Kazakhstan, one of the largest countries in the post-Soviet space and the largest country in Central Asia, is successfully building a nation state. Kazakhs are the indigenous population of a country of Turkic origin. The ancient roots of the people come from the Bronze Age tribes. The warlike tribes and peoples of Central Asia, the Saks, the Massagets and the Huns, are considered the distant ancestors of this people. Kazakhs in Russia live compactly in several regions where they have always traditionally resided.
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In total, there are more than 14 million Kazakhs in the world, of which 10.8 million are in Kazakhstan. The first largest Kazakh diaspora lives in China - about 1.4 million. Most of them live in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The number of ethnic groups in the country replenished with two waves of refugees who were fleeing the Soviet regime. Kazakhs are a people who suffered greatly as a result of the famine of the 30s. From 0.8 to 1.1 million live in Uzbekistan. They got here when dividing the country into Soviet republics. Kazakhs in Russia, only 648 thousand people, live compactly in the Astrakhan region and Altai. A large diaspora, about 102 thousand, also lives in Mongolia. Significant diasporas live in some Turkic-speaking countries - Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. Kazakhstan has a program to support the resettlement of ethnic Kazakhs from other countries. According to some estimates, about 1 million oralmans (the name of foreign compatriots) moved to their historical homeland. Before independence, the divided parts of the people could not communicate. Since 1992, the World Kurultai of the Kazakhs have been held, of historical importance, which is the unification of the ethnic group living in other countries, with its main part living in the national state.
Etymology
The basic version of the meaning of the word "Kazakh" is a free, free, independent person, a trader. In the Turkic-Arabic dictionary of an unknown author in 1245, reprinted in 1894, other Muslim written sources the word is translated as "homeless", "homeless", "wanderer", "exile". In the scientific literature there are a variety of theories of the origin of this word. Some researchers deduced the meaning of the word Kazakh from the Turkic words to kill, keskit, wobble, escape. There are also completely unbridled fantasies. So, some researchers show the etymology of the word from kazakh, acny. Another group of scientists believes that the Mongols left their mark here, with the word “kasak-tergen” called a wagon of a certain type. There are some researchers who associate it with the name of the ancient Caucasian tribal association of kasogs. Thus, there is no reliable version of the explanation of the word "Kazakh". Its values can be very different.
Kazakhs and Cossacks
Initially, regardless of the origin of the word Kazakh, it did not mean a people, but a person of courageous and daring, free, homeless wanderer. That is, the word did not carry ethnic or political significance. So called a free man who broke away from his people, lord and state and forced to lead the life of an adventurer. It is believed that from here this Turkic word came into Russian. It should be noted that in the Kazakh language "қазақ" is closer in sound to the word "Cossack", and not "Kazakh". Cossacks in Russia called people without specific occupations, which consisted of the Russian population, who fled to the outskirts of hunger and the arbitrariness of the masters. Historically, the homeland of the first Russian free people was the southern outskirts of Russia, bordering the Kipchak steppe. People here were forced to live in military communities, being fed on robberies and military campaigns. The Siberian peoples living in the neighborhood attached the word "Kazakh" to the meaning of "an outcast, " "a good fellow who lives by what he obtains by force."
Among the Turkic and Iranian tribes, it was customary to go to Cossacks for a while. It was considered useful if in his youth a man lived some time away from civilization, feeding, hunting, stealing herds of horses. A person of any nationality, rich or poor, could join them. For some time, many future sultans and khans were Cossacks. By the beginning of the 16th century, a large number of Turkic-speaking clans and tribes who came here from more southern regions already lived on the territory of modern Kazakhstan. The name "Cossacks" was finally assigned to them. Now this word was used to name both the ethnic group and the free community. Since then, the inhabitants of this large country call themselves Kazakhs. The modern official name, Kazakhs, is the Russian version of the Turkic word "Cossack". In Russia, for a long time, the ethnos was given the name "Kyrgyz" or "Kyrgyz-Kaisaki", which was associated with the mistakes of officials. The first written use of the word "Kazakh" in Russian sources dates back to 1822, in dictionaries it appears in 1865. At the state level, the use of the word was recorded in 1936 in connection with the new administrative division.
Ethnogenesis
Kazakhs are a nation that belongs to the South Siberian minor race, a transition between the Caucasoid and the Mongoloid. In appearance, people are considered quite homogeneous both in descriptive and in measuring terms. To the north and west, Caucasoid characters are more common. Men and women of the Kazakh population have straight, tight dark hair. The population of the southern regions has a greater growth of beards and hairline, here the maximum frequency of a narrow section of the eyes is noted. Epicanthus is found in about a third of the people. Modern genetic studies have shown that many have a common male ancestor with Russians, 18% of Kazakhs have the haplogroup R1a1. Most of them belong to the Mongolian group. Haplogroup C3 has 42%, while more than a thousand of them are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. About 12% are descendants of the Caucasian peoples (haplogroup G1 -12%), Finno-Ugric peoples - 5%, Arabs - 2%.
Nation formation
The formation of the Kazakh people took place under the influence of a long mixture of diverse nomadic tribes. The Aryan tribes (belonging to the Iranian-speaking peoples), who lived in ancient times from the Danube to Lake Baikal, played an important role in the ethnogenesis of the nation. Scythian mounds are found throughout Kazakhstan. In one of them, Issyk barrow near Alma-Ata, the famous "Golden Warrior" was found, which has become a symbol of the statehood of modern Kazakhstan. The mention of the Sak tribes, one of the Scythian peoples, dates back to Herodotus (1 millennium BC). In the 1st millennium AD, the Kazakh steppes were a zone of constant migration. First came the Huns, who inhabited the territories north of China. Various Turkic-speaking tribes from Altai moved here behind them. The final stage of Turkization took place from the middle of the 1st millennium, when this territory became a zone of influence of various Turkic-speaking tribes. The ancestors of modern Kazakhs finally became Mongoloid only after the Mongol conquest, when the territory of Kazakhstan became part of the Golden Horde. The nation began to form from a group of Turkic-speaking and Mongol-speaking tribes (for example, Naimans, Kereits, Argyns, Khazars, Kiyats, Dulats). And now every representative of the people knows his own family, which came from one of these tribes.
