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Talysh

A group of Iranian Talysh at their home, the end of the 19th century
Regions with significant populations
Azerbaijan: 110,934 (2009 official census)  Iran: 430,000  Russia: 2,548  Ukraine: 133  Estonia: 6
Languages
Talysh, Azerbaijani, Gilaki, Persian, Russian
Religion
Islam (Shi'a and Sunni and Zartosht) (sources disagree as to the specific makeup)
Related ethnic groups
Iranian peoples, Caucasian peoples

Talysh (also Talishi, Taleshi or Talyshi) are an Iranian ethnic group indigenous to a region shared between Azerbaijan and Iran which spans the South Caucasus and the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea. They speak the Talysh language, one of the Northwestern Iranian languages. It is spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Northern Talysh (the part in the Republic of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Talish-i Gushtasbi. In Iran there is a Talesh County in Gilan. Anthropologically they belong to the Balkan-Caucasian type of the European race.

Origins

The Talishis generally identify themselves with the ancient Cadusians, who inhabited the area to the southwest of Caspian Sea, bounded on the north by Kura River, including modern provinces of Ardabil and Zanjan. The name Talishi may be etymologically related to Cadusi, which has influenced the name of the Caspian and Caucasus.

Language

Talysh has two major mutually intelligible dialects – Northern (in Azerbaijan and Iran), and Southern (in Iran). Azerbaijani is used as the literary language in Azerbaijan and Farsi in Iran.

Genetics

With regards to their NRY-Y-DNA haplogroups, the Talysh show salient Near-Eastern affinities, with haplogroup J2, associated with the advent and diffusion of agriculture in the neolithic Near East, found in over 1/4 of the sample. Another patriline, haplogroup R1, is also seen to range from 1/4 to up to 1/2, while R1a1, a marker associated with Indo-Iranian peoples of Central/South Eurasia, only reaches to under 5%, along with haplogroup G.

Location

Talysh people in Iran
Mazanderani Persian Kurd Kurd Gilaki Lur Balochi Azerbaijani Turkmen Qashqai Uninhabited Arab Arab Talysh

There are no statistical data on the numbers of Talysh-speakers in Iran, but estimates show their number to be around 1 million. Talysh nationalists claim that the number of Talysh in Azerbaijan is around 835,000, which is a highly exaggerated estimation. The number of Talysh speakers in 2003 was estimated by some other authors to be around 400,000 in the Republic of Azerbaijan. However, the 1999 census of the Republic of Azerbaijan revealed the real number of Talysh people in the Republic of Azerbaijan, which was 76,800. According to the most recent census, which was held in 2009, the number of ethnic Talyshs in Azerbaijan is precisely 110,934 members. There is a general consensus among the prominent political scientists that all other numbers referred to by nationalists constitute nothing less than groundless speculation.

Demographics

According to a 1926 census, there were 77,039 Talysh in Azerbaijan SSR. From 1959 to 1989, the Talysh were not included as a separate ethnic group in any census, but rather they were included as part of the Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis, although the Talysh speak an Iranian language. In 1999, the Azerbaijani government claimed there were only 76,800 Talysh in Azerbaijan, but this is believed to be an under-representation given the problems with registering as a Talysh. Some claim that the population of the Talysh inhabiting the southern regions of Azerbaijan is 500,000. Talysh nationalists have always asserted that the number of Talysh in Azerbaijan is substantially higher than the official statistics.

Obtaining accurate statistics is difficult, due to the unavailability of reliable sources, intermarriage, and the decline of the Talysh language. and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have voiced their concerns about the arrest of Novruzali Mamedov, Chairman of the Talysh Cultural Centre and editor-in-chief of the Tolyshi Sado newspaper.

According to a U.S. government interview with Khilal Mamedov, a Talysh rights activist, Mr. Mamedov: “Accused the Azerbaijani leadership of Turkic nationalism and of seeking to suppress non-Turkic minorities…. He said the Azerbaijani leadership seeks to minimize contacts between the Talysh communities in Azerbaijan and Iran and to run Azerbaijan into a monoethnic state.”

During modern history

USSR era

In the early Soviet period, there were Talysh high schools, a newspaper called "Red Talysh", and several Talysh language books published, but by end of the 1930s these schools were closed and the Talysh identity was not acknowledged in official statistics, with the Talysh being classified as "Azerbaijani".

