- published: 14 Dec 2012
- views: 449
- author: NATOCOMMUNITY
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
MORE VIDEOS
Loading...
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- Afghan Turkestan
- Afghanistan
- Africa
- Alans
- Almaty
- Altaic language
- Americas
- Amu Darya
- Andean States
- Andijan
- Anglo-America
- Antarctic
- Aral Sea
- Arctic
- Arctic Ocean
- Ashgabat
- Asia
- Astana
- Atlantic Ocean
- Attar Neyshapuri
- Australasia
- Azad Kashmir
- Bactria
- Bactrian language
- Bactrians
- Balkh province
- Bashkortostan
- BBC News
- Beijing
- Bilaterally
- Biome
- Bishkek
- British Empire
- Buddhism
- Buddhism in Mongolia
- Buddhist monasticism
- Bukhara
- Bukhara Province
- Bukharan Jews
- Bukhori language
- Cambridge
- Capital (political)
- Caribbean
- Caspian Sea
- Caucasoid
- Central Africa
- Central America
- Central Asia
- Central Asian Union
- Central Europe
- Chagatai Khanate
- Chagatai language
- China
- Chinese language
- Chirchik River
- Chuy Province
- Claas Epp, Jr.
- Confucianism
- Continent
- Country
- Dardic languages
- Desert
- Divination
- Dune
- Dushanbe
- Dzungaria
- Earth
- East Africa
- East Asia
- Eastern Europe
- Ecozone
- Endorheic
- English language
- Ertugrul gazi
- Eurasia
- Eurasian nomads
- Eurasian Steppe
- Europe
- Farkhor Air Base
- Fergana
- Fergana Province
- Fergana Valley
- Firearm
- Freestyle battle
- Freestyle rap
- Gandhara
- Gansu
- Genghis Khan
- Gilgit
- Gilgit Baltistan
- Gilgit–Baltistan
- Gobi desert
- Golestan Province
- Google Books
- Great Khingan
- Greater Khorasan
- Han Chinese
- Herat
- Himalayas
- Hindi
- Hindu Kush
- Hindutash
- Hispanic America
- Hohhot
- Horses in warfare
- Hui people
- Huns
- India
- Indian Ocean
- Indian subcontinent
- Indo-European
- Indochina
- Inner Mongolia
- Iran
- Iranian languages
- Iranian peoples
- Ishkashimi language
- Islam
- Islamabad
- Jammu and Kashmir
- Jilin
- Kabul
- Kabul River
- Kamal-ol-molk
- Kangju
- Kanishka
- Kara Kum
- Karakum Desert
- Kashmir
- Kashmir Valley
- Kashmiri language
- Kazakh
- Kazakh language
- Kazakh SSR
- Kazakhs
- Kazakhstan
- Khanate of Khiva
- Khiva
- Khorasan Province
- Khorezm
- Khowar
- Khwarezmian language
- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- Khyber Pass
- Kipchaks
- Kokand
- Komuz
- Kumalak
- Kushans
- Kyrgyz language
- Kyrgyz people
- Kyrgyzstan
- Kyzyl
- Kyzyl Kum
- Ladakh
- Ladakhi
- Lake Balkhash
- Lanzhou
- Latin America
- Leh
- Leh District
- Lingua franca
- Major non-NATO ally
- Manas (epic)
- Margiana
- Marketplace
- Martha Brill Olcott
- Mashhad
- Mazar-e Sharif
- Melanesia
- Michael Mandelbaum
- Micronesia
- Middle Asia
- Middle East
- Mongol raids
- Mongolia
- Mongolian language
- Mongolian people
- Mongols
- Moscow
- Mount Binalud
- Mountain ranges
- Munji language
- Natural gas
- NBM Publishing
- Nestorianism
- New Delhi
- New York
- Ningxia
- Nisa (village)
- Nishapur
- Nomad
- North Africa
- North America
- North Asia
- Northeast Asia
- Northern America
- Northern Areas
- Northern Europe
- Northern Hemisphere
- Novosibirsk
- Novosibirsk Oblast
- Nowruz
- Oasis
- Ocean
- Oceania
- Official languages
- Omar Khayyám
- Omsk
- Omsk Oblast
- Oral history
- Oral poetry
- Osh
- Osh Province
- Osman I
- Ossetic language
- Ottoman Empire
- Pacific Ocean
- Pakistan
- Palearctic
- Pamir Mountains
- Parthia
- Pashto
- Pashto language
- Permafrost
- Persian language
- Peshawar
- Photographer
- Polar region
- Polynesia
- Portal Asia
- Portal Geography
- Punjab, India
- Punjab, Pakistan
- Pustaka Nasional
- Qianlong
- Qinghai
- Razavi Khorasan
- Rigveda
- Russia
- Russian culture
- Russian Empire
- Russian Federation
- Russian language
- Russian Mennonite
- Russians
- Samarkand
- Samarqand Province
- Sanskrit
- Sarikoli language
- Satellite state
- Scythia
- Scythian language
- Scythians
- Sea
- Shamanism
- Shia
- Shia Islam
- Shina language
- Shughni language
- Siberia
- Sichuan
- Silk Road
- Singapore
- Slavic Peoples
- Sogdian language
- Sogdian people
- Sogdiana
- Sogdians
- South America
- South Asia
- Southeast Asia
- Southeast Europe
- Southern Africa
- Southern Cone
- Southern Europe
- Southern Ocean
- Southwest Asia
- Soviet Central Asia
- Soviet Union
- Steppe
- String instrument
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Subregion
- Sunni
- Svat Soucek
- Syr Darya
- Taiga
- Tajik language
- Tajikistan
- Taklamakan
- Taliban
- Tarim Basin
- Tarim mummies
- Tashkent
- Tatarstan
- Ted Rall
- Tehran
- Template Cat
- Template talk Cat
- Tengriism
- The Great Game
- The Guianas
- Tian Shan
- Tibet
- Tibetan Buddhism
- Tibetan language
- Tibetan Plateau
- Tibetans
- Tocharian languages
- Tokharistan
- Tous, Iran
- Transoxiana
- Turkestan
- Turkey
- Turkic language
- Turkic languages
- Turkic peoples
- Turkmen language
- Turkmen people
- Turkmenistan
- Tus, Iran
- Tuva
- Ukrainians
- Ulan Bator
- UNESCO
- Urdu
- Uyghur language
- Uyghur people
- Uzbek language
- Uzbek photography
- Uzbekistan
- Uzbeks
- Wakhan Corridor
- Wakhi language
- War
- War on Terror
- Washington Post
- Washington, D.C.
- West Africa
- West Asia
- Western Asia
- Western Europe
- World Ocean
- Wu Hu
- Xinjiang
- Yaghnobi language
- Yinchuan
- Zhetysu
- Zoroastrianism
- Ürümqi
-
Afghanistan
Afghanistan
i/æfˈɡænɨstæn/ (Persian/Pashto: افغانستان, Afġānistān), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming part of South Asia, Central Asia, and Greater Middle East, it is also considered to be part of a broader West Asia. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of 647,500 km2 (250,001 sq mi), making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and the east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.
Afghanistan has been an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and human migration. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation from as far back as 50,000 BC. Urban civilization may have begun in the area as early as 3,000 to 2,000 BC. Sitting at an important geostrategic location that connects the Middle East with Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the land has been home to various peoples through the ages and witnessed many military campaigns, notably by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and in modern era Western forces. The land also served as a source from which the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Timurids, Mughals and many others have risen to form major empires.
wn.com/Afghanistan -
Americas
The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World.
In the English language, the Americas refers to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, whereas America, in current usage, usually refers to the United States of America.
The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age.
wn.com/Americas -
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, although some oceanographers call it the Arctic Mediterranean Sea or simply the Arctic Sea, classifying it as one of the mediterranean seas of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean.
Almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America, the Arctic Ocean is partly covered by sea ice throughout the year (and almost completely in winter). The Arctic Ocean's temperature and salinity vary seasonally as the ice cover melts and freezes; its salinity is the lowest on average of the five major oceans, due to low evaporation, heavy freshwater inflow from rivers and streams, and limited connection and outflow to surrounding oceanic waters with higher salinities. The summer shrinking of the ice has been quoted at 50%. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) uses satellite data to provide a daily record of Arctic sea ice cover and the rate of melting compared to an average period and specific past years.
wn.com/Arctic_Ocean -
Ashgabat
Ashgabat (Turkmen: Aşgabat, Persian: اشک آباد, Russian: Ашхабад, also Ashkhabad in transliteration from Russian formerly Poltoratsk between 1919–1927) is the capital and largest city of Turkmenistan, a country in Central Asia. It has a population of 695,300 (2001 census estimate), 2009 estimates around 1 million people in Ashgabat, and is situated between the Kara Kum desert and the Kopet Dag mountain range. Ashgabat has a primarily Turkmen population, with ethnic minorities of Russians, Armenians, and Azeris. It is 250 km from the second largest city in Iran, Mashhad.
Ashgabat is Aşgabat in Turkmen, Ашхабад (Ashkhabad) in Russian, and اشک آباد (UniPers: Ešq-âbâd) in Persian. From 1919 until 1927, the city was renamed Poltoratsk after a local revolutionary. Before 1991, the city was usually spelled Ashkabad in English, a transliteration of the Russian form, which was itself from the original Persian form. It has also been variously spelled Ashkhabat and Ashgabad.
Root of the name of the city goes back to Arshacid Empire era, and derived from the name of the founder of the Parthian Empire,Arsaces I of Parthia. So it seems the original form of the name was Ashk-Abad, and because of Turkish pronunciation of the name it became like it is today.
wn.com/Ashgabat -
Astana
Astana (Russian/Kazakh: Астана, formerly known as Akmola (Kazakh: Ақмола / Aqmola, until 1998), Целиноград / Tselinograd until 1992) and Akmolinsk (Russian: Акмолинск, until 1961), is the capital and second largest city (after Almaty) of Kazakhstan, with an officially estimated population of 708,794 as of 1 August 2010. It is located in the north-central portion of Kazakhstan, within Akmola Province, though administrated separately from the province as a federal city area.
The current mayor of Astana is Imangali Tasmagambetov. He was appointed on 4 April 2008.
The word Astana in Kazakh literally means Capital but the word itself originates from Persian Astane (Persian: آستانه means "sublime threshold," "royal porte" implying a royal capital city or a holy shrine town, (from the Persian verb Istadan (آستان) 'to stand' (in respect)), and literally means "threshold" (royal or sacred, where people stand in respect or awe),[citation needed] implying where the court is seated (the capital city) or the body of a sacred person is interred (a shrine town). The city of Turkistan in Kazakhstan that hosts the body of the saint Ahmad Yasavi is also called the "astana" as is the city of Mashhad in Iran that is the burial place of the 8th Shiite Imam Reza. In fact, long before becoming the new capital of Kazakhstan, the city was "an astana," a burial ground of a saint, hence the old name of the city, Ak Mola (Ақмола), "white mausoleum."
wn.com/Astana -
Azad Kashmir
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Urdu: آزاد جموں و کشمیر, Azaad Jammu o- Kashmir, literally Free Jammu and Kashmir ; AJK) or Azad Kashmir (literally Free Kashmir) for short, is the southernmost political entity within the Pakistani-administered part of the former princely state of Kashmir and Jammu. It borders the present-day Indian-controlled state of Jammu and Kashmir to the east (separated from it by the Line of Control), Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to the west, Gilgit–Baltistan to the north, and the Punjab province to the south. With its capital at Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir covers an area of 13,297 square kilometres (5,134 sq mi) and has an estimated population of about four million. Brad Adams the Asia director at Human Rights Watch has said in 2006
Although ‘azad’ means ‘free,’ the residents of Azad Kashmir are anything but, The Pakistani authorities govern Azad Kashmir with strict controls on basic freedoms.
Azad Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan together constitute the disputed region, referred to as Pakistan-administered Kashmir by the United Nations and other international organisations, and as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in India in contrast to the name Indian-occupied Kashmir which is given to the Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistan. The territories have been under control of the two countries since the first Kashmir war after which Azad Kashmir was successfully captured from the princely state by the rebelling militias with the help of Pakistan army.
wn.com/Azad_Kashmir -
Bashkortostan
The Republic of Bashkortostan (Russian: Респу́блика Башкортоста́н, tr. Respublika Bashkortostan; IPA: [rʲɪsˈpublʲɪkə bəʂkərtɐˈstan]; Bashkir: Башҡортостан Республикаһы, Başqortostan Respublikahı), also known as Bashkiria (Russian: Башки́рия, tr. Bashkiriya; IPA: [bɐʂˈkʲirʲɪjə]) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It is located between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. Its capital is the city of Ufa. Population: 4,072,292 (2010 Census).
The state has strong relations with its Muslim neighbor Tatarstan.
"Bashkortostan" derives from the name of the Bashkir ethnic group and the Persian suffix -stan (an ending common to many Central Asian countries).
The first settlements in the territory of modern Bashkortostan were set up in the early Paleolithic period; however, it was the Bronze Age which served as a spur to populate this territory. When people of Abashevo culture started settling here, they possessed high skills in manufacturing bronze tools, weapons, and decorations. They were the first to establish permanent settlements in the Southern Urals.
wn.com/Bashkortostan -
Beijing
Beijing (
/beɪˈdʒɪŋ/; Chinese: 北京; pinyin: Běijīng, [peɪ˨˩ t͡ɕiŋ˥]), formerly romanized as Peking ( /piːˈkɪŋ/ or /peɪˈkɪŋ/), is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The metropolis, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government, with 14 urban and suburban districts and two rural counties. Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast.
Beijing is China's second largest city by urban population after Shanghai and is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's largest state-owned companies. Beijing is a major transportation hub in the national highway, expressway, railway and high-speed rail network. Beijing's Capital International Airport is the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic.
wn.com/Beijing -
Bishkek
Bishkek (in Kyrgyz and Russian: Бишкек), formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative centre of Chuy Province which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan.
The name is thought to derive from a Kyrgyz word for a churn used to make fermented mare's milk (kumis), the Kyrgyz national drink. Founded in 1825 as the Kyrgyz-Khokand fortress of "Bishkek", then, in 1862, named as the Russian fortress Pishpek (крепость Пишпек), in 1926 the city was renamed Frunze (Фрунзе), after the Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze. In 1991, the Kyrgyz parliament restored the city's historical name.
Bishkek is situated at about 800 metres (2,600 ft) altitude just off the northern fringe of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too range, an extension of the Tian Shan mountain range, which rises up to 4,855 metres (15,928 ft) and provides a spectacular backdrop to the city. North of the city, a fertile and gently undulating steppe extends far north into neighboring Kazakhstan. The Chui River drains most of the area. Bishkek is connected to the Turkestan-Siberia Railway by a spur line.
wn.com/Bishkek -
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world's population at the time, and covered more than 33,700,000 km2 (13,012,000 sq mi), almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.
During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (and then, following union between England and Scotland in 1707, Great Britain) the dominant colonial power in North America and India. The loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after a war of independence deprived Britain of some of its oldest and most populous colonies.
wn.com/British_Empire -
Bukhara
Bukhara (Tajik: Бухоро Bukhoro, Persian: بخارا; Uzbek: Buxoro; Russian: Бухара Bukhara), from the Soghdian βuxārak ("lucky place"), is the capital of the Bukhara Province (viloyat) of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 (2009 census estimate). The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time. Located on the Silk Road, the city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. The historic center of Bukhara, which contains numerous mosques and madrassas, has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Ethnic Uzbek may constitute the largest element in Bukhara, with the native Tajiks being as numerous. The city long has had a mixed population including Jews and other ethnic minorities.
Bukhara was known as Bokhara in 19th and early 20th century English publications and as Buhe/Puhe（捕喝） in Tang Chinese.
Persian-speaking Soghdians inhabited the area, and some centuries later the Persian language became dominant among them. Encyclopædia Iranica mentions that the name Bukhara is possibly derived from the Soghdian βuxārak (Place of Good Fortune).
wn.com/Bukhara -
Bukhara Province
Coordinates: 40°10′N 63°40′E / 40.167°N 63.667°E / 40.167; 63.667
Buxoro Province (Bukhara Province) (Uzbek: Buxoro viloyati/Бухоро вилояти) is a viloyat (province) of Uzbekistan located in the southwest of the country. The Kyzyl-Kum Desert takes up a large portion of its territory. It borders Turkmenistan, Navoiy Province, Qashqadaryo Province, a tiny bit of Xorazm Province, and the Karakalpakstan Republic. It covers an area of 40,300 km2. The population is estimated at 1,525,900 (end of 2005 data), with 71% living in rural areas.
Buxoro Province is divided into 11 administrative districts. The capital is Buxoro (pop. est. 241,300 at the end of 2005). Other major towns include Alat, Karakul, Galaasiya, Gazli, Gijduvan (pop. 40,600 end of 2005), Kagan (pop. 53,500, end of 2005), Romitan, Shafirkan, and Vabkent.
The climate is a typically arid continental climate.
The old city of Bukhara is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, famous as a "living museum" and a center for international tourism. There are numerous historical and architectural monuments in and around the city and adjacent districts.
wn.com/Bukhara_Province -
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge (i/ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒ/ KAYM-brij) is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia, on the River Cam, about 50 miles (80 km) north of London. According to the United Kingdom Census 2001, its population was 108,863 (including 22,153 students), and was estimated to be 125,717 in mid-2010. There is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area in bronze age and Roman times, and under Viking rule Cambridge became an important trading centre. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, although city status was not conferred until 1951.
Cambridge is most widely known as the home of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209 and consistently ranked one of the top five universities in the world. The university includes the renowned Cavendish Laboratory, King's College Chapel, and the Cambridge University Library. The Cambridge skyline is dominated by the last two buildings, along with the chimney of Addenbrooke's Hospital in the far south of the city and St John's College Chapel tower.
wn.com/Cambridge -
Caribbean
The Caribbean (pronounced /ˌkærɨˈbiːən/ or /kəˈrɪbiən/) is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north. From the peninsula of Florida on the mainland of the United States, the islands stretch 1,200 miles (1,900 km) southeastward, then 500 miles (800 km) south, then west along the north coast of Venezuela on the South American mainland.
Situated largely on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. These islands generally form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea.
The Caribbean islands are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which consists of the Greater Antilles on the north, the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), as well as the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands (the Lucayan Archipelago, which does not border the Caribbean Sea). Due to its proximity to the equator, the sun rises from 3am EST to 5am EST.[citation needed]
wn.com/Caribbean -
China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
wn.com/China -
Chuy Province
Coordinates: 42°30′N 74°30′E / 42.5°N 74.5°E / 42.5; 74.5
Chuy Province or Chui Province (Kyrgyz: Чүй областы, Russian: Чуйская область) is the northernmost province (oblast) of the Kyrgyz Republic. It is bounded on the north by Kazakhstan, and clockwise, Issyk Kul Province, Naryn Province, Jalal-Abad Province and Talas Province. Its administrative center is Bishkek, but from 2003 to May 2006 it was Tokmok.
The main northwest part of the province is flat, a rarity in Kyrgyzstan. This is the valley of the Chu River. The valley's black soil is very fertile and is largely irrigated with water diverted from the Chu River. Agricultural production includes wheat, maize, sugar beets, potatoes, lucerne, and various vegetables and fruits. During the Soviet period, various agro-processing and other industries were established throughout the province, giving rise to a number of urban centers such as Tokmok, Kant and Kara-Balta. The population is considerably more heterogeneous than that of the other regions of the country, with many ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Dungans, Koreans, Germans, etc.
wn.com/Chuy_Province -
Claas Epp, Jr.
Claas Epp Jr. (September 21, 1838 – January 19, 1913) was a Russian Mennonite minister known for leading his followers into Central Asia where he predicted Christ would return in 1889.
Epp was born in Fürstenwerder, Prussia. His family moved to the Trakt Mennonite settlement in the Russian province of Samara in 1853. He was married to Elisabeth Jantzen in 1862. Most of their twelve children died before reaching adulthood. His son, Claas Epp III migrated to Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1891, and his numerous descendants live in the United States.
The 1870s were a time of stress and transition in the Mennonite settlements of Russia. The population of the colonies was more than could be supported by available land. The Russian government announced in 1870 that it would end all special privileges granted to colonists by 1880, including the exemption from military service, which was so important to nonresistant Mennonites. Those most concerned with these changes were looking toward North America as a resettlement option. There was widespread distribution of chiliastic writings by prophetic authors such as Jung Stilling and others among the Mennonite colonies.
wn.com/Claas_Epp,_Jr. -
Dushanbe
Dushanbe (Tajik: Душанбе, Dushanbe, Dyushambe until 1929; Stalinabad, Tajik: Сталинабад until 1961), population 679,400 people (2008 est.), is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan. Dushanbe means "Monday" in Tajik, and the name reflects the fact that the city grew on the site of a village that originally was a popular Monday marketplace.
Situated at the confluence of two rivers, Varzob and Kofarnihon, Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan. Although archaeological remnants dating to the 5th century BC have been discovered in the area, there is little to suggest that Dushanbe was more than a small village until the early 20th century. In 1920, the last Emir of Bukhara briefly took refuge in Dushanbe (then called Dyushambe) after being overthrown by the Bolshevik revolution. He fled to Afghanistan after the Red Army conquered the area the next year.
Dushanbe, which means "Monday" in Persian, (فارسی), developed on the site of a Monday marketplace village, Dyushambe-Bozor, and its former name Dyushambe was a Russified version of the word meaning "Monday" in Persian (du-shanbe from du two + shanbe Saturday, lit. "second day after Saturday"). Following the Red Army victory in Central Asia the village was upgraded to town in 1925 and made the capital of the newly created Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik ASSR). After the transformation of Tajik ASSR to Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik SSR) in 1929, Dyushambe was renamed Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin. As part of Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization initiative, the city was renamed Dushanbe in 1961.
wn.com/Dushanbe -
Dzungaria
Dzungaria, also called Zungaria, is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang. It covers approximately 777,000 km2 (300,000 sq mi), lying mostly within Xinjiang, and extending into western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan. Formerly the term could cover a wider area, depending on temporary political boundaries.
The name Dzungaria is a corruption of the Mongolian term "Züün Gar" or "Jüün Gar" depending on the dialect of Mongolian used. "Züün"/"Jüün" means "left" and "Gar" means "hand". The name originates from the notion that the Western Mongols are on the left hand side when the Mongol Empire began its division into East and West Mongols. After this fragmentation, the western Mongolian nation was called "Zuun Gar". Today, the cradle of this former nation retains its name: Zungaria.
The core of Dzungaria is the triangular Dzungarian Basin (also Junggar Basin) with its central Gurbantunggut Desert. It is bounded by the Tien Shan to the south, the Altai Mountains to the northeast and the Tarbagatai Mountains to the northwest. The three corners are relatively open. The northern corner is the valley of the upper Irtysh River. The western corner is the Dzungarian Gate with its railroad (opened in 1990). The eastern corner leads to Gansu and the rest of China. In the south an easy pass leads from Ürümqi to the Turfan Depression. In the southwest the Borohoro Mountains branch of the Tian Shan separates the basin from the upper Ili River.
wn.com/Dzungaria -
Fergana
Coordinates: 40°23′11″N 71°47′11″E / 40.38639°N 71.78639°E / 40.38639; 71.78639 Fergana (Uzbek: Farg'ona/Фарғона; Persian: فرغانه Farghāneh; Russian: Фергана́) is a city (population: 214,000), the capital of Fergana Province in eastern Uzbekistan, at the southern edge of the Fergana Valley in southern Central Asia, cutting across the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Fergana is about 420 km east of Tashkent, and about 75 km west of Andijan.
The fertile Fergana Valley was an important conduit on the Silk Roads (more precisely the North Silk Road), which connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an to the west over the Wushao Ling Mountain Pass to Wuwei and emerging in Kashgar before linking to ancient Parthia, or on to the north of the Aral and Caspian Seas to ports on the Black Sea.
The ancient kingdom referred to as Dayuan (大宛, "Great Yuan", literally "Great Ionians") in the Chinese chronicles is now generally accepted as being in the Ferghana Valley. It is sometimes, though less commonly, written as Dawan (大宛). Dayuan were Greeks, the descendants of the Greek colonists that were settled by Alexander the Great in Ferghana in 329 BCE, and prospered within the Hellenistic realm of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians, until they were isolated by the migrations of the Yuezhi around 160 BCE. It has been suggested that the name "Yuan" was simply a transliteration of the words “Yona”, or “Yavana”, used throughout antiquity in Asia to designate Greeks (“Ionians”). Their capital was Alexandria Eschate.
wn.com/Fergana -
Fergana Province
Coordinates: 40°46′12″N 71°42′07″E / 40.77°N 71.702°E / 40.77; 71.702
Fergana Province (Uzbek: Farg‘ona viloyati, Russian: Ферганский вилоят) is a viloyat (province) of Uzbekistan, located in the southern part of the Fergana Valley in the far east of the country. It borders the Namangan and Andijan Provinces of Uzbekistan, as well as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It covers an area of 6,800 km2. The population is estimated to be around 2,597,000, with over 71% of the population living in rural areas.
Fergana Province is divided into 15 administrative districts. The capital is the city of Fergana, with an estimated 214,000 inhabitants. Other major cities include Besharik, Khamza, Kokand, Kuva, Kuvasay, Margilan and Rishdan.
Fergana Province has a typically continental climate with extreme differences between winter and summer temperatures.
