Total population | |
---|---|
2,000 [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
![]() | |
Languages | |
Garachi, Azerbaijani, Tat, Domari, Turkish, Kurdish. | |
Religion | |
Islam | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Dom people |
The Garachi (Azerbaijani : Qaraçı; Kurdish : Qereçî), also spelled Karachi or Karaci, are a group of the Dom people living in Azerbaijan and Turkey. Little research has been done on the Garachi, and most of what is known about them is based on the works of the 19th-century Russian scholars Kerope Patkanov and Jean-Marie Chopin. [2]
The term Garachi is sometimes used to describe the Domari-speaking people of northern Iran, The confusion is explained by the fact that both groups live in the regions populated mostly by Azeri-speakers who apply the word Garachi to medieval collective migrants from Karachi from Sindh.
Even though the Garachi of Azerbaijan and Turkey call themselves Dom (the name Garachi was given to them by the local population and derives from the Azeri word qara - "black" and the suffix -çı denoting the stem-word's function/occupation), they do not seem to share same origins with the Dom people. According to Jean-Marie Chopin, the Azerbaijani Garachi descend from the medieval Romani nomads of Central Asia. [3] In 1944, Vasily Yan suggested that the Garachi of Azerbaijan and the Dom of Iran (sometimes referred to as the Garachi) differ in terms of their origins. [4]
In 1887, Kerope Patkanov stated that the Garachi of the South Caucasus (then part of the Russian Empire) numbered 2,399 people living mostly in the Goychay uyezd (present-day Goychay, Ujar, Agsu, and Ismayilli districts of Azerbaijan) and Nakhchivan. The largest Garachi settlement was named after them and is situated around 4 km southeast of Khacmaz town in Khachmaz region. [5]
Their main occupation was the production of household items such as baskets, sieves and chewing gum made by men and sold by women in the neighbouring towns. Among other sources of income Patkanov lists fortune-telling and cattle larceny. Nomadic Garachi groups used to train animals and make street song-and-dance performances. [6] This practice was described in the famous 1913 story Garaja giz by the Azeri writer Suleyman Sani Akhundov. [7]
Garachi | |
---|---|
Native to | Azerbaijan |
Extinct | ?[ citation needed ] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | kara1460 |
Patkanov's analysis of the language of the Garachi (based on 101 common phrases) indicated that despite being Indo-Aryan, it is not mutually intelligible with any of the Romani or Domari dialects of the Balkans, Russia, or the Middle East. In addition to it, the Garachi observed by Patkanov spoke Azeri and sometimes Tat as a second and third language respectively.
Here are four phrases in Garachi and Romani languages with translation.
Garachi | Romani | English translation |
---|---|---|
|
|
|
Most Garachis nowadays are settled and live in communities in Yevlakh, Agdash, Gakh, Khachmaz and Baku suburbs numbering altogether around 2,000 people. Small communities in Shusha and Jabrayil were driven out by the Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. [8] Presently the Garachi are undergoing cultural and linguistic assimilation by Azeris. Modern Garachi couples tend to have 2 to 3 children as opposed to 5 and above, as was often the case throughout their history. [8]
The Romani people, also known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who traditionally lived a nomadic, itinerant lifestyle. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Romani people originated in the Indian subcontinent, in particular the region of Rajasthan. Their first wave of westward migration is believed to have occurred sometime between the 5th and 11th centuries. They are thought to have first arrived in Europe sometime between the 9th and 14th centuries. Although they are widely dispersed, their most concentrated populations are believed to be in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.
The Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus river in Bangladesh, North India, Eastern Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal. Moreover, apart from the Indian subcontinent, large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan–speaking communities live in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America, the Caribbean, Southeast Africa, Polynesia and Australia, along with several million speakers of Romani languages primarily concentrated in Southeastern Europe. There are over 200 known Indo-Aryan languages.
Romani is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani people. The largest of these are Vlax Romani, Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Romani (300,000). Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.
Articles related to the Azerbaijan Republic include:
The Dom are descendants of the Dom caste with origins in the Indian subcontinent which through ancient migrations are found scattered across the Middle East and North Africa, the Eastern Anatolia Region, and parts of the Balkans and Hungary. The traditional language of the Dom is Domari, an endangered Indo-Aryan language, thereby making the Dom an Indo-Aryan ethnic group.
The Lom people, also known by non-Loms as Bosha or Posha or as Armenian Romani or Caucasian Romani, are an ethnic group originating from the Indian subcontinent. Their Lomavren language is a mixed language, combining an Indo-Aryan substrate with Armenian.
