The Bashkirs, are Turkic people indigenous to Bashkortostan, Russia. Groups 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.

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 a second language, and some as their first language, regarding Bashkir as a language spoken by their grandparents.

History

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 worshiped phallic idols. At that time, Bashkirs lived as nomadic cattle breeders. Until the 13th century they occupied the territories between the Volga and Kama Rivers and the Urals.

The first European sources to mention the Bashkirs are 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 or Bastarci, and asserted that they spoke the same language as the Hungarians.

According to medieval sources, until the arrival of the Mongol in the middle of the 13th century, the Bashkirs were 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 dissolved into a number of weak tribes. They were converted to Islam by the Volga Bulgarians in the XIII century.

In 1556, they voluntarily recognized the supremacy of Russia, which in consequence founded the city of Ufa in 1574 to defend them from attacks by the Kyrgyz and the Nogays, and subjected the Bashkirs to a fur-tax.

In 1676, the Bashkirs rebelled under a leader named Seit, 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. The third insurrection occurred in 1735, at the time of the foundation of Orenburg, and it lasted for six years.

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.

Culture

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 öyrä and a cheese named qorot.

Famous Bashkirs

• Salawat Yulayev
• Zeki Velidi Togan
• Yakup Kulmiy
• Murtaza Rakhimov, first president of Bashkortostan
• Elbrus Nigmatullin, a World's Strongest Man athlete
• Gaziz Almukhametov
• Zemfira (Tatar father, Bashkir mother)
• Laysan Utiasheva (Bashkir mother), gymnast
• Yuri Shatunov (Bashkir mother), singer

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

External links

• History, culture, language of the Bashkirs
• Bashkir folk-tales and legends
• Bashkir folk tales in Andrey Platonov's recitation, A. Usmanov, ed., (C) Bashkirskie narodnye skazki, Detgiz, 1947. 96 pp., A.K. Bulygin, ed., (C) ImWerden Verlag, München 2005.