According to Russian historian and ethnologist Victor Schnirelmann,

Simultaneously ethnic minorities suffered persecutions in Azerbaijan. After Soviet power was established, the Iranian speaking Talyshes, who lived in southeast Azerbaijan dreamt of the restoration of the Talysh Mugan republic declared in the summer of 1919 and brutally ruined by Ottoman Troops. In 1936–38, Talysh nationalists were exiled to Siberia, and Talysh schools were closed. Broadcasting in Talysh was abolished, and the Talyshes were deprived of their mass media in general. Since that time, the Talyshes have been pressed to identify themselves with the Azeris.

Victor Schnirelmann's personal account is based on his general bias towards Azerbaijan, which can be noticed in all his publications about Azerbaijan. Most of the Talyshs would disagree with his notion of "persecution".

From 1991 to present

Historical repression of identity and the inability to practice their culture and language has led the Talysh to an internalized self repression. This makes it hard to gauge support for any type of Talysh movement. According to Hema Kotecha, many Talysh fear being associated with the separatist Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic, with Russia, or with Armenia if they acknowledge or attempt to talk about their beliefs in the public sphere. For instance, a school in Lerik wanted to invite a poet from Lenkoran to a party in his honor and to speak to children; the headmaster was told that he would be dismissed if the event went ahead. The fear of the police is another factor to this silence, although support for a secular democracy and shared Azerbaijani-Talysh feelings towards Nagorno-Karabakh contribute as well. The Talesh population is declining; the language is on its way to extinction within 25–35 years, as its very often not passed on to children. Young Talesh people prefer to use Persian or Azerbaijani inside their own communities, and this choice is done voluntarily, without any pressure from Baku.

As of 2008, Ismail Shabanov was the president of the Talysh diaspora of Russia.

The National Talysh Movement (NTM)

This one-man movement was founded in the Netherlands in 2007 by the self-appointed Talysh "leader in exile" Alakram Humbatov. NTM declared its goal to proclaim an independent Talyshistan and secede from Azerbaijan. Most of the Talysh people refuse to support a movement with such utopia goals.

See also

• Talysh Khanate
• Iranian peoples
• Demographics of Azerbaijan

References

1. The State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan Republic. 2009
2. Looklex Encyclopaedia — Talysh
3. Население по национальности по субъектам Российской Федерации - 2002 г. (XLS). Проверено 4 мая 2009.
4. Ukrayna Respublikası Statistika Komitəsi : 5-14 dekabr 2001 - ci il siyahıya alması
5. PC225: Population By Ethnic Nationality, Mother Tongue and Citizenship, Estonia Statistics database.
6. Clifton/Deckinga/Lucht/Tiessen (2005), "Sociolinguistic Situation of the Talysh in Azerbaijan". SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2005. p. 5
7. UNPO - Talysh
8. The Unreached Peoples Prayer Profiles
9. Dunlop, John B. "What I Saw", Hoover Digest, 30 July 1999.
10. "Jamie Stokes,"Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, Volume 1",Infobase Publishing, 2009. pp 682: "The Talysh are an Iranian people, most of whom now live in the Republic of Azerbaijan, on the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea, "
11. M. Wesley Shoemaker, "Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States 2008", Stryker-Post Publications, 2008. pp 141: "Here the Talysh, an Iranian people, live in their mountainous villages and support themselves by weaving rugs and carpets by hand in the traditional way."
12. James Stothert Gregory, "Russian land, Soviet people: a geographical approach to the U.S.S.R.", Pegasus, 1968. pp 161: "Smaller Iranian groups are the Talysh and Kurds of Transcaucasia"
13. Michael P. Croissant, "The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict: causes and implications", Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998. pp 67: "Talysh, an Iranian people whose language belongs to the northwest Iranian language group"
14. Charles Dowsett, "Sayatʻ-Nova: an 18th-century troubadour : a biographical and literary study", Peeters Publishers, 1997. pp 174: "Talish is the name of an Iranian people in Gilan"
15. Garnik Asatrian & Habib Borjian (2005.). Talish and the Talashis (State of Research). Iran & the Caucasus, 9 (1), pp. 43–72 pp 46: "Despite the fact that the Talishis, both in Iran and in the north, have explicit Iranian identity, the situation with the Talishis in Azerbaijan Republic, living as an enclave within the predominantly Turkic environment, has inspired the southern intellectual milieu as well." pp 47: "The structures of both ethnonyms, Καδούσ- (Cadus-) and Tāliš, are similar: ... Despite the obvious speculative character of the above etymology, still the Καδούσ-/Tāliš identification must not be discarded from the agenda of the ethnic history of the region, at least as a working hypothesis."
16. Народы мира : энциклопедия. Olma Media Group. 2007. p. 201. ISBN 978-5-373-01057-3.
17. ^ Nasidze I, Quinque D, et al. (2009). "mtDNA and Y-chromosome variation in the Talysh of Iran and Azerbaijan". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138 (1): 82–9
18. ^ Disputed number of Talysh in Azerbaijan
19. ^ Minahan, James. Reasons for the dispute around the number of Talysh in Azerbaijan: One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups, Greenwood, 2000, ISBN 0-313-30984-1, ISBN 978-0-313-30984-7, p.674.
20. Tiessen, Calvin F. "Positive Orientation Towards the Vernacular Among the Talysh of Sumgayit", Graduate Thesis, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, 2003.
21. Umudlu, I. "Azerbaijan has preserved its `unique country' image because of the population's ethnic composition", Ayna (Azerbaijani newspaper), 16 March 2001. Translated and posted online by Justin Burke at Azerbaijan Daily Digest, Eurasianet.org, 23 March 2001.
22. ^ Kotecha, Hema. “Islamic and Ethnic Identities in Azerbaijan: Emerging Trends and Tensions”, OSCE Report, Baku, July 2006.
23. "Allegation of Minority Rights Violations in Azerbaijan". Wash. profile. Retrieved 2007-12-29.
24. "Talysh: Editor Arrested". http://www.unpo.org/. UNPO. Retrieved 2007-12-29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
25. "Azerbaijani Authorities Accused of Discriminating Against Ethnic Minorities". HRI. Hellenic Resources Network. 7 July 2011. Retrieved 2007-12-29.
26. "Azerbaijani authorities accused of discriminating against ethnic minorities", Newsline, RFE/RL, February 20, 2007.
27. Shnirelmann, V.A. (2001), The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia, Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.

v t e Ethnic groups in the Caucasus
Caucasian (areal)	Kartvelian Georgians Adjarians Dvals Gurians Imerkhevians Ingiloys Javakhians Kakhetians Meskhetians Colchians/Zans Lazs Mingrelians Svans Northeast (Caspian) Avar–Andic Andis Akhvakhs Avars Bagvalals Botlikhs Chamalals Godoberis Karatas Tindis Lezgic Aguls Archin Budukhs Jeks Kryts Lezgins Rutuls Tabasarans Tsakhurs Udis Nakh Bats Chechens Kists Aukhs Ingush Tsezic (Didoic) Bezhtas Hinukhs Hunzibs Khwarshis Tsez Others Dargins (Kaitags) Khinalugs Laks Northwest (Pontic) Abazins Abkhazians Sadz Circassians Abzakhs Adygeans Besleneys Bzhedugs Chemirgoys Cherkess Kabardians Natukhajs Shapsugs Ubykhs
Indo- European	Armenian Armenians Armeno-Tats Cherkesogai Zoks Lom Hellenic Caucasus Greeks Urums Pontic Greeks Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Loms Roma Iranian Ossetians Digors Irons Kudar Trialeti Ossetians Talysh Tats Yazidis Slavic Poles in Armenia in Azerbaijan Russians Cossacks Doukhobors Molokans Ukrainians Others Germans
Turkic	Kipchaks Balkars Karachays Kumyks Nogais Oghuz Turks Azerbaijanis Ayrums Karadaghis Shahsevan Bayats Karapapakhs Küresünni Meskhetian Turks
Others	Assyrians in Armenia in Georgia Jews Abkhaz Jews Armenian Jews Azerbaijani Jews Georgian Jews Mountain Jews Kalmyks
Ethnic minorities in Armenia Ethnic minorities in Azerbaijan Ethnic minorities in Georgia Ethnic minorities in Russia

v t e Members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
Africa	Afrikaners Barotseland Bellah people Biafra Haratin Kabylia Ogaden Ogoni Oromo Rehoboth Basters Somaliland Western Togoland Yoruba Zambesia
Asia	Aceh Assyria Balochistan Chittagong Hill Tracts East Turkestan Gilgit Baltistan Hmong Iranian Kurdistan Khmer Krom Khuzestani Madhesh Nagalim Southern Azerbaijan South Moluccas Southern Mongolia Sindh Sulu Taiwan Tibet West Balochistan
Europe	Abkhazia Brittany Catalonia Crimean Tatars Lezghin Savoy
North America	District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.)
Oceania	Guam West Papuans

• Talysh people
• Iranians in Caucasus
• Peoples of the Caucasus