Agriculture is the main economy activity of Fergana Province, primarily irrigated cotton, sericulture, horticulture, and wine. Animal husbandry concentrates on meat and milk production.
wn.com/Fergana_Province -
Fergana Valley
The Fergana Valley or Farghana Valley (Uzbek: Farg‘ona vodiysi, Kyrgyz: Фергана өрөөнү [ferʁana œrœːny], Tajik: водии Фaрғонa, Russian: Ферганская долина, Persian: وادی فرغانه) is a region in Central Asia spread across eastern Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Divided into three subdivisions of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse, and in the early 21st century was the scene of ethnic conflict. A large triangular valley in what is an often dry part of Central Asia, the Fergana owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which run from the east, joining near Namangan, forming the Syr Darya river. The valley's history stretches back over 2300 years, when its population was conquered by Greco-Bactrian invaders from the west. Chinese chroniclers date its towns to more than 2100 years ago, as a path between Greek, Chinese, Bactrian and Parthian civilizations. In the path of the Northern Silk Road, the area was converted by Muslim invaders from the west, and was home to Babur, famous conqueror and founder of the Mughal Empire in India, tying the region to modern Afghanistan and South Asia. The Russian Empire conquered the valley at the end of the 19th century, and it became part of the Soviet Union from the beginning of the 20th. Its three soviet regional states gained independence in 1991. The area remains Muslim, populated by ethnically Uzbek, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz, often intermixed and not matching modern borders. As well there historically have been substantial Russian, Kashgarians, Kipchaks, Bukharan Jews and Romani minorities. Mass cotton cultivation, introduced by the Soviets, remains central to the economy, along with a wide range of grains, fruits and vegetables. There is a long history of stock breeding, leatherwork, and a growing mining sector, including deposits of coal, iron, sulfur, gypsum, rock-salt, lacustrine salt, naphtha, and some small known oil reserves.
wn.com/Fergana_Valley -
Gansu
Coordinates: 38°0′N 102°20′E / 38°N 102.333°E / 38; 102.333
Gansu (help·info) (simplified Chinese: 甘肃; traditional Chinese: 甘肅; pinyin: Gānsù; Wade–Giles: Kan-su, Kansu, Kan-suh) is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.
It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east. The Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province.
Gansu has a population of 26 million (2009) and has a large concentration of Hui Chinese, and the historical home, along with Shaanxi of the dialect of the Dungans, who are Hui who migrated to Central Asia. The southwestern corner of Gansu is home to a large Tibetan population. The capital is Lanzhou, located in the southeast part of the province. Gansu is abbreviated as "甘" (Gān) or "陇" (Lǒng), and is also known as Long West or Long Right, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu.
wn.com/Gansu -
Gilgit
Gilgit (Urdu, Shina: گلگت) is the capital city of Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan. Gilgit City forms a tehsil of Gilgit, within Gilgit District. Its ancient name was Sargin, later to be known as Gilit, and it is still called Gilit or Sargin-Gilit by local people. In the Burushaski language, it is named Geelt and in Wakhi and Khowar it is called Gilt. Ghallata is considered its name in ancient Sanskrit literature. Gilgit City is one of the two major hubs in Gilgit Baltistan for mountaineering expeditions to the Karakoram and other the peaks in the Himalayas, the other hub being Skardu.[citation needed]
Gilgit was an important city on the Silk Road, along which Buddhism was spread from South Asia to the rest of Asia.[citation needed]
The Dards and Chinas appear in many of the old Pauranic lists of peoples who lived in the region, with the former also mentioned in Ptolemy's accounts of the region. Two famous travellers, Faxian and Xuanzang, traversed Gilgit according to their accounts.[citation needed]
wn.com/Gilgit -
Gilgit Baltistan
Gilgit–Baltistan (Urdu: گلگت - بلتستان, Balti: གིལྒིཏ་བལྟིསྟན, formerly known as the Northern Areas (Urdu: شمالی علاقہ جات, Shumālī Ilāqe Jāt)), is the northernmost political entity within Pakistan. It borders Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province to the west, Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to the north, China to the east and northeast, Azad Kashmir to the southwest, and Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast. Gilgit–Baltistan covers an area of 72,971 km² (28,174 mi²) and is highly mountainous. It has an estimated population approaching 1,000,000. Its administrative center is the city of Gilgit (population 216,760).
Formerly a part of the erstwhile Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu, which governed the larger historic region of Kashmir and subsequently Azad Kashmir, the territory became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name Northern Areas and was formed by the amalgamation of the Gilgit Agency, the Baltistan District of the Ladakh Wazarat, and the states of Hunza and Nagar.
wn.com/Gilgit_Baltistan -
Gobi desert
The Gobi (Mongolian: Говь, Govi, "semidesert"; Chinese: 戈壁; pinyin: Gēbì) is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast. The Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road.
The Gobi is made up of several distinct ecological and geographic regions based on variations in climate and topography. One is the Eastern Gobi desert steppe Ecoregion, a Palearctic ecoregion in the Deserts and xeric shrublands Biome, home to the Bactrian camel and various other animals.. It is a rain shadow desert formed by the Himalaya range blocking rain-carrying clouds from reaching the Gobi from the Indian Ocean.
The Gobi measures over 1,610 km (1,000 mi) from southwest to northeast and 800 km (500 mi) from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the line joining the Lake Bosten and the Lop Nor (87°-89° east). It occupies an arc of land 1,295,000 km2 (500,002 sq mi) in area as of 2007, making it the fifth largest in the world[clarification needed] and Asia's largest. Much of the Gobi is not sandy but is covered with bare rock.
wn.com/Gobi_desert -
Golestan Province
Golestan Province (Persian: استان گلستان, Ostān-e Golestān ) is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, located in the north-east of the country, south of the Caspian Sea. Its capital is Gorgan.
Golestān was split off from the province of Mazandaran in 1997. It has a population of 1.6 million (2006) and an area of 20,380 km². The major townships of the province are: Gorgan, Gonbad Kavoos, Bandar Torkaman, Bandar Gaz, Aliabad-e katul, Kord Kooy, Fenderesk and Minoo Dasht. Present-day Gorgan was called Esterabad or Astarabad until 1937.
Gorgān, Hyrcania in Latin, the district of "the wolves" (still seen thereabouts), is mentioned already as Varkāna- in the Behistun inscription.
Human settlements in this area date back to 10 000 BCE. Evidence of the ancient city of Jorjan can still be seen near the current city of Gonbad-e Kavus. This was an important city of Persia, located on the Silk Road.
Under the Achaemenid Iran, it seems to have been administered as a sub-province of Parthia and is not named separately in the provincial lists of Darius and Xerxes. The Hyrcanians, however, under the leadership of Megapanus, are mentioned by Herodotus in his list of Xerxes’ army during the invasion of Greece.
wn.com/Golestan_Province -
Great Khingan
The Greater Khingan Range (simplified Chinese: 大兴安岭; traditional Chinese: 大興安嶺 pinyin: Dà Xīng'ānlǐng; Mongolian: Их Хянганы нуруу; Manchu: ᠠᠮᠪᠠ᠋ ᡥᡳᠨ᠋ᡤᡤᠠᠨ, Amba Hinggan), also called the Greater Hing'an Range or Greater Hinggan Range, is a volcanic mountain range in the northeastern part of the People's Republic of China. The range extends roughly 1,200 km from north to south, narrowing toward the south. It divides the Manchurian plain of northeastern China to the east from the Mongolian Plateau of Inner Mongolia to the west.
The area has an elevation of 1,200 to 1,300 metres, with the highest peak reaches 2,035 metres. The range is much broader in the north (306 km (190 mi)) than it is in the south (97 km (60 mi)). It was formed during the Jurassic Period (roughly 200 to 145 million years ago), and is essentially a tilted fault block; its ancient fault line forms its eastern edge, facing the Northeast Plain. The ranges are markedly asymmetrical, with a sharp eastern face and a more gentle western slope down to the Mongolian Plateau at an elevation of 790–1,000 m (2,590–3,300 ft). The eastern slopes are more heavily dissected by the numerous tributaries of the Nen and Sungari rivers, but generally the mountains are rounded with flat peaks. The ranges are composed largely of igneous rocks (i.e., formed through the solidification of magma).
wn.com/Great_Khingan -
Herat
Herāt (Persian / Pashto: هرات) is the capital of Herat province in Afghanistan. It is the third largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 397,456 as of 2006. It is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. The city is linked with Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif via highway 1 or the ring road that stretches across the country. It is also linked to the city of Mashad in Iran through the border town of Islam Qala.
Situated in a fertile area, Herāt dates back to the Avestan times and was traditionally known for its wine. The city has a number of historic sites, including the Citadel of Alexander and the Mosallah Complex. During the Middle Ages Herāt became one of the important cities of Khorasan, as it was known as the pearl of Khorasan. It was made independent in 1717 from the Safavid dynasty by the Afghans until 1736 when the Hotaki dynasty was defeated by the Afsharids, which finally became part of the Durrani Empire in 1747. It saw some actions during the 19th century Anglo-Afghan wars. Much of the city has been spared from destructions that occurred in other cities of Afghanistan during the 1978-present wars.
wn.com/Herat -
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains ( /ˌhɪməˈleɪ.ə/ or /hɪˈmɑːləjə/;Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya, is a mountain range immediately to the north of the Indian subcontinent. By extension, it can also refer to the massive mountain system that additionally includes the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, and other lesser ranges that extend out from the Pamir Knot. Some of the world's major river systems arise in the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basins are home to some 3 billion people (almost half of the Earth's population) in 18 countries. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
Geologically, the Himalayas originate from the northward movement of the Indian tectonic plate at 15 cm[citation needed] per year to impact the Eurasian continent, with first contact about 70 million years ago, and with movement continuing today. This caused the formation of the Himalayan arc peaks: the lighter rocks of the seabeds of that time were easily uplifted into mountains. An often-cited fact used to illustrate this process is that the summit of Mount Everest is made of marine limestone.
wn.com/Himalayas -
Hindu Kush
Coordinates: 35°N 71°E / 35°N 71°E / 35; 71
The Hindu Kush (Pashto/Persian: ھندوکُش, Urdu: سلسلہ کوہ ہندوکش) is an 800 km (500 mi) long mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir (7,708 m or 25,289 ft) in Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a sub-range of the Himalayas.
The names Hindu Kush (Persian: ھندوکُش), Hindu Kūh (ھندوکوه) and Kūh-e Hind (کوهِ ھند) are usually applied to the entire range separating the basins of the Kabul and Helmand rivers from that of the Amu River (ancient Oxus) or more specifically to that part of the range, northwest of the Afghan capital Kabul. Sanskrit documents refer to the Hindu Kush as Pāriyātra Parvata (पारियात्र पर्वत). Greek geographers adapted the Sanskrit to "Paropanisadae" by Greeks in the late first millennium BC.
The Persian-English dictionary indicates that the word 'Kush' is derived from the verb Kushtar - to slaughter or carnage. Kush is probably also related to the verb Koshtan, meaning to kill.
wn.com/Hindu_Kush -
Hohhot
Hohhot (Mongolian:
, Chinese: 呼和浩特; pinyin: Hūhéhàotè, abbreviated Hū Shì (Chinese: 呼市); also romanized as Huhehot or Huhhot), is a city in north-central China and the capital of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, serving as the region's administrative, economic, and cultural centre.
The city was founded by Mongol ruler Altan Khan in the late 16th century. It was chosen as the region's administrative centre in 1952, replacing Ulanhot. A city with a rich cultural background, Hohhot is known for its historical sites and temples and is one of the major tourist destinations of Inner Mongolia. It is also nationally known as the home of China's dairy giants Mengniu and Yili, and was declared "Dairy Capital of China" by the China Dairy Industry Association and the Dairy Association of China in 2005.
The name of the city in Mongolian means "Blue City." The color blue in Mongolian culture is associated with the sky, eternity and purity; in Chinese, the name can be translated as Qīng Chéng (Chinese: 青城), literally, "Blue/Green City."
wn.com/Hohhot -
India
India (i/ˈɪndiə/), officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four of the world's major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.
wn.com/India -
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula (or, more generally, by southern and western Asia); on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, by Antarctica). The ocean is named after the geographic location of India.
As one component of the interconnected global ocean, the Indian Ocean is delineated from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian running south from Cape Agulhas, and from the Pacific by the meridian of 146°55' east. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf. This ocean is nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) wide at the southern tips of Africa and Australia; its area is 73,556,000 square kilometres (28,350,000 sq mi), including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
wn.com/Indian_Ocean -
Inner Mongolia
Coordinates: 44°N 113°E / 44°N 113°E / 44; 113
Inner Mongolia (Mongolian: s
, Öbür Monggol and c Өвөр Монгол, Övör Mongol; Chinese: 内蒙古; pinyin: Nèi Měnggǔ, but officially romanized to Nei Mongol) is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation. Its capital is Hohhot and the largest city is Baotou.
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was established in 1947 on the area of former Republic of China provinces of Suiyuan, Chahar, Rehe, Liaobei and Xing'an along with the northern parts of Gansu and Ningxia. It is the third-largest subdivision of China spanning about 1,200,000 km² (463,000 sq mi) or 12% of China's total land area. It has a population of about 24 million as of 2004. The majority of the population in the region are Han Chinese, with a substantial Mongol minority. The official languages are Chinese and Mongolian, the latter written in the Mongolian script, as opposed to the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet used in the state of Mongolia.
wn.com/Inner_Mongolia -
Iran
Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] (
listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
wn.com/Iran -
Islamabad
Islamabad (Urdu: اسلام آباد Islām ābād, lit. Abode of Islam) is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.152 million in 2011. The greater Islamabad-Rawalpindi Metropolitan Area is the third largest conurbation in Pakistan with a population of over 4.5 million inhabitants.
Islamabad is located in the Pothohar Plateau in the northern part of the country, within the Islamabad Capital Territory. The region has historically been a part of the crossroads of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Margalla pass acting as the gateway between the two regions. The city was built during the 1960s to replace Karachi as Pakistan's capital. Islamabad is a well-organized city divided into different sectors and zones. It is regarded as the most developed city in Pakistan. Islamabad is ranked as a Gamma world city. The city is home to Faisal Mosque, the largest mosque in South Asia and the sixth largest mosque in the world.
wn.com/Islamabad -
Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmiri/ˌdʒɑːmuː/ & /ˈkæʃmɪər/ is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan, to the west and northwest respectively.
Formerly a part of the erstwhile Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu, which governed the larger historic region of Kashmir, this territory is disputed among China, India and Pakistan. Pakistan, which claims the territory as disputed, refers to it alternatively as Indian-occupied Kashmir or Indian-held Kashmir, while some international agencies such as the United Nations, call it Indian-administered Kashmir. The regions under the control of Pakistan are referred to as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir or PoK within India.
Jammu and Kashmir consists of three regions: Jammu, the Kashmir valley and Ladakh. Srinagar is the summer capital, and Jammu is the winter capital. While the Kashmir valley is famous for its beautiful mountainous landscape, Jammu's numerous shrines attract tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims every year. Ladakh, also known as "Little Tibet", is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and Buddhist culture.
wn.com/Jammu_and_Kashmir -
Kabul
Kabul ( /ˈkɑːbəl/, /ˈkɑːbuːl/; Pashto: کابل Kābəl, IPA: [kɑˈbəl]; Persian: کابل Kābol, IPA: [kɒːˈbol]), also spelled Cabool, Caubul or Cabul, mostly in historical contexts, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Kabul is the 5th fastest growing city in the world [2] and the world's 64th largest city [3]. It is also the capital of Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan. According to latest estimates, the population of the Kabul metropolitan area is over 4 million.
The city serves as the nation's cultural and learning centre, situated 1,791 metres (5,876 ft) above sea level in a narrow valley, wedged between the Hindu Kush mountains along the Kabul River. It is linked with Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif via the circular Highway 1 that stretches across Afghanistan. It is also the start of the main road to Jalalabad and further to Peshawar, Pakistan. The Kabul International Airport is located about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from the center of the city, next to the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. Bagram Airfield is about 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of Kabul.
wn.com/Kabul -
Kashmir
Kashmir (Balti, Gojri, Poonchi/Chibhali, Dogri: कश्मीर; Kashmiri: कॅशीर, کٔشِیر; Ladakhi: ཀཤམིར; Uyghur: كەشمىر; Shina: کشمیر) is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range. Today Kashmir denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir (the Kashmir valley, Jammu and Ladakh), the Pakistani-administered Gilgit–Baltistan and the Azad Kashmir provinces, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract.
In the first half of the first millennium, the Kashmir region became an important center of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose. In 1349, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir and inaugurated the Salatin-i-Kashmir or Swati dynasty. For the next five centuries, Muslim monarchs ruled Kashmir, including the Mughals, who ruled from 1526 until 1751, then the Afghan Durrani Empire that ruled from 1747 until 1820. That year, the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Dogras—under Gulab Singh—became the new rulers. Dogra Rule, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until 1947, when the former princely state became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: India, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China.
wn.com/Kashmir -
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan (i/ˌkɑːzəkˈstɑːn/ or /ˌkæzəkˈstæn/) (Kazakh: Қазақстан, Qazaqstan, pronounced [qɑzɑqstɑ́n]; Russian: Казахстан [kəzɐxˈstan]), officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Europe. The ninth largest country in the world by land area, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of 2,727,300 square kilometres (1,053,000 sq mi) is larger than Western Europe. It is neighbored clockwise from the north by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and also borders on a significant part of the Caspian Sea. Although Kazakhstan does not share a border with Mongolia, its most easterly point is only 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Mongolia's western tip. The terrain of Kazakhstan ranges from flatlands, steppes, taigas, rock-canyons, hills, deltas, and snow-capped mountains to deserts. With 16.6 million people (2011 estimate) Kazakhstan has the 62nd largest population in the world, though its population density is less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 per sq. mi.). The capital was moved in 1998 from Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, to Astana.
wn.com/Kazakhstan -
Khanate of Khiva
The Khanate of Khiva (Persian: خانات خیوهUzbek: خیوه خانلیگی) was the name of an Uzbek state that existed in the historical region of Khwarezm from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Persian occupation by Nadir Shah between 1740–1746. The Khans were the patrilineal descendants of Shayban (Shiban), the fifth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. Centered in the irrigated plains of the lower Amu Darya, south of the Aral Sea, with the capital in Khiva City, the country was ruled by the Kungrads, a branch[citation needed] of the Astrakhans, themselves a Genghisid dynasty. It covered present western Uzbekistan, southwestern Kazakhstan and much of Turkmenistan before Russian arrival at second half of 19th century.
In 1873, the Khanate of Khiva was much reduced in size and became a Russian protectorate. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Khiva had a revolution too, and in 1920 the Khanate was replaced by the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic. In 1924, the area was formally incorporated into the Soviet Union and today is largely a part of Karakalpakstan and Xorazm Province in Uzbekistan.
wn.com/Khanate_of_Khiva -
Khiva
Khiva (Uzbek: Xiva / Хива; Persian: خیوه / Khiveh; Russian: Хива; alternative or historical names include Khorasam, Khoresm, Khwarezm, Khwarizm, Khwarazm, Chorezm, and Persian: خوارزم) is a city of approximately 50,000 people located in Xorazm Province, Uzbekistan. It is the former capital of Khwarezmia and the Khanate of Khiva. Itchan Kala in Khiva was the first site in Uzbekistan to be inscribed in the World Heritage List (1991).
In the early part of its history, the inhabitants of the area were from Iranian stock and spoke an Eastern Iranian language called Khwarezmian. Subsequently the Iranic ruling class was replaced by Turks in the 10th century A.D, and the region gradually tuned into an area with a majority of Turkic speakers.
The city of Khiva was first recorded by Muslim travellers in the 10th century, although archaeologists assert that the city has existed since the 6th century. By the early 17th century, Khiva had become the capital of the Khanate of Khiva, ruled by a branch of the Astrakhans, a Genghisid dynasty.
wn.com/Khiva -
Khorasan Province
Khorasan (Persian: استان خراسان) (also transcribed as Khurasan and Khorassan, anciently called Traxiane during Hellenistic and Parthian times) currently names a region located in north eastern Iran, but historically referred to a much larger area east and north-east of the Persian Empire. The name Khorasan is Persian and means "where the sun arrives from." The name was given to the eastern province of Persia during the Sassanid Empire.
Khorasan is famous world wide for its saffron and zereshk which are produced in the southern cities of the province. Production is more than 170 tons per year. Khorasan is also known for its famous rugs as well as for the Ferdousi and Imamreza shrines/tombs.
Khorasan was the largest province of Iran until it was divided to three provinces on September 29, 2004. The provinces approved by the parliament (on May 18, 2004) and the Council of Guardians (on May 29, 2004) are:
Some parts of the province were added to
The older Persian province of Khorasan included parts which are today in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Some of the main historical cities of Persia are located in the older Khorasan: Nishapur and Tus (now in Iran), Merv and Sanjan (now in Turkmenistan), Samarkand and Bukhara (both now in Uzbekistan), Herat and Balkh (now in Afghanistan), Khujand and Panjakent (now in Tajikistan). In its long history, Khorasan knew many conquerors and empires: Greeks, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Safavids, Pashtuns (ethnic Afghans) and others.
wn.com/Khorasan_Province -
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pashto: خیبر پښتونخوا [xaiˈbər pəxtunˈxwɑ]; Urdu: خیبر پختونخوا [ˈxɛːbər pəxˈtuːnxwaː]), locally called Pukhtunkhwa, and formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province and various other names, is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, located in the north-west of the country. It borders Afghanistan to the north-west, Gilgit–Baltistan to the north-east, Azad Kashmir to the east, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to the west and south, Balochistan to the south and Punjab and the Islamabad Capital Territory to the south-east. The main ethnic group in the province is the Pashtuns; other smaller ethnic groups include most notably the Hindkowanss, Gujjar's and Chitralis. The principal languages are Pashto (locally referred to as Pukhto) The provincial capital is Peshawar.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sits primarily on the Iranian plateau and comprises the junction where the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains on the Eurasian plate give way to the Indus-watered hills approaching South Asia. This situation has led to seismic activity in the past. The famous Khyber Pass links the province to Afghanistan, while the Kohalla Bridge in Circle Bakote Abbottabad is a major crossing point over the Jhelum River in the east.
wn.com/Khyber_Pakhtunkhwa -
Kokand
Kokand (Uzbek: Qo‘qon / Қўқон; Tajik: Хӯқанд; Persian: خوقند; Chagatai: خوقند; Russian: Коканд) is a city in Fergana Province in eastern Uzbekistan, at the southwestern edge of the Fergana Valley. It has a population of 192,500 (1999 census estimate). Kokand is 228 km (142 mi) southeast of Tashkent, 115 km (71 mi) west of Andijan, and 88 km (55 mi) west of Fergana. It is nicknamed “City of Winds”, or sometimes “Town of the Boar".
Kokand is on the crossroads of the ancient trade routes, at the junction of two main routes into the Fergana Valley, one leading northwest over the mountains to Tashkent, and the other west through Khujand. As a result, Kokand is the main transportation junction in the Fergana Valley.
Kokand has existed since at least the 10th century, under the name of Khavakend and was frequently mentioned in traveler’s accounts of the caravan route between India and China. The Mongols destroyed Kokand in the 13th century.
The present city began as a fort in 1732 on the site of another older fortress called Eski-Kurgan. In 1740, it became the capital of an Uzbek kingdom, the Khanate of Kokand, which reached as far as Kyzylorda to the west and Bishkek to the northeast. Kokand was also the major religious center of the Fergana Valley, boasting more than 300 mosques.
wn.com/Kokand -
Kyzyl
Kyzyl (Russian: Кызы́л; Tuvan: Кызыл) is the capital city of the Tuva Republic, Russia. The name of the city means "red" in Tuvan (as well as in many other Turkic languages). Population: 109,906 (2010 Census preliminary results); 104,105 (2002 Census); 84,641 (1989 Census).
Kyzyl claims to be located exactly in the geographical center of Asia. Whether these coordinates are in fact the center of Asia is disputed. However, there is a monument labelled "Center of Asia" in English, Russian, and Tuvan which asserts this claim. Tos-Bulak is the area of open fields and mineral springs which lies immediately south of Kyzyl.
Kyzyl is located where the Yenisei River meets the Maly Yenisey River to form the Verkhny Yenisey. Most development is south of the river and follow the curves of the river, with the highest development centered where the two headstreams of the Yenisei, the Bolshoy Yenisey, and the Maly Yenisey, meet. A monument was built in 1964 on the river bank to mark this.
It was founded in 1914 as Belotsarsk (Белоца́рск).[citation needed] In 1918, it was renamed Khem-Beldyr (Хем-Белды́р), and in 1926 it was given its present name.[citation needed] In September 2004, Kyzyl celebrated its 90th anniversary as a city.
wn.com/Kyzyl -
Ladakh
Ladakh (Wylie: la-dwags, Ladakhi [lad̪ɑks], Hindi: लद्दाख़, Urdu: لدّاخ [ləd̪ˈd̪aːx]; "land of high passes") is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state in the control of the Republic of India. It is however disputed territory between Pakistan and India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent. It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir.
Historically, the region included the Baltistan (Baltiyul) valleys, the Indus Valley, the remote Zangskar, Lahaul and Spiti to the south, Aksai Chin and Ngari, including the Rudok region and Guge, in the east, and the Nubra valleys to the north.
Contemporary Ladakh borders Tibet to the east, the Lahaul and Spiti to the south, the Vale of Kashmir, Jammu and Baltiyul regions to the west, and the trans–Kunlun territory of Xinjiang to the far north. Ladakh is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and culture. It is sometimes called "Little Tibet" as it has been strongly influenced by Tibetan culture.
wn.com/Ladakh -
Ladakhi
Ladakh (Wylie: la-dwags, Ladakhi [lad̪ɑks], Hindi: लद्दाख़, Urdu: لدّاخ [ləd̪ˈd̪aːx]; "land of high passes") is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state in the control of the Republic of India. It is however disputed territory between Pakistan and India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent. It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir.
Historically, the region included the Baltistan (Baltiyul) valleys, the Indus Valley, the remote Zangskar, Lahaul and Spiti to the south, Aksai Chin and Ngari, including the Rudok region and Guge, in the east, and the Nubra valleys to the north.
Contemporary Ladakh borders Tibet to the east, the Lahaul and Spiti to the south, the Vale of Kashmir, Jammu and Baltiyul regions to the west, and the trans–Kunlun territory of Xinjiang to the far north. Ladakh is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and culture. It is sometimes called "Little Tibet" as it has been strongly influenced by Tibetan culture.
wn.com/Ladakhi -
Lanzhou
Lanzhou (simplified Chinese: 兰州; traditional Chinese: 蘭州; pinyin: Lánzhōu; Postal map spelling: Lanchow) is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. A prefecture-level city, it is a key regional transportation hub, allowing areas further west to maintain railroad connections to the eastern half of the country. Lanzhou is home to 3,616,163 inhabitants at the 2010 census and 2,177,130 in the built-up area (urban) on 1,088 km².
Originally in the territory of the Western Qiang peoples, Lanzhou became part of the territory of Qin (state) in the 6th century BC.
