1.
Hungarians
–
Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are a nation and ethnic group who speak Hungarian and are primarily associated with Hungary. There are around 13. 1–14.7 million Hungarians, of whom 8. 5–9.8 million live in todays Hungary, the Hungarians own ethnonym to denote themselves in the Early Middle Ages is uncertain. The Magyars/Hungarians probably belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance, and it is possible that they became its ethnic majority, in the Early Middle Ages the Hungarians had many names, including Ungherese, Ungar, and Hungarus. The H- prefix is an addition of Medieval Latin, another possible explanation comes from the Old Russian Yugra. It may refer to the Hungarians during a time when they dwelt east of the Ural Mountains along the borders of Europe. The Hungarian people refer to themselves by the demonym Magyar rather than Hungarian, Magyar is Finno-Ugric from the Old Hungarian mogyër. Magyar possibly derived from the name of the most prominent Hungarian tribe, the tribal name Megyer became Magyar in reference to the Hungarian people as a whole. Magyar may also derive from the Hunnic Muageris or Mugel, the Greek cognate of Tourkia was used by the scholar and Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in his De Administrando Imperio of c. AD950, though in his use, Turks always referred to Magyars, the historical Latin phrase Natio Hungarica had a wider meaning because it once referred to all nobles of the Kingdom of Hungary, regardless of their ethnicity. During the 4th millennium BC, the Uralic-speaking peoples who were living in the central, some dispersed towards the west and northwest and came into contact with Iranian speakers who were spreading northwards. From at least 2000 BC onwards, the Ugrian speakers became distinguished from the rest of the Uralic community, judging by evidence from burial mounds and settlement sites, they interacted with the Indo-Iranian Andronovo culture. In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Hungarians moved from the west of the Ural Mountains to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the Volga River known as Bashkiria and Perm Krai. In the early 8th century, some of the Hungarians moved to the Don River to an area between the Volga, Don and the Seversky Donets rivers, meanwhile, the descendants of those Hungarians who stayed in Bashkiria remained there as late as 1241. The Hungarians around the Don River were subordinates of the Khazar khaganate and their neighbours were the archaeological Saltov Culture, i. e. Bulgars and the Alans, from whom they learned gardening, elements of cattle breeding and of agriculture. Tradition holds that the Hungarians were organized in a confederacy of seven tribes, the names of the seven tribes were, Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, Megyer, Nyék, and Tarján. Around 830, a rebellion broke out in the Khazar khaganate, as a result, three Kabar tribes of the Khazars joined the Hungarians and moved to what the Hungarians call the Etelköz, the territory between the Carpathians and the Dnieper River. The Hungarians faced their first attack by the Pechenegs around 854, the new neighbours of the Hungarians were the Varangians and the eastern Slavs. In 895/896, under the leadership of Árpád, some Hungarians crossed the Carpathians, the tribe called Magyar was the leading tribe of the Hungarian alliance that conquered the centre of the basin
2.
Ural Mountains
–
The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
3.
Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin
–
Before the arrival of the Hungarians, three early medieval powers, the First Bulgarian Empire, East Francia and Moravia had fought each other for control of the Carpathian Basin. They occasionally hired Hungarian horsemen as soldiers, therefore, the Hungarians who dwelt on the Pontic steppes east of the Carpathians were familiar with their future homeland when their land-taking started. The Hungarian conquest started in the context of a late or small migration of peoples, contemporary sources attest that the Hungarians crossed the Carpathian Mountains following a joint attack in 894 or 895 by the Pechenegs and Bulgarians against them. They first took control over the lowlands east of the river Danube and they exploited internal conflicts in Moravia and annihilated this state sometime between 902 and 906. The Hungarians strengthened their control over the Carpathian Basin by defeating a Bavarian army in a battle fought at Brezalauspurc on July 4,907 and they launched a series of plundering raids between 899 and 955 and also targeted the Byzantine Empire between 943 and 971. However, they settled in the Basin and established a Christian monarchy. Byzantine authors were the first to record these events, nearly contemporary narration can be read in the Continuation of the Chronicle by George the Monk. However, De Administrando Imperio provides the most detailed account and it was compiled under the auspices of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in 951 or 952. Works written by clergymen in the states of the Carolingian Empire narrate events closely connected to the conquest. The Annals of Fulda which ends in 901 is the earliest among them, a letter from Archbishop Theotmar of Salzburg to Pope John IX in 900 also refers to the conquering Hungarians, but it is often regarded as a fake. Abbot Regino of Prüm who compiled his World Chronicle around 908 sums up his knowledge on the Hungarians in an entry under the year 889. Another valuable source is Bishop Liutprand of Cremonas Antapodosis from around 960, Aventinus, a 16th-century historian provides information not known from other works, which suggests that he used now-lost sources. An Old Church Slavonic compilation of Lives of saints preserved an account on the Bulgarian-Byzantine war of 894–896. Similarly late manuscripts offer the text of the Russian Primary Chronicle and it provides information based on earlier Byzantine and Moravian sources. The Hungarians themselves initially preserved the memory of the events in the form of folk songs. The earliest local chronicle was compiled in the late 11th century and it exists now in more than one variant, its original version several times extended and rewritten during the Middle Ages. For instance, the 14th-century Illuminated Chronicle contains texts from the 11th-century chronicle, an anonymous authors Gesta Hungarorum, written before 1200, is the earliest extant local chronicle. However, this most misleading example of all the early Hungarian texts contains much information that cannot be confirmed based on contemporaneous sources, around 1283 Simon of Kéza, a priest at the Hungarian royal court wrote the next surviving chronicle
4.
