Editing Turan (section)

==== Early Islamic era ====
According to Clifford E. Bosworth:{{r|Bosworth1990_EI}}

{{blockquote|In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the ''Shahnama'' of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted to Fereydun's son Tur. The denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam essentially those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, and behind them the Chinese (see Kowalski; Minorsky, "Turan"). Turan thus became both an ethnic and a geographical term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through Islamic times the lands immediately beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians.}}

The terms "Turk" and "Turanian" became used interchangeably during the Islamic era. ''The Shahnameh'', or the Book of Kings, the compilation of Iranian mythical heritage, uses the two terms equivalently. Other authors, including Tabari, Hakim Iranshah and many other texts follow like. A notable exception is the Abl-Hasan Ali ibn Masudi, an Arab historian who writes: "The birth of Afrasiyab was in the land of Turks and the error that historians and non-historians have made about him being a Turk is due to this reason".<ref>{{cite book|author=Abi al-Ḥasan Ali ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Ali al-Masudi |title=Muruj al-dhahab wa-maadin al-jawhar |location=Beirut, Lebanon |publisher=Dar al-Marifah |date=2005}}</ref> By the 10th century, the myth of Afrasiyab was adopted by the Qarakhanid dynasty.{{r|Yarshater1984_EI}} During the [[Safavid Iran|Safavid]] era, following the common geographical convention of the ''Shahnameh'', the term Turan was used to refer to the domain of the Uzbek empire in conflict with the Safavids.{{Citation needed|date=February 2021}}

Some linguists derive the word from the Indo-Iranian root *''tura-'' "strong, quick, sword(Pashto)", [[Pashto]] ''turan (thuran)'' "swordsman". Others link it to old Iranian *''tor'' "dark, black", related to the New Persian ''tār(ik)'', Pashto ''tor (thor)'', and possibly English ''dark''. In this case, it is a reference to the "dark civilization" of Central Asian nomads in contrast to the "illuminated" [[Zoroastrianism|Zoroastrian]] civilization of the settled Ārya.{{Citation needed|date=February 2021}}