1.
Avars (Caucasus)
–
The Avars constitute a Caucasus native ethnic group, the most predominant of several ethnic groups living in the Russian republic of Dagestan. The Avars reside in a known as the North Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas. Alongside other ethnic groups in the North Caucasus region, the Caucasian Avars live in ancient villages located approximately 2,000 m above sea level, the Avar language spoken by the Caucasian Avars belongs to the family of Northeast Caucasian languages and is also known as Nakh–Dagestanian. Sunni Islam has been the religion of the Avars since the 13th century. According to 19th-century Russian historians, the Avars neighbors usually referred to them by the exonyms Lezgins, vasily Potto wrote that those to the south usually knew them as Tavlins and their neighbors on the other side of the mountains, in Georgia referred to them as Lezgins. The words in different languages have the same meaning, no single ethic group was known as Lezgins prior to the Russian Revolution, and the name was not usually used by the Lezgins themselves. However, Lezgin was originally a Turkish term for highland resident, the name Tavlin is believed to be from the Turkic tau, meaning mountain. Those known as Tavlins usually have origins in the parts of two tributaries of the Sulak River, the Andiyskoe Koisu and Avarskoye Koisu. Potto also claimed that members of the Avar tribe also often referred to themselves by the alternate endonym maarulal, according to the historian Sergey Tolstov, the Avars originated in Khurasan, south-east of the Caspian Sea, and migrated to the Caucasus. These geographical origins apparently link them to the Hurrians of Subartu, there is circumstantial evidence for this in human Y-DNA chromosomes, Haplogroup J1 typical of Avar males are also common in the area formerly occupied by Subartu. However, there are distribution and other haplogroups, each ethnic group of the Avars there are several haplogroups that both are identical to each other and different. For example, in most Bagvalal grafting - R1b, and related to them by language Chamalal - J1. The earliest mention of the Avars in European history is by Priscus, the legation claimed that in 461 their peoples had been displaced by the Sabirs, as a result of pressure from the Avars. The modern Arab Encyclopaedia states that the Magyars originated in this area, the Avar invasion of the Caucasus resulted in the establishment of an Avar ruling dynasty in Sarir, a medieval Christian state in the Dagestani highlands. During the Khazar wars against the Caliphate in the 7th century, surakat is mentioned as their Khagan around 729–30 AD, followed by Andunik-Nutsal at the time of Abu Muslima, then Dugry-Nutsal. Sarir suffered a partial eclipse after the Arabs gained the upper hand and it confronted the weakened Khazars and conducted a friendly policy towards the neighbouring Christian states of Georgia and Alania. In the early 12th century, Sarir disintegrated, to be succeeded by the Avar Khanate, the only extant monument of Sarir architecture is a 10th-century church at the village of Datuna. The Mongol invasions seem not to have affected the Avar territory, in the 15th century the Horde declined, and the Shamkhalate of Kazi-Kumukh rose to power
2.
Ravenna
–
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. It then served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Eastern Roman Empire. Afterwards, the city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Lombards in 751, although an inland city, Ravenna is connected to the Adriatic Sea by the Candiano Canal. It is known for its well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture, the origin of the name Ravenna is unclear, although it is believed the name is Etruscan. Some have speculated that ravenna is related to Rasenna, the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, the origins of Ravenna are uncertain. Ravenna consisted of houses built on piles on a series of islands in a marshy lagoon – a situation similar to Venice several centuries later. The Romans ignored it during their conquest of the Po River Delta, in 49 BC, it was the location where Julius Caesar gathered his forces before crossing the Rubicon. Later, after his battle against Mark Antony in 31 BC and this harbor, protected at first by its own walls, was an important station of the Roman Imperial Fleet. Nowadays the city is landlocked, but Ravenna remained an important seaport on the Adriatic until the early Middle Ages, during the German campaigns, Thusnelda, widow of Arminius, and Marbod, King of the Marcomanni, were confined at Ravenna. Ravenna greatly prospered under Roman rule, Emperor Trajan built a 70 km long aqueduct at the beginning of the 2nd century. During the Marcomannic Wars, Germanic settlers in Ravenna revolted and managed to seize possession of the city, for this reason, Marcus Aurelius decided not only against bringing more barbarians into Italy, but even banished those who had previously been brought there. In AD402, Emperor Honorius transferred the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Milan to Ravenna, at that time it was home to 50,000 people. However, in 409, King Alaric I of the Visigoths simply bypassed Ravenna, after many vicissitudes, Galla Placidia returned to Ravenna with her son, Emperor Valentinian III and the support of her nephew Theodosius II. The late 5th century saw the dissolution of Roman authority in the west, Odoacer ruled as King of Italy for 13 years, but in 489 the Eastern Emperor Zeno sent the Ostrogoth King Theoderic the Great to re-take the Italian peninsula. After losing the Battle of Verona, Odoacer retreated to Ravenna, Theoderic took Ravenna in 493, supposedly slew Odoacer with his own hands, and Ravenna became the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. Both Odoacer and Theoderic and their followers were Arian Christians, but co-existed peacefully with the Latins, Ravennas Orthodox bishops carried out notable building projects, of which the sole surviving one is the Capella Arcivescovile. Theoderic allowed Roman citizens within his kingdom to be subject to Roman law, the Goths, meanwhile, lived under their own laws and customs
3.
Heraclius
–
Heraclius was the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 610 to 641. He was responsible for introducing Greek as the Eastern Roman Empires official language and his rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas. Heracliuss reign was marked by military campaigns. The year Heraclius came to power, the empire was threatened on multiple frontiers, Heraclius immediately took charge of the Byzantine–Sassanid War of 602–628. Soon after, he initiated reforms to rebuild and strengthen the military, Heraclius drove the Persians out of Asia Minor and pushed deep into their territory, defeating them decisively in 627 at the Battle of Nineveh. The Persian king Khosrau II was overthrown and executed by his son Kavadh II and this way peaceful relations were restored to the two deeply strained empires. Heraclius soon experienced a new event, the Muslim conquests, emerging from the Arabian Peninsula, the Muslims quickly conquered the Sassanid empire. In 634 the Muslims marched into Roman Syria, defeating Heracliuss brother Theodore, within a short period of time, the Arabs conquered Mesopotamia, Armenia and Egypt. Heraclius entered diplomatic relations with the Croats and Serbs in the Balkans and he tried to repair the schism in the Christian church in regard to the Monophysites, by promoting a compromise doctrine called Monothelitism. The Church of the East was also involved in the process, eventually, however, this project of unity was rejected by all sides of the dispute. Heraclius was the eldest son of Heraclius the Elder and Epiphania, of an Armenian family from Cappadocia, beyond that, there is little specific information known about his ancestry. His father was a key general during Emperor Maurices war with Bahrām Chobin, usurper of the Sassanid Empire, after the war, Maurice appointed Heraclius the Elder to the position of Exarch of Africa. In 608, Heraclius the Elder renounced his loyalty to the Emperor Phocas, the rebels issued coins showing both Heraclii dressed as consuls, though neither of them explicitly claimed the imperial title at this time. Heracliuss younger cousin Nicetas launched an invasion of Egypt, by 609, he had defeated Phocass general Bonosus. Meanwhile, the younger Heraclius sailed eastward with another force via Sicily, when he reached the capital, the Excubitors, an elite Imperial Guard unit led by Phocass son-in-law Priscus, deserted to Heraclius, and he entered the city without serious resistance. When Heraclius captured Phocas, he asked him Is this how you have ruled, Phocass reply—And will you rule better. —so enraged Heraclius that he beheaded Phocas on the spot. He later had the genitalia removed from the body because Phocas had raped the wife of Photius, a powerful politician in the city. On October 5,610, Heraclius was crowned for a time, this time in the Chapel of St. Stephen within the Great Palace, at the same time he married Fabia
4.
