History Of The Bashkirs People

• published: 18 May 2014
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The Bashkirs as a Kipchak group formed in the early medieval period in the context of the Turkic migrations. Russian ethnographic literature has discussed, besides their Turkic ancestry, Ugrian and Iranian contributions. Genetically, R1b1a1 (2011 name) occurs with comparatively high frequency among the Bashkirs in Bashkortostan (62/471 = 13.2%). Paleontological and anthropological findings link the roots of the Bashkir people to the Andronovo culture. Recent studies[when?] regard Turkic and Ugrian theories as the most likely explanations of the ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs. Linguistic data in favor of the Iranian hypothesis is not given, and hardly any can be found. Tribal subdivision The Bashkirs developed from a mixture of Finno-Ugric tribes and a variety of Turkic and Mongolian tribes, although their origins are still unclear. Traditionally, the Bashkir nation comprises seven clans, the Kypchak, Yurmat, Myng, Usergan, Katai, Tabin, and Burzyan. The clans, which are closely related to the neighboring Tatars, are further divided into numerous subclans and extended familiy groups such as Yurmi, Yenei, Geine-Tarkhan, Kese, Suler, Tanyp, Yomran, Negmen, Yulaman, Imes, Misher. The Bashkir language is spoken in three major dialects, Kuvakan (Mountain Bashkir), Yurmaty (Steppe Bashkir), and Burzhan (Western Bashkir). Seven of these ethnonyms have analogues in ancient Hungarian ethnonyms: Yurmaty/Gyarmat, Yenei/Jenö, Geine-Tarkhan/Tarján, Kese/Keszi, Yulaman/Gjula, Misher/Megyer, Negmen/Nyék. The first five are of Turkic orign and have ancient Bulgar traits and the ethnonyms Negmen and Mischer are of Ugric origin. The ethnonyms Tarkhan and Imes also find analogues in Chuvash ethnonyms. Early records on the Bashkirs are found in medieval works by Sallam Tardzheman (9th century) and Ibn-Fadlan (10th century). Al-Balkhi (10th century) described Bashkirs as a people divided into two groups, one inhabiting the Southern Urals, the second group living on the Danube plain near the boundaries of Byzantium——therefore - given the geography and date - referring to either Danube Bulgars or Magyars (the former is more likely). 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, and Tobol Rivers and upstream of the Yaik river. Achmed ibn-Fadlan visited Volga Bulgaria as a staff member in the embassy of the Caliph 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, 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 10th century, Islam spread among the Bashkirs. By the 14th century, Islam had become the dominant religious force in Bashkir society. By 1236, lands of Bashkortostan were incorporated into the empire of Genghis Khan. During the 13th and 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 and 18th centuries -- a part of the Kalmyks and Middle Asian Sarts. From the 16th to the 20th centuries, various groups of Tatars. After the breakup of the Mongol Empire, the Bashkirs were separated between Nogay horde and Kazan and Siberian khanates, founded in the 15th century. Trans-Ural Bashkirs were subordinated to the Siberian Khanate. 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, Sibir, 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) family trees of the Bashkir.