The Mongol conquests not only completely changed the political map of Eurasia, but also made certain adjustments in the ethnic map of settlement of nomadic tribes of Eastern Europe and Asia. At the beginning of the 13th century, the steppe expanses from the Irtysh further westward were home to nomads of Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes known in the East under the common name of Kipchaks, in Russia — Polovtsians, in Central Europe — Komans. The importance of the Kipchak tribes in the steppe was so great that the entire Great Steppe from the Irtysh in the east to the Dniester in the west began to be called, since the 11th century, Desht-i Kipchak (lit.: ?Kipchak steppe’; Persian), Polovtsian Field (in Rus), Comania (in Europe). Desht-i Kipchak was usually divided into two parts: Western Desht-i Kipchak and Eastern Desht-i Kipchak. Western Kipchak stretched from east to west from the Yaik River (Ural) to the Dniester, and from south to north from the Black and Caspian Seas to Ukek (its remains are in the vicinity of modern Saratov). The border of Eastern Kipchak was made up by the Irtysh in the east, the Yaik River in the west, and the Ukek River in the north. Yaik River in the east, the Tobol River in the north, Lake Balkhash in the south and the areas adjacent to the middle course of the Syr-Darya.
According to V.V. Bartold, there were separate Kipchak khans, but there was never a khan of all Kipchaks; and in each part of the Kipchak steppe (Western and Eastern) several Kipchak khans ruled simultaneously. At the beginning of the 13th century, one of the Kipchak khans in Eastern Desht-i Kipchak was Kuidzhsk. According to Rashid ad-Din’s «Collection of Annals», when Eastern Kipchak was conquered by Mongols, Kunjok, together with his son named Kumurbish-Kunji, a skillful hunter, was captured and was in the service of Genghis Khan as an elder of umbrella-holders (a special kind of umbrella held over the sovereign was one of the most important signs of monarchic dignity in the East). Nothing is known about the further fate of the last sovereign of the eastern Kipchaks.
One of the last sovereigns of the Western Kipchaks was Kotan. As already mentioned, during Batu’s invasion (1236-1242) he was defeated several times by the Mongols, in the fall of 1239 he went to Hungary together with 40 thousand horde and in 1241 he fell in Pest, being a victim of intrigues of the courtiers of the Hungarian monarch Bela IV (ruled in 1235-1270).
The question of the tribal composition of the Kipchaks of the XII — early XIII centuries has been considered many times in the scientific press. The last study of this kind belongs to the prominent Kazakh Arabist B.E. Kumekov. According to his data, the Eastern Kipchak included the following sixteen tribes: Borilu, Toksoba, Ietioba, Durtoba, al-ars (al-as), Burjoglu, Mankuroglu, Yimak, Tag, Bashkurt, Kumanlu, Bazanak (Badeyuanak), Bajna, Karaboriklu, Uz, Dzhortan.
The Western Kipchaks were divided into eleven tribes: Toksoba, Ietioba, Burdeyuogly, Yelborili, Kangarogly, Anjogly, Durutoba, Kulabaogly, Jortan, Karaborikli, Kotan.
As a result of the Mongol invasion, some part of the Kipchaks died, some part fled to the west, and some part was captured and sold into slavery. But the mass of Kipchaks remained nomadic in their steppes and constituted the main part of nomadic Turkic subjects of the descendants of Juchi [Yurchenko, 2003, p. 397-399]. Somewhat later, probably in the second half of the XIII century, the name Kipchak was even transferred to the Mongol state of the Golden Horde. Nevertheless, Desht-i Kipchak of the Golden Horde period, as we shall see, sharply differed in its tribal composition from Desht-i Kipchak of pre-Mongol times.
It is, of course, understandable. With the arrival of Central Asian (Mongol-Tatar) tribes to the Kipchak steppe, a new stage of ethnic integration began. The main results of this complex in nature and long in time multifaceted process were:
1) mixing of clans and tribes, change of many former local Turkic (Kipchak) ethnonyms to Mongolo-Tatar ones, formation of a number of new tribal groups with previously unknown or paired names;
2) Turkization of Mongol-Tatar tribes and their adoption of Islam;
3) formation of a number of Turkic nationalities, including those with Mongolian names, from a conglomerate of clans and tribes, which were at different stages of development, as was the population of Desht-i Kipchak during the collapse of the Golden Horde.
