of the Turkic Kaganate is almost impossible, so many-sided and mosaic in culture, including religious beliefs, was this state formation. In the I millennium AD. On the territory of modern Central Asia, there were complex ethnic and cultural processes, on this earth, various states emerged and disappeared, including the Turkic Kaganate. The religion of the initial period of this state was of a multi-confessional character, including the numerous beliefs of the most diverse nations that found themselves in this country. And the state itself has gone through a difficult path, it is enough to say that historians formally singulate two periods in the existence of the Turkic statehood: the First Kaganate, which existed from 551 to 659, and the Second - 679-74.

In the period when the Turkic Kaganate was taking shape, religion was practically the same for all the peoples of the region - Tengrin. The supreme deity was Tengri. According to scientists, the origin of this word is associated with the Scythian deity, which embodied in the image of the mythological hero Targitai and symbolized the supreme god of the universe. It is not true to assume that the ancient Turks were animists in the pre-Islamic period, and that their supreme deity was a wolf. She was simply considered the progenitor of some Turkic tribes, but not all, some in the same capacity revered the leopard, bull, etc.

Historical chronicles provide an opportunity to accurately represent and describe the area of residence of peoples, which in the middle of the 6th century formed the basis of the Turkic state. This power began in the territory of modern East Turkmenistan, gradually expanding, it grew not only territorially, but became an increasingly multicultural entity. After the Avars were conquered in 551 (and their last ruler was killed), the leader of the Turks, Bumyn, took the title of kagan. The state created by the Turks proper was called Turk ale. Thus, when considering any issue of the history of these peoples, it is necessary to distinguish between these concepts: the union of tribes (the Turkic state) and the Turk (the state of the Turks).

The Turkic state - the Turkic kaganate, religion, culture - experienced several stages in their history, one of which, of course, is the adoption of Islam, which made the religious composition of the population more homogeneous. Before that, a wide variety of beliefs were spread throughout the territory of the Turkic country. Here are some of them. Buddhism began to spread among the Turkic population since the Chinese Turkestan. It was taken by Uighurs, it is also known that even at the highest level Buddhism was revered. So there are narrations about how the Chinese Emperor Wong Kung (570-576) sent gifts to one of the khans of the Bumin-Tapu Khan Dynasty (573-583), and the translation of the holy book "Nirvana Sutra" into Turkic language was also included there. Among the Turkic peoples, Mazdeism, a variety of Zoroastrianism, was also widely spread, recognizing the existence of two deities symbolizing good and evil. This religion developed most widely in Iran and the Bukhara region. Among the Turks were adherents of various meanings of Christianity, in particular - Manichaeism, which, as belief, took shape as a result of the symbiosis of Zarathustra's teachings with Christianity and was initially spread by an Iranian preacher named Manichaeus (in some Islamic sources he is called Manes). Thanks to Manichaeism, the Turks, for example, have their own unique alphabet. Among the Turks were supporters of Nestorianism - the Patriarch of Byzantium, who differed in his religious views from classical dogmas, and therefore was forced to abandon his rank. Theosophy of Confucius also penetrated to the Turks, as the acquisition of education in China was very common among the Turkic nobility.

When the Turkic Kaganate began to disintegrate, religion also underwent major changes, above all at the level of individual peoples who were able to create their national statehood.

For example, the Avarian Kaganate, founded in the year 567 under the rule of Bayan Bay, whose religion was formerly Islam, was conquered by the armies of Charlemagne and then by the Hungarians in the 8th century, which led to its adoption of classical Catholicism. Another example: the religion of the Khazar Khaganate, when it was part of the Turkic, was pagan. After the collapse of the Turkic Khaganate, Khazars - tribes of the Turkic-Mongolian group, accept Judaism. It happened around 679, and the representatives of the ruling elite were the first and especially active believers in the new faith who for some time had to hide this fact from the people.

Thus, the history of the religion of the Turkic peoples is a continuous intertwining of cultural, ethnic and political collisions that predetermined the mosaic of religious processes on the territory of their residence.