1.
Islam
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Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the worlds second-largest religion and the major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and He has guided mankind through revealed scriptures, natural signs, and a line of prophets sealed by Muhammad. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the word of God. Muslims believe that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. As for the Quran, Muslims consider it to be the unaltered, certain religious rites and customs are observed by the Muslims in their family and social life, while social responsibilities to parents, relatives, and neighbors have also been defined. Besides, the Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it spread in the Arabian Peninsula. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and empires, traders, most Muslims are of one of two denominations, Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, sizable Muslim communities are also found in Horn of Africa, Europe, China, Russia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Philippines, Northern Borneo, Caucasus and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world, Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means voluntary submission to God, Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means submission or surrender. Muslim, the word for an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the verb form. The word sometimes has connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of Islam as a state, Whomsoever God desires to guide. Other verses connect Islām and dīn, Today, I have perfected your religion for you, I have completed My blessing upon you, still others describe Islam as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith. In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān, Islam was historically called Muhammadanism in Anglophone societies. This term has fallen out of use and is said to be offensive because it suggests that a human being rather than God is central to Muslims religion
2.
Uyghurs
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The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China and they primarily practice Islam, and are a physically diverse ethnic group ranging from Western Eurasian to a more East Asian appearance. An estimated 80% of Xinjiangs Uyghurs live in the portion of the region. Outside Xinjiang, the largest community of Uyghurs in China is in Taoyuan County, outside of China, significant diasporic communities of Uyghurs exist in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and in Turkey. Smaller communities are found in Afghanistan, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Uyghur is often pronounced /ˈwiːɡər/ by English speakers, though an acceptable English pronunciation closer to the Uyghur peoples pronunciation of it is /uː. iˈɡʊər/, several alternate romanizations also appear, Uighur, Uygur, and Uigur. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region provincial government recommends that the ethnonym, adopted in the early 20th century. The meaning of the term Uyghur is unclear, the Old Turkic inscriptions record a word uyɣur which was transcribed into Chinese as * > Huíhé in Tang dynasty annals. Later, in response to an Uyghur request, this was changed to > Huíhú in 788 or 809 as mentioned in the Old History of the Five Dynasties, the earliest record of an Uyghur tribe is from the Northern Wei. At that time the ethnonym * > Gaoche was used, and later, the first use of Uyghur as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Khaganates. The term Uyghur disappeared from records in the 15th century. Throughout its history, the term Uyghur has taken on an expansive definition. Initially signifying only a small coalition of Tiele tribes in Northern China, Mongolia, finally it was expanded into an ethnicity whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin. This fluid definition of Uyghur and the ancestry of modern Uyghurs create confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography. DNA analyses indicate that the peoples of central Asia such as the Uyghurs are all mixed Caucasian, the Uighurs are the people whom old Russian travellers called Sart, while Western travellers called them Turki, in recognition of their language. The Chinese used to call them Chan-tou but this term has dropped, being considered derogatory. As a matter of fact there was for centuries no national name for them, people identified themselves with the oasis they came from, the term Uyghur was not used to refer to any existing ethnic group in the 19th century, but to an ancient people. The inhabitants of Xinjiang were not called Uyghur before 1921/1934, westerners called the Turkic-speaking Muslims of the oases Turki, and the Turkic Muslims in Ili were known as Taranchi
3.
Uzbeks
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The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group, the largest Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan but are found as a minority group in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia. Uzbek diaspora communities also exist in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the origin of the word Uzbek remains disputed. One view holds that it is named after Oghuz Khagan, also known as Oghuz Beg. Another states that the name means independent or the lord itself, from Oʻz, before, 5th century, what is todays Uzbekistan was part of Sogdia, mainly inhabited by Sogdians, an Indo-Iranian people. It was part of the Achaemenid Empire and later part of Sasanian Empire, from 5th to 6th century, what is todays Uzbekistan was part of the Hephthalite Empire. From 6th to 8th century, what is todays Uzbekistan was under the rule of Göktürk Khanate, Turkic and Chinese migration into central Asia occurred during the Chinese Tang Dynasty, and Chinese armies commanded by Turkic generals stationed in large parts of central Asia. But Chinese influence ended with the An Lushan rebellion, from the 9th century on, Transoxania was under the rule of Turkic Kara-Khanid Khanate, their arrival in Transoxania signalled a definitive shift from Iranian to Turkic predominance in Central Asia. Kara-Khanid ruler Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan was the first Turkic ruler to convert Islam, in the 12th century, Transoxania was conquered by Qara Khitai, a sinicized Khitan dynasty, they brought to Central Asia the Chinese system of government. In the 13th century, Kara-Khanid Khanate was destroyed by the Turkic Khwarazmian dynasty, the language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process. This process was boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region. The modern Uzbek language is derived from the Chagatai language which gained prominence in the Timurid Empire. The modern Uzbek population represents varying degrees of diversity derived from the high traffic routes through Central Asia. Once populated by Iranian tribes and other Indo-European people, Central Asia experienced numerous invasions emanating out of Mongolia that would affect the region. According to recent genetic genealogy testing from a University of Oxford study, high levels of haplogroup 10 and its derivative, haplogroup 36, are found in most of the Altaic-speaking populations and are a good indicator of the genetic impact of these nomadic groups. The difference could be due to the density of the different geographical areas. Eastern regions of Central Asia must have had a low density at the time. Thus, the estimate from North-East Asia is high in the east
4.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
5.
Nomad
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A nomad is a member of a community of people who live in different locations, moving from one place to another. Among the various ways nomads relate to their environment, one can distinguish the hunter-gatherer, as of 1995, there were an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world. Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method, pastoralists raise herds, driving them, or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand. For example, many groups in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-nomadic and these nomads sometimes adapt the use of high technology such as solar photovoltaics to reduce their dependence on diesel fuel. These groups are known as peripatetic nomads, a nomad is a person with no settled home, moving from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. The word Nomad comes from a Greek word that one who wanders for pasture. Most nomadic groups follow an annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic peoples traditionally travel by animal or canoe or on foot, today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Most nomads live in tents or other portable shelters, Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, the Australian Aborigines, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and to gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life, Pastoral nomads make their living raising livestock, such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, or yaks. These nomads travel to find more camels, goats, and sheep through the deserts of Arabia, the Fulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands of Niger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may move to raid settled communities or avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers and they include the Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Romani traders, and the Irish Travellers. Most nomads travel in groups of families called bands or tribes and these groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs, in the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements would generally occur during the summer and winter, the winter location is usually located near mountains in a valley and most families already have their fixed winter locations
6.
Turkic peoples
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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
7.
