By this party, as appears from this tradition, the Ghuzz were not considered to be genuine Turks, but to be Turkmans (that is, according to a popular etymology, resembling Turks).
During the first half of his long reign took place the development of the power of the Ghuzz, a great Turkish tribe, who took the name Seljuk from Seljuk their chief in Transoxiana.
In 1153 the Ghuzz Turkomans overran the country and partly destroyed town and suburbs.
During the reign of Sultan Sanjar or Sinjar of the same house, in the middle of the 11th century, Mer y was overrun by the Turkish tribes of the Ghuzz from beyond the Oxus.
Under the Tahirids of Khorasan, the Saffarids of Seistan and the Samanids of Bokhara, it flourished for some centuries in peace and progressive prosperity; but during the succeeding rule of the Ghaznevid kings its metropolitan character was for a time obscured by the celebrity of the neighbouring capital of Ghazni, until finally in the reign of Sultan Sanjar of Mer y about 1157 the city was entirely destroyed by an irruption of the Ghuzz, the predecessors, in race as well as in habitat, of the modern Turkomans.