Talk:Talyshstan (region)

Merge proposal
Formal request has been received from Smpad to merge Talish (region) and History of Talysh and Talyshstan (region) into Talyshistan with i (Talyshistan) (with removal of the redirect from Talyshstan to Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic). Please discuss the proposal here.

Proposer's rationale: Talyshistan = Talysh, that is the land of Talysh people. Everything is simple. Felix QW (talk) 14:59, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose Talish/Talysh/Talesh for the name of the historical region is much more WP:COMMON NAME than "Talyshistan/Talyshstan". However, I would support that History of Talysh and Talyshstan (region) get redirected to Talish (region). --HistoryofIran (talk) 15:06, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment: While the name of the merger target has been opposed, there remains the actual merger proposal of the three pages into one. Felix QW (talk) 08:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Felix QW, everything is simple. Encyclopædia Iranica (TĀLEŠ DISTRICT — article is about Ṭāleš district in Islamic Republic of Iran, but it also describes the whole country of the Talysh people): "The Tāleš region altogether stretches north from the Safidrud, which cuts through the western Alborz mountains in western Gilān, to the the Araxes-Kura plain in the south of the Republic of Azerbaijan; there it includes the districts of Āstārā, Lenkarān, Lerik, Yardymly, Masally, and Jelilābād, with the exception of the small subdistrict of ʿAnbarān locatedon the western side of the mountain chain in the province of Ardabil. The region is inhabited by an ethnic group speaking tāleši, one of the northwestern Iranian languages. The present author took the use of a single term, Tāleš, to designate both a geographical entity (toponym) and an ethnic group (ethnonym) as a starting point of his study of this area, focusing on the links between ethnic identities and regional geography, a rather rare feature in the Iranian world. A comprehensive article on Tāleš as a whole, describing its general characteristics and including the northern part, will be published online..." Well, as we can see, Talysh and Talyshistan are equivalent. I would like to ask the colleague HistoryofIran to clarify in which sources the term Talysh is more common than Talyshistan: in Azeri-Turkic/Iranian or in sources independent of Republic of Azerbaijan and Islamic Republic of Iran? With respect, colleagues. Smpad (talk) 15:44, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * To resolve the issue, it is very important to separate sources affiliated with the Republic of Azerbaijan and Soviet Union (and to a lesser extent, with the Islamic Republic of Iran) from other sources, and decide which term is more prevalent in the latter. Smpad (talk) 15:47, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Smpbad. I’m referring to WP:RS written in English. Respectfully, the spelling in Persian and Azeri is irrelevant, as this is the English Wiki. HistoryofIran (talk) 16:10, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Smpad is a western form of Smbat :) Yes, HistoryofIran, sources written in English. But such sources could be produced by Azerbaijani-affiliated authors or authors that take a strong pro-Azerbaijani stance. Such examples should not be taken into account. And Talyshistan is the name that is usually taken by Talyshes themselves and Talysh authors writing in English. With respect, Smpad (talk) 16:25, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You mean sources to do with this ? I'm not basing it off revisionist studies, but WP:RS. Please see the recent Talysh people that I expanded, Talish/Talesh/Talysh is not only the common name, but also it's original name. Many of the cited authors in that article (Shahvar, Asatrian, Arakelova, Stilo, etc) all use that spelling. In JSTOR for example, it gives 388 results for "Talish" (though admittedly "Talish" is not only used for the region but also the language and people), while "Talyshistan" gives 2 results . --HistoryofIran (talk) 18:07, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * HistoryofIran, I want to thank you for your contribution to the article about the Talysh people. Now for your objections:

«...but also it's original name» — the originality of the name has little weight :) The original name of Iranian Azerbaijan is Atropatene, but this name does not appear even in the first preamble paragraph of the article «In JSTOR for example, it gives 388 results for "Talish" (though admittedly "Talish" is not only used for the region but also the language and people)» — and yes, that's a big problem, because it denotes not only Talyshistan proper, but the people, the language, the surname Talish (e.g. Shihabuddin Talish), the byname (Abdal Beg Talish, Khadem Beg Talish...), an adjective (Talish khans etc), villages with the name Talish in Azrbaijan (one of which became popular due to the Karabakh war) unrelated with the Talysh people, Talish Mountains, Talish district of Iran and so on and so