Kazakhs

This article is about ethnic Kazakhs. For Kazakh citizens, see Kazakhstan .

Kazakh eagle hunters

The Kazakhs ( Kazakh Қазақ Qazaq , Pl. Қазақтар Qazaqtar ) are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group with around 20 million members, mainly in Kazakhstan , but also in Mongolia (the largest Turkic-speaking and largest Muslim minority there ), Russia (1,300,000) and in the People's Republic of China (2,200,000), Uzbekistan (800,000), Iran (15,000), Afghanistan (45,000) and Turkey (30,000). There is also a notable Kazakh minority in Germany (17,000).

Originally the Kazakhs were pastoral nomads in the Central Asian steppe. At the time of the Soviet rule, most nomads were forcibly made sedentary under state coercion and the herds were nationalized as collective farms . Especially in Mongolia and China, however, there are still local groups that make a living from mobile animal husbandry .

The vast majority of all Kazakhs speak Kazakh .

Approximate settlement area of ​​the Kazakhs

Name meaning

The name "Qazaq" (also written Kazak ) is of old Turkish origin . In the 19th century it was translated by Kazakh scholars as “independent” or “steppe rider”. See also Cossacks .

Origin and the three shots (hordes)

The Kazakh khanate and territory

of the Little Horde

of the Middle Horde

of the Great Horde

Approximate distribution of the individual tribal groups

The ancestors of today's Kazakhs are mainly Turkic , but also partly Turkic Mongolian or Siberian tribes. Today's Kazakhs, like the Tuwinians , show a close relationship with both the Mongols and other Turkic peoples.

The Kazakhs are still today divided into three “Schüs” ( Kazakh Jüz “Department”) or “ Horde ”: the Small Horde (Kişi Jüz) , the Middle Horde (Orta Jüz) and the Great Horde (Ulı Jüz) .

There are a number of legends about the origin of these shots:

1. In some Kazakh chronicles, the origin of the shots is placed in the 13th century of Genghis Khan .
2. According to other sources, the shus originated in the 15th century when Timur-i Leng subjugated the Kyptschak horde .
3. Other records deliberately trace the formation of the shots back to the pre-Mongolian period, so that these would then be mainly of Koek-Turkish origin and much older than the actual Kazakh people. The Kazakh historian Manash Kossibayev now takes the position that the formation of the shots - or the hordes - represented the formation of Kazakh society over several centuries. According to Kossibayev, the shots are based on natural geographic factors. So they still correspond to the nomadic way of life and traditions, including the clan and tribal relationships among themselves. Thus, the Schüs are to be regarded as tribal unions, as were the Mongolian hordes, and the equation of "Schüs" and "Horde" is to be regarded as justified.

But unlike the Mongolian hordes, the shots were not formed according to the kinship principle, but according to the territorial principle: The three shots do not differ in their structure, but according to their dialect and area of ​​validity. What is remarkable is the fact that the shots can be traced back to two other subdivisions beyond their limits: the "Koscha" (Kazakh: Koja , Turkish Hoca [German Hodscha]) and the "Tore" (Kazakh: Töre ), which is the Mongolian Form hereditary nobility among the Kazakhs. The Kosha were regarded as the representatives of the clergy and the gates as the direct descendants of Genghis Khan - only members of the gates (“keepers”; from the old Turkish word Törü [the ancient, unwritten law of the Central Asian peoples]) were allowed to be elected Khan .

Every Kazakhs must be able to trace the history of his tribe and his clan back to the seventh generation before him - this ensures that the old tribal and clan traditions survive in the long run.

history

prehistory

Kazakh culture on postage stamps

Alasch Khan is considered the mythical progenitor of the Kazakh nation . Originally, today's Kazakhs belonged to the territories of Ordas ( Orda-Horde ) and Shibans ( White Horde ) and were called Alasch . Orda and Shibani were grandsons of the Mongol prince Genghis Khan and placed the first princes over the Kazakh steppe nomads.

The Kazakhs emerged as a federal tribal association

The Kazakhs emerged as an independent ethnic group between the 13th and 15th centuries . The Mongolian upper class began to merge with the pre-population of Turkic origin. Clans of Turkic origin were also incorporated into the emerging Kazakh tribal association . Clan names such as Kimek and Naiman bear witness to this , where some parts of the people of the old Türgiş, Tschigil and the Yenisei Kirghiz were added.

A Qazaq Orda ("Kazakh Horde") is mentioned for the first time around 1400 . These were part of an emerging tribal federation that would later be called " Uzbek ".

Today's Kazakhs only formed around 1456 as a split from the Uzbek Khanate, which had just been founded : The princes Janibek and Kerei, sons of Boraq Khan († 1428, Orda or White Horde ) broke away from the Abu'l Chairs of the Uzbek Empire, because they wanted to remain unbound as steppe nomads and founded the Kazak khanate .

