Kumyks

Kumyks or Kumyk people (Kumyk: Къумукълар, romanized: Qumuqlar, Russian: Кумыки) are a Turkic ethnic group living in Dagestan, Chechnya and North Ossetia. They are the largest Turkic people in the North Caucasus. They traditionally populate the Kumyk Plateau (northern Dagestan and northeastern 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 (Kumyk: Къумукъ, Qumuq). All of the lands populated by Kumyks were once part of the independent Tarki Shamkhalate.