Pannonian Basin
–
The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in Central Europe. It is a subsystem of the Alps-Himalaya system. Most of the consists of the Great Hungarian Plain and the Little Hungarian Plain. The Pannonian Basin lies in the part of Central Europe. It forms a discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by imposing geographic boundaries - the Carpathian Mountains, the Alps, the Dinarides. The Rivers Danube and Tisza divide the basin roughly in half and it extends roughly between Vienna in the northwest, Zagreb in the southwest, Belgrade in the southeast and Satu Mare in the northeast. The name Pannonian comes from Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire, in English, the terms Pannonian Basin and Carpathian Basin are used synonymously. The name Pannonian is taken from that of Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire, the historical province overlapped but was not coterminous with the geographical plain or basin. Pannonia Inferior covered much of the half of the basin. Pannonia Superior included the western fringe of the basin as well as part of the Eastern Alps, the southern fringe of the basin was in Dalmatia and Moesia. The eastern half of the basin was not conquered by the Romans, likewise, the parts north of the Danube were not in the empire, they were considered part of Germania, inhabited by the Quadi. The term Pannonian Plain refers to the parts of the Pannonian Basin as well as those of some adjoining regions like Lower Austria, Moravia, Bosnia. The lands adjoining the plain proper are also called peri-Pannonian. In Hungarian geographical literature various subdivisions of the Carpathian Mountains are also considered parts of the Carpathian Basin on the basis of traditional geopolitical divisions, julius Pokorny derived the name Pannonia from Illyrian, from the Proto-Indo-European root *pen-, swamp, water, wet. For its early settlers, the plain offered few sources of metals or stone, thus when archaeologists come upon objects of obsidian or chert, copper or gold, they have almost unparalleled opportunities to interpret ancient pathways of trade. The Pannonian plain is divided into two parts along the Transdanubian Mountains, the northwestern part is called Western Pannonian plain and the southeastern part Eastern Pannonian plain. The plain was named after the Pannon named Medes, various different peoples inhabited the plain during its history. In the first century BC, the parts of the plain belonged to the Dacian state
5.
Volga River
–
The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It is also Europes largest river in terms of discharge and watershed, the river flows through central Russia and into the Caspian Sea, and is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. Eleven of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including the capital, some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka in Russian literature and folklore. The Slavic name is a translation of earlier Scythian Rā Volga, literally wetness, cognate with Avestan Raŋhā mythical stream and Sanskrit rasā́- dew, liquid, juice. The Scythian name survives in modern Mordvin Rav Volga, the Turkic peoples living along the river formerly referred to it as Itil or Atil big river. In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as İdel in Tatar, Атăл in Chuvash, Idhel in Bashkir, Edil in Kazakh, the Turkic peoples associated the Itils origin with the Kama. Thus, a tributary to the Kama was named the Aq Itil White Itil which unites with the Kara Itil Black Itil at the modern city of Ufa. The name Indyl is used in Adyge language, among Asians, the river was known by its other Turkic name Sarı-su yellow water, but the Oirats also used their own name, Ijil mörön or adaptation river. Presently the Mari, another Uralic group, call the river Jul, formerly, they called the river Volgydo, a borrowing from Old Russian. The Volga is the longest river in Europe and it belongs to the closed basin of the Caspian Sea, being the longest river to flow into a closed basin. From there it turns south, flows past Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd, at its most strategic point, it bends toward the Don. Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is located there, the Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the rivers Kama, the Oka, the Vetluga, and the Sura. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which flows through an area of about 1,350,000 square kilometres in the most heavily populated part of Russia. The Volga Delta has a length of about 160 kilometres and includes as many as 500 channels, the largest estuary in Europe, it is the only place in Russia where pelicans, flamingos, and lotuses may be found. The Volga freezes for most of its length for three each year. The Volga drains most of Western Russia and its many large reservoirs provide irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Moscow Canal, the Volga–Don Canal, and the Volga–Baltic Waterway form navigable waterways connecting Moscow to the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov, high levels of chemical pollution have adversely affected the river and its habitats
6.