In 81 BC, under the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), it was taken from the Huns' Huandi Chanyu and made the seat of Jincheng commandery (jùn), and later of the Jincheng county (xiàn), later renamed Yunwu. The city used to be called the Golden City, and since at least the first millennium BC it was a major link on the ancient Northern Silk Road, and also an important historic Yellow River crossing site. To protect the city, the Great Wall of China was extended as far as Yumen.
wn.com/Lanzhou -
Leh
Leh pronunciation (help·info) (Tibetan alphabet: གླེ་, Wylie: Gle), was the capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh, now the Leh District in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Leh, with an area of 45,110 km2, is the second largest district in the country (after Kutch, Gujarat) in terms of area.
The town is still dominated by the now ruined Leh Palace, former mansion of the royal family of Ladakh, built in the same style and about the same time as the Potala Palace. Leh is at an altitude of 3524 metres (11,562 ft), and connects via National Highway 1D connects it to Srinagar in the southwest and to Manali in the south via Leh-Manali Highway
Leh was an important stopover on trade routes along the Indus Valley between Tibet to the east, Kashmir to the west and also between India and China for centuries. The main goods carried were salt, grain, pashm or cashmere wool, charas or cannabis resin from the Tarim Basin, indigo, silk yarn and Banaras brocade.
Although there are a few indications that the Chinese knew of a trade route through Ladakh to India as early as the Kushan period (1st to 3rd centuries AD), and certainly by Tang dynasty, little is actually known of the history of the region before the formation of the kingdom towards the end of the 10th century by the Tibetan prince, Skyid lde nyima gon (or Nyima gon), a grandson of the anti-Buddhist Tibetan king, Langdarma (r. c. 838 to 841). He conquered Western Tibet although his army originally numbered only 300 men. Several towns and castles are said to have been founded by Nyima gon and he apparently ordered the construction of the main sculptures at Shey. "In an inscription he says he had them made for the religious benefit of the Tsanpo (the dynastical name of his father and ancestors), and of all the people of Ngaris (Western Tibet). This shows that already in this generation Langdarma's opposition to Buddhism had disappeared." Shey, just 15 km east of modern Leh, was the ancient seat of the Ladakhi kings.
wn.com/Leh -
Mashhad
Mashhad (Persian: مشهد) is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia Muslim world. It is also the only major Iranian city with an Arabic name. It is located 850 kilometres (530 mi) east of Tehran, at the center of the Razavi Khorasan Province close to the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Its population was 2,427,316 at the 2006 population census. It was a major oasis along the ancient Silk Road connecting with Merv in the East.
Now Mashhad is notably known as the resting place of the Imam Reza. A shrine was later built there to commemorate the Imam, which in turn gave rise to increasing demographic development.
Mashhad is also known as the city of Ferdowsi, the Iranian poet of Shahnameh, which is considered to be the national epic of Iran.
The city is located at 36.20º North latitude and 59.35º East longitude, in the valley of the Kashaf River near Turkmenistan, between the two mountain ranges of Binalood and Hezar-masjed. The city benefits from the proximity of the mountains, having cool winters, pleasant springs, mild summers, and beautiful autumns. It is only about 250 km (160 mi) from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
wn.com/Mashhad -
Mazar-e Sharif
Mazār-i-Sharīf or Mazār-e Sharīf (Persian/Pashto: مزارِ شریف, ˌmæˈzɒːr ˌi ʃæˈriːf) is the fourth-largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 375,000 as of 2006. It is the capital of Balkh province and is linked by roads to Kunduz in the east, Kabul in the south-east, Herat to the west and Uzbekistan to the north. The city is a major tourist attraction in Afghanistan because of its famous shrines as well as the Muslim and Hellenistic archeological sites. In 2006, the discovery of new Hellenistic remains was announced.
The region around Mazar-e-Sharif has been historically part of Greater Khorasan and was controlled by the Tahirids followed by the Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Ilkhanates, Timurids, and Khanate of Bukhara until the mid-18th century when it became part of the Durrani Empire after an agreement was signed between Amir Murad Beg and Amir Ahmad Shah Durrani. The Mazari Sharif Airport in the city has been heavily used during the 1980s Soviet war and the latest 2001-present war in Afghanistan.
wn.com/Mazar-e_Sharif -
Mongolia
Mongoliai/mɒŋˈɡoʊliə/ (Mongolian: Монгол улс (help·info), literally Mongol country/state) is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest city, is home to about 45% of the population. Mongolia's political system is a parliamentary republic.
The area of what is now Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Gökturks and others. The Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206. After the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols returned to their earlier pattern of constant internal conflict and occasional raids on the Chinese borderlands. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Mongolia came under the influence of Tibetan Buddhism. At the end of the 17th century, all of Mongolia had been incorporated into the area ruled by the Qing Dynasty. During the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Mongolia declared independence, but had to struggle until 1921 to firmly establish de facto independence from the Republic of China, and until 1945 to gain international recognition.
wn.com/Mongolia -
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language (in Mongolian script:
,Mongγol kele; in Mongolian Cyrillic: Монгол хэл, Mongol khel) is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China. In Mongolia, the Khalkha dialect, written in Cyrillic, is predominant, while in Inner Mongolia, the language is more dialectally diverse and is written in the traditional Mongolian script. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is Standard Khalkha Mongolian (i.e., the standard written language as formalized in the writing conventions and in the school grammar), but much of what is to be said is also valid for vernacular (spoken) Khalkha and other Mongolian dialects, especially Chakhar.
Mongolian has vowel harmony and a complex syllabic structure for a Mongolic language that allows clusters of up to three consonants syllable-finally. It is a typical agglutinative language that relies on suffix chains in the verbal and nominal domains. While there is a basic word order, subject–object–predicate, ordering among noun phrases is relatively free, so grammatical roles are indicated by a system of about eight grammatical cases. There are five voices. Verbs are marked for voice, aspect, tense, and epistemic modality/evidentiality. In sentence linking, a special role is played by converbs.
wn.com/Mongolian_language -
Moscow
Moscow (
/ˈmɒskaʊ/ or /ˈmɒskoʊ/; Russian: Москва́, tr. Moskva; IPA: [mɐˈskva] (
listen)) is the capital and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural and scientific center of Russia and the continent. Moscow is the northernmost megacity on Earth, the most populous city in Europe, and the 6th largest city proper in the world. Its population, according to the results of the 2010 Census, is 11,503,501. Based on Forbes 2011, Moscow has the largest community of billionaires in the world.
Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia. In the course of its history the city has served as the capital of a progression of states, from the medieval Grand Duchy of Moscow and the subsequent Tsardom of Russia to the Soviet Union. Moscow is the site of the Moscow Kremlin, an ancient fortress that is today the residence of the Russian President and of the executive branch of the Government of Russia. The Kremlin is also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament (the State Duma and the Federation Council) also sit in Moscow.
wn.com/Moscow -
New Delhi
New Delhii/ˈnjuː dɛli/ is the capital city of India. As the national capital, New Delhi is the seat of executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the Government of India. It also serves as the centre of the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi and is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory.
The definition of New Delhi is unclear and the differentiation between Delhi and New Delhi is blurry. Even administratively, the demarcation between Delhi and New Delhi is not clear. Government of India and Government of Delhi have not clearly defined the area and boundaries of New Delhi. The boundaries of areas of New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and New Delhi district of Delhi do not completely overlap. In 1920s, when British constructed New Delhi, there were only two Delhis' – the old walled city called Old Delhi and the new city designed by Edwin Lutyens to serve as capital of British India, which was called 'New Delhi'. The rest of Delhi was rural. But after independence as more and more areas around New Delhi urbanized they also became a part of New Delhi as they were also a part of Delhi which was 'new'. Now, almost all of National Capital Territory of Delhi, with exceptions of the old city called Old Delhi, Civil Lines area, Trans-Yamuna region, some rural areas and some underdeveloped parts of Delhi (e.g. Ashok Vihar, Timarpur, Nangloi, Sultanpuri, Mangolpuri, Badarpur etc.), is designated as 'New Delhi' in postal addresses. Especially, almost all the places in South, South-west, Central and West districts of Delhi are designated as New Delhi. Most of the time, the terms Delhi and New Delhi are used interchangeably.
wn.com/New_Delhi -
New York
New York (/njuː ˈjɔrk/; locally IPA: [nɪu ˈjɔək] or [nuː ˈjɔɹk] ( listen)) is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. New York is the 27th most extensive, the 3rd most populous, and the 7th most densely populated of the 50 United States. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border with Rhode Island east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario to the west and north, and Quebec to the north. The state of New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City.
New York City, with a population of over 8.1 million, is the most populous city in the United States. Alone, it makes up over 40 percent of the population of New York state. It is known for its status as a center for finance and culture and for its status as the largest gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, New York City is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both the state and city were named for the 17th century Duke of York, James Stuart, future James II and VII of England and Scotland.
wn.com/New_York -
Nishapur
Nishapur or Nishabur (Persian: نیشاپور, also Romanized as Nīshāpūr, Nīshābūr, and Neyshābūr), is a city in the Razavi Khorasan province in northeastern Iran, situated in a fertile plain at the foot of the Binalud Mountains, near the regional capital of Mashhad. Nishapur derived its name from its alleged founder, the Sasanian king Shapur.
The region's economy is largely agricultural, based on grain and cotton, and it is also the second industrial city in Khorasan, and it is one of the most prosperous localities in Iran, although somewhat blighted by drug smuggling from nearby Afghanistan. It had a population of 205,972 people according to 2006 census. The main east-west railway line through Iran passes through the town. The region is very prone to earthquakes, with the most recent significant ones occurring in 1986 and 1997.
wn.com/Nishapur -
Nomad
Nomadic people (Greek: νομάδες, nomádes, "those who let pasture herds"), commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world.
Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in industrialized countries. Nomadic cultures are discussed in three categories according to economic specialization: hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, and "peripatetic nomads".
Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method. Pastoralists raise herds, driving them or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Peripatetic nomads, who offer the skills of a craft or trade to those with whom they travel, are most common in industrialized nations.
Many groups of 'nomadic' hunter-gatherers (also known as foragers) moved from campsite to campsite, following game and wild fruits and vegetables. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were hunter-gatherers until around 10,000 years ago.
wn.com/Nomad -
Northern Areas
Gilgit–Baltistan (Urdu: گلگت - بلتستان, Balti: གིལྒིཏ་བལྟིསྟན, formerly known as the Northern Areas (Urdu: شمالی علاقہ جات, Shumālī Ilāqe Jāt)), is the northernmost political entity within Pakistan. It borders Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province to the west, Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to the north, China to the east and northeast, Azad Kashmir to the southwest, and Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast. Gilgit–Baltistan covers an area of 72,971 km² (28,174 mi²) and is highly mountainous. It has an estimated population approaching 1,000,000. Its administrative center is the city of Gilgit (population 216,760).
Formerly a part of the erstwhile Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu, which governed the larger historic region of Kashmir and subsequently Azad Kashmir, the territory became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name Northern Areas and was formed by the amalgamation of the Gilgit Agency, the Baltistan District of the Ladakh Wazarat, and the states of Hunza and Nagar.
wn.com/Northern_Areas -
Northern Hemisphere
Coordinates: 45°0′0″N 0°0′0″E / 45°N 0°E / 45; 0
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator. Earth's northern hemisphere contains most of the planet's land, and roughly 90% of its human population. See also Arctic, Temperate zone, Tropics, Seasons and Climate
Due to the Earth's axial tilt, winter lasts from the winter solstice (typically December 22) to the vernal equinox (typically March 20), while summer lasts from the summer solstice (typically June 21) through to the autumnal equinox (typically September 21).
The Arctic is the region north of the Arctic Circle. Its climate is characterized by cold winters and cool summers. Precipitation mostly comes in the form of snow. The Arctic experiences some days in summer when the Sun never sets, and some days during the winter when it never rises. The duration of these phases varies from one day for locations right on the Arctic Circle to several months near the North Pole.
wn.com/Northern_Hemisphere -
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk (Russian: Новосибирск; IPA: [nəvəsʲɪˈbʲirsk]) is the third most populous city in Russia after Moscow and Saint Petersburg and the most populous city of Asian Russia, with a population of 1,473,737 (2010 Census preliminary results). It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of Siberian Federal District. The city is located in the south-western part of Siberia at the banks of the Ob River and occupies an area of 477.2 square kilometers (184.2 sq mi).
Novosibirsk was founded in 1893 at the future site of a Trans-Siberian Railway bridge crossing the great Siberian river of Ob and was named Novonikolayevsk (Новониколаевск), in honor of both Saint Nicholas and the reigning Tsar Nicholas II. The bridge was completed in the spring of 1897, making the new settlement the regional transport hub. The importance of the city further increased with the completion of the Turkestan-Siberia Railway in the early 20th century. The new railway connected Novosibirsk to Central Asia and the Caspian Sea.
wn.com/Novosibirsk -
Novosibirsk Oblast
Novosibirsk Oblast (Russian: Новосиби́рская о́бласть, Novosibirskaya oblast) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in southwestern Siberia. Its administrative and economic center is the city of Novosibirsk. The population was 2,665,911 as of the 2010 Census.
Novosibirsk Oblast is located in the south of West Siberian Plain, at the foothills of low Salair ridge, between the Ob and Irtysh Rivers. The oblast borders Omsk Oblast in the west, Tomsk Oblast in the north, Kemerovo Oblast in the east, and Altai Krai together with Kazakhstan (Pavlodar Province) in the south. The territory of the oblast extends for more than 600 kilometers (370 mi) from west to east, and for over 400 kilometers (250 mi) from north to south. The oblast is mainly plain; at south the steppes prevail; at north enormous tracts of woodland with great number of marshes prevail. There are many lakes, the largest ones located at the south. The majority of the rivers belong to the Ob basin, many of them falling in dead lakes. Largest lakes are Chany, Sartlan, Ubinskoye, and some others.
wn.com/Novosibirsk_Oblast -
Omsk
Omsk (Russian: Омск) is a city and the administrative center of Omsk Oblast, Russia, located in southwestern Siberia 2,236 kilometers (1,389 mi) from Moscow. With a population of over 1.1 million, it is Russia's second-largest city east of the Ural Mountains after Novosibirsk, and seventh by size nationally.
During the Imperial era, Omsk was the seat of the Governor General of Western Siberia, and later of the Governor General of the Steppes. For a brief period during the Russian Civil War in 1918–1920, it served as the capital of the anti-Bolshevik Russian State and held the imperial gold reserves.
Omsk is the administrative center of the Siberian Cossack Host. It also serves as the see of the bishop of Omsk and Tara, as well as the administrative seat of the Imam of Siberia.
Omsk stretches along on the banks of the north-flowing Irtysh at its confluence with the smaller Om River. The city has an elevation of 87 meters (285 ft) above mean sea level at its highest point.
Omsk is an important railroad hub, and is the junction point for the northern and southern branches of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The city also serves as a major hub for the regional highway network. River-port facilities handle both passengers and freight, giving the city access to the extensive navigable waterways of the Irtysh and Ob River;. The waterways connect Omsk with the coal and mineral-mining towns further up the river in Kazakhstan, as well as with the oil, natural gas and lumber operations of northern Siberia. Omsk is served by the Tsentralny Airport, which offers access to domestic and international (primarily, German and Kazakh) destinations, making the city an important aviation hub for Siberia and the Russian Far East.
wn.com/Omsk -
Omsk Oblast
Omsk Oblast (Russian: О́мская о́бласть, Omskaya oblast) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southwestern Siberia. The oblast has an area of 139,700 square kilometers (53,900 sq mi). Its population is 1,977,655 (2010 Census) with the majority, 1.15 million, living in Omsk, the administrative center.
The oblast borders with Tyumen Oblast in the north and west, Novosibirsk and Tomsk Oblasts in the east, and with Kazakhstan in the south.
Archeological finds have indicated that the present day territory of the oblast has been inhabited for the last 14,000 years. Neolithic societies in the area lived by fishing and hunting. About three thousand years ago, pastoralism began to take hold.
Various Turkic states dominated the area throughout the Middle Ages. The most notable of these were the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Siberian Khanate. Siberian Tatars, Mongols, Khanty and Mansi tribes, along with others, inhabited the territory.
The Russian history of Omsk can be said to begin with the 1584 arrival of a Cossack force under the command of Yermak, who defeated local rulers and established nominal Russian control of the area.
wn.com/Omsk_Oblast -
Osh
Osh (Kyrgyz: Ош) is the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan, located in the Fergana Valley in the south of the country and often referred to as the "capital of the south". The city is at least 3,000 years old, and has served as the administrative center of Osh Province since 1939. The city has an ethnically mixed population of about 220,000 (in 2003), comprising Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Russians, Tajiks, and other smaller ethnic groups.
Osh is a lively place, with the largest and most crowded outdoor market in all of Central Asia. The city's industrial base, established during the Soviet period, largely collapsed after the break-up of the Soviet Union and has started to revive only gradually. The proximity of the Uzbek border, which cuts through historically linked territories and settlements, deprives Osh of much of its former hinterland and presents a serious obstacle to trade and economic development. Daily flights link Osh - and hence the southern part of Kyrgyzstan - to Bishkek and the north, and the recent upgrading of the long and arduous road through the mountains to Bishkek has greatly improved communications.
wn.com/Osh -
Osh Province
Coordinates: 40°0′N 73°0′E / 40°N 73°E / 40; 73
Osh Province (Kyrgyz: Ош областы, Russian: Ошская область) is a province (oblast) of Kyrgyzstan. Its capital is Osh. It is bounded by (clockwise) Jalal-Abad Province, Naryn Province, Xinjiang, China, Tajikistan, Batken Province and Uzbekistan.
Most of the population lives in the flat northern part of the Oblast, on the edge of the Ferghana Valley. The land gradually rises southward to the crest of the Alay Mountains, drops into the Alay Valley and rises to the Trans-Alai Range which forms the border with Tajikistan. In the east, the land rises to the Ferghana Range which is roughly parallel to the Naryn border. This area is drained by the Kara Darya which flows northwest to join the Naryn River to form the Syr Darya in the Ferghana Valley.
Highway M41 goes south over the mountains from Osh to the Tajik border. At Sary-Tash a branch goes east to the Chinese border crossing at Irkeshtam. The other main road goes west through the flat country to Batken Province.
wn.com/Osh_Province -
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.
At 165.2 million square kilometres (64.1 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean – and, in turn, the hydrosphere – covers about 46% of the Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth's land area combined. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,797 ft).
The eastern Pacific Ocean was first sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century. Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and named it Mar del Sur (South Sea). The ocean's current name was given by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation in 1521, who encountered favourable winds as he reached the ocean and called it Mar Pacifico in Portuguese, meaning "peaceful sea".
wn.com/Pacific_Ocean -
Pakistan
Pakistan (
i/ˈpækɨstæn/ or i/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is a sovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.
The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.
wn.com/Pakistan -
Pamir Mountains
Coordinates: 39°N 72°E / 39°N 72°E / 39; 72
The Pamir Mountains are a mountain range in Central Asia formed by the junction or knot of the Himalayas, Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, and Hindu Kush ranges. They are among the world’s highest mountains and since Victorian times they have been known as the "Roof of the World" a probable translation from the Persian.
In other languages they are called: Kyrgyz Памир тоолору; Persian: رشته کوه های پامیر Reshte Kūh-hāye Pāmīr; Tajik: Кӯҳҳои Помир; Pashto: د پامير غرونه; Uyghur: پامىر ئېگىزلىكى; Urdu: پامیر کوهستان; Hindi: पामीर पर्वतमाला; Chinese: 帕米尔高原; pinyin: Pàmǐ'ěr Gāoyuán. Another Chinese name is Congling (cōnglǐng 葱嶺) (Wade-Giles: Ts'ung-ling) or "Onion Range" (after the wild onions growing in the region).
The precise extent of the Pamir Mountains is debatable. They lie mostly in Gorno-Badakhshan province, Tajikistan and Badakshan Province, Afghanistan. To the north they join the Tian Shan mountains along the Alay Valley of Kyrgyzstan. To the south they join the Hindu Kush mountains along the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan/Pakistan, and also Gilgit–Baltistan in Pakistan. To the east they may end on the Chinese border or extend to the range that includes Kongur Tagh which is sometimes included in the Kunlun Mountains.
wn.com/Pamir_Mountains -
Peshawar
Peshawar (Pashto: پېښور Pēx̌awar; Hindko: پيشور Pishōr; Urdu: پشاور Pishāwar; Persian: پیشاور P īshāwar; pronunciation (help·info)) is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as NWFP), and the administrative centre and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated in a large valley near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass. Known as "City on the Frontier", Peshawar's strategic location on the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia has made it one of the most culturally vibrant and lively cities in the greater region. Peshawar is irrigated by various canals of the Kabul River and by its right tributary, the Bara River.
Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities. In the last three decades, there has been a significant increase in urban population, in part due to internal migration of people in search of better employment opportunities, education, and services, and in part because of the influx of Afghan refugees and other people displaced by military operations and civil unrest in neighboring regions. Peshawar is the major educational, political and business center of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
wn.com/Peshawar -
Punjab, India
Punjab (i/pʌnˈdʒɑːb/) (Punjabi: ਪੰਜਾਬ Hindi: पंजाब) is a state in the northwest of the Republic of India, forming part of the larger Punjab region. The state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the east, Haryana to the south and southeast and Rajasthan to the southwest as well as the Pakistani province of Punjab to the west, it is also bounded to the north by Jammu and Kashmir. The state capital is Chandigarh, which is a Union Territory and also the capital of neighbouring state of Haryana. Major cities of Punjab includes Ludhiana, Amritsar, Patiala, Jalandhar, Bathinda and Mohali.
After the partition of India in 1947, the Punjab province of British India was divided between India and Pakistan. The Indian Punjab was divided in 1966 with the formation of the new states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh as well as the current state of Punjab. Punjab is the only state in India with a majority Sikh population.
The Greeks referred to Punjab as Pentapotamia, an inland delta of five converging rivers. In Avesta, the sacred text of Zoroastrians, the Punjab region is associated with the ancient hapta həndu or Sapta Sindhu, the Land of Seven Rivers. The British used to call Punjab "Our Prussia."[citation needed] Historically, the Punjab region has been the gateway to the Indian subcontinent for people from Greece, Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan and Vice-versa.
wn.com/Punjab,_India -
Punjab, Pakistan
Punjab (Shahmukhī: پنجاب, Persian: پنجاب, panj-āb, "five waters": Punjab.ogg (help·info)), also spelled Panjab is the most populous province of Pakistan, with approximately 62% of the country's total population. Forming most of the Punjab region, the province is bordered by Kashmir (Azad Kashmir, Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir, India) to the north-east, the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan to the east, the Pakistani province of Sindh to the south, the province of Balochistan to the southwest, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, and the Islamabad Capital Territory to the north. The Punjab is home to the Punjabis and various other groups. The main languages are Punjabi and Saraiki and the dialects of Mewati and Potowari. The name Punjab derives from the Persian words Panj (پنج) (Five), and Āb (آب) (Water), i.e. (the) Five Waters - referring to five tributaries of the Indus River from which is also the origin of the name of "India" - these being Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, that flow through the larger Punjab.
wn.com/Punjab,_Pakistan -
Razavi Khorasan
Razavi Khorasan Province (Persian: استان خراسان رضوی, Ostān-e Khorāsān-e Rażavī ) is a province located in northeastern Iran. Mashhad is the centre and capital of the province.
Other cities and townships are Ghouchan, Dargaz, Chenaran, Sarakhs, Fariman, Torbat-e Heydarieh, Torbat-e Jam, Taybad, Khaf, Roshtkhar, Kashmar, Bardaskan, Nishapur, Sabzevar, Gonabad, Kalat, Khalil Abad and Mahvalat.
Razavi Khorasan is one of the three provinces that were created after the division of Khorasan in 2004.
Greater Khorasan has witnessed the rise and fall of many dynasties and governments in its territory throughout history. Various tribes of the Arabs, Afghans, Turks, Kurds, Turkemen and Mongols brought changes to the region time and time again.
Ancient geographers of Iran divided Iran ("Iran-Shahr") into eight segments of which the most flourishing and largest was the territory of Greater Khorasan. Esfarayen, among other cities of the province, was one of the focal points for residence of the Aryan tribes after entering Iran.
wn.com/Razavi_Khorasan -
Russia
Russiai/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
wn.com/Russia -
Russian Federation
Russiai/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
wn.com/Russian_Federation -
Samarkand
Coordinates: 39°39′15″N 66°57′35″E / 39.65417°N 66.95972°E / 39.65417; 66.95972
Samarkand (Tajik: Самарқанд; Persian: سمرقند; Uzbek: Samarqand; from Sogdian: "Stone Fort" or "Rock Town") is the second-largest city in Uzbekistan and the capital of Samarqand Province. The city is most noted for its central position on the Silk Road between China and the West, and for being an Islamic centre for scholarly study. In the 14th century it became the capital of the empire of Timur (Tamerlane) and is the site of his mausoleum (the Gur-e Amir). The Bibi-Khanym Mosque remains one of the city's most notable landmarks. The Registan was the ancient center of the city.
In 2001, UNESCO added the city to its World Heritage List as Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures.
The city was known by an abbreviated name of Marakanda when Alexander the Great took it in 332BC. There are various theories of how Marakanda evolved into Samarkanda/Samarkan. One derives the name from the Old Persian asmara, "stone", "rock", and Sogdian kand, "fort", "town". Others less convincingly derive the name from the old Turkic "Semiz-Kent" meaning "Rich City".[citation needed]. Since the name Marakanda was already in existence 2300 years ago and long before anyone had heard of Turks in that region of Transoxiana, this version is likely a folk etymology.
wn.com/Samarkand -
Samarqand Province
Coordinates: 39°50′N 66°15′E / 39.833°N 66.25°E / 39.833; 66.25
Samarqand Province (Samarkand Province) (Uzbek: Samarqand viloyati) is a viloyat (province) of Uzbekistan located in the center of the country in the basin of Zarafshan River. It borders with Tajikstan, Navoiy Province, Jizzakh Province and Qashqadaryo Province. It covers an area of 16,400 km². The population is estimated to be around 2,322,000, with some 75% living in rural areas.
Samarqand Province was established on January 15, 1938, and is divided into 14 administrative districts. The capital is Samarqand (pop est 368,000 inhabitants). Other major towns include Bulung‘ur, Juma, Ishtixon, Kattaqo‘rg‘on, Urgut, and Oqtosh.
The climate is a typically arid continental climate.