Irtysh River
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The Irtysh River is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the tributary of the Ob River. The rivers source lies in the Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria close to the border with Mongolia, the Irtyshs main tributaries include the Tobol River and the Ishim River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia. The name Black Irtysh is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the course of the river. The term White Irtysh, in opposition to the Black Irtysh, was used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below lake Zaysan. In Kazakhstan and Russia, tankers, passenger and freight boats navigate the river during the ice-free season, Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largest river port in Western Siberia. On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are three major hydroelectric plants, namely at Bakhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk. The worlds deepest lock, with a drop of 42 metres, plans exist for the construction of several more dams. Three dams have been constructed on the Chinese section of the Irtysh as well, the Keketuohai Dam, the Kalasuke Dam, in 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstans capital, Astana. In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a more major project. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh, opened in 1896, this is the oldest bridge on the river. Tobolsk, on the Tyumen-Surgut line As the Kuytun–Beitun Railway in Chinas Xinjiang is being extended toward Altay City, numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. There are no bridges of any kind on the Irtysh downstream of Tobolsk, a number of Mongol and Turkic peoples occupied the river banks for many centuries. In 657, Tang Dynasty general Su Dingfang defeated Ashina Helu, qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, at the Battle of Irtysh River, helus defeat ended the Khaganate, strengthened Tang control of Xinjiang, and led to Tang suzerainty over the western Turks. The Khanate of Sibir was conquered by the Russians in the 1580s, farther east, Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of the taiga belt and the steppe to the south. In the 17th century the Dzungar Khanate, formed by the Mongol Oirat people, became Russias southern neighbor, the Chinese Qing Empire conquered Dzungaria in the 1750s. Concerns were raised in Russia about the possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh, a Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely
8.
Altai Mountains
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The Altai Mountains are a mountain range in Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together, and are where the rivers Irtysh and Ob have their headwaters. The name Altai means Gold Mountain in Mongolian, alt and tai and also in its Chinese name, in Turkic languages altin means gold and dag means mountain. The proposed Altaic language family takes its name from this mountain range and their mean elevation is 1,500 to 1,750 m. The snow-line runs at 2,000 m on the side and at 2,400 m on the southern. Mountain passes across the range are few and difficult, the chief being the Ulan-daban at 2,827 m, and this region is studded with large lakes, e. g. The north western and northern slopes of the Sailughem Mountains are extremely steep, on this side lies the highest summit of the range, the double-headed Belukha, whose summits reach 4,506 and 4,440 m respectively, and give origin to several glaciers. Altaians call it Kadyn Bazhy, but is also called Uch-Sumer, the second highest peak of the range is in Mongolian part named Khüiten Peak. This massive peak reaches 4374 m, numerous spurs, striking in all directions from the Sailughem mountains, fill up the space between that range and the lowlands of Tomsk. The Katun and the Biya together form the Ob, the next valley is that of the Charysh, which has the Korgon and Tigeretsk Alps on one side and the Talitsk and Bashalatsk Alps on the other. The Altai, seen from this valley, presents the most romantic scenes, including the small but deep Kolyvan lake, farther west the valleys of the Uba, the Ulba and the Bukhtarma open south-westwards towards the Irtysh. The lower part of the first, like the valley of the Charysh, is thickly populated, in the valley of the Ulba is the Riddersk mine, at the foot of the Ivanovsk Peak. Its upper parts abound in glaciers, the best known of which is the Berel, on the northern side of the range which separates the upper Bukhtarma from the upper Katun is the Katun glacier, which after two ice-falls widens out to 700 to 900 metres. From a grotto in this glacier bursts tumultuously the Katun river, the high valleys farther north, on the same western face of the Sailughem range, are but little known, their only visitors being Kyrgyz shepherds. Those of Bashkaus, Chulyshman, and Chulcha, all three leading to the lake of Teletskoye, are inhabited by Telengit people. The shores of the lake rise almost sheer to over 1,800 m, from this lake issues the Biya, which joins the Katun at Biysk, and then meanders through the prairies of the north-west of the Altai. Farther north the Altai highlands are continued in the Kuznetsk district, which has a different geological aspect. But the Abakan River, which rises on the shoulder of the Sayan mountains. East of 94° E the range is continued by a series of mountain chains
9.
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
10.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
11.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
12.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
13.
Turkic languages
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The Turkic languages are a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China. Turkic languages are spoken as a language by some 170 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages. Turkic languages are languages, have vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of grammatical articles, noun classes. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family, the geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia ranges from the North-East of Siberia to Turkey in the West, since the Ottoman era. The two groups shared a religion, Tengrism, and there exists a multitude of evident loanwords between Turkic languages and Mongolic languages, although the loans were bidirectional, today Turkic loanwords constitute the largest foreign component in Mongolian vocabulary. The most famous of these loanwords include lion, gold, the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, written during the 11th century AD by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and it mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to todays Chuvash language, are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD. With the Turkic expansion during the Early Middle Ages, Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, various terminologies from the Turkic languages have passed into Persian, Hindustani, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Arabic. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, the modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich. It is not clear when two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged. With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages, Rhoticisation, e. g. in the last consonant of the word for nine *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, in this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/, *-/k/, *-/kh/ in this branch. See Antonov and Jacques on the debate concerning rhotacism and lambdacism in Turkic and this separates Khalaj as a peripheral language. The following table is based upon the classification presented by Lars Johanson The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, in some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language, or a loanword is much more common
14.
Uyghur language
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Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly Uyghur processes include, especially in dialects, vowel reduction. In addition to influence of other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been influenced strongly by Persian and Arabic, the modified Arabic-derived writing system is the most common and the only standard in China, although other writing systems are used for auxiliary and historical purposes. Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all due to modifications to the original Perso-Arabic script made in the 20th century. Two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet are used, though to a much lesser extent. The Arabic and Latin alphabets both have 32 characters, the Middle Turkic languages are the direct ancestor of the Karluk languages, including Uyghur and the Uzbek language. Kagan Arik wrote that Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur, rather, according to Gerard Clauson, Western Yugur is considered to be the true descendant of Old Uyghur, and is also called Neo-Uyghur. Modern Uyghur is not a descendant of Old Uyghur, but is descended from the Xākānī language described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk, the Western Yugur language, although in geographic proximity, is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic languages in Siberia. Robert Dankoff wrote that the Turkic language spoken in Kashgar and used in Kara Khanid works was Karluk, robert Barkley Shaw wrote, In the Turkish of Káshghar and Yarkand. This would seem in many case to be a misnomer as applied to the language of Kashghar. Other Kara-Khanid writers wrote works in the Turki Karluk Khaqani language, yusuf Khass Hajib wrote the Kutadgu Bilig. Ahmad bin Mahmud Yukenaki wrote the Hibat al-ḥaqāyiq, after Chaghatai fell into extinction, the standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region, showing abundant Chaghatai influence. Uyghur language today shows considerable Persian influence as a result from Chagatai, Modern Uyghur religious literature includes the Taẕkirah, biographies of Islamic religious figures and saints. The Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr, the shrines of Sufi Saints are revered in Altishahr as one of Islams essential components and the tazkirah literature reinforced the sacredness of the shrines. Anyone who does not believe in the stories of the saints is guaranteed hellfire by the tazkirahs and it is written, And those who doubt Their Holinesses the Imams will leave this world without faith, and on Judgement Day their faces will be black. In the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams, Shaw translated extracts from the Tazkiratul-Bughra on the Muslim Turki war against the infidel Khotan. The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari, historical works like the Tārīkh-i amniyya and Tārīkh-i ḥamīdi were written by Musa Sayrami
15.