It is appropriate and timely to note some points related to the use of the words «clan» and «tribe» in this paper. These ethnic categories for the period under consideration have a conditional character. The fact is that the elucidation of the tribal structure of Asian nomads is complicated by the uncertainty and vagueness of the ethnic terminology used by medieval authors. The notion of a term presupposes, as is known, the existence of a stable connection between a word and a concept, when one and the same word is used in the same meaning all the time when it comes to a known concept. Meanwhile, Muslim historians of the Middle Ages use the same words to refer to different socio-ethnic groups or, on the contrary, refer to the same socio-ethnic group in similar contexts with different words. Such substitution of one concept for another leads to terminological confusion and thus deprives the concept of a term of its own specific content.
В. V. Radlov in his work «Experience of the Dictionary of Turkic Dialects», published in 1893, proposed (with reference to Ahmad-Wefik) the following classification of ethnic terminology: boy and urug were the smallest cells of the tribal organization of the Turks and Mongols; some number of them constituted oimak; and some number of oimaks — il; the union of the latter constituted ulus — people. Here I should also note that this classification quantitatively covers a very small part of the ethnic terminology used in medieval Muslim literature.
Among the works of modern researchers developing the above theme, I would like to mention the publications of the well-known St. Petersburg Iranianist E. I. Vasilieva. She attempted to systematize the use of terms for Kurdish nomadic tribal units. On the basis of taking into account all cases of mentioning ethnic terms by Bidlisi, the author of «Sharaf-name» (XVI century), she comes to the conclusion that the term taifa means a tribe, regardless of its quantitative and other characteristics, kabile — a small tribe, ashirat — a large tribe or a union of tribes.
As such works show, in principle it is possible to outline the semantic features of the terms used by one any Muslim author of the Middle Ages. However, if we turn to Iranian- and Turkic-speaking historical literature in general, there is no generally accepted ethnic terminology observed by all medieval authors.
Usually a medieval Muslim historian described the tribal structure of any ethnic community by the concepts known to him from literature, most often the commonly used Arabic words taifa, kabile, ashirat, firke. Eastern Muslim authors added to this set of words-tuman (tyumen), oymak (umak), urug, boy, b?l?k and other words-notions of Turkic-Mongolian origin, again using them without a definite system and without bringing them into conformity with Arabic words-notions. The problem of semantic adequacy of multilingual ethnic terms and concepts was not faced by medieval authors, and relying only on their reports, it is difficult to say which Arabic term and when it corresponds, for example, to the Turkic Urug. However, it is not quite clear what Urugh is in Eastern Muslim authors.
A number of historians, such as Babur (1483-1530), Mirza Haydar Douglat (1500-1551), Abu-l-Ghazi (1603-1664), knew well the tribal structure of nomadic peoples of Central Asia and neighboring regions, as well as local terms for tribal divisions, and, it would seem, could clarify such questions. But practical knowledge did not, unfortunately, receive any clear reflection in their literary works. The terminological vocabulary of the above authors does not differ particularly from that of historians who were little familiar with the nomadic part of the population.
The discrepancy in the use of ethnic terminology in the works of medieval Muslim authors can be explained by many reasons. Here, obviously, the following influenced:
1) the absence of a unified scientific doctrine that would have taken upon itself the labor of constructing a theory of society. Medieval Muslim historiography was not concerned with the problem of typology of ethnic communities;
2) the wide variability of means of expression, which was generally characteristic of medieval Muslim authors, who strove for a limitless expansion of vocabulary;
3) the uncertainty of tribal nomenclature was also largely due to the lack of stability in the tribal subdivisions themselves, which did not allow even educated contemporaries to establish the boundaries of various socio-ethnic groups and to determine the specific content peculiar to a subgenus, clan, or tribe. Accordingly, each medieval author put into the designations he used his personal understanding or the reasoning of his informants.
