Kazakh
What is the origin of the Kazakh people?
What was the Kazakh khanate?
How did the Kazakh territory become part of Russia?
Kazakh, Turkic-speaking people of Central Asia inhabiting mainly Kazakhstan and the adjacent parts of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China. The Kazakhs emerged in the 15th century from an amalgam of Turkic peoples who entered Transoxiana about the 8th century and Mongols who entered the area in the 13th century. They speak Kazakh, a Turkic language of the northwestern, or Kipchak, branch and predominantly practice Sunni Islam. In the early 2020s there were roughly 13,500,000 Kazakhs in Kazakhstan and more than 1,500,000 in China (mainly in Xinjiang), with small numbers in Uzbekistan, Russia, and Mongolia.
History
The Kazakh khanate
About 1465, under the leadership of Karay and Jani Beg, some 200,000 dissatisfied subjects of the Uzbek khan Abū’l-Khayr (Abū al-Khayr) moved into Mughulistān, whose khan, Esen Bogha (Buga), settled them between the Chu and Talas rivers. These separatist Uzbeks became known as Kazakh (“Independent” or “Vagabond”) Uzbeks, and over time a significant differentiation developed between them and the nonseparatist Uzbeks in their respective ways of life: that of the Kazakhs was more nomadic, that of the Uzbeks more sedentary.
During the late 15th century and throughout the 16th century the Kazakhs were able to establish the Kazakh khanate, a nomadic empire that stretched across the Steppe east of the Caspian Sea and north of the Aral Sea as far as the upper Irtysh River and the western approaches to the Altai Mountains. Under Burunduk Khan (ruled 1488–1509) and Kasym Khan (1509–18) the Kazakhs were the masters of virtually the entire steppe region, reportedly able to bring 200,000 horse-mounted warriors into the field and feared by all their neighbors. The prevailing view is that the rule of Kasym Khan marked the beginning of an independent Kazakh polity. Under his rule Kazakh power extended from what is now southeastern Kazakhstan to the Ural Mountains.
Political fragmentation and foreign entanglements
After Kasym Khan’s reign, however, the power of the khan weakened, and the khanate disintegrated into three separate hordes—the Great Horde, the Middle Horde, and the Little Horde—each with its own khan. In each horde the authority of the khan tended to be curtailed by the power exercised by tribal chieftains, known as sultans, and perhaps even more by the beys and batyrs (the heads of the clans that were the components of each tribe). Nominally, the khans commanded a formidable force of mounted warriors, but, in reality, they depended on the loyalty of the beys and batyrs. Political disunity characterized the Kazakh hordes in the centuries that followed, only uniting a limited number of times for expansion (as under Ḥaqq Naẓar [1538–80] and his successors in the late 16th century) or defense (as they did under Teüke Khan [1680–1718] in their war against the Dzungars).
Russia began advancing into what is now Kazakhstan in the beginning of the 18th century, with sedentary agriculturalists pushing into the traditionally nomadic lands. Some Kazakhs believed that the Russian presence might at least provide some security against Dzungar raids, and in 1731 the Little Horde accepted Russian protection, followed by the Middle Horde in 1740 and by part of the Great Horde in 1742, although its effect upon the Dzungars was to prove minimal. Some Kazakh groups submitted themselves to the Dzungars around this time. After the Chinese defeat and subsequent genocide of the Dzungars in the 1750s Kazakh communities found themselves in a precarious position. In 1757 Ablai Khan of the Middle Horde officially surrendered to the Qing emperor, while still being a subject of the Russians. After a series of ineffectual Kazakh uprisings, of which the most extensive was that of Batyr Srym in 1792–97, Russia resolved to suppress such autonomy as the Kazakh khans still possessed. In 1822 the khanate of the Middle Horde was abolished, in 1824 the Little Horde, and in 1848 the Great Horde.
The incorporation of the Kazakhs of the steppe into Russia led to the rise of a secular intelligentsia and the beginning of a written Kazakh literary tradition. Russian-formed intellectuals such as Şoqan Wälihanov (Shoqan Walikhanov) and Abai Qūnanbayūly (Abay Kunanbayev) adapted Western ideas to specific Kazakh needs. Abai also played a pivotal role in the foundation of modern Kazakh literature.
The 20th and 21st centuries
Beginning in 1927 the Soviet government pursued a vigorous policy of transforming the Kazakh nomads into a settled population and of colonizing the region with Russians and Ukrainians. Soviet collectivization efforts about the same time proved disastrous for the Kazakh people: Between 1926 and 1939 the number of Kazakhs in the Soviet Union fell by about one-fifth. More than 1.5 million died during this period, the majority from starvation and related diseases, others as a result of violence. Thousands of Kazakhs fled to China, but fewer than one-fourth survived the journey; about 300,000 fled to Uzbekistan and 44,000 to Turkmenistan.
