URUMS ~ THE TATAR - SPEAKING GREEKS

 

Urums; Greek: Ουρούμ, Urúm;  are several groups of Turkic-speaking Greek Orthodox people native to Crimea. The emergence and development of the Urum identity took place from 13th to the 17th centuries. Bringing together the Crimean Greeks along with Greek-speaking Crimean Goths, with other indigenous groups that had long inhabited the region, resulting in a gradual transformation of their collective identity.

The term Urum is derived from the Arabic word روم (rūm), meaning Roman and subsequently Byzantine and Greek, with a prothetic u in some Turkic languages. In Ottoman Turkish under the Ottoman Empire, Rum denoted Orthodox Christians living in the Empire; in modern Turkish, Rum denotes Greeks living in Turkey and Cyprus. The word "Urum" involves a prothetic u- that generally appears in Turkic language loanwords initially starting with a r-. The common use of the term Urum appears to have led to some confusion, as most Turkish-speaking Greeks were called Urum.

The term is used by the following sub-ethnic groups of Greeks as a way of ethnic self-identification:

Crimean-Tatar speaking Greeks of North Azov (Ukraine) (Crimean Greeks)

Turkish speaking Greeks of Tsalka (Georgia) (see Caucasus Greeks)

North Azovian Urums

The Greeks of Crimea (and later of the adjacent Azovian region; present-day Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine) were represented by two groups: the Hellenic-speaking Romaioi, whose dialect is known as Rumeíka, a.k.a. Mariupol Greek, and the Turkic-speaking Urums (also called Graeco-Tatars). Both groups populated the region over the course of many centuries, and consist of both the descendants of the ancient (4th century BCE – 4th century CE) Greek and Byzantine Christian Greek colonizers of the northern shores of the Black Sea and interior of southern Russia and Ukraine, and also of Pontic Greeks who fled as refugees or economic migrants from northeastern Anatolia between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 and the 1828-29 Russo-Turkish War. Some Greek settlers of the Crimea region gradually adopted the Crimean Tatar language as a mother tongue.

In 1777, after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire, Empress Catherine the Great ordered all Greeks from the peninsula to settle in the North Azov region around Mariupol, and they have been known as the North Azovian Greeks (приазовские греки / priazovskie greki) henceforth. Some linguists believe that the dialect spoken by the North Azovian Urums differs from the common Crimean Tatar language on a more than just dialectical level and therefore constitutes a separate language unit within the Kypchak language sub-group (see Urum language).

Urums practice Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  Throughout history, they represented an isolated cultural group and rarely settled in towns populated by the Romaioi, despite sharing Greek heritage with them. Unlike Greek, Urum has never been a language of secondary education in Ukraine. Turkologist Nikolai Baskakov estimated that by 1969, 60,000 people spoke Urum as a native language. According to the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001, only 112 of the Donetsk Oblast's 77,516 Greeks listed languages other than Greek, Ukrainian and Russian as their mother tongue.

Tsalka Urums

Tsalka Urums are sometimes referred to as the Trialeti Greeks or the Transcaucasian Turcophone Greeks, Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks, or Τσαλκαλίδες (Tsalkalides), a name that refers to the Georgian town of Tsalka, where Urums once made up the largest ethnic community.

Between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 and the Russian annexation of Georgia in 1801 there had been several waves of Pontic Greeks who left the eastern Black Sea coastline and the highlands of the Pontic Alps, and then settled as refugees or economic migrants in Georgia and the South Caucasus. The largest and most recent waves came in the late 18th and especially the early 19th century, when the South Caucasus experienced mass migrations of Greeks from the Ottoman Empire, mainly from the region of Pontus, as well as the vilayets of Sivas and Erzurum in northeastern Anatolia. This wave of Pontic emigrants is particularly associated with the 1828-29 Russo-Turkish War, when many Pontic Greeks collaborated with or welcomed the Russian army that had occupied the region and then, to escape likely Turkish reprisals, followed it with their families when it withdrew back into Russian territory.

Many Pontian Greeks spoke Turkish either as Greek-Turkish bilinguals, or as a mother tongue due to linguistic assimilation processes that isolated groups of the Anatolian Greeks were exposed to.

