| The Bashkirs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| approx. 2 million[1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Other Turkic peoples |
The Bashkirs (Bashkir: Башҡорттар, Başqorttar) are a Turkic people indigenous to Bashkortostan extending on both parts of the Ural mountains, on the place where Europe meets Asia. Groups of Bashkirs also live in the republic of Tatarstan, Perm Krai, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Samara and Saratov Oblasts of Russia, as well as in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other countries. They speak the Kypchak-based Bashkir language. The Bashkirs are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab.
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There is no universally accepted etymology of the word "Bashqort". Several suggested theories are:
Ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs are extremely complicated. Southern Urals and adjacent steppes, where there was shaping people, have long been an arena of active interaction between different tribes and cultures. In the literature on the ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs, one can see that there are three hypotheses about the origin of the Bashkir people:
R1b1a1 (2011 name) is defined by the presence of SNP marker M73. It has been found at generally low frequencies throughout central Eurasia, but has been found with relatively high frequency among particular populations there including the Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (62/471 = 13.2%), 44 of these being found among the 80 tested Bashkirs of the Abzelilovsky District in the Republic of Bashkortostan (55.0%).[21])
Valuable information about the Bashkirs is contained in works by Sallam Tardzheman (IX cent.) and Ibn-Fadlan (X cent.). Al-Balkhi (X cent.) described Bashkirs as a people divided into two groups, one inhabited the Southern Urals, the second group lived on the Danube plain near the boundaries of Byzantium.
Ibn-Ruste, a contemporary of Al Balkhi, observed that Bashkirs were an independent people, occupying territories on both sides of the Ural mountain ridge between Volga, Kama, Tobol and upstream of the Yaik river.
Achmed ibn-Fadlan visited Volga Bulgaria as a staff member in the embassy of Calif of Baghdad in 922CE. He described them as a belligerent Turk nation. Ibn-Fadlan described the Bashkirs as nature worshipers, identifying their deities as various forces of nature, birds and animals. He also described the religion of acculturated Bashkirs as a variant of Tengrism, the national religion of the Mongol empire, including 12 'gods' and naming Tengri – lord of the endless blue sky.
The first European sources to mention the Bashkirs are the works of Joannes de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruquis. These travelers, encountering Bashkir tribes in the upper parts of the Ural River, called them Pascatir or Bastarci, and asserted that they spoke the same language as the Hungarians.
During the tenth century (CE) Islam spread among the Bashkirs. By the fourteenth century Islam had become the dominant religious force in Bashkir society.
By 1236, lands of Bashkortostan were incorporated into the empire of Genghis Khan.
By the XII-XIV centuries (CE) all of Bashkortostan was in a of the Golden Horde. The brother of Batu-Khan, Sheibani, received the Bashkir lands to the east of the Ural Mountains, at that time inhabited by the ancestors of contemporary Kurgan Bashkirs.
During the period of Mongolian-Tatar dominion the features of Kipchacks a part of Bashkirs. Under the Golden Horde, separate Mongolian elements. During the XVII-XVIII centuries (CE) – a part of the Kalmyks and Middle Asian Sarts During the XVI-XX centuries (CE) various groups of Tatars.
After the breakup of the Mongol Empire, Bashkirs appeared separated between Nogay horde and Kazan and Siberian khanates, founded in the XV century. Trans-Ural Bashkirs subordinated to Siberian khanate.
In the late XVI and early XIX centuries (CE) Bashkirs occupied the territory from the left bank of the Volga on the south-west to the riverheads of Tobol in the east, from the river Sylva in the north, to the middle stream of the Yaik in the south, in the Middle and Southern Urals, in Cis-Urals, including Volga territory and Trans-Urals.
In the middle of the XVI century (CE) Bashkirs joined the Russian state. Previously they formed parts of the Nogayskaya, Kazan, Siberian, and partly, Astrakhan khanates. Charters of Ivan the Terrible to Bashkir tribes became the basis of their contractual relationship with the tsar’s government. Primary documents pertaining to the Bashkirs during this period have been lost, some are mentioned in the (shezhere)the family trees of the Bashkir.
