Kyrgyzstan (pronounced /ˈkɜrɡɪstæn/; KUR-gi-stan; Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан, IPA: [qɯrʁɯzstɑ́n]; Russian: Кыргызстан [kˠirɡˠisˈtan]), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east.
The ethnonym "Kyrgyz", after which the country is named, is thought to originally mean either "forty girls" or "for...
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Kyrgyzstan (pronounced /ˈkɜrɡɪstæn/; KUR-gi-stan; Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан, IPA: [qɯrʁɯzstɑ́n]; Russian: Кыргызстан [kˠirɡˠisˈtan]), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east.
The ethnonym "Kyrgyz", after which the country is named, is thought to originally mean either "forty girls" or "forty tribes", presumably referring to the epic hero Manas who, as legend has it, unified forty tribes against the Khitans. The 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan symbolizes the forty tribes of Manas.
The Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khanate in 840 A.D. Then Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years.
In the twelfth century, however, the Kyrgyz domination had shrunk to the Altay Range and Sayan Mountains as a result of the...
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