1.
Volga Tatars
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The Volga Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group, native to the Volga-Ural region, Russia. They are in turn subdivided into various subgroups and they compose 53% of the population of Tatarstan. Volga Tatars are Russias second-largest ethnicity, Tatars inhabiting the Republic of Tatarstan, a federal subject of Russia, constitute one third of all Tatars, while the other two thirds reside outside Tatarstan. The formation of some of the communities residing outside Tatarstan took place before the Russian Revolution of 1917 due to Tatars being specialized in trading, the emergence of ethnonym Tatar is disputed, with two theses trying to explain its origins. Mongol thesis, according to which etymology can be traced back to the Chinese Ta-Tan or Da-Dan, is widely accepted than Turkic one. Ethnonym Tatar first emerged in the fifth century CE/AD, the 14th century saw the spread of Sunni Islam among the Tatars. Tatars became subjects of Russia after the Siege of Kazan in 1552, since Russians linked Tatars with the Mongol Golden Horde, they began to negatively stereotype the Tatar people. Up to the end of the 19th century, Volga Tatars mainly identified themselves as Muslims until the rehabilitation of the ethnonym Tatar occurred, Russian officials used literary Tatar language to interact with the Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire before the end of the 19th century. Volga Tatar role in the Muslim national and cultural movements of the Russian Empire before the 1917 Revolution is significant, Tatar authorities attempted in the 1990s to reverse the Russification of Tatarstan that took place during the Soviet period. Bulgarism is a term for the position that the Volga Tatars are significantly descended from the Volga Bulgars. A more accepted position, however, is that the Volga Tatar ethnogenesis was completed upon the arrival of the Kipchaks, Cumans, the majority of Volga Tatars are Kazan Tatars. They form the bulk of the Tatar population of Tatarstan, traditionally, they inhabit the left bank of Volga river. Khazar invasions forced Bulgars, Turkic people, to migrate from the Azov steppes to the Middle Volga, in the period of 10th–13th centuries, Turkic peoples, including Kipchaks, migrated from southern Siberia to Europe. They played a significant role in the Mongol invasion of Rus in the 13th century, Tatar ethnogenesis took place after Turkic peoples, who were mixed with the Bulgars and other local inhabitants of the Volga River area, kept Kipchak dialect and became Muslims. Several new Tatar states had emerged by the 1500s after the Golden Horde fell and these states were Khanate of Kazan, Astrakhan Khanate, Khanate of Sibir and Crimean Khanate. Controversy surrounds the origin of the Tatar people, whether they are descended either from Bulgars or Golden Horde, mishars are an ethnographic group of Volga Tatars speaking Mishar dialect of the Tatar language. They comprise approximately one third of the Volga Tatar population and they are descendants of Cuman-Kipchak tribes who mixed with the Burtas in the Middle Oka River area and Meschiora. Nowadays, they live in Chelyabinsk, Ulyanovsk, Penza, Ryazan, Nizhegorodskaya oblasts of Russia and in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the Qasím Tatars have their capital in the town of Qasím in Ryazan Oblast
Volga Tatars
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Warriors of the
Golden Horde raid upon Moscow.
Volga Tatars
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Ivan the Terrible subjugated the
Tatars and forcibly converted many of them to
Christianity.
Volga Tatars
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Qistibi
Volga Tatars
–
A Tatar
cemetery in
Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.
2.
Autonomous Republic of Crimea
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The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine, encompassing the territory of the former Crimean Oblast, a status it gained following a referendum on 20 January 1991. Russia then annexed Crimea to incorporate the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol as federal subjects of Russia. Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783 and this was recognised in 1792 when the peninsula was ceded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Jassy. Following a referendum on 20 January 1991, the Crimean Oblast was upgraded to the status of an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on 12 February 1991 by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. On 26 February 1992, the Crimean parliament renamed the ASSR the Republic of Crimea and proclaimed self-government on 5 May 1992, on 6 May 1992 the same parliament inserted a new sentence into this constitution that declared that Crimea was part of Ukraine. In the same period, Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk agreed to divide the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet between Russia and the newly formed Ukrainian Navy. On 14 October 1993, the Crimean parliament established the post of President of Crimea, after an interim constitution, the current constitution was put into effect, changing the territorys name to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Following the ratification of the May 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, however, in 2006, anti-NATO protests broke out on the peninsula. On 24 August 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held in Crimea by ethnic Russian residents, sergei Tsekov said then that he hoped that Russia would treat the Crimea the same way as it had treated South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Along with Verkhovna Rada, the treaty was ratified by the Russian State Duma as well, on 26 February 2014, thousands of pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine protesters clashed in front of the parliament building in Simferopol. Two days later, Russian forces occupied airports and other locations in Crimea which the interim Government of Ukraine described as an invasion and occupation. Gunmen, either armed militants or Russian special forces, occupied the Crimean parliament, under armed guard and with the doors locked, members of parliament reportedly elected Sergey Aksyonov as the new Crimean Prime Minister. The central Ukrainian government did not recognize the Aksyonov administration and considers it illegal, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich sent a letter to Putin asking him to use military force in Ukraine to restore law and order. The Russian foreign ministry stated that movement of the Black Sea Fleet armored vehicles in Crimea happens in accordance with basic Russian-Ukrainian agreements on the Black Sea Fleet. On 1 March, the Russian parliament granted President Vladimir Putin the authority to use force in Ukraine. The move was condemned by many Western and Western-aligned nations, on the same day, the acting president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov decried the appointment of the Prime Minister of Crimea as unconstitutional. Russia established de facto control of the territory, however, Interfax news agency later quoted a fleet spokesman who denied that any ultimatum had been issued. Nothing came to pass at the deadline, on 4 March, several Ukrainian bases and navy ships in Crimea reported being intimidated by Russian forces but vowed non-violence
Autonomous Republic of Crimea
–
Автономна Республіка Крим
Autonomous Republic of Crimea
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Flag
Autonomous Republic of Crimea
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A view of the Bay of
Sevastopol
Autonomous Republic of Crimea
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Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet "About the transfer of the Crimean Oblast"
3.
Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
Uzbekistan
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Comparison of the
Aral Sea between 1989 and 2014.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
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Female statuette wearing the
kaunakes. Chlorite and limestone,
Bactria, beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.
Uzbekistan
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Alexander the Great at the
Battle of Issus.
4.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
Turkey
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Some
henges at
Göbekli Tepe were erected as far back as 12,000 BC, predating those of
Stonehenge,
England by almost ten millennia.
Turkey
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Flag
Turkey
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The Lion Gate in
Hattusa, capital of the
Hittite Empire. The city's history dates back to the 6th millennium BC.
Turkey
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The
Library of Celsus in
Ephesus was built by the
Romans in 135 AD. The
Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, built by king
Croesus of
Lydia in the 6th century BC, was one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
5.
Romania
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Romania is a sovereign state located in Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and it has an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a temperate-continental climate. With over 19 million inhabitants, the country is the member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-largest city in the EU, the River Danube, Europes second-longest river, rises in Germany and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romanias Danube Delta. The Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest are marked by one of their tallest peaks, Moldoveanu, modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. Romania lost several territories, of which Northern Transylvania was regained after the war, following the war, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition towards democracy and it has been a member of NATO since 2004, and part of the European Union since 2007. A strong majority of the population identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are speakers of Romanian. The cultural history of Romania is often referred to when dealing with artists, musicians, inventors. For similar reasons, Romania has been the subject of notable tourist attractions, Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning citizen of Rome. The first known use of the appellation was attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, after the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân gradually fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a leader of the early 19th century. The use of the name Romania to refer to the homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been officially in use since 11 December 1861, in English, the name of the country was formerly spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975, Romania is also the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the region of the earliest European civilization. Evidence from this and other sites indicates that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage
Romania
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Neacșu's letter from 1521, the oldest surviving document written in
Romanian.
Romania
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Flag
Romania
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Writ issued on 14 October 1465 by
Radu cel Frumos, from his residence in
Bucharest, indicating
Ottoman victory.
Romania
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A 1917 British map showing territories with majority Romanian populations.
6.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
Russia
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Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
Russia
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Flag
Russia
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The
Baptism of Kievans, by
Klavdy Lebedev
Russia
–
Sergius of Radonezh blessing
Dmitry Donskoy in
Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the
Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by
Ernst Lissner
7.
Bulgaria
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Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, with a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europes 16th-largest country. Organised prehistoric cultures began developing on current Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period and its ancient history saw the presence of the Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Alans and Huns. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 led to the formation of the Third Bulgarian State, the following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 it became a one-party socialist state as part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, in December 1989 the ruling Communist Party allowed multi-party elections, which subsequently led to Bulgarias transition into a democracy and a market-based economy. Bulgarias population of 7.2 million people is predominantly urbanised, most commercial and cultural activities are centred on the capital and largest city, Sofia. The strongest sectors of the economy are industry, power engineering. The countrys current political structure dates to the adoption of a constitution in 1991. Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic with a high degree of political, administrative. Human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria can be traced back to the Paleolithic, animal bones incised with man-made markings from Kozarnika cave are assumed to be the earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in humans. Organised prehistoric societies in Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture, Vinča culture, the latter is credited with inventing gold working and exploitation. Some of these first gold smelters produced the coins, weapons and jewellery of the Varna Necropolis treasure and this site also offers insights for understanding the social hierarchy of the earliest European societies. Thracians, one of the three primary groups of modern Bulgarians, began appearing in the region during the Iron Age. In the late 6th century BC, the Persians conquered most of present-day Bulgaria, and kept it until 479 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in the 5th century the area fell under Byzantine control, by this time, Christianity had already spread in the region. A small Gothic community in Nicopolis ad Istrum produced the first Germanic language book in the 4th century, the first Christian monastery in Europe was established around the same time by Saint Athanasius in central Bulgaria. From the 6th century the easternmost South Slavs gradually settled in the region, in 680 Bulgar tribes under the leadership of Asparukh moved south across the Danube and settled in the area between the lower Danube and the Balkan, establishing their capital at Pliska
Bulgaria
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Objects from
Varna necropolis, parts of the oldest golden treasure in the world.
Bulgaria
–
Flag
Bulgaria
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Khan Krum feasts with his nobles after the battle of Pliska. His servant (far right) brings the wine-filled
skull cup of
Nicephorus I.
Bulgaria
–
The
Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs, built and painted on the order of
Bulgarian Emperor Ivan Asen II in honour of his victory near
Klokotnitsa in 1230.
8.
Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
Kazakhstan
–
Artistic depiction of medieval
Taraz situated along the Silk Road
Kazakhstan
–
Flag
Kazakhstan
–
Ablai Khan served as khan of the
Middle jüz from 1771 to 1781
Kazakhstan
–
Inside a Kazakh
yurt
9.
United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
–
Flag
United States
–
The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
–
The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
10.
Ukraine
–
Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
Ukraine
–
Gold
Scythian pectoral, or neckpiece, from a royal
kurgan in
Ordzhonikidze, dated to the 4th century BC
Ukraine
–
Flag
Ukraine
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Principalities of
Kievan Rus', 1054-1132
Ukraine
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The baptism of the Grand Prince Vladimir led to the adoption of Christianity in
Kievan Rus'.
11.
