The area Zhambyl ( Kazakh Жамбыл облысы Zhambyl oblysy ; Russian Жамбылская область Schambylskaja oblast , to 1993 Джамбулская область Dschambulskaja oblast ) is one of 14 provinces of Kazakhstan . It is located in the south of the country on the border with Kyrgyzstan . The capital is Taras , it is named after the Kazakh- Soviet poet and Akyn Schambyl Schabajew .
The Shambyl area is located in the south of the country. It is bordered to the west by the territory Türkistan , on the north by the region Karaganda and the east by the Almaty region . Its southern border also forms the state border with Kyrgyzstan . The area is largely dominated by deserts that are sparsely populated. In the north, the hunger steppe , also called Betpaqdala, determines the appearance. This is a steppe - like semi - desert , which is separated from the Mujunkum desert further south by the valley of the river Schu . The Qaratau , a northwestern branch of the Tianshan, extends to the southwest on the border with the Turkistan region . The east of the area is characterized by the Schu-Ili Mountains , the mountain slopes of which are largely covered by desert and steppe landscape. In the south on the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border rises the Kyrgyz Alatau , at the foot of which most of the larger cities and settlements are located.
About 1.13 million people live in the Shambyl area (2019 estimate). Around three quarters of the population today are Kazakhs , ten percent are Russians and five percent are Dungans , a Muslim-Chinese minority who immigrated from China to Central Asia at the end of the 19th century . The majority of the Dungans now settle in the Qordai district . Especially since the end of the Soviet Union and Kazakhstan's independence, the Russian population has declined sharply, from 27 percent in the 1989 census to just 12 percent in the last 2009 census . In the Shambyl region there was also a large number of Russian Germans until the beginning of the 1990s , who made up a good seven percent of the total population with a number of 70,000. Today only around 4,300 Germans live in the area, which makes them less than one percent of the population.
The area is divided into ten districts ( Kazakh Ауданы Audany ; Russian Район Rajon ). The administrative center of Taras represents a separate urban district. Other places with the status of a city are Qaratau , Schangatas and Schu .