Samarkand is the 2nd largest center for economy, science, and culture in Uzbekistan, after Tashkent. The Institute of Archeology at the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan is based at Samarqand. The Province's UNESCO World Heritage Site architectural monuments are world famous, and make Samarkand the largest center for international tourism in the country.
wn.com/Samarqand_Province -
Siberia
Coordinates: 60°0′N 105°0′E / 60°N 105°E / 60; 105
Siberia (/saɪˈbɪəriə/; Russian: Сиби́рь, tr. Sibir'; IPA: [sʲɪˈbʲirʲ] ( listen)) is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union (USSR) from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th to 19th centuries.
Encompassing much of the Eurasian Steppe, the territory of Siberia extends eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of Mongolia and China. Siberia makes up about 77% of Russia's territory (13.1 million square kilometres), but has only 28% (40 million people) of Russia's population.
Some sources say that the word Siberia originates from the Turkic for "sleeping land". Another version is that this name was the ancient tribal name of the Sabirs, Turkic nomads later assimilated to Siberian Tatars. The modern usage of the name appeared in the Russian language after the conquest of the Siberian Khanate.
wn.com/Siberia -
Sichuan
Coordinates: 30°N 103°E / 30°N 103°E / 30; 103
Sichuan (help·info) (Chinese: 四川, known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan) is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu. The current name of the province, "四川", is an abbreviation of "四川路" (Sì Chuānlù), or "Four circuits of rivers", which is itself abbreviated from "川峡四路" (Chuānxiá Sìlù), or "Four circuits of rivers and gorges", named after the division of the existing circuit into four during the Northern Song Dynasty.
The province and its vicinity were the cradle of unique local civilizations, which can be dated back to at least the fifteenth century BC (coinciding with the later years of the Shang Dynasty). Beginning from the ninth century BC, Shu (today Chengdu) and Ba (today Chongqing City) emerged as cultural and administrative centers where two rival kingdoms were established.
Shu's existence was unknown until an archaeological discovery in 1986 at a small village named Sanxingdui (三星堆) in Guanghan County. It is believed to be an ancient city of the Shu Kingdom, where excavations have yielded invaluable archaeological information.
wn.com/Sichuan -
Singapore
Singapore (i/ˈsɪŋəpɔər/ SI-ngə-pohr), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, 137 kilometres (85 mi) north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the Singapore Strait to its south. Singapore is highly urbanised but almost half of the country is covered by greenery. More land is being created for development through land reclamation.
wn.com/Singapore -
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
wn.com/Soviet_Union -
Tajikistan
Tajikistan (i/tɑːˈdʒiːkɨstɑːn/, /təˈdʒiːkɨstæn/, or /tæˈdʒiːkiːstæn/; Тоҷикистон [ˈtɔjikɪsˈtɔn]), officially the Republic of Tajikistan (Tajik: Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Cumhuriyi Tocikiston; Persian: جمهوری تاجیکستان Jomhuri-ye Tajikestan; Russian: Республика Таджикистан, Respublika Tadzhikistan), is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. It borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. Gilgit Baltistan as well as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan are separated from Tajikistan by the narrow Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan in the south.
Most of Tajikistan's population belongs to the Persian-speaking Tajik ethnic group, who share language, culture and history with Afghanistan and Iran. Once part of the Samanid Empire, Tajikistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, known as the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik SSR). Mountains cover over 90% of this Central Asian republic.
After independence, Tajikistan suffered from a devastating civil war which lasted from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability and foreign aid have allowed the country's economy to grow. Trade in commodities such as cotton, aluminium and uranium has contributed greatly to this steady improvement.
wn.com/Tajikistan -
Taklamakan
The Taklamakan Desert, also known as Taklimakan and Teklimakan, is a desert in northwest China, in the southwest portion of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, and the desert Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan (ancient Mount Imeon) to the west and north.
The name is probably an Uyghur borrowing of Arabic tark, "to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan, "place". Another plausible explanation is that it is derived from Turki taqlar makan, which means "the place of ruins". Popular accounts wrongly claim that Takla Makan means "go in and you will never come out". It may also mean "The point of no return" or "The Desert of Death".
The Taklamakan Desert Ecoregion is a Chinese ecoregion of the Deserts and xeric shrublands Biome.[citation needed]
It has an area of 337,000 km2. (130,116 sq. mi.), and includes the Tarim Basin, which is 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long and 400 kilometres (250 mi) wide. It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road as travelers sought to avoid the arid wasteland. It is the world's second largest shifting sand desert with about 85% made up of shifting sand dunes ranking 18th in size in a ranking of the world's largest non-polar deserts.
wn.com/Taklamakan -
Tashkent
Tashkent (/ˌtæʃˈkɛnt/; Uzbek: Toshkent, Тошкент; Russian: Ташкент, [tɐʂˈkʲent]; literally "Stone City") is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.
During its long history, Tashkent has had various changes in names and political and religious affiliations.
Tashkent started as an oasis on the Chirchik River, near the foothills of the West Tian Shan Mountains. In ancient times, this area contained Beitian, probably the summer "capital" of the Kangju confederacy.
In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times the town and the province were known as "Chach". The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi also refers to the city as Chach. Later the town came to be known as Chachkand/Chashkand, meaning "Chach City".[citation needed] The principality of Chach, whose main town had a square citadel built around the 5th to 3rd centuries BC, some 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the Syr Darya River. By the 7th century AD, Chach had over 30 towns and a network of over 50 canals, forming a trade center between the Sogdians and Turkic nomads. The Buddhist monk Xuánzàng 玄奘 (602/603? – 664 CE), who travelled from China to India through Central Asia, mentioned the name of the city as Zhěshí 赭時. The Chinese chronicles Suí shū 隋書 (Book of Suí), Běi shǐ 北史 (History of Northern Dynasties) and Táng shū 唐書 (Book of Táng) mention a possession called Shí 石 or Zhěshí 赭時 with a capital of the same name since the fifth century AD [Bichurin, 1950. v. II]. The region came under the sway of Islam in the early parts of the 8th century.
wn.com/Tashkent -
Tatarstan
The Republic of Tatarstan (Russian: Респу́блика Татарста́н, tr. Respublika Tatarstan; IPA: [rʲɪsˈpublʲɪkə tətɐrˈstan]; Tatar Cyrillic: Татарстан Республикасы, Latin: Tatarstan Respublikası) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic) located in the Volga Federal District. Its capital is the city of Kazan, which is one of Russia's largest and most prosperous cities. The republic borders with Kirov, Ulyanovsk, Samara, and Orenburg Oblasts, and with the Mari El, Udmurt, and Chuvash Republics, as well as with the Republic of Bashkortostan. The unofficial Tatarstan motto is: Bez Buldırabız! (We can!). Population: 3,786,488 (2010 Census).
The state has strong relations with its Muslim neighbor Bashkortostan.
"Tatarstan" derives from the name of the Tatar, Turkic ethnic group, and the Persian suffix -stan (an ending common to many Central Asian countries). Another version of the Russian name is "Тата́рия" (Tatariya), which was official along with "Tatar ASSR" during the Soviet rule.
Inhabitants of Tatarstan regardless of ethnicity are usually called Tatari (Tatar Cyrillic: татарлар, Latin: Tatarlar, татары).
wn.com/Tatarstan -
Tehran
Tehran ( pronunciation (help·info)) (Persian: تهران Tehrān; pronounced [tehˈɾɒːn]), sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, the largest city in Western Asia, one of the largest in Southern Asia, and the 19th-largest city globally.
In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to mass-migration of people from all around Iran. The city is home to many historic mosques, churches, synagogues and Zoroastrian fire temples. Contemporary Tehran is a modern city featuring many structures, of which the Azadi (Freedom) Tower and the Milad Tower have come to be symbols of Tehran itself. In 2008 Tehran was the least expensive capital in the world and the second-least expensive city globally based on the cost-of-living index presenting the best value for money in the world. Globally it stands 19th by city population, 56th by the size of its GDP and 29th by the population of its metropolitan area. Throughout Iran's history, the capital city has been relocated many times, with Tehran being the 32nd national capital of Iran. Persian is the city's native tongue, with roughly 98% of the population able to speak and understand it. The majority of people in Tehran identify themselves as Persians. In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Tehran was called Ray (which in the Avesta occurs in the form of Ragha)[citation needed].
wn.com/Tehran -
Tian Shan
The Tian Shan (Chinese: 天山; pinyin: Tiān Shān; literally "celestial mountains"; Mongolian: Тэнгэр уул; Uyghur: تەڭرى تاغ, ULY: Tengri Tagh), also spelled Tien Shan, is a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Victory Peak (Jengish Chokusu), 7,439 metres (24,406 ft).
The Chinese name for Tian Shan may be derived from the Xiongnu language name qilian (祁连), which was described by Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian as the homeland of the pre-Xiongnu peoples of the region, the Yuezhi, and has been said to refer to the Tian Shan rather than to the range 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) further east now known by this name. The nearby Tannu-Ola Mountains (Tuvan: Таңды-Уула Tangdy-Uula) bear the same name ("heaven/celestial mountains" or "god/spirit mountains").
Tian Shan lies to the north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north and east it meets the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. It also extends into the Chinese province of Xinjiang and into the northern areas of Pakistan, where it joins the Hindu Kush.[citation needed]
wn.com/Tian_Shan -
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau (Tibetan: བོད་ས་མཐོ།, Wylie: bod sa mtho), also known as the Qinghai-Tibetan (Qingzang) Plateau (Chinese: 青藏高原; pinyin: Qīngzàng Gāoyuán) is a vast, elevated plateau in Central Asia or East Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province in western China, as well as part of Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir. It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north to south and 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east to west. With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres (14,800 ft), the Tibetan Plateau is sometimes called "the Roof of the World" and is the world's highest and largest plateau, with an area of 2.5 million km2 (0.97 million sq. mi., or about four times the size of France).
The Tibetan Plateau is surrounded by massive mountain ranges. The plateau is bordered to the south by the Himalayan range, to the north by the Kunlun Range which separates it from the Tarim Basin, and to the northeast by the Qilian Range which separates the plateau from the Hexi Corridor and Gobi Desert. To the east and southeast the plateau gives way to the forested gorge and ridge geography of the mountainous headwaters of the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze rivers in western Sichuan (the Hengduan Mountains) and southwest Qinghai. In the west the curve of the rugged Karakoram range of northern Kashmir embraces it.
wn.com/Tibetan_Plateau -
Turkey
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
wn.com/Turkey -
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan (i/tɜrkˈmɛnɨstæn/ or i/tɜrkmɛnɨˈstɑːn/; Turkmen: Türkmenistan), formerly also known as Turkmenia (Russian: Туркмения), is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkmen SSR). Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states. It is bordered by Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest, Uzbekistan to the east and northeast, Kazakhstan to the north and northwest and the Caspian Sea to the west.
Turkmenistan's GDP growth rate of 11% in 2010[update] ranks 4th in the world, but these figures are subject to wide margins of error. It possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources. Although it is wealthy in natural resources in certain areas, most of the country is covered by the Karakum (Black Sand) Desert.
The Turkmen government operates as a single-party system. Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov (called "Türkmenbaşy" — "leader of the Turkmens") until his sudden death on 21 December 2006. Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was elected the new president on 11 February 2007.
wn.com/Turkmenistan -
Tus, Iran
Tus (Persian: توس or طوس) also spelled as Tous, Toos or Tūs, is an ancient city in the Iranian province of Razavi Khorasan. To the ancient Greeks, it was known as Susia (Ancient Greek: Σούσια). It was captured by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE.
On his way to solve the unrest in Khorasan in 808, the Abbasid Caliph Harun Al-Rashid fell ill and died in Tus.
The city was almost entirely destroyed by Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest during 1220-1259.
Perhaps the most famous resident was the poet Ferdowsi, author of the Persian epic Shahnameh. His mausoleum, built in 1934 in time for the millennium of his birth, dominates the town.
Some other notable residents of Toos include: Jābir ibn Hayyān, Asadi Tusi, Nizam al-Mulk, Ghazali, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and the prominent Shia scholar Abu Ja'far Tusi.
Media related to Tus, Iran at Wikimedia Commons
Coordinates: 36°27′15″N 59°34′01″E / 36.45417°N 59.56694°E / 36.45417; 59.56694
wn.com/Tus,_Iran -
Tuva
The Tyva Republic (Russian: Респу́блика Тыва́, tr. Respublika Tyva; IPA: [rʲɪˈspublʲɪkə tɨˈva]; Tuvan: Тыва Республика, Tyva Respublika), or Tuva (Russian: Тува́), is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It lies in the geographical center of Asia, in southern Siberia. The republic borders with the Altai Republic, the Republic of Khakassia, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Irkutsk Oblast, and the Republic of Buryatia in Russia and with Mongolia to the south. Its capital is the city of Kyzyl. Population: 307,930 (2010 Census).
Forests, mountains, and steppe make up a large part of the geography.
A majority of the people are Tuvans who speak the Tuvan language, but Russian is also spoken extensively. Tuva is governed by the Great Khural which elects a chairman for a four-year term. The current chairman is Sholban Kara-ool.
The republic is situated in the far south of Siberia. Its capital city of Kyzyl is located near the geographic "center of Asia". The eastern part of the republic is forested and elevated, and the west is a drier lowland.
wn.com/Tuva -
Ulan Bator
Ulan Bator /ˌuːlɑːn ˈbɑːtər/ or Ulaanbaatar (Mongolian: Улаанбаатар, [ʊɮɑːŋ.bɑːtʰɑ̆r], ᠤᠯᠠᠭᠠᠨᠪᠠᠭᠠᠲᠤᠷ, Ulaγanbaγatur, literally "Red Hero") is the capital and by far the largest city of Mongolia. An independent municipality, the city is not part of any province, and its population as of 2008 is over one million.
Located in north central Mongolia, the city lies at an elevation of about 1,310 metres (4,300 ft) in a valley on the Tuul River. It is the cultural, industrial, and financial heart of the country. It is the center of Mongolia's road network, and is connected by rail to both the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia and the Chinese railway system.
The city was founded in 1639 as a movable (nomadic) Buddhist monastic centre. In 1778 it settled permanently at its present location, the junction of the Tuul and Selbe rivers. Before that it changed location twenty-eight times, with each location being chosen ceremonially. In the twentieth century, Ulan Bator grew into a major manufacturing centre.
wn.com/Ulan_Bator -
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistani/ʊzˌbɛkɨˈstɑːn/, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan (Uzbek: O‘zbekiston Respublikasi, Ўзбекистон Республикаси) is the only doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of only two such countries worldwide. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south. Before 1991, it was part of the Soviet Union.
Uzbekistan is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia.
Once part of the Persian Samanid and later Timurid empires, the region was conquered in the early 16th century by Uzbek nomads, who spoke an Eastern Turkic language. Most of Uzbekistan’s population today belong to the Uzbek ethnic group and speak the Uzbek language, one of the family of Turkic languages.
Uzbekistan was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century, and in 1924 became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, known as the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbek SSR). It became independent on 31 August 1991 (officially, from the following day).
wn.com/Uzbekistan -
Wakhan Corridor
Wakhan Corridor is commonly used as a synonym for Wakhan, an area of far north-eastern Afghanistan which forms a land link or "corridor" between Afghanistan and China. The Corridor is a long and slender panhandle or salient, roughly 140 miles (220 km) long and between 10 and 40 miles (16 and 64 km) wide. It separates Tajikistan in the north from Pakistan in the south.
The corridor was a political creation of the Great Game. On the corridor's north side, agreements between Britain and Russia in 1873 and between Britain and Afghanistan in 1893 effectively split the historic area of Wakhan by making the Panj and Pamir Rivers the border between Afghanistan and the Russian Empire. On its south side, the Durand Line agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between British India and Afghanistan. This left a narrow strip of land as a buffer between the two empires, which became known as the Wakhan Corridor in the 20th century. The corridor has 12,000 inhabitants.
The term Wakhan Corridor is also used in a narrower sense to refer to the route along the Panj River and the Wakhan River to China, and the northern part of the Wakhan is then referred to as the Afghan Pamir.
wn.com/Wakhan_Corridor -
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a federal district to become the national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution. The District is therefore not a part of any U.S. state. It was formed from land along the Potomac River donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia; however, the Virginia portion was returned by Congress in 1846.
A new capital city named after George Washington was founded in 1791 to the east of the preexisting port of Georgetown. Congress consolidated the City of Washington, Georgetown, and the remaining unincorporated area within the District under a single municipal government in 1871. The city shares its name with the U.S. state of Washington, located on the country's Pacific coast.
Washington, D.C., had an estimated population of 617,996 in 2011. The city was the 24th most populous place in the United States as of 2010. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's population to over one million during the workweek. The Washington Metropolitan Area, of which the District is a part, has a population of nearly 5.6 million, the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the country.
wn.com/Washington,_D.C. -
Yinchuan
Yinchuan is the capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China, and former capital of the Western Xia Empire of the Tanguts. It has an area of 4,467 km² and a total population of 1.99 million. Its built up area is home to 1,290,170 inhabitants spread on 3 urban districts. The name of the city literally means "silver river"; the character for "river" (川) is the same as that in Sichuan, but not as those in, for example, the Yellow River (黄河) or Yangtze River (长江).
Yinchuan originally was a xian (county) under the name of Fuping in the 1st century BC; its name was changed to Huaiyuan in the 6th century AD. After the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907, it was occupied by the Tangut Xi-Xia dynasty, of which it was the capital. After the destruction of the Xi-Xia dynasty by the Mongols in 1227, it came under the rule of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. Under the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, it was a prefecture of Ningxia. In 1928, when the province of Ningxia was formed from parts of Gansu and Inner Mongolia, it became the capital city. In 1954, when Ningxia province was abolished, the city was put in Gansu province; but, with the establishment of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region in 1958, Yinchuan once again became the capital.
wn.com/Yinchuan -
Zhetysu
Coordinates: 45°N 78°E / 45°N 78°E / 45; 78
Zhetysu (Kazakh: Жетісу, pronounced [ʒi̯ɘtɘsʊw] meaning "seven rivers"; also transcribed Zhetisu, Jetisuw, Jetysu, Jeti-su, Jity-su, Жетысу, Джетысу, etc.) is a historical name of a part of Russian Turkestan, corresponding to the South-Eastern part of modern Kazakhstan. It owes its name, meaning "seven rivers" (literally "seven waters") in Kazakh, to the rivers which flow from the south-east into Lake Balkhash.
When the region was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century, it became known in Russian (and, to an extent, in European languages) as Semirechye (Russian: Семиречье), which is a Russian calque of the Kazakh "Zhetysu". The name has also been transcribed as Semiryechye, Semirech'e, Semirechiye, Semirechie or Semireche.
Zhetysu falls into today's Almaty Province of Kazakhstan. However, the Semirechye Oblast (Семиреченская область), as an administrative unit of the Russian Empire, included not only Zhetysu proper but also lands that now constitute parts of northern Kyrgyzstan and adjacent provinces of Kazakhstan as well.
wn.com/Zhetysu -
Ürümqi
Ürümqi ( /uːˈruːmtʃi/), formerly Tihwa, is the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, in the northwest of the country.
With a built up population of 2,744,280 as of 2010 census (5 urban districts plus Midong) and 2.3 in urban districts, Ürümqi, whose name means "beautiful pasture" in the Mongolian language of the Dzungar people, is the largest city in China's western interior. Since the 1990s Ürümqi has developed economically and now serves as a regional transport node and commercial centre.
Although Ürümqi is situated near the northern route of the Silk Road, it is likely to be a relatively young city. According to Chinese scholars, during the 22nd year of Emperor Taizong's reign in the Tang Dynasty, AD 648, the Tang government set up the town of Luntai in the ancient town seat of Urabo, 10 kilometers from the southern suburb of present-day Ürümqi. Ancient Luntai Town was a seat of local government, and collected taxes from the caravans along the northern route of the Silk Road.
wn.com/Ürümqi
-
Alans
The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.
The various forms of Alan — Greek: Αλανοί, Αλαννοί; Chinese: 阿蘭聊 Alanliao (Pinyin) in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan (Pinyin) in the 3rd century — and Iron (a self-designation of the Alans' modern Ossetian descendants, indicating early tribal self-designation) are Iranian dialectical forms of Aryan. These and other variants of Aryan (such as Iran), were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, the common ancestors of the Indo-Aryans and Iranian peoples to whom the Alans belonged.
The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As, and Os (Bulgarian Uzi, Hungarian Jász, Russian Jasy, Georgian Osi). It is this name that is the root of the modern Ossetian.
<timeline> ImageSize = width:680 height:200 PlotArea = left:72 right:8 bottom:20 top:2 AlignBars = justify Define $wide = width:35
wn.com/Alans -
Attar Neyshapuri
Abū Hamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (1145-1146 - c. 1221; Persian: ابو حمید ابن ابوبکر ابراهیم), better known by his pen-names Farīd ud-Dīn (فریدالدین) and ‘Attār (عطار - "the perfumer"), was a Persian Muslim poet, theoretician of Sufism, and hagiographer from Nīshāpūr who had an abiding influence on Persian poetry and Sufism.
Information about Attar's life is rare. He is mentioned by only two of his contemporaries, `Awfi and Tusi. However, all sources confirm that he was from Nishapur, a major city of medieval Khorasan (now located in the northeast of Iran), and according to `Awfi, he was a poet of the Seljuq period. It seems that he was not well known as a poet in his own lifetime, except at his home town, and his greatness as a mystic, a poet, and a master of narrative was not discovered until the 15th century.
`Attar was probably the son of a prosperous chemist, receiving an excellent education in various fields. While his works say little else about his life, they tell us that he practiced the profession of pharmacy and personally attended to a very large number of customers. The people he helped in the pharmacy used to confide their troubles in `Attar and this affected him deeply. Eventually, he abandoned his pharmacy store and traveled widely - to Baghdad, Basra, Kufa, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Khwarizm, Turkistan, and India, meeting with Sufi Shaykhs - and returned promoting Sufi ideas.
wn.com/Attar_Neyshapuri -
Bactrians
The Bactrians were the inhabitants of Bactria.
Several important trade routes from India and China (including the Silk Road) passed through Bactria and, as early as the Bronze Age, this had allowed the accumulation of vast amounts of wealth by the mostly nomadic population. The first proto-urban civilization in the area arose during the 2nd millennium BC. Control of these lucrative trade routes, however, attracted foreign interest, and in the 6th century BC the Bactrians were conquered by the Persians, and in the 4th century BC by the Ancient Macedonians. These conquests marked the end of the Bactrian independence. From around 304 BC the area formed part of the Seleucid Empire, and from around 250 BC it was the centre of a Greco-Bactrian kingdom, ruled by the descendants of Greeks who had settled there following the conquest of Alexander the Great.
These people, also known as Yavanas, worked in cooperation with the native Bactrian aristocracy. By the early 2nd century BC the Greco-Bactrians had created an impressive empire that stretched southwards to include northwest India. By about 135 BC, however, this kingdom had been overrun by invading Yuezhi tribes, an invasion that later brought about the rise of the powerful Kushan Empire. From this point the Bactrians tend to disappear from the historical record, a disappearance made final by the Arab invasion of the 8th century AD.
wn.com/Bactrians -
Beijing
Beijing ( /beɪˈdʒɪŋ/; Chinese: 北京; pinyin: Běijīng, [peɪ˨˩ t͡ɕiŋ˥]), formerly romanized as Peking ( /piːˈkɪŋ/ or /peɪˈkɪŋ/), is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The metropolis, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government, with 14 urban and suburban districts and two rural counties. Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast.
Beijing is China's second largest city by urban population after Shanghai and is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's largest state-owned companies. Beijing is a major transportation hub in the national highway, expressway, railway and high-speed rail network. Beijing's Capital International Airport is the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic.
wn.com/Beijing -
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy indigenous to the Indian subcontinent and encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha (meaning "the awakened one" in Sanskrit and Pāli). The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end ignorance (avidyā), craving (taṇhā), and suffering (dukkha), by recognizing dependent origination and sunyata, and attain Nirvana.
Two major branches of Buddhism are recognized: Theravada ("The School of the Elders") and Mahayana ("The Great Vehicle"). Theravada has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana is found throughout East Asia and includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, Tiantai (Tendai) and Shinnyo-en. In some classifications, Vajrayana—practiced mainly in Tibet and Mongolia, and adjacent parts of China and Russia—is recognized as a third branch, while others classify it as a part of Mahayana. There are other categorisations of these three Vehicles or Yanas.
wn.com/Buddhism -
Chagatai Khanate
The Chagatai Khanate (Mongolian: Tsagadai Khan Uls/Цагадайн улс) was a Turko-Mongolkhanate that comprised the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, second son of Genghis Khan, and his descendents and successors. Initially it was considered a part of the Mongol Empire, but it later became fully independent.
At its height in the late 13th century, the Khanate extended from the Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea to the Altai Mountains in the border of modern-day Mongolia and China.
The khanate lasted in one form or another from 1220s until the late 17th century, although the western half of the khanate was lost to Tamerlane in the 1360s. The eastern half remained under Chagatai khans who were, at times, allied or at war with Timur's successors. Finally, in the 17th century, the remaining Chagatai domains fell under the theocratic regime of Apaq Khoja and his descendants, the Khojijans, who ruled East Turkestan under Dzungar and Manchu overlordships consecutively.
Genghis Khan's empire was inherited by his third son, Ögedei, the designated Great Khan who personally controlled the lands east of Lake Balkash as far as Mongolia. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was accorded the northern Mongolian homeland. Chagatai, the second son, received Transoxania, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in modern Uzbekistan, and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almalik near what is now Kulja in northwestern China. Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire was endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Turkic subjects.
wn.com/Chagatai_Khanate -
Chagatai language
The Chagatai language (جغتای Jağatāy; Uzbek: چەغەتاي Chag'atoy; Mongolian: ᠲᠰᠠᠭᠠᠳᠠᠢ, Chagadai ; Uyghur: چاغاتاي Chāghātāy； Turkish: Çağatayca) is an extinct Turkic, Mongolic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century. Soviet scholarship termed the Chagatai language "Old Uzbek."Ali-Shir Nava'i was the greatest representative of Chagatai language literature. Chagatai was also spoken by the early Mughal rulers in the Indian subcontinent.
The word Chagatai relates to the Chagatai Khanate, a descendant empire of the Mongol Empire, which was left to Genghis Khan's second son, Chagatai Khan. Many of the Chagatai Turk,Mongols and Tatars who were the speakers of this language claimed descent from Chagatai Khan.