Let us now give general data on the tribal composition of the nomads of the Juchiye Ulus in the 13th-15th centuries, and in the course of the topic and some information about the time and ways of penetration of some Central Asian (Mongol-Tatar) clans and tribes into the territory of Desht-i Kipchak.
Of the Mongol tribes proper, the Merkits were among the first to appear on the territory of Kipchak. And it happened so.
Merkits (Mekrites) — one of the large Mongolian tribes living in the Selenga river basin, according to both Mongolian and Muslim sources, fought a lot with Genghis Khan, but often suffered defeat. In the next battle, which took place in 1208, Genghis Khan again defeated the Merkits and the Naimans, who acted together with them. Forced first from the vicinity of Baikal and then from the banks of the Irtysh, groups of Merkits and Naimans were defeated in 1209 by the Uigur ruler while trying to pass through his possessions in East Turkestan. As a result, they were divided: the Naimans led by Kuchluk went to Semirechye, to the possessions of the Kara-Chinese, and the Merkits led by Kultugan (Tuktugan) went to the Kipchaks in the present-day Kazakh steppes.
In 1216, after the completion of another military campaign in China, Genghis Khan instructed Juchi, his eldest son, to finish off the Merkits who had fled to the west. The longtime adversaries met in close combat near the Irgiz, in the steppe expanses of present-day Central Kazakhstan. Merkits have suffered a complete defeat, and their leader Kultugan has been seized and delivered in a rate Djuchi. As the tsarevich Djuchi, the source says, heard about the accuracy of his shooting, then, having set a target, ordered him to let an arrow into it. Kultugan-mergen (mergen — «marksmanship»), having shot, hit the target, and then let another, hit the very nick, where the plumage of the first arrow, and split it. Juchi was extremely pleased with this; he sent an envoy to Genghis Khan with a request to preserve Kultugan’s life. Genghis Khan disapproved of this and said: «There is no tribe worse than the Merkit tribe: how many times have we fought with them, many troubles and difficulties have we seen from them — how is it possible to keep him alive so that he may again stir up rebellion! I have acquired for you all these regions, armies and tribes; what need is there of this man?! There is no better place for an enemy of the state than the grave!» For this reason Juchi executed Kultugan [Rashid ad-Din, vol. 1, book 1, pp. 114-116; Bartold, vol. 1, pp. 426, 434-436].
The Merkits who survived and were free dispersed throughout the country of Kipchaks. Over time, they absorbed a lot of Turkic elements, were Turkicized, but retained their Mongolian name; in the era of the Kazakh Khanate, the Merkits were part of the Abak tribal association of the Kazakh Orta zhuz (Middle Horde).
According to Rashid ad-Din and the anonymous author of «Muizz al-ansab», Genghis Khan (d. 1227) even in his lifetime allocated to his eldest son Djuchi four emirs with four thousand troops — one thousand Mungur, who was from the Sijiut (Sihiut) tribe; one thousand Kingitai Kutan-noyon, who was from the Kingit tribe; one thousand Hushitai, who was from the Hushin tribe; one thousand Bauku, who was also from the Hushin tribe. These four personal thousands of warriors of tsarevich Juchi, writes the Persian historian Vassaf (d. 1335), after his death passed into the jurisdiction of his eldest son, Horde, and already during Horde’s lifetime (d. between 1246-1251), together with his direct descendants, amounted to more than one tuman of the living army, i.e. more than 10 thousand soldiers.
According to Mahmud ibn Wali, author of the multi-volume general history «Bahr al-asrar», Batu’s army included militias of the Argun, Oguz, Naiman, Buyrak, Oirat, Karluk, Kushchi, Usun, Ming, Kongrat, Kereit, and Barlas tribes, among others. The sources from which Mahmud ibn Wali drew his information about the tribal composition of Batu’s army are unknown to us.
After the military campaign of 1236-1242, most of the Central Asian tribes, together with their leaders, returned to their historical homeland. But some number of these clans and tribes were distributed after the campaign among the Juchids as ale; they thus became «Desht». Thus, according to Abu-l-Gazi and the author of «Zubdat al-asar» (XVI century), Batu after his return from the campaign in Eastern Europe (1242) gave under the power of his brother, Shiban, the people consisting of 15 thousand families, allocating him from the «ancient clans» (bayri elinden) four main tribes: Kushchi, Naiman, Karluk, Buirak. To his other brother, Tuqai-Timur, Batu allocated «from the kauchins» (i.e. from the privileged part of the army) ming, tarhan, ushun, oirat.
