The Kara-Khanids convert to Islam in the mid-tenth century and adopt Muslim names and honorifics, but retain Turkic regnal titles such as Khan, Khagan, Ilek (Ilig) and Tegin.

They will later adopt the Arab titles sultan and sultān al-salātīn (sultan of sultans).

A Karakhanid prince named Satuk Bughra Khan (d. 955) was according to the Ottoman historian known as Munajjim-bashi the first of the khans to convert.

After conversion, he had obtained a fatwa that permitted him in effect to kill his presumably still pagan father, after which he had conquered Kashgar.

There was a mass conversion of the Turks (reportedly "200,000 tents of the Turks") later in 960, according to Muslim historians Ibn Miskawaih and Ibn al-Athir; circumstantial evidence suggests these were the Karakhanids.