According to Andrei Popov, throughout the 19th century hundreds of Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox families from Erzurum, Gümüşhane and Artvin moved to Southern Russia and settled on the Tsalka Plateau, in present-day Georgia. During the Soviet era they populated over 20 villages in Georgia's Tsalka, Dmanisi, Tetritsqaro, Marneuli, and Akhaltsikhe regions. In 1926, there were 24,000 Greeks living in Tiflis and the neighbouring area with 20,000 of them being Turcophone.

Tsalka language, the dialect spoken by the Tsalka Urums, is similar to that of the Meskhetian-Ahiska Turks, an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, which hails from the regions of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin. The Turkish Meskhetian-Ahiska dialect has also borrowed from other languages (including Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek) which the Meskhetian-Ahiska Turks have been in contact with during the Russian and Soviet rule. However some linguists, like Nikolai Baskakov, classify it as a separate Oghuz language due to differences in phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Present-day Tsalka language is also thought by some to be phonetically closer to Azeri than to the literary Turkish, which leads them to believe that it is rather a dialect of Azeri. Late Soviet censuses also showed Azeri as the mother tongue of the Tsalka Urums, however this may have been done simply due to the Soviets' somewhat unfavourable attitude towards Turkish culture. No secondary education in Urum Turkish has been available; its speakers attended schools where subjects were taught in Azeri and later in Russian.

The Tsalka Urums themselves call their language bizim dilja (turk. 'our language') or moussourmanja (turk. 'Muslims' language). Nowadays, the majority speaks Russian. Also starting from the 1960s, there has been a modest cultural revival among the Turcophone Greeks. Historian Airat Aklaev's research showed that 36% of them considered Greek their mother tongue despite not speaking it; 96% expressed a desire to learn Greek.

A documentation project on the language of Caucasus Urum people compiled a basic lexicon, a sample of translations for the study of grammar, and a text collection. The website of the project contains further information about the language and the language community.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, serious migration did take place, so Greeks are no longer the largest ethnic group in Tsalka. Between 1989 and 2002, their population declined from 35,000 to 3,000. Many emigrated to Greece, particularly Thessaloniki and other parts of Greek Macedonia in Northern Greece, and also to the relatively near the North Caucasus region of Krasnodar Krai and other parts of Southern Russia (particularly the cities of Krasnodar, Abinsk, Sochi, and Gelendzhik).

Religion

By religion, the majority of Urums are Greek Orthodox Christians. Urums tend to practice their religion in Greek, Georgian or Russian Orthodox churches. Despite there not being any liturgical practices in the Urum language, 60% (18/30 respondents) of native Urum speakers reported that they use Urum in praying. 23% of Urum vocabulary in the field of religion or belief are said to be loanwords - much less than the average across world languages, being estimated to be 43%. According to legend common among the Urums of Georgia, long before they left Turkey, the Orthodox Greeks were forced to make a choice between their language and faith. Being devout Christians, they chose to keep their Orthodox faith and thus relinquished their language.

Language

The language of the North Azov Urums is a Turkic language belonging to the West Kipchak branch. It has been written with the Greek alphabet, and between 1927 and 1937 it was written with Yañalif, and it was taught in some schools. After Yañalif's replacement by the Cyrillic script in 1940, the Urum language was to only be written in Cyrillic.Urum is considered by some to be a dialect of Crimean Tatar.

Much of Urum's religious vocabulary is descended from words of Turkic origin, for example, Allah for ‘God’ or cänäm for ‘hell’ (compare Turkish allah, cehennem). However, Russian loanwords are restricted to narrow Christian terms, e.g., gimn meaning ‘hymn’, derived from Russian gimn (Гимн) and episkop meaning ‘bishop’, derived from Russian episkop (Епископ).

The Tsalka Urum language belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language and displays substantial similarities with the Turkish dialects of Anatolia (e.g. in vocal harmony), but also with Russian (e.g. in the use of subordinate clauses).

