What are the names of rural settlements located in the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Central Asia? What is the difference between aul and kishlak? The answers to these and other questions can be found in the article presented here.
general information
What is a village and aul? These two concepts can be combined with one common definition.
This is a traditional rural Muslim settlement, community and camp of Turkic and other Central Asian and Caucasian peoples, as well as a nomadic or sedentary gathering of dwellings (huts, huts, dugouts, huts or huts, tents, yurts, booths, nomad wagons) in Asian and many Caucasian regions.
Definition
What is a village? Initially, this was the name of the wintering place for nomads (translated from Turkic kıs - "winter"). Kishlaks were usually surrounded by blank walls (deval or duval) of clay. On each site with a house located in it, surrounded by a fence of stone, there was kyariz - an underground well. Therefore, on the streets of the village it was rarely possible to meet people with water. There was no sewage in these settlements. Clay furnaces were heated with dung. Along the winding streets walked women dressed in a veil, men in dressing gowns and trousers, as well as donkeys laden with cargo. The image of the village was complemented by a tree of plane trees.
In addition to residential buildings, mosque, bazaar and cemetery were special elements in the village. The main population of former and current villages is peasants (dekhkans).
The antonym of the word “kishlak” is “yaylak” meaning a summer cottage or summer pasture.
What is aul?
Kishlak and aul have some differences. The second name refers mainly to rural settlements in the Caucasus, and villages are called rural settlements of Central Asia and Afghanistan. In essence, the village among the peoples of Asia is the same as a farm, village, village, village, that is, any small rural settlement. Villages are also called villages near the Bashkirs, Tatars, Kyrgyz-Kaisaks, Kalmyks, as well as among Caucasians.
The Caucasus Mountains, especially on the territory of the Republic of Dagestan, are inhabited by villages - fortified settlements. The houses in them are usually built of stone, and they are located either on a steep mountain wall or on a mountain slope in order to protect against unexpected attacks. As a rule, two-story houses are built, located on ledges. They are turned to a greater extent by a facade in a southerly direction in order to receive more sunlight in winter and to protect themselves from northern cold winds. Often, villages are located far from water sources and pastures.
In the North Caucasus, traditionally called villages are rural settlements with a population of non-Christian faith. This is the name of the settlement with the Circassian (Adyghe), Nogai and Abaza populations in Adygea, as well as villages in Karachay-Cherkessia and the Krasnodar Territory. In other republics of this mountainous region and in the Stavropol Territory, such settlements are officially called villages, but in publications and among the people they are also called villages.
Village of Central Asia
What is a village? Among the peoples of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and also Bashkiria, this term originally meant a mobile settlement, periodically moving to summer roaming (Zhailau) from the territories of winter grazing (Kyshlau). The transformation of such settlements into permanent settlements is associated with the transition in the XIX-XX centuries of certain peoples (Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Turkmens and Kyrgyz) to a settled way of life. The place of residence of these peoples is a village where houses of raw or burnt bricks (sometimes made of wood) are located in the form of chaotic or quarter buildings. On each site there are cattle pens, cowsheds, barns, wells, gardens and vegetable gardens.
Kishlaks are more often located near lakes, rivers, springs or in places with a high level of groundwater. The Central Asian settlements are very similar to the village or village of the Finno-Ugric and Slavic peoples.
Types of villages
What is a village before the times of the USSR? Before the 1917 Revolution, it was a sedentary wintering and settlement of a semi-nomadic population.
By the nature of settlement, the following types are distinguished:
- breeding - several small fused or located at some distance villages, united under one name and making up one community (each is endowed with a kindred group and its own mosque);
- large-scale - in the process of development of the first type, small villages expanded and turned into quarters of a common village;
- scattered - these are individual estates located at a great distance from each other, but united into one community, since their fields were irrigated by the water of one channel.
What is a modern village? During the Soviet period and later on, villages were transformed and turned into modern state farms and collective farms, which did not differ in terms of amenities and layout from urban-type settlements.