Khazars
–
The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people, who created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Kaganate. For some three centuries the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea, the alliance was dropped around 900. Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil, the native religion of the Khazars is thought to have been Tengrism, like that of the North Caucasian Huns and other Turkic peoples. The polyethnic populace of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been a multiconfessional mosaic of pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and this theory still finds occasional support, but most scholars view it with scepticism. The theory is associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Gyula Németh, following Zoltán Gombocz, derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- being an hypothetical velar variant of Common Turkic kez-, louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyğur tribal name, Qasar. András Róna-Tas connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar, D. M. Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for Khazars to one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz Oğuz, namely the Gésà. One method for tracing their origins consists in analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym Khazar itself. The tribes that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not a union, but a congeries of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be subordinated. They appear to stem from Mongolia and South Siberia in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic/Xiōngnú nomadic polities, moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akatziroi, who had been important allies of Byzantium in fighting off Attilas army. An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630, Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain. The Āshǐnà clan whose tribal name was Türk appear on the scene by 552, by 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia. Both briefly challenged Tang hegemony in eastern Turkestan, to the West, two new nomadic states arose in the meantime, Old Great Bulgaria under Kubrat, the Duōlù clan leader, and the Nǔshībì subconfederation, also consisting of five tribes. The Duōlù challenged the Avars in the Kuban River-Sea of Azov area while the Khazar Qağanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an Āshǐnà dynasty. The Qağanate of the Khazars thus took out of the ruins of this nomadic empire as it broke up under pressure from the Tang dynasty armies to the east sometime between 630–650. According to Omeljan Pritsak, the language of the Onoğur-Bulğar federation was to become the lingua franca of Khazaria as it developed into what Lev Gumilev called a steppe Atlantis, Khazaria developed a Dual kingship governance structure, typical among Turkic nomads, consisting of a shad/bäk and a qağan. The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the conversion to Judaism, particularly elaborate rituals accompanied a royal burial. At one period, travellers had to dismount, bow before the rulers tomb, such a royal burial ground is typical of inner Asian peoples
7.
Turkic peoples
–
The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethnic groups that live in central, eastern, northern, and western Asia as well as parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family and they share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The first known mention of the term Turk applied to a Turkic group was in reference to the Göktürks in the 6th century, a letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as the Great Turk Khan. The Orhun inscriptions use the terms Turk and Turuk and this includes Chinese records Spring and Autumn Annals referring to a neighbouring people as Beidi. During the first century CE, Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. There are references to certain groups in antiquity whose names could be the form of Türk/Türük such as Togarma, Turukha/Turuška, Turukku. But the information gap is so substantial that we cannot firmly connect these ancient people to the modern Turks, turkologist András Róna-Tas posits that the term Turk could be rooted in the East Iranian Saka language or in Turkic. This etymological concept is related to Old Turkic word stems tür, türi-, törü. The earliest Turkic-speaking peoples identifiable in Chinese sources are the Dingling, Gekun, the Chinese Book of Zhou presents an etymology of the name Turk as derived from helmet, explaining that taken this name refers to the shape of the Altai Mountains. During the Middle Ages, various Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe were subsumed under the identity of the Scythians, between 400 CE and the 16th century, Byzantine sources use the name Σκύθαι in reference to twelve different Turkic peoples. However, the usage of the term is based on the linguistic classification in order to avoid any political sense. In short, the term Türki can be used for Türk or vice versa and it is generally agreed that the first Turkic people lived in a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia, with the majority of them living in China historically. Historically they were established after the 6th century BCE, the earliest separate Turkic peoples appeared on the peripheries of the late Xiongnu confederation about 200 BCE. Turkic people may be related to the Xiongnu, Dingling and Tiele people, according to the Book of Wei, the Tiele people were the remnants of the Chidi, the red Di people competing with the Jin in the Spring and Autumn period. Turkic tribes such as the Khazars and Pechenegs probably lived as nomads for many years before establishing the Turkic Khaganate or Göktürk Empire in the 6th century and these were herdsmen and nobles who were searching for new pastures and wealth. The first mention of Turks was in a Chinese text that mentioned trade between Turk tribes and the Sogdians along the Silk Road, the first recorded use of Turk as a political name appears as a 6th-century reference to the word pronounced in Modern Chinese as Tujue. The Ashina clan migrated from Li-jien to the Juan Juan seeking inclusion in their confederacy, the tribe were famed metalsmiths and were granted land near a mountain quarry which looked like a helmet, from which they were said to have gotten their name 突厥. A century later their power had increased such that they conquered the Juan Juan, Turkic peoples originally used their own alphabets, like Orkhon and Yenisey runiforms, and later the Uyghur alphabet
8.