Kazakh family in a traditional yurt (around 1910)

"Kirghiz" as the general name for the Kazakhs

The Russian Empire dubbed the Central Asian steppe nomads as "Kyrgyz" from the 16th century . Previously, they were generally assigned to the Tatars . The generic term "Kyrgyz" was deliberately chosen by the Tsarist Empire, as the Kazakhs had a lot in common with the Kyrgyz . The latter were considered to be mountain residents and were generally referred to as "Kara-Kyrgyz". The tsarist empire avoided using the name Kazakhs to avoid confusion with the Slavic Cossacks .

Kazakh Autonomy and Soviet Era

After the collapse of the tsarist empire, the Kazakhs were united in the Alasch Orda , and after its defeat they belonged to the Turkestan SSR . There they were grouped together in the " Kazak-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region ".

Compare the history of Kazakhstan

Distribution of Kazakhs in different countries

Kazakhs in the states of the former Soviet Union

country	Number of people of Kazakh origin	Share of the total population [%]
Armenia	1,000	0.03
Azerbaijan	3,000	0.04
Estonia	1,000	0.07
Georgia	3,000	0.06
Kazakhstan	15,550,000	81.4
Kyrgyzstan	45,000	0.9
Lithuania	3,000	0.09
Moldova	3,000	0.07
Russia	1,310,000	0.9
Tajikistan	15,000	0.2
Turkmenistan	120,000	2.4
Ukraine	15,000	0.03
Uzbekistan	800,000	2.9

Kazakhs in other countries in the world

country	Number of people of Kazakh origin	comment
Afghanistan	45,000	have immigrated recently
People's Republic of China	1,462,588	recognized minority (2010 census)
Germany	17,000	mostly relatives of Kazakh Germans
France	15,000
Iran	15,000	predominantly located in northern Iran
Canada	5,000
Mongolia	100,000	largest Turkic minority
Pakistan	3,000
Sweden	1,000
Turkey	30,000	immigrated from 1950
United Kingdom	2,000
United States	10,000	Immigrated from 1930

Population development in Kazakhstan

The percentages below indicate what percentage of the population of Kazakhstan consists of ethnic Kazakhs.

1897	1911	1926	1939	1959	1970	1979	1989	1999	2006	2009	2018
73.9%	60.8%	59.5%	38.0%	30.0%	32.6%	36.0%	39.7%	53.4%	59.2%	63.5%	81.4%

Kazak religion

See also : Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan  and Roman Catholic Church in Kazakhstan

Minaret of the Central Mosque in Almaty

The Kazakhs are predominantly Sunni Muslims . The influence of the Islamic religion reached the Kazakhs in the 8th century after the Arabs came to Central Asia, with Islam spreading north from Turkmenistan and finally reaching present-day Kazakhstan. The missionary work of the Samanids also induced numerous Kazakhs to convert.

In the 14th century, the Golden Horde spread Islam on a large scale, reaching the majority of the Kazakhs and other Central Asian peoples.

Islam was finally accepted only in the 19th century, when Kazan Tatars appeared among them, who worked as traders and interpreters for the Russian tsars . It should also be noted that Sufism and the numerous shamanic practices remained anchored in Kazakh culture. From this old religion (the ethnologist Klaus E. Müller speaks of "complex shamanism" and means those forms that have developed a complex ritual culture through contact with other religions and neighboring agricultural societies) comes the worship of fire, which still plays an important role today plays. Kazakh necromancers were healers and fortune tellers and were said to be able to influence female fertility.

During the time of the Soviet Union , the Kazakh Islamic associations - like other religious institutions - had a rather difficult time and only survived in the areas where the Kazakhs dominated in numbers. This has caused numerous Kazakhs to turn away from Islam.

The Kazakhs' interest in Islam only increased after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The governments of Islamic countries (including Turkey , Egypt and Saudi Arabia ) financed the construction of mosques and cultural centers in Kazakhstan. The most famous cultural center is called Nur-Mubarak and was built in 2001 in Almaty .

Furthermore, shamanism or animism , the original religion of the Kazakhs, is widespread in the population and is enjoying greater popularity again among intellectual and especially younger people. As in other Turkic-speaking countries in Central Asia, Altaic animism (as well as Tengrism ) is experiencing a revival , among other things with the support of a growing nationalism as in Kyrgyzstan .

language

The vast majority of Kazakhs speak to the Turkic belonging Kazakh , the order with the Turkish , Kyrgyz and Chuvash language used is.

Kazakh used the Arabic script since the 19th century . The Russian minority in the country founded secular schools with the Cyrillic alphabet and the Kazakhs founded religious schools with the Arabic alphabet.

In 1927 the first writing reform of the Kazakh language took place in the Soviet Union . The Arabic script was initially replaced by a Latin alphabet and then by a modified Cyrillic in 1940 when compulsory Russian lessons were introduced in Kazakhstan .

In 1990 the Kazakh government decided to change the language of the country again to a Latin alphabet and a corresponding model alphabet was drafted by 1995. However, the final changeover to the Latin alphabet has not yet been carried out. However, a Latin version was also created for the government website and the website of the Kazakh news agency. In addition, the Cyrillic script will prevail until further notice.

