Turkestan

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Turkestan

Turkestan (literally meaning "Land of the Turks") is a region in Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
, which today is largely inhabited by Turkic peoples

Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia, and who mostly speak languages belonging to the Turkic languages....
. It has been referenced in many Turkic and Persian sagas and is an integral part of Turan

Turan

Turan is the ancient Iranian languages name for Central Asia, literally meaning "the land of the Tur". As described below, the original Turanians are the...
(though Turan dwarfs Turkestan in area). Oghuz Turks

Oghuz Turks

The Oghuz were a group of loosely linked nomadic Turkic peoples. In the ninth century the Oghuz Turks from the Aral steppes drove the Pechenegs of the Emba region and the Ural River toward the west....
(also known as Turkmens), Uzbeks

Uzbeks

The Uzbeks are a Turkic peoples people of Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China....
, Kazakhs

Kazakhs

The Kazakhs are a Turkic peoples of the northern parts of Central Asia ....
, Khazars

Khazars

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who dominated the Pontic steppe and the North Caucasus from the 7th to the 10th century CE. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic languages verb form meaning "wandering"....
, Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz

The Kyrgyz are a Turkic peoples ethnic group found primarily in Kyrgyzstan....
and Uygurs

Uyghur people

The Uyghur are a Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" is closer to native ....
are some of the Turkic inhabitants of the region who, as history progressed, have spread further into Eurasia forming such Turkic nations as Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
and Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan , is the largest and most populous country in the South Caucasus, located partially in Eastern Europe and partially in Western Asia....
, and subnational regions like Tatarstan

Tatarstan

Republic of Tatarstan is a federal subjects of Russia of the Russian Federation . Its size is 68,000 km? with a population of 3,800,000. Its capital is Kazan....
in Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
and Crimea

Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
.

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Encyclopedia

Turkestan (literally meaning "Land of the Turks") is a region in Central Asia

Central Asia

Turkic peoples

Turan

Oghuz Turks

Uzbeks

Kazakhs

The Kazakhs are a Turkic peoples of the northern parts of Central Asia ....
, Khazars

Khazars

Kyrgyz

The Kyrgyz are a Turkic peoples ethnic group found primarily in Kyrgyzstan....
and Uygurs

Uyghur people

Turkey

Azerbaijan

Tatarstan

Republic of Tatarstan is a federal subjects of Russia of the Russian Federation . Its size is 68,000 km? with a population of 3,800,000. Its capital is Kazan....
in Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
and Crimea

Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
in Ukraine

Ukraine

Tajiks

Tajik is a general designation for a wide range of mostly Persian language peoples of Iranian peoples, with traditional homelands in present-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, southern Uzbekistan, north west Pakistan and western China....
and Russians form sizable non-Turkic minorities.

It is subdivided into Afghan Turkestan

Afghan Turkestan

Afghan Turkestan is a region in northern Afghanistan, on the border with the former Republics of the Soviet Unions of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan....
, Russian Turkestan

Russian Turkestan

Russian Turkestan , also known as Western Turkestan or Turkestanskiy Krai , was the western part of Turkestan within the Russian Empire , comprising the oasis region to the south of the Kazakhstan steppes, but not the protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva....
and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

Xinjiang

Xinjiang is an autonomous region of China of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million sq....
(also known as Chinese Turkestan, East Turkestan

East Turkestan

East Turkestan, also known as East Turkistan, Uyghuristan, and Uyghurstan , refers to the eastern part of the greater Turkestan region of Central Asia, and is concurrent with the present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China....
or Uyghuristan) in the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
. The Tian Shan

Tian Shan

The Tian Shan , also commonly spelled Tien Shan, is a mountain range located in Central Asia. The Chinese name for Tian Shan or Tien Shan, may in turn go back to a Xiongnu name, qilian reported by the Shiji as the last place where they met and had their baby as in of the Yuezhi, which has been argued to refer to the Tian Shan...
and Pamir

Pamir Mountains

The Pamir Mountains are a mountain range in Central Asia formed by the junction or knot of the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun Mountains, and Hindu Kush ranges....
ranges form a rough division between the latter two.