Byzantine Empire
–
It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, however, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans, Romania, the Roman Republic, Graikia, and also as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika. The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West also suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
5.
Eurasian nomads
–
The Eurasian nomads were a large group of nomadic peoples from the Eurasian Steppe, who often appear in history as invaders of Europe, the Middle East and China. The generic title encompasses the varied ethnic groups who have at times inhabited the steppes of Central Asia, Mongolia, Early periods in Chinese history involved conflict with the nomadic Rong and Xiongnu peoples to the west of the Wei valley. Iron and bronze was supplied from China, the Roman army hired Sarmatians as elite cavalrymen. The earliest example of an invasion by a people may have been by the Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves. Cimmerian is the first invasion of equestrian steppe nomads that is known from historical sources and their military strength was always based on cavalry, usually marked by prowess as mounted archers. Kurgan is a term for steppe burial mounds, which sometimes contained very elaborate burials. J. R. R. Tolkiens Rohirrim may be seen as an idealised Germanic people influenced by these romantic notions, Tolkiens Wainriders of eastern Rhûn recall ancient steppe peoples like the Scythians. Similarly, George R. R. Martins nomadic Dothraki people are influenced by the lifestyles and cultures of historical horse people. Nomadism persists in the steppelands, though it has generally been disapproved of by modern regimes, chronologically, there have been several waves of invasions of either Europe, the Near East, India and/or China from the steppe. Mongols, Turks, and others, Eurasian nomads and the sedentary world, Early riders, The beginnings of mounted warfare in Asia and Europe. Nomads and their neighbours in the Russian Steppe, Turks, Khazars, warriors of the steppe, A military history of Central Asia,500 B. C. to A. D.1700. New York, Sarpedon Publishers,1997, Cambridge, MA, korotayev, Dmitri Bondarenko, V. de Munck, and P. K. Vladivostok, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reprinted in, The Early State, ed. by Leonid Grinin et al. Nomadism, Evolution, and World-Systems, Pastoral Societies in Theories of Historical Development, journal of World-System Research 8, 368–388. In Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution, kradin, Dmitri Bondarenko, and T. Barfield. Moscow, Center for Civilizational Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nomads of Inner Asia in Transition. Littauer, Mary A. Crouwel, Joost H. Raulwing, selected writings on chariots and other early vehicles, riding and harness. Shippey, Thomas Tom A. Goths and Huns, The rediscovery of Northern culture in the century, in The Medieval legacy
6.
Middle Ages
–
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
7.
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
8.
Avar Khaganate
–
The Avar Khaganate was a khanate established in the Pannonian Basin region in 567 by the Avars, a nomadic people of uncertain origins and ethno-linguistic affiliation. As the Göktürk Empire expanded westwards, the Khagan Bayan I led a group of Avars and Bulgars out of their reach, in 557 the Avars sent an embassy to Constantinople, marking their first contact with the Byzantine Empire—presumably from the northern Caucasus. In exchange for gold, they agreed to subjugate the unruly gentes on behalf of the Byzantines and they conquered and incorporated various nomadic tribes—Kutrigurs and Sabirs—and defeated the Antes. By 562 the Avars controlled the lower Danube basin and the north of the Black Sea. By the time they arrived in the Balkans, the Avars formed a group of about 20,000 horsemen. After the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I bought them off, they pushed northwestwards into Germania, however, Frankish opposition halted the Avars expansion in that direction. The Avars turned their attention to the Carpathian Plain and to the natural defenses it afforded, however, the Carpathian basin was then occupied by the Gepids. In 567 the Avars formed an alliance with the Lombards—enemies of the Gepids—and together they destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom, the Avars then persuaded the Lombards to move into northern Italy, an invasion that marked the last Germanic mass-movement in the Migration Period. After devastating much of the Sclavenes land, the Avars returned to Pannonia after many of the Khagans subjects deserted to the Byzantine Emperor. By 600 the Avars had established a nomadic empire ruling over a multitude of peoples, by about 580, the Avar Khagan Bayan I had established supremacy over most of Slavic, Bulgar, Vlachs and Germanic tribes living in Pannonia and the Carpathian Basin. When the Byzantine Empire was unable to pay subsidies or hire Avar mercenaries, according to Menander, Bayan commanded an army of 10,000 Kutrigur Bulgars and sacked Dalmatia in 568, effectively cutting the Byzantine terrestrial link with North Italy and Western Europe. By 582, the Avars had captured Sirmium, an important fort in Pannonia, when the Byzantines refused to increase the stipend amount as requested by Bayans son and successor Bayan II, the Avars proceeded to capture Singidunum and Viminacium. They suffered setbacks, however, during Maurices Balkan campaigns in the 590s, after being defeated in their homeland, some Avars defected to the Byzantines in 602, but Emperor Maurice decided not to return home as was customary. He maintained his army camp beyond the Danube throughout the winter and this gave the Avars a desperately needed respite. They attempted an invasion of northern Italy in 610, the ongoing Byzantine civil war prompted a Persian invasion and after 615, the Avars enjoyed a free hand in the undefended Balkans. When now the Wendish army went against the Huns, the merchant Samo accompanied the same, and so the Samo’s bravery proved itself in wonderful ways and a huge mass of Huns fell to the sword of the Wends. While negotiating with Emperor Heraclius beneath the walls of Constantinople in 617, while they were unable to capture the city centre they pillaged the suburbs of the city and took 270,000 captives. Payments in gold and goods to the Avars reached the sum of 200,000 solidi shortly before 626
9.
Central Europe
–
Central Europe lies between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The concept of Central Europe is based on a historical, social and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of strategic awakening, with such as the CEI, Centrope. While the regions economy shows high disparities with regard to income, elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Roman Catholicism and Latin. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in connection with Western European development. The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe and these phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns, counties and parliaments, in 1335 under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. They agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, in the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe, even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, an example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch’s book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany, another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic and cultural domination. The bible of the concept was Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa in which he called for a federation to be established after the war. The concept failed after the German defeat in World War I, the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, italy and Yugoslavia are not considered by the author to be Central European because they are located mostly outside Central Europe. The author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, the interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, however, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe, after the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept
10.