Chagatai belongs to the Uyghur branch of the Turkic language family. It is descended from the Old Uyghur that served as a lingua franca in Central Asia, with a strong infusion of Arabic and Persian words and turns of phrase. It was developed as a sophisticated written language using the Persian alphabet. It can be divided into three periods:
wn.com/Chagatai_language -
China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
wn.com/China -
Ertugrul gazi
Ertuğrul (Ottoman Turkish: ارطغرل, often with title Gazi) (1191 / 1198, Ahlat – 1281, Söğüt) was the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. He was the leader of the Kayı clan of the Oghuz Turks. When arriving in Anatolia from Merv (Turkmenistan) with his 400 horsemen to aid the Seljuks of Rum against the Byzantines, Ertuğrul set off the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the founding of the Ottoman Empire. Like his son, Osman, and his future descendants, Ertuğrul is often referred to as a Ghazi, a heroic champion fighter for the cause of Islam.
In 1230, he inherited the command of the Kayı tribe of the Oghuz Turks as a result of his assistance to the Seljuks against the Byzantines. Ertuğrul received lands of Karaca Dağ, a mountainous area near Angora (now Ankara), by Ala ad-Din Kay Qubadh I, the Seljuk Sultan of Rum. One account indicates that the Seljuk leader's rationale for granting Ertuğrul land was for Ertuğrul to repel any hostile incursion from the Byzantines or other adversary. Later, he received the village of Söğüt which he conquered in 1231 together with the surrounding lands. That village became the Ottoman capital in 1299 under Osman I, Ertuğrul's son. Ertuğrul had two other sons, Saru Batu Savcı Bey and Gündüz.
wn.com/Ertugrul_gazi -
Gandhara
Gandhāra (Sanskrit: गन्धार Gandḥārā, Urdu: گندھارا Ghandhāra, Pashto: ګندارا, Punjabi: گندھارا, Persian: ویهیند) is the name of an ancient kingdom (Mahajanapada), located in modern day northern Pakistan and parts of eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau (see Taxila) and on the Kabul River. Its main cities were Purushapura (modern Peshawar), literally meaning "City of Man", Varmayana (modern Bamyan) and Takshashila (modern Taxila).
The Kingdom of Gandhara lasted from the early 1st millennium BC to the 11th century AD. It attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century under the Buddhist Kushan Kings. The Hindu term Shahi is used by history writer Al-Biruni to refer to the ruling Hindu dynasty that took over from the Turki Shahi and ruled the region during the period prior to Muslim conquests of the 10th and 11th centuries. After it was conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1021 CE, the name Gandhara disappeared. During the Muslim period the area was administered from Lahore or from Kabul. During Mughal times the area was part of Kabul province.
wn.com/Gandhara -
Gansu
Coordinates: 38°0′N 102°20′E / 38°N 102.333°E / 38; 102.333
Gansu (help·info) (simplified Chinese: 甘肃; traditional Chinese: 甘肅; pinyin: Gānsù; Wade–Giles: Kan-su, Kansu, Kan-suh) is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.
It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east. The Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province.
Gansu has a population of 26 million (2009) and has a large concentration of Hui Chinese, and the historical home, along with Shaanxi of the dialect of the Dungans, who are Hui who migrated to Central Asia. The southwestern corner of Gansu is home to a large Tibetan population. The capital is Lanzhou, located in the southeast part of the province. Gansu is abbreviated as "甘" (Gān) or "陇" (Lǒng), and is also known as Long West or Long Right, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu.
wn.com/Gansu -
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan (/ˈɡɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/ or /ˈdʒɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/,Mongol: [tʃiŋɡɪs xaːŋ] ( listen); 1162? – August 1227), born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.
He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. After founding the Mongol Empire and being proclaimed "Genghis Khan", he started the Mongol invasions that resulted in the conquest of most of Eurasia. These included raids or invasions of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, Caucasus, Khwarezmid Empire, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were often accompanied by wholesale massacres of the civilian populations – especially in Khwarezmia. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China.
Before Genghis Khan died, he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor and split his empire into khanates among his sons and grandsons. He died in 1227 after defeating the Western Xia. He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia at an unknown location. His descendants went on to stretch the Mongol Empire across most of Eurasia by conquering or creating vassal states out of all of modern-day China, Korea, the Caucasus, Central Asian countries, and substantial portions of modern Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Many of these invasions resulted in the large-scale slaughter of local populations, which have given Genghis Khan and his empire a fearsome reputation in local histories.
wn.com/Genghis_Khan -
Hui people
The Hui people (Chinese: 回族; pinyin: Huízú, Xiao'erjing: حُوِ ذَو / حواري) are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in China. Hui people are found throughout the country, though they are concentrated mainly in the provinces of Ningxia, Qinghai, and Gansu. According to a 2000 census, China is home to approximately 9.8 million Hui people, the majority of whom are Chinese-speaking practitioners of Islam, though some practice other religions. Although many Hui people are ethnically similar to Han Chinese, the group has retained some Persian and Central Asian features, their ethnicity and culture having been shaped profoundly by their position along the Silk Road trading route.
In the People's Republic of China, the Hui people are one of 56 officially recognized ethnic groups. Under this definition, the Hui people are defined to include all historically Muslim communities in People's Republic of China that are not included in China's other ethnic groups. Since China's Muslims speaking various Turkic, Mongolic, or Iranian languages are all included into those other groups (e.g., Uyghurs, Dongxiang, or Tajiks) the "officially recognized" Hui ethnic group consists predominantly of Chinese speakers. In fact, the "Hui nationality" is unique among China's officially recognized ethnic minorities in that it does not have any particular non-Chinese language associated with it.
wn.com/Hui_people -
Huns
The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns.Priscus mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have been the subject of debate for centuries. Most authorities suppose that it may have been a member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family, with the languages Bulgar, Khazar, Turkic Avar and Chuvash. Numerous other languages were spoken within the Hun pax including East Germanic, which was widely used as a lingua franca in the Hunnic territories. Their main military technique was mounted archery.
wn.com/Huns -
Inner Mongolia
Coordinates: 44°N 113°E / 44°N 113°E / 44; 113
Inner Mongolia (Mongolian: s, Öbür Monggol and c Өвөр Монгол, Övör Mongol; Chinese: 内蒙古; pinyin: Nèi Měnggǔ, but officially romanized to Nei Mongol) is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation. Its capital is Hohhot and the largest city is Baotou.
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was established in 1947 on the area of former Republic of China provinces of Suiyuan, Chahar, Rehe, Liaobei and Xing'an along with the northern parts of Gansu and Ningxia. It is the third-largest subdivision of China spanning about 1,200,000 km² (463,000 sq mi) or 12% of China's total land area. It has a population of about 24 million as of 2004. The majority of the population in the region are Han Chinese, with a substantial Mongol minority. The official languages are Chinese and Mongolian, the latter written in the Mongolian script, as opposed to the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet used in the state of Mongolia.
wn.com/Inner_Mongolia -
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages (also called Iranic languages) form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn are a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian peoples.
The Iranian languages are considered in three stages of Old (until 400 BCE), Middle (400 BCE – 900 CE), and New (since 900 CE). From the Old Iranian languages the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian (a language of Achaemenid Iran) and Avestan (the language of Zarathushtra). Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian (a language of Sassanid Iran) and Parthian (a language of Arsacid Iran). There are many Iranian languages, the largest amongst them are Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, and Balochi.
Today, there are an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages. The Ethnologue lists 87 Iranian languages.Persian has about 65 million native speakers, Pashto about 50 million, Kurdish about 18 million, Balochi about 7 million, and Lurish about 2.3 million.
wn.com/Iranian_languages -
Iranian peoples
The Iranian peoples (Iranic peoples) are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. Their historical areas of settlement were on the Iranian plateau, and comprised most of Iran and certain areas of Central Asia such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and most of Afghanistan, some parts of western Pakistan, northern Iraq and eastern Turkey, and scattered parts of the Caucasus Mountains. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian plateau, and stretches from Pakistan's Indus River in the east to eastern Turkey in the west, and from Central Asia and the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south – a region that is sometimes called the Iranian cultural continent, or Greater Persia by scholars, and represents the extent of the Iranian languages and influence of the Persian People, through the geopolitical reach of the Persian empire.
wn.com/Iranian_peoples -
Kamal-ol-molk
Mohammad Ghaffari (1847 - 18 August 1940), better known as Kamal-ol-Molk (also Kamal-al-Molk), was an Iranian painter and part of the Ghaffari Clan in Kashan.
Mohammad Ghaffari, better known as Kamal-ol-Molk, born in Kashan in 1847, to a family greatly attached to art, was undoubtedly one of the most eminent artists in Iran. Dubbed as the Michelangelo of Persia, his uncle, Mirza AbolHassan Khan Ghaffari, known as Sanee-ol-Molk, a 19th century celebrated painter, was unrivalled in watercolor portraits. His father, Mirza Bozorg Ghaffari Kashani, was the founder of Iran's painting school and a famous artist as well. His brother, AbuTorab Ghaffari, was also a distinguished painter of his time. Mohammad developed an interest in calligraphy and painting from the early years of his life. In his childhood eagerness, he drew charcoal sketches on the walls of his room. Some of the sketches he drew in that very house may amazingly, still be visible.
Upon completion of his primary education, Mohammad moved to Tehran. To further his studies, he registered in Dar-ul-Funun School, a modern institute of higher learning in Persia, where he studied painting with Mozayyen-od-Doleh, a well-known painter who had visited Europe and studied Western art.
wn.com/Kamal-ol-molk -
Kanishka
Kanishka (Kanishka the Great), (Sanskrit: कनिष्क, Bactrian language: Κανηϸκι, Middle Chinese: 迦腻色伽 (Jianisejia)) was an emperor of the Kushan Empire, ruling an empire extending from Bactria to large parts of northern India in the 2nd century of the common era, and famous for his military, political, and spiritual achievements. His main capital was at Purushpura (Peshawar in present day northwestern Pakistan) with regional capitals at the location of the modern city of Taxila in Pakistan, Begram in Afghanistan and Mathura in India.
Kanishka was a Kushan of probable Yuezhi ethnicity. He used an Eastern Iranian, Indo-European language known as Bactrian (called "αρια," i. e. "Aryan" in the Rabatak inscription), which appears in Greek script in his inscriptions, though it is not certain what language the Kushans originally spoke; possibly some form of Tocharian - a "centum" Indo-European language. The "Aryan" language of the inscription was a "satem" Middle Iranian language, possibly the one spoken in "Arya" or "Ariana" (the region around modern Herat) and was, therefore, quite possibly unrelated to the original language of the Kushans (or the Yuezhi), but adopted by them to facilitate communication with local people.
wn.com/Kanishka -
Kazakhs
The Kazakhs (also spelled Kazaks, Qazaqs; Kazakh: Қазақтар [qɑzɑqtɑ́r]; the English name is transliterated from Russian) are a Turkic people of the northern parts of Central Asia (largely Kazakhstan, but also found in parts of Uzbekistan, China, Russia, and Mongolia).
Kazakhs are descendants of the Turkic tribes - Argyns, Khazars, Qarluqs; and of the Kipchaks and Cumans (the Kipchaks and Cumans being one of their major ancestors) Proto-Tatar groups (Kiyat, Dughlat, Naimans, Kerait, Onggirat, Manghud, Jalayir) and other Proto Turkic tribes such as the Kankalis, origin and Iranian tribes like the Sarmatians, Saka and Scythians. Kazakhs populated the territory between Siberia and the Black Sea and remained in Central Asia when the Turkic and Turko-Tatar groups started to invade and conquer the area between the 5th and 13th centuries AD.
The Kazakhs began using this name during either the 15th or 16th centuries. There are many theories on the origin of the word Kazakh or Qazaq. Some speculate that it comes from the Turkish verb qaz (to wander), because the Kazakhs were wandering steppemen; or that it derives from the prototurk word khasaq (a wheeled cart used by the Kazakhs to transport their yurts and belongings).
wn.com/Kazakhs -
Khwarezmian language
Khwarezmian, also known as Khwarazmian or Chorasmian, is the name of an extinct East Iranian language closely related to Sogdian. The language was spoken in the area of Khwarezm (Chorasmia), centered in the lower Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea (the northern part of the modern Republic of Uzbekistan, and the adjacent areas of Turkmenistan).
Our knowledge of Khwarezmian is limited to its Middle Iranian stage and, as with Sogdian, little is known of its ancient form. Before the advance of Islam in Transoxiana (early 8th century), Khwarezmian was written in a script close to that of Sogdian and Pahlavi with its roots in the imperial Aramaic script. From the few surviving examples of this script on coins and artifacts it has been observed that written Khwarezmian included Aramaic logograms or ideograms, that is Aramaic words written to represent native spoken ones.
After the advance of Islam, Khwarezmian was written using an adapted version of the Perso-Arabic alphabet with a few extra signs to reflect specific Khwarezmian sounds, such as the letter څ, which represents /ts/ and /dz/, as in the traditional Pashto orthography.
wn.com/Khwarezmian_language -
Kyrgyz people
The Kyrgyz (also spelled Kirgiz, Kirghiz) are a Turkic people living primarily in Kyrgyzstan.
There are several etymological theories on the ethnonym "Kyrgyz."
The word "Kyrgyz" is derived from the Turkic word "forty", with -Iz being an old plural suffix, referring to a collection of forty tribes.
wn.com/Kyrgyz_people -
Michael Mandelbaum
Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is also Director of the SAIS American Foreign Policy program. He has written 10 books on American foreign policy and the edited 12 more. He most recently co-authored That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Mandelbaum was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine for "for teaching America how to be a hegemon on the cheap." He is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Mandelbaum worked on on security issues at the U.S. Department of State from 1982-1983 on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in the office of Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger. He served as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Speaking on behalf of the United States Information Agency for more than two decades, Mandelbaum has explained American foreign policy to groups throughout Europe, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Middle East.
wn.com/Michael_Mandelbaum -
Mongols
Mongols (Mongolian: Монголчууд (help·info)), Mongolchuud) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. Owing to wars and migrations, Mongols are also found in some Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia (a smaller number of Mongols can also be found in Xinjiang in northwest China). The Buryat branch of the Mongol ethnic group can be found in the autonomous republic of Buryatia, Russia. Ethnic Mongols are bound together by a common language and culture. They speak languages belonging to the Mongolic languages. The contiguous territories inhabited by ethnic Mongols is also known as Greater Mongolia[disambiguation needed 
]. There are approximately 10 million ethnic Mongols in total.
A definition includes the Mongols proper, who can be approximately divided into the eastern Mongols (the Khalkha Mongols, the Inner Mongolians, the Buryats), and the Oirats. In a wider sense, the Mongol people includes all people who speak a Mongolic language, such as the Kalmyks of eastern Europe.
wn.com/Mongols -
Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám (1048–1131; Persian: عمر خیام) was a Persian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and Islamic theology.
Born in Nishapur, at a young age he moved to Samarkand and obtained his education there, afterwards he moved to Bukhara and became established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He is the author of one of the most important treatises on algebra written before modern times, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, which includes a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He contributed to a calendar reform.
His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Al-Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Avicenna in Nishapur where Khayyám was born and buried and where his mausoleum today remains a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every year.
wn.com/Omar_Khayyám -
Osman I
Osman I or Othman I or El-Gazi[citation needed] (1258 – 1326) Ottoman Turkish: سلطان عثمان غازى Sultan Osman Ghazi, Turkish: Osman Gazi or Osman Bey or I. Osman, Osman Gazi Han), nicknamed "Kara" for his courage, was the leader of the Ottoman Turks, and the founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire. The Empire, named after him, would prevail as a world empire for over six centuries.
Osman announced the independence of his own small kingdom from the Seljuk Turks in 1299. The westward drive of the Mongol invasions had pushed scores of Muslims toward Osman's Anatolian principality, a power base that Osman was quick to consolidate. As the Byzantine Empire declined, the Ottoman Empire rose to take its place.
Ertuğrul, Osman's father, led the Turkic Kayi tribe west into Anatolia, fleeing the Mongol onslaught. His mother was named Khaima. He pledged allegiance to Sultan Kayqubad I of the Seljuk principality of Rum, who gave him permission to establish an emirate and expand it if he could, at the expense of the neighboring Byzantine provinces.
wn.com/Osman_I -
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire or Turkish Empire or Sublime Ottoman State or sometimes also referred to as Turkey (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِيّهٔ عُثمَانِیّه Devlet-i ʿAliyye-yi ʿOsmâniyye (also عثمانلى دولتى Osmanlı Devleti),Modern Turkish: Osmanlı Devleti or Osmanlı İmparatorluğu) was a Turkish empire which lasted from 27 July 1299 to 1 November 1922, when the Sultanate was abolished.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest lasting empires in history; such that the Ottoman State, its politics, conflicts, and cultural heritage in a vast geography provide one of the longest continuous narratives. During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the empire was one of the most powerful states in the world – a multinational, multilingual empire that stretched from the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire to the outskirts of Vienna, Royal Hungary (modern Slovakia) and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the north to Yemen and Eritrea in the south; from Algeria in the west to Azerbaijan in the east; controlling much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states, some of which were later absorbed into the empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
wn.com/Ottoman_Empire -
Parthia
Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire.
The name "Parthia" is a continuation from Latin Parthia, from Old Persian Parthava, which was the Parthian language self-designator signifying "of the Parthians" who were an Iranian people.
Parthia roughly corresponds to the western half of Khorasan region in northeastern Iran. It was bordered by the Kopet Dag mountain range in the north and the Dasht-e-Kavir desert in the south. It bordered Media on the west, Hyrcania on the north west, Margiana on the north east, and Aria on the south east.
During Arsacid times, Parthia was united with Hyrcania as one administrative unit, and that region is therefore often (subject to context) considered a part of Parthia proper.
As the region inhabited by Parthians, Parthia first appears as a political entity in Achaemenid lists of governorates ("satrapies") under their dominion. Prior to this, the people of the region seem to have been subjects of the Medes, and 7th century BC Assyrian texts mention a country named Partakka or Partukka (though this "need not have coincided topographically with the later Parthia").
wn.com/Parthia -
Russian Mennonite
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites descended from Dutch and mainly Germanic Prussian Anabaptists who established colonies in South Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have come to countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest were forcibly relocated, so that few of their descendants now live at the location of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual with Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German) as their lingua franca.
In the early-to-mid 16th century, Mennonites began to move from the Low Countries (especially Friesland) and Flanders to the Vistula delta region, seeking religious freedom and exemption from military service. They gradually replaced their Dutch and Frisian languages with the Plautdietsch dialect spoken in the area, blending into it elements of their native tongues. Plautdietsch is the distinct Mennonite language which developed over a period of 300 years in the Vistula delta region and south Russia.
wn.com/Russian_Mennonite -
Scythians
The Scythians (/ˈsɪθi.ən/ or /ˈsɪði.ən/; from Greek Σκύθης, Σκύθοι), or Scyths /ˈsɪθ/, were an ethnolinguistic group of ancient Iranian nomadic tribal cultures who throughout Classical Antiquity dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known at the time as Scythia. By Late Antiquity the closely related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scythians in this area. Much of the surviving information about the Scythians comes from the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) in his Histories and Ovid in his poem of exile Epistulae ex Ponto, and archaeologically from the exquisite goldwork found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia.
The name "Scythian" has also been used to refer to various peoples seen as similar to the Scythians, or who lived anywhere in the area known as Scythia,
Sulimirski views the Histories of Herodotus as the most important literary source relating to ancient Scyths. Herodotus provides a depiction that can be related to the results of archaeological research, but apparently knew little of the eastern part of Scythia. He did say that the ancient Persians called all the Scyths Σάκαι (Sacae, Herodotus 7.64). Their principal tribe, the "Royal Scyths", ruled the vast lands occupied by the nation as a whole (Herodotus 4.20), calling themselves Σκώλοτοι (Scōloti, Herodotus 4.6). Oswald Szemerényi devotes a thorough discussion to the etymologies of ancient ethnic words for the Scythians in his work "Four old Iranian ethnic names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka". In it the names of Herodotus and the names of his title, except Saka, as well as many other words for "Scythian," such as Assyrian Aškuz and Greek Skuthēs, descend from *skeud-, an ancient Indo-European root meaning "propel, shoot" (cf. English shoot). *skud- is the zero-grade; that is, a variant in which the -e- is not present. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda (archer), which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, in which the d has been regularly replaced by an l.
wn.com/Scythians -
Sichuan
Coordinates: 30°N 103°E / 30°N 103°E / 30; 103
Sichuan (help·info) (Chinese: 四川, known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan) is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu. The current name of the province, "四川", is an abbreviation of "四川路" (Sì Chuānlù), or "Four circuits of rivers", which is itself abbreviated from "川峡四路" (Chuānxiá Sìlù), or "Four circuits of rivers and gorges", named after the division of the existing circuit into four during the Northern Song Dynasty.
The province and its vicinity were the cradle of unique local civilizations, which can be dated back to at least the fifteenth century BC (coinciding with the later years of the Shang Dynasty). Beginning from the ninth century BC, Shu (today Chengdu) and Ba (today Chongqing City) emerged as cultural and administrative centers where two rival kingdoms were established.
Shu's existence was unknown until an archaeological discovery in 1986 at a small village named Sanxingdui (三星堆) in Guanghan County. It is believed to be an ancient city of the Shu Kingdom, where excavations have yielded invaluable archaeological information.
wn.com/Sichuan -
Sogdiana
Sogdiana or Sogdia ([pronunciation?]; Old Persian: Suguda-; Ancient Greek: Σογδιανή, Sogdianē; Persian: سغد Soġd; Tajik: Суғд, سغد Suġd; Uzbek: Sơģd; Chinese: 粟特 Sùtè) was the ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great (i. 16). Sogdiana is "listed" as the second of the "good lands and countries" that Ahura Mazda created. This region is listed second after Airyana Vaeja, Land of the Aryans, in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad or "Videvdat", indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana, at different times, included territories around Samarkand, Bukhara, Khujand and Shahrisabz in modern Uzbekistan. The inhabitants of Sogdiana were the Sogdians, an Eastern Iranian people who are among the ancestors of modern-day Tajik, Pashun and Yaghnobi peoples.
The Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centered around the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya), embracing the fertile valley of the Zeravshan (ancient Polytimetus). Sogdian territory corresponds to the modern provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan.
wn.com/Sogdiana -
Sogdians
Sogdiana or Sogdia ([pronunciation?]; Old Persian: Suguda-; Ancient Greek: Σογδιανή, Sogdianē; Persian: سغد Soġd; Tajik: Суғд, سغد Suġd; Uzbek: Sơģd; Chinese: 粟特 Sùtè) was the ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great (i. 16). Sogdiana is "listed" as the second of the "good lands and countries" that Ahura Mazda created. This region is listed second after Airyana Vaeja, Land of the Aryans, in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad or "Videvdat", indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana, at different times, included territories around Samarkand, Bukhara, Khujand and Shahrisabz in modern Uzbekistan. The inhabitants of Sogdiana were the Sogdians, an Eastern Iranian people who are among the ancestors of modern-day Tajik, Pashun and Yaghnobi peoples.
The Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centered around the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya), embracing the fertile valley of the Zeravshan (ancient Polytimetus). Sogdian territory corresponds to the modern provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan.
wn.com/Sogdians -
Svat Soucek
Svat Soucek (full name: Svatopluk Souček) is a compiler and author of works in relation to Central Asia, and Central Asian studies and works in the Oriental division of the New York Public Library. His works include Turkish Mapmaking After Columbus and A History of Inner Asia.
wn.com/Svat_Soucek -
Tibetans
The Tibetan people (Tibetan: བོད་པ།་, Wylie: Bodpa; Chinese: 藏族; pinyin: Zàng Zú) are an ethnic group that is native to Tibet, which is mostly in the People's Republic of China. They number 5.4 million and are the 10th largest ethnic group in the country. Significant Tibetan minorities also live in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The Khampas of Tibet are originally from Mongolia.
Tibetans speak the Tibetan language, which belongs to the Sino-Tibetan languages and has many mutually unintelligible dialects. The traditional, or mythological, explanation of the Tibetan people's origin is that they are the descendants of the monkey Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo. Most Tibetans practice Tibetan Buddhism, though some observe the indigenous Bön and others are Muslims. Tibetan Buddhism influences Tibetan art, drama, and architecture, while the harsh geography of Tibet has produced an adaptive culture of Tibetan medicine and cuisine.
As of 2008, there are 5.4 million Tibetans in China. The SIL Ethnologue in 2009 documents an additional 189,000 Tibetan language speakers living in India, 5,280 in Nepal, and 4,800 in Bhutan. The Central Tibetan Administration's (CTA) own refugee register counts 145,150 Tibetans outside Tibet: a little over 100,000 in India; in Nepal there are over 16,000; over 1,800 in Bhutan and more than 25,000 in other parts of the world. There are Tibetan communities in the Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Norway, Taiwan, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and USA.[citation needed]
wn.com/Tibetans -
Turkic language
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.
Turkic languages are spoken as a native language by some 165 to 200 million people; and the total number of Turkic speakers is over 300 million, including speakers of a second language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, or Anatolian [and Balkan] Turkish, the speakers of which account for about 40% of all Turkic speakers.
Characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. There is also a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the various Oghuz languages, which include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish and Oghuz influenced Crimean Tatar.
The characteristic features of the Turkic languages are vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes and other affixes, and lack of noun classes or grammatical gender. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family. All of these distinguishing characteristics are shared with the Mongolic, Tungusic, and Korean language families, as well as (with the exception of vowel harmony) with Japonic, which are considered by some linguists to be genetically linked with the Turkic languages in an Altaic language family.
wn.com/Turkic_language -
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.
Turkic languages are spoken as a native language by some 165 to 200 million people; and the total number of Turkic speakers is over 300 million, including speakers of a second language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, or Anatolian [and Balkan] Turkish, the speakers of which account for about 40% of all Turkic speakers.
Characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. There is also a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the various Oghuz languages, which include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish and Oghuz influenced Crimean Tatar.
