Salur, Salyr or Salgur (Salır, Salyr, سالور) was an ancient Oghuz Turkic (or Turkoman) tribe and a sub-branch of the Üçok tribal federation.
The medieval Karamanid principality in Anatolia belonged to the Karaman branch of the Salur. The Salghurids of Fars (Atabegs of Fars), were also a dynasty of Salur origin.
The patriarchs of the modern Turkmen tribe of Salyr in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, as well as the Salars of China claim descent from the original Oghuz tribe of Salur.
Historian and statesman of the Ilkhanate, Rashid al-Din Hamadani, in his literary work Oghuzname, which is part of his extensive history book Jami' al-tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), writes that the name Salyr means “wherever you go, you fight with a sword and a club”. The khan of the Khanate of Khiva and simultaneously a historian, Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur, in his Shajara-i Tarākima (Genealogy of the Turkmens) expresses his belief that the meaning of the tribe's name is “armed with a saber”.
Turkologist Peter B. Golden believes the name comes from Salğur < sal- "to put into motion, violent motion," in Oghuz "to be aggressive, to hurl oneself into attack." Thus, this is a tribal name expressing military power, force and aggression. Such nomenclature may have appeared more in the medieval Turkic environment (e.g. Qiniq), as for personal names.
According to various versions of the Oghuz Turkic heroic epos Oghuzname, the Salyr tribe played an important role in the Oghuz Yabgu State up to the middle of the 10th century until the beginning of the Seljuk movement, and many Khans of this State were from the Salyrs. Rashid al-Din Hamadani:
For a long time, royal dignity remained in the Oghuz family; for so long the dignity of the sovereign was in the ancestral branch of Salyr, and after that (from) other branches (also) there were revered kings.
Subsequently, the bulk of the Salyr tribe lived on the territory of Turkmenistan, a significant part of them in the 11th-12th centuries left along with other Oghuz-Turkmen tribes to the west; in Asia Minor they established the Salghurids State centered in Iraq in the 12th century, and supported other Turkmen beyliks in the reconstruction of Anatolia.