Eastern Europe
–
Eastern Europe, also known as East Europe, is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural. There are almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region, a related United Nations paper adds that every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct. One definition describes Eastern Europe as an entity, the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc, a similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegating, several definitions of Eastern Europe exist today, but they often lack precision or are extremely general. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even scientists, recently becoming more and more imprecise. The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the land border of the eastern edge of Europe. Eurovoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, provides entries for 23 EU languages, of these, those in italics are classified as Eastern Europe in this source. Other official web-pages of the European Union classify some of the countries as strictly Central European. The East–West Schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern and Western churches which began in the 11th century and lasts until this very day and it divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches in the east, due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic, for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, the fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the East–West division in Europe, but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by the media. The Baltic states have seats in the Nordic Council as observer states and they also are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight whereas Eastern European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group. Estonia Latvia Lithuania The Caucasus nations may be included in the definitions of Eastern Europe, the extent of their geographic or political affiliation with Europe varies by country and source. All three states are members of the European Unions Eastern Partnership program and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, on 12 January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. Georgia — in modern geography, Georgia has been classified as part of Eastern Europe. Under the European Union’s geographic criteria, Georgia is viewed as part of Eastern Europe and is the only Caucasus country to be actively seeking EU membership and it is a member of Council of Europe and Eurocontrol
11.
Philology
–
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources, it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. It is more defined as the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist, in older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics. Indo-European studies involves the comparative philology of all Indo-European languages, Philology, with its focus on historical development, is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussures insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis. The contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and Chomskyan linguistics alongside its emphasis on syntax, the term changed little with the Latin philologia, and later entered the English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French philologie, in the sense of love of literature. The adjective φιλόλογος meant fond of discussion or argument, talkative, in Hellenistic Greek also implying an excessive preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, as an allegory of literary erudition, Philologia appears in 5th-century post-classical literature, an idea revived in Late Medieval literature. The meaning of love of learning and literature was narrowed to the study of the development of languages in 19th-century usage of the term. Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that the philological instinct was universal as is the use of language. Based on the critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly scientistic study of language. The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the relationship between languages, similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. Philology also includes the study of texts and their history and it includes elements of textual criticism, trying to reconstruct an authors original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. Since that time, the principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other widely distributed texts such as the Bible. Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants and this method was applied to Classical Studies and to medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the authors original work. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, as these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics. When text has a significant political or religious influence, scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions, some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. Supporters of New Philology insist on a diplomatic approach, a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript. Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts and this science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems. In the case of Bronze Age literature, philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study and this has notably been the case with the Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite, Ugaritic and Luwian languages
12.
Latin
–
Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
13.
Ancient Greek
–
Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
14.
Turkic languages
–
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
15.
Turkish people
–
Turkish people, or the Turks, also known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the speakers of Turkic languages, ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, the ethnonym Turk may be first discerned in Herodotus reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians, furthermore, during the first century AD. Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century, in these sources, Turk appears as Tujue, which referred to the Göktürks. Although Turk refers to Turkish people, it may sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples. In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers, the Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks. In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a more positive connotation. The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish Arab followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered Turks, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a Turk as anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship. Anatolia was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Paleolithic era, most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengriism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were also adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids, the Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian, under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, as the Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century the Seljuk Turks who were admirers of the Persian civilization grew in number and were able to occupy the province of the Abbasid Empire. By 1055, the Seljuk Empire captured Baghdad and began to make their first incursions into the edges of Anatolia, when the Seljuk Turks won the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in 1071, it opened the gates of Anatolia to them. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became the purveyors of the Persian culture rather than the Turkish culture, in dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade. Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, by the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region Turchia or Turkey, meaning the land of the Turks
16.
Proto-Bulgars
–
The Bulgars were semi-nomadic warrior Turkic tribes who flourished in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century. Emerging as nomadic equestrians in the Volga-Ural region, according to some researchers their roots can be traced to Central Asia, during their westward migration across the Eurasian steppe the Bulgars absorbed other ethnic groups and cultural influences, including Hunnic, Iranian and Indo-European people. Modern genetic research on Central Asian Turkic people and ethnic groups related to the Bulgars points to an affiliation with western Eurasian and European populations, the Bulgars spoke a Turkic language, i. e. Bulgar language of Oghuric branch. They preserved military titles, organization and customs of Eurasian steppes, as well as pagan shamanism, the Bulgars became semi-sedentary during the 7th century in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, establishing the polity of Old Great Bulgaria c. 635, which was absorbed by the Khazar Empire in 668 AD,679, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, and established the First Bulgarian Empire. In the Balkans, the Bulgars became a political and military elite, and merged with previous populations, such as the Thracians and Vlachs, and were Slavicized, thus forming modern Bulgarians. The remaining Pontic Bulgars migrated in the 7th century to the Volga River, the Volga Tatars and Chuvash people claim to be originated from the Volga Bulgars. The etymology of the ethnonym Bulgar is not completely understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD. Since the work of Wilhelm Tomaschek, it is said to be derived from the Common Turkic bulğha, bulga- or bulya. Other scholars have added that bulğha might also imply stir, disturb, confuse. Peter A. Boodberg noted that the Buluoji in the Chinese sources were recorded as remnants of the Xiongnu confederation, and had strong Caucasian elements. Another theory linking the Bulgars to a Turkic people of Inner Asia has been put forward by Boris Simeonov, who identified them with the Pugu, a Tiele and/or Toquz Oguz tribe. The Pugu were mentioned in Chinese sources from 103 BC up to the 8th century AD, the names Onoğur and Bulgar were linked by later Byzantine sources for reasons that are unclear. Karatay interpreted gur/gor as country, and noted the Tekin derivation of gur from the Altaic suffix -gir, generally, modern scholars consider the terms oğuz or oğur, as generic terms for Turkic tribal confederations, to be derived from Turkic *og/uq, meaning kinship or being akin to. The terms initially were not the same, as oq/ogsiz meant arrow, while oğul meant offspring, child, son, oğuš/uğuš was tribe, clan, and the verb oğša-/oqša meant to be like, resemble. There also appears to be an association between the Bulgars and the preceding Kutrigur and Utigur – as Oğur tribes, with the ethnonym Bulgar as a spreading adjective. Golden considered the origin of the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be obscure and he noted, however, an implication that the Kutrigurs and Utigurs were related to the Šarağur, and that according to Procopius these were Hunnish tribal unions, of partly Cimmerian descent. Karatay considered the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be two related, ancestral people, and prominent tribes in the later Bulgar union, but different from the Bulgars, among many other theories regarding the etymology of Bulgar, the following have also had limited support. An Eastern Germanic root meaning combative, according to D, the origin of the early Bulgars is still unclear
17.
