Ghengis Khan was a superb general, a great ruler whose empire at one point spanned a swathe of Asia all the way from the Black Sea to the Korean peninsula. If you trust the depiction in “Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, he was also a scruffy barbarian with a penchant for roasted meat and a natural talent for baseball. More than this, though, he was a deeply religious man, who began all his official pronouncements with the dedication, “It is by the will of Tengri!”

Tengri isn’t worshipped so much any more, but he still has some followers in the steppes of Asia, including parts of Mongolia and some of the more out-of-the-way provinces of Russia. Tengri is a sky-god, sometimes represented as a goose, sometimes visualised as the blue sky itself. His origins are obscure, although more than one researcher has linked him to the very ancient Chinese concept of Tian, “Heaven”, as well as the Chinese folk deity Cheng Li. If their theories are correct, the god that would become Tengri was venerated in China as far back as 1100 BCE, making his faith older than almost any other religion still practised (with the obvious exception of Hinduism). It was the Turkic people, however, who established the modern, shamanistic form of Tengriism, and it was for a long time effectively the official religion of many Central Asian and Eastern European cultures, including the Huns and the Uzbeks. In the Turkic branch of Tengriism, we can see interesting parallels to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, with Tengri becoming a creator god and effectively dominating the pantheon to the exculsion of all others. This eventually resulted in a functionally monotheistic system, with other deities such as Ak Ana, the water godess, vanishing almost entirely. Indeed there are a number of parallels between the Turkic Tengri and the Jewish Yahweh – both are sky-gods, both bring good fortune in war, both are “hidden” gods, approachable only by the priesthood, both created their own antithesis (Satan in Yahweh’s case, Er Kishi (an almost identical character to Satan) in Tengri’s) and both are non-anthropomorphic, portrayed as existing in an abstract, divine state. In fact the modern Turkish word for “god” (sometimes used by Turkish Muslims as a synonym for “Allah”) is tanri, a clear etymological descendent of Tengri.

The actual practices of Tengriism vary widely, but most have a strong shamanistic aspect to them. Shamans are unable to communicate directly with Tengri, but can convey their messages to sacred spirit guides (usually in animal form) who will carry the information the rest of the way to Heaven. To contact these animal spirits, Tengriist shamans use a variety of methods varying from intense meditative practices to drug-induced trances. Tengriism is very much animist in nature, ascribing a degree of sentience to all living things (and most non-living ones!)

The religion’s one claim to fame is the (oft-disputed) stake it has in the origin of the Epic Of Gesar. Mongolian forms of this behemoth of an epic poem (it can take several days to perform it its entirety) frame Gesar as a Tengriist hero, and locate his mythical Kingdom of Ling in Mongolia. However, the Tibetan version of the epic is much more widespread, and Gesar is generally held by most scholars to be of Tibetan Buddhist origin. As a result, the Tibetans raise a metaphorical two-finger salute to their Mongolian counterparts and interpret Mongolia as the poem’s Kingdom of Hor – the bad guys, in other words…

So, monotheistic sky-god worship is not unique to the ancient Hebrews – it seems the Chinese and the Turks may well have gotten there first. Tengriism looks to be on its last legs (the Tengriist stronghold of Central Asia was hammered into submission by Islam centuries ago), but if you want a romantic religion of the wide steppe and clear blue sky, Tengriism still fits the bill.