Aral SeaThe Aral Sea (ˈærəl ) was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan to its north and Uzbekistan to its south which began shrinking in the 1960s and largely dried up by the 2010s. It was in the Aktobe and Kyzylorda regions of Kazakhstan and the Karakalpakstan autonomous region of Uzbekistan. The name roughly translates from Mongolic and Turkic languages to "Sea of Islands", a reference to the large number of islands (over 1,100) that once dotted its waters.
Amu DaryaThe Amu Darya (also called the Amu, Amo River, and historically known by its Latin name Oxus or Greek Ὦξος) is a major river in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Kush, the Amu Darya is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, in the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and flows from there north-westwards into the southern remnants of the Aral Sea.
Dungan languageDungan (ˈdʊŋɡɑːn or ˈdʌŋgən) is a Sinitic language spoken primarily in Kazakhstan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan by the Dungan people, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China. Although it is derived from the Central Plains Mandarin of Gansu and Shaanxi, it is written in Cyrillic (or Xiao'erjing) and contains loanwords and archaisms not found in other modern varieties of Mandarin.
Emirate of BukharaThe Emirate of Bukhara (Emārat-e Bokhārā, Bukhārā Amirligi) was a Muslim polity in Central Asia that existed from 1785 to 1920 in what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It occupied the land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, known formerly as Transoxiana. Its core territory was the fertile land along the lower Zarafshon river, and its urban centres were the ancient cities of Samarqand and the emirate's capital, Bukhara.
SartSart is a name for the settled inhabitants of Central Asia which has had shifting meanings over the centuries. There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit sārthavāha (सार्थवाह), meaning "merchant, trader, caravan leader", a term supposedly used by nomads to describe town-dwellers, according to Vasily Bartold, Gerard Clauson, and most recently Richard Foltz. The earliest known use of the term is in the 1070 Turkic text Kutadgu Bilig "Blessed Knowledge", in which it refers to the settled population of Kashgar.
Dungan peopleDungan is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union to refer to a group of Muslim people of Hui origin. Turkic-speaking peoples in Xinjiang Province in Northwestern China also sometimes refer to Hui Muslims as Dungans. In both China and the former Soviet republics where they reside, however, members of this ethnic group call themselves Hui because Dungans are descendants of historical Hui groups that migrated to Central Asia.
ÜrümqiÜrümqi (ʊˈrʊmtʃi ; also spelled Urumqi or Urumchi), formerly known as Dihua (also spelled Tihwa), is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the People's Republic of China. Ürümqi developed its reputation as a leading cultural and commercial center during the Qing dynasty in the 19th century. With a census population of 4 million in 2020, Ürümqi is the second-largest city in China's northwestern interior after Xi'an as well as the largest in Central Asia in terms of population.
National delimitation in the Soviet UnionNational delimitation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the process of specifying well-defined national territorial units (Soviet socialist republics [SSR], autonomous Soviet socialist republics [ASSR], autonomous oblasts [provinces], raions [districts] and okrugs [circuits]) from the ethnic diversity of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its subregions.
PersianizationPersianization (ˌpɜːrʒəˌnaɪˈzeɪʃən) or Persification (ˌpɜːrsᵻfᵻˈkeɪʃən; پارسیسازی), is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Persian society becomes "Persianate", meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art, music, and identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes a language shift.
ZhetysuZhetysu (Jetısu, ʑjɪtɪsəw; meaning "seven rivers" or more literally, "seven waters") or Jeti-Suu (Jeti-Suu, dʒetisuː), also transcribed Zhetisu, Jetisuw, Jetysu, Jeti-su or Jity-su, is a historical name of a part of Central Asia corresponding to the southeastern part of modern Kazakhstan. Word comes from "seven rivers" in Kazakh language but meant "abounding in water", in contrast to the dry steppes of the eastern Balkhash area. It owes its name to the rivers that flow from the southeast into Lake Balkhash.