History

Turkestan has a rich history, dating back to the third

3rd millennium BC

The 3rd millennium BC spans the Early to Middle Bronze Age.It represents a period of time in which imperialism, or the desire to conquer, grew to prominence, in the city states of the Middle East, but also throughout Eurasia, with Indo-European people expansion to Anatolia, Europe and Central Asia....
millennium BC. Many artifacts

Artifact (archaeology)

In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human archaeological culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor....
were produced in that period, and much trade

Trade

Tradeis the willing exchange of goods, Service , or both. Trade is also called commerce. A mechanism that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter , the direct exchange of goods and services....
was conducted. The region was a focal point for cultural diffusion

Cultural diffusion

Cultural diffusion, as first conceptualized by the famous Alfred L. Kroeber in his influential 1940 paper Stimulus Diffusion, or trans-cultural diffusion in later reformulations, is used in cultural anthropology and cultural geography to describe the spread of culture items ? such as ideas, styles, religions, technology, contact lin...
, as the Silk Road

Silk Road

The Silk Road is an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Europe....
traversed it.

Turkestan covers the area of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
that corresponded to eastern Scythia

Scythia

The Scythians or Scyths were an Eastern Iranian languages of Equestrianism nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic steppe throughout Classical Antiquity....
, Transoxania and Greater Khorasan

Greater Khorasan

Greater Khorasan is a modern term for a geographic region spanning north-eastern Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and north-western Afghanistan....
in Antiquity, and acquired its "Turkic" character from the 4th to 6th centuries AD with the incipient Turkic expansion.

Turkic sagas, such as the Ergenekon legend, and written sources such as the Orkhon Inscriptions state that Turkic peoples originated in the nearby Altay Mountains

Altay Mountains

File:2006-07_altaj_belucha.jpgThe Altai Mountains are a mountain range in central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together, and where the rivers Irtysh, Ob River and Yenisei have their sources....
, and, through nomadic settlement, started their long journey westwards.

Successive external powers have held the region. Greeks

Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
, under Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
, held the area from 327 BC to 150 BC.

Huns

Huns

The Huns were a confederation of Central Asian Eurasian nomads or semi-nomads, who had established an empire in Eurasia. The Huns may have stimulated the Migration Period, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire....
conquered the area after they conquered Kashgaria in the early 2nd century BC. With the dissolution of the Huns' empire, Chinese

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
rulers took over Eastern Turkestan.

Arab

Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
forces captured it in the 8th century. The Persian

Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
Samanid

Samanid

The Samanid dynasty or Samanids was an Iranian Persian empire in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan, named after its founder Saman Khuda who converted to Sunni Islam despite being from Zoroastrianism theocratic nobility....
dynasty subsequently conquered it and the area experienced economic success.

The entire territory was held at various times by Turkic forces, such as the Göktürks

Göktürks

The G?kt?rks were a powerful nomadic confederation of medieval Inner Asia. Known in China sources as T'u k?e , the G?kt?rks under the leadership of Bumin Khan and his sons succeeded the Rouran as the main power in the region and took hold of the lucrative Silk Road trade....
until the conquest by Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan , born , was the founder, Khan and Khagan of the Mongol Empire, the World's largest empires contiguous empire in history....
and the Mongols

Mongols

The name Mongol specifies one or several ethnic groups, now mainly located in Mongolia, China, and Russia....
in 1220. Khan gave the territory to his son, Chagatai

Chagatai

Chagatai can refer to different things:* Chagatai Khanate* Chagatai Khan* Chagatai Khans* Chagatai language* Chagatai people* Chughtai...
and the area became the Chagatai Khanate

Chagatai Khanate

The Chagatai Khanate was a Mongol, and later linguistically Turkic languages, khanate that comprised the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan , second son of the Great Khan Genghis Khan, and his descendents and successors....
.

Tamerlane took over the area in 1369 and the area became the Timurid Empire.

Overview

Known as Turan

Turan

Turan is the ancient Iranian languages name for Central Asia, literally meaning "the land of the Tur". As described below, the original Turanians are the...
to Iranians

Iranian peoples

The Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Iranian plateau and beyond in central-, southern-, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe....
, western Turkestan has also been known historically as Sogdiana

Sogdiana

Sogdiana or Sogdia was the ancient civilization of an Iranian peoples and a province of the Achaemenid Empire Persian Empire, the eighteenth in the list in the Behistun Inscription of Darius I of Persia ....
, Ma wara'u'n-nahr (by its Arab

Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
conquerors), and Transoxiana

Transoxiana

Transoxiana is the ancient name used for the portion of Central Asia corresponding approximately with modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and southwest Kazakhstan....
by Western travellers. The latter two names refer to its position beyond the River Oxus when approached from the south, emphasizing Turkestan's long-standing relationship with Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
, the Persian Empire

Persian Empire

Abbasid

The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire. The Caliphate is one of the high points of Islam, and at the time Muslim civilization, together with that of Byzantium, China and India, was the most developed part of the world....
Caliphate

Caliphate

The caliphate represented the political leadership of the Muslim ummah in classical and medieval Islamic history and juristic theory. The head of state's position is based on the notion of a successor to the Prophets of Islam Muhammad's political authority....
s.

Russian and Chinese influence

The region became part of the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
in the 1860s, and is thus sometimes called Russian Turkestan

Russian Turkestan

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union....
, a Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created from the Turkestan Krai of Imperial Russia. Its capital was Tashkent, population about 5,000,000....
of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
was created, which was eventually split into the Kazakh SSR

Kazakh SSR

The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Kazakh SSR for short, was one of Republics of the Soviet Union that made up the Soviet Union....
(Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, also Kazakstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a large Eurasian country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the List of countries by area as well as the world's largest landlocked country, it has a territory of 2,727,300 km? ....
), Kyrgyz SSR (Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and People's Republic of China to the east....
), Tajik SSR

Tajik SSR

The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Tajik SSR for short, was one of the 15 Republics of the Soviet Union that made up the Soviet Union....
(Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and People's Republic of China to the east....
), Turkmen SSR

Turkmen SSR

The Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Turkmen SSR for short, was one of republics of the Soviet Union in Soviet Central Asia....
(Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a Turkic peoples country in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic ....
) and Uzbek SSR

Uzbek SSR

The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Uzbek SSR for short, was one of the republics of the Soviet Union since its creation in 1924....
(Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a Landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union....
). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these republics gained their independence.

Eastern Turkestan, also known as Chinese Turkestan, was called the Western Regions

Western Regions

The Western Regions or Xiyu was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to 8th century that referred to the regions west of Jade Gate, most often Central Asia ....
in Chinese historic records. Turkestan experienced Chinese influence long before Russian influence. The first Chinese military campaigns in Turkestan dates to the Battle of Loulan

Battle of Loulan

The Battle of Loulan in 108 BC marks the earliest Chinese military venture into Tarim Basin, after a conflict of the Han Dynasty with Loulan and Jushi and a switch of allegiance to the Xiongnu....
in the 2nd century BC. From then on, Turkestan was alternately controlled by the Chinese and/or other nomads like the Tujue. The Protectorate of the Western Regions

Protectorate of the Western Regions

The Protectorate of the Western Regions was a China regional government established by the Han Dynasty to manage and to control the Western Regions, roughly today's Xinjiang ....
and the Anxi Protectorate were areas of Chinese rule. Turkic peoples, such as Uyghurs

Uyghur people

The Uyghur are a Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" is closer to native ....
started to settle in Turkestan from the 8th century on. It was conquered by the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, followed the Ming Dynasty in History of China, and was the last ruling Chinese Dynasties of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 ....
in the mid-18th century and was named ??, Xinjiang
Xinjiang

Xinjiang is an autonomous region of China of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million sq....
(Postal spelling: Sinkiang), meaning new frontier. It was taken over by the Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , also known as Nationalist China is a country in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition into a multi-party democratic state with Political status of Taiwan....
and then the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

Seres

Seres was the ancient Greek language and Latin name for the inhabitants of the northwestern part of modern China, . It meant "of silk," or people of the "land where silk comes from." The country of the Seres was Serica....
(Greek

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
and Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
name of China) (essentially Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
and Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
) gives the following account:

Turkestan

History

Overview

Russian and Chinese influence

Further reading

See also