In the Kazakh settlement areas of Mongolia, the Arabic alphabet was adopted by the Kazakhs there in the 1940s. In the Chinese settlement areas, too, the current Kazakh cyrillic alphabet was adopted for a short time from 1950 to 1970. However, in the 1970s, it was decided to latinize the minorities of China and a Latin alphabet was therefore introduced. Since the Chinese government reversed the Latinization, a modified Arabic alphabet has been reintroduced for the Kazakhs in China.

Chinese has been the second most widely spoken language (L2) since 2016, displacing English as a second language.

See also : Development of the Kazakh written language

"Non-destructive-aggressive society"

The social psychologist Erich Fromm used ethnographic records to analyze 30 pre-state peoples, including the Kazak ethnic group , as part of his work on the anatomy of human destructiveness . He finally assigned them to the “non-destructive-aggressive societies”, whose cultures are characterized by a sense of community with pronounced individuality (status, success, rivalry), targeted child-rearing, regulated manners, privileges for men and, above all, male tendencies to aggression - but without destructive ones Tendencies (destructive rage, cruelty, greed for murder, etc.) - are marked. (see also: "War and Peace" in pre-state societies )

Famous Kazakhs

• Abai Qunanbajuly , poet and writer
• Qanysch Sätbajew , geologist, one of the founders of Soviet and Kazakh geology
• Nursultan Nazarbayev , former Kazakh President
• Toqtar Äubäkirow , military pilot and spaceman
• Timur Bekmambetov , film director
• Talghat Mussabaev , spaceman
• Dimash Kudaibergen , singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
• Denis Ten , figure skater

Web links

Commons : Kazakhs  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Kazakhs  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Ethnographic map of Kazakhstan (English)

Footnotes

1. ↑ Kazakhstan's population tops 18 million . In: The Astana Times . March 31, 2018 (English, astanatimes.com [accessed July 17, 2018]).
2. ↑ Julie Di Cristofaro, Erwan Pennarun, Stéphane Mazières, Natalie M. Myres, Alice A. Lin: Afghan Hindu Kush. Where Eurasian Sub-Continent Gene Flows Converge . In: PLoS ONE . tape 8 , no. 10 , October 18, 2013, ISSN  1932-6203 , p. e76748 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0076748 , PMID 24204668 , PMC 3799995 (free full text) - (English, plos.org [accessed September 12, 2018]).
3. ^ The Kazakh Diasporas Abroad. In: sana.gov.kz. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007 ; Retrieved September 2, 2019 (Russian). 
4. ↑ Harald Haarmann : Small Lexicon of Nations. From Aborigines to Zapotecs. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51100-7 , p. 184.
5. ↑ In-Depth: The Long Journey Home: an IRIN In-Depth on the challenge of refugee return and reintegration. irinnews.org, accessed December 20, 2009 . 
6. ^ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Minorities and participation in public life: Kazakhstan Paper ; Editing: Bhavna Dave. Mikhail Alexandrov: Uneasy Alliance: Relations Between Russia and Kazakhstan in the Post-Soviet Era, 1992–1997 ; Greenwood Press, 1999; ISBN 978-0-313-30965-6 . Agency on Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan: Demographic situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2006 (Russian)
7. ↑ Kazakhstan's population tops 18 million . In: The Astana Times . March 31, 2018 (English, astanatimes.com [accessed July 17, 2018]).
8. ↑ Ibn Athir, 8th edition, page 396
9. ↑ Klaus E. Müller: Shamanism. Healers, spirits, rituals. 4th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2010 (original edition 1997), ISBN 978-3-406-41872-3 . Pp. 30-33, 41.
10. ↑ Markus Porsche-Ludwig, Jürgen Bellers (ed.): Handbook of the religions of the world. Volumes 1 and 2, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2012, ISBN 978-3-88309-727-5 . P. 1124.
11. ↑ Traditional life in the steppe: Kazakh people and shamanism · Publications · “Kazakhstan History” portal. Accessed July 17, 2018 . 
12. ↑ Shamanism. Accessed July 17, 2018 . 
13. ↑ https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/079e/6bb8e0e2bc668494e26d87983004b075b9a0.pdf
14. ↑ We Are Turks, Not Arabs. In: Liveleak.com. Accessed July 17, 2018 . 
15. ↑ Reuters Editorial: Lost in translation? Kazakh leader bans cabinet from speaking Russian . In: US (English, reuters.com [accessed July 17, 2018]).
16. ↑ Jack Farchy: Kazakh language schools shift from English to Chinese. May 9, 2016, Retrieved September 2, 2019 (UK English). 
17. ↑ Students learn Chinese to hone Their job prospects - World - Chinadaily.com.cn. Retrieved September 2, 2019 . 
18. ↑ Erich Fromm: Anatomy of human destructiveness . From the American by Liselotte et al. Ernst Mickel, 86. – 100. Thousand edition, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-499-17052-3 , pp. 191–192.