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Bashkirs
Башҡорттар, Başqorttar

Bashkir girls in traditional dress (1998 photograph)
Total population
approx. 2 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
Russia 1,673,389 [2]  Kazakhstan 17,263 [3]  Ukraine 4,253 [4]  Uzbekistan 3,707 [5]
Languages
Bashkir, Russian
Religion
Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
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.

Name[link]

There is no universally accepted etymology of the word "Bashqort". Several suggested theories are:

• Ethnologist R. G. Kuzeev defines the ethnonym as "bash" — "main, head" and "qort" — " clan, tribe".
• According to the theory of 18th c. ethnographers, V. N. Tatishchev, P. I. Richkov, and Johann Gottlieb Georgi, the word "Bashqort" means "wolf-leader of the pack" (bash — "main",qort — "wolf").
• In 1847, historian V. S. Yumatov suggested the meaning as "beekeeper, beemaster".
• Another Russian historian and ethnologist A. E. Alektorov in 1885 suggested that "Bashqort" means "distinct nation".
• Famous Turkologist N. A. Baskakov believed that the word "Bashqort" consists of two parts: "badz(a)" - brother-in-law" and "(o)gur" and means "Ugrics' brother-in-law".
• Ethnologist N. V. Bikbulatov's theory states that the term originates from the name of legendary Khazar warlord Bashgird, who was dwelling with two thousand of his warriors in the area of the Jayıq river.
• According to Douglas Morton Dunlop the word "Bashqort" comes from "beshgur, bashgur" which means "five tribes, five Ugrics". Since "SH" in the modern language complies with "L" in Bulgar ethnonyms "Bashqort(bashgur)" and "Bulgar" are equivalent.
• Historian and linguist András Róna-Tas believes the ethonym "Bashkir", is a Bulgar Turkic reflex of the Hungarian self-denomination "Magyar" (Old Hungarian: "Majer").

History[link]

Bashkir Archer, representation of the 19th century

Ethnogenesis[link]

The Bashkirs as a Kipchak group form in the early medieval period in the context of the Turkic migrations. Besides their Turkic ancestry,^[6] Ugrian^[7] and Iranian^[8] contributions have also been discussed in Russian ethnographic literature. Genetically, R1b1a1 (2011 name) has been found to occur with comparatively high frequency among the Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (62/471 = 13.2%).^[9] Accordance with all paleontological and anthropological findings presume the roots of the Bashkir people likely to the Andronovo culture.^{[10][11][12][13][14]}

Middle Ages[link]

Early records on the Bashkirs are found in medieval works by Sallam Tardzheman (9th cent.) and Ibn-Fadlan (10th cent.). Al-Balkhi (10th 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 Rustah, 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 922. 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, 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 13th-14th centuries, all of Bashkortostan was part 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 Kipchaks a part of Bashkirs. Under the Golden Horde, separate Mongolian elements. During the 17th-18th centuries – a part of the Kalmyks and Middle Asian Sarts. During the 16th-20th centuries, 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 15th century. Trans-Ural Bashkirs subordinated to Siberian khanate.

Early modern period[link]

In the late 16th and early 19th centuries 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 16th century, 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.

Two Bashkir horsemen

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 Bashkir War[link]

^[15] 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).

The main settlement area of the Bashkirs in the late 18th century extends over the Kama, Volga, Samara and Tobol Rivers

Although the history of the 1735 Bashkir War cannot be easily summarized, its results can be.

• The Russian Imperial goal of expansion into Central Asia was delayed to deal with the Bashkir problem.
• Bashkiria was pacified in 1735-1740.
• Orenburg was established.
• The southern side of Bashkiria was fenced off by the Orenburg Line of forts. It ran from Samara on the Volga east up the Samara River to its headwaters, crossed to the middle Ural River and followed it east and then north on the east side of the Urals and went east down the Uy River to Ust-Uisk on the Tobol River where it connected to the ill-defined 'Siberian Line' along the forest-steppe boundary.
• In 1740 a report was made of Bashkir loses. It gave: Killed:16,893, Sent to Baltic regiments and fleet: 3,236, Women and children distributed (presumably as serfs): 8,382, Grand Total: 28,511. Fines: Horses: 12,283, Cattle and Sheep: 6,076, Money: 9,828 rubles. Villages destroyed: 696. As this was compiled from army reports it excludes losses from irregular raiding, hunger, disease and cold. All this was from an estimated Bashkir population of 100,000.

