Search

(formerly vernyi), town, capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ḳazak̲h̲istān since 1929 and administrative centre of the oblast (province) of the same name. Established in 1854 on the site of a Ḳazak̲h̲ settlement called Almaty, in 1867 it became the administrative centre of the Russian military governorate of Semirechia. By 1871 it had been largely rebuilt on Russian lines and had become a thriving trade centre with a mixed population of 12,000 composed of Ḳazak̲h̲s, Dungans, Uyg̲h̲ur…

3rd pers. plur. of the Persian personal pronoun. The word, which has always had an honorific significance, was formerly used in Central Asia ( i.e., what is now Soviet Central Asia and the Sinkiang-Uygur Autonomous Region of China) in the sense of s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ or murs̲h̲id (teacher or guide) in contrast to murīd (disciple or pupil). It has still to be established when the term first appeared in this sense. It certainly existed in the middle ages; the celebrated Ḵh̲wād̲j̲a Aḥrār (died 895/1490 in Samarḳand) is always referred to as is̲h̲ān in his biography. The rank of is̲h̲ān was frequently …

, the Turkish name for a Mongol people, the Oyrat, who in the time of Čingiz-K̲h̲ān [ q.v.] inhabited the forests to the west of Lake Baykal. The name is derived (probably only by popular etymology) from the verb ḳalmak ,, “to remain” and distinguishes the Oyrat, who “remained” pagans, from the Dungans (the Chinese-speaking Muslims), who had “returned” (the verb dönmek ), according to the well-known Muslim idea, to Islam. A group of the Oyrat had accompanied Hülegü to the west and played a certain rôle in Īl-K̲h̲ānid Persia. The peopl…

( Faizullah K̲h̲od̲j̲a ) (1896-1938), Buk̲h̲āran revolutionary and nationalist, was born in Buk̲h̲ārā the son of a wealthy merchant. In 1907 he went with his father to Moscow, where he received a Russian education. In 1913 he joined the so-called Ḏj̲adīd Muslim reformist movement [see d̲j̲adīd ], which was opposed to the feudal régime of the Amīr. In 1917 he became a member of the newly formed Young Buk̲h̲āran Party and in December left for Tas̲h̲kent with the avowed object of working for the overthrow of the Amīr. By …

(a.), nationalism. 1. In the Arab world east of the Mag̲h̲rib. The term derives from ḳawm , a term of tribal provenance used to denote a group of people having or claiming a common ancestor, or a tribe descended from a single ancestor. One’s ḳawm is simply one’s people, either genealogically determined or mythologically and folklorishly depicted. In this century, ḳawmiyya refers to the movement of nationalism among the Arabs of the Ottoman dominions in the Fertile Crescent that were conquered by the Allies in the Great War. The use …

, a Turkmen tribe mainly inhabiting the country round Bojnurd in northern Persia, but with some elements in the Turkmen SSR and the Kara-Kalpak ASSR of the Soviet Union. The number in Persia is difficult to determine but is probably about 60,000. Soviet sources now tend to avoid tribal distinctions, but according to the 1926 census there were. 17,000 Göklän in the Kara-Kala district of the Turkmen SSR (South of Kizyl-Arvat) and some 38,000 in the area lying between Il’yaly (S. of Khodzheyli) and…