I understand that earlier pagan groups like the celts and continental and british germanics converted to christianity...

What free stuff would that be?

So you mean that people were literally selling their religion?

Those enslaved turks were what would become the mamelukes but I mean the central asian turks who were still free.

Cause it´s the religion not of some small tribes you just meet, but that of the powerful and fairly organized states. During Middle Ages, Catholicism does not only come as a religion, but as a way to access to the Roman culture and traditions, including some very interesing tools for monarchs to be.

i think this desu, ive read a part in ibn fadhlans book where he encountered some turks(still pagan at the time, slants, wolf fur and everything) seeing arabs do some some prayer and they followed it without having any idea what the words mean because they think its the "hip" thing to do for turkic tribes there

found the excerpts

>Then we went and rode without stopping with the most strenuous and intense driving what only happens, every night from the midnight till the dusk time immediately after the midday. Then we stop. When we passed fifteen days, we reached a big mountain with a lot of rocks, from which the springs are flowing if you excavate for water. When we crossed them, (we) came to a tribe of the Turks known under a name al-Guzziya. And they are coachers; their homes are from hair (from koshma) and they (Guzzes) halt or leave. You see their houses (once) in one place, then the same houses in another place, as do the nomads in their coaching; and here they are in a pitiful position. At the same time they are as wandering donkeys, do not submit to Allah, do not use a reason and do not worship anything, but call their oldest their lords. So, when one of them asks advice from the leader, he tells him: "Oh, my lord, what I shall do in such and such (case)?". And rules them a council between them. But (as soon as) they spend for something or decide something, then comes the most insignificant and the most pitiful of them and destroys what they already agreed. And I heard them saying: "There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah", trying to come with these words nearer to those Moslems who pass by them, but not believing in it. And if injustice fells on one of them or happens something unpleasant, he lifts his face to the sky and says: "Bir Tengri", and that in Turkish is "One God", as "bir" in Turkish is "one", and "Tengri" is God (Allah) in the language of the Turks.

They do not clear of excrements and from urine, and do not wash from the sexual uncleanness and (do not do) other similar things. They do not do anything with water, especially in the winter. Their women do not cover from their men and from others of them, and also a woman does not cover anything of her body from anybody of the people. And really, in one of the days we stopped at a man of theirs and sat down, and the wife of this person sat together with us. And, talking to us, she opened her "fardj" and scratched it while we looked at her. Then we closed our faces and said: "My God, Forgive me!" The husband of hers laughed and said to the translator: "Tell them, - we open it in your presence and you see it, and she protects it so, that there is no access to it. It is better, than if she would cover it and (at the same time) would concede it to somebody". They do not know fornication, but if they find out anything about somebody, they break off him in two halves, namely: they pull together an branches of two trees, then tie him to the branches and release both trees, and the one between the unbending (trees) is ripped apart. One of them said: "Let me hear the reading". So, he liked the Koran, and he started to tell the translator: "Tell him: "do not stop reading". Once this person told me with the language of the translator: "Tell this Arab: "Is our God mighty and great a woman?". I was stunned by that, gave a glorification to Allah and asked for the pardon. And he also gave a glorification and asked for the pardon, the same as I did it. And this is (in general) exactly the rule of the Turk, every time he hear a Moslem saying glorification and saying "There is no god except Allah", he says the same as he.

because they played sick beats till entering on a trance
youtube.com/watch?v=33bBm4frSbA

>Tell them, - we open it in your presence and you see it, and she protects it so, that there is no access to it. It is better, than if she would cover it and (at the same time) would concede it to somebody

Based, so they would literally have adulterers pulled apart by trees?
That's pretty metal desu.

The binding of cloth to trees is something that still happens in rural turkey desu, didn't know the mongols did it too.

The Suljuks converted to Islam because most of their subjects were muslim

Did people really care so much about the religion of the person they paid taxes to back then?

I do believe europe, asia and the midle east are somehow connected with different rites from ancient times, we don't see that ont rees there, but I can recognice some similar clothes on them, the playing of drums, etc. Pic related not to mention the swastika connecting europe asia and the midle east

I would say that it were the eurasians like the hungarians, russians and turks who are basically of both continents that bind them together.

yep from russia to spain, regional rural costumes are pretty much identical, you find the swastika (only in northern spain, I believe); and then you have something similar between asia and midle east, some similarities in the costumes or jewlery

>you find the swastika from russia all the way to spain (only in northern spain, I believe)
I meant

Two reasons. Firstly, it's extremely helpful to be the same religion as your subjects, makes them less prone to rise up against you. Second, and probably more important, they all married Muslim girls, who raised their sons to be good Muslims.

>turks
probably easier to rule muslims if you are muslim yourself
also they probably seen splendor of islam in form of beautiful mosques and thought that theres more to than than to their own meme paganism

Turks were conquered by Arabs

When?

The Muslim conquest of Transoxiana or Arab conquest of Transoxiana were the 7th and 8th century conquests, by Umayyad and Abbasid Arabs, of Transoxiana; the land between the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, a part of Central Asia that today includes all or parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Transoxiana

Not all of turkic central asia was conquered though and even then it was only a few centuries.
After those centruries the karakhanids and seljuks pushed them out. The seljuks and later ottomans conquered all the arabs aside from the morrocans.