The Karachays (Къарачайлыла, Qaraçaylıla) are a Turkic people of the North Caucasus, mostly situated in the Russian Karachay-Cherkess Republic.
The Karachays are a Turkic people descending from the Kypchaks, with some admixture of the medieval Alans.[1] The state of Alania established in the Middle Ages had its capital in Maghas, which some authors locate in Arkhyz, the mountains currently inhabited by the Karachay (others place it in modern Ingushetia or North Ossetia). In the 14th century, Alania was destroyed by Timur and the decimated population dispersed in the mountains. Timur's intervention to the North Caucasus introduced the local nations to Islam.
In 1828, the Russian army broke into the Karachay's territory and, after the Russo-Circassian War with numerically insignificant military forces of mountain men, formally annexed the Karachay territories. In 1831 - 1860, Karachays joined the bloody anti-Russian struggles carried out by Caucasian peoples. In 1861 - 1880, to escape repression by the Russian army, large numbers of Karachays migrated to Turkey. Between Jan 1, 1921 - Dec 12, 1930 (early Soviet period), Bolshevik authorities quelled resistance to Soviet rule in Karachay region and other territories of the Caucasus. In 1942, the invading German army occupied the Karachay region.