Kipchak Language

Kipchak - The Kipchak language is the precursor language of a number of modern Turkic languages that are spoken in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia today. Kazakhs are remnants of Eastern Cuman-Kipchak tribes who lived in Northern Kazakhstan in the 10th century. So, their language originates from a more isolated form of earlier Kipchak. Bolgar-speaking Volga Bulgarians (later Kazan Tatars), Astrakhan Tatars, Balkars, Karachays, Kumyks, Cumans (later Crimean Tatars), Bashkirs and Mongolian aristocracy adopted the Kipchak language in the days of the Golden Horde.

The modern Northwestern branch of the Turkic language is often referred to as the Kipchak branch. The languages in this branch are mostly considered to be descendants of the Kipchak language, and the people who speak them may likewise be referred to as Kipchak peoples.

Karakalpak - Karakalpak is also a member of the Eastern Kipchak branch of Turkic languages, which includes Tatar, Kumyk, Nogai, and Kazakh. Due to its proximity to Uzbek, much of Karakalpak's vocabulary and grammar has been influenced by Uzbek. Like Turkish, Karakalpak has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually subject–object–verb.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipchak_language

Yellow carrots

The wild carrot, Daucus Carota, is native to Central Asia. Within the subspecies Daucus Carota sativus, two varieties are recognised: The Western carrot (variety sativus) and the Eastern carrot (variety atrorubens).

The Yellow carrot is an Eastern cultivar, domesticated in Central Asia as early as the 9th century. It yields a sweeter flavor at maturity than other cultivars while also retaining healthy texture; ie: its tap-root is not woody or fiberous. They have a firm and crunchy texture and an earthy sweet flavor with notes of celery and parsley. They belong to the Umbelliferae family along with parsnips, fennel caraway, cumin and dill. Whilst classified as a root vegetable its midribs and greens are also edible and nutritious. Yellow carrots are also one of the key ingredients in  the national dish of Uzbekistan Plov (dozens of variations of this dish but usually consists of chunks of mutton, shredded yellow carrot and rice fried in a cast iron or aluminium pot. Staple food for both every day and celebrations). and also popular in soups, stews, salads and are used as an ingredient in stocks. Uzbekistan at 1.6 million tonnes per year is the second largest producer of carrots in the world after China. They are rich in pro-healthy antioxidants both of lipophylic (carotenoids) and hydrophilic (phenolic compounds) characters and accumulate xanthophylls, pigments similar to beta-carotene that support good eye health. In addition they contain lutein, a pigment similar to beta-carotene that is absorbed as Vitamin A in the body.

Source:http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/qna.html

The origin of the Oghuz Turks

The Oghuz is a linguistic term designating the Western Turkic or Oghuz languages from the Oghur sub-division of Turkic language family. Oghus also spelled Oğuz, or Ghuzz also refers to a confederation of Turkic peoples whose homeland, until at least the 11th century AD, was the steppes of central Asia known as Turkistan or Turan, which has been the domain of all Turkic peoples since antiquity.

According to many historians, the usage of the word "Oguz" dates back to the advent of the Huns (220 BC). Legend has it that the title "Oguz Khan" was given to Mete, the founder of the Hun empire, which is often considered the first Turkic political entity in Central Asia. Also in the 2nd century BC, a Turkic tribe called "O-kut" who were described as Huns (referred to as Hsiung-Nu or "colored-eyed people" in Chinese sources) were mentioned in the area of Tarbogatain, in present-day southern Kazakhstan. Greek sources also used the name Oufi (or Ouvvi) to describe the Huns. Prior to the Gokturk state, there are references to the "Sekiz-Oguz" ("eight-Oguz") and the "Dokuz-Oguz" ("nine-Oguz") state formations ruling

different areas in the vicinity of the Altay mountains.

Orkhon Museum, Kharkhorin, Mongolia

In the 6th century the "six Oguz tribal union" in the Turkic Orhun inscriptions  found in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia, near Ögii Lake. Before the inscriptions were deciphered by the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen, very little was known about Turkic script. These scripts are the oldest form of a Turkic language to be preserved.   
 

The main domain of the Oguz in the ensuing centuries was the area of Transoxiana, in western Turkistan. This land became known as the "Oguz steppe" between the Caspian and Aral Seas. Oguz are said to have first come there in the period of the caliph Al-Mehdi in the years between 775 and 785 from the Zhetysu now the South-Eastern part of modern Kazakhstan after conflict with the Karluk branch of Uighurs. Mass migrations of the Oghuz into Western Eurasia occurred from the early part of the 9th Century onwards, during the period of the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun (813–833). They established trading, religious and cultural contacts with the Abbasid Arab caliphate who ruled to the south. This influence led to most of them to converted to Islam and renounced their Tengriism belief system.

Mass migrations of the Oghuz into Western Eurasia occurred from the early part of the 9th Century onwards, during the period of the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun (813–833). They established trading, religious and cultural contacts with the Abbasid Arab caliphate who ruled to the south. This influence led to most of them to converted to Islam and renounced their Tengriism belief system.

In the mid 9th century, the Oguzes drove the Bechens from the Emba and Ural River region toward the west. By the 10th century, they inhabited the steppe of the rivers Sari-su, Turgai, and Emba to the north of Lake Balkhash of modern-day Kazakhstan. It was in this area that one branch of the Oğuz later founded the Seljuk Empire, and it was from here that they spread west into western Asia and eastern Europe during the mass Turkic migrations from the 9th -12th centuries. By the end of the 11th century they controlled an empire stretching from the Amu Darya to the Persian Gulf and from the Indus to the Mediterranean Sea by the end of the 11th century.

Also in the 11th century, a Tengriist Oghuz clan—referred to as Uzes or Torks in the Russian chronicles — overthrew Pecheneg supremacy in the Russian steppe. Harried by another Turkic horde, the Kipchaks, these Oghuz penetrated as far as the lower Danube, crossed it and invaded the Balkans, where most they were either crushed or struck down by an outbreak of plague, causing the survivors either to flee or to join the Byzantine imperial forces as mercenaries (1065). Oghuz warriors served in almost all Islamic armies of the Middle East from the 1000s onwards from Byzantium to Spain and Morocco.

"The term 'Oghuz' was gradually supplanted among the Turks themselves by the term Türkmen or Turcoman, from the mid 900's on, a process which was completed by the beginning of the 1200s." The Ottoman dynasty, who gradually took over Anatolia after the fall of the Seljuks, toward the end of the 13th century, led an army that was also predominantly Oghuz.

Linguistically, the Oghuz are listed together with the old Kimaks of the middle Yenisei of the Ob, the old Kipchaks who later emigrated to southern Russia, and the modern Kirghiz in one particular Turkic group, distinguished from the rest by the mutation of the initial y sound to j (dj). Today this language is spoken by the Azerbaijanis of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the South Azerbaijan region of Iran, Turks of Turkey and Cyprus, Turkmens of Turkmenistan and northeastern Iran, Qashqay and Khurasani Turks of Iran, Balkan Turks of Greece, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia as well as Gauguz (Gokoguz) Turks of Moldova.

Source: Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oghuz_Turks