Uyghurs
–
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
18.
Mongols
–
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
19.
Khagan
–
Khagan or Qagan is a title in the Mongolian language equal to the status of emperor and used to refer to someone who rules a khaganate or empire. The title was adopted by Ögedei Khan from the Turkic title kaɣan and it may also be translated as Khan of Khans, equivalent to King of Kings. In modern Mongolian, the title became Khaan with the g sound becoming almost silent or non-existent, since the division of the Mongol Empire, emperors of the Yuan dynasty held the title of Khagan and their successors in Mongolia continued to have the title. Kağan and Kaan are common Turkish names in Turkey, the common western rendering as Great Khan, notably in the case of the Mongol Empire, is translation of Yekhe Khagan. In the speech one of the Murongs general named Yinalou addressed him as kehan, the Rouran Khaganate was the first people to use the titles Khagan and Khan for their emperors, replacing the Chanyu of the Xiongnu, whom Grousset and others assume to be Turkic. However, many believe the Rouran were proto-Mongols. The Avar Khaganate, who may have included Rouran elements after the Göktürks crushed the Rouran ruling Mongolia, the Avars invaded Europe, and for over a century ruled the Carpathian region. Westerners Latinized the title Khagan into Gaganus or Cagan, Khagan or Khaan refers to Emperor or King in the Mongolian language, however, Yekhe Khagan means Great Khagan or Grand Emperor. Thus, the Yuan is sometimes referred to as the Empire of the Great Khan, coexisting with the independent Mongol khanates in the west, including the Chagatai Khanate, only the Ilkhanate truly recognized the Yuans overlordship as allies. Later Yuan emperors made peace with the three khanates of the Mongol Empire and were considered as their nominal suzerain. The nominal supremacy, while based on nothing like the foundations as that of the earlier Khagans, did last for a few decades. After the breakdown of Mongol Empire and the fall of the Yuan dynasty in the mid-14th century, dayan Khan once revived Emperors authority and recovered its reputation in Mongolia, but with the distribution of his empire among his sons and relatives as fiefs it again caused decentralized rule. The last Khagan of the Chahars, Ligdan Khan, died in 1634 while fighting the Qing dynasty founded by the Manchu people, in contemporary Mongolian language the word Khaan and Khan have different meanings, while English language usually does not differentiate between them. The title is used as a generic term for a king or emperor. Minor rulers were rather relegated to the title of khan. Khagan is the title of Safavid and Qajar shahs of Iran. For example, Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar, Fath Ali Shah, the nickname of Shah Ismail and other Safavid shahs is Kagan-i Suleyman shan. Emperor Taizong of Tang was crowned Tian Kehan, or heavenly Khagan after defeating the Tujue, a later letter sent by the Tang court to the Yenisei Kirghiz Qaghan explained that the peoples of the northwest had requested Tang Taizong to become the Heavenly Qaghan
20.
Khan (title)
–
Khan is originally a title for a sovereign or a military ruler, widely used by Turkic and later medieval nomadic Mongolian tribes living to the north of China. Khan also occurs as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289, the Rourans were the first people who used the titles khagan and khan for their emperors. Subsequently the Ashina adopted the title and brought it to the rest of Asia, in the middle of the sixth century the Iranians knew of a Kagan – King of the Turks. Khan now has many equivalent meanings such as commander, leader, as of 2015 khans exist in South Asia, Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Turkey. The female alternatives are Khatun, Khatoon and Khanum and these titles or names are sometimes written as Han, Kan, Hakan, Hanum, or Hatun and as xan, xanım. Khagan is rendered as Khan of Khans and it was the title of Chinese Emperor Emperor Taizong of Tang, and also the title of Genghis Khan and of the persons selected to rule the Mongol Empire. For instance Möngke Khan and Ogedei Khan would be Khagans but not Chagatai Khan, some managed to establish principalities of some importance for a while, as their military might repeatedly proved a serious threat to such empires as China and kingdoms in Central Asia. One of the earliest notable examples of such principalities in Europe was Danube Bulgaria, Khan was the official title of the ruler until 864 AD, when Kniaz Boris adopted the Eastern Orthodox faith. The title Khan became unprecedently prominent when the Mongol Temüjin created the Mongol empire, the greatest land empire the world has ever seen and his title was khagan, or Khan of Khans, but has often been abbreviated to Khan or described as Great Khan. The great leader was regarded as a khan in the middle east, ming Dynasty Chinese Emperors also used the term Xan to denote brave warriors and rulers. The title Khan was used to designate the greatest rulers of the Jurchens, while most Afghan principalities were styled emirate, there was a khanate of ethnic Uzbeks in Badakhshan since 1697. For example, in present Armenia and nearby territories to the left and right, diverse khanates existed in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, including Baku, Ganja, Jawad, Quba, Salyan, Shakki and Shirvan=Shamakha, Talysh, Nakhichevan and Karabakh. The most important of these states were, Khanate of Kazan, sibir Khanate Astrakhan Khanate Crimean Khanate. The ruling descendants of the branch of Genghis Khans dynasty are referred to as the Great Khans. The title Khan of Khans was among numerous titles used by the Sultans of the Ottoman empire as well as the rulers of the Golden Horde and its descendant states. The title Khan was also used in the Seljuk Turk dynasties of the near-east to designate a head of multiple tribes, clans or nations, jurchen and Manchu rulers also used the title Khan, for example, Nurhaci was called Genggiyen Han. Rulers of the Göktürks, Avars and Khazars used the higher title Kaghan, see the main article for more details. Khan-i-Khanan was a given to the commander-in-chief of the army of the Mughals
21.
Kavhan
–
The kavhan was one of the most important officials in the First Bulgarian Empire. According to the accepted opinion, he was the second most important person in the state after the Bulgarian ruler. He had a number of responsibilities and concentrated power and authority. The kavhan was a commander-in-chief of the Bulgarian army and one of the diplomats in the state. He was a member of the Bolyar Counsel and one of the most important advisers to the Bulgarian ruler, the kavhan was a high magistrate and substitute to the ruler when the latter is absent from the capital. He is also attributed to have been a judge and it is assumed that there was a prominent bolyar family in Bulgaria from which the kavhan was chosen generation after generation - the so-called kavhan kin. The title was hereditary and for life. According to most historians the title outlived the First Empire which was conquered by Basil II in 1018, the last person who had the prerogatives and responsibilities of a kavhan was Georgi Voiteh, an initiator of the uprising of Peter III in 1072. During the reign of Samuil the kavhan was Dometian, captured by the Byzantines, during the Second Bulgarian Empire the title was not used. Another famous kavhan is Peter who carried out three missions in Rome and one in Constantinople during the reign of Boris I, the most prominent kavhan, as well as the one with most merits for Bulgaria was Isbul. He occupied that position during the reign of three Khans, Omurtag, Malamir and his nephew Presian and his merits include the reconstruction of Pliska as a beautiful capital during Omurtag and the completion of the new centralized state administration. He ordered an action to catch the Byzantine spies and he was among the main initiators of the 30-year peace Treaty of 815 which was very favourable and useful for Bulgaria. Isbul commanded the Bulgarian armies in campaigns against the Byzantines in southern Macedonia
22.