SOURCE Wikipedia 

GREEK COLONIES IN THE EAST

The Black Sea littoral, initially called by the Greeks "inhospitable," was colonized intensively by them. Ancient written sources number these colonies between 75 and 90. According to the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, Miletus, the most prosperous city of Ionia (ancient East Greece, the western part of modern-day turkey), was known to many. Its fame was due mainly to the large number of its colonies, since the whole of Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea), Propontis (Sea of Marmara), and many other places had been settled by Milesians.

The reasons for Ionian colonization have been argued for many decades as one aspect of the general debate about why the Greeks established so many colonies. Nowadays, most scholars agree that colonization was enforced migration. Ionian cities were situated in favorable geographical locations and possessed large tracts of fertile land. Miletus, called "the pearl of Ionia," was, the center of Greek culture during the Archaic period. At the end of the 8th century, Ionians began advancing deeply into the hinterland: Miletus, for example, pushed its frontiers twenty to thirty miles up the river valley. This expansion led to conflict between Lydians and Ionians, with Lydian kings seeking to push the Ionians back toward the coast. The principal outcome was to diminish the amount of cultivable land available to the Ionians. This was the chief reason why from the mid-7th century, Miletus, which had never undertaken colonization, became the last Greek city to do so.

The struggles between Lydia and Ionia came to an end at the beginning of the 6th century, when Miletus was obliged to accept a treaty reducing its territorial possessions. This, in turn, provoked an internal crisis in Miletus, whose resolution prompted large-scale migration and the establishment of new colonies on the Black Sea. New and hitherto unparalleled difficulties arose in the middle of the 6th century, as the expanding Persian empire conquered Ionian cities. Ancient written sources state directly that the Ionians faced a stark choice: death and enslavement or flight. In these circumstances migration was the obvious course, leading to the foundation of more new colonies. This did not mark the end of forced migration: in 499 B.C.E. an Ionian uprising against Persian rule was crushed, and in 494 BCE Miletus was sacked and burned. In consequence, a final wave of Ionian colonies was established on the Black Sea at the beginning of the 5th century B.C.E.

Archaeology provides the principal evidence for Greek colonies on the Black Sea. There are a few written sources on the establishment of Pontic Greek cities, but they are contradictory, giving different dates of foundation and mixing myths with other explanations of the colonization process. The first colonies appeared in the last third of the 7th century, and by the end of it Berezan, Histria, Sinope, possibly Amisus and Trapezus, Apollonia Pontica, and the Taganrog settlement on the Sea of Azov had been founded. All were very small, situated on peninsulas. The next wave of colonization dates to the beginning of the 6th century and witnessed the establishment of Olbia, Panticapaeum, Nymphaeum, Theodosia, Myrmekion, Kepoi, Patraeus, Tomis, and others. Hermonassa, on the Taman Peninsula (South Russia), was a joint foundation of Miletus and Mytilene in the second quarter of the 6th century B.C.E.

From the middle of the 6th century, other Ionian Greek cities were in the business of establishing colonies: Teos founded Phanagoria (Taman Peninsula), and the (non-Ionian) Megarians and Boeotians founded Heraclea, on the southern shores of the Pontus circa 556 B.C.E. The latter colony developed as a major trading center for the whole Pontus and, in turn, established its own colonies: Chersonesus in the Crimea was founded in the last quarter of the 5th century (where a small Ionian settlement had existed from the end of the 6th century) and, later, Callatis on the Western coast. Also, during the mid-6th century  Miletus established three colonies on the eastern Black Sea (in the ancient country of Colchis)—Phasis, Gyenos, and Dioscurias. The final Ionian colonizers arrived at the end of the 6th/beginning of the 5th century B.C.E., establishing new colonies (Mesambria, Kerkinitis, and others) and settling in existing ones. In newly established colonies, Apollo was the major deity, as He was in Miletus.