Crimean Tatar language
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Crimean Tatar, also called Crimean Turkish or simply Crimean, is a language spoken for centuries in Crimea. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea and the Crimean Tatar diasporas of Uzbekistan, Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as communities in the United States. It should not be confused with Tatar proper, spoken in Tatarstan and adjacent regions in Russia, though only distantly related, it has been extensively influenced by nearby Oghuz Turkic languages such as Turkish, Turkmen, and Azerbaijani. Today, more than 260,000 Crimean Tatars live in Crimea, approximately 150,000 reside in Central Asia, where their ancestors had been exiled in 1944 during World War II by the Soviet Union. However, of all people, mostly the older generations are the only ones still speaking Crimean Tatar. In 2013, the language was estimated to be on the brink of extinction, Turkey has provided support to Ukraine, to aid in bringing the schools teaching in Crimean Tatar to a modern state. An estimated 5 million people of Crimean origin live in Turkey, descendants of those who emigrated in the 19th, of these an estimated 2,000 still speak the language. Smaller Crimean Tatar communities are found in Romania, Bulgaria. Crimean Tatar is one of the endangered languages in Europe. Almost all Crimean Tatars are bilingual or multilingual, using as their first language the dominant languages of their home countries, such as Ukrainian, Turkish, Uzbek. Each of the three groups of the Crimean Tatars has its own dialect. The dialect of the Nogays, the inhabitants of the Crimean steppe, is of Kypchak–Nogay origin. The Yalıboylus, who lived on the southern coast of Crimea before 1944, the Tat Tatars from the Crimean Mountains use a middle dialect of Kypchak–Cuman origin. The dialect is a descendant of the Cuman language. The modern Crimean Tatar written language is based on Tat because the Tats comprise about 55% of the total Crimean Tatar population, the forming of the Crimean Tatar spoken dialects began with the first Turkic invasions of Crimea and ended during the period of the Crimean Khanate. However, the written languages of the Crimean Khanate were Chagatai. After Islamization, Crimean Tatars wrote with an Arabic script, in 1876, the different Turkic Crimean dialects were made into a uniform written language by Ismail Gasprinski. A preference was given to the Oghuz dialect of the Yalıboylus, in 1928, the language was reoriented to the middle dialect spoken by the majority of the people
Crimean Tatar language
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"Welcome to Crimea" (Qırımğa hoş keldiñiz!) written in Crimean Tatar Cyrillic, airport bus,
Simferopol International Airport
Crimean Tatar language
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Crimean Tatar-speaking world
Crimean Tatar language
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Crimean Tatar Latin script on the table in Bakhchisaray.
Crimean Tatar language
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An example of Crimean Tatar Arabic script.
12.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
Turkish language
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Old Turkic inscription with the
Orkhon script (c. 8th century).
Kyzyl, Russia
Turkish language
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Countries where Turkish is an official language
Turkish language
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Road signs in
Prizren,
Republic of Kosovo. Official languages are:
Albanian (top),
Serbian (middle) and Turkish (bottom).
Turkish language
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Map of the main subgroups of
Turkish dialects.
13.
Uzbek language
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Uzbek is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has 27 million native speakers and is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, Uzbek belongs to the Eastern Turkic, or Karluk, branch of the Turkic language family. External influences include Persian, Arabic and Russian, one of the most noticeable distinctions of Uzbek from other Turkic languages is the rounding of the vowel /a/ to /ɒ/ or /ɔ/, a feature that was influenced by Persian. In the language itself, Uzbek is oʻzbek tili or oʻzbekcha, in Cyrillic, the same names are written ўзбек тили and ўзбекча, in Arabic script, ازبېک تیلی and ازبېجه. The first Turkic dynasty in the region was that of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in the 9th–12th centuries, the language was championed by Ali-Shir Navai in the 15th and 16th centuries. Navai was the greatest representative of Chagatai language literature and he significantly contributed to the development of the Chagatay language and its direct descendant Uzbek and is widely considered to be the founder of Uzbek literature. Ultimately based on the Karluk variant of the Turkic languages, Chagatay contained large numbers of Persian, by the 19th century it was rarely used for literary composition, but disappeared only in the early 20th century. The term Uzbek as applied to language has meant different things at different times, all three dialects continue to exist within modern spoken Uzbek. Edward A. Allworth argued that this badly distorted the history of the region and was used to give authors such as the 15th century author Ali-Shir Navai an Uzbek identity. Estimates of the number of speakers of Uzbek vary widely, the Swedish encyclopedia Nationalencyklopedin estimates the number of native speakers to be 26 million, and the CIA World Factbook estimates 25 million. The influence of Islam, and by extension, Arabic, is evident in Uzbek loanwords, there is also a residual influence of Russian, from the time when Uzbeks were under the rule of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Uzbek vocabulary has also heavily influenced by Persian through its historic roots. The Uzbek language has many dialects, varying widely from region to region, however, there is a commonly understood dialect which is used in mass media and in most printed materials. Among the most-widespread dialects are the Tashkent dialect, Afghan dialect, the Ferghana dialect, the Khorezm dialect, the Chimkent-Turkestan dialect, 1928–1940, the Latin-based Yañalif used officially. 1940–1992, the Cyrillic script used officially, since 1992, Yañalif is official in Uzbekistan, although the Cyrillic script is still widely used. Despite the official status of the Latin script in Uzbekistan, the use of Cyrillic is still widespread, especially in advertisements, in newspapers, scripts may be mixed, with headlines in Latin and articles in Cyrillic. The Arabic script is no longer used in Uzbekistan except symbolically in limited texts or for the studies of Chagatai. In the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where there is an Uzbek minority, however, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet is sometimes used
Uzbek language
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A 1911 Uzbek text in the Arabic script
Uzbek language
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Dark blue = majority; light blue = minority
14.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
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Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
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Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
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This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
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The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
15.
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
Ukrainian language
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Miniature of
St Luke from the
Peresopnytsia Gospels (1561).
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian-speaking world
Ukrainian language
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The 1921 Soviet recruitment poster. It uses traditional Ukrainian imagery with Ukrainian-language text: "Son! Enroll in the school of
Red commanders, and the defense of
Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."
Ukrainian language
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Anti-russification protest. The banner reads "For Ukrainian Children – a Ukrainian school!".
16.
Sunni Islam
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Sunni Islam is the largest group of Islam. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the behavior of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Sunni tradition, Muhammad did not clearly designate a successor and this contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad intended his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib to succeed him. Political tensions between Sunnis and Shias continued with varying intensity throughout Islamic history and they have been exacerbated in recent times by ethnic conflicts, as of 2009, Sunni Muslims constituted 87–90% of the worlds Muslim population. Sunni Islam is the worlds largest religious denomination, followed by Catholicism and its adherents are referred to in Arabic as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah or ahl as-sunnah for short. In English, its doctrines and practices are sometimes called Sunnism, while adherents are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis, Sunnites, Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as orthodox Islam. The Quran, together with hadith and binding juristic consensus form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, sunnī, also commonly referred to as Sunnīism, is a term derived from sunnah meaning habit, usual practice, custom, tradition. The Muslim use of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of the prophet Muhammad, in Arabic, this branch of Islam is referred to as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah, the people of the sunnah and the community, which is commonly shortened to ahl as-sunnah. One common mistake is to assume that Sunni Islam represents a normative Islam that emerged during the period after Muhammads death, and that Sufism and Shiism developed out of Sunni Islam. This perception is due to the reliance on highly ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works. Both Sunnism and Shiaism are the end products of centuries of competition between ideologies. Both sects used each other to further cement their own identities and doctrines, the first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun or Rightly-Guided Ones. Sunni recognition includes the aforementioned Abu Bakr as the first, Umar who established the Islamic calendar as the second, Uthman as the third, Sunnis believe that the companions of Muhammad were the best of Muslims. Support for this view is found in the Quran, according to Sunnis. Sunnis also believe that the companions were true believers since it was the companions who were given the task of compiling the Quran, furthermore, narrations that were narrated by the companions are considered by Sunnis to be a second source of knowledge of the Muslim faith. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 and released January 2011 found that there are 1.62 billion Muslims around the world, Islam does not have a formal hierarchy or clergy. Leaders are informal, and gain influence through study to become a scholar of Islamic law, according to the Islamic Center of Columbia, South Carolina, anyone with the intelligence and the will can become an Islamic scholar. During Midday Mosque services on Fridays, the congregation will choose a person to lead the service
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam
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Malaysian Sunni Muslims in a
Mawlid procession in capital
Putrajaya, 2013.
Sunni Islam
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The
Great Mosque of Kairouan (also known as the Mosque of Uqba) was, in particular during the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, an important center of Islamic learning with an emphasis on the
Maliki Madh'hab. It is located in the city of
Kairouan in
Tunisia
17.
Tatars of Romania
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Tatars, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, have been present on the territory of todays Romania since the 13th century. According to the 2011 census,20,464 people declared their nationality as Tatar and they are the main factor of Islam in Romania. The roots of the Crimean Tatar community in Romania began with the Cuman migration in the 10th century, even before the Cumans arrived, other Turkic people like the Huns and the Bulgars settled in this region. The Tatars first reached the mouths of the Danube in the century at the height of the power of the Golden Horde. In 1241, under the leadership of Kadan, the Tatars crossed the Danube, the region was probably not under the direct rule of the Horde, but rather, a vassal of the Bakhchisaray Khan. It is known from Arab sources that at the end of the 13th century, another Arab scholar, Ibn Battuta, who passed through the region in 1330–31, talks about Baba Saltuk as the southernmost town of the Tatars. The Golden Horde began to lose its influence after the wars of 1352-1359 and at the time, in the 14th and 15th centuries the Ottoman Empire colonized Dobruja with Nogais from Bucak. Between 1593 and 1595 Tatars from Nogai and Bucak were also settled to Dobruja, toward the end of the 16th century, about 30,000 Nogai Tatars from the Budjak were brought to Dobruja. After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783 Crimean Tatars began emigrating to the Ottoman coastal provinces of Dobruja, from 1783 to 1853 tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars and Nogais emigrated to the Rusçuk region which subsequently became known as Little Tartary. Following the Russian conquest of 1812, Nogais from Bucak also immigrated to Dobruja, Tatars who settled in Dobruja before the great exodus of 1860 were known as Kabail. They formed the Kabail Tatar squadron in the Nizam-ı Cedid army of sultan Selim III, Tatars together with Albanians served as gendarmes, who were held in high esteem by the Ottomans and received special tax privileges. The Ottomans additionally accorded a degree of autonomy for the Tatars who were allowed governance by their own kaymakam. The Giray dynasty multiplied in Dobruja and maintained their respected position, a Dobrujan Tatar, Kara Hussein, was responsible for the destruction of the Janissary corps on orders from Sultan Mahmut II. From 1877-1878 it is estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated from Dobruja to Anatolia, which continued in smaller numbers until World War I. Other reasons included the 1899 famine in Dobruja, a series of laws from 1880 to 1885 regarding confiscation of Tatar and Turkish land, a unique Crimean Tatar national identity in Dobruja began to emerge in the last quarter of the 19th century. When Ismail Gasprinski, considered by many to be the father of Crimean Tatar nationalism, however, it was the poet Mehmet Niyazi who is most credited with spreading nationalist ideas among the Tatars of Dobruja. In the wake of the fall of the Crimean Tatar government, many of these refugees were inspired to join the Prometheus movement in Europe which aimed for the independence of Soviet nationalities. During this period Mustecip Hacı Fazıl was the leader of community in Dobruja, in 1918, when he was 19 he went to Crimea to teach in Tatar schools and published the first Tatar journal in Dobruja, Emel from 1930 to 1940
Tatars of Romania
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Distribution of Tatars in Romania (2002 census)
18.
Nogais
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The Nogais are a Turkic ethnic group, who live in southern European Russia, mainly in the North Caucasus region. Most are found in northern Dagestan and Stavropol Krai, as well as in Karachay–Cherkessia and the Astrakhan Oblast and they speak the Nogai language and are descendants of various Mongolic and Turkic tribes, who formed the Nogai Horde. There are two groups of Nogais, the Ak Nogai and, the Karanogay or Qara-Nogai. In the 1990s,65,000 were still living in the Northern Caucasus, divided into Aq Nogai, Nogais live in the territories of Dagestan, Chechnya, Stavropol district and Astrakhan Oblast. From 1928 there was a Nogaysky District, Republic of Dagestan and from 2007 a Nogaysky District, a few thousand Nogais live in Dobruja, in the town of Mihail Kogălniceanu and villages of Lumina, Valea Dacilor, Cobadin. An estimated 90,000 Nogais live in Turkey today, mainly settled in Ceyhan/Adana, Ankara, the Nogai language is still spoken in some of the villages of Central Anatolia - mainly around the Salt Lake, Eskişehir and Ceyhan. To this day, Nogais in Turkey have maintained their cuisine, Üken börek, kasık börek, tabak börek, şır börek, köbete, the Junior Juz, or the Lesser Horde of the Kazakhs, occupied the lands of the former Nogai Khanate in Western Kazakhstan. A part of Nogais joined Kazakhs in 17-18th centuries and formed separate clan or tribe called as Kazakh-Nogais and their estimated number is about 50,000. Cedsan Nogais inhabited the land from Dniester to Southern Bug, Camboyluk Nogais inhabited in the lands from Bug to the beginning of Crimean Peninsula. Cedişkul Nogais inhabited the north of Crimean peninsula, Kuban Nogais inhabited the north of Sea of Azov around Prymorsk. The name Nogai is derived from Nogai Khan, a general of the Golden Horde, the Mongol tribe called the Manghits constituted a core of the Nogai Horde. The Nogai Horde supported the Astrakhan Khanate, and after the conquest of Astrakhan in 1556 by Russians, the Nogais protected the northern borders of the khanate, and through organized raids to Wild Fields prevented Slavic settlement. Many Nogais migrated to the Crimean peninsula to serve as khans cavalry, settling there, they contributed to the formation of the Crimean Tatars. They have raised various herds and migrated seasonally in search of pastures for their animals. Nogais were proud of their traditions and independence, which they considered superior to settled agricultural life. The recorded history of the Nogais first commenced when representatives of the Ottoman Empire reached the Terek–Kuma Lowland, there were two main chiefs, Yusuf Mirza and Ismail Mirza. Yusuf Mirza supported joining the Ottomans, however, his brother Ismail Mirza, who was allied with Russians, ambushed Yusuf and declared his chiefdom under Russian rule. After that, the supporters of Yusuf Mirza migrated to Crimea and Yedisan, supporters of Yusuf took the name Qara, later named by Crimeans as Kichi
Nogais
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Nogai man in national costume, 19th century
19.
Turkish people
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Turkish people, or the Turks, also known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the speakers of Turkic languages, ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, the ethnonym Turk may be first discerned in Herodotus reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians, furthermore, during the first century AD. Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century, in these sources, Turk appears as Tujue, which referred to the Göktürks. Although Turk refers to Turkish people, it may sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples. In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers, the Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks. In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a more positive connotation. The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish Arab followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered Turks, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a Turk as anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship. Anatolia was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Paleolithic era, most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengriism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were also adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids, the Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian, under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, as the Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century the Seljuk Turks who were admirers of the Persian civilization grew in number and were able to occupy the province of the Abbasid Empire. By 1055, the Seljuk Empire captured Baghdad and began to make their first incursions into the edges of Anatolia, when the Seljuk Turks won the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in 1071, it opened the gates of Anatolia to them. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became the purveyors of the Persian culture rather than the Turkish culture, in dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade. Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, by the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region Turchia or Turkey, meaning the land of the Turks
Turkish people
–
The loss of almost all
Ottoman territories during the late 19th and early 20th century, and then the establishment of the
Republic of Turkey, in 1923, resulted in Turkish refugees, known as "
Muhacirs ", from hostile regions of the
Balkans, the
Black Sea, the
Aegean islands, the island of
Cyprus, the
Sanjak of Alexandretta, the
Middle East, and the
Soviet Union to migrate to
Anatolia and
Eastern Thrace.
Turkish people
–
The
Öksökö, symbol of the
Seljuk Turks.
Turkish people
–
Turkish woman in Ottoman costume
Turkish people
–
Taksim Square.
20.
Crimean Tatar diaspora
–
The Crimean Tatar diaspora dates back to the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, after which Crimean Tatars emigrated in a series of waves spanning the period from 1783 to 1917. The diaspora was largely the result of the destruction of their social, the Soviet Union brought about the final dispersal of Crimean Tatars in 1944, in the midst of World War II, when it deported all Tatars remaining in the Crimea to Central Asia. This population is considered a community rather than a diaspora. There have been members of Tatar nobility in the Ottoman Empire. There was a Giray vassal state in the Ottoman province of Bucak and it was centered on the towns of Bender and Çatal Osman, and considered semi-independent In the 14th and 15th centuries, Ottomans colonized Dobruja with Crimean Tatars from Bucak. Between 1593 and 1595, Crimean Tatars were also settled to Dobruja, some Crimean Tatars went to Greece and Turkey. However, the first Crimean Tatar emigration took place after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Crimean Tatar ruling class and mullahs sought asylum within the North Caucasian people, fearing persecution. Their relations to Crimea continued from their Caucasian safe havens, hopes that a Giray from the Caucasus would return to liberate Crimea continued until the very conquest of North Caucasus by the Russians in 1859. The Crimean Tatars in the North Caucasus were exiled to Anatolia in 1877-1878 together with Circassians and Chechens by the Russian Empire, the exiled Muslims from the North Caucasus were around one million. After the annexation,4,000 Tatars also escaped to westward direction to the Ottoman fortress of Ozu, with the conquest of Bessarabia by the Russians in 1812, all Tatars here migrated to southwards, to the Dobruja province. Crimean Tatars immigrated to the Ottoman Empire, where they were welcomed as fellow Muslims, according to ancient Crimean Tatar traditions, marriage between relatives, even very distant ones, has always been strictly prohibited, unlike the local population of Anatolia. The ones who lived in a manner in adjacent villages, such as the ones around Eskişehir region, were able to maintain their ethnic identity. An excerpt from Crimean Tatar exile literature is as follows, The angry, the old Çatırdağ, distressed and worried, Where are the Tatars going. This pattern of immigration contributed to the severing of kinship ties, the Crimean Tatars participated in the building of the new Turkish Republic, as well as the formation of the core Turkish identity. People of Crimean Tatar descent in Turkey number around 1 million, the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey established several ethnic associations. On May 18,1944, the Soviet government deported the Crimean Tatars who were left in Crimea to Central Asia, after 1989, nearly 300,000 Tatars were able to return to Crimea from their places of deportation. Their return was met the opposition of the rest population of Crimea. Another roughly 270,000 Crimean Tatars remain in Uzbekistan and other parts of the former Soviet Union and this population is best considered as an exiled community rather than a diaspora, although they might develop into a diaspora if their exile is prolonged
Crimean Tatar diaspora
–
History
21.
Crimean Tatars in Bulgaria
–
After 1241, the year of the earliest recorded Tatar invasion of Bulgaria, the Second Bulgarian Empire maintained constant political contacts with the Tatars. In this early period, Tatar was not an ethnonym but a term for the armies of Genghis Khan’s successors. From the late 14th to the late 15th century, several groups of Tatars settled in the Bulgarian territory for various reasons, the settlers, probably nomads, eventually adopted a sedentary way of life and, in some areas, survived as compact communities for more than two centuries. The records show that the Tatars were inclined to raid villages and resist authority, the Tatars were assigned special messenger and military missions, and were incorporated into the Ottoman military administration. This fact, along with their number, the closeness between the Tatar and local Ottoman Turkish languages, and the common religion, led to the eventual loss of group Tatar identity. Unlike the situation in Thrace, the composition of Dobruja attests to the existence of a large Tatar community from the 15th to the 20th century. The Ottoman conquest of Bessarabia created conditions for the constant migration of Tatars from the Northern Black Sea region to Dobruja in the 1530s and 1540s. The 18th century saw the beginning of a change in the ethnic composition of the Northern Black Sea region as a result of Russian invasions. The Tatars who live in Bulgaria today are descended precisely from those immigrants, the largest wave of emigration was during and after the Crimean War. Of the approximately 230,000 Tatars who emigrated from 1854 to 1862, the majority dispersed in Northern Bulgaria especially in Dobruja, on the plains near the Danube River and in the area of Vidin. The mass settlement of Tatars in the Bulgarian lands led to the establishment of relations between Bulgarians and Tatars. Contrary to the Circassian immigration, Bulgarian National Revival society did not disapprove of the settlement of Tatars, the Tatars themselves were in a state of ethnopsychological shock but, in all likelihood thanks to their nomadic past, succeeded in adapting to the alien world. The development of the Tatar group and its identity after Bulgaria’s 1878 Liberation was determined by political factors, on the one hand, the host country changed. This came as another ethnopsychological shock to the Tatars and prompted a new wave of emigration, the second factor of ethnic changes was the nascent Crimean Tatar national renaissance and differentiation in the late 19th and early 20th century. Notably, the idea of the Tatars developed at a time when the majority of them were beyond the boundaries of their historical homeland. Other factors also accounted for the specificity of each period in the history of the Tatars in Bulgaria, in the post-Liberation period, there were generally no major changes in the Tatar group - there was no large-scale emigration, and the process of ethnic consolidation continued. The period from the Treaty of Neuilly to the Treaty of Craiova saw a number of radical changes, Southern Dobruja, home to two-thirds of Bulgaria’s Tatar population, was annexed to Romania. The Tatars found themselves in a state with large Tatar populations around Medgidia, Mangalia, on the other hand, the start of this period coincided with a short-lived Tatar nation-state in the Crimea and the constitution of the Turkish secular state
Crimean Tatars in Bulgaria
–
History
22.