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
16.
Karakhanids
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The Kara-Khanid Khanate was a Turkic dynasty that ruled in Transoxania in Central Asia, ruled by a dynasty known in literature as the Karakhanids or Ilek Khanids or Āl-e Afrāsiyāb. Both the dynastic names of Karakhanids and Ilek Khanids refer to royal titles with Kara Kağan being the most important Turkish title up till the end of the dynasty, the Khanate conquered Transoxania in Central Asia and ruled it between 999–1211. Their capitals included Kashgar, Balasagun, Uzgen and Samarkand, the Khanate eventually split into two – the Eastern and Western Khanates. They then came under the suzerainty of the Seljuks, followed by the Kara-Khitans and their history is reconstructed from fragmentary and often contradictory written sources, as well as studies on their coinage. The Karakhanids were a confederation formed some time in the 9th century of Karluks, Yaghmas, Chigils, and other living in Semirechye, Western Tian Shan. Arabic Muslim sources called this dynasty al-Khaqaniya, while Persian sources often preferred the term Al-i Afrasiyab on the basis of the kings of pre-Islamic Transoxania. The Karluks were a people from western Altai who moved to Semirechye. In 742, the Karluks were part of an alliance led by the Basmyl, the Karluks and Uyghurs later allied themselves against the Basmyl, and within two years they toppled the Basmyl khagan. The Uyghur yabghu became khagan and the Karluk leader yabghu and this arrangement lasted less than a year. Hostilities between the Uyghur and Karluk forced the Karluk to migrate westward into the western Türk-Türgesh lands, by 766 the Karluks had forced the submission of the Western Türk-Türgesh and they established their capital at Suyab on the Chu River. The Karluk confederation by now included the Chigil and Tukshi tribes who may have been Türgesh tribes incorporated into the Karluk union. By the mid-9th century, the Karluk confederation had gained control of the lands of the Western Türks after the destruction of the Uyghur state by the Kyrgyz. During the 9th century southern Central Asia was under the rule of the Samanids, while the Central Asian steppe was dominated by Turkic nomads such as the Pechenegs, the Oghuz, the area to the South and east of the Karluks was inhabited by the Yaghma. The Karluk center in the 9th and 10th centuries appears to have been at Balasagun on the Chu River. In the late 9th century the Samanids marched into the Steppes and captured Taraz, one of the headquarters of the Karluk khagan, during the 9th century, the Karluk confederation and the Yaghma, possible descendants of the Toquz-oguz, joined force and formed the first Karluk-Karakhanid khaganate. The Chigils appear to have formed the nucleus of the Karakhanid army, the date of its foundation and the name of its first khan is uncertain, but according to one reconstruction, the first Karakhanid ruler was Bilge Kür Kadïr Khan. The rulers of the Karakhanids were likely to be from the Chigil and Yaghma tribes – the Eastern Khagan bore the title Arslan Qara Khaqan and the Western Khagan the title Bughra Qara Khaqan. The names of animals were an element in the Turkish titles of the Karakhanids, thus Aslan, Bughra, Toghan, Böri
17.
Chagatai Khanate
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The Chagatai Khanate was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate that comprised the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, second son of Genghis Khan, and his descendants and successors. Initially it was a part of the Mongol Empire, but it became a functionally separate khanate with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259. The Chagatai Khanate recognized the supremacy of the Yuan dynasty in 1304. At its height in the late 13th century, the Khanate extended from the Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea to the Altai Mountains in the border of modern-day Mongolia and China. The khanate lasted in one form or another from 1220s until the late 17th century, the eastern half remained under Chagatai khans, who were, at times, allied or at war with Timurs successors, the Timurid dynasty. Genghis Khans empire was inherited by his son, Ögedei Khan. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was accorded the northern Mongolian homeland, Chagatai Khan, the second son, received Transoxiana, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almaliq near what is now Yining City in northwestern China, the transition had to be ratified in a kurultai, which was duly celebrated, but without the presence of Batu Khan, the independent-minded khan of the Golden Horde. The Ögedite ulus was dismembered, only the Ögedites who did not immediately go into opposition were given minor fiefs, Chagatai died in 1242, shortly after his brother Ögedei. For nearly twenty years after this the Chagatai Khanate was little more than a dependency of the Mongol central government, the cities of Transoxiana, while located within the boundaries of the khanate, were administrated by officials who answered directly to the Great Khan. Most of the Chagatayids first supported Kublai but in 1269 they joined forces with the House of Ögedei, baraq was soon confined to Transoxiana and forced to become a vassal of Kaidu. At the same time, he was at odds with Abaqa Khan, the Ilkhan, baraq attacked first, but was defeated by the Ilkhanate army and forced to return to Transoxiana, where he died not long after. The next several Chagatayid khans were appointed by Kaidu, who maintained a hold upon the khanate until his death and he finally found a suitable khan in Baraqs son Duwa, who participated in Kaidus wars with Kublai khan and his successors of the Yuan dynasty. The two rulers also were active against the Ilkhanate, after Kaidus death in 1301, Duwa threw off his allegiance to his successor. He also made peace with the Yuan dynasty and paid tributes to the Yuan court, Duwa left behind numerous sons, many of whom became khans themselves. Included among these are Kebek, who instituted a standardization of the coinage and selected a sedentary capital, and Tarmashirin, Tarmashirin, however, was brought down by a rebellion of the tribes in the eastern provinces, and the khanate became increasingly unstable in the following years. In 1346 a tribal chief, Amir Qazaghan, killed the Chagatai khan Qazan Khan ibn Yasaur during a revolt, the Chagatai Khanate split into two parts in the 1340s. In Transoxiana in the west, the mostly Muslim tribes, led by the Qaraunas amirs, seized control
18.