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.

The Bashkirs lived between the Kama, Volga, Samara and Tobol Rivers. The Samara River extends from the hairpin curve of the Volga east to the base of the Urals. The Tobol is east of the Upper Ural River. Orsk is where the Ural turns westward. The Belaya River with the town of Ufa cuts through the center.

Demographics[link]

The ethnic Bashkir population is estimated at roughly 2 million people (2009 SIL Ethnologue), of which about 1.4 million speak are native speakers of the Bashkir language, a Turkic language of the Kypchak group. The Russian census of 2002 recorded 1.38 million Bashkir speakers in the Russian Federation. Most Bashkirs are bilingual in Bashkir and Russian.

The 2010 Russian census recorded 1,172,287 ethnic Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (29.5% of total population).

Culture[link]

It has been suggested that Music in the Republic of Bashkortostan be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since April 2012.

The Bashkirs are predominantly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab. The 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.

«Ural-batyr» and «Akbuzat» are Bashkir national epics. 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. The first systematic investigations on Bashkir mythology was made by ethnographers in the 18th century. Especially valuable are works of S.I. Rudenko, dubbed the "Father of the Bashkir ethnography".^[16]

Famous Bashkirs[link]

• Salawat Yulayev, Bashkir national hero.
• Zeki Velidi Togan, historian, turkologist, and leader of the Bashkir revolutionary and liberation movement.
• Murtaza Rakhimov, first president of Bashkortostan.
• Rustem Khamitov, president of Bashkortostan.
• Irek Zaripov, biathlete and cross-country skier.
• Zemfira, rock artist.
• Ildar Abdrazakov, operatic singer (bass-baritone).

Gallery[link]

This section looks like an image gallery. Wikipedia policy discourages galleries of random images of the article subject; please improve or remove the section accordingly, moving freely licensed images to Wikimedia Commons if not already hosted there.

• 

  Young Bashkirs in national dress

• 

  Bashkir sergeant, Orenburg, 1892

• 

  Bashkir switchman on the Trans-Siberian, near the town of Ust' Katav, 1910

• 

  illustration by A. O. Orlovskiy (1777-1832)

• 

  illustration by Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet (1788-1871)

• 

  illustration from The Peoples of Russia (1812)

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Frhn, "De Baskiris", in Mrn. de l'Acad. de St-Pitersbourg, 1822.
• J. P. Carpini, "Liber Tartarorum", edited under the title "Relations des Mongols ou Tartares", by d'Avezac (Paris, 1838).
• Semenoff, "Geographical-statistic Dictionary of Russian Empire", 1863.
• Florinsky, in "Vestnik Evropy" magazine, 1874.
• Katarinskij, "Dictionnaire Bashkir-Russe", 1900.
• Gulielmus de Rubruquis, "The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World", translated by V.W. Rockhill (London, 1900).
• William of Rubruck's "Account of the Mongols", 1900.
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bashkirs". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. .
• Alton S. Donnelly, "The Russian Conquest of Bashkiria 1552-1740": Yale Univ. Press, 1968.
• Summerfield, Stephen Cossack Hurrah: Russian Irregular Cavalry Organisation and Uniforms during the Napoleonic Wars, Partizan Press, 2005 ISBN 1-85818-513-0

External links[link]

• Bashkirs at congress of Hungarians
• Bashkir folk dance "Kahim Tura"
• Culture of Bashkirs
• Bashkir folk-tales and legends
• The Bashkir nation: history pages (Russian)
• Photos of Bashkirs and their life in funds of the Library of Congress
• Photos of Bashkirs and their life in funds of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera)