Karakalpaks

The Karakalpaks or Qaraqalpaqs (ˈkærəkɑːlpɑːks,_-pæks; Qaraqalpaqlar, Қарақалпақлар, قاراقلپقلر), are a Turkic ethnic group native to Karakalpakstan in Northwestern Uzbekistan. During the 18th century, they settled in the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and in the (former) delta of Amu Darya on the southern shore of the Aral Sea. The name "Karakalpak" comes from two words: qara meaning "black" and qalpaq meaning "hat". The Karakalpaks number nearly 620,000 worldwide, out of which about 500,000 live in the Karakalpakstan region of Uzbekistan. The word Karakalpak is derived from the Russian Cyrillic spelling of their name and has become the accepted name for these people in the West. The Karakalpaks endonymically refer to themselves as Qaraqalpaqs, whilst the Uzbeks call them Qoraqalpoqs. The word means "black hat" and has caused much confusion in the past, since historians linked them with other earlier peoples (such as Cherniye Klobuki), who have borne the appellation "black hat" in Slavic vernacular. The Qaraqul hat is made from the fur of the Qaraqul breed of sheep which originated in Central Asia with archaeological evidence pointing to the breed being raised there continuously since 1400 BCE. The breed is named after Qorako‘l which is a city in Bukhara Province in Uzbekistan. Many accounts continue to link the present-day Karakalpaks with the Turkic confederation known as the Cherniye Klobuki of the 11th century, whose name also means "black hat" in Russian. Cherniye Klobuki were mercenary military troops of the Kievan Rus. Apart from the fact that their names have the same meaning, there is no archaeological or historical evidence to link these two groups. The Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, and Kazakhs are regarded to be subgroups of the same Uzbek Confederation that arose in the fifteenth century following the breakdown of Genghis Khan's empire and the collapse of the Golden Horde. The Karakalpak group was formed in the seventeenth century as a result of a split from the Kazakh confederation.