Mongol Empire
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The Mongol Empire existed during the 13th and 14th centuries and was the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of tribes in the Mongol homeland under the leadership of Genghis Khan. The empire grew rapidly under the rule of him and his descendants, the Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued even among the descendants of Tolui. Kublai successfully took power, but civil war ensued as Kublai sought unsuccessfully to control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. The Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 marked the point of the Mongol conquests and was the first time a Mongol advance had ever been beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield. In 1304, the three western khanates briefly accepted the suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty, but it was later taken by the Han Chinese Ming dynasty in 1368. What is referred to in English as the Mongol Empire was called the Ikh Mongol Uls, in the 1240s, one of Genghiss descendants, Güyük Khan, wrote a letter to Pope Innocent IV which used the preamble Dalai Khagan of the great Mongolian state. After the succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke, Ariq limited Kublais power to the part of the empire. Kublai officially issued an edict on December 18,1271 to name the country Great Yuan to establish the Yuan dynasty. Some sources state that the full Mongolian name was Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus, the area around Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of North China had been controlled by the Liao dynasty since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty, in the 1130s the Jin dynasty rulers, known as the Golden Kings, successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation, ruled at the time by Khabul Khan, great-grandfather of Temujin. The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations, Keraites, Khamag Mongol, Naiman, Mergid, khabuls successor was Ambaghai Khan, who was betrayed by the Tatars, handed over to the Jurchen, and executed. The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier, resulting in a failed Jurchen counter-attack in 1143, in 1147, the Jin somewhat changed their policy, signing a peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts. The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan, the Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161. During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century and it is thought that as a result, a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock significantly enhanced Mongol military strength. Known during his childhood as Temujin, Genghis Khan was the son of a Mongol chieftain, when he was young he was from one of Yesugis orphaned and deserted families, he rose very rapidly by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait. Kurtait was the most powerful Mongol leader during this time and was given the Chinese title Wang which means Prince, Temujin went to war with Wang Khan. After Temujin defeated Wang Khan he gave himself the name Genghis Khan and he then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin
19.
Turkology
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This includes ethnic groups from the Sakha in East Siberia to the Balkan Turks and Gagauz in Moldova. Ethnological information on Turkic tribes for the first time was systemized by the 11th-century Turkic philologist Mahmud al-Kashgari in the Dīwān ul-Lughat it-Turk, by the Middle Ages the Turkology was centred around Byzantine/Greek historians, ambassadors and travelers, and geographers. In the 15th-17th centuries the main subject of Turkology was the study of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish language, and the Turkic languages of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In the 19th century, Turkology was further developed by M. A. Kazembeks Grammar of the Turkish-Tatar language, a major achievement was the deciphering at the end of the 19th century of the Early Middle Age Orkhon inscriptions by V. Thomsen and W. W. Radloff. By the end of the 19th century, Turkology developed into a discipline that included linguistics, history, ethnology, archeology, arts. In the 20th century the Turkology complex included physical anthropology, numismatics, genetics, ancient Turkic alphabetic scripts, typology, genesis, the appearance of Türkische Bibliothek inaugurated specialised periodicals, followed by Mitteilungen zur Osmanischen Geschichte. Deeper study of the ancient sources allowed better understanding of economical, social, mythological and cultural forces of the sedentary, linguistic studies uncovered pre-literate symbioses and mutual influences between different peoples. On 9 August 1944 the Central Committee VKP, the party of the USSR. In the two decades after the Bolsheviks assuming power, the tradition of Turkological studies in Russia and dependent countries was practically wiped out, on the other hand, this edict brought unintended benefits to Turkology. that filled scientific publications. The other was writing into a drawer, when results of the years of work were written down for future publication. When the bonds relaxed, the publications exploded, another was a flight of scientists from European Russia into remote areas, which brought first class scientists to many intellectually starved outlying areas of Middle Asia. Another one was connected with the efforts to re-invent the history. And another one was a built-up of the public interest for the forbidden subjects, L. N. Gumilev and O. Suleimenov inflamed a surge in the new generation of Turkology scholars. Very few of the early 20th century expedition diaries, ethnographical notes, Биобиблиографический словарь востоковедов - жертв политического террора в советский период, Петербургское Востоковедение. Online edition Д. Д. Тумаркин, Репрессированные Этнографы, Вып, archaeological studies in Soviet Russia // Eurasia septentrionalis antiqua. X. А. А. Формозов, Русские археологи и политические репрессии 1920-1940-х гг, Институт археологии РАН, Москва,1998 Turko-Tatar Bibliography of Turkic linguistics//Monumenta Altaica http, //altaica. narod. ru/bibliograf/e_turkmeng. N. Editor, Bibliographical dictionary of native Turkologists, pre-USSR period, Moscow, Science,1974 - Кононов А. Н
20.
Homonym
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In linguistics, a homonym is one of a group of words that share the same pronunciation but have different meanings, whether spelled the same or not. A more restrictive definition sees homonyms as words that are simultaneously homographs and homophones – that is to say they have same pronunciation and spelling, the relationship between a set of homonyms is called homonymy. Examples of homonyms are the pair stalk and stalk and the left and left. In non-technical contexts, the term homonym may be used to refer to words that are either homographs or homophones. The words row and row and row are considered homographs, while the read and reed would be considered homophones, under this looser definition. The adjective homonymous can additionally be used wherever two items share the name, independent of how close they are or arent related in terms of their meaning or etymology. The word homonym comes from the Greek ὁμώνυμος, meaning having the same name, thus, it refers to two or more distinct concepts sharing the same name or signifier. Note, for the h sound, see rough breathing and smooth breathing, several similar linguistic concepts are related to homonymy. These include, Homographs are usually defined as words that share the same spelling, if they are pronounced the same then they are also homophones – for example, bark and bark. If they are pronounced differently then they are also heteronyms – for example, homophones are usually defined as words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of how they are spelled. If they are spelled the same then they are also homographs, homographic examples include rose and rose. Heterographic examples include to, too, two, and there, their, they’re, due to their similar yet non-identical pronunciation in American English, ladder and latter do not qualify as homophones, but rather synophones. Heteronyms are the subset of homographs that have different pronunciations, such words include desert and desert, tear and tear, row and row. Heteronyms are also sometimes called heterophones, polysemes are words with the same spelling and distinct but related meanings. The distinction between polysemy and homonymy is often subtle and subjective, and not all sources consider polysemous words to be homonyms. Words such as mouth, meaning either the orifice on ones face, or the opening of a cave or river, are polysemous, capitonyms are words that share the same spelling but have different meanings when capitalized. Such words include polish and Polish, march and March, however, both polish and march at the beginning of sentences still need to be capitalized. A further example of a homonym, which is both a homophone and a homograph, is fluke, fluke can mean, A fish, and a flatworm
21.
Mani (prophet)
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Mani, of Iranian origin, was the prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a gnostic religion of Late Antiquity which was once widespread but is now extinct. Mani was born in or near Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Parthian Babylonia, at the time part of the Parthian Empire. Six of his works were written in Syriac Aramaic. He died in Gundeshapur, under the Sassanid Empire, in 1969 in Upper Egypt a Greek parchment codex dating to ca.400 CE was discovered. It is now designated Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis because it is conserved at the University of Cologne, among these medieval accounts, Ibn al-Nadims account of Manis life and teachings is generally speaking the most reliable and exhaustive. Notably, the image of the Third Ambassador is only represented through a mention of the name bašīr, messenger of good news. This work and other evidence discovered in the 20th century establishes Mani as a historical individual, Mani was born near Seleucia-Ctesiphon, perhaps in the town Mardinu in the Babylonian district of Nahr Kutha, according to other accounts in the town Abrumya. Manis father Pātik, a native of Ecbatana, was a member of the Jewish-Christian sect of the Elcesaites and his mother was of Parthian descent, her name is reported variously, among others Mariam. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a twin of his, calling him to leave his fathers sect. In 240–41, Mani travelled to India, where he studied Hinduism, Al-Biruni says Mani traveled to India after being banished from Persia. Returning in 242, he joined the court of Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his work written in Persian. Shapur was not converted to Manichaeanism and remained Zoroastrian, shapurs successor Hormizd I appears to have continued to patronize Mani, but his successor Bahram I, a follower of the Zoroastrian reformer Kartir, began to persecute the Manichaeans. He incarcerated Mani, who died in prison within a month, Manis followers depicted Manis death as a crucifixion in a conscious analogy to the death of Christ, Al-Biruni says that Bahram ordered the execution of Mani. His corpse was decapitated and the placed on a spike. Bahram also ordered the killing of many Manicheans, the canon of Mani included six works originally written in Syriac, and one in Persian, the Shapuragan. Mani also wrote the book Arzhang, a book of Manichaeism unique in that it contained many drawings and paintings to express and explain the Manichaeist creation. Manis teaching was intended to succeed and surpass the teachings of Christianity and it is based on a rigid dualism of good and evil, locked in eternal struggle. In his mid-twenties, Mani decided that salvation was possible through education, self-denial, fasting, Mani claimed to be the Paraclete promised in the New Testament, and the Last Prophet
22.
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
23.
Mongols
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The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and Chinas Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China, as well as in Russia, Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia. The Mongols are bound together by a heritage and ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are known as the Mongolian language. The ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols, broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper, Buryats, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols. The latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohans, Baarins, Gorlos Mongols, Jalaids, Jaruud, Khishigten, Khuuchid, Muumyangan, the designation Mongol briefly appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei. It resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty, after the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau. However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them, in the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan. In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. The identity of the Xiongnu is still debated today, although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more likely a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes. It has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü, the Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu and the Classic of Mountains, the Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people, the Zhukaigou Xianbei had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian wrote in his commentary Jixie that Shanrong, againm in Inner Mongolia another closely connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture where the Donghu confederation was centered. After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei, tadun Khan of the Wuhuan was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi. The Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the New Book of Tang says that in 209 BCE, the Xianbei, however, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, the Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state. Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories, the Rouran, the Khitan people, besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong, Duan and Tuoba
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Western Turkic Khaganate
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At its height, the Western Turkic Khaganate included the later areas of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The ruling elite of the Western Turkic Khaganate were the Onogurs – an oğuz, the name of the Onugurs is derived from the proto-Turkic Onoq. Initially, the Western khaganate sought friendly relations with the Eastern Roman Empire, in order to expand their territory at the expense of their mutual enemy, the Western and Eastern khaganates were reunited as the Turkic Khaganate in 682. For the origin of the Onoq two contradicting accounts are given, In the beginning, Shidianmi followed the Shanyu and commanded the ten great chiefs, together with their 100,000 soldiers, he marched to the Western Regions and subdued the barbarian statelets. There he declared himself as qaghan, under the title of ten tribes, soon, Dielishi Qaghan divided his state into ten parts, and each was headed by one man, together they made up the ten she. Every she is given an arrow by him, thus they were known as the ten arrows and he also divided the ten arrows into two factions, each consisted of five arrows. The left faction consisted of five Duoliu tribes, headed by five chuo separately, the right faction consisted of five Nushibi tribes, headed by five sijin separately. Each took command on one arrow and called themselves as the ten arrows, thereafter, each arrow was also known as one tribe, and the great arrow head as the great chief. The five Duoliu tribes inhabited to east of Suiye, and the five Nushibi tribes to the west of it, since then, they called themselves as the ten tribes. The exact date for the event was not recorded, and the shanyu here referred to might be Muhan Khan, thereafter, the name ten tribes became as a shortened address for the Western Turks in Chinese records. However it should be noted that those divisions did not include the five major tribes, the earlier tribes consisted of eight primary tribes ruled by ten chiefs-in-command, afterwards called the on oq. They were the five Duolu tribes, and the three Nushibi tribes, the relationships between the ten tribes and the ruling elites were divided into two groups. The more aristocratic Duolu tribes, who held the title qur, and the lower-rated Nushipi in west, during the reformation the more powerful Nushipi tribes such as A-Xijie and Geshu were sub-divided into two tribal groups with a greater and lesser title under a fixed tribal name. In 619 the Western Turks invaded Bactria but were repulsed in the course of the Second Perso-Turkic War, during the Third Perso-Turkic War Khagan Tung Yabghu and his nephew Böri Shad joined their forces with Emperor Heraclius and successfully invaded Transcaucasia. The khaganates capitals were Navekat and Suyab, both situated in the Chui River valley of Kyrgyzstan, to the east from Bishkek, the khaganate was overrun by Tang Chinese forces under Su Dingfang in 657-659 during the Tang campaign against the Western Turks