In 1953 the Virgin and Idle Lands project further opened Kazakhstan to immigration from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Despite many Kazakhs fleeing from China to Kazakhstan in 1962 because of food shortages, ethnic Kazakhs were a minority in Kazakhstan for much of the latter half of the 20th century. After Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991, significant numbers of ethnic Russians in the country began emigrating to Russia. This emigration, along with a return to the country of ethnic Kazakhs, changed the demographic makeup of Kazakhstan: By the mid-1990s the Kazakh proportion was approaching half the total population. The trend persisted into the 21st century, and by the 2020s Kazakhs comprised more than two-thirds of the country’s total population.
Kazakhs are the third largest minority group in the Xinjiang autonomous region of China. Like the Uyghurs, the largest Turkic-speaking Muslim group in Xinjiang, Kazakhs in China have been subject to repression after the government’s crackdown in 2017.
Changing lifeways
The Kazakhs were traditionally pastoral nomads, dwelling year-round in portable dome-shaped tents called yurts (Kazakh: kiız üy [Cyrillic киіз үй], literally “felt house”) constructed of dismountable wooden frames covered with felt. Felt made the tent snug inside and out, and was also used for cloaks. The Kazakhs migrated seasonally to find pasturage for their livestock, including horses, sheep, goats, cattle, and a few camels. The diet consisted largely of milk products supplemented by mutton. Koumiss, a drink made of fermented mare’s milk and similar to kefir, and horse flesh were highly esteemed but usually available only to the prosperous. Hides provided clothing, containers, and straps; horsehair was braided into rope, while horn was used for ladles and other utensils.
The basic unit of nomadic Kazakh society was the extended family. This included not only parents and unmarried children but also married sons and their families, who camped together. Such families were organized into larger clan and tribal groupings. Groups at various levels in the tribal hierarchy had leaders known as sultans, beys, and batyrs. These smaller groups came together to comprise the larger hordes (ordas). About the turn of the 16th century the various Kazakh tribes were united under the Kazakh khanate.
Their nomadic life was gradually curtailed by the encroachment of settled agriculture on the pasturelands. In the 19th century an increasing number of Kazakhs along the borders began to plant some crops. During World War I and again under Soviet rule, many Kazakhs were killed in repressions or fell victim to famines; still others fled with their herds to Xinjiang in China or to Afghanistan, and the remaining nomads were eventually settled on collective farms. Most Kazakhs are now settled farmers who raise sheep and other livestock and grow crops. In Xinjiang, however, many nomadic groups remain.
Arts and culture
Kazakh literature consists of both oral and written traditions. Oral epics formed the main literary genre until the 19th century. Written literature arose as contact with Russian traditions increased in the 18th and 19th centuries. Poetry remained the primary genre until prose stories, short novels, and drama were introduced in the early 20th century, before the end of the tsarist era in 1917. Abai İbrahim Qūnanbayūly (Kunanbayev) in the late 19th century laid the basis with his verse for the development of the modern Kazakh literary language and its poetry. (Ahmet) Baitūrsynūly, editor of the influential newspaper Qazaq, led the advance of modern Kazakh writing in the early 20th century. Baitūrsynūly, along with Älihan Nūrmūhamedūly Bökeihan (Alikhan Bukeikhanov), Mırjaqyb Dülatūly, and, later, Mağjan Jumabayev (Magzhan Zhumabayev), represented the cream of Kazakh Modernism in literature, publishing, and cultural politics in the reformist decades before Sovietization set in after 1920. All these figures disappeared into Soviet prisons and never returned, as a result of Joseph Stalin’s purges, which destroyed much of the Kazakh intelligentsia. An early Soviet Kazakh writer, Mūhtar Äuezov (Mukhtar Auezov), gained recognition for the long novel Abai (published in four parts and written between 1939 and 1954), based on the life and poetry of Qūnanbayūly, and for his plays, including Eñlık-Kebek (1917).
Related to the Kazakh tradition of oral poetry is the aitys, an improvised poetry competition performed between two contestants. Performers in an aitys may exchange spoken poems or they may participate in an exchange of sung poems generally accompanied by a dombra (also spelled dombyra), a type of lute prevalent in traditional Kazakh music. Both aitys and dombra kuy, which refers to a composition performed by a single musician playing the dombra, were added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in the mid-2010s. (See also Central Asian arts.)
- Also spelled:
- Kazak
A number of traditional sports, often shared between the Kazakhs and other Central Asian peoples, are still played today. Many of these are based on horse riding and various forms of martial arts. A form of falconry utilizing eagles is practiced in Kazakhstan and a number of surrounding regions. Many Kazakh competitors have participated in the World Nomad Games, a tournament that began in the 2010s featuring many different sports that originated in the Steppe.