Languages of the Caucasus
–
Linguistic comparison allows these languages to be classified into several language families, with little or no discernible affinity to each other. However, the languages of the Caucasus are sometimes referred to as a family of languages. Three of these families have no current members outside the Caucasus, the term Caucasian languages is generally restricted to these families, which are spoken by about 11.2 million people. Kartvelian language family with a total of about 5.2 million speakers, includes Georgian, the official language of Georgia, with four million speakers, Svan, Mingrelian and Laz. Northeast Caucasian, also called the Nakho-Dagestanian or Caspian family, with a total of about 3.8 million speakers. Includes the Chechen language with 1.5 million speakers, the Avar language with 1 million speakers, the Ingush language with 500,000 speakers, the Lezgian language with 800,000 speakers, and others. Northwest Caucasian, also called the Abkhazo-Adyghean or Pontic family, with a total of about 2.5 million speakers, includes the Kabardian language, with one million speakers. It is commonly believed that all Caucasian languages have a number of consonants. Many of these features are shared with languages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time. The most promising proposals are connections between the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families and each other or with languages spoken in Anatolia. Linguists such as Sergei Starostin see the Northeast and Northwest families as related and propose uniting them in a single North Caucasian family and this theory excludes the South Caucasian languages, thereby proposing two indigenous language families. There are no known affinities between the South Caucasian and North Caucasian families, nevertheless, some scholars have proposed the single name Ibero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian language families, North and South, in an attempt to unify the Caucasian languages under one family. Some linguists have claimed affinities between the Northwest Caucasian family and the extinct Hattic language of central Anatolia, see the article on Northwest Caucasian languages for details. Alarodian is a connection between Northeast Caucasian and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages of Anatolia. Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dené–Caucasian macrofamily, which includes the North Caucasian languages together with Basque, Burushaski, Na-Dené, Sino-Tibetan and this proposal is rejected by most linguists. Other languages historically and currently spoken in the Caucasus area can be placed into families with a wider geographical distribution. The predominant Indo-European language in the Caucasus is Armenian, spoken by the Armenians, the Ossetians, speaking the Ossetian language, form another group of around 700,000 speakers. Two dialects of Neo-Aramaic are spoken in the Caucasus, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, with around 30,000 speakers, both of these were brought to the Caucasus by ethnic Assyrians fleeing Assyrian Genocide during World War One
23.
Iranian languages
–
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, which in turn are a branch of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian people, historical Iranian languages are grouped in three stages, Old Iranian, Middle Iranian, and New Iranian. Of the Old Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian and Avestan, Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian, Parthian, and Bactrian. As of 2008, there were an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages, ethnologue estimates there are 86 Iranian languages, the largest among them being Persian, Pashto and Kurdish. The term Iranian is applied to any language which descends from the ancestral Proto-Iranian language, Iranian derives from the Persian and Sanskrit origin word Arya. The use of the term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen, robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878, and Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan and Indo-Aryan. Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention, the Eastern Iranian languages subdivided into, Southeastern, of which Pashto is the dominant member, Northeastern, by far the smallest branch, of which Ossetian is the dominant member. All Iranian languages are descended from an ancestor, Proto-Iranian. In turn, and together with Proto-Indo-Aryan and the Nuristani languages, the Indo-Iranian languages are thought to have originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is the candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca.2000 BC. It was situated precisely in the part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia. Of that variety of languages/dialects, direct evidence of two have survived. These are, Avestan, the two languages/dialects of the Avesta, i. e. the liturgical texts of Zoroastrianism, Old Persian, the native language of a south-western Iranian people known as Persians. Indirectly attested Old Iranian languages are discussed below, Old Persian is the Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in south-western Iran by the inhabitants of Parsa, who also gave their name to their region and language. The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as Old Avestan, and Younger Avestan. These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since Younger Avestan is not only much younger than Old Avestan, the Old Avestan dialect is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Rigvedic Sanskrit. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Carduchi and Old Parthian. Additionally, the existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages, such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has a Median substrate in some of its vocabulary
24.
Hungarian language
–
Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, its closest relatives being Mansi and it is one of several European languages not part of the Indo-European languages, and the most widely-spoken European language that does not belong to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar or magyar nyelv, the word Magyar is used as an English and Hungarian word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, the name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur, there are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, for example, Hungarian ház house vs. Khanty xot house, and Hungarian száz hundred vs. Khanty sot hundred. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular, during the later half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b. c. e. in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists, in Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’, tíz ‘ten’, tej ‘milk’, increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs later had a influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e. g. borjú ‘calf’, dél ‘noon, many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a dramatic way during these 300 years. After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities, Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries, e. g. koboz ‘cobza’, komondor ‘mop dog’. Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages, in exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e. g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. Approximately 1. 6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin, on the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too
25.
Old Hungarian language
–
Hungarian is a Uralic language of the Ugric group. It has been spoken in the region of modern-day Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century, the predecessor language of Hungarian separated from the Ob-Ugric languages, probably still during the Bronze Age. There is no attestation for a period of close to two millennia, the oldest surviving coherent text in Old Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, dated to 1192. The Old Hungarian period is by convention taken to cover Medieval Hungary, from the invasion of Pannonia in AD896 and this predicament caused backwardness in the cultural life as well. However, Hungary, with the previously listed great territorial and human losses, soon entered into a new cultural era and this religious movement heartened many authors to find new ways. Cultural life was based in Trasylvania, but Royal Hungary also saw the rebirth of the Hungarian culture. The first printed Hungarian book was printed in Cracow, Poland and it is a partial Bible-translation, containing the letters of Saint Paul. The translation was done by Benedek Komjáti, the New Testaments first printed edition was published by János Sylvester. He also composed the first scientific analysis of the Hungarian language, like Komjáti, Sylvester printed his works in Cracow. The previous publications, however, were not Protestant in their sense, among other works, Aesops Fables – a collection of moral short stories – were first translated into Hungarian by Gábor Pesti. These are the first denoted Hungarian short stories, the first attempt to standardize Hungarian was done by Mátyás Bíró Dévai. He proposed a logical and feasible orthography to the language and his book, called Orthographia, is known from its second edition, printed in 1549. The speakers of Ugric languages were still living close together approximately until 1000 BC, Proto-Hungarian likely had contacts with the Permic languages at this time, as indicated by a nontrivial number of shared vocabulary and sound developments. The Hungarians gradually changed their way of living from settled hunters to nomadic cattle-raising and their most important animals included sheep and cattle. There are no resources on the era, thus only a little is known about it. After a long journey, the Hungarians had settled the region of the northeastern Black Sea. With the fall of Attilas empire, the Huns had receded to this area, and established their new state, which also ruled over the Hungarians. Maybe a memoir of this is a Hungarian myth, the saga of Hunor and Magor, who are said to be the ancestors of the Huns
26.