The characteristic features of the Turkic languages are vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes and other affixes, and lack of noun classes or grammatical gender. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family. All of these distinguishing characteristics are shared with the Mongolic, Tungusic, and Korean language families, as well as (with the exception of vowel harmony) with Japonic, which are considered by some linguists to be genetically linked with the Turkic languages in an Altaic language family.
wn.com/Turkic_languages -
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethnic groups that live in northern, central and western Asia, northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people including existing societies such as the Turkish, Azerbaijani, Chuvashes, Kazakhs, Tatars, Kyrgyzs, Turkmens, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Qashqai, Gagauzs, Yakuts, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Karakalpaks, Karachays, Nogais and as well as past civilizations such as the Göktürks, Kumans, Kipchaks, Avars, Bulgars, Turgeshes, Khazars, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Mamluks, Timurids and possibly Huns and the Xiongnu.
The distribution of people of Turkic cultural background ranges from Siberia, across Central Asia, to Eastern Europe. As of 2011[update] the largest groups of Turkic people live throughout Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan, in addition to Turkey and Iran. Additionally, Turkic people are found within Crimea, East Turkistan region of western China, northern Iraq, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, Afghanistan, and the Balkans: Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. A small number of Turkic people also live in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Small numbers inhabit eastern Poland and the south-eastern part of Finland. There are also considerable populations of Turkic people (originating mostly from Turkey) in Germany, United States, and Australia, largely because of migrations during the 20th century.
wn.com/Turkic_peoples -
Turkmen people
The Turkmen (Turkmen: Türkmen/Түркмен, plural Türkmenler/Түркменлер) are a Turkic people located primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, Syria, Iraq and North Caucasus (Stavropol Krai). They speak the Turkmen language, which is classified as a part of the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Qashqai, Gagauz and Salar.
Originally, all Turkic tribes that were not part of the Turkic dynastic mythological system (for example, Uigurs, Karluks, Kalaches and a number of other tribes) were designated "Turkmens". Only later did this word come to refer to a specific ethnonym. The etymology of the term derives from Türk plus the Sogdian affix of similarity -myn ,-men, and means "resembling a Türk" or "co-Türk". A prominent Turkic scholar, Mahmud Kashgari, also mentions the etymology Türk manand (like Turks). The language and ethnicity of the Turkmen were much influenced by their migration to the west. Kashgari calls the Karluks Turkmen as well, but the first time the etymology Turkmen was used was by Makdisi in the second half of the 10th-century AD. Like Kashgari, he wrote that the Karluks and Oghuz Turks were called Turkmen. Some modern scholars have proposed that the element -man/-men acts as an intensifier, and have translated the word as "pure Turk" or "most Turk-like of the Turks". Among Muslim chroniclers such as Ibn Kathir the etymology was attributed to the mass conversion of two hundred thousand households in AH 349 (971 CE), causing them to be named Turk Iman, which is a combination of "Turk" and "Iman" إيمان (faith, belief), meaning "believing Turks", with the term later dropping the hard-to-pronounce hamza.
wn.com/Turkmen_people -
Ukrainians
Ukrainians (Ukrainian: Українці, Ukrayintsi, [ukrɑˈjinʲtsʲi]) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens. According to some dictionary definitions, a descriptive name for the "inhabitants of Ukraine" is Ukrainian or Ukrainian people.Russians and Belarusians are considered the closest relatives of Ukrainians, while Rusyns are either considered another closely related group, or an ethnic subgroup of Ukrainians.
Ethnonym Ukrainians became widely accepted only in the 20th century, so modern Ukrainians identify their ancestry with differently named historical Slavic groups, who are often called Ukrainians too, in retrospect. The oldest recorded ethnonyms used for Ukrainian ancestors are Rusy, Rusyny, and Rusychi (from term Rus'). From the 9th to 12th centuries those names applied to the population of Kievan Rus', as the united state of Rusy is restrospectively called. Similar names were adopted by the proto-Russian and proto-Belarusian inhabitants of the northern principalities of Rus', reflecting the common origin of all those East Slavic peoples.
wn.com/Ukrainians -
Uzbek language
Uzbek (O‘zbek tili or O‘zbekcha in Latin script, Ўзбек тили or Ўзбекча in Cyrillic script; اوزبیک تیلی or اوزبیکچه in Arabic script) is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 40 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia. Uzbek belongs to the southeastern Turkic or Uyghur family of Turkic languages, and consequently its lexicon and grammar are most closely linked to the Uyghur language, while other influences rose from Persian, Arabic and Russian.
One of the most distinguishing aspects of Uzbek from other Turkic languages is its rounding of the vowel /a/ to /ɒ/ or /ɔ/, a feature influenced by Persian.
Turkic speakers have probably settled in the Amu-Darya, Syr-Darya and Zeravshan river basins since at least AD 600–700, gradually ousting or assimilating the speakers of Eastern Iranian languages who previously inhabited Soghdiana, Bactria and Chorasmia. The first Turkic dynasty in the region was that of the Karakhanids in the 9th–12th centuries AD, who were a confederation of Karluks (Qarluq), Chigil, Yaghma and other tribes.
wn.com/Uzbek_language -
Uzbeks
The Uzbeks (Oʻzbek, pl. Oʻzbeklar) are a major Turkic-speaking ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Smaller diaspora populations of Uzbeks from Central Asia, mainly from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, are also found in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, North America, and Western Europe.
The origin of the name Uzbek remains disputed. One view holds that it is eponymously named after Uzbeg Khan. Another states that the name means independent or the lord itself, from Oʻz (self) and Bek/Bey/Beg (from the Turkic root meaning a noble title). However there is another theory that the pronunciation of Uz comes from one of the Oghuz Turks variously known as Uz or Uguz united with the word Bey or Bek to form uguz-bey, meaning "leader of an oguz".
Although Turko-Mongol infiltration into Central Asia had started early, as late as the 13th century AD when Turkic and Mongol armies finally conquered the entire region, the majority of Central Asia's peoples were Iranic peoples such as Sogdians, Bactrians and, more ancient, the Saka–Massagetae tribes. It is generally believed that these ancient Indo-European-speaking peoples were linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups while the sedentary population finally adopted the Persian language, the traditional lingua franca of the eastern Islamic lands. The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process. This process was dramatically boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region.
wn.com/Uzbeks -
Wu Hu
Wu Hu (Chinese: 五胡; pinyin: Wǔ Hú; literally "Five Barbaric Tribes") was a Chinese term for the northern non-Chinese nomadic tribes which caused the Wu Hu uprising, and established the Sixteen Kingdoms from 304 to 439 AD.
The Chinese word "Hu" (胡) in "Wu Hu" means "unintelligible" or "difficult to understand," which probably refers to the native languages spoken by these ethnic groups. It is similar to the origin of the word "barbarian" in many European languages. A diplomatic message sent by Hulugu to Emperor Wu of Han which was recorded in the Han Shu defined Hu as the proud son of heaven (天之驕子).
The Xiongnu were the most powerful non-Chinese ethnic group bordering the Chinese Han Dynasty, therefore the Han simply referred to them as the Hu (the non-Chinese or barbarians). Both "Hu" and "Xiongnu" were used concurrently. Nevertheless, Hu later became a collective term for non-Chinese ethnic groups, often preceded by Chinese numerals and characters such as Wu (five) or Zhu (numerous). The term Wu Hu meaning the "Five Hu" was first used in the Shiliuguo Chunqiu (501-522), which recorded the history of the five tribes ravaging Northern China from the early fourth century to the mid fifth century. They are mostly defined as: Xiongnu (匈奴), Xianbei (鮮卑), Di (氐), Qiang (羌), and Jie (羯); although different groups of historians and historiographers have their own definitions.
wn.com/Wu_Hu -
Xinjiang
Xinjiang (XUAR) (Uyghur: شىنجاڭ, ULY: Shinjang; Mandarin pronunciation: [ɕíntɕjɑ́ŋ]; Chinese: 新疆; pinyin: Xīnjiāng; Wade–Giles: Hsin1-chiang1; Postal map spelling: Sinkiang) is an autonomous region (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2. Xinjiang borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.
It is home to a number of different ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kyrgyz, and Mongol. More than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities are located in Xinjiang. Older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan, Sinkiang, and East Turkestan. Xinjiang is divided into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south by a mountain range. Only about 4.3% of Xinjiang's land area is fit for human habitation.
wn.com/Xinjiang
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
NATO in Afghanistan - Central Asia's celebrities fight drug trade
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:21
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Afghanistan's narcotics problem is only part of a larger drug trade in Central Asia. At a United Nations-backed, three-day forum, celebrities and policy-makers from the region got together in Kabul to discuss how best to fight the drugs trade
http://wn.com/NATO_in_Afghanistan_Central_Asia's_celebrities_fight_drug_trade
Afghanistan's narcotics problem is only part of a larger drug trade in Central Asia. At a United Nations-backed, three-day forum, celebrities and policy-makers from the region got together in Kabul to discuss how best to fight the drugs trade
Advice for Your Global UGRAD Recommendations
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:36
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Get advice on your Global UGRAD application from current participants. Learn tips and first-hand advice on how to approach professors and get quality recommendations for your application.
http://wn.com/Advice_for_Your_Global_UGRAD_Recommendations
Get advice on your Global UGRAD application from current participants. Learn tips and first-hand advice on how to approach professors and get quality recommendations for your application.
- published: 20 Dec 2012
- author: irexdc
Tajikistan Khojand Food Market Central Asia. Xujand Panjshanbeh Baazaar 29-97 fps 16-9 Kambiz.mp4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:22
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
Travel to Khojand Market on the Silk Road in Central Asia. Xujand Panjshanbeh bozor Baazaar Khujand Tajikistan khodjand tourism trip. Tajik persian food traditional culinary restaurant cooking soups kabob bread dried nuts and fruits. Exotic adventure by Kambiz Taleghani usa iran camera: Abdumalik Sodikov
http://wn.com/Tajikistan_Khojand_Food_Market_Central_Asia_Xujand_Panjshanbeh_Baazaar_29-97_fps_16-9_Kambizmp4
Travel to Khojand Market on the Silk Road in Central Asia. Xujand Panjshanbeh bozor Baazaar Khujand Tajikistan khodjand tourism trip. Tajik persian food traditional culinary restaurant cooking soups kabob bread dried nuts and fruits. Exotic adventure by Kambiz Taleghani usa iran camera: Abdumalik Sodikov
- published: 12 May 2011
- views: 50893
- author: kelar12
Kyrgyz Weekend. Central Asia. Food, Market, Music, Issyk Kul, Bishkek. Silk Road travel. Kambiz
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:51
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
A weekend in Kyrgyizstan (Kyrgyz Republic). Bishkek, Issyk Kul, Horse Trading in Livestock Bazaar. Central Asia silk road travel tourism destination traditional cooking cuisine food water sports jet ski scenic scenery. traditional and modern music. tour site by Kambiz Taleghani
http://wn.com/Kyrgyz_Weekend_Central_Asia_Food,_Market,_Music,_Issyk_Kul,_Bishkek_Silk_Road_travel_Kambiz
A weekend in Kyrgyizstan (Kyrgyz Republic). Bishkek, Issyk Kul, Horse Trading in Livestock Bazaar. Central Asia silk road travel tourism destination traditional cooking cuisine food water sports jet ski scenic scenery. traditional and modern music. tour site by Kambiz Taleghani
- published: 08 Jun 2012
- views: 3315
- author: kelar12
Fish for Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:31
- Updated: 23 Nov 2012
Worldwide, fish farming is a fast growing industry. With funding from Finland, FAO is helping Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia to join this global trend and build up an aquaculture sector step by step.
http://wn.com/Fish_for_Kyrgyzstan,_Central_Asia
Worldwide, fish farming is a fast growing industry. With funding from Finland, FAO is helping Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia to join this global trend and build up an aquaculture sector step by step.
- published: 11 Oct 2012
- views: 496
- author: FAOVideo
Water for Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:03
- Updated: 11 Oct 2012
The winter snows of Central Asia store great volumes of water in the region's mountains. In spring and summer, the snows melt, swelling rivers and irrigation canals and creating a paradise for agriculture. This is the story of how Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia has started to rebuild and modernize their irrigated agricultural sector with the help of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
http://wn.com/Water_for_Kyrgyzstan,_Central_Asia
The winter snows of Central Asia store great volumes of water in the region's mountains. In spring and summer, the snows melt, swelling rivers and irrigation canals and creating a paradise for agriculture. This is the story of how Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia has started to rebuild and modernize their irrigated agricultural sector with the help of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
- published: 11 Oct 2012
- views: 514
- author: FAOVideo
Borodin In the Steppes of Central Asia - Svetlanov
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:27
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
Borodin: In the Steppes of Central Asia - Musical picture USSR Symphony Orchestra Evgeny Svetlanov, conductor Rec. 1966 The musical picture "In Central Asia" was written in 1880 and premiered in St.Petersburg under Rimsky Korsakov's baton that year.
http://wn.com/Borodin_In_the_Steppes_of_Central_Asia_Svetlanov
Borodin: In the Steppes of Central Asia - Musical picture USSR Symphony Orchestra Evgeny Svetlanov, conductor Rec. 1966 The musical picture "In Central Asia" was written in 1880 and premiered in St.Petersburg under Rimsky Korsakov's baton that year.
- published: 29 Dec 2010
- views: 46170
- author: nikolaimedtner
Central Asia Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan mp4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 56:04
- Updated: 22 Oct 2012
http://wn.com/Central_Asia_Kirghizstan_and_Uzbekistan_mp4
Tech Forum Central Asia 2 - Almaty, Kazakhstan
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:49
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Over 70 young professionals from South and Central Asia came to Almaty, Kazakhstan to learn how to use technology for social good. A dozen local and international technologists led trainings on various aspects of tech for social good as well as grant-writing and train-the-trainers seminars. Participants then competed in teams to win tech-training trips across Central Asia, to spread their newly acquired expertise. Tech Forum Central Asia 2 was the 18th in a series of global "Tech Camps" supporting Secretary Clinton's Civil Society 2.0 initiative and a follow-up event to the first Tech Forum hosted in June 2012 in Almaty.
http://wn.com/Tech_Forum_Central_Asia_2_Almaty,_Kazakhstan
Over 70 young professionals from South and Central Asia came to Almaty, Kazakhstan to learn how to use technology for social good. A dozen local and international technologists led trainings on various aspects of tech for social good as well as grant-writing and train-the-trainers seminars. Participants then competed in teams to win tech-training trips across Central Asia, to spread their newly acquired expertise. Tech Forum Central Asia 2 was the 18th in a series of global "Tech Camps" supporting Secretary Clinton's Civil Society 2.0 initiative and a follow-up event to the first Tech Forum hosted in June 2012 in Almaty.
- published: 20 Dec 2012
- author: USCG Almaty
Borodin - In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880), played on period instruments
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:42
- Updated: 12 Dec 2012
In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880) A "musical tableau" for orchestra by Russian composer and chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), a member of the group of composers known as The Five, or the Mighty Handful. The work was originally intended to celebrate the silver anniversary of the reign of Czar Alexander II, who had expanded the domain of Imperial Russia eastward into Central Asia. The celebration never came to fruition due to the assassination of the Czar; instead the piece was premiered in a concert in 1880 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the orchestra of the Russian Opera. Borodin dedicated it to Franz Liszt. This recording was made by conductor Jos van Immerseel and the Anima Eterna Orchestra, which plays on period instruments.
http://wn.com/Borodin_In_the_Steppes_of_Central_Asia_1880,_played_on_period_instruments
In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880) A "musical tableau" for orchestra by Russian composer and chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), a member of the group of composers known as The Five, or the Mighty Handful. The work was originally intended to celebrate the silver anniversary of the reign of Czar Alexander II, who had expanded the domain of Imperial Russia eastward into Central Asia. The celebration never came to fruition due to the assassination of the Czar; instead the piece was premiered in a concert in 1880 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the orchestra of the Russian Opera. Borodin dedicated it to Franz Liszt. This recording was made by conductor Jos van Immerseel and the Anima Eterna Orchestra, which plays on period instruments.
- published: 27 May 2011
- views: 9277
- author: musicanth
In the Steppes of Central Asia - Borodin - Mongolia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:08
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
A musical journey to Mongolia. Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Kurt Sanderling.
http://wn.com/In_the_Steppes_of_Central_Asia_Borodin_Mongolia
A musical journey to Mongolia. Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Kurt Sanderling.
- published: 27 Sep 2010
- views: 104232
- author: Gilda Tabarez
The Nations of the World - Central Asia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:32
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Images are from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. National anthems were recorded by the Anthems Symphony Orchestra and the United States Navy Band. This video is for educational purposes.
http://wn.com/The_Nations_of_the_World_Central_Asia
Images are from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. National anthems were recorded by the Anthems Symphony Orchestra and the United States Navy Band. This video is for educational purposes.
- published: 18 Dec 2012
- views: 1
- author: Atlasia890
Strangers
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:33
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
Erman, a PETRONAS engineer stationed in Central Asia, struggles to adjust to life away from home, when his path crosses that of a local boy, Jeyhun. While Erman and Jeyhun start out as strangers, every step brings them closer to realising their true potential, to reimagining their energy and making a difference to those around them. Its a story of one man's journey of self-discovery and exploration towards the meaning of life While past PETRONAS TVCs have always celebrated stories from within Malaysia, this year, it tells a bigger story -- of the role that PETRONAS plays in its countries of operations.
http://wn.com/Strangers
Erman, a PETRONAS engineer stationed in Central Asia, struggles to adjust to life away from home, when his path crosses that of a local boy, Jeyhun. While Erman and Jeyhun start out as strangers, every step brings them closer to realising their true potential, to reimagining their energy and making a difference to those around them. Its a story of one man's journey of self-discovery and exploration towards the meaning of life While past PETRONAS TVCs have always celebrated stories from within Malaysia, this year, it tells a bigger story -- of the role that PETRONAS plays in its countries of operations.
- published: 06 Aug 2012
- views: 425749
- author: PETRONASOfficial
A Tourist's Guide to Dushanbe, Tajikistan
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:37
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
I fly back into Central Asia to see what the capital of Tajikistan, the pooerst of the former Soviet Republics has to offer. Quite a lot actually...
http://wn.com/A_Tourist's_Guide_to_Dushanbe,_Tajikistan
I fly back into Central Asia to see what the capital of Tajikistan, the pooerst of the former Soviet Republics has to offer. Quite a lot actually...
- published: 19 Jul 2012
- views: 6611
- author: cessnagbdso
Alexander Borodin In The Steppes Of Central Asia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:23
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
Alexander Borodin In The Steppes Of Central Asia
http://wn.com/Alexander_Borodin_In_The_Steppes_Of_Central_Asia
Alexander Borodin In The Steppes Of Central Asia
- published: 26 Aug 2010
- views: 29439
- author: bluekeith999
Lady Gayga dancing central 2 - Asia's no.1 gamer
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:34
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
I WILL GET BETTER AT DANCING! you watch me bish and I'll get my hdpvr working too :) BYE! luv you
http://wn.com/Lady_Gayga_dancing_central_2_Asia's_no1_gamer
I WILL GET BETTER AT DANCING! you watch me bish and I'll get my hdpvr working too :) BYE! luv you
- published: 17 Sep 2012
- views: 70500
- author: chonnygame
ALABAI Central Asian Shepherd Breeding March 2011 "Romance is in the Air"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:29
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Video of Anchar and Aladga day before the breeding. Breeding was done on 3/11/11 www.alabaiusa.com http www.centralasianovcharka.com http www.centralasianshepherds.com 818-691-2330 Music by MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons
http://wn.com/ALABAI_Central_Asian_Shepherd_Breeding_March_2011_Romance_is_in_the_Air
Video of Anchar and Aladga day before the breeding. Breeding was done on 3/11/11 www.alabaiusa.com http www.centralasianovcharka.com http www.centralasianshepherds.com 818-691-2330 Music by MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons
- published: 26 Mar 2011
- views: 4050765
- author: iva90
euronews le mag - Central Asian exhibition debunks "Borat syndrome"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:28
- Updated: 29 Nov 2012
'Between Heaven and Earth' is an exhibition on the diverse contemporary works of 23 artists from Central Asia. The curator says the exhibition aims to address Western prejudice and dismissal of art from the region.... www.euronews.net
http://wn.com/euronews_le_mag_Central_Asian_exhibition_debunks_Borat_syndrome
'Between Heaven and Earth' is an exhibition on the diverse contemporary works of 23 artists from Central Asia. The curator says the exhibition aims to address Western prejudice and dismissal of art from the region.... www.euronews.net
- published: 15 Sep 2011
- views: 220
- author: Euronews
El mastin tibetano, y el mastin de asia central
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:10
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
El Dogo del Tíbet es el perro osuno, no solo por su tamaño sino por su ladrido, que más que un ladrido parece un rugido. Marco polo también dijo de él que era "grande como un asno". Origen La historia del Mastín Tibetano está rodeada de misticismo. Es una raza muy antigua que ya usaban los pastores nómadas del Himalaya y los monjes tibetanos para guardar sus monasterios. La raza fue desconocida fuera de su país hasta el siglo XIX, que fue llevada a Gran Bretaña para salvarla y perfeccionarel estándar. Comportamiento El Dogo del Tíbet es un perro tranquilo, estable, independiente ya veces puede resultar algo testarudo. Es muy desconfiado con los extraños y, por el contrario, leal, territorial, protector y afectuoso con su familia. Con los niños se muestra muy paciente y tolerante. Aspecto El Mastín Tibetano es un perro majestuoso, potente, pesado y de buena osamenta. Tiene una cabeza bastante grande y unas orejas medianas de forma triangular que le caen hacia delante. Su cola es peluda, la lleva implantada alta y enroscada de lado sobre la espalda. El pelo es grueso, de una buena longitud y puede ser de color negro, negro y fuego, marrón, dorado, gris o gris y fuego. Cuidados específicos Debido a su gran tamaño, el Dogo del Tíbet necesita un gran espacio para vivir. Se adapta bien a las inclemencias climáticas y le gusta caminar y pasear por el aire libre con su familia. Tiene un fuerte carácter y necesita un dueño que lo sepa dominar, que lo trate con mucha paciencia y ...
http://wn.com/El_mastin_tibetano,_y_el_mastin_de_asia_central
El Dogo del Tíbet es el perro osuno, no solo por su tamaño sino por su ladrido, que más que un ladrido parece un rugido. Marco polo también dijo de él que era "grande como un asno". Origen La historia del Mastín Tibetano está rodeada de misticismo. Es una raza muy antigua que ya usaban los pastores nómadas del Himalaya y los monjes tibetanos para guardar sus monasterios. La raza fue desconocida fuera de su país hasta el siglo XIX, que fue llevada a Gran Bretaña para salvarla y perfeccionarel estándar. Comportamiento El Dogo del Tíbet es un perro tranquilo, estable, independiente ya veces puede resultar algo testarudo. Es muy desconfiado con los extraños y, por el contrario, leal, territorial, protector y afectuoso con su familia. Con los niños se muestra muy paciente y tolerante. Aspecto El Mastín Tibetano es un perro majestuoso, potente, pesado y de buena osamenta. Tiene una cabeza bastante grande y unas orejas medianas de forma triangular que le caen hacia delante. Su cola es peluda, la lleva implantada alta y enroscada de lado sobre la espalda. El pelo es grueso, de una buena longitud y puede ser de color negro, negro y fuego, marrón, dorado, gris o gris y fuego. Cuidados específicos Debido a su gran tamaño, el Dogo del Tíbet necesita un gran espacio para vivir. Se adapta bien a las inclemencias climáticas y le gusta caminar y pasear por el aire libre con su familia. Tiene un fuerte carácter y necesita un dueño que lo sepa dominar, que lo trate con mucha paciencia y ...
- published: 09 Jun 2012
- views: 44732
- author: carolina3420
euronews Life - Almaty: Kazakhstan's Garden City
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:54
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
www.euronews.com The city of Almaty lies to the south of Kazakhstan, a stop off point in years gone by on the Silk Road, the great trading route that linked east and west. Trade and economy are still at the heart of Almaty which was once the country's capital. It is the financial centre of central Asia and attracted some six million tourists last year. History, hot summers and a raft of winter sports on tap are among the top attractions. In the hustle and bustle of modern development Almaty has not forgotten long held traditions like the famous steam baths, the Russian Banya. Some like it hot first thing. Bagdat Yermagambedov has been taking the steam for 30 years. "Its a tradition here and everyone likes to start the week with a Banya to gather energy for the rest of the week, but what is a Russian bath without the steam - its not a bath! It's a great pleasure to come here to the steam rooms to re-charge our energy," he explained. The vast Arasan complex was opened in 1982 and has been hailed as the best 'Banya' in central Asia. If a massage is not for you there are many other ways of ending your visit. Some people like to start the day with a good thrashing; birch leaves pummel the skin and its supposed to stimulate the circulation to take the stress out of the day before you have even started. It doesn't so much hurt as it stings. A morning in the Banya is perhaps the perfect preparation for a visit to the busy Green Bazaar. On the Silk Road it is Kazakhstan's biggest ...
http://wn.com/euronews_Life_Almaty_Kazakhstan's_Garden_City
www.euronews.com The city of Almaty lies to the south of Kazakhstan, a stop off point in years gone by on the Silk Road, the great trading route that linked east and west. Trade and economy are still at the heart of Almaty which was once the country's capital. It is the financial centre of central Asia and attracted some six million tourists last year. History, hot summers and a raft of winter sports on tap are among the top attractions. In the hustle and bustle of modern development Almaty has not forgotten long held traditions like the famous steam baths, the Russian Banya. Some like it hot first thing. Bagdat Yermagambedov has been taking the steam for 30 years. "Its a tradition here and everyone likes to start the week with a Banya to gather energy for the rest of the week, but what is a Russian bath without the steam - its not a bath! It's a great pleasure to come here to the steam rooms to re-charge our energy," he explained. The vast Arasan complex was opened in 1982 and has been hailed as the best 'Banya' in central Asia. If a massage is not for you there are many other ways of ending your visit. Some people like to start the day with a good thrashing; birch leaves pummel the skin and its supposed to stimulate the circulation to take the stress out of the day before you have even started. It doesn't so much hurt as it stings. A morning in the Banya is perhaps the perfect preparation for a visit to the busy Green Bazaar. On the Silk Road it is Kazakhstan's biggest ...
