confederation of Turkic peoples whose homeland, until at least the 11th century AD, was the steppes of central Asia and Mongolia. The Orhon inscriptions (q.v.), describing an early Turkic people, probably refer to the Oğuz. The Seljuqs, who comprised one branch of the Oğuz, controlled an empire stretching from the Amu Darya to the Persian Gulf and from the Indus to the Mediterranean Sea by the end of the 11th century. Speakers of the southwestern branch of the Turkic language subfamily are also sometimes referred to as Oğuz Turks.