A certain number of nomadic hordes, as well as the space of land sufficient for their nomadism, were given in Desht-i Kipchak to Batu’s other brothers and relatives and, of course, to Batu himself; but the list of the names of these tribes is unknown.
Judging by fragmentary information from Muslim sources, a number of new Mongol-Tatar tribes arrived in Desht-i Kipchak both from Mongolia itself and other Mongol ulus during the period from Batu (d. 1255) to the accession of Uzbek (1313).
As part of the army of the Golden Horde khans of the 13th — early 15th century, the sources name parts of the tribes Kungrat, Kyyat, Sarai, Bakh-rin, Naiman, Jalair, Uishun, Kipchak, Kurlaut, Alchin, Burujogly, Yisut and Kurder.
According to al-Hajji Abd al-Gaffar Kirimi, the author of «Umdat al-tawarikh» («The Support of Stories»), the personal guard of the Golden Horde Khan Toktamysh (ruled in 1379-1395) consisted of representatives of four tribes: Shirin, Barin, Argyn, and Kipchak. In the XV-XVI centuries these four tribes were the main tribes of the Crimean Khanate [Manz, 1978, p. 281-307].
In connection with the events in Desht-i Kipchak in the 30-90s of the XV century, Muslim sources list several dozens more names of Desht clans and tribes [see: Sultanov, 1982, pp. 8-16].
Bringing together the available material, we get the following consolidated List of names of clans and tribes of the Ulus Dzhuchi of the XIII-XV centuries (for convenience of use, ethnic names are given in alphabetical order):
Altyn, Argun, As, Barak, Barin, Barlas, Bakhrin, Bashgyrd, Buirak, Burkut, Burujogly, Jalair, Djurkun, Durman, Ichki, Ichki-Bairi, yijan, yisut, yeti-ming, kaanbayly, karlu k, keneges, kereit, kingit, kipchak, kungrat, kiyat, kuyun, kurder, kurlaut, kushchi, madayuar, mangyut, masit, merkit (mekrit), ming, naiman, oguz, oirat, salor, saray, sihiut (sijiut), timas, tabgut (tangut), tarhan, tatar, tili-ming, tubai, tubai-tuman, tuman, tuman-ming, uigur, uysun, uraysh-naiman, utarchi, chitai, khushin, chinbai, chuburgan, shadbakly, shunkarly.
The observed abundance of Mongolian names of tribes within the Juchiye Ulus should not confuse or surprise us. It is explained, of course, first of all by the fact that Mongols among the Turkic world of the Kipchak steppe were the dominant layer and constituted a privileged part of the army of the Ulus Juchi. The peculiarity of the historical situation under consideration lies in another thing, namely: all these numerous tribes and clans of the Juchi Ulus, bearing Mongolian names, represented a Turkic-speaking ethnic community in the XIV-XV centuries. The fact is that the specific weight of the Mongol population in the Golden Horde from the very beginning of its formation was relatively small. In the XIV century these Mongols were completely Turkicized. The process of assimilation of the Mongols who came to Desht-i Kipchak with the Turkic nomads living there was described remarkably aptly and vividly in the XIV century by the Arab author al-Omari (d. 1349). «In ancient times this state was a country of Kipchaks,» he wrote, «but when the Tatars took possession of it, the Kipchaks became their subjects. Then the Tatars mixed and interbred with the Kipchaks, and the land prevailed over the natural and racial qualities of the Tatars, and they all became exactly Kipchaks, as if they were of the same race with them, because Mongols and Tatars settled in the land of the Kipchaks, intermarried with them and stayed to live in the land of the Kipchaks. Thus, a long stay in some country and land makes human nature to resemble it and changes the natural traits according to its nature…» [SMIZO, vol. 1, p. 235].
