THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL TOPONYMS IN DETERMINING THE GEOGRAPHY OF DISTRIBUTION OF UZBEKISTAN AND KYRGYZ PEOPLE IN THE FERGHANA VALLEY

Аннотация

В статье дается подробное описание распространения узбекского и кыргызского народов в Ферганской долине, их образа жизни, трактовки топонимов этих регионов, а также топонимов, связанных с населенными пунктами Ферганской долины. Ключевые слова: долина, регион, люди, скот, оседлый крестьянин, хозяйство, историко-географический регион, этнокультурный, торговля, нация, поселения. The Ferghana Valley, like many regions of Central Asia, has served as a place for peoples speaking different languages for many centuries. At the same time, the population of the valley, consisting mainly of sedentary farmers and partly nomadic pastoralists, differs from other regions of the region as a historical and geographical area. The Ferghana Valley, neighboring the historical and geographical areas of the Seven Waters region such as Talas and Narin to the north and northeast, Choch to the west, and Khujand and Ustrushona (Uratepa, Jizzakh) to the south and southwest, did not have significant differences from them in terms of economic life, household lifestyle and culture. In this regard, it is noticeable that the Fergana Valley was in close ethnocultural ties with the population of such historical and geographical areas as Kashkar (East Turkestan) and Northern Tokharistan, which are geographically somewhat close to it. 86 As in ancient times and the early Middle Ages, the migration processes that took place in the region in the late Middle Ages were reflected in the formation of the current local population of the Ferghana Valley, which was also reflected in the fact that the population of the valley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries consisted of different peoples. According to various written sources of this period - mainly historical and artistic works related to the historiography of the Kokand Khanate, the notes of Russian and other foreign authors such as travelers and ambassadors, as well as statistical and historical data collected at the beginning of the last century [1], the local population of the Fergana Valley consisted mainly of Uzbeks (the population was called by various clan names such as sart, turk, yuz, kipchak, and ming), tadjiks, kyrgyz, uyghurs, and karakalpaks.[2] Among them can be added the Kazakhs, who formed a small part of the population of the Ferghana and Namangan regions in the valley. Also living in the valley during this period, although in minority, were Jews (“Bukhara Jews”), Dungans (Muslim Chinese) [3], Indians, and Gypsies, many of whom were engaged in trade and lived in the valley for a certain period. Among the local population of the Fergana Valley, after the uzbeks, the tadjiks, kyrgyz and uyghurs made up a large number of them, and among them the Tajiks had their own several cities and hundreds of villages in almost all regions of the region. In the late Middle Ages, a significant part of the thousands of place names in the valley were tadjik, and a significant part of them were inhabited by tadjik-speaking people, while a significant part was inhabited by Turkic-speaking people such as uzbeks, kyrgyz and uyghurs. That is, statistical and historical materials from the beginning of the 20th century show that no matter how Tajik the name of a settlement was, the population living in it was clearly the Turkic population listed above. Interestingly, just as Tajik speakers lived in a settlement with a purely Turkic name, Afrim, it was found that, on the contrary, villages with purely Tajik names were inhabited by Turkic people. For example, the population of the village of Karasuv near the city of Margilan was Tajik, the nearby village of Varzak [4] was inhabited by Kyrgyz, and the village of Khamrak near this village was inhabited by Uzbeks. In turn, the above situation can be explained by several factors. First, migration processes caused by various socio-political events, natural phenomena such as flooding or, conversely, the drying up of water sources, earthquakes, etc., wars and conflicts, and the assimilation of others by ethnic groups that were numerically in the majority led to the emergence of such situations. On the other hand, the draining of swamps, the development of new lands as a result of the digging of water networks - rivers and canals, and the allocation of special border lands by khans also led to certain changes in the toponymy of the valley. Also, one of the main factors in the increase in the number of toponyms associated with the settlements of the Ferghana Valley in the late Middle Ages was the settlement of numerous nomadic Uzbek and Kyrgyz, and partly Karakalpak tribes, which led to major changes in place names in the valley, especially in historical toponymy. Also, the Uyghurs who migrated from East Turkestan in the mid-17th–19th centuries played a significant role in such changes in the historical toponymy of the valley.[5] In the late Middle Ages, a significant part of the population of the Fergana Valley was made up of Tajik-speaking people, who, in addi