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Tiele people
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The Göktürks, Celestial Turks, Blue Turks or Kok Turks, were a nomadic confederation of Turkic peoples in medieval Inner Asia. Strictly speaking, the common name Göktürk is the Anatolian Turkish form of the ethnonym, the Old Turkic name for the Göktürks was
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Kipchaks
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The Kipchak were a Turkic nomadic people. The Cuman-Kipchak confederation was a predecessor of the Kazakh Khanate and, later, the Kipchaks described their name as meaning hollow tree, as it was, according to them, inside a hollow tree that their original human ancestress gave birth to her son. They are called Polovtsy in Russian and Ukrainian and similar names in other Slavic languages, the Kipchaks were a tribal confederation that originally settled on the River Irtysh, possibly connected to the Kimäks. According to Ukrainian anthropologists, Kipchaks had racial characteristics of Caucasians and Mongoloids, namely a broad flat face, researcher E. P. Alekseeva drew attention to the fact that European Kipchak stone images have both Mongoloid and Caucasoid faces. However, in her opinion, Kipchaks, who settled in Georgia in the first half of the 12th century, were predominantly Caucasoid in appearance with some admixture of Mongoloid traits and they were already joined by Cumans. In the course of the Turkic expansion they migrated into Siberia, eventually they occupied a vast territory in the Eurasian steppe, stretching from north of the Aral Sea westward to the region north of the Black Sea, establishing a state known as Desht-i Qipchaq. Cumans expanded further westward, by the 11th century reaching Moldavia, Wallachia, in 1089, they were defeated by Ladislaus I of Hungary, and again by Knyaz Vladimir Monomakh of the Rus in the 12th century. They were finally crushed by the Mongols in 1241, after the fall of the Mongol Empire, the Golden Horde rulers continued to hold Saraj until 1502. The Cumans fled to Hungary, and some of their warriors became mercenaries for the Latin crusaders, members of the Bahri dynasty, the first dynasty of Mamluks in Egypt, were Kipchaks/Cumans, one of the most prominent examples was Sultan Baybars, born in Solhat, Crimea. Some Kipchaks served in the Yuan dynasty and became the Kharchins, the Kipchaks and Cumans spoke a Turkic language whose most important surviving record is the Codex Cumanicus, a late 13th-century dictionary of words in Kipchak, Cuman, and Latin. The presence in Egypt of Turkic-speaking Mamluks also stimulated the compilation of Kipchak/Cuman-Arabic dictionaries, some Kipchaks and Cumans are also known to have converted to Christianity, around the 11th century, at the suggestion of the Georgians as they allied in their conflicts against the Muslims. A great number were baptized at the request of the Georgian king David IV, from 1120, there was a Kipchak national Christian church and an important clergy. Following the Mongol conquest, Islam rose in popularity among the Kipchaks of the Golden Horde, during the 16th and 17th centuries the Turkic language among the Armenian communities of the Kipchak people was Armeno-Kipchak. They were settled in the Lviv and Kamianets-Podilskyi areas of what is now Ukraine, the modern Northwestern branch of the Turkic language is often referred to as the Kipchak branch. The languages in this branch are considered to be descendants of the Kipchak language. Some of the traditionally included are the Karachays, Siberian Tatars, Nogays, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Volga Tatars. There is also a village named Kipchak in Crimea, kypshak is one of the constituent tribes of the Middle Horde confederation of the Kazakh people. The name Kipchak also occurs as a surname in Kazakhstan, some of the descendants of the Kipchaks are the Bashkirian clan Qipsaq
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Basmyl
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The Basmyls were a 7th–8th century nomadic tribe who mostly inhabited the Dzungaria region in the northwest of modern-day China. The Basmyls may be ancestral to the Argyn of the Middle Juz of modern Kazakhstan, the Basmyls played a prominent role in the Turkic Khaganate from the 6th century, and at one time were the dynastic tribe who led the Khaganate. They later merged with Karluk and Yagma tribes and created the Kara-Khanid state, Basmyls were the first to use the term Idyk-kut, which replaced khagan in the titles of the Uyghur rulers of Turpan. The second component kut/qut in the title is found in Old Turk onomastics. In the year 720 CE, the dynastic Basmal clan were reported to be concentrated at Beitin, near Gucheng, in the Bogda Shan range, the Basmals appear to be the Argons mentioned by Marco Polo in a country called Tenduc, during the 13th century. Polo reported that this tribe who had sprung from two different races, to wit, of the race of the Idolaters of Tenduc and. They are handsomer men than the natives of the country, and having more ability, they come to have authority. From their inception in 552, the Basmyls were members of the First Turkic Kaganate, when this split into Eastern and Western Kaganates in 604, the Basmyls found themselves in the Western Turkic Kaganate, dominated by the Türkuts of the east. In 641 disgruntled tribes, including the Dzunaria Basmyls, joined a revolt by pretender to the throne Yugu-Ukuk, the period from 649 to 703 is the best documented in Basmyl history due to the existence of Chinese annalistic records. According to ancient Türkic succession law, a brother succeeded a brother, the Chinese thought such an idea absurd, and ignored it in their acts, causing further problems on top of existing resentment of the greedy bureaucracy. This 52-year period of relative quiet ended with the rise of the restored Eastern Türkic Kaganate, and its recapture of Dzungaria, the Türgeshes numbered 5–700,000, and although this represented a large state for the time, they were under pressure from Arabs from the south. This involved the Basmyls into one of the most exciting events of the century, the Yenisei Kirghiz were also pressing from the north, and the Türgeshes from the west. Bilge-kagans chancellor Tonyukuk developed a counter-plan, which involved facing the one at a time. At the beginning of the subsequent war, the Basmyls were the first allies to joing the Türkic horde, Tonyukuks Türks left them alone and following a forced march came to Bishbalyk, which they took by surprise attack. By the time the men and horses of the Basmyls reached Bishbalyk, instead of rest. Surrounded under the walls of the fortress, the Basmyls surrendered, the war was immortalized in the Orkhon inscriptions on the Bilge-kagan and Tonyukuk monuments. Another inscription on the monument takes a completely different view of the Bishbalyk operation. The defeated Basmyl carved his composition on the rock, In the Year of Monkey, in the ninth month, a felicitous hero is in hardship, his army in ambush
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Yueban
