is de jure part of Georgia. The Yazidis reside in the western areas of Armenia, mostly in the Aragatsotn marz, and in the eastern areas of Georgia. An autonomous Kurdish region was created in 1923 in Soviet Azerbaijan but was later abolished in 1929. Pontic Greeks reside in Armenia (Lori Province, especially in Alaverdi) and Georgia (Kvemo Kartli, Adjara, the Tsalka, and Abkhazia). Pontic Greeks had also made up a significant component of the South Caucasus region acquired from the Ottoman Empire (following the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano) that centred on the town of Kars (ceded back to Turkey in 1916). Russians mostly live in the Russian North Caucasus and their largest concentration is in Stavropol Krai, Krasnodar Krai, and Adygea. Georgia and the former Russian South Caucasus province of Kars Oblast was also home to a significant minority of ethnic (Swabian) Germans, although their numbers have become depleted as a result of deportations (to Kazakhstan following World War II), immigration to Germany, and assimilation into indigenous communities. Semitic Caucasians that speak languages belonging to the Semitic language family: Assyrians in the Caucasus number approximately 35,000 people, and live in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and southern Russia. There are up to 15,000 in Georgia, 5000 in Armenia, up to 15,000 in southern Russian regions of the Caucasus and 1400 in Azerbaijan. They descend from the ancient Mesopotamians and are indigenous to what is today Iraq, Northeast Syria and Southeast Turkey. They are Eastern Rite Christians, mainly followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, and speak and write Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic dialects. Caucasus Jews of two sub-ethnic groups Mountain Jews and Georgian Jews. There are about 15,000–30,000 Caucasus Jews (as 140,000 immigrated to Israel, and 40,000 to the US). Arabs in the Caucasus: a population of nomadic Arabs was reported in 1728 as having rented winter pastures near the Caspian shores of the Mugan plain (in present-day Azerbaijan). In 1888, an unknown number of Arabs still lived in the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire. As well as descendants of Sayyid and Siddiqui – the people with Arabian origin, but mostly assimilated by other Caucasian peoples. However, some people identify not just as Sayyid or Siddiqui with non-Arabian ethnicity, but as Arabs. Mongolic Kalmyks The Kalmyks — is the name given to the Oirats, western Mongols in Russia, whose ancestors migrated from Dzungaria in 1607. Today they form a majority