Domari is an endangered Indo-Aryan language, spoken by Dom people scattered across the Middle East and North Africa. The language is reported to be spoken as far north as Azerbaijan and as far south as central Sudan, in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon. Based on the systematicity of sound changes, it is known with a fair degree of certainty that the names Domari and Romani derive from the Indo-Aryan word ḍom. Although they are both Central Indo-Aryan languages, Domari and Romani do not derive from the same immediate ancestor. The Arabs referred to them as Nawar as they were a nomadic people that originally immigrated to the Middle East from the Indian subcontinent.
The Lyuli, Jughi or Jugi are a branch of the Ghorbati people living in Central Asia, primarily Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and southern Kyrgyzstan; also, related groups can be found in Turkey, and the Balkans, Crimea, Southern Russia and Afghanistan. They speak ethnolects of the Persian and Turkic language and practice Sunni Islam. The terms Lyuli and Jugi are considered pejorative. They have a clan organization. Division into sub-clans is also practiced. The Lyuli community is extremely closed towards non-Lyuli.
Abdulla Shaig, born Abdulla Mustafa oglu Talibzadeh, was an Azerbaijani writer.
Suleyman Sani Rzagulu bey oghlu Akhundov, was an Azerbaijani playwright, journalist, author, and teacher. He chose the name Sani to avoid confusion with his namesake, Mirza Fatali Akhundov.
The Romani diaspora refers to the presence and dispersion of Romani people across various parts of the world. Their migration out of the Indian subcontinent occurred in waves, with the first estimated to have taken place in the 6th century. They are believed to have first arrived in Europe sometime between the 9th and 14th centuries, via the Balkans. They settled in the areas of present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the 19th and later centuries, to the Americas. The Roma population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.
Suleyman Rustam was a Soviet and Azerbaijani poet, playwright and translator.
The Transcaucasian Teachers Seminary in Gori was a 4-year specialized secondary school in the Russian Empire in 1876–1917 aimed at professional training of primary school teachers. Historic building is currently used by Gori Public School N9.
Ethnic groups in the Middle East are ethnolinguistic groupings in the "transcontinental" region that is commonly a geopolitical term designating the intercontinental region comprising West Asia without the South Caucasus, and also comprising Egypt in North Africa. The Middle East has historically been a crossroad of different cultures and languages. Since the 1960s, the changes in political and economic factors have significantly altered the ethnic composition of groups in the region. While some ethnic groups have been present in the region for millennia, others have arrived fairly recently through immigration. The largest socioethnic groups in the region are Egyptians, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis but there are dozens of other ethnic groups that have hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of members.
The Romani people are known by a variety of names, mostly as Gypsies, Roma, Romani, Tsinganoi, Bohémiens, and various linguistic variations of these names. There are also numerous subgroups and clans with their own self-designations, such as the Sinti, Kalderash, Boyash, Manouche, Lovari, Lăutari, Machvaya, Romanichal, Romanisael, Calé, Kale, Kaale, Xoraxai, Xaladytka, Romungro, Ursari and Sevlengere.
Zargari is a dialect of Balkan Romani, spoken in Zargar region of the Qazvin Province of in Iran by the ethnic Zargari people. The language can be found in surrounding regions as well. It is one of the only Indo-Aryan languages still spoken in Iran, and is considered endangered. Zargari takes its name from the Persian word for "goldsmith".
Russians are the second-largest ethnic minority in Azerbaijan, and the country is home to the largest Russian community in the South Caucasus and one of the largest outside of Russia. Although in decline, the community still numbers 71,000 people as of 2019. Since their arrival at the beginning of the 19th century, the Russians have played an important role in all spheres of life, particularly during the Czarist and Soviet period, especially in the capital city of Baku.
Kerovbe Patkanian or Kerope Petrovich Patkanov was a Russian Armenian philologist, linguist, orientalist, and historian who served as Professor of Armenian Studies at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University. He was born in Nakhichevan-on-Don into a noted family of scholars and educators. He published a number of works of medieval Armenian literature, some for the first time.
The Dom people migrated to the territory of the present day Egypt from South Asia, particularly from Indian Subcontinent, and heavily intermixed with Egyptians. Scholars suggest that their Egyptian admixture later made them known around the world by the vernacular term Gypsies, deriving from the word Egyptian.
Adil Alviz oglu Ismayilov was an Azerbaijani lawyer, jurist, investigator, and a public figure.