Gajals or Gadzhals () are a Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Eastern Balkans and Turkey. Gajals mainly settle in the northeastern Ludogorie region of Bulgaria, as well as in the region of Eastern Thrace. Because of the Turkic language, and the Islamic faith, Gajals are usually ranked as a subgroup among Turks. Balkan-Gagauz is the main language, and the total number of Gajals is about 300,000 people, including about 20,000 native speakers. They are believed to be descendants of Pechenegs and Cumans. They are closely related to the Gagauz people, leading to claims that they are both ess
Gajals or Gadzhals () are a Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Eastern Balkans and Turkey. Gajals mainly settle in the northeastern Ludogorie region of Bulgaria, as well as in the region of Eastern Thrace. Because of the Turkic language, and the Islamic faith, Gajals are usually ranked as a subgroup among Turks. Balkan-Gagauz is the main language, and the total number of Gajals is about 300,000 people, including about 20,000 native speakers. They are believed to be descendants of Pechenegs and Cumans. They are closely related to the Gagauz people, leading to claims that they are both essentially the same people, with the only difference being religion.
== History == The term Gajal was first used in Ahmed Vefik's dictionary Lehçe-i Osmani written in 1873–1876. According to him, Gajal was a word used to describe gypsies of Varna and Balchik. In fact, his dictionary is the only Turkish dictionary which mentions this word. The Yearbook of the Varna State High School by the Škorpil brothers (Hermann Škorpil and Karel Škorpil) from 1898, says:
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).