During  their first 60 to 80 years of existence, the colonies were very simple in terms of architecture and urban planning.  There was virtually no stone architecture; instead there were pit houses. Nor was there regular town planning. The only colony with fortification walls was Histria. A complete change of appearance took place at the end of the 6th/first half of the 5h century. Pit houses gave way to typical Greek stone dwellings. It is possible to identify clearly standard features of Greek urbanization, such as the agora, temenos, acropolis, and craftsmen's quarter, among others. Temples were built in the Ionic and Doric orders. As the result of a change in the local political situation, cities began to construct stone fortification walls. The exception is the region of the eastern Black Sea, where, thanks to natural conditions (wetlands and marshes, for example), temples and fortification walls as well as dwellings were constructed of wood.

Every Greek city became a center of craft production. In Histria and Nymphaeum pottery kilns were found dating from the mid-6th centuryB.C.E..; in Panticapaeum from the end of the century; and in Chersonesus, Gorgippia, Histria, Phanagoria, and Sinope from the 5th to the2nd centuries. They produced such things as terra-cotta figurines, lamps, loom weights, and tableware; in Heraclea, Sinope, and Chersonesus, amphorae were made as well. Through the migration of Sinopean potters, the Greek cities of Colchis began to produce their own amphorae from the second half of the 4th century B.C.E. From the 4th century, tiles and architectural terra-cotta were manufactured in Apollonia Pontica, Chersonesus, Olbia, Tyras, and the Bosporan cities (on the Kerch and Taman Peninsulas). The Bosporan cities and Histria produced simple painted pottery, which imitated the shapes of East Greek and Attic pottery.

Nearly every Greek city has left traces of metalworking. In Panticapaeum, for example, workshops were found in two areas. The workshops, which produced iron, bronze, and lead objects (including weapons), contained numerous moulds, iron ore, and slags in the remains of furnaces. In Phanagoria, pottery and metal workshops were situated at the edge of the city. One produced life-size bronze statues. Metalworking in the Pontic Greek cities was based mainly on the use of ingots specially produced for them, for example, in wooden-steppe Scythia for the northern Black Sea cities. The same situation most probably obtained in the other parts of the Black Sea.

Agriculture was the main economic activity. Greek cities established their agricultural territories, called chorai, almost immediately. Their size varied over time; initially they were small but grew larger with the appearance of new colonists and the expansion of the cities. In the 4th century B.C.E., the chorai of Olbia and Chersonesus and of the cities of the Bosporan Kingdom each covered an area of about 150,000 hectares and contained several hundred settlements. These rural settlements were sources of agricultural produce for the inhabitants of the cities. There were several settlements specializing entirely in craft production. The wonderfully preserved chora of Chersonesus in the Crimea is unique, as is Metapontum in Italy. Chersonesus was situated in the Heraclean Peninsula, approximately 11,000 hectares of which was divided c. 350 B.C.E. into four hundred lots, each with six subdivisions, to make 2,400 small allotments. They were used mainly for viticulture and growing fruit trees. About 4,000 hectares along the north coast were the basis of the earliest allotments. There was a second chora of Chersonesus in the northwestern Crimea, entirely for grain production.

Trade was one of the principal economic activities of Greek cities. The main sources for the study of trade relations are pottery and amphorae. In the 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E., pottery from southern Ionia was common throughout the Pontic region; later it was displaced by pottery from northern Ionia. Goods transported in amphorae came from Chios, Lesbos, and Clazomenae. The small quantities of Corinthian and Naucratite goods probably were brought by Ionian merchants, who also were responsible, with Aeginetans, for the appearance of the first Archaic Athenian pottery in the region. In the Classical period Athenian pottery predominates, as evidence discoverd  from the excavation of the Pontic Greek cities demonstrates. This pottery probably reflects direct links between them and Athens.

Trade between the Pontic Greek cities and the local peoples is an extremely important but complex question. All discussion is based on the finds of Greek pottery made in local settlements, some as far as 500–600 kilometers inland from the Black Sea. Overall, about 10 percent of known and excavated local sites, especially for the Classical period, yield examples, but usually they are few in number (as is the case, for example, in both the Thracian and Colchian hinterlands). At the same time, local elite tombs each provide several examples of Athenian painted pottery. Thus, a simple explanation of the very close trade relationship between Greeks and locals is no longer tenable.

