Tură is the supreme deity of the Chuvash, the lord of the bright upper sky and the single creator of the world. The name continues the Common Turkic theonym Tängri, and the same word serves in Chuvash as the ordinary term for 'god'. He is addressed through a chain of honorifics — the Supreme God (Şülti Tură), the Great God (Măn Tură), the God of the blue sky (Kăvak Tĕneri Tură), the Elder God (Aslă Tură) and simply Father (Aşa) — and is qualified as the Creator (Śuratakan). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnographers describe the Chuvash religious year as organised around offerings to Tură and to the ancestors; the great open-air sacrifices for rain and harvest are directed to him. Later scholarship, building on Magnitsky's catalogue of more than two hundred named gods and spirits, presents the lesser powers as ministers carrying out Tură's will rather than as rival deities.