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
27.
Priscus
–
Priscus of Panium was a 5th-century Roman diplomat and Greek historian and rhetorician. Priscus was born in Panion between 410-420 AD, in 448/449 AD, he accompanied Maximinus, the head of the Byzantine embassy representing Emperor Theodosius the Younger, on a diplomatic mission to the court of Attila the Hun. While there, he met and conversed with a Greek merchant, dressed in Scythian fashion, the trader explained to Priscus that after the sack of Viminacium, he was a slave of Onegesius, a Hunnic nobleman, but obtained his freedom and chose to settle among the Huns. Priscus ultimately engaged in a debate with the Greek defector regarding the qualities of life, after an interlude in Rome, Priscus traveled to Alexandria and the Thebaid in Egypt. He last appeared in the East, circa 456, attached to the staff of Euphemios as Emperor Marcians magister officiorum, Priscus was the author of an eight-volume historical work, written in Greek, entitled the History of Byzantium, which was probably not the original title name. The History probably covered the period from the accession of Attila the Hun to the accession of Emperor Zeno, priscuss work currently survives in fragments and was very influential in the Byzantine Empire. Priscuss writing style is straightforward and his work is regarded as a contemporary account of Attila the Hun, his court. Priscus recount of a dinner with Attila the Hun Priscus recount of a dinner with Attila the Hun was at, but this one was said to be supposedly greater than the rest. Made for celebration due to it being constructed of polished wood. Priscus entered the house the following day bearing gifts to Attilas wife and her name was Kreka who had three sons. The dinner was at three O’clock, Priscus and the embassy of Western Romans, were placed at the end of the table farthest from Attila but still in his presence, this was to show a means of Attila being greater than the Roman guest. That to Priscus, Attila considered his people were more important than Prius, as Priscus and the Western Roman embassy stood, they followed the cultural tradition of being given tea from the cupbearers. They were to pray and have a drink before having a seat at the table, Attila sat in the middle of the couch, with the seats being arranged linear to the walls. As the seating arrangement went on the side of Attila was held for the Chiefs in honor. With the everyone else including Priscus and the Roman embassies on the left, following the seating, everyone was to raise a glass to pledge one another with wine. Once the Cupbearers left another attendant came in with a plate of meat, followed by other items of food such as bread, all of the food was served on plates of silver and gold. Prius also notes that Attila didn’t use any silver or gold plates but instead used a cup made of wood, once the first round was finished, they stood and then drank again to the health of Attila. Once evening arrived torches were lite and songs that were composed of Attilas victories were sung, the remaining works of Priscus are currently published in four collections, Given, John
28.
Onogurs
–
The Onoğurs or Oğurs, were Turkic nomadic equestrians who flourished in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Volga region between 5th and 7th century, and spoke Oğhuric language. The name Onoğur is most often derived as On-Oğur ten Oğurs, modern scholars consider Turkic tribal terms oğuz and oğur to be derived from Turkic *og/uq, meaning kinship or being akin to. The terms initially were not the same, as oq/ogsiz meant arrow, while oğul meant offspring, child, son, oğuš/uğuš was tribe, clan, and this tangle of events indicates that the Oğuric tribes are related to the Ting-ling and Tiele people. It is considered they belonged to the westernmost Tiele tribes, which included the Uyghurs-Toquz Oghuz and the Oghuz Turks. In early 7th century Theophylaktos Simokattes recorded that certain Onoğur city Βακάθ was destroyed by an earthquake before his lifetime, the Sogdian name indicates it was situated in the vicinity of Iranian Central Asia. Scholars also relate the Hyōn to this account, the Oğurs and Onoğurs, in the 6th and 7th century sources, were mentioned mostly in connection with the Avar and Türks conquest of Western Eurasia. According to the 6th century Menander Protector, the leader of the Οὐγούρων had the authority of the Türk Yabgu Khagan in the region of Kuban River to the lower Don. Simokattes in the Letter of the Türk Qaγan to the Emperor Maurikios recorded a complex notice. the Qağan set off on another undertaking and this people is of the most powerful because of their numbers and their training for war in full battle-gear. They have made their abodes towards the East, whence flows the river Τίλ, the oldest chieftains of this people are called Οὐάρ and Χουννί. Simokattes also recounts when the Ogor, then, were brought completely to heel, scholars consider if the Til is Qara Itil i. e. Volga, then the mentioned Ὀγώρ would be the Oğurs, while if is in Inner Asia, then could be the Uyghurs. Jordanes in Getica mentioned that the Hunuguri were notable for the skin trade. In the Middle Ages, marten skin was used as a substitute for minted money and this also indicates they lived near forests and were in contact with Finno-Ugrian peoples. From the 8th century, the Byzantine sources often mention the Onoğurs in close connection with the Bulgars, agathon wrote about the nation of Onoğurs Bulğars. Nikephoros I noted that Kubrat was the lord of the Onoğundurs, Kubrat successfully revolted against the Avars and founded the Old Great Bulgaria, also known as Onoğundur–Bulğars state, or Patria Onoguria in the Ravenna Cosmography. Constantine VII remarked that the Bulğars formerly called themselves Onoğundurs, all the forms show the phonetic changes typical of later Oğuric. The origin of the Kutrigurs and Utigurs, who lived in the vicinity of the Onoğurs and Bulgar, scholars consider unclear how the union between Onoğurs and Bulgars formed, viewing it as a long process in which a number of different groups were merged. During that time, the Bulgars may have represented a confederation of which the Onoğurs formed one of the core tribes. Kutrigurs Utigurs Bulgars Maenchen-Helfen, Otto John, The World of the Huns, Studies in Their History and Culture, University of California Press, ISBN9780520015968 Golden, Peter Benjamin
29.