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Yueban, also written Üeban, Urpen literally, Weak Xiongnu) was the name used by Chinese historians for remnants of the Xiongnu in Zhetysu, now part of modern-day Kazakhstan. In Chinese literature they commonly called Yueban, the Yueban emerged after the disintegration of the Xiongnu confederation. They underwent a strong influence of the Sogdian culture and their name was later applied to the Chuy tribes of Chuyue, Chumi, Chumuhun, and Chuban. The Chuy tribes were collectively named Chuyue. The present endoethnonym of the Chuy descendants is Chuy Kiji, Turkic for Chuy People, the Yuebans later intermixing with Turkic peoples, formed the Shatuo of the Western Göktürk Khaganate. The Yueban-descended Shato played an important role in Chinese dynastic history, another Chuy-descendent tribe, the Kimek was one of the Turkic tribes known from Arab and Persian Middle Age writers as one of the seven tribes in the Kimek Kaganate in the period of 743-1050 AD. The other six constituent tribes of the Kimek Kaganate according to Abu Said Gardizi were the Kipchaks, Imi, Tatars, Bayandur, Lanikaz, siberia and Middle Asia The defeat ended the prominence of the Eastern Huns as a major power in inner Asia. Tian-Shih-huai expelled the Xiongnu from Dzungaria to beyond the Tarbagatai Mountains, the defeat had cost the Xiongnu their revenue from the Silk Road in the agricultural dependencies in the Tarim Basin, forcing them to find new dependencies, and the Xiongnu split again. The Yueban tribes, or Weak Xiongnu, took advantage of Uar weakness and conquered Zhetysu, where they established the principality of Yueban, the Strong Xiongnu migrated westward, conquering the Iranian Alans and Germanic Goths, and later attacking the Roman Empire. In literature, the Yuebans of the Late Antique period are called by the generic appellation Central Asian Huns. In the 5th century the Yueban were conquered by the Gaoche and split into four tribes, Chuyue, Chumi, Chumuhun, the Chuyue branch, intermixing with Turkuts, formed the Shato tribe in Southern Dzungaria, west of Lake Barkol. Zhetysu was also populated by the Tukhsi and Azi, the Azi lived between Suyab and Uzket. The Tukhsi and Azi are sometimes linked to the Tukhara and Asii – Indo-European peoples who had conquered Bactria six centuries earlier, however, the pioneering medieval linguist Mahmud Kashgari listed the Tukhsi, as a male dynastic tribe with a Turkic language. This may suggest that language replacement, in the form of Turkification, had occurred, in 448 the Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei received an envoy from the Yueban to negotiate a war with the Rouran. If the Yuebans would pressure them from the west, the Rourans would lose any freedom to maneuver, though no direct records exist about the war in Dzungaria, by the course of the events, there was no peace, and the nomadic empire of Rouran began to decline. By the 6th century AD the Yuebans, Uar Hephthalites, the Yueban state survived to the end of 480s, until its independence was destroyed by the Teleuts, who had split from the Rouran in 487. But the Teleuts dominance was short-lived, first the Hephthalite conquered them in 495-496, then Rouran crushed them, and finally in 547, but the Yueban lived on, forming four tribes - Chuyue, Chumi, Chumuhun and Chuban. These tribes became major players in the later Turkic Khaganate and thereafter No records address the Yueban religion, though Chinese annals depict some manifestations of religious rites, a narration about the Yuebans tells about sorcerers, able to cause frost and rainstorm
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Turkic Khaganate
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The Turkic Khaganate, Skyturks or Göktürk Khaganate was a khaganate established by the Ashina clan of the Göktürks in medieval Inner Asia. This khaganate interacted extensively with various dynasties based in North China, a century later, a second, renewed, Turkic Khaganate emerged in 682 and lasted until 744, when it was overthrown by the Uyghurs, a different Turkic-speaking group. The origins of the Türk Khanate trace back to 546, when Bumin Qaghan made a strike against the Uyghur and Tiele groups planning a revolt against their overlords. For this service he expected to be rewarded with a Rouran princess, however, the Rouran khagan, Yujiulü Anagui, sent an emissary to Bumin to rebuke him, saying, You are my blacksmith slave. How dare you utter these words, according to Denis Sinor, this reference indicates that the Türks specialized in metallurgy, although it is unclear if they were miners or, indeed, blacksmiths. Whatever the case, that the Turks were slaves need not be taken literally, a disappointed Bumin allied with the Western Wei against the Rouran, their common enemy. In 552, Bumin defeated Anagui and his forces north of Huaihuang, having excelled both in battle and diplomacy, Bumin declared himself Illig Khagan of the new khanate at Otukan, but died a year later. His son, Muqan Qaghan, defeated the Hephthalite Empire, Khitan, bumins brother Istämi bore the title Yabgu of the West and collaborated with the Sassanid Empire of Iran to defeat and destroy the Hephthalites, who were allies of the Rouran. This war tightened the Ashina clans grip on the Silk Road, Istämis policy of western expansion brought the Göktürks into Europe. In 576 the Göktürks crossed the Kerch Strait into the Crimea, five years later they laid siege to Chersonesus, their cavalry kept roaming the steppes of Crimea until 590. As for the borders, they were drawn south of the Amu Darya, bringing the Ashina into conflict with their former allies. Much of Bactria remained a dependency of the Ashina until the end of the century, the Turkic Khanate split in two after the death of the fourth ruler, Taspar Qaghan, ca. He had willed the title of khagan to Muqans son Apa Qaghan, before long, four rivals claimed the title. They were successfully played off against each other by Sui and Tang China, the most serious contender was the western one, Istämis son Tardu, a violent and ambitious man who had already declared himself independent from the Qaghan after his fathers death. He now seized the title and led an army east to claim the seat of imperial power, in order to buttress his position, Ishbara of the Eastern Khaganate applied to Emperor Yang of Sui for protection. Tardu attacked Changan, the Sui capital, around 600, demanding Emperor Yangdi end his interference in the civil war, in retaliation, Chinese diplomacy successfully incited a revolt of Tardus Tiele vassals, which led to the end of Tardus reign in 603. Among the dissident tribes were the Uyghurs and Xueyantuo, the civil war left the empire divided into eastern and western parts. The eastern part, still ruled from Otukan, remained in the orbit of the Sui, the Shibi Khan and Illig Qaghan attacked China at its weakest moment during the transition between the Sui and Tang
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Heir apparent
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An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person. An heir presumptive, by contrast, is someone who is first in line to inherit a title, today these terms most commonly describe heirs to hereditary titles, particularly monarchies. They are also used metaphorically to indicate an anointed successor to any position of power, in France the title was le Dauphin. See crown prince for more examples and this article primarily describes the term heir apparent in a hereditary system regulated by laws of primogeniture—as opposed to cases where a monarch has a say in naming the heir. An heir presumptive, by contrast, can always be bumped down in the succession by the birth of more closely related in a legal sense to the current title-holder. The clearest example occurs in the case of a title-holder with no children, if at any time he or she were to produce children, they rank ahead of whatever more distant relative had been heir presumptive. Many legal systems assume childbirth is always possible regardless of age or health, in such circumstances a person may be, in a practical sense, the heir apparent but still, legally speaking, heir presumptive. Adelaide was 44 at the time, so pregnancy was even if unlikely. Daughters may inherit titles that descend according to male-preference primogeniture, thus, normally, even an only daughter will not be heir apparent, since at any time a brother might be born who, though younger, would assume that position. Hence, she is an heir presumptive, for example, Queen Elizabeth II was heir presumptive during the reign of her father, King George VI, because at any stage up to his death, George could have fathered a legitimate son. In a system of absolute primogeniture that disregards gender, female heirs apparent occur, several European monarchies that have adopted such systems in the last few decades furnish practical examples. Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway is heir apparent to her father, Victoria was not heir apparent from birth, but gained the status in 1980 following a change in the Swedish Act of Succession. Her younger brother Carl Philip was thus heir apparent for a few months, then, as the representative of her fathers line she would assume a place ahead of any more distant relatives. Such a situation has not to date occurred with the English or British throne, several times an heir apparent has died, however, there have been several female heirs apparent to British peerages. In one special case, however, England and Scotland had an heir apparent. William, by contrast, was to reign for life only, thus, although after Marys death William continued to reign, he had no power to beget direct heirs, and Anne became the heir apparent for the remainder of Williams reign. She eventually succeeded him as Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, the position of an heir apparent is normally unshakable, it can be assumed they will inherit. Sometimes, however, extraordinary events—such as the death or the deposition of the parent—intervene
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Bogd Khan Mountain
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The Bogd Khan Mountain is a mountain in Mongolia that overlooks the nations capital, Ulaanbaatar, from a height of 3000 feet above and to the south of the city. The Bogd Khan Mountain, along with Mongolias other sacred mountains Burkhan Khaldun, World Heritage sites are those that exhibit universal natural or cultural significance, or both. In 1783 the local Mongolian government of the Qing Dynasty declared the Bogd Khan a protected site and this makes it the oldest legally protected natural area in the world. It is about 7440 feet tall, in 1778 the Mongolian governor of Khuree Sanzaidorj sent a letter to the Qianlong Emperor requesting approval of annual ceremonies dedicated to Mount Bogd Khan Uul. The Mongolian letter and the reply from Beijing in Mongolian is kept in the Central State Archives of Mongolia, the text of governor Sanzaidorjs letter reads, Your servant San and us we hereby raise and pronounce this earnestly. Reason for begging Royal Decree, Upon inspection, in the south of Khuree there is a certain Khan Uul, whenever the four Khanates of the Khalkha gather in Assembly this mountain is the place they point out for gathering. And the multitudes of lamas and disciples of the Jebtsundamba Khutugtu all reside here, the word handed down among the locals here says, This mountain is called Khan Uul because Genghis Khan had lived here originally. Indeed the many princes, dukes, banner governors, saints and disciples of the Khalkha all regard this mountain as marvelous and the former old Khutugtu himself worshipped it. Until now the locals here never hunt the animals of the mountain as if they were entitled to hunt them. Your servant Sanzaidorj and the lamas have annually worshipped the mountain, as have each of the princes, dukes, in addition, the many princes, dukes, banner governors and lamas have discussed this and agree in totality. Therefore we your servants joyously say to each other now that it is fitting for us to await your Divine Lordship’s unbending charity, upon inspection, Mosuur Pass, Mount Geden and Mount Altai are all currently being worshipped by official funds. Then your servants will receive them and hold ceremonies twice annually, pronounced earnestly for this reason, we beg Royal Decree. 17th day of the 9th month of the 43rd year of Tengeriig Tetgesen To this the Board for Administration of Outlying Regions in Beijing replied in Mongolian, sent to the Ministers residing in Khuree. Copy obtained from the Interior Ministry, all the princes, dukes, banner governors, saints and disciples of the Khalkha are earnest in saying that this mountain is marvelous. Then bring the princes, dukes and banner governors and let worship ceremonies be held, earnestly obeying this Decree a copy has been sent to this Board. Therefore we have sent it to the Ceremony Ministry and had them examine and we have also determined that it be sent and made known to the Household Department and to the Ministers residing in Khuree. 29th day of the 9th month of the 43rd year of Tengeriig Tetgesen
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Mongolia
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Mongolia /mɒŋˈɡoʊliə/ is a landlocked unitary sovereign state in East Asia. Its area is equivalent with the historical territory of Outer Mongolia. It is sandwiched between China to the south and Russia to the north, while it does not share a border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia is separated from it by only 36.76 kilometers. At 1,564,116 square kilometers, Mongolia is the 18th largest and it is also the worlds second-largest landlocked country behind Kazakhstan and the largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea. The country contains very little land, as much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to about 45% of the countrys population, approximately 30% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic, horse culture is still integral. The majority of its population are Buddhists, the non-religious population is the second largest group. Islam is the dominant religion among ethnic Kazakhs, the majority of the states citizens are of Mongol ethnicity, although Kazakhs, Tuvans, and other minorities also live in the country, especially in the west. Mongolia joined the World Trade Organization in 1997 and seeks to expand its participation in regional economic, the area of what is now Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Turkic Khaganate, and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China to establish the Yuan dynasty, after the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan. In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism began to spread in Mongolia, being led by the Manchu-founded Qing dynasty. By the early 1900s, almost one-third of the male population were Buddhist monks. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Mongolia declared independence from the Qing dynasty, shortly thereafter, the country came under the control of the Soviet Union, which had aided its independence from China. In 1924, the Mongolian Peoples Republic was declared as a Soviet satellite state, after the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989, Mongolia conducted its own peaceful democratic revolution in early 1990. This led to a multi-party system, a new constitution of 1992, homo erectus inhabited Mongolia from 850,000 years ago. Modern humans reached Mongolia approximately 40,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic, the Khoit Tsenkher Cave in Khovd Province shows lively pink, brown, and red ochre paintings of mammoths, lynx, bactrian camels, and ostriches, earning it the nickname the Lascaux of Mongolia. The venus figurines of Malta testify to the level of Upper Paleolithic art in northern Mongolia, the wheeled vehicles found in the burials of the Afanasevans have been dated to before 2200 BC
, Qarluq,[1] Persian: خَلُّخ (Khallokh), Arabic قارلوق "Qarluq") were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribal confederacy residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh (Black Irtysh) and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains in Central Asia. They were also known as the Gelolu (simplified Chinese: 葛逻禄; traditional Chinese: 葛邏祿; pinyin: Géluólù, customary phonetic: Gelu, Khololo, Khorlo or Harluut). They were closely related to the Uyghurs. Karluks gave their name to the distinct Karluk group of the Turkic languages, which also includes the Uyghur, Uzbek, and Ili Turki languages.