The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in

modern Mongolia. Erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan,
these date back to the Second Turkic Khaganate.[18] After the discovery and excavation of these
monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding
the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the
inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Old Turkic alphabet, which has also been
referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to a superficial similarity to the Germanic runic
alphabets.[19]
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th–11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic
languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching
from Siberia all the way to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in
particular, brought their language, Oghuz—the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language—
into Anatolia during the 11th century.[20] Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic
languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive
Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in
the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk).[21]