The state of the descendants of Dzhuchi with the center in the Volga region, according to the general assessment of the famous Tatar scientist M. A. Usmanov [Usmanov, v. 1, p. 235]. A. Usmanov [Usmanov, 1979, p. 100], was a «Mongolian state» only in dynastic terms, being in fact a Turkic country in culture, economy and ethnic basis.
In the sources, when covering the events of the 13th — first half of the 14th century, the words «Tatars», «Mongols», «Turks», «Kipchaks» are equally used to designate the nomadic population of the Ulus Dzhuchi. Of these names, the word «Tatars» was retained the longest: in particular, Russian sources continued to call the nomadic population of the Golden Horde Tatars even after the 15th century, so that for Russians «Tatars» were all the Turkic states of the Mongol dynasty, with which they had direct contact in the 15th-16th centuries — the Khanate of Kazan, Astrakhan, Crimean and Siberian (on the Irtysh, near modern Tobolsk). Gradually, the Central Asian word «Tatar» became the self-name of the Turkic-speaking population of the Volga region (from Kazan to Astrakhan), Crimea and part of Western Siberia. The ethnic basis of the Tatars of the Volga region, Crimea and Western Siberia was formed by Turkic tribes and communities that originally lived in these territories; the origin of the modern Tatars of the Russian Federation is not determined by the ethnic history of the ancient Tatars of Central Asia and is not directly related to them; this should be clearly remembered and distinguished.
Since the second half of the 14th century, the nomadic population of the Juchi Ulus has been known to us under the general collective word Uzbeks. The origin of the name «Uzbek» has not been finally clarified. As a proper name this word is found for the period earlier than the XIV century. As the name of a part of the nomadic tribes of the Ulus Dzhuchi, the word «Uzbeks», as far as is now known, first appears in the Persian historian and geographer of the XIV century Hamdallah Mustaufi Kazvini (d. 1350). Describing the military campaign of the Golden Horde on Azerbaijan in 1335, he calls the army of Uzbek Khan (ruled in 1313-1341) Uzbeks (Uzbekiyan), and the state of Juchi’s descendants — «The State of Uzbeks» (Mamlakat-i Uzbeki) [MediaZO, vol. 2, pp. 93, 221, 222].
Later Iranian- and Turkic-speaking authors, writing about the Ulus Dzhuchi, spread the name of Uzbek-khan (under whom the dominance of Islam was finally established in the Golden Horde and its cultural and economic ties with Muslim countries, especially with Egypt, were strengthened) to all the multi-tribal nomadic population of the Golden Horde and to the state of Dzhuchi’s descendants itself. Since the 15th century, as the Golden Horde disintegrated and some parts of it acquired political sovereignty, the word «Uzbek» as an ethnic and state name gradually disappeared from use in the western regions of the Great Steppe and remained only for the nomadic Turkic and Turkicized tribes of Eastern Desht-i Kipchak, although the khans of this area did not descend from Khan Uzbek (d. 1341). Muslim authors began to use exclusively the term Uzbek ulus or simply Uzbekistan («Land of the Uzbeks») to designate the territory of their habitation. Thus, the then medieval Uzbekistan included in its composition, in particular, the territory of modern Central, Northern, North-Eastern and Western Kazakhstan.
In 1500 the descendants of Shiban, son of Djuchi, half-brothers Muhammad Sheibani (so! ) and Mahmud-sultan, taking advantage of the political fragmentation of the Timurid state in Central Asia, came out of the Uzbek ulus (Eastern Desht-i Kipchak) with their adherents, seized Bukhara, and the following year Samarkand and founded there, in Maverannahr (the Central Asian interfluve of the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya), an independent khanate of the Shibanid dynasty. Exactly Shibanids, i.e. descendants of Shiban, son of Djuchi, son of Genghis Khan, and not Sheibanids, as it is often written in the historical literature. The fact is that the direct heirs of the founder of the Shibanid state in Central Asia, Abu-l-Fath Muhammad Sheibani-khan (that was his full name) never ruled anywhere. The domination of this branch of the house of Shiban in Maverannahr lasted until 1601. [Alekseev, 2004, p. 22].
