Kumyks

Kumyks

Kumyk: къумукълар, qumuqlar
Abdul-Wahab son of Mustafa — a prominent Kumyk architect of the 19th century pictured wearing a traditional Caucasian papakha and chokha.
Total population
c. 600,000
Regions with significant populations
Russia	565,830[1]
Turkey	10,000[2]
Uzbekistan	1,200[3] (2016)
Ukraine	718[4] (2001)
Kazakhstan	481[5] (2009)
Belarus	360[6] (2009)
Latvia	33[7] (2020)
Languages
Kumyk language
Religion
Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Karachays,[8] Karapapakhs[9]

Kumyks (Kumyk: Къумукълар, romanized: Qumuqlar, Russian: Кумыки) are a Turkic ethnic group living in Dagestan, Chechnya and North Ossetia.^[10][11] They are the largest Turkic people in the North Caucasus.

They traditionally populate the Kumyk plateau (northern Dagestan and north-eastern Chechnya), lands bordering the Caspian Sea, areas in North Ossetia, Chechnya and along the banks of the Terek river. They speak the Kumyk language, which until the 1930s had been the lingua-franca of the Northern Caucasus.

Territories where Kumyks have traditionally lived, and where their historical state entities used to exist, are called Kumykia^[12][13][14] (Kumyk: Къумукъ, Qumuq).^[15] All of the lands populated by Kumyks were once part of the independent Tarki Shamkhalate.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]}