Kazakhs are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia and Eastern Europe. They share a common culture, language and history that is closely related to those of other Turkic peoples. The majority of ethnic Kazakhs live in their nation state of Kazakhstan.
Ethnic Kazakh communities are present in Kazakhstan's border regions in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, northern Uzbekistan, northwestern China (Xinjiang), western Mongolia (Bayan-Ölgii), and northern Iran (Golestan).
The Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia and were previously the most influential of the various Central Asian ethnic groups. The Kazakhs emerged as a distinct people as a result of the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. Distinct Kazakh ethnic identity developed throughout the 15th–16th centuries, with the final consolidation of Turko-Mongol tribes into a unified Kazakh nation within the Kazakh Khanate.: "Kazakhs While Muslim and Turkic speaking, the Kazakhs emerged as a people from the breakup of the Mongol Empire and have been in constant contact, both warlike and peaceful, with Oirats and Khalkha Mongols. Today they form Mongolia's largest non-Mongol minority."
The term Kazakh is used to refer to ethnic Kazakhs, while the term Kazakhstani refers to all citizens of Kazakhstan, regardless of ethnicity.
Ethnonym There are many theories on the origin of the word "Kazakh" or "Qazaq". Some speculate that it comes from the Turkic verb ('wanderer, brigand, vagabond, warrior, free, independent, freebooter, conqueror') or that it derives from the Proto-Turkic word (a wheeled cart used by the Kazakhs to transport their yurts and belongings).
Another theory on the origin of the word "Kazakh" (or ) is that it comes from the ancient Turkic word , first mentioned on the 8th century Turkic monument of Uyuk-Turan. According to Turkic linguist Vasily Radlov and Orientalist Veniamin Yudin, the noun derives from the same root as the verb ('to obtain, to gain'). Therefore, defines a type of person who wanders and seeks gain. Kazakh was a common term throughout medieval Central Asia, generally with regard to individuals or groups who had taken or achieved independence from a figure of authority. Timur described his own youth without direct authority as his ("freedom", "Qazaq-ness").
Historical usage and qazaqliq
Annemarie von Gabain also notes that among the Chinggisids and Timurids rulers who underwent qazaqlïq were Janibek Khan, Kerei Khan, Timur, Babur, and Muhammad Shaybani Khan. In her view, beginning in the 15th century, the term "qazaq" referred to a member of a ruling dynasty who, pursuing political objectives, left his state and wandered through the Steppe either alone or with his family, without the support of his tribe, seeking to achieve new military conquests. The same term was also applied to princes who had failed to attain power and were therefore forced to wander without a fixed abode, as well as to entire tribes or parts of tribes that had broken away from their former political union and became qazaqs.
A more detailed definition of the term qazaqlïq is offered by Wolfgang Holzwart, based on early 16th-century Turkic sources. He characterizes qazaqlïq as a mobile way of life associated with raids and military activities, distinct from ordinary seasonal nomadic movements between pastures. More broadly, Holzwart defines qazaqlïq as "the life of an adventurer," which includes the following elements: wandering; raids, plunder, and guerrilla warfare; existence outside the established political order; and a period during which a non-ruling prince demonstrates his leadership abilities and gathers supporters around him. Accordingly, qazaq/kazak is defined by him as "a member of a band of free warriors engaged in raids, plundering, or brigandage."
In his autobiography, Babur also uses the term qazaqlïq in the sense of "raids" or "guerrilla warfare." For example, Babur writes: "In that same winter, some of the soldiers who were unable to accompany us on our raids asked for permission to go to Andijan" (Ušbu qïš sipāhīlardïn baʿżïsï bizing bilä qazaqlïqlarda yür almay Andijānġa barmaqqa ruḫsat tilädilär). Elsewhere, in the Baburnama, for Babur the term qazaq refers to a warrior who leads a harsh and simple way of life.
Timur was probably the most famous qazaq fugitive-turned-ruler in the history of Central Eurasia. He began his political career as a vassal of Tughlugh Timur, the khan of Moghulistan who conquered Transoxiana in 1361. Before coming to power in 1370, Timur experienced at least two periods of qazaqlïq.
Similarly, the Russians recounted to Sigismund von Herberstein, the envoy of Emperor Maximilian I who was sent to the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1517, a story about Timur's qazaq activities and his rise to power. According to Herberstein, the Russians considered Timur to have come from a lowly background and attributed his rise to plunder, claiming that in his youth he had been an exceptionally skilled robber. Timur was also known as the founder of an empire of qazaq origins. According to Carolus Gambarinus, the Ottomans feared the Ukrainian Cossacks, because both Timur and the Ottomans, in his view, had followed a path from being wanderers to becoming founders of empires.
In Turko-Persian sources, the term Özbek-qazaq first appeared during the mid-16th century, in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi by Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, a Chagatayid prince of Kashmir, which locates Kazakh in the eastern part of Desht-i Qipchaq. According to Vasily Bartold, the Kazakhs likely began using that name during the 15th century.
An alternative and historical ethnonym for Kazakhs is "Alash". This name spreads a lot in Kazakh culture. Most commonly, Alash is the group of three jüzes, territorial and tribal divisions of Kazakhs. This word can be used as a synonym to Kazakh.A.A.Karatayev. The ethnonym "Alash" also was used to refer to Kazakhs by Nogais.
