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The Caucasus () or CaucasiaShamil Shetekauri et al., Mountain Flowers and Trees of Caucasia; Pelagic Publishing Limited, 2018, .John L. Esposito, Abdulaziz Sachedina (2004). "Caucasus". The Islamic World: Past and Present. Volume 1. Oxford University Press USA. . p. 86 . Accessed 30 June 2021. (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have conventionally been considered as a natural barrier between Europe and Asia, bisecting the landmass.
Mount Elbrus, Europe's highest mountain, is situated in the Western Caucasus area of Russia. On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and the Armenian highlands, part of which is in Turkey.
The Caucasus is divided into the North Caucasus and South Caucasus, although the Western Caucasus also exists as a distinct geographic space within the North Caucasus. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is mostly shared by Russia and Georgia as well as the northernmost parts of Azerbaijan. The Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is occupied by several independent states, mostly by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, but also extends to parts of northeastern Turkey, and northern Iran.
The region is known for its linguistic diversity: aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian Language family are indigenous to the area.
Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae () also says the name means shining white like snow:
In the Tale of Past Years (1113 AD), it is stated that Old East Slavic Кавкасийскыѣ горы ( Kavkasijskyě gory) came from Ancient Greek Καύκασος ( Kaúkasos), which, according to M. A. Yuyukin, is a compound word that can be interpreted as the 'mountain of the seagull(s)' (καύ-: καύαξ, καύηξ, -ηκος, κήξ, κηϋξ 'a kind of seagull' + the reconstructed *κάσος 'mountain' or 'rock' richly attested both in place and personal names).
In Georgian tradition, the term Caucasus is derived from Caucas (კავკასოსი Ḳavḳasosi), the son of the Biblical Togarmah and legendary forefather of the Nakh peoples.
According to Germany Philology Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the Ancient Greek word Καύκασος ( Kaukasos) is connected to Gothic language hauhs 'high' as well as Lithuanian kaũkas 'hillock' and kaukarà 'hill, top', Russian language куча 'heap'. British linguist Adrian Room claims that * kau- also means 'mountain' in Pelasgian, though this is speculative given that Pelasgian is so poorly known.
The Transcaucasus region and Dagestan were the furthest points of Parthian Empire and later Sasanian Empire expansions, with areas to the north of the Greater Caucasus range practically impregnable. The mythological Mount Qaf, the world's highest mountain that ancient Iranian lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region. The region is also one of the candidates for the location of Airyanem Vaejah, the apparent homeland of the Iranians of Zoroaster. In Middle Persian sources of the Sasanian era, the Caucasus range was referred to as Kaf Kof. The term resurfaced in Iranian tradition later on in a variant form when Ferdowsi, in his Shahnameh, referred to the Caucasus mountains as Kōh-i Kāf. "Most of the modern names of the Caucasus originate from the Greek Kaukasos (Lat., Caucasus) and the Middle Persian Kaf Kof".
"The earliest etymon" of the name Caucasus comes from Kaz-kaz, the Hittite language designation of the "inhabitants of the southern coast of the Black Sea".
It was also noted that in Nakh languages Ков гас ( Kov gas) means "gateway to steppe".Bolatojha J. "Древняя родина Кавкасов The", p. 49, 2006.
The North Caucasus contains most of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. It consists of Southern Russia, mainly the North Caucasian Federal District's autonomous republics and the Krais in Southern Russia, and the northernmost parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan. The North Caucasus lies between the Black Sea to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, and borders the Southern Federal District to its north. The two Federal Districts are collectively referred to as "Southern Russia".
The South Caucasus borders the Greater Caucasus range and Southern Russia to its north, the Black Sea and Turkey to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, and Iran to its south. It contains the Lesser Caucasus mountain range and surrounding lowlands. All of Armenia, Azerbaijan (excluding the northernmost parts), and Georgia (excluding the northernmost parts) are in the South Caucasus.
The watershed along the Greater Caucasus range is considered by some sources to be the dividing line between Europe and Southwest Asia. According to that, the highest peak in the Caucasus, Mount Elbrus (5,642 meters) located in western Ciscaucasus, is considered the highest point in Europe. The Kuma-Manych Depression, the geologic depression that divides the Russian Plain from the North Caucasus foreland is often regarded by classical and non-British sources as the natural and historical boundary between Europe and Asia. Another opinion is that the rivers Kura and Rioni mark this border, or even that of the river Aras.
The Caucasus is a linguistically, culturally and geographically diverse region. The that compose the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia (including Adjara and Abkhazia), Azerbaijan (including Nakhchivan), Armenia, and the Russian Federation. The Russian divisions include Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, , , , Adygea, Krasnodar Krai, and Stavropol Krai, in clockwise order.
Two territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful of entities: Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are largely recognized by the world community as part of Georgia.
The peoples of the northern and southern Caucasus mostly are Shia Islam, Sunni Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians or Armenian Christians.
The site yields the earliest unequivocal evidence for the presence of early humans outside the African continent;Vekua, A., Lordkipanidze, D., Rightmire, G. P., Agusti, J., Ferring, R., Maisuradze, G., et al. (2002). A new skull of early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia. Science, 297:85–9. and the Dmanisi skulls are the five oldest hominins ever found outside Africa.
Under Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC), the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire reached as far as the Caucasus Mountains. Later ancient kingdoms of the region included Armenia, Albania, Colchis and Iberia, among others. These kingdoms were later incorporated into various empires, including Medes, the Achaemenid Empire, Parthia, and the Sassanid Empire, who would altogether rule the Caucasus for many hundreds of years. In 95–55 BC, under the reign of the Armenian king Tigranes the Great, the Kingdom of Armenia included Kingdom of Armenia, vassals Iberia, Albania, Parthia, Atropatene, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Syria, Nabataean kingdom, and Judea. By the time of the first century BC, Zoroastrianism had become the dominant religion of the region; however, the region would go through two other religious transformations. Owing to the strong rivalry between Persia and Roman Empire, and later Byzantine Empire. The Romans first arrived in the region in the 1st century BC with the annexation of the kingdom of Colchis, which was later turned into the province of Lazica. The next 600 years was marked by a conflict between Rome and Sasanian Empire for the control of the region. In western Georgia the eastern Roman rule lasted until the Middle Ages.
In the 10th century, the Alans (proto-Ossetians) Аланы, Great Soviet Encyclopedia founded the Kingdom of Alania, that flourished in the Northern Caucasus, roughly in the location of latter-day Circassia and modern North Ossetia–Alania, until its destruction by the Mongol invasion in 1238–39.
During the Middle Ages, Bagratid Armenia, Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget, Kingdom of Syunik and Principality of Khachen organized local Armenian population facing multiple threats after the fall of antique Kingdom of Armenia. Caucasian Albania maintained close ties with Armenia and the Church of Caucasian Albania shared the same Christian dogmas with the Armenian Apostolic Church and had a tradition of their Catholicos being ordained through the Patriarch of Armenia.
In the 12th century, the Georgian king David the Builder drove the Muslims out of the Caucasus and made the Kingdom of Georgia a strong regional power. In 1194–1204 Georgian Queen Tamar's armies crushed new Seljuk Turkish invasions from the southeast and south and launched several successful campaigns into Seljuk Turkish-controlled Southern Armenia. The Georgian Kingdom continued military campaigns in the Caucasus region. As a result of her military campaigns and the temporary fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, Georgia became the strongest Christian state in the whole Near East area, encompassing most of the Caucasus stretching from Northern Iran and Northeastern Turkey to the North Caucasus.
The Caucasus region was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, Turco-Mongols, local kingdoms and khanates, as well as, once again, Iran.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire also conquered the North Caucasus. In the aftermath of the Caucasian Wars, the Russian military perpetrated an ethnic cleansing of Circassians, expelling this indigenous population from its homeland.Yemelianova, Galina, Islam nationalism and state in the Muslim Caucasus. Caucasus Survey, April 2014. p. 3Memoirs of Miliutin, "the plan of action decided upon for 1860 was to cleanse ochistit' the mountain zone of its indigenous population", per Richmond, W. The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, and Future. Routledge. 2008. Between the 1850s and World War I, about a million North Caucasian Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees.
Having killed and deported most of the Armenians of Western Armenia during the Armenian genocide, the Turks intended to eliminate the Armenian population of Eastern Armenia.Balakian. Burning Tigris, pp. 319-323. During the 1920 Turkish–Armenian War, 60,000 to 98,000 Armenian civilians were estimated to have been killed by the Turkish army.Vahakn Dadrian. (2003). The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 360–61. .
In the 1940s, around 480,000 Chechens and Ingush people, 120,000 Karachays–Balkars and Meskhetian Turks, thousands of Kalmyks, and 200,000 Kurds in Nakchivan and Caucasus Germans were deported en masse to Central Asia and Siberia by the Soviet security apparatus. About a quarter of them died.
The Southern Caucasus region was unified as a single political entity twice – during the Russian Civil War (Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic) from 9 April 1918 to 26 May 1918, and under the Soviet Union rule (Transcaucasian SFSR) from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia became independent nations.
The region has been subject to various territorial disputes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994), the East Prigorodny Conflict (1989–1991), the War in Abkhazia (1992–93), the First Chechen War (1994–1996), the Second Chechen War (1999–2009), Russo-Georgian War (2008), and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020).
In Persian mythology, the Caucasus might be associated with the mythic Mount Qaf which is believed to surround the known world. It is the battlefield of Saoshyant and the nest of the Simurgh.
The Ancient Rome poet Ovid placed the Caucasus in Scythia and depicted it as a cold and stony mountain which was the abode of personified hunger. The Greek hero Jason sailed to the west coast of the Caucasus in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, and there met Medea, a daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis.
