Currently viewing the category: "History"

Mong – Tatars National Unity Through Song

On March 26, 2015 · Leave a Comment

The Cruise

On board a Turkish cultural cruise I took in July 2000 I met the much-loved Tatar singer Färidä Kudasheva, a small woman with a benevolent gaze, auburn hair, and the high cheekbones and round cheeks typical of Eurasian Turks. One evening after dinner Färidä apa – Auntie Farida, as she preferred […]

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Camels!

On December 18, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Spurred by a conversation with a Kazakh architect here in Almaty who told me of the camel herd her great grandmother’s “white bone” – or aristocrat – family kept before the Bolsheviks took over in the 1920s, I started reading about camels online. I discovered, much to my surprise, that dromedaries and bactrians – one […]

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The Silk Road

On July 14, 2008 · Leave a Comment

During the Middle Ages, the Silk Road was an unparalleled cultural formation. Most famous in the west as the route Marco Polo took on his journey to the eastern most reaches of the earth, the Silk Road stretched from Italy to Japan and passed through Turkey, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, […]

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