TURKESTAN
Turkestan
The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and was believed to have never been in use to denote a single nation although it was at one time ruled by an Emperor. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples. After Persia had been considerably weakened by its defeat in 1857, Imperial Russia stepped up its campaign to wrest full control over the Central Asian region from Persian dominance and on their way southward, the Russians took the city of Turkestan in 1864. Mistaking its name for that of the entire region, they adopted the appellation of "Turkestan" for their new territory. Today the term is used to describe a region which is ...The above text is a snippet from Wikipedia: Turkestan
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