Caucasian legends include stories involving giants similar to Homer's Polyphemus story.Hunt, pp. 9, 13, 201, 210–229; Bachvarova, p. 106; Mayor, pp. xxi; Rashidvash, p. 34; Colarusso. pp. 6–7, 170 (Circassian Saga 37: A Cyclops Bound atop Was'hamakhwa), 200–202 (Abaza Saga 52: How Sosruquo Brought Fire to His Troops). In these stories, the giant is almost always a shepherd,Hunt, p. 13. and he is variously a one-eyed rock-throwing cannibal, who lives in a cave (the exit of which is often blocked by a stone), kills the hero's companions, is blinded by a hot stake, and whose flock of animals is stolen by the hero and his men, all motifs which (along with still others) are also found in the Polyphemus story.Hunt, Table 1, pp. 211–212. In one example from Georgia, two brothers, who are being held prisoner by a giant one-eyed shepherd called "One-eye", take a spit, heat it up, stab it into the giant's eye, and escape.Hunt, pp. 218–222 (45. The Story of One-eye ( Georgian)).
There are also links with the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus.Mayor, p. xxi; Hunt, pp. 14, 330–357; Calarusso, pp. 7, 170, 200—202; Rashidvash, p. 34. Many legends, widespread in the Caucasus, contain motifs shared with the Prometheus story.Hunt, p. 14. Hunt, p. 330, mentions forty-four versions. These motifs include a giant hero, his conflict with God or gods, the stealing of fire and giving it to men, being chained, and being tormented by a bird who pecks at his liver (or heart).Hunt, pp. 330–331. The Adyghe people/Circassians Nart Nasran,Colarusso, pp. 158–168 (Circassian Saga 34: How Pataraz Freed Bearded Nasran, Who Was Chained to the High Mountain), 168–169 (Circassian Saga 35: Bound Nasran); Hunt, pp. 355–356; Rashidvash, p. 34. the Georgians Amirani,Hunt, pp. 332–337, 351–355; Colarusso, p. 169. the Chechens Pkharmat,Hunt, pp. 332, 339–344. and the Abkhazians Abrskil,Hunt, pp. 333, 347–351. are examples of such Prometheus-like figures.
The region has a high level of endemism and several relict animals and plants, the fact reflecting the presence of refugial forests, which survived the Ice Age in the Caucasus Mountains. The Caucasus forest refugium is the largest throughout the Western Asian (near Eastern) region.van Zeist W, Bottema S. 1991. Late Quaternary vegetation of the Near East. Wiesbaden: Reichert. The area has multiple representatives of disjunct relict groups of plants with the closest relatives in Eastern Asia, southern Europe, and even North America.Milne RI. 2004. "Phylogeny and biogeography of Rhododendron subsection Pontica, a group with a Tertiary relict distribution". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 33: 389–401.Kikvidze Z, Ohsawa M. 1999. "Adjara, East Mediterranean refuge of Tertiary vegetation". In: Ohsawa M, Wildpret W, Arco MD, eds. Anaga Cloud Forest, a comparative study on evergreen broad-leaved forests and trees of the Canary Islands and Japan. Chiba: Chiba University Publications, 297–315.Denk T, Frotzler N, Davitashvili N. 2001. "Vegetational patterns and distribution of relict taxa in humid temperate forests and wetlands of Georgia Transcaucasia". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 72: 287–332. Over 70 species of forest snails of the region are endemic.Pokryszko B, Cameron R, Mumladze L, Tarkhnishvili D. 2011. "Forest snail faunas from Georgian Transcaucasia: patterns of diversity in a Pleistocene refugium". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 102: 239–250 Some relict species of vertebrates are Caucasian parsley frog, Caucasian salamander, Robert's snow vole, and Caucasian grouse, and there are almost entirely endemic groups of animals such as lizards of genus Darevskia. In general, the species composition of this refugium is quite distinct and differs from that of the other Western Eurasian refugia.
The natural landscape is one of mixed forest, with substantial areas of rocky ground above the treeline. The Caucasus Mountains are also noted for a dog breed, the Caucasian Shepherd Dog (Rus. Kavkazskaya Ovcharka, Geo. Nagazi). Vincent Evans noted that have been recorded from the Black Sea.
Mountain-skiing complexes include:
The 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix (motor racing) was the first in the history of Formula One to be held in Azerbaijan. The 2017 World Rugby Under 20 Championship was held in Georgia. In 2017 the U-19 Europe Championship (Football) was held in Georgia. In 2019 the UEFA European Under-19 Championship was held in Armenia.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The history of wars and Russian domination in the Caucasus (История войны и владычества русских на Кавказе). Sankt-Petersburg, 1871–1888, at Runivers.ru in DjVu and PDF formats.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Sixty years of the Caucasian War (Шестьдесят лет Кавказской войны). Tiflis, at Runivers.ru in DjVu format.
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