There are other ways in which pottery could have reached local settlements, and the small quantity cannot support the argument that the more examples, the closer and more intense the links. Painted pottery from elite tombs cannot be viewed only from the perspective of trade relationships: it is not known how the locals interpreted the scenes depicted on the painted pottery, which could have been a gift from the Greeks and not traded. Furthermore, the tombs contained jewelry and metal vessels, on which the local elite was much keener, in far greater quantities than pottery.

Over time the composition of imports and exports changed. The best account is found in the Histories of the Greek historian Polybius (book 4):

'As regards necessities, it is an undisputed fact that the most plentiful supplies and best qualities of cattle and slaves reach us from the countries lying around the Pontus, while among luxuries, the same countries furnish us with an abundance of honey, wax and preserved fish; from the surplus of our countries they take olive-oil and every kind of wine. As for grain, there is give and take—with them sometimes supplying us when we require it and sometimes importing it from us.'

From the start, the history of the colonies is inseparable from that of the local population. Many ethnic groups lived around the Black Sea, among whom the most prominent were the Thracians, Getae, Scythians, Tauri, Maeotians, Colchians, Mariandyni, and Chalybes. From the earliest days of the colonies, locals formed part of their population. For the Archaic period not much is known about the relationship between Greeks and local peoples, although it was most probably peaceful until the end of the 6th century/beginning of the 5th century B.C.E. Thereafter, local kingdoms grew up, such as the Thracian (Odrysian), Colchian, and Scythian. Relations between these kingdoms and the Greek colonies were at times peaceful and at others hostile. In about 480 B.C.E. a phenomenon unique for the whole Greek world in the Classical period took place: the Greek cities situated on the Kerch and Taman Peninsulas united, to withstand Scythian pressure, in a single state, known as the Bosporan Kingdom (whose capital was Panticapaeum). The rulers of this state were tyrants. Its final consolidation was completed by the middle of the 4th century B.C.E. In character it was akin to the kingdoms that mushroomed in the Hellenistic period.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/greek-colonies-east

CRIMEA : 2,000 - YEAR- OLD GREEK FORTRESS DISCOVERED BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS

In 2016, researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology, have discovered the ruins of a fortress constructed by  Greeks.Archeologists believe that the rampart was built in the early part of the 3rd century BCE and later, in the 1st century BCE, during the reign of King Asander, it was fortified with watchtowers. These fortifications protected the Bosporan Kingdom and its capital at Panticapaeum (modern-day Kerch) from the nomadic and warlike Scythians, who controlled most of what is today known as Ukraine and southern Russia. The Bosporan Kingdom (Basileion tou Kimmerikou Bosporou) was an ancient Greek state established in eastern Crimea and around the present-day Strait of Kerch.  Panticapaeum was originally founded by Greeks in the 7th century BCE, and it grew to become the third largest city in the Ancient Greek world. Thracian kings took over the prosperous city and region in the middle of the 5th century BCE. 
 The excavated site also matches with the geographical attribute, with the defensive complex being situated near the village of Gornostayevka, located about 10 miles west of the city of Kerch.

 The ancient fortress had a defensive ditch, a gate, structural blocks made of masonry bricks, an ‘economic’ section with bored wells and a preserved ancient tower that overlooked a large part of the settlement. Additionally the archaeologists have also discovered several burials, including the tomb of a female (of presumed high status) buried with objects like a jug and bowl, earrings, beads and a bronze mirror.

As for the Bosporan Kingdom itself, the ancient Greek mercantile state prospered from its noted export of wheat, fish and slaves to mainland Greece. The strategic value of the realm was not lost on the Romans,who offered the client-state status to the kingdom (circa late 1st century CE) even after the subjugation of mainland Greece, thus making it the longest surviving client kingdom of the Romans. On the other hand, the realm also showcased its fascinating brand of cultural synthesis between the Greeks and the Eurasian nomads (Scythians and later Sarmatians), which was often mirrored by exotic artworks, including Bosporan architectural and sculptural specimens.


These excavations began in 2016 near Gornostayevka, as part of preparations for a planned gas pipeline to Crimea from the mainland Russia.

Images Credit: Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology

SOURCES : Realm of History , Russia Beyond