History
The Kazakhs are direct descendants of the people of the Ulus of Jochi, who were referred to in sources as Tatars by the Russians and Ottomans; the term Uzbeks later began to be applied to them due to their conversion to Islam under Özbeg Khan (). The Kazakhs emerged as a result of the merging of Mongol, and various Inner Eurasian groups on the territory of Desht-i-Qipchaq. In the 15th century, under the leadership of two sultans from the Chinggisid dynasty Janibek Khan and Kerei Khan, the Kazakhs founded the Kazakh Khanate, which existed in the eastern part of the Kipchak Steppe until the mid-19th century.: "The Qazaqs are direct descendants of the Jochid ulus (people), who began to be called Uzbek after the reign of Uzbek Khan (r. 1313–1341), the Jochid ruler who made Islam the state religion of the Ulus of Jochi (the Golden Horde). The Jochid ulus, hence the Qazaqs, arose from the merging of the Mongols and various Inner Eurasian groups in the thirteenth century in the Qipchaq Steppe" The modern Kazakhs form the most direct descendants of the Mongol Empire, along with the modern Mongols, and other Inner Asian nomadic empires.: "The modern Qazaqs form the most direct descendants of the Mongol empire, along with the modern Mongols, and other Inner Asian nomadic empires"
Beatrice F. Manz has examined in detail the nature of the Turkic identity of the Mongol successor states. Manz convincingly argues that the Turkic Muslim nomadic elites of post-Mongol Central Asia and the Kipchak Steppe displayed a pronounced Mongol orientation and interprets the new Turkic-speaking collective identities of the post-Mongol period—such as the Chaghatays (Timurids), Kazakhs, and Uzbeks—as variants of Mongol identity. None of these peoples traced their origins to pre-Mongol Turkic states or peoples such as the Qarakhanids, Kipchaks, or Seljuks. Manz, in particular, interprets the formation of Kazakh identity as the result of the fragmentation of the Turco-Mongol groups that emerged within the Mongol Empire beginning in the fifteenth century. More specifically, she links this process to the division of the Jochid Ulus into the Kazakhs, who retained their nomadic way of life and the Shibanid Uzbeks who settled in Transoxiana.
Seen from a broader perspective, the Kazakhs belonged to the Chinggisid uluses, others being the Shibanid Uzbeks, Crimean Tatars, Manghits/Noghays, and Chaghatays (Moghuls and Timurids), who shared a common language (Turkic), political ideology (based on Mongol traditions), royal lineage (Chinggisids), ethnic identity Turco-Mongols ("Mongol Turks" Turk-i mughūl), and religion (Sunni Islam), and who still dominated much of the vast region stretching from the Crimea in the west to the Tien Shan Mountains in the east, and from southern Siberia in the north to northern India in the south during the post-Mongol period. Shoqan Walikhanov believed that when the Golden Horde began to disintegrate, the reasons why Kazakhs created Kazakh Khanate were in order to retain their nomadic territories and secure their rights in the lands where they migrated. The Kazakhs are the most northerly of the Central Asian peoples, inhabiting a large expanse of territory in northern Central Asia and southern Siberia known as the Kazakh Steppe. The tribal groups formed a powerful confederation that grew wealthy on the trade passing through the steppe lands along the fabled Silk Road.
Middle Ages
The exact place of origins of the Turkic peoples has been a topic of much discussion. Early Medieval Turkic peoples who migrated into Central Asia displayed genetic affinities with Ancient Northeast Asians, deriving around 62% of their ancestry from a gene pool maximized among Neolithic hunter-gatherers in the Amur region. There is also evidence for contact with Iranian, Uralic and Yeniseian peoples.
From the 11th century, the entire Great Steppe, stretching from the Danube and the northern shores of the Black Sea to the Irtysh and Lake Balkhash, and bounded in the south by the middle course of the Syr Darya and Khwarazm, was referred to in historical sources and scholarly literature as Desht-i Kipchak ("the Kipchak Steppe"). The name derived from the Kipchaks, a Turkic tribal confederation inhabiting the region, who were also known as the Cumans and Polovtsians. In the 13th century, the entire territory of the Great Steppe became part of the Ulus of Jochi, better known in historiography as the Golden Horde. The population of the Golden Horde was ethnically heterogeneous: while a portion consisted of sedentary peoples conquered by the Mongols, the majority comprised numerous Turkic and Mongol nomadic clans and tribes that had not yet developed into distinct ethnic groups.
According to historian Lee (2023), the ethnogenesis of the Kazakhs involved multiple components, including tribes of Mongol origin (among them the Duglats, Manghits, Qongirats, and Ushin, among others), as well as non-Mongol, Mongolic-speaking, and Turkic tribes from the Mongolian Plateau (such as the Jalayirs, Kereits, and Naimans), which had once formed part of the new Mongol ulus established by Genghis Khan in 1206. These components also included the indigenous Turkic tribes of Desht-i Kipchak, notably the Kipchaks and Kangly, as well as new tribal formations that emerged during the era of the Mongol Empire, including the Argyns. Lee notes that Soviet-era scholarship often argued that Kazakh tribes bearing the names of tribes from the Mongolian Plateau were in fact descended from indigenous Kangly and Kipchak elements. However, genetic studies conducted by both Kazakhstani and international researchers indicate that modern Kazakh tribes are actually descended from their 13th-century namesakes.
Fazlallah Khunji Isfahani, who took part in the campaign against the Kazakhs alongside Shaybani Khan in 1509, identifies the Kazakhs with the "Tatars," that is, the Mongols. His account begins as follows: