Turks
an important and widespread family of the human race; found from the banks of the Lena through central Asia and Asia Minor to the European shores of the Bosporus and the Ægean.
Formerly classed among the Turanian peoples, it is now more usual to say that they are of the Mongolo-Tartar ethnological group, and speak languages of the Ural-Altaic family. To them belong at the present day Yakuts, Siberian Tartars, Kirghizes, Uzbegs, Turkomans, Karakalpaks, Kazan Tartars, and Dungans, as well as the Ottoman Turks; linguistically the Bashkirs and Tchuwashes fall under the same head. The existing Turkish peoples are all Moslems, except the Yakuts, and mostly nomadic.
They have given ruling families or races to China, Persia, India, Syria, Egypt, and the empire of the Caliphs. a