Tamga

Logo with the Xiongnu tamga; these five symbols were later used as the tamgas of Genghis Khan and his sons.

Tamgha of Kaidu, House of Ögedei.

Since the time when the ancients, including the Mongol nations have developed into relative groups, origins, and ethnic groups, the symbol and belief of a clan have emerged, and a custom to distinguish their origins and relatives have been established. Consequently, when labor distributions within clans began to develop and people started to manage an economy, various tamgas, drawings, notes and earmarks have been used as an identification sign for labor instruments and utilities as well as in domestication of animals. Every time the clan branched off due to internal clashes, the number of derivative tamghas gradually developed into personal, family, lineage, khans, and state tamghas. Those new tamghas were created through adding new markings on the original tamgha, in order to conserve the tradition. In the Mongol Empire a Tamgha was a seal placed on taxed items, and by extension, a tax on commerce (and see Eastern Europe below).[5]

"Tamga" or "tamag" literally means a stamp or seal in the Mongolian language. Tamgas are also stamped using hot irons on domesticated animals such as horses in present-day Mongolia and others to identify that the livestock belongs to a certain family while they graze during the day on their own. In this regard, each family has their own tamga markings for easier identification. Tamga marking in that case is not very elaborate and is just a curved iron differentiating from other families' tamgas. The President of Mongolia also passes the tamag "state seal" when he or she transitions the position to the new president. In the presidential case, the tamag or seal is a little more elaborate and is contained in a wooden box.

Tamga of the Bulgar clan Dulo.

Flag of the Crimean Tatars, sporting the traditional tamğa.

A page from Selçukname.

The Turks who remained pastoral nomad kings in eastern Anatolia and Iran however, continued to use their clan tamgas, and in fact they became high-strung nationalistic imagery. The Ak Koyunlu and Kara Koyunlu, like many other royal dynasties in Eurasia, put their tamga on their flags and stamped their coinage with it.

For those Turks who never left their homeland of Turkestan in the first place it remained and still is what it was originally, a cattle brand and clan identifier.

Among modern Turkic peoples, the tamga is a design identifying property or cattle belonging to a specific Turkic clan, usually as a cattle brand or stamp.

When Turkish clans took over more urban or rural areas, tamgas dropped out of use as pastoral ways of life became forgotten. This is most evident in the Turkish clans who took over western and eastern Anatolia following the Battle of Manzikert. The Turks who took over western Anatolia founded the Sultanate of Rûm and became Roman-style aristocrats. Most of them adopted the (at the time) Muslim symbol of the Seal of Solomon after the Sultanate disintegrated into a mass of feuding ghazi states (see Isfendiyarids, Karamanids). Only the Ottoman ghazi state (later to become the Ottoman Empire) kept its tamga, and this was highly stylized, so much so that the bow was stylized down eventually to a crescent moon.

Tamgas of the twenty-one Oghuz tribes (as Charuklug had none) according to Mahmud al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk:[6]