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Central Asia is a subregion of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the southwest and Eastern Europe in the northwest to Western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian suffix "-stan" in both respective native languages and most other languages.
The Uyghurs, alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the titular nationality of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government as a regional minority and the titular people of Xinjiang.
The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group native to the wider Central Asian region, being among the largest Turkic ethnic group in the area. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, next to Kazakh and Karakalpak minorities, and are also minority groups in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and China. Uzbek diaspora communities also exist in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United States, Ukraine, and other countries.
Tajiks are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak varieties of Persian, a Western Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks. In China, the term is used to refer to its Pamiri ethnic groups, the Tajiks of Xinjiang, who speak the Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages. In Afghanistan, the Pamiris are counted as a separate ethnic group.
The Kyrgyz people are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia. They are primarily found in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. A Kyrgyz diaspora is also found in Russia, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. They speak the Kyrgyz language, which is the official language of Kyrgyzstan.
East Turkestan or East Turkistan, also called Uyghuristan, is a loosely-defined geographical region in the northwestern part of the People's Republic of China, which varies in meaning by context and usage. The term was coined in the 19th century by Russian Turkologists, including Nikita Bichurin, who intended the name to replace the common Western term for the region, "Chinese Turkestan", which referred to the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang or Xinjiang as a whole during the Qing dynasty. Beginning in the 17th century, Altishahr, which means "Six Cities" in Uyghur, became the Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin. Uyghurs also called the Tarim Basin "Yettishar," which means "Seven Cities," and even "Sekkizshahr", which means "Eight Cities" in Uyghur. Chinese dynasties from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty had called an overlapping area the "Western Regions".
Turkology is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative context. This includes ethnic groups from the Sakha in East Siberia to the Turks in the Balkans and the Gagauz in Moldova.
The Chuvash people, plural: чӑвашсем, çăvaşsem; Russian: чува́ши ) are a Turkic ethnic group, a branch of the Ogurs, native to an area stretching from the Idel-Ural (Volga-Ural) region to Siberia.
Pan-Turkism or Turkism is a political movement that emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals who lived in the Russian region of Kazan (Tatarstan), Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire, with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Turanism is a closely related movement but it is a more general term, because Turkism only applies to Turkic peoples. However, researchers and politicians who are steeped in the pan-Turkic ideology have used these terms interchangeably in many sources and works of literature.
Turkmens are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia, living mainly in Turkmenistan, northern and northeastern regions of Iran and north-western Afghanistan. Sizeable groups of Turkmens are found also in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and the North Caucasus. They speak the Turkmen language, which is classified as a part of the Eastern Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages.
Turanism, also known as pan-Turanism or pan-Turanianism, is a pan-nationalist political movement built around pseudoscientific claims of biological and linguistic connections between various ethnic groups of Eurasia. It revolves around the abandoned proposal of a Ural-Altaic language family, which hypothesizes that the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Uralic peoples share Inner and Central Asian origins and therefore close cultural, ethnic, and linguistic bonds. Supporters of Turanism propose political unity among these groups, chiefly to oppose the cultural and political influences of the Indo-Europeans of Europe and South Asia, as well as the Sino-Tibetans of East Asia. The movement emerged in the 19th century to counter pan-nationalist ideologies such as pan-Germanism, and built upon the ideas of pan-Slavism.
The history of Central Asia concerns the history of the various peoples that have inhabited Central Asia. The lifestyle of such people has been determined primarily by the area's climate and geography. The aridity of the region makes agriculture difficult and distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region. Nomadic horse peoples of the steppe dominated the area for millennia.
Peter Benjamin Golden is an American professor emeritus of History, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. He has written many books and articles on Turkic and Central Asian studies, such as An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples.
Yuri Enohovich Bregel was one of the world's leading historians of Islamic Central Asia. He published extensively on Persian- and Turkic-language history and historiography, and on political, economic and ethnic history in Central Asia and the Muslim world. He lived in the Soviet Union (1925–1974), Israel (1974–1981), and the United States (1981–2016).
Devin Deweese is a professor of Islamic and Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana.
Nicholas N. Poppe was an important Russian linguist. He is also known as Nikolaus Poppe, with his first name in its German form. He is often cited as N.N. Poppe in academic publications.
The Department of Central Eurasian Studies, often abbreviated as CEUS, is a specialized academic department in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. Since its original formation in 1943 as a language-training program for the U.S. military, the department has become the sole independent degree-granting academic unit staffed with its own faculty dedicated to Central Eurasia in the country. Due to the department and the presence of several additional centers - the Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center, the Denis Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, and the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region - Indiana University currently hosts the premier program of Central Asian studies in the United States.
The L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University (ENU), is a Kazakh national research university, and the largest higher education institution in Astana.
Mongolian studies or Mongolistics is an interdisciplinary field of scholarly inquiry concerning Mongolian language, Mongolian history, and Mongolian culture. Scholars who work in the field of Mongolian studies are often referred to as Mongolists.
References
- ↑ Levi 2012, p. 867.
- ↑ Levi 2012, p. 866.
- ↑ "Mizan: incorporating Central Asian review". OPC4. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2006-06-21.
- ↑ Will Myer. Islam and Colonialism: Western Perspective on Soviet Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. p. 103-4. ISBN 0-7007-1765-X.