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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kazakstan
Index
Until the arrival of Russians in the eighteenth century, the history of
Kazakstan was determined by the movements, conflicts, and alliances of
Turkic and Mongol tribes. The nomadic tribal society of what came to be
the Kazak people then suffered increasingly frequent incursions by the
Russian Empire, ultimately being included in that empire and the Soviet
Union that followed it.
Early Tribal Movements
Humans have inhabited present-day Kazakstan since the earliest Stone
Age, generally pursuing the nomadic pastoralism for which the region's
climate and terrain are best suited. The earliest well-documented state in
the region was the Turkic Kaganate, which came into existence in the sixth
century A.D. The Qarluqs, a confederation of Turkic tribes, established a
state in what is now eastern Kazakstan in 766. In the eighth and ninth
centuries, portions of southern Kazakstan were conquered by Arabs, who
also introduced Islam. The Oghuz Turks controlled western Kazakstan from
the ninth through the eleventh centuries; the Kimak and Kipchak peoples,
also of Turkic origin, controlled the east at roughly the same time. The
large central desert of Kazakstan is still called Dashti-Kipchak, or the
Kipchak Steppe.
In the late ninth century, the Qarluq state was destroyed by invaders
who established the large Qarakhanid state, which occupied a region known
as Transoxania, the area north and east of the Oxus River (the present-day
Syrdariya), extending into what is now China. Beginning in the early
eleventh century, the Qarakhanids fought constantly among themselves and
with the Seljuk Turks to the south. In the course of these conflicts,
parts of present-day Kazakstan shifted back and forth between the
combatants. The Qarakhanids, who accepted Islam and the authority of the
Arab Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad during their dominant period, were
conquered in the 1130s by the Karakitai, a Turkic confederation from
northern China. In the mid-twelfth century, an independent state of
Khorazm (also seen as Khorezm or Khwarazm) along the Oxus River broke away
from the weakening Karakitai, but the bulk of the Karakitai state lasted
until the invasion of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan in 1219-21.
After the Mongol capture of the Karakitai state, Kazakstan fell under
the control of a succession of rulers of the Mongolian Golden Horde, the
western branch of the Mongol Empire. (The horde, or zhuz , is
the precursor of the present-day clan, which is still an important element
of Kazak society--see Population and Society, this ch.) By the early
fifteenth century, the ruling structure had split into several large
groups known as khanates, including the Nogai Horde and the Uzbek Khanate.
Data as of March 1996
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