forth. Some of the articles with "Talish" in JSTOR are not in English at all, but in French. A significant part of the references to «Talish» are simply title mentions, for example, the title of the work Talish and the Talishis (The State of Research). Such a polysemy, of course, gives so many results :) But how practical is it? Talyshistan, in turn, refers only to the region, and nothing else. Bournoutian considers the use of the word legitimate:"The above refers to the northwestern Iranian language spoken in the Talysh region of the Azerbaijan Republic, known currently as Talyshistan." But even if Talish is indeed more common (which is in doubt, because also Talysh and Talesh, etc. are just as widely used) than Talyshistan, this is due to one of the most terrible acts of ethnic squelch in the recent history of Eurasia. I have long wanted to write a full-fledged article about the forced Turkification of Azerbaijan (which began under Bağırov and continues today under the Aliyevs) in a Russian or Ukrainian Wiki, and then translated into other languages, but so far I haven't had time for this, although there are enough good sources. In the USSR, Russification hit hard only on Ukraine and Belarus, while minorities in other republics suffered so much not from Russification, but from the forcible imposition of the culture and language of the people after whom a particular republic was named. For example, Christa Goff's book excellently describes state assimilation practices in the Transcaucasus with a focus on Azerbaijan. The main milestones were as follows: the elimination of korenizatsiia, the official renaming of "Azerbaijani Turks" into "Azerbaijanis" (to make them and their language the most important in Azerbaijan, purely eponymously), the purge of established historians who particularly emphasized Turkic migration in the formation of Azerbaijanis, repression of intelligentsias of indigenous peoples, liquidation of some autonomies (for example, Azerbaijani Kurdistan), deportation of some non-Turkic peoples, the creation of revisionist narratives and an official theory of the ethnogenesis of Azerbaijanis (which removes the focus from the Turkic migration to the assimilated peoples of Azerbaijan, arguing that the Azerbaijanis (that is, the Azeri Turks) are indigenous to Azerbaijan, because they were formed before the migration of the Turks, and then simply switched to their language (this made it possible for Azeri historiography to retrospectively Azerbaijanize everyone who has ever lived on the territory of Azerbaijan)), conversion of schools with native language into Azerbaijani (Turkic) and of course, unlimited falsification of censuses. These measures made the Azerbaijanis the fastest growing people in the USSR, whose growth was 2.5 times higher than the average for the state, which was largely achieved by recording indigenous peoples as Azerbaijanis on the basis of their knowledge of the Azerbaijani language, which was the only language they were taught at school along with history based on the official theory of ethnogenesis (which told them that they are in fact Azeri Turks). Talysh people have been the people most suppressed by the Azerbaijani authorities since the introduction of the policy of Turkization. They were silenced after the repression of their cultural leaders. Then the unprecedented began: the creation by the state apparatus of an official narrative about the "complete assimilation of the Talysh into Azerbaijanis without a trace". First, a massive underestimation of their number to only 85 (not 85 thousand people, but 85 people). Goff, Nested Nationalism, p. 136:"Indeed, nationality erasure through census reclassification was one of the main ways that titular majorities increased in Soviet republics. According to the 1939 census, Talyshes comprised the fifth largest national community in Azerbaijan—after Azeris, Russians, Armenians, and Lezgins—and were the largest minority lacking co-ethnic ties to a titular or principal (in the case of Lezgins in Dagestan) population of a neighboring republic. Between the 1939 and 1959 censuses, however, the documented Talysh population declined from 87,510 to 85. The official explanation was that the Talysh nationality category was eliminated from the Azerbaijani census in 1959 because Talyshes voluntarily and en masse self-identified as Azeri to census workers. Yet some Moscow ethnographers and cartographers argued that Azerbaijani census authorities artificially assimilated Talyshes to “portray their region as more ethnically homogeneous and their natsiia or narodnostʹ more consolidated” than it was in reality. Indeed, as I discuss in chapter 4, the documentary record clearly shows that the Central Statistical Administration in Moscow planned to include the Talysh nationality category in the 1959 census, but it was eliminated through the process of census collection and reporting in Azerbaijan." Subsequently, they completely disappeared from the censuses. They wrote letters to Moscow about the censuses, but received from there "such a people does not exist, it has long been assimilated, read the works of ethnographers." Therefore, they were completely deprived of the support of their identity, and the Azerbaijani authorities tried to hush up their presence and identity as much as possible. This created "dark ages" for the Talysh for decades. The most forgotten people of the USSR, which officially "does not exist." A large people about whom incredibly little has been written, because the production of information about them was not encouraged. For more, see Krista A. Goff Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Caucasus (especially the part The Discursive Erasure of Talyshes). Also there is a good article Ethnography, Demography and Assimilation – How Talysh Community was Made to Disappear in Soviet Azerbaijan, but unfortunately it is only in Bulgarian. Returning to toponyms. The perceived high prevalence of the term Talish, and not Talyshistan, is not provoked by some conscious consensus in the academic environment, but by gatekeeping of an incredible scale. Most of the Talysh live in Azerbaijan, not in Iran. But to this day, the Talysh in Azerbaijan are suppressed more severely than the Kurds in Turkey. They are completely devoid of any means of self-expression and self-declaration. Data about them continues to be falsified. The use of the term Talyshistan in Azerbaijan is very dangerous, because the authorities are afraid of something similar to the story of the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic. And the Talysh are too intimidated. From my own experience, I can say that when I privately ask the Talysh themselves, they prefer Talyshistan. And since an article with the name Talyshstan existed, then there are enough reliable sources for the name with -stan, indicating purely the territory. From Введение в историю и культуру талышского народа by Garnik Asatrian: "(p. 13) Страна талышей, называемая Талыш или Талышистан, занимает крайний юго-западный угол Каспийского моря и делится на две части: северную, входящую в состав Азербайджанской Республики, и южную, составляющую северные районы провинции Гилан в Исламской Республике Иран. (p. 20) Талыш (или по талышски — Толыш), который мы иногда называем и Талышистан (во избежание омонимии с названием самого этноса, талыш) — по распространенной модели образования названий территорий и стран с суффиксом -стан — обладает стройной топонимической системой, в основном иранской по природе. (p. 24) К сожалению, источниковедческая база для изучения топонимической системы северного Талышистана, в отличие от южного (иранского), весьма скудна. (p. 27) Согласно данным Управления финансов провинции Гилан, в 1997 году количество талышей в южном Талышистане составляло 325 340 чел., которые проживали в 7 городах и 576 деревнях. Однако, как и в случае с северным Талышистаном, официальная цифра весьма далека от истины. (p. 91) Южный Талышистан по отраслям продукции делится на одиннадцать поясов — Асалем, Карганруд, Астара, Вилкич, Зуванд, Чай Ичи Ланкаран, Дариг, Алуф, Даштеванд, Уджаруд и Муган."So, when writing in Russian, Asatrian uses Talyshistan very often. It's a secret for me why he doesn't do this in his works in English :) but at least the term Talyshistan is not marginal for such an authoritative author, albeit not in English spelling. Sincerely. Smpad (talk) 23:52, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but please see WP:TLDR, this is too much. We're here to discuss the name in English academia, not in other languages and especially not the political history of the Talysh people. What the Talyshis prefer is irrelevant, the WP:COMMON NAME is "Talish/Talesh/Talysh", it's not even close. Moreover, Bournoutian also uses the term "Talesh", as seen in his latest and arguably greatest work, From the Kur to the Aras. Even if "Talish/Talesh/Talysh" refers to a load of other things and even comes in other languages, it still has a lot more results than "Talyshistan" (which barely has any results), as can be quickly skimmed throughout the articles that come up. Not only in JSTOR, but also other academic sites;


 * Brill: Talyshistan 5 results
 * Brill: Talish 83 results
 * Brill: Talesh 75 results
 * Brill: Talysh 105 results --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:22, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * HistoryofIran, I personally think that we cannot simply rely on large numbers in this case. Take for example the Talysh branch results, how many of results refer to the land:
 * 1 The Talishis on Opposite Banks of the Araxes River: Identity Issues, Author: Victoria Arakelova: Since 1813, northern Talysh has successively been ruled by...'' — Okay.
 * 2 The Survival of an Ancient Term in Talishi, Author: Garnik Asatrian: ...historically known as Talysh or Talyshistan. — 50/50
 * 3 Notes on Language Affinity and Imagined Kinships, Author: Victoria Arakelova: It focuses on several illustrative examples, particularly the case of the Talysh-Zaza rapprochement, which has been developed recently as... — not about the land.
 * 4 Thirty years later, five Iranian larvae were found in Talysh Mountains... — not about the land.
 * 5 northern areas of the Talyshi zone, fanning somewhat southwards, and meshed with the local Talysh populations, affecting... — not about the land.
 * 6 ...as well as first-hand accounts of titular minority experiences from Azerbaijan’s Talysh, Lezgi, and Georgian-Ingiloi communities — not about the land.
 * 7 ...the Turkish-speaking Azeris, as well as Persian-speaking Kurds, Tats, Talysh, etc., were the overwhelming majority of the — not about the land.
 * 8 ...role that scholars, in particular ethnographers, played in the erasure of the Talysh national category — not about the land.
 * 9 The Talysh khanate was incorporated in 1809. The Treaty of Gulistan, signed in 1813, legally confi rmed the status quo. In this treaty Iran abandoned its claims to the Karabakh, Gandzha, Shirvan, Sheki, Baku, Derbent, Kuba, Talysh khanates as well — not about the land.
 * 10 Some readers might hesitate about the identity of the "khanate of Lankuran" (mentioned on p. 20 in connection with the Treaty of Gulistan) with Talysh (referred to on p. 21 in connection with the Treaty of Turkmanchay) — not about the land (but about an identity of Lankuran and Talysh khanates). So, of the first ten results, only two refer to territory, with one also using Talyshistan. My point is that you can't bombard Talyshistan with hundreds of Talysh results because it's just a mirage :) With respect, colleague. Smpad (talk) 00:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * HistoryofIran, btw Bournoutian prefers the term Talesh in his latest work, because... he writes about the time of the khanates :) not the current times. His own words: The above refers to the northwestern Iranian language spoken in the Talysh region of the Azerbaijan Republic, known currently as Talyshistan. Currently. Not in the past :) With respect. Smpad (talk) 00:51, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but this looks like cherrypicking to me, there were loads of sources mentioning it as a region, but you coincidentally chose the ones that weren't? Also, "Talish" is used in current times as well, so no, Bournoutian wasn't using it as a past thing. I don't think we're going anywhere like this. Ultimately we to have follow the rules of this site, that is WP:COMMON NAME, something which Talyshistan clearly isn't. I don't really care about what the Talyshis prefer, or what the Azerbaijani regime dislikes, only what WP:RS says (this is also mentioned in WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS). --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * HistoryofIran, well, in that case... I don't have any strong argument. Perhaps I'll agree with you. I will just wait until the name Talyshistan begins to prevail :) (and it will, because it is more convenient). Perhaps this topic can be closed. Can you call the administrator to give a resume of the discussion? Or how does it work in the English wiki? :) Regards. Smpad (talk) 01:05, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * If “Talyshistan” becomes dominant in WP:RS, I will be the first one to support you. HistoryofIran (talk) 01:09, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * HistoryofIran, btw I also want to discuss some more things, if we're already here. For example, why can't the Talysh language come first in brackets in the preamble in the article? And if we mix all the articles into Talish (region), can the "fatified" spelling Talyshistan be presented in the preamble? Respectfully. Smpad (talk) 01:21, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I never paid attention to it, but yes the Talysh spelling should deffo come first. And do you mean "falsified"? I have nothing against the spelling "Talyshistan" and I don't consider it inaccurate/wrong - I have no problem in mentioning it as a variant in the Talish (region) article. --HistoryofIran (talk) 01:33, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * HistoryofIran, no, I wrote fatified, like fat, to fatify (to make fat) :) To make the word look this way — Talyshistan, using ''' . Sincerely. Smpad (talk) 01:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I see. Variant names are usually fatified/written in bold in the lede, so I deffo think it should. --HistoryofIran (talk) 01:44, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose per HistoryofIran. Benyamin (talk) 18:55, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify: In his earlier post, HistoryofIran actually expressed that he is in favour of only retaining a single article, opposing only to the name suggested by proposer. Does your opposition also extend to merging the three pages? Felix QW (talk) 19:14, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Felix QW Talyshistan is not covered by mainstream academic sources. The name of the region is Tālīsh which translated as Talysh in Russian sources. George Bournoutian had explained the matter. Thus, I suppose merging the three pages into Talish (region). Benyamin (talk) 18:38, 24 May 2023 (UTC)


 * HistoryofIran, I also wonder what to do with this article — Talish-i Gushtasbi :) Smpad (talk) 22:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure. --HistoryofIran (talk) 22:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)