Peoples of the Caucasus
–
This article deals with the various ethnic groups inhabiting the Caucasus region. There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region, Georgians are the only Caucasian people who have their own undisputedly independent state—Georgia. Other Caucasian peoples have republics within the Russian Federation, Adyghe, Cherkess, Kabardins, Ingush, Chechens, in the Caucasus region, they live in Georgia, Russia, Turkey and previously in Armenia. The total number of Azerbaijanis is around 35 million, other Turkic speakers live in their autonomous republics within Russian Federation, Karachays, Balkars, while Kumyks and Nogais live in Dagestan. Elsewhere in the region, they reside in Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, the Ossetians live in North Ossetia–Alania and in South Ossetia, which is de facto independent, but de jure is part of Georgia. The Yazidis reside in the areas of Armenia, mostly in the Aragatsotn marz. An autonomous Kurdish region was created in 1923 in Soviet Azerbaijan but was abolished in 1929. Pontic Greeks reside in Armenia and Georgia, pontic Greeks had also made up a significant component of the southern Caucasus region acquired from the Ottoman Turkish Empire that centred on the town of Kars. Russians mostly live in the Russian North Caucasus and their largest concentration is in Stavropol Krai, Krasnodar Krai, there are up to 15,000 in Georgia,3500 in Armenia, up to 15,000 in southern Russia and 1400 in Azerbaijan. They descend from the ancient Mesopotamians and they are Eastern Rite Christians, mainly followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, and speak and write Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic dialects. There are about 15, 000–30,000 Caucasus Jews, as well as descendants of Sayyid and Siddiqui – the people with Arabian origin, but mostly assimilated by other Caucasian peoples. However, some people not just as Sayyid or Siddiqui with non-Arabian ethnicity. The Kalmyk people — or Kalmyks — is the given to the Oirats, western Mongols in Russia. Today they form a majority in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia on the shore of the Caspian Sea. Kalmykia has Europes only Buddhist government and this gives ethnic locations about 1775 before the Russians came. All of these peoples were Sunni Muslims unless otherwise noted, in the mountains there were some pre-Islamic customs. NWCLS means Northwest Caucasian Language speakers and NECLS means Northeast Caucasian Language speakers and it should be noted that the linguistic nationalities that we now recognize are somewhat artificial. Two hundred years ago a man’s loyalty was to his friends, kin, village and chief, the difference between steppe, mountain and plain was far more important than difference of language
9.
Georgians
–
The Georgians or Kartvelians are a nation and ethnic group who constitute a majority of the population in Georgia. Large Georgian communities are present throughout Russia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Ukraine, United States. Georgians arose from the ancient Colchian and Iberian civilizations, there are also small Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities in Tbilisi and Adjara, as well as a significant number of irreligious Georgians. By the early 11th century they formed a unified Kingdom of Georgia and inaugurated the Georgian Golden Age and this lasted until being weakened by Mongol invasions, as well as internal divisions following the death of George V the Brilliant, the last of the great kings of Georgia. To ensure Georgias survival, in 1783 Heraclius II of Georgia forged an alliance with the Russian Empire, the Russo-Georgian alliance, however, backfired as Russia was unwilling to fulfill the terms of the treaty, proceeding to annex the troubled kingdom in 1801. Georgians briefly reasserted their independence from Russia under the First Georgian Republic from 1918-1921, Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi, their land Sakartvelo, and their language Kartuli. According to The Georgian Chronicles, the ancestor of the Kartvelian people was Kartlos, however, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the latter being one of the proto-Georgian tribes that emerged as a dominant group in ancient times. Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians, the term Georgians is derived from the country of Georgia. Starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. Scholars usually refer to them as Proto-Kartvelian tribes, the Georgian people in antiquity have been known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Colchians and Iberians. East Georgian tribes of Tibarenians-Iberians formed their kingdom in 7th century BCE, however, western Georgian tribes established the first Georgian state of Colchis before the foundation of the Iberian Kingdom in the east. According to the scholars of Georgia, the formations of these two early Georgian kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia, resulted in the consolidation and uniformity of the Georgian nation. The ancient Jewish chronicle by Josephus mentions Georgians as Iberes who were also called Thobel, diauehi in Assyrian sources and Taochi in Greek lived in the northeastern part of Anatolia, a region that was part of Georgia. This ancient tribe is considered by scholars as ancestors of the Georgians. Modern Georgians still refer to this region, which now belongs to present-day Turkey, as Tao-Klarjeti, some people there still speak the Georgian language. Colchians in the ancient western Georgian Kingdom of Colchis were another proto-Georgian tribed and they are first mentioned in the Assyrian annals of Tiglath-Pileser I and in the annals of Urartian king Sarduri II, and are also included western Georgian tribe of the Meskhetians. Iberians, also known as Tiberians or Tiberanians, lived in the eastern Georgian Kingdom of Iberia, both Colchians and Iberians played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the modern Georgian nation
.jpg)
