Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world as of 1995.
The Manchus are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and Qing (1636–1912) dynasties of China were established and ruled by the Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in northern China. Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. They are found in 31 Chinese provincial regions. Among them, Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. There are a number of Manchu autonomous counties in China, such as Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen and over 300 Manchu towns and townships. Manchus are the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region.
Jurchen is a term used to collectively describe a number of East Asian Tungusic-speaking people. They lived in northeastern China, also known as Manchuria, before the 18th century. The Jurchens were renamed Manchus in 1635 by Hong Taiji. Different Jurchen groups lived as hunter-gatherers, pastoralist semi-nomads, or sedentary agriculturists. Generally lacking a central authority, and having little communication with each other, many Jurchen groups fell under the influence of neighbouring dynasties, their chiefs paying tribute and holding nominal posts as effectively hereditary commanders of border guards.
The Jianzhou Jurchens were one of the three major groups of Jurchens as identified by the Ming dynasty. Although the geographic location of the Jianzhou Jurchens changed throughout history, during the 14th century they were located south of the Wild Jurchens and the Haixi Jurchens, and inhabited modern-day Liaoning and Jilin provinces in China. The Jianzhou Jurchens were known to possess an abundant supply of natural resources. They also possessed industrial secrets, particularly in processing ginseng and the dyeing of cloth. They were powerful due to their proximity to Ming trading towns such as Fushun, Kaiyuan, and Tieling in Liaodong, and to Manpojin camp near Korea.
Hūlun was a powerful alliance of Jurchen tribes in the late 16th century, based primarily in modern Jilin province of China.
Nomads are known as a group of communities who travel from place to place for their livelihood. Some are salt traders, fortune-tellers, conjurers, ayurvedic healers, jugglers, acrobats, actors, storytellers, snake charmers, animal doctors, tattooists, grindstone makers, or basketmakers. Some anthropologists have identified about 8 nomadic groups in India, numbering perhaps 1 million people—around 0.12 percent of the country's billion-plus population. Aparna Rao and Michael Casimir estimated that nomads make up around 7% of the population of India.
Nomadic empires, sometimes also called steppe empires, Central or Inner Asian empires, were the empires erected by the bow-wielding, horse-riding, nomadic people in the Eurasian Steppe, from classical antiquity (Scythia) to the early modern era (Dzungars). They are the most prominent example of non-sedentary polities.
The Korean–Jurchen border conflicts were a series of conflicts from the 10th century to the 17th century between the Korean states of Goryeo and Joseon and the Jurchen people.
De-Sinicization is a process of eliminating or reducing Han Chinese cultural elements, identity, or consciousness from a society or nation. In modern contexts, it is often contrasted with the assimilation process of Sinicization.
The Haixi Jurchens were a grouping of the Jurchens as identified by the Chinese of the Ming dynasty. They inhabited an area that consists of parts of modern-day Jilin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia in China.
The Ghorbati are an ethnic group and originally a nomadic community in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, where they are part of the various communities termed Lyuli. They are mostly situated in Iran, where others have migrated from. They trace their ancestry to Sassanid Persia.
There are several ethnic groups in Afghanistan which traditionally lead a peripatetic life. This means they are nomadic and their main occupations centre around providing services to the settled populations they travel among, like peddling particular goods or performing music. In this way, they contrast both with the settled population and with the pastoralist nomads. They are of low social status and are known to outsiders as Jats, a derogatory term that none of the groups use as a self-designation.
The Qalandar are a Muslim ethnic group found in North India and Pakistan. They are also known as Qalander Faqir. A few Qalandar are also found in the Terai region of Nepal.
Nurhaci, also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizu of Qing, was the founding khan of the Jurchen-led Later Jin dynasty.
Identity in China was strongly dependent on the Eight Banner system during the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1912). China consisted of multiple ethnic groups, of which the Han, Mongols and Manchus participated in the banner system. Identity, however, was defined much more by culture, language and participation in the military until the Qianlong Emperor resurrected the ethnic classifications.
The Qing dynasty in Inner Asia was the expansion of the Qing dynasty's realm in Inner Asia in the 17th and the 18th century AD, including both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, both Manchuria and Outer Manchuria, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang.
Manchuria under Ming rule refers to the domination of the Ming dynasty of China over the greater region of Manchuria, including today's Northeast China and Outer Manchuria. The Ming rule of Manchuria began with its conquest of Manchuria in the late 1380s after the fall of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and reached its peak in the early 15th century with the establishment of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission. With the dissolution of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission the Ming power waned considerably in Manchuria. Starting in the 1580s, Nurhaci, the Jianzhou Jurchen chieftain who had been a Ming vassal, began to take control of most of Manchuria over the next several decades, and in 1616 he established the Later Jin and openly renounced Ming overlordship with the Seven Grievances. The Qing dynasty established by his son Hong Taiji would eventually conquer the Ming and take control of China proper.
The Later Jin, officially known as Jin or the Great Jin, was a Jurchen-led royal dynasty of China in Manchuria and the precursor to the Qing dynasty. Established in 1616 by the Jianzhou Jurchen chieftain Nurhaci upon his reunification of the Jurchen tribes, its name was derived from the earlier Jin dynasty founded by the Wanyan clan which had ruled northern China in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The Jurchen unification were a series of events in the late 16th and early 17th centuries that led to the unification of the Jurchen tribes under the Jianzhou Jurchen leader Nurhaci. While Nurhaci was originally a vassal of the Ming dynasty who considered himself a local representative of imperial Ming power, he also had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the Ming due to Ming's involvement in events early on in his life that led to the death of his father and grandfather combined with his own increasing ambition.
Aparna Rao was a German anthropologist who performed studies on social groups in Afghanistan, France, and some regions of India. Her doctorate studies focused on anthropogeography, ethnology, and Islamic studies. Rao taught anthropology at the University of Cologne, serving for a brief time as chair of the Department of Ethnology at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University, Germany.
