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The Shahnameh or Shah-nama (Persian: شاهنامه Šāhnāmeh, 'The Book of Kings') is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran and related Perso-Iranian cultures. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of Greater Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.<br/><br/> The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama (Persian: شاهنامه Šāhnāmeh, 'The Book of Kings') is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran and related Perso-Iranian cultures. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of Greater Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.<br/><br/> The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.
A Persian miniature is a small painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a muraqqa. The techniques are broadly comparable to the Western and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. Although there is an equally well-established Persian tradition of wall-painting, the survival rate and state of preservation of miniatures is better, and miniatures are much the best-known form of Persian painting in the West, and many of the most important examples are in Western, or Turkish, museums.<br/><br/> Miniature painting became a significant Persian genre in the 13th century, receiving Chinese influence after the Mongol conquests, and the highest point in the tradition was reached in the 15th and 16th centuries. The tradition continued, under some Western influence, after this, and has many modern exponents. The Persian miniature was the dominant influence on other Islamic miniature traditions, principally the Ottoman miniature in Turkey, and the Mughal miniature in the Indian sub-continent.
Tatars (Tatar: Tatarlar / Татарлар, sometimes spelled Tartars) are a Turkic speaking people, numbering around 7 million. The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of 5.5 million, 2 million of which live in the Republic of Tatarstan, 1 million in the Republic of Bashkortostan and the other 2.5 million in different regions of Russia. Significant minority populations are found in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and countries of Central Asia.<br/><br/> The Tatars originated with the Tatar confederation in the north-eastern Gobi desert in the 5th century. After subjugation in the 9th century by the Khitans, they migrated southward. In the 13th century, they were subjugated by the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. Under the leadership of his grandson Batu Khan, they moved westwards, forming part of the Golden Horde which dominated the Eurasian steppe during the 14th and 15th centuries. In Europe, they were assimilated by the local populations or their name spread to the conquered peoples: Kipchaks, Kimaks and others; and elsewhere with Uralic-speaking peoples, as well as with remnants of the ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea and Caucasians in the Caucasus.<br/><br/> Siberian Tatars are survivors of the Turkic population of the Ural-Altaic region, mixed to some extent with the speakers of Uralic languages, as well as with Mongols.<br/><br/> The three ethnic descendants of the 13th-century westward migration are Volga Tatars, Lipka Tatars and Crimean Tatars, most of whom adopted Islam in the medieval period.
The First Eastern Turkestan Republic (ETR), or Turkish Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET), also Republic of Uyghurstan, (Sherqiy Türkistan Yislam Jumuhuriyiti or Sarki Turk Islam Cumhuriyeti) was a short-lived breakaway would-be Islamic republic founded in 1933. It was centered on the city of Khotan in what is today the People's Republic of China-administered Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Although primarily the product of the independence movement of the Uyghur population living there, the ETR was Turkish-ethnic in character, including Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in its government and its population.<br/><br/> With the sacking of Kashgar in 1934 by Hui warlords nominally allied with the Kuomintang government in Nanjing, the first ETR was effectively eliminated. Its example, however, served to some extent as inspiration for the founding of a Second East Turkestan Republic a decade later, and continues to influence modern Uyghur nationalist support for the creation of an independent East Turkestan.