Sabir people
–
The Sabirs were numerous Turkic tribes who lived in the north of the Caucasus, on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, in the Kuban area, and possibly came from Western Siberia. They were skilled in warfare, used siege machinery, had an army and were boat-builders. They switched sides in the Byzantine–Sasanian wars, as they favored the Byzantines, it laid the basis for the later Khazars-Byzantine alliance. Al-Masudi recorded that the Khazars name is in Persian, while in Turkic it is Sabir, implying the same semantic meaning, walter Bruno Henning considered to have found them in the Sogdian Nafnamak long after the 5th century. Some scholars related their name to the name of Siberia, with the far Eastern Xianbei, the ancient historians related and differed them from the Huns, implying their mixed descent. Possibly some Hungarian group derived from the Sabirs as their name is reflected in Szavard, and personal clan name Zuard. In 463 AD, Priscus mentions that the Sabirs attacked the Saragurs, Ogurs and Onogurs, probably in present day Kazakhstan and it is considered that the nomadic motion began with the Chinese attack in 450-458 against the Rouran Khaganate. It is considered that the 20,000 Huns led by Zilgibis were Sabirs and she ruled over 100,000 people, and could field 20,000 strong-men army. At the Battle of Satala, a mixed Persian army led by Mihr-Mihroe consisted of three thousand Sabirs. In December 531, many Sabirs were summoned by the Persians to plunder around Euphratesia, Cyrrhus, Cilicia, during the Lazic War, in 548, along the Alans they allied with Gubazes II of Lazica and conquered the Petra from the Persians. In 556, two thousand Sabirs served as heavy infantry mercenaries of the Byzantine Empire against the Sasanian Empire and they were led by Balmaq, Kutilzis and Iliger. They won against the three thousand Dilimnites near Archaeopolis, eight hundred Dilimnites were killed in a failed rush. In the same year, some five thousand Sabirs allied to the Persians were killed by three thousand Roman horsemen, as part of the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 572–591, in 572–573, Sabirs lost as part of the Sasanian mixed army against the Marcian near Nisibis. In 578, some eight thousand Sabirs and Arab allies were on the side of the Persians, the Syriac translation of the Pseudo–Zacharias Rhetors Ecclesiastical History in Western Eurasia recorded thirteen tribes, including the sbr. The Armenian and Arabic sources placed them in the North Caucasus, near Laks, Alans, Filān, Masqat, Sāhib as-Sarīr, by the late 6th century, the coming of the Avars into Europe terminated the Sabir union in North Caucasus. According to Theophylact Simocatta, when the Barsils, Onogurs and Sabirs saw the invading Var, menander Protector placed the events between 558-560. They were assimilated into the Khazars and Bulgars confederations, the tribe Suwāz in Volga Bulgaria is related to the city Suwār in the same state, and North Caucasian kingdom Suwār. However, it is whether these Suwār i. e. Ahmad ibn Fadlan recorded that in the 10th century they still had own leader with the title Wirgh
30.
Griffin
–
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, the head and wings of an eagle, and an eagles talons as its front feet. Because the lion was considered the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of birds. The griffin was thought of as king of all creatures. Griffins are known for guarding treasure and priceless possessions, in Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspeans were associated with gold. Indeed, in later accounts, griffins were said to lay eggs in burrows on the grounds, in antiquity it was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine. The derivation of this remains uncertain. It could be related to the Greek word γρυπός, meaning curved, also, this could have been an Anatolian loan word, compare Akkadian karūbu, and similar to Cherub. A related Hebrew word is כרוב, Most statuary representations of griffins depict them with bird-like talons, although in some older illustrations griffins have a lions forelimbs, they generally have a lions hindquarters. Its eagles head is given prominent ears, these are sometimes described as the lions ears, but are often elongated. Infrequently, a griffin is portrayed without wings, or a wingless eagle-headed lion is identified as a griffin, in 15th-century and later heraldry, such a beast may be called an alce or a keythong. In heraldry, a griffin always has forelegs like an eagles hind-legs, there is evidence of representations of griffins in Ancient Iranian and Ancient Egyptian art dating back to before 3000 BC. In Egypt, a griffin can be seen in a cosmetic palette from Hierakonpolis, known as the Two Dog Palette, which is dated to ca. In Iran, griffins appeared on seals from Susa as early as 3000 BC. Griffin depictions appear in the Levant, Syria. Early depictions of griffins in Ancient Greek art are found in the 15th century BC frescoes in the Throne Room of the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos and it continued being a favored decorative theme in Archaic and Classical Greek art. In Central Asia, the griffin appears about a years after Bronze Age Crete, in the 5th–4th centuries BC. The Achaemenids considered the griffin a protector from evil, witchcraft, the modern generalist calls it the lion-griffin, as for example, Robin Lane Fox, in Alexander the Great,1973,31 and notes p. The Pisa Griffin is a bronze sculpture that has been in Pisa in Italy since the Middle Ages. It is the largest bronze medieval Islamic sculpture known, at three feet tall, and was probably created in the 11th century in Al-Andaluz
31.
Don River (Russia)
–
The Don is one of the major rivers of Russia and the 5th longest river in Europe. The Don basin is between the Dnieper basin to the west, the Volga basin to the east, and the Oka basin to the north. The Don rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast of Tula, from its source, the river first flows southeast to Voronezh, then southwest to its mouth. The main city on the river is Rostov on Don and its main tributary is the Seversky Donets. In antiquity, the river was viewed as the border between Europe and Asia by some ancient Greek geographers, during the times of the old Scythians it was known in Greek as the Tanaïs and has been a major trading route ever since. Tanais appears in ancient Greek sources as both the name of the river and of a city on it, situated in the Maeotian marshes, pliny gives the Scythian name of the Tanais as Silys. According to Plutarch, the Don River was also home to the legendary Amazons of Greek mythology, the area around the estuary is speculated to be the source of the Black Death. While the lower Don was well known to ancient geographers, its middle, the Don Cossacks, who settled the fertile valley of the river in the 16th and 17th centuries, were named after the river. The fort of Donkov was founded by the princes of Ryazan in the late 14th century and it is shown as Donko in Mercators Atlas, Donkov was again relocated in 1618, appearing as Donkagorod in Joan Blaeus map of 1645. Both Blaeu and Mercator follow the 16th-century cartographic tradition of letting the Don originate in a great lake, Mercator still follows Giacomo Gastaldo in showing a waterway connecting this lake to Ryazan and the Oka River. In modern literature, the Don region was featured in the work And Quiet Flows the Don of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, at its easternmost point, the Don comes near the Volga, and the Volga-Don Canal, connecting the two rivers, is a major waterway. The water level of the Don in this area is raised by the Tsimlyansk Dam and this facility, with its dam, maintains sufficient water level both in its section of the Don and in the lowermost stretch of the Seversky Donets. This is presently the last lock on the Don, below Kochetovsky lock, the sufficient depth of the navigation waterway is maintained by dredging
32.
Kuban
–
The settlement of Kuban and of the adjacent Black Sea region occurred gradually for over a century, and was heavily influenced by the outcomes of the conflicts between Russia and Turkey. In the mid-18th century, the area was settled by the mountainous Adyghe tribes. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, the population of the area started to show more pro-Russian tendencies. In order to stop Turkish ambitions to use Kuban region to facilitate the return of the Crimea, after the Russian annexation of the Crimea, right-bank Kuban, and Taman in 1783, the Kuban River became the border of the Russian Empire. New fortresses were built on the Kuban in the 1780s–1790s, until the 1790s, these fortresses and the abandoned Cossack settlements on the Laba River and in Taman remained the only indication of Russian presence in the area. More intensive settlement started in 1792–1794, when Black Sea Cossack Host, in the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, the right bank of the Kuban River was settled. At the same time, first settlements appear on the coast of the Black Sea, during the second half of the 19th century, the settlement rate intensified, and the territory was administratively organized into Kuban Oblast and Black Sea Okrug. The location of the territory along the border had a significant effect on its administrative division, which incorporated the elements of civil and military governments
33.
