Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Aug 26, 2022 13 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Interesting dialogue between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan presidents. They don't conversate in Russian, but in their native tongues. Both languages are Turkic, but belong to different language sub-groups: Azeri is Oghuz, Kazakh is Kipchak. Therefore, pronunciation is very different
Oghuz speaking area stretches from Khwarazm in Uzbekistan to Eastern Thrace. Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen have the most speakers. Oghuz languages have harsh pronunciation, much harsher than Kipchak ones
Kipchak speaking zone is stretching from Kyrgyzstan in the southeast to the Tatarstan in the northwest, plus plenty enclaves in the Caucasus. Kipchak accent is much softer. From my perspective Anatolian Turkish sounds as if Russian who doesn't know Tatar was trying to speak Tatar
Another prominent group is Karluk. It has only two big languages: Uzbek and Uyghur. Anecdotally, some of my Uzbek acquaintances found Uyghur far more understandable than some of the "dialects" (=separate languages ofc) at their home country
While Oghuz, Kipchak and Karluk languages are kinda mutually understandable (though mutually funny sounding), Chuvash language is not. Tatars can understand Kazakhs, and even Anatolian Turks if they speak slowly enough. We cannot understand Chuvashs
Chuvash language is so isolated because it is the last remnant of Old Bulgaria. With its destruction, one group migrated to Danube, another to Volga. Danube Bulgars switched to Slavic (=Bulgaria), Volga Bulgars to Kipchak (=Tatars) by around 1400. Only Chuvashs did not
Apart from the Oghuz, Kipchak, Karluk and Oghur (=Chuvash) languages, there are also languages of Siberia. They are more distant from the rest though as they do not share Islamic heritage and Farsi/Arab vocabulary like others
Most Turkic cultures are very Persianate. That's why they belong to the "Stan" zone, adopting this Farsi work for a country in their official naming. There is only one nation keeping the ancient Turkic name for the country. It's Mari El. Interestingly enough, they're Finno-Ugric
Mari may be the last authentic pagans in Europe, still worshipping in the sacred woods and sacrificing geese to their gods. Their history is poorly known and generally misunderstood
Now Mari people are clustered in the ethnic republic Mari El and also have large enclaves in what is now Bashkortostan, where they escaped from the Russian conquest in the 16th c. Around the year 1500 though they were probably far more numerous
Most probably Finno-Ugrics comprised the bulk of Kazan Khanate population, being only partially touched by the Turkic and Islamic culture. Their mass conversion to Islam happened later. At least its well-documented part starts around the 18th c, long after the Russian conquest
That's a poorly known and somewhat counterintuitive story. Mass Islamization of the Middle Volga happened not under the Muslim power as one could expect, but centuries later, when Islam was a second class and persecuted religion of the Muscovite Tsardom and the Russian Empire
I'll go into details in a next thread on how Volga became Muslim. The end

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More from @kamilkazani

Jul 1
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:

“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry

(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)

So, yes, living under the actual communism sucks
Read 5 tweets
Jun 28
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s victory

Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc

Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one Image
1. Public outrage does not work anymore

If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while

For a while, this tactics worked

Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
Read 8 tweets
Jun 28
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
Theory: X -> Y

Reality:

There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.

Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation

And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
Read 6 tweets
Jun 26
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani's victory:

1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.

In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings

Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
Read 12 tweets
Jun 21
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.Image
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain

According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her Image
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.

Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 19
On the impending war with Iran

One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg

And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking
Read 12 tweets

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