The Bashkirs rebelled in 1662-64 and 1675–83 and 1705-11. In 1676, the Bashkirs rebelled under a leader named Seyid Sadir or 'Seit Sadurov', and the Russian army had great difficulties in ending the rebellion. The Bashkirs rose again in 1707, under Aldar and Kûsyom, on account of ill-treatment by the Russian officials.
1735 War:[22] The third insurrection occurred in 1735, at the time of the foundation of Orenburg, and it lasted for six years. From at least the time of Peter the Great there had been talk of pushing southeast toward Persia and India. Ivan Kirillov drew up a plan to build a fort to be called Orenburg at Orsk at the confluence of the Or River and the Ural River southeast of the Urals where the Bashkir, Kalmyk and Kazakh lands join. Work was started at Orsk in 1735, but by 1743 'Orenburg' was moved about 250 km west to its present location. The next planned step was to build a fort on the Aral Sea. This would involve crossing the Bashkir country and then the lands of the Kazakh Lesser Horde, some of whom had recently offered a nominal submission. Kirillov's plan was approved on May 1, 1734 and he was placed in command. He was warned that this would provoke a Bashkir rebellion, but the warnings were ignored. He left Ufa with 2,500 men in 1735 and fighting started on the first of July. The war consisted of many small raids and complex troop movements, so it cannot be easily summarized. For example: In the spring of 1736 Kirillov burned 200 villages, killed 700 in battle and executed 158. An expedition of 773 men left Orenburg in November and lost 500 from cold and hunger. During, at Seiantusa the Bashkir planned to massacre sleeping Russian. The ambush failed. One thousand villagers, including women and children, were put to the sword and another 500 driven into a storehouse and burned to death. Raiding parties then went out and burned about 50 villages and killed another 2,000. Eight thousand Bashkirs attacked a Russian camp and killed 158, losing 40 killed and three prisoners who were promptly hanged. Rebellious Bashkirs raided loyal Bashkirs. Leaders who submitted were sometimes fined one horse per household and sometimes hanged. And so on. Bashkirs fought on both sides (40% of 'Russian' troops in 1740). Numerous leaders rose and fell. The oddest was Karasakal or Blackbeard who pretended to have 82,000 men on the Aral Sea and had his followers proclaim him 'Khan of Bashkiria'. His nose had been partly cut off and he had only one ear. Such mutilations are standard Imperial punishments. The Kazakhs of the Little Horde intervened on the Russian side, then switched to the Bashkirs and then withdrew. Kirillov died of disease during the war and there were several changes of commander. All this was at the time of Empress Elizabeth of Russia and the Russo-Turkish War (1735–1739).
Although the history of the 1735 Bashkir War cannot be easily summarized, its results can be.
Later, in 1774, the Bashkirs, under the leadership of Salavat Yulayev, supported Pugachev's rebellion. In 1786, the Bashkirs achieved tax-free status; and in 1798 Russia formed an irregular Bashkir army from among them. Residual land ownership disputes continued.
Bashkirs speak the Kypchak-based Bashkir language. Most Bashkirs also speak Russian: some as a second language, and some as their first language, regarding Bashkir as a language spoken by their grandparents.
During the period, since 10 till 14—15 centuries, Bashkirs converted to Islam. The Bashkirs are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab.
Some Bashkirs traditionally practiced agriculture, cattle-rearing and bee-keeping. The half-nomadic Bashkirs wandered either the mountains or the steppes, herding cattle.
Bashkir national dishes include a kind of gruel called öyrä and a cheese named qorot.
Wild-hive beekeeping can be named as a separate component of the most ancient culture which is practiced in the same Burzyansky District near to the Shulgan-Tash cave.
The Bashkir experts relate the ancient epic legends «Ural-batyr» and «Akbuzat» to the most original and valuable national monuments. Their plot concerns struggle of heroes against demonic forces. The peculiarity of them is that events and ceremonies described there can be addressed to a specific geographical and historical object –the Shulgan-Tash cave and its vicinities.
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