Crimean Tatars in Romania
–
Tatars, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, have been present on the territory of todays Romania since the 13th century. According to the 2011 census,20,464 people declared their nationality as Tatar and they are the main factor of Islam in Romania. The roots of the Crimean Tatar community in Romania began with the Cuman migration in the 10th century, even before the Cumans arrived, other Turkic people like the Huns and the Bulgars settled in this region. The Tatars first reached the mouths of the Danube in the century at the height of the power of the Golden Horde. In 1241, under the leadership of Kadan, the Tatars crossed the Danube, the region was probably not under the direct rule of the Horde, but rather, a vassal of the Bakhchisaray Khan. It is known from Arab sources that at the end of the 13th century, another Arab scholar, Ibn Battuta, who passed through the region in 1330–31, talks about Baba Saltuk as the southernmost town of the Tatars. The Golden Horde began to lose its influence after the wars of 1352-1359 and at the time, in the 14th and 15th centuries the Ottoman Empire colonized Dobruja with Nogais from Bucak. Between 1593 and 1595 Tatars from Nogai and Bucak were also settled to Dobruja, toward the end of the 16th century, about 30,000 Nogai Tatars from the Budjak were brought to Dobruja. After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783 Crimean Tatars began emigrating to the Ottoman coastal provinces of Dobruja, from 1783 to 1853 tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars and Nogais emigrated to the Rusçuk region which subsequently became known as Little Tartary. Following the Russian conquest of 1812, Nogais from Bucak also immigrated to Dobruja, Tatars who settled in Dobruja before the great exodus of 1860 were known as Kabail. They formed the Kabail Tatar squadron in the Nizam-ı Cedid army of sultan Selim III, Tatars together with Albanians served as gendarmes, who were held in high esteem by the Ottomans and received special tax privileges. The Ottomans additionally accorded a degree of autonomy for the Tatars who were allowed governance by their own kaymakam. The Giray dynasty multiplied in Dobruja and maintained their respected position, a Dobrujan Tatar, Kara Hussein, was responsible for the destruction of the Janissary corps on orders from Sultan Mahmut II. From 1877-1878 it is estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated from Dobruja to Anatolia, which continued in smaller numbers until World War I. Other reasons included the 1899 famine in Dobruja, a series of laws from 1880 to 1885 regarding confiscation of Tatar and Turkish land, a unique Crimean Tatar national identity in Dobruja began to emerge in the last quarter of the 19th century. When Ismail Gasprinski, considered by many to be the father of Crimean Tatar nationalism, however, it was the poet Mehmet Niyazi who is most credited with spreading nationalist ideas among the Tatars of Dobruja. In the wake of the fall of the Crimean Tatar government, many of these refugees were inspired to join the Prometheus movement in Europe which aimed for the independence of Soviet nationalities. During this period Mustecip Hacı Fazıl was the leader of community in Dobruja, in 1918, when he was 19 he went to Crimea to teach in Tatar schools and published the first Tatar journal in Dobruja, Emel from 1930 to 1940
Crimean Tatars in Romania
–
Map of Romania with
Northern Dobruja highlighted in orange and Bulgaria with
Southern Dobruja highlighted in yellow.
23.
Crimean Tatars in the United States
–
Crimean Tatars constituted the majority of Crimeas population from the time of its ethnogenesis until mid-19th century, and the relative largest ethnic population until the end of 19th century. Starting in 1967, some were allowed to return to Crimea, today, Crimean Tatars constitute approximately 12% of the population of Crimea. There remains a large diaspora of Crimean Tatars in Turkey and Uzbekistan, in the latest Ukrainian census,248,200 Ukrainian citizens identified themselves as Crimean Tatars with 98% of them living in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. An additional 1,800 citizens live in the city of Sevastopol, also on the Crimean peninsula, about 150,000 remain in exile in Central Asia, mainly in Uzbekistan. The official number of Crimean Tatars in Turkey is 150,000 with some Crimean Tatar activists estimating a figure as high as 6 million. The activists reached this number by taking one million Tatar immigrants to Turkey as a starting point, Crimean Tatars in Turkey mostly live in Eskişehir Province, descendants of those who emigrated in the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Dobruja region straddling Romania and Bulgaria, there are more than 27,000 Crimean Tatars,24,000 on the Romanian side, and 3,000 on the Bulgarian side. However, the Cuman language is considered the ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages like Crimean Gothic. Another theory suggests Crimean Tatars trace their origins to the waves of ancient people Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Italians and Armenians. Goths, Gypsies, and Greeks were assumed to be some of the ancestors of the Tatars on the coast of Crimea, while there were mixed hill Tatars, Italians and Greeks mixed with the coastal Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate, the Turkic-speaking population of the Crimea had mostly adopted Islam already in the 14th century, following the conversion of Ozbeg Khan of the Golden Horde. Until the beginning of the 18th century, Crimean Tatars were known for frequent, at some periods almost annual, devastating raids into Ukraine and Russia. For a long time, until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive trade with the Ottoman Empire. One of the most important trading ports and slave markets was Kefe, slaves and freedmen formed approximately 75% of the Crimean population. Some researchers estimate that altogether up to 3 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate, the Don Cossacks and Kalmyk Mongols also managed to raid Crimean Tatars land. The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in the Russo-Turkish War took place during the reign of Peter the Great, however, Cossack raids continued after that time, Ottoman Grand Vizier complained to the Russian consul about raids to Crimea and Özi in 1761. In 1769 one last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War, after a period of political unrest in Crimea, Russia violated the treaty and annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. After the annexation, the wealthier Tatars, who had exported wheat, meat, fish and wine to other parts of the Black Sea, began to be expelled, further expulsions followed in 1812 for fear of the reliability of the Tatars in the face of Napoleons advance
Crimean Tatars in the United States
–
Mamai
Crimean Tatars in the United States
–
Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu
Crimean Tatars in the United States
–
Juma Mosque
Crimean Tatars in the United States
–
The
Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1566, Crimean Tatars as vanguard, a
Persian style miniature
24.
Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan
–
Crimean Tatars constituted the majority of Crimeas population from the time of its ethnogenesis until mid-19th century, and the relative largest ethnic population until the end of 19th century. Starting in 1967, some were allowed to return to Crimea, today, Crimean Tatars constitute approximately 12% of the population of Crimea. There remains a large diaspora of Crimean Tatars in Turkey and Uzbekistan, in the latest Ukrainian census,248,200 Ukrainian citizens identified themselves as Crimean Tatars with 98% of them living in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. An additional 1,800 citizens live in the city of Sevastopol, also on the Crimean peninsula, about 150,000 remain in exile in Central Asia, mainly in Uzbekistan. The official number of Crimean Tatars in Turkey is 150,000 with some Crimean Tatar activists estimating a figure as high as 6 million. The activists reached this number by taking one million Tatar immigrants to Turkey as a starting point, Crimean Tatars in Turkey mostly live in Eskişehir Province, descendants of those who emigrated in the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Dobruja region straddling Romania and Bulgaria, there are more than 27,000 Crimean Tatars,24,000 on the Romanian side, and 3,000 on the Bulgarian side. However, the Cuman language is considered the ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages like Crimean Gothic. Another theory suggests Crimean Tatars trace their origins to the waves of ancient people Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Italians and Armenians. Goths, Gypsies, and Greeks were assumed to be some of the ancestors of the Tatars on the coast of Crimea, while there were mixed hill Tatars, Italians and Greeks mixed with the coastal Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate, the Turkic-speaking population of the Crimea had mostly adopted Islam already in the 14th century, following the conversion of Ozbeg Khan of the Golden Horde. Until the beginning of the 18th century, Crimean Tatars were known for frequent, at some periods almost annual, devastating raids into Ukraine and Russia. For a long time, until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive trade with the Ottoman Empire. One of the most important trading ports and slave markets was Kefe, slaves and freedmen formed approximately 75% of the Crimean population. Some researchers estimate that altogether up to 3 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate, the Don Cossacks and Kalmyk Mongols also managed to raid Crimean Tatars land. The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in the Russo-Turkish War took place during the reign of Peter the Great, however, Cossack raids continued after that time, Ottoman Grand Vizier complained to the Russian consul about raids to Crimea and Özi in 1761. In 1769 one last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War, after a period of political unrest in Crimea, Russia violated the treaty and annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. After the annexation, the wealthier Tatars, who had exported wheat, meat, fish and wine to other parts of the Black Sea, began to be expelled, further expulsions followed in 1812 for fear of the reliability of the Tatars in the face of Napoleons advance
Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan
–
Mamai
Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan
–
Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu
Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan
–
Juma Mosque
Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan
–
The
Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1566, Crimean Tatars as vanguard, a
Persian style miniature
25.
Religion in Ukraine
–
Religious in Ukraine is diverse, with a majority of the population adhering to Christianity. According to a 2015 Sociology poll by Razumkov Centre, SOCIS, Rating, of these Christians,73. 77% are Eastern Orthodox,8. 11% are Greek Catholics,0. 8% are Latin Rite Catholics and a further 0. 9% are Protestants. As of 2015,6. 11% of the population does not claim a religious affiliation, Tatar Islam represents a significant part of the population in Crimea, which prior 2014 was a subject of Ukraine, but has been since that year a subject of Russia. In pre-historic times and in the early Middle Ages, the territories of present-day Ukraine supported different tribes practising their traditional pagan religions, byzantine-rite Christianity first became prominent about the turn of the first millennium. In the 10th century the state of Kievan Rus came increasingly under the cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire. The first recorded Rus convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, the Princess Saint Olga, in the 980s, according to tradition, Olgas grandson, Knyaz Vladimir baptised his people in the Dnieper River. This began a history of the dominance of the Eastern Orthodoxy in Ruthenia. Domination of Little Russia by Moscow eventually led to the decline of Uniate Catholicism in Tsarist-controlled Ukraine, Judaism has existed in the Ukrainian lands for approximately 2000 years, Jewish traders appeared in Greek colonies. After the 7th century Judaism influenced the neighbouring Khazar Khaganate, from the 13th century Ashkenazi Jewish presence in Ukraine increased significantly. In the 18th century a new teaching of Judaism originated and became established in the Ukrainian lands - Hasidism, the Golden Horde and the Sunni Ottoman Empire brought Islam to their subject territories in present-day Ukraine. Crimean Tatars accepted Islam as the religion of the Golden Horde. Only a small fraction of people remained official church-goers in that period, according to 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 83. 8% of the total Ukrainian population are Christians, or 38 million. And about 76. 7% of the total Ukrainian population are Eastern Orthodox Christians, more than 90 percent of religiously active citizens were Christians, the majority Orthodox. Religious practice was generally stronger in the part of the country due to Western Ukraine being the spiritual centre of the Ukrainian nation. The different confessions in Ukrainian society were estimated by the nationwide survey, the results differ from the official number of registered religious groups. The Russian Orthodox church has, since the times of the Russian Empire,62.5 percent stated they are not religious or did not clearly identified their church allegiance. Affiliation with either or both of the assemblies is voluntary, in 2007, the council accounted for representatives of 19 organizations, while in 2013, only 18. The Council of Christian Churches accounted for representatives from 9 churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has 35 eparchies and 9,049 communities, most of which were located in the central, southern, and eastern oblasts
Religion in Ukraine
–
Saint Sophia's Cathedral, Kiev is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Religion in Ukraine
–
Orthodox priest in
Donetsk
Religion in Ukraine
–
St Volodymyr's Cathedral in
Kiev.
Religion in Ukraine
–
Saint Andrew's Church of Kiev
26.
Hanafi
–
The Hanafi school is one of the four religious Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. It is named after the scholar Abū Ḥanīfa an-Nu‘man ibn Thābit, the other major schools of Sharia in Sunni Islam are Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali. Hanafi is the fiqh with the largest number of followers among Sunni Muslims and it is predominant in the countries that were once part of the historic Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire and Sultanates of Turkic rulers in the Indian subcontinent, northwest China and Central Asia. Thus, the Hanafi school came to be known as the Kufan or Iraqi school in earlier times. Ali and Abdullah, son of Masud formed much of the base of the school, as well as other such as Muhammad al-Baqir, Jafar al-Sadiq. Many jurists and historians had lived in Kufa including one of Abu Hanifas main teachers, in the early history of Islam, Hanafi doctrine was not fully compiled. The fiqh was fully compiled and documented in the 11th century, the Abbasids patronized the Hanafi school from the 10th century onwards. The Seljuk Turkish dynasties of 11th and 12th centuries, followed by Ottomans adopted Hanafi fiqh, the Turkic expansion spread Hanafi fiqh through Central Asia and into South Asia, with the establishment of Seljuk Empire, Timurid dynasty, Khanates and Delhi Sultanate. Nurit Tsafrir, The History of an Islamic School of Law, the Second Formation of Islamic Law, The Ḥanafī School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Hanafi
Hanafi
–
Suleiman the Magnificent, known in the East as "The Lawgiver" for his complete reconstruction of the
Ottoman legal system according to Hanafi law.
Hanafi
–
The sixth Mughal Emperor
Aurangzeb reading Quran, in early 18th century. He commissioned the
Fatawa-e-Alamgiri that expanded
Islamic law within
Hanafi jurisprudence boundaries. Composed by 500
Medina,
Iraqi and
Mughal Muslim scholars, the fatwa created social stratification of Muslims, where one's status determined the person's legal rights and unequal treatment under Islamic law.
27.
History of Crimea
–
The recorded history of the Crimean Peninsula, historically known as the Tauric Chersonese, begins around the 5th century BC when several Greek colonies were established along its coast. In the 13th century, some cities were controlled by the Venetians. In the medieval period, it was acquired partly by Kievan Rus and they were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, which conquered the coastal areas as well, in the 15th to 18th centuries. After two centuries of conflict, the Russian fleet had destroyed the Ottoman navy and the Russian army had inflicted heavy defeats on the Ottoman land forces, the ensuing Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca forced the Sublime Porte to recognize the Tatars of the Crimea as politically independent. Catherine the Greats incorporation of the Crimea in 1783 from the defeated Ottoman Empire into the Russian Empire increased Russias power in the Black Sea area, the Crimea was the first Muslim territory to slip from the sultans suzerainty. The Ottoman Empires frontiers would gradually shrink for two centuries, and Russia would proceed to push her frontier westwards to the Dniester. In 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created and this republic was dissolved in 1945, and the Crimea became an oblast first of the Russian SSR and then the Ukrainian SSR. Since 1991 the territory was covered by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, during the 2014 Crimean crisis, the peninsula was taken over by pro-Russian forces and a referendum on whether to join Russia was held. Shortly after the result in favour of joining Russia was announced, archaeological evidence of human settlement in Crimea dates back to the Middle Paleolithic. Neanderthal remains found at Kiyik-Koba Cave have been dated to about 80,000 BP, late Neanderthal occupations have also been found at Starosele and Buran Kaya III. Archaeologists have found some of the earliest anatomically modern human remains in Europe in the Buran-Kaya caves in the Crimean Mountains, the fossils are about 32,000 years old, with the artifacts linked to the Gravettian culture. Human site occupation density was high in the Crimean region. Proponents of the Black Sea deluge hypothesis believe Crimea did not become a peninsula until relatively recently, in the early Iron Age, Crimea was settled by two groups, the Tauri in southern Crimea, and the East Iranian-speaking Scythians north of the Crimean Mountains. The origins of the Tauri, from which the name of Crimea as Taurica arose, are unclear. They are possibly a remnant of the Cimmerians displaced by the Scythians, alternative theories relate them to the Abkhaz and Adyghe peoples, which at that time resided much farther west than today. The Greeks, who established colonies in Crimea during the Archaic Period, regarded the Tauri as a savage. Even after centuries of Greek and Roman settlement, the Tauri were not pacified and continued to engage in piracy on the Black Sea, by the 2nd century BC they had become subject-allies of the Scythian king Scilurus. The Crimean Peninsula north of the Crimean Mountains was occupied by Scythian tribes and their center was the city of Scythian Neapolis on the outskirts of present-day Simferopol
History of Crimea
–
The Scythian treasure of
Kul-Oba, in eastern Crimea.
History of Crimea
–
Satellite image of the
Black Sea. The Crimean peninsula is situated in the north.
History of Crimea
–
Chersonesos in modern
Sevastopol
History of Crimea
–
The "Chersonesus Tauricus" of
Antiquity, shown on a map printed in
London, ca 1770
28.
Crimean Khanate
–
The Crimean Khanate was a Turkic vassal state of the Ottoman Empire from 1478 to 1774, the longest-lived of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde. The khanate was located in present-day Russia and Ukraine, Ottoman forces under Gedik Ahmet Pasha conquered all of the Crimean peninsula and joined it to the khanate in 1475. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Crimean Khanate was an important center of the slave trade. In 1774, it was released as a independent state, following the Russo-Turkish Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. English-speaking writers during the 18th and early 19th centuries often called the territory of the Crimean Khanate, the name Little Tartary distinguished the area from Tartary - those areas of central and northern Asia inhabited by Turkic peoples or Tatars. The Khanate included the Crimean peninsula and the adjacent steppes, mostly corresponding to the parts of South Ukraine between the Dnepr and the Donets. The Crimean Khanate originated in the early 15th century when certain clans of the Golden Horde Empire ceased their nomadic life in the Desht-i Kipchak and decided to make Crimea their yurt. At that time, the Golden Horde of the Mongol empire had governed the Crimean peninsula as an ulus since 1239, the local separatists invited a Genghisid contender for the Golden Horde throne, Hacı Giray, to become their khan. Hacı Giray accepted their invitation and traveled from exile in Lithuania and he warred for independence against the Horde from 1420 to 1441, in the end achieving success. But Hacı Giray then had to fight off internal rivals before he could ascend the throne of the khanate in 1449, the khanate included the Crimean Peninsula as well as the adjacent steppe. The sons of Hacı I Giray contended against each other to succeed him, the Ottomans intervened and installed one of the sons, Meñli I Giray, on the throne. Menli I Giray, took the imperial title Sovereign of Two Continents, in 1475 the Ottoman forces, under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, conquered the Greek Principality of Theodoro and the Genoese colonies at Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa. Thenceforth the khanate was a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman sultan enjoyed veto power over the selection of new Crimean khans. The Empire annexed the Crimean coast but recognized the legitimacy of the rule of the steppes. In 1475, the Ottomans imprisoned Meñli I Giray for three years for resisting the invasion, after returning from captivity in Constantinople, he accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, Ottoman sultans treated the khans more as allies than subjects, the khans continued to have a foreign policy independent from the Ottomans in the steppes of Little Tartary. The khans continued to mint coins and use their names in Friday prayers and they did not pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire, instead the Ottomans paid them in return for their services of providing skilled outriders and frontline cavalry in their campaigns. Later on, Crimea lost power in this relationship as the result of a crisis in 1523, during the reign of Meñlis successor and he died that year and beginning with his successor, from 1524 on, Crimean khans were appointed by the Sultan
Crimean Khanate
–
A Crimean Tatar cavalry archer.
Crimean Khanate
–
Flag
Crimean Khanate
–
A
Persian style miniature depicting the
Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1566, Crimean Tatars as vanguard.
Crimean Khanate
–
Crimean Tatar warrior fighting a
Polish soldier.
29.
Taurida Oblast
–
Taurida Oblast was an oblast of the Russian Empire. It roughly corresponded to most of the Crimean peninsula and parts of the Southern Ukraine regions and it was created in 1783 out territories of the Crimean Khanate. In 1796 it was merged into the Novorossiya Governorate, officially the oblast was created under the Imperial ukase of 13 February 1784 signed by Catherine the Great. The administrative seat of the region was declared the city of Simferopol, before 1784 Qarasuvbazar served as a temporary administrative center. The oblast was divided into seven counties, in 1787 Levkopol and Levkopol county were renamed into Feodosiya and Feodosiya county respectfully. In 1791 an administrative seat of Melitopol county was moved to Great Tokmak, on 12 December 1796 the oblast was liquidated, its territory was redivided into two counties and passed to the Novorossiysk Governorate. The city of Simferopol was changed to Aqmescit
Taurida Oblast
Taurida Oblast
–
Flag
Taurida Oblast
–
The linguistic composition of the
uyezds (povits) of Taurida in 1897. Ukrainians in yellow, Russians in red, Crimean Tatars in green, Germans in gray, Yiddish speakers in blue, and others in purple. (Ukrainian)
30.
Taurida Governorate
–
The Taurida Governorate or the Government of Taurida was an historical governorate of the Russian Empire. It included the Crimean Peninsula and the mainland between the lower Dnieper River and the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. It was formed after the Taurida Oblast was abolished in 1802 in the course of Paul Is administrative reform of the South-Western territories that had been annexed from the Crimean Khanate, the governorates centre was the city of Simferopol. The province was named after the ancient Greek name of Crimea - Taurida, later were created Yalta and Berdyansk counties. In 1804-29 there also existed the separate city of Theodosia and in 1914 Yalta county became the city of Yalta. The governorate bordered Yekaterinoslav Governorate and Kherson Governorate to its north, the Strait of Kerch bordered the Free lands of the Don Cossacks. It has natural borders, being surrounded by the waters of the Black Sea, the mainland and the peninsular parts of the region differ significantly. The total area of the governorate was 63, 538km² of which the mainland portion consisted of 38, the population of the whole region was 1,634,700 in 1906. Major urban centres were Simferopol, Sevastopol, Theodosia, Bakhchisaray, and Yalta in Crimea, and Aleshki, Berdyansk, and Melitopol on the mainland. The Imperial census of 1897 found that the population of the governorate consisted of 1,447,790, in 1897289,316 people lived in the cities, constituting 19. 98% of the total population. The ethnicities of the population were Russians, Tatars, and Jews. By the Imperial census of 1897 there were around 1,100,000 Eastern Orthodox followers, just over 30,000 Catholic, around 70,000 Protestant Christians, only 13% of population were Muslims who mainly lived in the peninsular portion of the guberniya, Crimea itself. They were the force that after the next 10 years established the first Muslim democratic state of the Crimean Peoples Republic. Beside the Magometians and Jews there were eight other non-Christian followers in the whole guberniya. For further history see, History of Crimea In 1783, the Khanate of Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great’s Russia, soon after this the Taurida Oblast was established. During the reign of Paul I the oblast was abolished, and it was a part of the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution of 1918. Following the 1917 October Revolution, the ethnic Tatar government proclaimed the Crimean Peoples Republic on December 13,1917, the Tatar republic covered the peninsular portion of the former governorate, while its northern counties ended up temporarily under jurisdiction of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. However neither Ukraine nor the Crimea managed to hold on to their territories and were overrun by Bolshevik Red Guards in the winter of 1917-18
Taurida Governorate
Taurida Governorate
–
Flag
Taurida Governorate
–
The linguistic composition of the
uyezds (povits) of Taurida in 1897. Ukrainians in yellow, Russians in red, Crimean Tatars in green, Germans in gray, Yiddish speakers in blue, and others in purple. (Ukrainian)
31.
Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Russian SFSR located in the Crimean Peninsula. It was created on October 18,1921 as the Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic of the Russian SFSR and it was renamed the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on December 5,1936 by the VIII Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of the USSR. Crimea was under de facto control of Nazi Germany from September 1942 to October 1943, alfred Frauenfeld was appointed as General Commissar. The constitutional rights of the forcibly-resettled Tatars were restored with a decree dated September 5,1967, with the establishment of autonomous republic it was divided into seven okrugs from 1921 to 1923
Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Flag
32.
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
–
The state-organized removal is known as the Sürgünlik in Crimean Tatar. A total of more than 230,000 people were deported and this included the entire ethnic Crimean Tatar population, at the time about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula, as well as smaller numbers of ethnic Greeks and Bulgarians. A large number of deportees died from starvation or disease as a result of deportation. It is considered to be a case of ethnic cleansing, for a long time Crimean Tatars and Soviet dissidents called for recognition of the genocide of Crimean Tatars. During Destalinization the deportation was denounced by the Soviet government, nevertheless, in November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the deportation as a crime against humanity of the highest degree. On 21 April 2014, President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree that rehabilitated Crimean Tatars and other ethnicities who suffered from Stalinist repressions in Crimea. On November 12,2015 parliament of Ukraine adopted a resolution recognizing the event as a genocide, however, under Joseph Stalin, the official policy of the Soviet government turned to one of repression. However, between 1923 and 1938, the Crimean Tatar population had increased from 150,000 to over 218,000 people. In September 1941 the German 11th Army and troops from the Romanian Third Army and Fourth Army entered the Crimean Peninsula, by November, they controlled the entire peninsula except for the city of Sevastopol. After a siege lasting for months, Sevastopol also fell and the peninsula was occupied by Army Group A with the 17th Army, with the fall of the peninsula to the Germans, the resistance activity of the Soviet partisans, led by A. N. Martynov and organized by the NKVD and activists of the Communist Party began, however, Crimean Tatars were banned from joining this movement. Historian J. Otto Pohl has accused Mokrousov and Martynov of incompetence, some Crimean Tatar communists were forced out of their refuges in woodlands by the partisans, which resulted in their execution by the occupying German forces. The partisans specifically targeted and destroyed Crimean Tatar villages, according to Pohl, Crimean Tatar villages were also pillaged for food by the partisans. Overall, the number of Crimean Tatar men who joined these battalions was around 20,000 The motivations of Crimean Tatar men who joined these battalions varied, some were members of the defeated 51st Army and had been taken as prisoners of war by the German Army. They joined the battalions to avoid the conditions in the POW camps in Simferopol and Mykolaiv. Some aimed to protect their villages from the activities of Soviet partisans, however, 15% of the adult male Crimean Tatar population remained active in the ranks of the Red Army, and some Crimean Tatars were taken to Germany as forced laborers, called Ostarbeiter. According to Pohl, the aim of the Soviet government was the ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars and this constituted the continuation of a policy practiced earlier in the Caucasus, whereby an ethnic group was selected to be deported and then charges of treason were fabricated. Another motivation, according to Pohl, was their close historical and cultural ties with Turkey
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
–
Location of the Arabat Spit
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
–
Monument to the Forced Deportation of Crimean Tatars in
Sudak.
33.
Republic of Crimea
–
The Republic of Crimea is a federal subject of Russia that is located on the Crimean Peninsula. It has a population of 1,891, 465 , Russia then annexed the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects of Russia. Russia disputes this, citing the right of the people of Crimea to self-determination, in 1792, under the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, Crimea was ceded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Jassy, which formally ended the Russo-Turkish war of 1787-1792. From 1802, it constituted a part of the Taurida Governorate of the Russian Empire until the collapse thereof in 1917. The Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to Crimea in the mid-1980s under perestroika, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine, which led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised, Crimean Tatars began returning from exile and resettling in Crimea. Ukraine restored Crimeas autonomous status in 1991, the document specifically mentioned Kosovo as a precedent in the lead part. The available choices did not include keeping the status quo of Crimea, on 16 March 2014, according to statements of organizers of Crimean status referendum, a large majority voted in favour of independence of Crimea from Ukraine and joining Russia as a federal subject. The referendum was not recognized by most of the international community, the BBC reported that most of the Crimean Tatars that they interviewed were boycotting the vote. Reports from the UN criticised the circumstances surrounding the referendum, especially the presence of paramilitaries, self-defence groups, the European Union, Canada, Japan and the United States condemned the vote as illegal. After the referendum, Crimean lawmakers formally voted both to secede from Ukraine and applied for their admission into Russia, the Sevastopol City Council, however, requested the ports separate admission as a federal city. On 18 March 2014, the self-proclaimed independent Republic of Crimea signed a treaty of accession to the Russian Federation, the accession was only recognised internationally by a few states with most regarding the action as illegal. Though Ukraine refused to accept the annexation, the Ukrainian military began to withdraw from Crimea on 19 March. On 3 April 2014, Moscow sent a note to Ukraine on terminating the actions of agreements concerning the deployment of the Russian Federations Black Sea Fleet on the territory of Ukraine. As part of the agreements, Russia paid the Ukrainian government $530 million annually for the base, the Kremlin stated that as the base is no longer located in Ukraine, there were no legal grounds for the discount to be continued. On 3 April 2014, Crimea and the city of Sevastopol became part of Russias Southern Military District, on 11 April 2014, the parliament of Crimea approved a new constitution, with 88 out of 100 lawmakers voting in favor of its adoption. The constitution ensures the Republic of Crimea as a state within the Russian Federation and says that its territory is united. The Crimean parliament will become smaller and have 75 members instead of current 100, on 12 April 2014, the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea, adopted at the session of the State Council on 11 April entered into legal force
Republic of Crimea
–
Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet "About the transfer of the Crimean Oblast", 1954
Republic of Crimea
Republic of Crimea
–
Sevastopol, Crimea, 9 May 2014
Republic of Crimea
–
Dmitry Medvedev and
Crimean PM Aksyonov meeting Crimean school children in
Simferopol, 31 March 2014
34.
Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People
–
The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is the single highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars in period between sessions of the Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar People. The Mejlis is an institution of the European Unions Platform of European Memory. The Mejlis was outlawed by Russia in 2016 and listed as an extremist organization after Russia had gained control of Crimea after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. H On June 30,1991, the Mejlis declared its sovereignty over the Crimean Tatars, also, the Crimean Tatars elected 14 Crimean Tatar Deputies to the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea. These 14 deputies were the first Crimean Tatar representatives in the Crimean Parliament in over 50 years, during the 1998 parliamentary elections members of the Mejlis joined the Rukh election list. During the 2002,2006, and 2007 parliamentary elections, members of the Mejlis joined the Our Ukraine election list, Crimean Tatar organizations urged President Viktor Yanukovych to protect Crimeas indigenous people from discrimination. During the 2012 parliamentary elections, members of the Mejlis joined the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland election list, since 2012, Mejlis is member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Russia then officially annexed Crimea late March 2014, after the annexation most Mejlis members did not cooperated with the new Russian-Crimean authorities. Of the six members that did one became deputy Crimean parliament speaker and another head of the Crimean state committee for interethnic relations, on 3 July 2014 it was announced that for the first time Mejlis would hold its session outside of Crimea in Henichesk. Russian law enforcement seized the Mejlis building in Simferopol on 20 September 2014, the Mejlis was labeled an extremist organisation by Russian authorities in Crimea and banned by the Russian-appointed supreme court there on 26 April 2016. The Mejlis denied involvement in these events, amnesty International stated the ban “demolishes one of the few remaining rights of a minority that Russia must protect instead of persecute”. Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis Nariman Dzhelal vowed that the organization would try to continue its work despite the ban, saying “it will continue working in Ukraine, Umerov was then charged with calling for Russias borders to be changed, a charge punishable up to five years in jail. The Supreme Court of Russia upheld the ban on 29 September 2016, the Mejlis is contesting this ban in the European Court of Human Rights. On 1 October 2016 Head of the Republic of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov explained that Natalia Poklonskaya accused Mejlis in energy blockade through diversion, the same day Aksyonovs Vice-Prime Minister Dmitry Polonsky claimed that Mejlis is a puppet organization of the United States Department of State. By late December 2016 nine Mejlis members were in mainland Ukraine, in Russia, one was imprisoned, and more than 10 had been charged with criminal and administrative offences in Crimea. Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people consists of 33 members including the Mejlis chair person, Simferopol is the location of Mejlis. The status of Mejlis was legalized by the Presidential decree of May 18,1999 About the council of representatives of Crimean Tatar people. In 2010, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych reformed the council cutting it almost in half, from its foundation in 1991 until 2013 its chairman was Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu
Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People
–
Autonomous Republic
of Crimea /
Republic of Crimea
35.
Turkic peoples
–
The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethnic groups that live in central, eastern, northern, and western Asia as well as parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family and they share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The first known mention of the term Turk applied to a Turkic group was in reference to the Göktürks in the 6th century, a letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as the Great Turk Khan. The Orhun inscriptions use the terms Turk and Turuk and this includes Chinese records Spring and Autumn Annals referring to a neighbouring people as Beidi. During the first century CE, Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. There are references to certain groups in antiquity whose names could be the form of Türk/Türük such as Togarma, Turukha/Turuška, Turukku. But the information gap is so substantial that we cannot firmly connect these ancient people to the modern Turks, turkologist András Róna-Tas posits that the term Turk could be rooted in the East Iranian Saka language or in Turkic. This etymological concept is related to Old Turkic word stems tür, türi-, törü. The earliest Turkic-speaking peoples identifiable in Chinese sources are the Dingling, Gekun, the Chinese Book of Zhou presents an etymology of the name Turk as derived from helmet, explaining that taken this name refers to the shape of the Altai Mountains. During the Middle Ages, various Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe were subsumed under the identity of the Scythians, between 400 CE and the 16th century, Byzantine sources use the name Σκύθαι in reference to twelve different Turkic peoples. However, the usage of the term is based on the linguistic classification in order to avoid any political sense. In short, the term Türki can be used for Türk or vice versa and it is generally agreed that the first Turkic people lived in a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia, with the majority of them living in China historically. Historically they were established after the 6th century BCE, the earliest separate Turkic peoples appeared on the peripheries of the late Xiongnu confederation about 200 BCE. Turkic people may be related to the Xiongnu, Dingling and Tiele people, according to the Book of Wei, the Tiele people were the remnants of the Chidi, the red Di people competing with the Jin in the Spring and Autumn period. Turkic tribes such as the Khazars and Pechenegs probably lived as nomads for many years before establishing the Turkic Khaganate or Göktürk Empire in the 6th century and these were herdsmen and nobles who were searching for new pastures and wealth. The first mention of Turks was in a Chinese text that mentioned trade between Turk tribes and the Sogdians along the Silk Road, the first recorded use of Turk as a political name appears as a 6th-century reference to the word pronounced in Modern Chinese as Tujue. The Ashina clan migrated from Li-jien to the Juan Juan seeking inclusion in their confederacy, the tribe were famed metalsmiths and were granted land near a mountain quarry which looked like a helmet, from which they were said to have gotten their name 突厥. A century later their power had increased such that they conquered the Juan Juan, Turkic peoples originally used their own alphabets, like Orkhon and Yenisey runiforms, and later the Uyghur alphabet
Turkic peoples
–
Map from Kashgari's Diwan, showing the distribution of Turkic tribes.