Tongue
The Kazakh language is part of the Kypchak subgroup of Turkic languages. Similar languages in this group are many peoples of the post-Soviet space, for example, Bashkirs, Kumyks, Tatars and Kazakhs. Representatives of these peoples can easily communicate with each other in their native language. The ancient Turkic language, from which this language group emerged, from the 5th to the 15th century was the language of interethnic communication in most of the Eurasian continent. Even in the Golden Horde, documentation was conducted including in Turkic. The formation of a language close to modern Kazakh began in the 13-15th century. Until the beginning of the 20th century, there was a common literary language of the Turki, from which local languages, including Kazakh, later separated. Of course, each of these languages has its own phonetic features. For example, in most Turkic languages, the word "three" sounds like uch, and in Kazakh - ush. Therefore, in Soviet times, when there were large borrowings from the Russian language, they changed in accordance with these features. For example, the word "district" sounded like an eared one.
In the modern language of the Kazakhs, there is no division into dialects, but there are three dialects, the distribution area of which roughly corresponds to the territory of the three zhuzes (ancient Kazakh khanates). In the language spoken by representatives of the ethnic group in China, Mongolia, there are differences in vocabulary that have arisen over more than 70 years of separate living. Most modern Kazakhs (more than 75%) are fluent in Russian.
Writing
The first written monuments discovered on the territory of Kazakhstan date back to the 6-7th century and were executed by the ancient Turkic runic script. Such artifacts were discovered throughout the Eurasian space, from Mongolia to Kyrgyzstan. The inscriptions were made including on the surface of stones, coins, bones, household items, which indicates the widespread use of writing. Archaeological artifacts with writing samples are kept in the Kazakh State Museum. Initially, the runic alphabet had 24 letters and a word mark, later versions had 38 letters. As Islam spread in the early 10th century, along with religion, many Turkic peoples, along with religion, adopted the Arabic alphabet. Of course, he was significantly adapted to the norms of local languages. As a people, the Kazakhs converted to Islam only in the 18th century, and, like many nomadic peoples, did not devote too much time to religion. A small literate part of the population began to use Arabic script. In 2012, Kazakh enlightener A. Baitursynov reformed Kazakh writing based on Arabic graphics. He added specific letters and removed unused characters. The new spelling, the so-called new alphabet, is still used by Kazakhs living in China, Iran, and Afghanistan. In the Soviet period, the language was first translated to the Latin alphabet in 1929, and in 1940 to the Cyrillic alphabet. By 2025, it is planned to again translate the Kazakh language into the Latin alphabet. The new alphabet has already been approved, and in 2022, teaching will begin from first grade.
Religion
Like many peoples of the continent, the ancestors of the Kazakhs were pagans. They deified nature, the eternal sky and worshiped the spirits of their ancestors. A peculiar feature of such a religion was the feeling of a kinship between a person and the natural environment. Such faith (Tengrian by definition of Gumilyov) gave the nomads knowledge and the ability to live in harmony with nature. The ethnic traditions of the Kazakhs, tribal customs were closely associated with pagan beliefs and rites. Until now, some pagan customs have been preserved in modern rites, for example, the rites of purification by fire at marriage and the first laying of a child in a cradle. The nomadic way has imposed its national characteristics on later Islam. Islamization of the Kazakh population took several centuries, starting with the settled population of Semirechye. And slowly spreading among the nomads, who for a long time were not very religious. Now the Kazakhs are Sunni Muslims, most of whom observe Islamic rites, or at least some of them. For example, circumcision (sundet) and burial rites are always held in accordance with religious rules. Currently, there are 2700 mosques in the country, in Soviet times there were 63. In general, Kazakhs are becoming an increasingly religious people.
National dress
Any national costume reflects its history, customs and living conditions. The modern national costume of the Kazakhs was formed under the influence of many peoples with whom the ethnic group interacted. Some types of national outerwear are fur coats, felt cloaks, similar to Scythian clothes, the remains of which were found in ancient mounds. Since that time, felt stockings with a pattern on top and sharp-pointed felt caps have their history. A little later, ornamental motifs appeared in the decoration of clothes, including the “ram’s horn” pattern, which in various interpretations remains one of the main motifs. From the ancient Huns and Türks came ornaments with metal plates, colored stones, enamel and grain. Some types of national costume were borrowed from the ancient Türks, for example, the female headdress of Zhaulyk; others are among the Huns, such as the type of swing skirt Beldesche. At a time when Turkic tribes began to roam in Kazakhstan, including the Kipchaks and Karluks, felt and silver items became very popular. In the same period, a manner of smelling clothes appeared on the left side. Ukazakhov is characteristic of both men's and women's clothing. The main type of clothing is a shapan, which since the 9th century has been worn by the entire population, regardless of gender and social status. Sewed bathrobes made of suede, wool, silk and cotton fabrics, depending on income. And nowadays, honorary guests are always given a hat and a cap, a pointed cap made of felt. Women's costume is divided into girlish, outfits of married and elderly women.
After independence, a revival of traditional customs takes place, and photos of Kazakhs in national costumes are no longer rare.
