Bashkirs

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Bashkirs
(Башҡорттар)
Total population

1,800,000 (estimated)
Regions with significant populations
Russia:
  1,673,389 (2002)[1]

Uzbekistan:
  41,000
Kazakhstan:
  24,000 (1999) [2]
Tajikistan:
   5,000
Ukraine:
   4,300 (2001) [3]
Kyrgyzstan:
   3,200
Turkmenistan:
   2,600
Belarus:
   1,300
Latvia:
   600
Lithuania:
   400
Languages
Russian, Bashkir, Tatar
Religions
Predominately Sunni Islam, Miniscule adherents of Orthodox Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Other Turkic peoples

The Bashkirs, a Turkic people, live in Russia, mostly in the republic of Bashkortostan. A significant number of Bashkirs also live in the republic of Tatarstan, as well as in Perm Krai and Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Samara, and Saratov Oblasts of Russia.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Bashkirs are concentrated on the slopes and confines of the southern Ural Mountains and the neighboring plains. They speak the Kypchak-based Bashkir language, a close relative of the Tatar language. Most Bashkirs also speak Russian: some as as a second language, and some as their first language, regarding Bashkir as a language spoken by their grandparents.

[edit] History

Asia in 1200 AD, showing the location of the Bashkirs and their neighbors.
Asia in 1200 AD, showing the location of the Bashkirs and their neighbors.

The name Bashkir is recorded for the first time at the beginning of the 10th century in the writings of the Arab writer, ibn Fadlan, who, in describing his travels among the Volga Bulgarians, mentions the Bashkirs as a warlike and idolatrous race. According to ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs worshipped phallic idols. At that time, Bashkirs lived as nomadic cattle breeders. Until the 13th century they occupied the territories between Volga and Kama Rivers and the Urals.

European sources first mention the Bashkirs in the works of Joannes de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruquis. These travellers, who fell in with Bashkir tribes in the upper parts of the Ural River, called them Pascatir, and asserted that they spoke the same language as the Hungarians.

Until the arrival of the Mongols in the middle of the 13th century, the Bashkirs formed a strong and independent people, troublesome to their neighbors: the Volga Bulgarians and the Petchenegs, but by the time of the downfall of the Khanate of Kazan in 1552 they had become a weak state. In 1556 they voluntarily recognized the supremacy of Russia, which in consequence founded the city of Ufa in 1574 to defend them from the Kyrgyz, and subjected the Bashkirs to a fur-tax.

In 1676, the Bashkirs rebelled under a leader named Seit, and the Russians had great difficulties in pacifying them. Bashkiria rose again in 1707, under Aldar and Kûsyom, on account of ill-treatment by the Russian officials. The third and last insurrection occurred in 1735, at the time of the foundation of Orenburg, and it lasted for six years.

In 1774 Bashkiria supported Pugachev's rebellion. Bashkir troops fought under the Bashkir noble Salawat Yulayev, but suffered defeat.

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.


[edit] Bashkir-Hungarian relations

A comprehensive study of all the available evidence makes it perfectly clear that according to Muslim writers the Bashkirs — as they call the Hungarians — were divided into two groups, one of which lived in the Middle-Volga region "behind the Bulgars" and the other further south between two rivers flowing into the Black Sea.

It is also certain that in the usage of Muslim geographers the names Bashkir and Magyar were interchangeable; the name Bashkir is even used for the Hungarians living in Hungary. For instance the Persian historian Juwayni, in describing the Mongol campaign against Hungary, calls the Hungarians Bashkirs.

In Latin sources of the 13th century the Bashkir-Hungarian identity is taken for granted. Piano Carpini in describing the Mongol campaign in Russia writes: "Inde procedentes (the Mongols) ad aquilonem contra Baschart (var. Biscart, Bascart, etc.), id est Hungarian, magnam", and in another passage he mentions: "Bascartos id est Magnam Hungariam". His companion, Benedict of Poland, mentions "Bascardos qui sunt antiqui Ungari"

There was at least two Dominican expeditions to these regions. The second of them, undertaken in 1236-37 by the Hungarian Friar Julian, is well known through a description entitled De facto Ungarie magne.

[edit] Culture

Bashkir switchman near the town Ust-Katav on the Yuryuzan River between Ufa and Cheliabinsk in the Ural Mountain region, ca. 1910
Bashkir switchman near the town Ust-Katav on the Yuryuzan River between Ufa and Cheliabinsk in the Ural Mountain region, ca. 1910

Some Bashkirs traditionally practiced agriculture, cattle-rearing and bee-keeping. The nomadic Bashkirs wandered either the mountains or the steppes, herding cattle.

Bashkir national dishes include a kind of gruel called yûryu, and a cheese named skûrt.

Bashkirs had a reputation as a hospitable but suspicious people, apt to plunder and disinclined to hard work.

[edit] Famous Bashkir people

[edit] References

  • J. P. Carpini, Liber Tartarorum, edited under the title Relations des Mongols ou Tartares, by d'Avezac (Paris, 1838).
  • Gulielmus de Rubruquis, The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, translated by V.W. Rockhill (London, 1900).
  • Semenoff, Slovar Ross. Imp., s.v.
  • Frhn, "De Baskiris", in Mrn. de l'Acad. de St-Pitersbourg (1822).
  • Florinsky, in Вестник Европы [Vestnik Evropy] (1874).
  • Katarinskij, Dictionnaire Bashkir-Russe (1900).
  • http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/rubruck.html

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] External links

[edit] Bashkir news sites

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