Turkic peoples
–
Turkic states shown in red
Turkic peoples
–
History of the Turkic peoples Pre-14th century
Turkic peoples
–
The top of Belukha in the
Altay Mountains in Mongolia is shown here. The mountain range is thought to be the birthplace of the Turkic people.
36.
Crimean Peninsula
–
The peninsula is located south of the Ukrainian region of Kherson and west of the Russian region of Kuban. It is connected to Kherson Oblast by the Isthmus of Perekop and is separated from Kuban by the Strait of Kerch, the Arabat Spit is located to the northeast, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of lagoons named Sivash from the Sea of Azov. Crimea has historically been at the boundary between the world and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Crimea and adjacent territories were united in the Crimean Khanate during the 15th to 18th century, in 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. It became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within newly independent Ukraine in 1991, with Sevastopol having its own administration, within Ukraine, since 1997, after the Peace and Friendship Treaty signed by Russia and Ukraine, Crimea hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet naval base in Sevastopol. The ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet and its facilities were divided between Russias Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian Naval Forces, the two navies shared some of the citys harbours and piers, while others were demilitarised or used by either country. Sevastopol remained the location of the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters with the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters also based in the city, most of the international community does not recognize the annexation and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Russia currently administers the peninsula as two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine continues to assert its right over the peninsula, the classical name Tauris or Taurica is from the Greek Ταυρική, after the peninsulas Scytho-Cimmerian inhabitants, the Tauri. In English usage since the modern period the Crimean Khanate is referred to as Crim Tartary. The Italian form Crimea also becomes current during the 18th century, the omission of the definite article in English became common during the later 20th century. The name Crimea follows the Italian form from the Crimean Tatar name for the city Qırım which served as a capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde, the name of the capital was extended to the entire peninsula at some point during Ottoman suzerainty. The origin of the word Qırım is uncertain, suggestions argued in various sources include, a corruption of Cimmerium. A derivation from the Turkic term qirum, from qori-, other suggestions that have not been supported by sources but are apparently based on similarity in sound include, a derivation from the Greek Cremnoi. However, he identifies the port, not in Crimea, no evidence has been identified that this name was ever in use for the peninsula. The classical name was revived in 1802 in the name of the Russian Taurida Governorate, in the 8th century BCE the Cimmerians migrated to the region and subsequently the Scythians as well it being the site of Greek colonies. The most important city was Chersonesos at the edge of todays Sevastopol, the Persian Achaemenid Empire expanded to Crimea. Later occupiers included the Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, the Byzantine Empire, Khazars, the Kipchaks, the Golden Horde, consideration of the succeeding residents of the peninsula by their linguistic grouping is also of relevance
Crimean Peninsula
–
Ruins of ancient Greek colony of
Chersonesos
Crimean Peninsula
–
Satellite image of the Crimean peninsula
Crimean Peninsula
–
Swallow's Nest, built in 1912 for oil millionaire Baron von Steingel, a landmark of Crimea
Crimean Peninsula
–
Armenian
monastery of the Holy Cross (Սուրբ Խաչ), established in 1358
37.
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union
–
The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments. It elected the Presidium serving as the head of state of the Soviet Union, formed the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Court. The administrative units of the type would send in the same number of members regardless of their size or population. Under the Soviet constitutions of 1936 and 1977, the Supreme Soviet was imbued with great lawmaking powers, after 1989 it consisted of 542 deputies. The meetings of the body were more frequent, from six to eight months a year. The presidium carried out the operations of the Supreme Soviet when it was not in session. Beside the Supreme Council, in the Soviet Union supreme councils also existed in each of union, the supreme councils of republican level also were headed by their presidiums, but all those councils consisted of one chamber. All republics in the Soviet Union were soviet, yet 15 were of union level, while the other, autonomous republics, were subordinated to the union republics
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union
–
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union Верховный Совет СССР
38.
Ethnic cleansing
–
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous. The forces applied may be forms of forced migration, intimidation, as well as mass murder. An antecedent to the term is the Greek word andrapodismos, which was used in ancient texts to describe atrocities that accompanied Alexander the Greats conquest of Thebes in 335 BC. In the early 1900s, regional variants of the term could be found among the Czechs, the Poles, the French, a 1913 Carnegie Endowment report condemning the actions of all participants in the Balkan Wars contained various new terms to describe brutalities committed toward ethnic groups. During World War II, the euphemism čišćenje terena was used by the Croatian Ustaše to describe military actions in which non-Croats were purposely killed or otherwise uprooted from their homes. Viktor Gutić, a senior Ustaše leader, was one of the first Croatian nationalists on record to use the term as a euphemism for committing atrocities against Serbs. This process was repeated on a larger scale in 1939–41. During The Holocaust, Nazi Germany pursued a policy of ensuring that Europe was cleansed of Jews, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the term cleansing was used in Israeli military documents dating to the 1948 Israeli–Arab war, referring to the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. In the 1980s, the Soviets used the term ethnic cleansing to describe the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh. At around the time, the Yugoslav media used it to describe what they alleged was an Albanian nationalist plot to force all Serbs to leave Kosovo. It was widely popularized by the Western media during the Bosnian War, the first recorded mention of its use in the Western media can be traced back to an article in The New York Times dated 15 April 1992, in a quote by an anonymous Western diplomat. Those practices constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes, furthermore, such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention. As a category, ethnic cleansing encompasses a continuum or spectrum of policies, in the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, thnic cleansing defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation, at the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory. The term ethnic cleansing has frequently employed to refer to the events in Bosnia. General Assembly resolution 47/121 referred in its Preamble to the abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing and it can only be a form of genocide within the meaning of the Convention, if it corresponds to or falls within one of the categories of acts prohibited by Article II of the Convention. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide, there is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing. There are however situations, such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II, timothy V. Waters argues that if similar circumstances arise in the future, this precedent would allow the ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law
Ethnic cleansing
–
The
Chios Massacre refers to the slaughter of tens of thousands of Greeks on the island of
Chios by
Ottoman troops in 1822.
Ethnic cleansing
–
1941. Serbs who have been expelled from their homes, march out of town carrying large bundles.
Ethnic cleansing
–
The 12th anniversary exhibition of ethnic cleansing in
Abkhazia, which was held in
Tbilisi in 2005.
Ethnic cleansing
–
Mass expulsion of Poles in 1939 as part of the German ethnic cleansing of western Poland annexed to the Reich.
39.
Crimea
–
The peninsula is located south of the Ukrainian region of Kherson and west of the Russian region of Kuban. It is connected to Kherson Oblast by the Isthmus of Perekop and is separated from Kuban by the Strait of Kerch, the Arabat Spit is located to the northeast, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of lagoons named Sivash from the Sea of Azov. Crimea has historically been at the boundary between the world and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Crimea and adjacent territories were united in the Crimean Khanate during the 15th to 18th century, in 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. It became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within newly independent Ukraine in 1991, with Sevastopol having its own administration, within Ukraine, since 1997, after the Peace and Friendship Treaty signed by Russia and Ukraine, Crimea hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet naval base in Sevastopol. The ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet and its facilities were divided between Russias Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian Naval Forces, the two navies shared some of the citys harbours and piers, while others were demilitarised or used by either country. Sevastopol remained the location of the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters with the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters also based in the city, most of the international community does not recognize the annexation and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Russia currently administers the peninsula as two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine continues to assert its right over the peninsula, the classical name Tauris or Taurica is from the Greek Ταυρική, after the peninsulas Scytho-Cimmerian inhabitants, the Tauri. In English usage since the modern period the Crimean Khanate is referred to as Crim Tartary. The Italian form Crimea also becomes current during the 18th century, the omission of the definite article in English became common during the later 20th century. The name Crimea follows the Italian form from the Crimean Tatar name for the city Qırım which served as a capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde, the name of the capital was extended to the entire peninsula at some point during Ottoman suzerainty. The origin of the word Qırım is uncertain, suggestions argued in various sources include, a corruption of Cimmerium. A derivation from the Turkic term qirum, from qori-, other suggestions that have not been supported by sources but are apparently based on similarity in sound include, a derivation from the Greek Cremnoi. However, he identifies the port, not in Crimea, no evidence has been identified that this name was ever in use for the peninsula. The classical name was revived in 1802 in the name of the Russian Taurida Governorate, in the 8th century BCE the Cimmerians migrated to the region and subsequently the Scythians as well it being the site of Greek colonies. The most important city was Chersonesos at the edge of todays Sevastopol, the Persian Achaemenid Empire expanded to Crimea. Later occupiers included the Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, the Byzantine Empire, Khazars, the Kipchaks, the Golden Horde, consideration of the succeeding residents of the peninsula by their linguistic grouping is also of relevance
Crimea
–
Ruins of ancient Greek colony of
Chersonesos
Crimea
–
Satellite image of the Crimean peninsula
Crimea
–
Swallow's Nest, built in 1912 for oil millionaire Baron von Steingel, a landmark of Crimea
Crimea
–
Armenian
monastery of the Holy Cross (Սուրբ Խաչ), established in 1358
40.
Sevastopol
–
Sevastopol or traditionally Sebastopol is a city located in the southwestern region of the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. Sevastopol has a population of 393, 304 , concentrated mostly near the Bay of Sevastopol, the location and navigability of the citys harbours have made Sevastopol a strategically important port and naval base throughout history. The city has been a home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, although relatively small at 864 square kilometres, Sevastopols unique naval and maritime features provide the basis for a robust economy. The city enjoys mild winters and moderate summers, characteristics that help make it a popular seaside resort and tourist destination. The city is also an important centre for marine biology, in particular, the name of Sevastopolis was originally chosen in the same etymological trend as other cities in the Crimean peninsula that was intended to reflect its ancient Greek origins. It is a compound of the Greek adjective, σεβαστός and the noun πόλις, Σεβαστός is the traditional Greek equivalent of the Roman honorific Augustus, originally given to the first emperor of the Roman Empire, Augustus and later awarded as a title to his successors. Despite its Greek origin, the name itself is not from Ancient Greek times, the city was probably named after the Empress Catherine II of Russia who founded Sevastopol in 1783. She visited the city in 1787 accompanied by Joseph II, the Emperor of Austria, in the west of the city, there are well-preserved ruins of the ancient Greek port city of Chersonesos, founded in the 5th century BC by settlers from Heraclea Pontica. This name means peninsula, reflecting its location, and is not related to the ancient Greek name for the Crimean Peninsula as a whole. In English the current spelling has the pronunciation /səˈvæstəˌpoʊl/ or /ˌsɛvəˈstoʊpəl/, whilst the spelling has the pronunciation /sᵻˈbæstəpəl, -pɒl/ or /səˈbæstəˌpoʊl. Ukrainian, Севастополь, Russian, Севастополь, pronounced in Ukrainian, in the 6th century BC a Greek colony was established in the area of the modern-day city. The Greek city of Chersonesus existed for almost two years, first as an independent democracy and later as part of the Bosporan Kingdom. In the 13th and 14th centuries it was sacked by the Golden Horde several times and was totally abandoned. The modern day city of Sevastopol has no connection to the ancient and medieval Greek city, five years earlier, Alexander Suvorov ordered that earthworks be erected along the harbour and Russian troops be placed there. In February 1784, Catherine the Great ordered Grigory Potemkin to build a fortress there, the realisation of the initial building plans fell to Captain Fyodor Ushakov who in 1788 was named commander of the port and of the Black Sea squadron. It became an important naval base and later a commercial seaport, in 1797, under an edict issued by Emperor Paul I, the military stronghold was again renamed to Akhtiar. Finally, on 29 April,1826, the Senate returned the name to Sevastopol. One of the most notable involving the city is the Siege of Sevastopol carried out by the British, French, Sardinian, and Turkish troops during the Crimean War
Sevastopol
–
The ruins of the ancient Greek theater in
Chersonesos Taurica
Sevastopol
Sevastopol
–
"Soldier and Sailor" Memorial to Heroic Defenders of Sevastopol
Sevastopol
–
The Monument to the ships scuttled during the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War by
Amandus Adamson
41.