- published: 11 Sep 2012
- views: 6355
- author: Euronews
CENTRAL ASIAN OVCHARKA TURKMENISTAN - Alabai in the mountains near Iran
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 13:48
- Updated: 21 Dec 2011
www.pastoredellasiacentrale.it CENTRAL ASIAN OVCHARKA -- CENTRAL ASIAN SHEPHERD DOG - GUARD DOG - TURKMEN ALABAI - ABORIGINAL ALABAY - PASTORE DELL'ASIA CENTRALE
http://wn.com/CENTRAL_ASIAN_OVCHARKA_TURKMENISTAN_Alabai_in_the_mountains_near_Iran
www.pastoredellasiacentrale.it CENTRAL ASIAN OVCHARKA -- CENTRAL ASIAN SHEPHERD DOG - GUARD DOG - TURKMEN ALABAI - ABORIGINAL ALABAY - PASTORE DELL'ASIA CENTRALE
- published: 21 Dec 2011
- views: 16288
- author: CANIDAGUARDIA
People and Power - Breeding discontent
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 22:57
- Updated: 13 Aug 2012
People & Power investigates the growing religious radicalisation in Central Asia.
http://wn.com/People_and_Power_Breeding_discontent
People & Power investigates the growing religious radicalisation in Central Asia.
- published: 21 Jan 2010
- views: 41504
- author: AlJazeeraEnglish
Steppes of Central Asia - Sammamish Symphony
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:33
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
"In the Steppes of Central Asia" by Alexander Borodin ("В средней Азии" Александр Бородин), performance Feb 8, 2009 by the Sammamish Symphony Orchestra. The Sammamish Symphony Orchestra (R. Joseph Scott, Music Director) is a full-sized, symphony orchestra serving Sammamish, Washington, the Eastside and the Greater Seattle area. www.sammamishsymphony.org Our next concert is Scheherazade on Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 2 pm. Join us as we perform Rimsky-Korsakov's masterpiece and works by Mozart, Puccini and Vaughan Williams.
http://wn.com/Steppes_of_Central_Asia_Sammamish_Symphony
"In the Steppes of Central Asia" by Alexander Borodin ("В средней Азии" Александр Бородин), performance Feb 8, 2009 by the Sammamish Symphony Orchestra. The Sammamish Symphony Orchestra (R. Joseph Scott, Music Director) is a full-sized, symphony orchestra serving Sammamish, Washington, the Eastside and the Greater Seattle area. www.sammamishsymphony.org Our next concert is Scheherazade on Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 2 pm. Join us as we perform Rimsky-Korsakov's masterpiece and works by Mozart, Puccini and Vaughan Williams.
- published: 13 Feb 2009
- views: 15626
- author: trumpeterswain
photo: AP / Carolyn Kaster
20 Dec 2012
Obama held a White House news conference on Wednesday to announce that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an interagency effort to craft new gun policies. The group is expected to offer its proposals in January. “We know this is a complex issue that stirs deeply held passions and political divides,” Obama said. “But the fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing.” ... WAKE-UP CALL ... ....(size: 6.1Kb)
photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
19 Dec 2012
WASHINGTON. US President Barack Obama backs a new bill to revive an assault weapons ban and other new gun laws, the White House said Tuesday, fleshing out his nascent response to a shocking school massacre. Obama also called an ardently pro-gun senator who has shifted his position on firearms laws since Friday's carnage in Connecticut and has begun meeting top cabinet officials to consider his options, his spokesman Jay Carney said ... ....(size: 4.9Kb)
photo: AP / Charles Krupa
18 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. "Most people reason dramatically, not quantitatively." -Oliver Wendell Holmes. On the same day that a 20-year-old, described as brilliant but remote, walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and massacred 26 children and adults, the school where I teach went on "lock-down." Four students with a handgun were arrested ... That morning before school, he had posted on Twitter and Facebook....(size: 14.0Kb)
photo: Creative Commons / Joachim Huber
18 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. When a Stanford geneticist, Gerald Crabtree, published a provocative and controversial new view on evolutionary change, namely that humans are actually getting dumber, he should have also added that humans are still developing an extermination gene ... Paleontologist Tim Flannery would more than likely agree with Crabtree ... Strange strings of gravel also overlaid some bones ... (1) Kane, Alex ... 195....(size: 9.4Kb)
photo: AP / Mohammad Hannon
19 Dec 2012
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she accepts the findings of an independent panel that faulted the State Department over the deadly September attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya ... Clinton also ordered widespread changes to bolster US diplomatic security overseas ... 390 Source.. Al Jazeera and agencies. Share. Send Feedback ... Jaws ... Anaheim ... News Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Central/S.Asia Europe Middle East Sport ... ....(size: 19.2Kb)
noodls
21 Dec 2012
(Source. Centerra Gold Inc) NEWS RELEASE. Centerra Gold Files Updated Kumtor Technical Report for New Life-of-Mine Plan ... (TSX ... is a gold mining company focused on operating, developing, exploring and acquiring gold properties primarily in Asia, the former Soviet Union and other emerging markets worldwide. Centerra is a leading North American-based gold producer and is the largest Western- based gold producer in Central Asia ... John W ... (noodl....(size: 2.8Kb)
The Australian
21 Dec 2012
"The current situation in Greece is totally unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize winning European Union and so far below international human rights standards as to make a mockery of them," said John Dalhuisen, director of Europe and Central Asia for Amnesty International ... Greece is the main entry point for economic immigrants and refugees from war zones in Africa and Asia, who seek a better life in the EU ... AP. ....(size: 4.8Kb)
noodls
20 Dec 2012
ABU - Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union). The satellite operator Asia Satellite Telecommunications ... Through AsiaSat 3S's platform across the Asia Pacific, Zhwandoon TV will reach not only all broadcast networks and audiences in Afghanistan but also Central Asia, Middle East, South Asia and other parts of Asia Pacific....(size: 1.9Kb)
Al Jazeera
20 Dec 2012
South Koreans on Wednesday elected Park Guen-hye to succeed Lee Myung-bak as president ... Inside Story asks ... Kwang Ho-chun, a senior lecturer and course leader for Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Central Lancashire; John Swenson-Wright, a consulting fellow for the Asia Programme at Chatham House; and Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute ... News Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Central/S.Asia Europe Middle East Sport ... ....(size: 7.6Kb)
Stockhouse
20 Dec 2012
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Dec ... is a gold mining company focused on operating, developing, exploring and acquiring gold properties primarily in Asia, the former Soviet Union and other emerging markets worldwide. Centerra is a leading North American-based gold producer and is the largest Western-based gold producer in Central Asia ... ....(size: 1.7Kb)
photo: CAI / Wakil Karimi
20 Dec 2012
Afghanistan's Minister of Education Farooq Wardak was on hand Wednesday, Dec. 12, to help Central Asia Institute and residents of Maidan Shahr celebrate the opening of the new Awal Baba Girls' Higher Secondary School ... In addition to the education minister, Wardak Province Gov ... Wardak Gov ... Awal Baba's headmaster, Mr ... Central Asia Institute has established more than 120 schools in rural Afghanistan, with an emphasis on girls' schools. ....(size: 3.7Kb)
noodls
20 Dec 2012
Senior officials from the Ministries of Finance and Central Banks from Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Oman, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen, as well as international and regional institutions attended the workshop ... Zeine Zeidane, Advisor in the IMF Monetary and Middle East and Central Asia Department, said that "Islamic finance is growing fast globally but remains little developed in North African countries....(size: 3.9Kb)
Al Jazeera
20 Dec 2012
... During the campaign, both Park and her main challenger Moon Jae-in offered competing commitment to improve ties with Pyongyang and its new leader Kim Jong-un. ... ... Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kwang Ho-chun, of the University of Central Lancashire, said Park's previous meeting with North Korean officials could be crucial in future talks ... Asia-Pacific ... News Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Central/S.Asia Europe Middle East Sport ... ....(size: 19.5Kb)
Newstrack India
20 Dec 2012
Tweet ... However, he noted that "amidst these salient developments, Afghanistan continues to face an existential threat from terrorism ... We are fully cognizant that the economic viability of Afghanistan depends on its fuller integration into the neighbourhood, so that it can regain its historical role of a land-bridge between South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Eurasia ... Post comments.. ) .. ).. Comments.. HOME . . . . . . .. . . .. ....(size: 4.1Kb)
Jakarta Post
20 Dec 2012
The Hindu
20 Dec 2012
C. Makholia (SAI), Mun Si Song (Asian Football Confederation) and Shaji Prabhakaran (FIFA Regional Developmental Officer, South and Central Asia). The office-bearers. President. Praful Patel ... Treasurer....(size: 0.9Kb)
Al Jazeera
20 Dec 2012
Somalia may be a poor nation, but many people there have access to mobile phones. The country also has a well-established system of transferring money. Now, one aid agency is looking to combine both factors so that funds can be delivered quickly and safely to those who need help the most. Al Jazeera's Peter Greste reports from the capital, Mogadishu ... News Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Central/S.Asia Europe Middle East Sport ... ....(size: 15.4Kb)
Al Jazeera
20 Dec 2012
As 2012 draws to a close, Al Jazeera is taking a look at some of this year's most important stories, through the eyes of familes that have experienced them. Conflict has forced more than two and a half million Syrians to flee their country. Al Jazeera's Nisreen El-Shamayleh went to Al Zaatri camp in northern Jordan to hear one family's story. 61 Source. ... Share ... News Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Central/S.Asia Europe Middle East Sport ... ....(size: 15.2Kb)
| Central Asia | |
|---|---|
.svg) |
|
| Area | 4,003,400 km2 (1,545,721 sq mi)[1] |
| Population | 64,746,854[2] |
| Density | 15 /km2 (39 /sq mi) |
| Countries |  Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan |
| Nominal GDP (2009) | $ 166 Billion |
| GDP per capita (2009) | $ 2,700 |
Central Asia is the core region of the Asian continent and stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also sometimes referred to as Middle Asia, and, colloquially, "the 'stans" (as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with that suffix)[3] and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.
In modern contexts, all definitions of Central Asia include these five republics of the former Soviet Union: Kazakhstan (pop. 16.6 million), Kyrgyzstan (5.5 million), Tajikistan (7.6 million), Turkmenistan (5.1 million), and Uzbekistan (29.5 million), for a total population of 64.7 million as of 2012. Other areas included are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia, and sometimes Xinjiang and Tibet in western China and southern Siberia in eastern Russia.
Various definitions of its exact composition exist, and no one definition is universally accepted. Despite this uncertainty in defining borders, it does have some important overall characteristics. For one, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road.[4] As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, West Asia, South Asia, and East Asia.[5]
During pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was a predominantly Iranian[6][7] region that included the sedentary Eastern Iranic speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians, and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Alans. The ancient sedentary population played an important role in the history of Central Asia. After expansion by Turkic peoples, Central Asia also became the homeland for many Turkic peoples, including the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Kyrgyz and Uyghurs. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan.
From the 19th century, up to the end of the 20th century, most of Central Asia has been part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, both being Slavic majority countries. As of 2011, the "stans" are still home to about 7 million Russians and 500 thousand Ukrainians.[8][9][10]
Contents |
Definitions[link]
The idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions.
The most limited definition was the official one of the Soviet Union, which defined Middle Asia as consisting solely of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. This definition was also often used outside the USSR during this period.
However, the Russian culture has two distinct terms: Средняя Азия (Srednjaja Azija or "Middle Asia", the narrower definition, which includes only those traditionally non-Slavic, Central Asian lands that were incorporated within those borders of historical Russia) and Центральная Азия (Central'naja Azija or "Central Asia", the wider definition, which includes Central Asian lands that have never been part of historical Russia).
Soon after independence, the leaders of the four former Soviet Central Asian Republics met in Tashkent and declared that the definition of Central Asia should include Kazakhstan as well as the original four included by the Soviets. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia.
The UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. According to it, Central Asia includes Mongolia, Tibet, northeast Iran (Golestan, North Khorasan and Razavi provinces), Afghanistan, Northern Areas, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (also called N.W.F.P.), Azad Kashmir and Punjab provinces of Pakistan, Punjab, Kashmir and Ladakh of India, central-east Russia south of the Taiga, and the former Central Asian Soviet republics (the five "Stans" of the former Soviet Union).
An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity, and in particular, areas populated by Eastern Turkic, Eastern Iranian, or Mongolian peoples. These areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the Northern Areas of Pakistan and the Kashmir Valley may also be included. The Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the mentioned peoples are considered the "indigenous" peoples of the vast region.
There are several places that claim to be the geographic center of Asia, for example Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva in the Russian Federation, and a village 200 miles (320 km) north of Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region of China.[11]
Geography[link]
Central Asia is an extremely large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains (Tian Shan), vast deserts (Kara Kum, Kyzyl Kum, Taklamakan), and especially treeless, grassy steppes. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a homogeneous geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe.
Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming. The Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan (Da Hinggan) Mountains, 116°–118° E.
Central Asia has the following geographic extremes:
- The world's northernmost desert (sand dunes), at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, 50°18′ N.
- The Northern Hemisphere's southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N.
- The world's shortest distance between non-frozen desert and permafrost: 770 km (480 mi).
- The Eurasian pole of inaccessibility.
A majority of the people earn a living by herding livestock. Industrial activity centers in the region's cities.
Major rivers of the region include the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya, the Hari River and the Murghab River. Major bodies of water include the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash, both of which are part of the huge west-central Asian endorheic basin that also includes the Caspian Sea.
Both of these bodies of water have shrunk significantly in recent decades due to diversion of water from rivers that feed them for irrigation and industrial purposes. Water is an extremely valuable resource in arid Central Asia and can lead to rather significant international disputes.
Divisions[link]
The northern belt is part of the Eurasian Steppe. In the northwest, north of the Caspian Sea, Central Asia merges into the Russian Steppe. To the northeast, Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin may sometimes be included in Central Asia. Just west of Dzungaria, Zhetysu, or Semirechye, is south of Lake Balkhash and north of the Tian Shan Mountains. Khorezm is south of the Aral Sea along the Amu Darya. Southeast of the Aral Sea, Maveranahr is between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Transoxiana is the land north of the middle and upper Amu Darya (Oxus). Bactria included northern Afghanistan and the upper Amu Darya. Sogdiana was north of Bactria and included the trading cities of Bukhara and Samarkhand. Khorasan and Margiana approximate northeastern Iran. The Kyzyl Kum Desert is northeast of the Amu Darya, and the Karakum Desert southwest of it.
Climate[link]
Since Central Asia is not buffered by a large body of water, temperature fluctuations are more severe.
According to the WWF Ecozones system, Central Asia is part of the Palearctic ecozone. The largest biome in Central Asia is the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. Central Asia also contains the montane grasslands and shrublands, deserts and xeric shrublands and temperate coniferous forests biomes.
History[link]
Main article: History of Central Asia
The history of Central Asia is defined by the area's climate and geography. The aridness of the region made agriculture difficult, and its distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region; instead, the area was for millennia dominated by the nomadic horse peoples of the steppe.
Relations between the steppe nomads and the settled people in and around Central Asia were long marked by conflict. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to warfare, and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily potent peoples in the world, limited only by their lack of internal unity. Any internal unity that was achieved was most probably due to the influence of the Silk Road, which traveled along Central Asia. Periodically, great leaders or changing conditions would organize several tribes into one force and create an almost unstoppable power. These included the Hun invasion of Europe, the Wu Hu attacks on China and most notably the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia.[12]
During pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, southern Central Asia was inhabited predominantly by speakers of Iranian languages.[6][13] Among the ancient sedentary Iranian peoples, the Sogdians and Chorasmians played an important role, while Iranian peoples such as Scythians and the later on Alans lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle. The well-preserved Tarim mummies with Caucasoid features have been found in the Tarim Basin.[14]
The main migration of Turkic peoples occurred between the 5th and 10th centuries, when they spread across most of Central Asia. During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols conquered and ruled the largest contiguous empire in recorded history. Most of Central Asia fell under the control of the Chagatai Khanate.
The dominance of the nomads ended in the 16th century, as firearms allowed settled peoples to gain control of the region. Russia, China, and other powers expanded into the region and had captured the bulk of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution, the western Central Asian regions were incorporated into the Soviet Union. The eastern part Central Asia, known as East Turkistan or Xinjiang, was incorporated into the People's Republic of China. Mongolia remained independent but became a Soviet satellite state. Afghanistan remained relatively independent of major influence by the USSR until the Soviet invasion of 1979.
The Soviet areas of Central Asia saw much industrialization and construction of infrastructure, but also the suppression of local cultures, hundreds of thousands of deaths from failed collectivization programs, and a lasting legacy of ethnic tensions and environmental problems. Soviet authorities deported millions of people, including entire nationalities,[15] from western areas of the USSR to Central Asia and Siberia.[16] According to Touraj Atabaki and Sanjyot Mehendale, "From 1959 to 1970, about two million people from various parts of the Soviet Union migrated to Central Asia, of which about one million moved to Kazakhstan."[17]
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, five countries gained independence. In nearly all the new states, former Communist Party officials retained power as local strongmen. None of the new republics could be considered functional democracies in the early days of independence, although in recent years Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia have made further progress towards more open societies, unlike Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, which have maintained many Soviet-style repressive tactics.[18]
Culture[link]
Religions[link]
Further information: Islam in Central Asia
Islam is the religion most common in the Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan, Xinjiang and the peripheral western regions, such as Bashkortostan. Most Central Asian Muslims are Sunni, although there are sizable Shia minorities in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Zoroastrianism, a religion with origins in Afghanistan, was a major faith in Central Asia prior to the arrival of Islam. Its influence is still felt today in such celebrations as Nowruz, held in all five of the "core" Central Asian states.
Buddhism was a prominent religion in Central Asia prior to the arrival of Islam, and the transmission of Buddhism along the Silk Road eventually brought the religion to China. Amongst the Turkic peoples, Tengrianism was the popular religion before arrival of Islam. Tibetan Buddhism is most common in Tibet, Mongolia, Ladakh and the southern Russian regions of Siberia, where Shamanism is also popular (including forms of divination, such as Kumalak). Contact and migration with Han people from China has brought Confucianism and other beliefs into the region.
Nestorianism was the form of Christianity most practiced in the region in previous centuries, but now the largest denomination is the Russian Orthodox Church, with many members in Kazakhstan. The Bukharan Jews were once a sizable community in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but nearly all have emigrated since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Arts[link]
At the crossroads of Asia, shamanistic practices live alongside Buddhism. Thus, Yama, Lord of Death, was revered in Tibet as a spiritual guardian and judge. Mongolian Buddhism, in particular, was influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. The Qianlong Emperor of China in the 18th century was Tibetan Buddhist and would sometimes travel from Beijing to other cities for personal religious worship.
Central Asia also has an indigenous form of improvisational oral poetry that is over 1000 years old. It is principally practiced in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan by akyns, lyrical improvisationists. They engage in lyrical battles, the aitysh or the alym sabak. The tradition arose out of early bardic oral historians. They are usually accompanied by a stringed instrument—in Kyrgyzstan, a three-stringed komuz, and in Kazakhstan, a similar two-stringed instrument, the dombra.
Photography in Central Asia began to develop after 1882, when a Russian Mennonite photographer named Wilhelm Penner moved to the Khanate of Khiva during the Mennonite migration to Central Asia led by Claas Epp, Jr.. Upon his arrival to Khanate of Khiva, Penner shared his photography skills with a local student Khudaybergen Divanov, who later became the founder of the Uzbek photography.[19]
Some also learn to sing the Manas, Kyrgyzstan's epic poem (those who learn the Manas exclusively but do not improvise are called manaschis). During Soviet rule, akyn performance was co-opted by the authorities and subsequently declined in popularity. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it has enjoyed a resurgence, although akyns still do use their art to campaign for political candidates. A 2005 Washington Post article proposed a similarity between the improvisational art of akyns and modern freestyle rap performed in the West.[20]
As a consequence of Russian colonization, European fine arts - painting, sculpture and graphics - have developed in Central Asia. The first years of the Soviet regime saw the appearance of modernism, which took inspiration from the Russian avant-garde movement. Until the 80's Central Asian arts had developed along with general tendencies of Soviet arts. In the 90's, arts of the region underwent some significant changes. Institutionally speaking, some fields of arts were regulated by the birth of the art market, some stayed as representatives of official views, while many were sponsored by international organizations. The years of 1990 - 2000 were times for the establishment of contemporary arts. In the region, many important international exhibitions are taking place, Central Asian art is represented in European and American museums, and the Central Asian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale has been organized since 2005.
Territory and region data[link]
| Country | Area km² |
Population (2009) |
Population density per km² |
Nominal GDP millions of USD (2009) |
GDP per capita (2009) |
Capital | Official languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kazakhstan |
2,724,900 | 16,004,800 | 6 | 109,273 | $6,823 | Astana | Kazakh, Russian |
| Kyrgyzstan |
199,900 | 5,482,000 | 27 | 4,570 | $850 | Bishkek | Kyrgyz, Russian |
| Tajikistan |
143,100 | 7,349,145 | 51 | 4,982 | $766 | Dushanbe | Tajik (Persian) |
| Turkmenistan |
488,100 | 5,110,000 | 10 | 16,197 | $3,242 | Ashgabat | Turkmen, Russian |
| Uzbekistan |
447,400 | 27,606,000 | 62 | 32,816 | $1,175 | Tashkent | Uzbek |
Nations with territories sometimes included[link]
| Country or Territory | Area km² |
Population (2009) |
Population density per km² |
Capital | Official languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Afghanistan |
647,500 | 31,889,923 | 49 | Kabul | Persian, Pashto |
 China |
9,640,821 | 1,338,612,968 | 139.6 | Beijing | Chinese |
 Iran |
1,648,195 | 76,923,300 | 45 | Tehran | Persian |
 Mongolia |
1,564,116 | 2,736,800 | 2 | Ulan Bator | Mongolian |
 Pakistan |
803,940 | 168,925,500 | 210 | Islamabad | Urdu, English |
 Russia (Siberia) |
13,000,000 | 141,945,966 | 8.3 | Moscow | Russian |
 India (Ladakh)[21] |
86,904 (Ladakh), 3,287,263 (Whole India) | 270,126 (Ladakh), 1,210,193,422 (Whole India) | 3 (Ladakh), 363.8 (Whole India) | New Delhi (National), Leh (Local) | Ladakhi, English, Urdu, Hindi (national) |
Demographics[link]
Main article: Demography of Central Asia
By a broad definition including Mongolia and Afghanistan, but excluding Pakistan, more than 90 million people live in Central Asia, about 2% of Asia's total population. Of the regions of Asia, only North Asia has fewer people. It has a population density of 9 people per km², vastly less than the 80.5 people per km² of the continent as a whole.
Languages[link]
Russian, as well as being spoken by around six million ethnic Russians and Ukrainians of Central Asia,[22] is the defacto lingua franca throughout the former Soviet Central Asian Republics. Mandarin Chinese has an equally dominant presence in Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Xinjiang.
The languages of the majority of the inhabitants of the former Soviet Central Asian Republics come from the Turkic language group.[23] Turkmen, is mainly spoken in Turkmenistan, and as a minority language in Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. Kazakh and Kyrgyz are related languages of the Kypchak group of Turkic languages and are spoken throughout Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and as a minority language in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. Uzbek and Uyghur are spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Xinjiang.
The Turkic languages may belong to a larger, but controversial, Altaic language family, which includes Mongolian. Mongolian is spoken throughout Mongolia and into Buryatia, Kalmyk, Tuva, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang.
Iranian languages were once spoken throughout Central Asia, such as the once prominent Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Bactrian and Scythian languages are now extinct. The Eastern Iranian language of Pashto is still spoken in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, and other minor East Iranian languages, such as Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi, Sarikoli, Wakhi, Yaghnobi and Ossetian, are also spoken in various places in Central Asia. Varieties of Persian are also spoken as a major language in the region. Locally known as Dari (in Afghanistan), Tajik (by Tajiks in Tajikistan), Farsi (in Iran), and Bukhori (by the Bukharan Jews all over Central Asia).
Other languages and language groups include the Tibetan language, spoken by around six million people across the Tibetan Plateau and into Qinghai, Sichuan and Ladakh. Dardic languages, such as Shina, Kashmiri and Khowar, are predominant in the northern areas of Pakistan, as well as in Ladakh of India and KP of Pakistan.
As a note, Tocharian, an Indo-European language, was once spoken in Xinjiang and parts of Afghanistan, but is now extinct.
Geostrategy[link]
Main article: Geostrategy in Central Asia
Central Asia has long been a strategic location merely because of its proximity to several great powers on the Eurasian landmass. The region itself never held a dominant stationary population nor was able to make use of natural resources. Thus, it has rarely throughout history become the seat of power for an empire or influential state. Central Asia has been divided, redivided, conquered out of existence, and fragmented time and time again. Central Asia has served more as the battleground for outside powers than as a power in its own right.
Central Asia had both the advantage and disadvantage of a central location between four historical seats of power. From its central location, it has access to trade routes to and from all the regional powers. On the other hand, it has been continuously vulnerable to attack from all sides throughout its history, resulting in political fragmentation or outright power vacuum, as it is successively dominated.
- To the North, the steppe allowed for rapid mobility, first for nomadic horseback warriors like the Huns and Mongols, and later for Russian traders, eventually supported by railroads. As the Russian Empire expanded to the East, it would also push down into Central Asia towards the sea, in a search for warm water ports. The Soviet bloc would reinforce dominance from the North and attempt to project power as far south as Afghanistan.
- To the East, the demographic and cultural weight of Chinese empires continually pushed outward into Central Asia. The Manchu Qing dynasty would conquer Xinjiang and Tibet. However, with the Sino-Soviet split, China would project power into Central Asia, most notably in the case of Afghanistan, to counter Russian dominance of the region.
- To the Southeast, the demographic and cultural influence of India was felt in Central Asia, notably in Tibet, the Hindu Kush, and slightly beyond. Several historical Indian dynasties, especially those seated along the Indus River, would expand into Central Asia. India's ability to project power into Central Asia has been limited due to the mountain ranges in Pakistan, as well as the cultural differences between Hindu India and what would become a mostly Muslim Central Asia. From its base in India, the British Empire competed with the Russian Empire for influence in the region in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- To the Southwest, Western Asian powers have expanded into the southern areas of Central Asia (usually Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). Several Persian empires would conquer and reconquer parts of Central Asia; Alexander the Great's Hellenic empire would extend into Central Asia; two Islamic empires would exert substantial influence throughout the region; and the modern state of Iran has projected influence throughout the region as well.
