Caucasus

Caucasus (Russian: Kavkaz)1. A mountainous region, also called Caucasia, between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east, it is characterized by the Great and Little Caucasus Mountain Ranges. The area north of the Great Caucasus (Russia) is called the North Caucasus, Ciscaucasia (‘this side of the Caucasus' mountains from the Russians’ point of view). The area to the south (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) is called the Southern Caucasus or Transcaucasia (‘the other side of the Caucasus’). The present Latinized name may be derived from the Greek Kaukasos, which itself may come from the Hittite name for the people living along the southern shores of the Black Sea, the Kazkaz. On the other hand, it is possible that the name comes from an ancient Greek (Pelasgi) word kau ‘mountain’. The Caucasus was disputed between the Ottoman, Persian, and Russian Empires for centuries. By 1878 Russia had gained control, despite stiff local resistance, and after the 1917 Russian Revolution the Soviet Union maintained control until 1991. The term Caucasian is used to describe one of the five great racial divisions of mankind—that which is light‐skinned—as defined by the German anthropologist Johann Blumenbach (1752–1840). This is not to say that all the peoples of Europe belong to a single white race that originated in the Caucasus as proposed by Blumenbach.2. In the time of Alexander III the Great^† the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan was known as the Indian Caucasus to the Greeks. The present town of Chārīkār, north of Kabul, was founded by Alexander in 329 bc as Alexandria‐under‐the‐Caucasus.