About 1511 from the Eastern Desht-i Kipchak (Uzbek ulus) came another group of Shibanids (descendants of Shiban, son of Juchi, son of Genghis Khan), who remained in the Great Steppe, led by Ilbars-sultan and Bilbars-sultan, also brothers. They with their adherents seized Urgench, Khiva and other areas of Khorezm and there, in the lower reaches of the Amu-Darya, founded another independent state of Shibanids, later called in literature the Khanate of Khiva. The domination of this special branch of the descendants of Shiban, son of Djuchi, in Khorezm lasted until 1106/1694-1695. By the way, the famous historian Khan Abu-l-Gazi, whose work was so often referred to in this work, is from this dynasty: he ruled in Khorezm in 1645-1663 and wrote the history of his ancestors and the country himself.
Analysis of written sources shows that the total number of Desht-i Kipchak nomads who left the steppe then, in the early 16th century, for Maverannahr reached 360 thousand people [Sultanov, 1982, p. 20-21]. The departure of the Shibanids with a significant part of nomadic tribes of the Uzbek ulus from the territory occupied by the modern Kazakh steppes was the reason for the transfer of the term «Uzbek» to the conquered areas of Central Asia. However, for a long time in Maverannahr, the name «Uzbek» remained only for those clans and tribes of the Uzbek ulus, which together with the Shibanids moved to Maverannahr. Even in the 19th century, the term «Uzbek» was rarely used in the Central Asian khanates themselves, usually only in cases when an Uzbek (i.e., «deshtikipchaktsa») was used. The term «Uzbek» was rarely used even in the 19th century in the Central Asian khanates themselves, usually only when it was necessary to contrast an Uzbek (i.e., «Deshtikipchakts» by origin) with a representative of another ethnic or social group, such as a Tajik, a Sart (as the Turkic-speaking urban population in most parts of Central Asia was then called), or a Chagatai (as a part of the population of Central Asia called itself at that time by the name of Chagatai, the second son of Genghis Khan). The term «Uzbek» became a unifying ethnonym in the territory within the borders of modern Uzbekistan only in the 20th century, after the formal division of Turkestan (Central Asia) into national republics. So the history of the modern Uzbek people is not identical with the history of its name. And it should be remembered.
At the beginning of the second half of the XV century, the Kazakhs (Kazakhs) separated from the Uzbeks of the Uzbek ulus. However, this circumstance was preceded by a number of important events. Here is their course.
In the 20s of the XV century, war was raging everywhere in the Uzbek ulus. In one battle, which took place in 1428, Barak-sultan, the khan of nomadic Uzbeks of the Great Steppe, grandson of Urus-khan, a descendant of Orda Ezhen (Ichen), the eldest son of Djuchi, died. In the same year 1428 (or in the beginning of 1429), Abu-l-Khair-sultan, a representative of the house of Shiban, another son of Juchi, reigned in Eastern Desht-i Kipchak, in the region of Tara (Tobol River basin). In 864/1459-1460. Girey-sultan, Janibek-sultan and some other descendants of Urus-khan, dissatisfied with the power of Shibanid Abu-l-Khair-khan (ruled in the Uzbek ulus in 1428-1469), left the Uzbek ulus with the clans and tribes under their control and came to neighboring Mogolistan.
Mogolistan was called then, in the XV century, vast areas between Talas and Chu in the west, Irtysh and Emil in the northeast; in the north the border of Mogolistan with the Uzbek ulus passed along Kokche-Tengiz (renamed Lake Balkhash from the beginning of the XVIII century), and in the south the country of Mogolistan included Kashgaria. Mogolistan is a Persian name meaning «Land of the Moguls». It is formed from the word Mogol — so, without the letter n, was pronounced and written the folk name of the Mongols in Central Asia; the nomads of the eastern part of the Chagatai ulus, who made up the military force of the local Chagataids, were called Mogols. The supreme ruler of the Mogul state in those years was Esen-Buga Khan (ruled in 1434-1462). He favorably and with honors received Girey, Janibek and other sultans from the Juchi family and gave them the western part of Mogolistan for nomadism.
