Ambros/Andrews/Balim/Golden/Gökalp/Karamustafa, "Turks", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, online ed.: The name Türk spread as a political designation during the period of Göktürk imperial hegemony to their subject Turkic and non-Turkic peoples. Subsequently, it was adopted as a generic ethnonym designating most if not all of the Turkic-speaking tribes in Central Asia by the Muslim peoples with whom they came into contact.