Crimean peninsula
–
The peninsula is located south of the Ukrainian region of Kherson and west of the Russian region of Kuban. It is connected to Kherson Oblast by the Isthmus of Perekop and is separated from Kuban by the Strait of Kerch, the Arabat Spit is located to the northeast, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of lagoons named Sivash from the Sea of Azov. Crimea has historically been at the boundary between the world and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Crimea and adjacent territories were united in the Crimean Khanate during the 15th to 18th century, in 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. It became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within newly independent Ukraine in 1991, with Sevastopol having its own administration, within Ukraine, since 1997, after the Peace and Friendship Treaty signed by Russia and Ukraine, Crimea hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet naval base in Sevastopol. The ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet and its facilities were divided between Russias Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian Naval Forces, the two navies shared some of the citys harbours and piers, while others were demilitarised or used by either country. Sevastopol remained the location of the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters with the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters also based in the city, most of the international community does not recognize the annexation and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Russia currently administers the peninsula as two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine continues to assert its right over the peninsula, the classical name Tauris or Taurica is from the Greek Ταυρική, after the peninsulas Scytho-Cimmerian inhabitants, the Tauri. In English usage since the modern period the Crimean Khanate is referred to as Crim Tartary. The Italian form Crimea also becomes current during the 18th century, the omission of the definite article in English became common during the later 20th century. The name Crimea follows the Italian form from the Crimean Tatar name for the city Qırım which served as a capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde, the name of the capital was extended to the entire peninsula at some point during Ottoman suzerainty. The origin of the word Qırım is uncertain, suggestions argued in various sources include, a corruption of Cimmerium. A derivation from the Turkic term qirum, from qori-, other suggestions that have not been supported by sources but are apparently based on similarity in sound include, a derivation from the Greek Cremnoi. However, he identifies the port, not in Crimea, no evidence has been identified that this name was ever in use for the peninsula. The classical name was revived in 1802 in the name of the Russian Taurida Governorate, in the 8th century BCE the Cimmerians migrated to the region and subsequently the Scythians as well it being the site of Greek colonies. The most important city was Chersonesos at the edge of todays Sevastopol, the Persian Achaemenid Empire expanded to Crimea. Later occupiers included the Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, the Byzantine Empire, Khazars, the Kipchaks, the Golden Horde, consideration of the succeeding residents of the peninsula by their linguistic grouping is also of relevance
Crimean peninsula
–
Ruins of ancient Greek colony of
Chersonesos
Crimean peninsula
–
Satellite image of the Crimean peninsula
Crimean peninsula
–
Swallow's Nest, built in 1912 for oil millionaire Baron von Steingel, a landmark of Crimea
Crimean peninsula
–
Armenian
monastery of the Holy Cross (Սուրբ Խաչ), established in 1358
42.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
Central Asia
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On the southern shore of Issyk Kul lake,
Issyk Kul Region.
Central Asia
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Central Asia
Central Asia
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Uzbek men from
Khiva, ca. 1861–1880
Central Asia
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Kazakh man on a horse with golden eagle
43.
Dobruja
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Dobruja is a historical region shared today by Bulgaria and Romania. It is situated between the lower Danube River and the Black Sea, and includes the Danube Delta, Romanian coast, the territory of Dobruja is made up of Northern Dobruja, which is part of Romania, and Southern Dobruja, which belongs to Bulgaria. The territory of the Romanian region Dobrogea is now organised as the counties of Constanța and Tulcea, with an area of 15,500 km2. Its main cities are Constanța, Tulcea, Medgidia and Mangalia, Dobrogea is represented by dolphins in the coat of arms of Romania. The Bulgarian region of Dobrudzha is divided between the regions of Dobrich, Silistra, the villages, Konevo, Rainino, Terter and Madrevo. This part has an area of 7,565 km2, with a combined population of some 350,000 people. With the exception of the Danube Delta, a region located in its northeastern corner, Dobruja is hilly. The highest point is in the Țuțuiatu Peak in the Măcin Mountains, the Dobrogea Plateau covers most of the Romanian part of Dobruja, while in the Bulgarian part the Ludogorie Plateau is found. Lake Siutghiol is one of the most important lakes in Northern Dobruja, the Black Sea also exerts an influence over the regions climate, particularly within 40–60 kilometres from the coast. The average annual temperatures range from 11 °C inland and along the Danube to 11.8 °C on the coast, the coastal region of Southern Dobruja is the most arid part of Bulgaria, with an annual precipitation of 450 millimetres. Dobruja is a region once known for its windmills. About 85–90% of all experience some kind of wind, which usually comes from the north or northeast. The average wind speed is twice higher than the average in Bulgaria. Due to the precipitation and the proximity to the sea, rivers in Dobruja are usually short. However, the region has a number of shallow lakes with brackish water. The most widespread opinion among scholars is that the origin of the term Dobruja is to be found in the Turkish rendition of the name of a 14th‑century Bulgarian ruler and it was common for the Turks to name countries after one of their early rulers. Other etymologies have been considered, but never gained widespread acceptance, abdolonyme Ubicini believed the name meant good lands, derived from Slavic dobro, an opinion that was adopted by several 19th‑century scholars. I. A. Nazarettean combines the Slavic word with the Tatar budjak, a version matching contemporaneous descriptions was suggested by Kanitz, which connected the name with the Bulgarian dobrice
Dobruja
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Woods and agricultural land in the Northern Dobruja Plateau
Dobruja
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Dobruja (dark green) within
Romania and
Bulgaria (light green) both in Eastern Europe
Dobruja
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Steppe and agricultural land in the Central Dobruja Plateau
Dobruja
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Rocky shores characteristic for the Southern Dobrujan coast
44.
Tat people (Caucasus)
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The Tat people are an Iranian people, presently living within Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Russia. The Tats are part of the peoples of Iranian origin in the Caucasus. Tats use the Tat language, a southwestern Iranian language, related to but different from Persian, Azerbaijani, Tats are mainly Shia Muslims, with a significant Sunni Muslim minority. As late as the turn of the 20th century, the Tat constituted about 11% of the population of the eastern half of Azerbaijan. They formed nearly one-fifth of the population of the Baku province, either through misrepresentation, data manipulation or simple assimilation, the Tat portion of the population of Azerbaijan has shrunk to insignificance, facing assimilation. Archaeological material uncovered in present-day Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia include Achaemenid architecture, jewelry, there is little information about permanent Persian population in South Caucasus since the Achaemenid period. Khosrau I presented the title of regent of Shirvan in eastern South Caucasus to a relative of his. After the region had been conquered by Arabs Islamization of the population began. Since the 11th century Oghuz tribes, led by Seljuq dynasts started to penetrate into the region, the gradual formation of the Azeri people started. Apparently in this period the Turkic exonym Tat or Tati, which designated settled farmers, was assigned to the South Caucasian dialect of the Persian language, the Mongols conquered South Caucasus in the 1230s and the Ilkhanate state was founded in 1250s. Mongol domination lasted until 1360–1370, but that did not stop prominent poets and scientists to emerge, in the end of the 14th century South Caucasus was invaded by Tamerlane. By the end of the 15th century the state of Shirvanshahs had obtained a considerable power, in the middle of the 16th century the state of Shirvanshahs was eliminated and South Caucasus joined to Safavid Iran almost completely. In the middle of the 18th century Russia started to widen its influence over the South Caucasus, after that there is data about quantity and settling of the Tats, collected by tsarist authorities. When the city of Baku was occupied in the beginning of the 19th century during the Russo-Persian War and they are in the environs of a city that Anushiravan built near the wall of Darband. They speak the Tat language, which is one of the languages of Old Persia and it is clear that they are from the people of Fars and after its destruction they settled in those villages. It becomes apparent from this that they originate from Fars. “ According to the Calendar of the Caucasus of 1894 there were 124,693 Tats in South Caucasus, but because of the gradual spreading of Azeri Turkic, Tati was passing out of use. Whereas in 1926 about 28.443 Tats had been counted and this term relates to Pārsīk, the Middle Persian self-designation of Persians, cf. Middle Persian Pārsīk ut Pahlavīk – Persian and Parthian. During the New Persian language period the final consonant was lost, Some groups of Persian-speaking populations in Afghanistan together with the Zoroastrians of India also use the term Parsi as a self-designation
Tat people (Caucasus)
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Tat people
Tat people (Caucasus)
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Baku was a Tat town in 1887
Tat people (Caucasus)
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An old Tat woman in Lahic
45.
Caucasus
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The Caucasus /ˈkɔːkəsəs/ or Caucasia /kɔːˈkeɪʒə/ is a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europes highest mountain, politically, the Caucasus region is separated between northern and southern parts. The southern parts consist of independent sovereign states, and the parts are under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The region is known for its diversity, aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian. Pliny the Elders Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis, German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means ice. According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the South Caucasus region and southern Dagestan were the furthest points of Persian expansions, with areas to the north of Caucasus Mountains practically impregnable. The mythological mountain of Qaf, the worlds highest mountain that ancient lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region, therefore, the Caucasus might be associated with the legendary mountain. The Ciscaucasus contains the majority of the Greater Caucasus Mountain range. It includes Southwestern Russia and northern parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasus is bordered on the north by Russia, on the west by the Black Sea and Turkey, on the east by the Caspian Sea, and on the south by Iran. It includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in South Caucasus. The main Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the line between Asia and Europe. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus in the western Ciscaucasus in Russia, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful or by no independent states, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by the majority of independent states as part of Georgia, the Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The region has many different languages and language families, there are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. Russian is used as a common language, today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the part of the region. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world
Caucasus
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Caucasus from the sea by
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1899
Caucasus
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Caucasus mountain range
Caucasus
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View of the Caucasus Mountains in
Dagestan, Russia
Caucasus
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Petroglyphs in
Gobustan,
Azerbaijan, dating back to 10,000 BC indicating a thriving culture. It is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Crimea
Uzbekistan
Turkey
Romania
Russia (excl. Crimea)
Bulgaria
Kazakhstan
United States
Ukraine (excl. Crimea)
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