Turkish religious terminology in 8th to 13th centuries texts

There are two main schools of thought in Turcology which work on the historical periodization of Turkish language based on historical developments. First of these schools classify Köktürk and Uygur Turkish period which encompass the first written materials of Turkish language survived to the present day as "Old Turkish" and Karahanlı Turkish which encompass the first examples of Turkish texts influenced by Islam as "Mid Turkish". The main pillar of this perspective is the cultural transformations triggered with the influence of religious transformations. The effect of cultural transformations to Turkish vocabulary is considered to be linear. Therefore, historical periodization of Turkish Language incepted on the basis of progression of religious vocabulary in Turkish vocabulary. The second school of thought, working on the historical periodization of Turkish language, attributes the end of the "Old Turkish" period to the Mongol invasion in 13th century. This invasion led to the dispersion of the Turkish speaking population into a large geographical area where large communities live at isolating distances to each other and organized under the umbrella of varying political systems and entities. As a consequence of this dispersion, the Turkish language continued its progression in two distinct wings; east and west. On the other hand, during Karahanlı Turkish era, despite the communities living in large dispersed area, Turkish communities were using the common written language which was a continuation of Old Uygur Turkish writing system. This perspective requires including Karahanlı Turkish in the "Old Turkish" era together with Köktürk and Old Uygur Turkish. This study shall focus on the religious vocabulary as religious vocabulary is in the epicentre of historical periodization of Turkish language. Translation activities had a considerable influence on the emergence of religious vocabulary of Turkish language. The endeavour to deliver the new vocabulary of the recently embraced religion to the Turkish community in their own language flag-shipped the translation efforts of the foreign origin words in Old Uygur Turkish. This study shall first attempt to identify the religious vocabulary in the first examples of the texts of Islamic influenced era. Later, the study shall attempt to discover the influence of the existing religious vocabulary in the emergence and formation of the newly embraced religious vocabulary. With this goal in mind, the study will scrutinize the texts, considered to belong to the Karahanlı Turkish era, for demonstrating the evolution and transformation of Turkish religious vocabulary starting from 8th century.