Qarai Turks

The Karai or Qarai (Karāʾi / Qarāʾi / Qaraei / Karā or Qarā Tātār meaning Black Tatar) Turks, calling themselves Persian: قراي تركلر‎‎ or Persian: ترک های سیاه‎‎, are a Turkic-speaking minority mostly found in Khorasan and Iran especially Torbat-e Heydarieh.

At the start of the Qajar dynasty, Qarai Turks were also scattered even beyond southern Khorasan through the desert zone of Sistan. Malcolm (1829) thought the Karai of Persia arrived from "Tartary" as a result of Timur's campaigns. Under Afsharid Nader Shah (r. 1736–1747), they were settled in Khorasan. Before that time, the Karai seem also to have been found in Azerbaijan. Adam Olearius, who traveled in Azerbaijan in 1638, mentions Karai as one of the tribes of Mogan.

Their name (meaning "black") may ultimately derive from the Keraites, a Turco-Mongol polity in 11th-century Central Asia absorbed into the Mongol Empire and participating in the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, but may also be connected to those of various other Central Asian groups.

Since "Black" (qara) is a Turkic designation for "north" it was a frequently used tribal identifier among the early Turkic peoples, and there are numerous Kipchak groups known by this adjective. The earliest mention of these, not necessarily related, are the "Black Tatars" (Chinese: 黑韃靼), a subdivision of the Rouran Khaganate in Tang sources. Meanwhile, at the western end of the steppe more "black Tatars" were the Tatar troops serving the First Bulgarian Empire

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