The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars. From the total Tatar population of 300,000 in the Tauride Province, about 200,000 Crimean Tatars moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward the end of the Caucasian Wars, 90% of the Circassians were exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus and settled in the Ottoman Empire. During the 19th century, there was an exodus to present-day Turkey by a large portion of Muslim peoples from the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea and Crete, By the early 19th century, as many as 45% of the islanders may have been Muslim, had great influence in molding the country's fundamental features. These people were called "Muhacir" under a general definition. By the time the Ottoman Empire came to an end in 1922, half of the urban population of Turkey was descended from Muslim refugees from Russia. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Turkish education.