In that epoch, the Turkic word Cossack, known since the first half of the XIII century, was used to designate the temporary state of free people who, for various reasons and in various ways, had broken away from their social environment and were forced by circumstances to lead the life of adventurers. In the XIV century Cossacks in Russia were called people without certain occupations and permanent residence, free, walking people, as well as freelance laborers, etc. Since the middle of the XV century there is already information about detachments of Russian Cossacks who participated in military actions against «Tatars». Historians recognize the homeland of the Russian Cossacks as the southern outskirts of Rus, adjacent to the Kipchak steppe, the conditions of which gave this free association the character of a military society.
Since Girey, Janibek and their adherents were people who left their own and wandered on the outskirts of the state of nomadic Uzbeks, to which they belonged and with which they were at war, they were nicknamed Uzbek Cossacks, i.e. Uzbek Cossacks, or simply Cossacks. This name stuck to them.
In 1468/1469 Abu-l-Khair-Khan died. A struggle for supreme power began in the Uzbek ulus. In this situation Girey, Janibek and their Cossack freemen returned to the Uzbek ulus and in 875/1470-1471 seized the supreme power in the country and founded the dynasty of Kazakh sultans proper (daulat-i salatin-i Cossack). The name «Kazak» was first transferred to the khanate, and then became the name of the nation; since the first decades of the XVI century, the name Kazakstan was fixed for the country.
Since then and up to now the native inhabitants of this huge country do not call themselves otherwise than Cossacks, or more precisely ?aza?; the original form of this Turkic word is exactly the same — two uvular initial and final — ?aza?. Meanwhile, in Russian-language literature for a long time (starting from the XVIII century and up to the 30s of our century) the words Kaisak, Kirghiz, Kirghiz-Kaisak, Cossack-Kirghiz, Cossack-Burut, Kirghiz-Kazak were used to designate the indigenous population of Kazakhstan. Each case of transferring an erroneous name to Kazakhs (Kazakhs) has its own explanation and therefore requires special consideration. The word Kazakh is a Russian variant of the Turkic «Cossack».
With the formation of the Kazakh Khanate in 875/1470-1471, the Uzbek ulus finally disintegrated. With the formation of the Kazakh Khanate in 875/1470-1471, the Uzbek ulus finally disintegrated. From then on, according to the informed historian Mirza Haydar Douglat (1500-1551), the Kazakhs «ruled over most of Uzbekistan». The steppes of the western part of the Uzbek ulus, centered on the lower reaches of the Yaik, were the nomadic home of an association of tribes known in Oriental sources as the Mangyts, after one of the Turkicized Mongol tribes that once lived in East Asia. In Russian sources, the Mangyts are called Nogai, after the Mongolian tsarevitch Nogai (d. 1300), known in the history of the Golden Horde. In the XV-XVI centuries the Mangyts (Nogais) were not only ethnographic but also a political unit (Mangyts yurt — eastern, Muslim sources; Nogai Horde — Russian sources) and had their own rulers (biys, murzy). In the XVII century the association finally disintegrated, most of the clans and tribes that made up its population migrated to the west. The Russian term «Nogai» completely replaced the eastern name «Mangits», and later became the self-name of the Turkic-speaking Nogai people now living in Dagestan and Stavropol Krai. Nogais (self-name — Nogai) are Sunni Muslims. Here we should also note that the history of the Nogai (Mangyts) is devoted to a voluminous, well-funded and talented study by the famous Russian historian V. V. Trepalov (2001).
So, the ethnic composition of the population of the Golden Horde was motley: some part of it was made up of sedentary peoples conquered by the Mongols; but the bulk of the population of the state of Juchi’s descendants was made up of many different Turkic and Turkicized nomadic clans and tribes, which had not yet formed into a nation. After the collapse of the Golden Horde in the 15th century, separate nationalities began to form on their basis, which spoke Turkic and practiced Islam. Some clans and tribes of the western regions of the Juchiye Ulus formed the ethnic basis of the Crimean Tatars; some tribal groups became part of the Bashkirs, Kazan Tatars, and Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus. Nomadic clans and tribes of Eastern Kipchak formed the core of the Kazakh and Nogai peoples. The clans and tribes of Desht-i Kipchak, which moved to Maverannahr, Khorezm and Prityanshan, became part of the modern Uzbek, Karakalpak and Kyrgyz peoples.