Volga Delta
–
The delta is located in the Caspian Depression—the far eastern part of the delta lies in Kazakhstan. The delta drains into the Caspian approximately 60 km downstream from the city of Astrakhan, the Volga Delta has grown significantly in the past century because of changes in the level of the Caspian Sea. In 1880, the delta had an area of 3,222 km², today the Volga Delta covers an area of 27,224 km² and is approximately 160 km across. It has a delta pattern. The delta lies in the climate zone, characterized by very little rainfall. The region receives less than one inch of rainfall in January, strong winds often sweep across the delta and form linear dunes. Along the front of the delta, one will find muddy sand shoals, mudflats, the changing level of the Caspian Sea has resulted in three distinct zones in the delta. The higher areas of the first zone are known as Baers mounds and these mounds are linear ridges of clayey sands, ranging from 5 to 22 m in height and 400 m to 10 km in length. These depressions, called ilmens, used to part of the early, very deep river delta. Because of their isolation from the waters of the Volga. Together they form a vast and extremely diverse area of western substeppe ilmens which, because of the degrees of wetness and salinization, house a wealth of flora. The second zone, in the proper, generally has very little relief. The third zone is composed of a platform extending up to 60 km offshore. The delta has been protected since the early 1900s, with one of the first Russian nature preserves having been set up there in 1919, much of its local fauna is considered endangered. The delta is a staging area for many species of water birds, raptors. Although the delta is best known for its sturgeons, catfish, industrial and agricultural modification to the delta plain has resulted in significant wetland loss. Between 1984 and 2001, the delta lost 277 km² of wetlands, or an average of approximately 16 km² per year, from natural, the Volga discharges large amounts of industrial waste and sediment into the relatively shallow northern part of the Caspian Sea. The added fertilizers nourish the algal blooms that grow on the surface of the sea, allowing them to grow larger
34.
Huns
–
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century AD. In 91 AD, the Huns were said to be living near the Caspian Sea, by 370, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe. In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC. Since Guignes time, considerable effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Numerous other ethnic groups were included under Attilas rule, including very many speakers of Gothic and their main military technique was mounted archery. The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They formed an empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century, the Huns were a confederation of warrior bands, ready to integrate other groups to increase their military power, in the Eurasian Steppe in the 4th to 6th centuries AD. Most aspects of their ethnogenesis are uncertain, walter Pohl explicitly states, All we can say safely is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors. Jerome associated them with the Scythians in a letter, written four years after the Huns invaded the eastern provinces in 395. The equation of the Huns with the Scythians, together with a fear of the coming of the Antichrist in the late 4th century. This demonization of the Huns is also reflected in Jordaness Getica, written in the 6th century, otto J. Maenchen-Helfen was the first to challenge the traditional approach, based primarily on the study of written sources, and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research. Thereafter the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns ancestors became controversial among some, the similarity of their ethnonyms is one of the most important links between the two peoples. A Sogdian merchant described the invasion of northern China by the Xwn people in a letter, Étienne de la Vaissière asserts both documents prove that Huna or Xwn were the exact transcriptions of the Chinese Xiongnu name. Christopher P. Atwood rejects that identification because of the very poor match between the three words. For instance, Xiongnu begins with a velar fricative, Huna with a voiceless glottal fricative, Xiongnu is a two-syllable word. However, according to Zhengzhang Shangfang, Xiongnu was pronounced in Late Old Chinese, the Chinese Book of Wei contain references to the remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu who lived in the region of the Altai Mountains in the early 5th century AD
35.
Justinian I
–
Justinian I, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and also Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was a Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empires greatness, because of his restoration activities, Justinian has sometimes been called the last Roman in modern historiography. This ambition was expressed by the recovery of the territories of the defunct western Roman Empire. His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, the prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empires annual revenue by over a million solidi, during his reign Justinian also subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before. A still more resonant aspect of his legacy was the rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia, a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the early 540s marked the end of an age of splendour. Justinian was born in Tauresium around 482, a native speaker of Latin, he came from a peasant family believed to have been of Illyro-Roman or Thraco-Roman origins. The cognomen Iustinianus, which he later, is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. During his reign, he founded Justiniana Prima not far from his birthplace and his mother was Vigilantia, the sister of Justin. Justin, who was in the guard before he became emperor, adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople. As a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence, theology, Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown. Chronicler John Malalas, who lived during the reign of Justinian, tells of his appearance that he was short, fair skinned, curly haired, round faced, another contemporary chronicler, Procopius, compares Justinians appearance to that of tyrannical Emperor Domitian, although this is probably slander. When Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, during Justins reign, Justinian was the emperors close confidant. As Justin became senile near the end of his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler, Justinian was appointed consul in 521 and later commander of the army of the east. Upon Justins death on 1 August 527, Justinian became the sole sovereign, as a ruler, Justinian showed great energy. He was known as the emperor who never sleeps on account of his work habits, nevertheless, he seems to have been amiable and easy to approach. Around 525, he married his mistress, Theodora, in Constantinople and she was by profession a courtesan and some twenty years his junior
36.
Constantinople
–
Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and also of the brief Latin, and the later Ottoman empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, Constantinople was famed for its massive and complex defences. The first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, Constantinople never truly recovered from the devastation of the Fourth Crusade and the decades of misrule by the Latins. The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was likely just a play on the word Byzantion. During this time, the city was also called Second Rome, Eastern Rome, and Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew. In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently, the medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr, and later Miklagard and Miklagarth. In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-kubra and in Persian as Takht-e Rum, in East and South Slavic languages, including in medieval Russia, Constantinople was referred to as Tsargrad or Carigrad, City of the Caesar, from the Slavonic words tsar and grad. This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις, the modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin, meaning into the city or to the city. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script, in time the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages. In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpolis/Konstantinoúpoli or simply just the City, apart from this, little is known about this initial settlement, except that it was abandoned by the time the Megarian colonists settled the site anew. A farsighted treaty with the emergent power of Rome in c.150 BC which stipulated tribute in exchange for independent status allowed it to enter Roman rule unscathed. The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbour. He would later rebuild Byzantium towards the end of his reign, in which it would be briefly renamed Augusta Antonina, fortifying it with a new city wall in his name, Constantine had altogether more colourful plans. Rome was too far from the frontiers, and hence from the armies and the imperial courts, yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it might have seemed unthinkable to suggest that the capital be moved to a different location. Constantinople was built over 6 years, and consecrated on 11 May 330, Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis
