Transcaucasia in the context of "Swabian German"

The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain range at the intersection of Asia and Europe. Stretching between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, they are surrounded by the Caucasus region and are home to Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft) above sea level.

The Caucasus Mountains include the Greater Caucasus in the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south. The Greater Caucasus runs west-northwest to east-southeast, from the Western Caucasus on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea to close to Baku on the Caspian Sea, in Azerbaijan. The Lesser Caucasus runs parallel to the Greater about 100 km (62 mi) south. The Greater and Lesser Caucasus ranges are connected by the Likhi Range, and to the west and east of the Likhi Range lie the Colchis Plain and the Kur-Araz Lowland respectively. The Meskheti Range is a part of the Lesser Caucasus system. In the southeast, the Aras River separates the Lesser Caucasus from the Talysh Mountains which runs through the Greater Azerbaijan region. The Lesser Caucasus and the Armenian Highland constitute the Transcaucasian Highland, which at their western end converges with the highland plateau of Eastern Anatolia. The Caucasus Mountains were part of the Silk Road.

The Battle of Köse Dağ took place in eastern Anatolia on 26 June 1243 when an army of the Sultanate of Rum, led by Sultan Kaykhusraw II, confronted an invading Mongol army under the general Baiju and was decisively defeated. The battle was the pivotal event of the Mongol conquest of Anatolia: Rum, previously a significant independent power in the eastern Mediterranean, was reduced to the status of a client kingdom, and its territories were later absorbed into the Mongol Ilkhanate.

The Mongol Empire first achieved territorial contact with Rum in the early 1230s by conquering a large swathe of western Iran, but largely left it alone over the next decade. Instead, under their general Chormaqan, Mongol armies subjugated Transcaucasia and reduced the Kingdom of Georgia to a vassal state. Relations deteriorated after the accession of Kaykhusraw II to the Rum throne in 1237, and Mongol raids on Rum territory began in 1240. Two years later, Baiju, who had replaced Chormaqan after the latter became disabled, captured and pillaged the city of Erzurum, escalating hostilities into open war. He again invaded Rum in 1243, with an army of 30,000 Mongol troops accompanied by Georgian and Armenian auxiliaries.

The Caucasus Greeks (Greek: Έλληνες του Καυκάσου or more commonly Καυκάσιοι Έλληνες, Turkish: Kafkas Rum), also known as the Greeks of Transcaucasia and Russian Asia Minor, are the ethnic Greeks of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia in what is now southwestern Russia, Georgia, and northeastern Turkey. These specifically include the Pontic Greeks, though they today span a much wider region including the Russian north Caucasus, and the former Russian Caucasus provinces of the Batum Oblast and the Kars Oblast (the so-called Russian Asia Minor), now in north-eastern Turkey and Adjara in Georgia.

Greek people migrated into these areas well before the Christian/Byzantine era. Traders, Christian Orthodox scholars/clerics, refugees, mercenaries, and those who had backed the wrong side in the many civil wars and periods of political in-fighting in the Classical/Hellenistic and Late Roman/Byzantine periods, were especially represented among those who migrated. One notable example is the 7th-century Greek Bishop Cyrus of Alexandria, originally from Phasis in present-day Georgia. Greek settlers in the Caucasus generally became assimilated into the indigenous population, particularly in Georgia, where Byzantine Greeks shared a common Christian Orthodox faith and heritage with the natives.

Heraclius II, also known as Erekle II (Georgian: ერეკლე II) and The Little Kakhetian (Georgian: პატარა კახი [pʼatʼaɾa kʼaχi]; 7 November 1720 or 7 October 1721 [according to C. Toumanoff] – 11 January 1798), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti from 1762 until his death in 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan (ارکلی خان), while Russians knew him as Irakly (Ираклий). Heraclius is the Latinized form of his name.

From being granted the kingship of Kakheti by his overlord Nader Shah in 1744 as a reward for his loyalty, to becoming the penultimate king of the united kingdoms of Kakheti and Kartli in eastern Georgia, his reign is regarded as the swan song of the Georgian monarchy. Aided by his personal abilities and the unrest in Iran following Nader Shah's death, Heraclius established himself as a de facto autonomous ruler, unified eastern Georgia politically for the first time in three centuries, and attempted to modernize the government, economy, and military. Overwhelmed by the internal and external menaces to Georgia's precarious independence and its temporary hegemony in eastern Transcaucasia, he placed his kingdom under the formal Russian protection in 1783, but the move did not prevent Georgia from being devastated by the Persian invasion in 1795. Heraclius died in 1798, leaving the throne to his moribund heir, George XII.

The Russo-Persian Wars (Russian: Русско-персидские войны Rússko-Persídskije Vóiny), or the Russo-Iranian Wars (Persian: جنگ‌های ایران و روسیه Janghâ-ye Irân va Russīye), began in 1651 and continued intermittently until 1828. They consisted of five conflicts in total, each rooted in both sides' disputed governance of territories and countries in the Caucasus, particularly Arran (modern-day Azerbaijan), Georgia, and Armenia, as well as much of Dagestan. Generally referred to as Transcaucasia, this region was considered to be part of Persia prior to the 17th century. Between the War of 1722–1723 and the War of 1796, there was an interbellum period in which a number of treaties were drawn up between the two nations themselves and between them and the neighbouring Ottoman Empire; Turkish interest in the Caucasian territories further complicated the Russo-Persian Wars, as the two belligerents started forming alliances with the Ottoman Empire at different points of the conflict. Finally, as a consequence of the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Persians ceded much of their Transcaucasian holdings to Russia, thus concluding the War of 1826–1828 and resolving their dispute.

Iranian mythology, or Persian mythology in western term (Persian: اسطوره‌شناسی ایرانی), is the body of the myths originally told by ancient Persians and other Iranian peoples and a genre of ancient Persian folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures, and the origins and significance of the ancient Persians' own cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Persosphere, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence. Historically, these were regions long ruled by dynasties of various Iranian empires, that incorporated considerable aspects of Persian culture through extensive contact with them, or where sufficient Iranian peoples settled to still maintain communities who patronize their respective cultures. It roughly corresponds to the Iranian Plateau and its bordering plains.

The Encyclopædia Iranica project uses the term Iranian cultural continent for this region.

The royal hunt was an institution found throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa from antiquity until the early 19th century. It can be traced in ancient Egypt about 4000 years ago, but it lasted the longest in Iran, where it survived almost to the end of the Qajar dynasty. Its core area was the Iranian Plateau, North India amd Turkestan. Next to the core area were Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Transcaucasia. Even accounts of royal hunts from places as distant as Ethiopia and Qing China are so similar as to be nearly interchangeable.

The popularity of the royal hunt was correlated with the popularity of cavalry over infantry and with the presence of big game. It was inversely correlated with the popularity of hunting for sustenance. The royal hunt was not universal across Eurasia. It is not found, for instance, around the Mediterranean Sea in classical antiquity. Greek and Roman authors looked down on the Persian practice of hunting in enclosed parks. After the fall of Rome, however, the royal hunt gained prominence in Europe. The hunt as a "ritual of royalty" and a "force for [political] consensus" peaked during the reign of Charlemagne in the centuries after the fall of Rome. The royal forest as a hunting preserve dates to the Carolingian era.

Uzun Hasan or Uzun Hassan (اوزون حسن; February or March 1425 – January 6, 1478) was a ruler of the Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu state and is generally considered to be its strongest ruler. Hasan ruled between 1452 and 1478 and presided over the confederation's territorial apex, when it included parts or all of present-day Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Transcaucasia and Syria.