In the post–Cold War era, Central Asia is an ethnic cauldron, prone to instability and conflicts, without a sense of national identity, but rather a mess of historical cultural influences, tribal and clan loyalties, and religious fervor. Projecting influence into the area is no longer just Russia, but also Turkey, Iran, China, Pakistan, India and the United States:
- Russia continues to dominate political decision-making throughout the former SSRs; although, as other countries move into the area, Russia's influence has begun to wane.
- The United States, with its military involvement in the region and oil diplomacy, is also significantly involved in the region's politics. The United States and other NATO members are the main contributors to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and also exert considerable influence in other Central Asian nations.
- China has security ties with Central Asian states through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and conducts energy trade bilaterally.[24]
- India has geographic proximity to the Central Asian region and, in addition, enjoys considerable influence on Afghanistan.[25][26] India maintains a military base at Farkhor, Tajikistan, and also has extensive military relations with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.[27]
- Turkey also exerts considerable influence in the region on account of its ethnic and linguistic ties with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and its involvement in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Political and economic relations are growing rapidly (e.g., Turkey recently eliminated visa requirements for citizens of the Central Asian Turkic republics).
- Iran, the seat of historical empires that controlled parts of Central Asia, has historical and cultural links to the region and is vying to construct an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf.
- Pakistan, a nuclear-armed Islamic state, has a history of political relations with neighboring Afghanistan and is termed capable of exercising influence. For some Central Asian nations, the shortest route to the ocean lies through Pakistan. Pakistan seeks natural gas from Central Asia and supports the development of pipelines from its countries. The mountain ranges and areas in northern Pakistan lie on the fringes of greater Central Asia; the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan lies adjacent to Tajikistan, separated only by the narrow Afghan Wakhan Corridor. Being located on the northwest of South Asia, the area forming modern-day Pakistan maintained extensive historical and cultural links with the region.
War on Terror[link]
In the context of the United States' War on Terror, Central Asia has once again become the center of geostrategic calculations. Pakistan's status has been upgraded by the U.S. government to Major non-NATO ally because of its central role in serving as a staging point for the invasion of Afghanistan, providing intelligence on Al-Qaeda operations in the region, and leading the hunt on Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan, which had served as a haven and source of support for Al-Qaeda under the protection of Mullah Omar and the Taliban, was the target of a U.S. invasion in 2001 and ongoing reconstruction and drug-eradication efforts. U.S. military bases have also been established in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, causing both Russia and the People's Republic of China to voice their concern over a permanent U.S. military presence in the region.
Western governments have accused Russia, China and the former Soviet republics of justifying the suppression of separatist movements, and the associated ethnics and religion with the War on Terror.
Major cultural and economic centres[link]
Cities within the possible boundaries of Central Asia
| City | Country | Population | Image | Information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astana | Kazakhstan |
708,794 (2010) |
 |
The capital and second largest city in Kazakhstan. After Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991, the city and the region were renamed Aqmola. The name was often translated as "White Tombstone", but actually means "Holy Place" or "Holy Shrine". The "White Tombstone" literal translation was too appropriate for many visitors to escape notice in almost all guide books and travel accounts. In 1994, the city was designated as the future capital of the newly independent country and again renamed to the present Astana after the capital was officially moved from Almaty in 1997. |
| Almaty | Kazakhstan |
1,421,868 (2010) |
 |
It was the capital of Kazakhstan (and its predecessor, the Kazakh SSR) from 1929 to 1998. Despite losing its status as the capital, Almaty remains the major commercial center of Kazakhstan. It is a recognised financial centre of Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region. |
| Bishkek | Kyrgyzstan |
865,527 (2009) |
 |
The capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative center of Chuy Province, which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province, but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan. |
| Osh | Kyrgyzstan |
243,216 (2009) |
 |
The second largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Osh is also the administrative center of Osh Province, which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province, but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan. |
| Dushanbe | Tajikistan |
679,400 (2008) |
 |
The capital and largest city of Tajikistan. Dushanbe means "Monday" in Tajik and Persian,[28] and the name reflects the fact that the city grew on the site of a village that originally was a popular Monday marketplace. |
| Ashgabat | Turkmenistan |
909,000 (2009) |
 |
The capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. Ashgabat is a relatively young city, growing out of a village of the same name established by Russians in 1818. It is not far from the site of Nisa, the ancient capital of the Parthians, and it grew on the ruins of the Silk Road city of Konjikala, which was first mentioned as a wine-producing village in the 2nd century BCE and was leveled by an earthquake in the 1st century BCE (a precursor of the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake). Konjikala was rebuilt because of its advantageous location on the Silk Road, and it flourished until its destruction by Mongols in the 13th century CE. After that, it survived as a small village until the Russians took over in the 19th century.[29][30] |
| Bukhara | Uzbekistan |
237,900 (1999) |
 |
The nation's fifth-largest city and the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. Bukhara has been one of the main centres of Persian civilization from its early days in the 6th century BCE, and, since 12th century CE, Turkic speakers gradually moved in. Its architecture and archaeological sites form one of the pillars of Central Asian history and art. |
| Kokand | Uzbekistan |
209,389 (2011) |
 |
Kokand (Uzbek: Qo‘qon / Қўқон; Tajik: Хӯқанд; Persian: خوقند; Chagatai: خوقند; Russian: Коканд) is a city in Fergana Province in eastern Uzbekistan, at the southwestern edge of the Fergana Valley. It has a population of 192,500 (1999 census estimate). Kokand is 228 km southeast of Tashkent, 115 km west of Andijan, and 88 km west of Fergana. It is nicknamed “City of Winds”, or sometimes “Town of the Boar". |
| Samarkand | Uzbekistan |
596,300 (2008) |
 |
The second largest city in Uzbekistan and the capital of Samarqand Province. The city is most noted for its central position on the Silk Road between China and the West, and for being an Islamic centre for scholarly study. |
| Tashkent | Uzbekistan |
2,180,000 (2008) |
 |
The capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, the town and the province were known as Chach. Tashkent started as an oasis on the Chirchik River, near the foothills of the Golestan Mountains. In ancient times, this area contained Beitian, probably the summer "capital" of the Kangju confederacy.[31] |
| Kabul | Afghanistan |
3,895,000 (2011) |
 |
The capital and largest city of Afghanistan. The city of Kabul is thought to have been established between 2000 BCE and 1500 BCE.[32] In the Rig Veda (composed between 1700–1100 BCE), the word Kubhā is mentioned, which appears to refer to the Kabul River.[33] |
| Mazar-e Sharif | Afghanistan |
375,181 (2008) |
 |
The fourth largest city in Afghanistan and capital of Balkh province is linked by roads to Kabul in the southeast, Herat to the west and Uzbekistan to the north. |
| Hohhot | China |
2,866,615 (2010) |
 |
The capital and largest city in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the cultural center of the Mongols in China. |
| Lanzhou | China |
3,616,163 (2010) |
 |
The capital and largest city in Gansu Province and one of the economic center of western China. Two thousand years ago, Lanzhou was an important town on the Silk Road, a vast network of trade routes that also facilitated cultural exchanges throughout Eurasia. |
| Ürümqi | China |
3,110,280 (2010) |
 |
The capital and largest city in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the cultural center of the Uyghurs. Two thousand years ago, Ürümqi was an important town on the northern route of the Silk Road, a vast network of trade routes that also facilitated cultural exchanges throughout Eurasia. |
| Yinchuan | China |
1,993,088 (2010) |
200px | The capital and largest city in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and the cultural center of the Hui in China. |
| Mashhad | Iran |
2,907,316 (2006) |
The second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia world. At the beginning of the 9th century (3rd century AH), Mashhad was a small village called Sanabad situated 24 km away from Tus. It was not considered a great city until Mongol raids in 1220 caused the destruction of many large cities in the Greater Khorasan territories, leaving Mashhad relatively intact. Thus, the survivors of the massacres migrated to Mashhad.[34] | |
| Nishapur | Iran |
270,972 (2006) |
 |
The city is located in the Razavi Khorasan province in northeastern Iran, situated in a fertile plain at the foot of the Binalud Mountains, near the regional capital of Mashhad. It is the hometown of several respected Persian poets and artists, including Omar Khayyám, Attar Neyshapuri and Kamal-ol-molk. |
| Tus | Iran |
N/A |  |
An ancient city in the Iranian province of Razavi Khorasan. To the ancient Greeks, it was known as Susia (Gr. Σούσια). It was captured by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. The city was almost entirely destroyed by Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest in 1220. |
| Ulaanbaatar | Mongolia |
1,172,400 (2011) |
 |
The capital and largest city in Mongolia and the cultural center of the Mongolians. The city was founded in 1639 as an initially nomadic Buddhist monastic centre. Since 1778, it has been located in the Tuul River valley. In the 20th century, Ulaanbaatar grew into a major manufacturing centre. |
| Peshawar | Pakistan |
3,625,000 (2010) |
 |
Peshawar is the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, located on the edge of the Khyber Pass near the Afghan border. In ancient times, a major settlement called Purushpur (Sanskrit for "city of men") was established by Kanishka, the Kushan king, in the general area of modern Peshawar. Purushpur emerged as a major center of Buddhist learning, and the capital of the ancient Gandhara was moved to Peshawar in the 2nd century CE. During much of its history, Peshawar was one of the main trading centres on the ancient Silk Road and was a major crossroads for various cultures between Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. |
| Gilgit | Pakistan |
216,760 (1998) |
 |
Gilgit is the capital of the Gilgit–Baltistan territory of Pakistan, located in the staring of the Himalayas. The city is known for its tourist economy. |
| Novosibirsk | Russia |
1,473,700 (2010) |
 |
Novosibirsk is the capital of Novosibirsk Oblast, located on the edge of Siberia near the Kazakhstan border. Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia and third largest city in Russia. |
| Omsk | Russia |
1,154,000 (2010) |
Omsk is the capital of Omsk Oblast, located on the edge of Siberia near the Kazakhstan border.Omsk is the second largest city in east of the Ural Mountains in Russia. | |
| Leh | India |
27,513 (2001) |
 |
Leh was the capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh, now the Leh District in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The town is still dominated by the now ruined Leh Palace, former mansion of the royal family of Ladakh, built in the same style and about the same time as the Potala Palace. Leh is at an altitude of 3524 meters (11,562 ft). |
See also[link]
.svg){kind=small}
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Central Asia |
- Cambridge Central Asia Forum
- Central Asian studies
- Central Asian Union
- Continental pole of inaccessibility
- Economic Cooperation Organization
- Hindutash
- University of Central Asia
- Central Asians in Ancient Indian literature
References[link]
- ^ The area figure is based on the combined areas of five countries in Central Asia.
- ^ The population figure is the combined populations of 5 countries in Central Asia (last updated Mar 1, 2012).
- ^ Paul McFedries (2001-10-25). "stans". Word Spy. http://www.wordspy.com/words/stans.asp. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
- ^ Steppe Nomads and Central Asia
- ^ Travelers on the Silk Road
- ^ a b Encyclopædia Iranica, "CENTRAL ASIA: The Islamic period up to the Mongols", C. Edmund Bosworth: "In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted to Fereydun's son Tur. The denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam essentially those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, and behind them the Chinese (see Kowalski; Minorsky, "Turan"). Turan thus became both an ethnic and a diareeah term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through Islamic times the lands immediately beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians."
- ^ C.E. Bosworth, "The Appearance of the Arabs in Central Asia under the Umayyads and the establishment of Islam", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. IV: The Age of Achievement: AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, edited by M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth. Multiple History Series. Paris: Motilal Banarsidass Publ./UNESCO Publishing, 1999. excerpt from page 23: "Central Asia in the early seventh century, was ethnically, still largely an Iranian land whose people used various Middle Iranian languages.". [1]
- ^ http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/sng_nac_89.php
- ^ http://www.stat.kg/stat.files/din.files/census/5010003.pdf
- ^ http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2005/0191/analit05.php
- ^ 43°40'52"N 87°19'52"E Degree Confluence Project.
- ^ A Land Conquered by the Mongols
- ^ C.E. Bosworth, "The Appearance of the Arabs in Central Asia under the Umayyads and the establishment of Islam", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. IV: The Age of Achievement: AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, edited by M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth. Multiple History Series. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1998. excerpt from page 23: "Central Asia in the early seventh century, was ethnically, still largely an Iranian land whose people used various Middle Iranian languages.
- ^ Saiget, Robert J. (19 April 2005). "Caucasians preceded East Asians in basin". The Washington Times (News World Communications). Archived from the original on 20 April 2005. http://web.archive.org/web/20050420224622/http://washingtontimes.com/world/20050419-101056-2135r.htm. Retrieved 20 August 2007. "A study last year by Jilin University also found that the mummies' DNA had Europoid genes."
- ^ Deported Nationalities
- ^ Anne Applebaum – Gulag: A History Intro
- ^ "Central Asia and the Caucasus: transnationalism and diaspora". Touraj Atabaki, Sanjyot Mehendale (2005). p.66. ISBN 0-415-33260-5
- ^ "Democracy Index 2011". Economist Intelligence Unit. http://www.eiu.com//public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=DemocracyIndex2011.
- ^ Walter Ratliff, "Pilgrims on the Silk Road: A Muslim-Christian Encounter in Khiva", Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010
- ^ «In Central Asia, a Revival of an Ancient Form of Rap - Art of Ad-Libbing Oral History Draws New Devotees in Post-Communist Era» by Peter Finn, Washington Post Foreign Service, Sunday, March 6, 2005, p. A20.
- ^ UNESCO IHCN
- ^ Robert Greenall, Russians left behind in Central Asia, BBC News, 23 November 2005.
- ^ Ethnographic maps
- ^ Scheineson, Andrew (2009-03-24). "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization". Backgrounder. Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/publication/10883/shanghai_cooperation_organization.html. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
- ^ India: Afghanistan's influential ally
- ^ India, Pakistan and the Battle for Afghanista
- ^ Reiter, Erich. The Impact of Asian Powers on Global Developments. Springer, 2004. ISBN 3-7908-0092-9, 9783790800920.
- ^ D. Saimaddinov, S. D. Kholmatova, and S. Karimov, Tajik-Russian Dictionary, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan, Rudaki Institute of Language and Literature, Scientific Center for Persian-Tajik Culture, Dushanbe, 2006.
- ^ Konjikala: the Silk Road precursor of Ashgabat
- ^ Konjikala, in: MaryLee Knowlton, Turkmenistan, Marshall Cavendish, 2006, pp. 40-41, ISBN 0-7614-2014-2, ISBN 978-0-7614-2014-9 (viewable on Google Books).
- ^ Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 1963. "The consonantal system of Old Chinese." Asia Major 9 (1963), p. 94.
- ^ The history of Afghanistan, Ghandara.com website
- ^ "Kabul" Chambers's Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge (1901 edition) J.B. Lippincott Company, NY, page 385
- ^ Zabeth (1999) pp. 14-15
Further reading[link]
- Chow, Edward. "Central Asia's Pipelines: Field of Dreams and Reality", in Pipeline Politics in Asia: The Intersection of Demand, Energy Markets, and Supply Routes. National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010.
- Dani, A.H. and V.M. Masson, eds. UNESCO History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Paris: UNESCO, 1992.
- Gorshunova . Olga V. Svjashennye derevja Khodzhi Barora…, ( Sacred Trees of Khodzhi Baror: Phytolatry and the Cult of Female Deity in Central Asia) in Etnoragraficheskoe Obozrenie, 2008, n° 1, pp. 71–82. ISSN 0869-5415. (Russian).
- Mandelbaum, Michael, ed. Central Asia and the World: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994.
- Marcinkowski, M. Ismail. Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Pakistan and Early Ottoman Turkey. Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 2003.
- Olcott, Martha Brill. Central Asia's New States: Independence, Foreign policy, and Regional security. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996.
- Soucek, Svatopluk. A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Rall, Ted. Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? New York: NBM Publishing, 2006.
- Stone, L.A. The International Politics of Central Eurasia (272 pp). Central Eurasian Studies On Line: Accessible via the Web Page of the International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research: http://www.iicas.org/forumen.htm
- Weston, David. Teaching about Inner Asia, Bloomington, Indiana: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies, 1989.
External links[link]
- The Library: Central on politics, universities, culture, languages, etc.
- Central Asian Gateway Project of UNDP and CER, managed by N. Talibdjanov (since 2003).
- Modernity, State and Society in Central Asia: A Research Guide
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
http://wn.com/Central_Asia
Related pages:
http://de.wn.com/Zentralasien
http://es.wn.com/Asia Central
http://ru.wn.com/Центральная Азия
http://cs.wn.com/Střední Asie
http://pt.wn.com/Ásia Central
http://pl.wn.com/Azja Środkowa
http://hi.wn.com/मध्य एशिया
http://it.wn.com/Asia centrale
http://id.wn.com/Asia Tengah
http://nl.wn.com/Centraal-Azië
http://fr.wn.com/Asie centrale
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Asia
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Alexander Borodin | |
|---|---|
 Aleksandr Borodin |
|
| Born | 12 November 1833 Saint Petersburg |
| Died | 27 February 1887 (age 53) Saint Petersburg |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Fields | Composer and chemist |
| Doctoral advisor | Nikolay Zinin |
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin[1] (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887)[2] was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five (or "The Mighty Handful"), who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music.[3][4][5] He is best known for his symphonies, his two string quartets, and his opera Prince Igor. Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet.
Contents |
Life and profession[link]
Borodin was born in Saint Petersburg, the illegitimate son of a Georgian noble, Luka Gedevanishvili (Georgian: ლუკა სიმონის ძე გედევანიშვილი) and a 24-year-old Russian woman, Evdokia Konstantinovna Antonova (Евдокия Константиновна Антонова). The nobleman had him registered as the son of one of his serfs, Porfiry Borodin.[6] As a boy he received a good education, including piano lessons.[7] He entered the Medico–Surgical Academy in 1850, which was later home to Ivan Pavlov, and pursued a career in chemistry. On graduation he spent a year as surgeon in a military hospital, followed by three years of advanced scientific study in western Europe.
In 1862 Borodin became a professor of chemistry at the Academy of Medicine, and eventually was able to establish medical courses for women (1872). He spent the remainder of his life lecturing and overseeing the education of others.
He began taking lessons in composition from Mily Balakirev in 1862. He married Ekaterina Protopopova, a pianist, in 1863.[8] Music remained a secondary vocation for Borodin outside of his main career as a chemist and physician. He suffered poor health, having overcome cholera and several minor heart attacks. He died suddenly during a ball at the Academy, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in Saint Petersburg.
Career as a chemist[link]
In his profession Borodin gained great respect, being particularly noted for his work on aldehydes.[9] Between 1859 and 1862 Borodin held a postdoctorate in Heidelberg. He worked in the laboratory of Emil Erlenmeyer working on benzene derivatives. He also spent time in Pisa, working on organic halogens. One experiment published in 1862 described the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine in benzoyl chloride.[10] A related reaction known to the West as the Hunsdiecker reaction published in 1939 by the Hunsdieckers was promoted by the Soviet Union as the Borodin reaction. In 1862 he returned to the Medico–Surgical Academy, where he worked on self-condensation of small aldehydes. He published papers in 1864 and 1869, and in this field he found himself competing with August Kekulé.
Borodin is co-credited with the discovery of the Aldol reaction, with Charles-Adolphe Wurtz. In 1872 he announced to the Russian Chemical Society the discovery of a new by-product in aldehyde reactions with alcohol-like properties, and he noted similarities with compounds already discussed in publications by Wurtz from the same year.
He published his last full article in 1875 on reactions of amides and his last publication concerned a method for the identification of urea in animal urine.
His son-in-law and successor was fellow chemist A. P. Dianin.
Musical avocation[link]
Opera and orchestral works[link]
Borodin met Mily Balakirev in 1862. While under Balakirev's tutelage in composition he began his Symphony No. 1 in E flat major; it was first performed in 1869, with Balakirev conducting. In that same year Borodin started on his Symphony No. 2 in B minor, which was not particularly successful at its premiere in 1877 under Eduard Nápravník, but with some minor re-orchestration received a successful performance in 1879 by the Free Music School under Rimsky-Korsakov's direction. In 1880 he composed the popular symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia. Two years later he began composing a third symphony, but left it unfinished at his death; two movements of it were later completed and orchestrated by Glazunov.
In 1868 Borodin became distracted from initial work on the second symphony by preoccupation with the opera Prince Igor, which is seen by some to be his most significant work and one of the most important historical Russian operas. It contains the Polovtsian Dances, often performed as a stand-alone concert work forming what is probably Borodin's best known composition. Borodin left the opera (and a few other works) incomplete at his death. Prince Igor was completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. It is set in the 12th century, when the barbarous Polovtsians invaded southern Russia. The story tells of the capture of Prince Igor and son Vladimir of Russia by Polovtsian leader Khan Konchak, who entertains his prisoners lavishly and calls on his slaves to perform the famous Polovtsian dances, which provide a thrilling climax to the second act.
Chamber music[link]
No other member of the Balakirev circle identified himself so openly with absolute music as did Borodin in his two string quartets. Himself a cellist, he was an enthusiastic chamber music player, an interest that deepened during his chemical studies in Heidelberg between 1859 and 1861. This early period yielded, among other chamber works, a string sextet and a piano quintet. In thematic structure and instrumental texture he based his pieces on those of Felix Mendelssohn.[11]
In 1875 Borodin started his First String Quartet, much to the displeasure of Mussorgsky and Vladimir Stasov. That Borodin did so in the company of The Five, who were hostile to chamber music, speaks to his independence. From the First Quartet on, he displayed mastery in the form. His Second Quartet, in which his strong lyricism is represented in the popular "Nocturne", followed in 1881. The First Quartet is richer in changes of mood. The Second Quartet has a more uniform atmosphere and expression.[11]
Musical legacy[link]
Main article: List of compositions by Alexander Borodin
Borodin's fame outside the Russian Empire was made possible during his lifetime by Franz Liszt, who arranged a performance of the Symphony No. 1 in Germany in 1880, and by the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau in Belgium and France. His music is noted for its strong lyricism and rich harmonies. Along with some influences from Western composers, as a member of The Five his music exudes also an undeniably Russian flavor. His passionate music and unusual harmonies proved to have a lasting influence on the younger French composers Debussy and Ravel (in homage, the latter composed in 1913 a piano piece entitled "À la manière de Borodine").
The evocative characteristics of Borodin's music made possible the adaptation of his compositions in the 1953 musical Kismet, by Robert Wright and George Forrest, perhaps most notably in the song, "Stranger in Paradise". In 1954, Borodin was posthumously awarded a Tony Award for this show.
- Borodin's music is full of romantic charm and enticing melody, and much of it also rings with the pageantry and landscape of old Russia; of onion-domed churches, richly decorated icons, and the vastness of the land. (Betty Fry)
Subsequent references[link]
- The Borodin Quartet was named in his honour.
- The chemist Alexander Shulgin uses the name "Alexander Borodin" as a fictional persona in the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL.
- In his book Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (1974) Charles Bukowski wrote a poem about the life of Borodin entitled "the life of borodin".
References[link]
- ^ Russian: Алекса́ндр Порфи́рьевич Бороди́н, tr. Aleksandr Porfir'evič Borodin.
- ^ Old Style dates 31 October 1833 – 15 February 1887.
- ^ Abraham, Gerald. Borodin: the Composer and his Music. London, 1927
- ^ Dianin, Sergei Aleksandrovich. Borodin. London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1963
- ^ Oldani, Robert, William. "Borodin, Aleksandr Porfir′yevich," Grove Music Online (Accessed 27 January 2006, subscription required)
- ^ 8Notes website
- ^ By his teens Borodin could speak German, French, Italian and English, and could play the piano, flute and cello (Betty Fry, Tutor.com)
- ^ Habets, Alfred (2005). Borodin and Liszt: I. Life and works of a Russian Composer. II. Liszt, as sketched in the letters of Borodin. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4212-5305-3.
- ^ Michael D. Gordin (1996). "Facing the Music: How Original Was Borodin's Chemistry?" (PDF). Journal of Chemical Education 83 (4): 561–566. DOI:10.1021/ed083p561. http://www.jce.divched.org/HS/Journal/Issues/2006/Apr/clicSubscriber/V83N04/p561.pdf.
- ^ E. J. Behrman (2006). "Borodin?" (PDF). Journal of Chemical Education 83 (8): 1138. DOI:10.1021/ed083p1138.1. http://www.jce.divched.org/HS/Journal/Issues/2006/Aug/clicSubscriber/V83N08/p1138_1.pdf.
- ^ a b Maes, 72
External links[link]
- Free scores by Alexander Borodin in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
- Famous "In the Steppes of Central Asia", Alexander Borodin in Film "Moscow clad in snow", 00:07:22, 1908 on YouTube
- List of compositions (German)
- Free scores by Borodin at the International Music Score Library Project
- Free scores by Alexander Borodin in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
- Borodin's tomb
Further reading[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alexander Borodin |
- Maes, Francis, tr. Pomerans, Arnold J. and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
- George Sarton (1939). "Borodin (1833–87)". Osiris 7: 224–260. DOI:10.1086/368505. JSTOR 301543.
- A. J. B. Hutchings (1936). "A Study of Borodin: I. The Man". The Musical Times 77 (1124): 881–883. DOI:10.2307/920565. JSTOR 920565.
- George B. Kauffman, Kathryn Bumpass (1988). "An Apparent Conflict between Art and Science: The Case of Aleksandr Porfir'evich Borodin (1833–1887)". Leonardo 21 (4): 429–436. DOI:10.2307/1578707. JSTOR 1578707.
- J. Podlech (2010). ""Try and Fall Sick …"—The Composer, Chemist, and Surgeon Aleksandr Borodin". Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 49 (37): 6490–95. DOI:10.1002/anie.201002023. PMID 20715236.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Borodin, Alexander |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 12 November 1833 |
| Place of birth | Saint Petersburg |
| Date of death | 27 February 1887 |
| Place of death | Saint Petersburg |
http://wn.com/Alexander_Borodin
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Aleksandr Porfir'evič Borodin
http://cs.wn.com/Alexandr Porfirjevič Borodin
http://id.wn.com/Aleksandr Borodin
http://es.wn.com/Aleksandr Borodín
http://ru.wn.com/Бородин, Александр Порфирьевич
http://nl.wn.com/Aleksander Borodin
http://pl.wn.com/Aleksandr Borodin
http://fr.wn.com/Alexandre Borodine
http://de.wn.com/Alexander Porfirjewitsch Borodin
http://pt.wn.com/Aleksandr Borodin
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Borodin
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
