In the 20th century, Kipchaks or Kipchoks (Kipchoklar) lived compactly in the Zeravshan River valley (Samarkand and Bukhara regions of Uzbekistan), in the lower reaches of the Amu Darya (Khorezm region and Karakalpakstan) and in the Ferghana Valley (mainly in the Andijan region of Uzbekistan).
They were divided into 34 groups, of which the most numerous were ak-Kipchaks, Kara-Kipchaks and Sary-Kipchaks, as well as jet-Uruvs, Toguz-Uruvs consisting of Zeravshan and Kulan, Ulmas and Elatan –Fergana Kipchaks. In addition to the groups of Kipchak origin proper, many units included people from other tribes and even ethnic groups, for example, the following groups originate from the Kazakhs: Kanjigali, Balgaly, Tama, Uyshun. And many names of the Kipchak units find analogues in the units of the Kipshak Kazakhs.
Racially, Kipchaks differ from the majority of Uzbeks, especially in the Samarkand and Andijan regions, by being more Mongoloid, belonging to the variant (cheekbone 144 mm, epicanthus in 28.4% of men, body length 165.6 cm, Ferghana Kipchaks) of the South Siberian race.
The language is the Kipchak dialect of the Uzbek language (the dialect got its name not from the Kipchaks, but from the toponym Desht–i Kipchak or simply Kipchak, from where the nomadic Uzbek tribes came at the beginning of the 16th century and the Fergana Kipchaks 200 years later). This dialect is spoken not only by the Kipchaks, but also by the descendants of the tribes who came there – Mangyts, Kungrats, Mingi, Naimans, Kytai.
Size. According to a statistical survey of the population of Central Asia, in 1924 there were 128,000 Kipchaks, including about 60,000 in the Ferghana Valley, 40,500 in Samarkand County, 10.8 thousand in Katta–Kurgan, about 10,000 in the Bukhara region, and 3.8 thousand in Khorezm. The 1926 census recorded 33,500 Kipchaks in Ferghana as a special «nationality». In further censuses of the population of Uzbekistan, the Kipchaks were counted as Uzbeks.
Ethnogenesis. The Kipchaks played a major political role in medieval Khorezm, for which they paid during the Mongol invasion (1218-1220): some of them died in battle, some fled the country, some were captured and taken to other possessions, including Mongolia and China. The Kipchaks who remained in Khorezm were assimilated by the local population, although his vassals, the Kipchaks of Sary Bugi, took part in the wars of Emir Timur (Tamerlane). Modern Kipchaks in Uzbekistan are descendants of immigrants who arrived from the north in two migration streams: at the beginning of the 16th century, the nomadic Uzbeks of Muhammad Sheibani Khan invaded Desht–i Kipchak, including the Kipchaks, the second wave of Kipchaks arrived from Kazakhstan, fleeing from a particularly powerful Dzungarian invasion of the Kazakhs in 1723. It was then that the Kipchaks settled in Ferghana, which was under the rule of the Kokand Khan. By the middle of the 19th century, the Kipchak nobility had gained great power under the Kokand Khan, arousing the hatred of the local population.
The hatred was resolved by the removal of the Kipchak nobility from power and the mass killings of ordinary Kipchaks, which accelerated their assimilation.
Traditional farming. The Kipchaks, especially the Ferghana Kipchaks, maintained their traditional economy and way of life for a long time – initially nomadic, later semi-nomadic cattle breeding, until finally, under Soviet rule, they switched to agriculture. The herd composition is typical for a nomadic pastoralist: sheep, horses and camels. With the transition to sedentarism and agriculture, the number of traditional livestock decreases, but the number of cattle, especially oxen, increases. The agriculture of the Zeravshan Kipchaks, they switched to agriculture earlier, horticulture, melon growing, rice growing were developed, cotton growing began to prevail among the Fergana Kipchaks.
Back in the 20th century, the Ferghana Kipchaks had three types of settlements: 1) in the mountains, the semi–settled type – yurts (uy, utav) stand in convenient places; 2) in the foothills — sedentary with elements of nomadism, dwellings made of stones, wood and clay alternated with yurts; 3) on the plain, the fully settled type – the dwelling does not differ in any way from the dwellings of neighboring Uzbeks (Sarts). Among the Zeravshan Sari-Kipchaks of the Bulungur district of the Samarkand region, K.Sh. Shaniyazov described a dwelling on an arba similar to one of the types of Polovtsian dwelling depicted in the miniatures of the Radzivil chronicle. The kutarma (as it is called among the Kipchaks) is made of felt, is not disassembled, but is placed entirely on the ground or on a cart if necessary; the entrance is from the side of the harness (Shaniyazov, 1974, p. 148).
Religion. Like neighboring Uzbeks, the Kipchaks practice Sunni Islam, differing from them in elements of pre-Islamic beliefs typical of the nomadic tribes of Kazakhstan.
Literature. Shaniyazov K.S. Kipchaks in the Uzbek ethnic environment in the pre-October period (integration processes) // Ethnic processes among national groups of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Moscow, 1980.
In the recent past, there were Kipchak sub-ethnic groups within the Tatars. In addition to the above-mentioned «noble families» (which included the Kipchaks) among the nobility of the Crimean, Kazan and Kasimov Tatars, one of the divisions of the steppe Crimean Tatars (Nogai) were the Kipchaks, possibly of Nogai origin, who came to Crimea with Prince Mansur in 1502. However, the subsequent turbulent history of Crimea in general and the Crimean Tatar people in particular, especially their Stalinist deportation to Central Asia, made the fate of this ethnic group unknown. And although by now most of the Crimean Tatars have returned to their homeland, unfortunately, I do not have any information about the Crimean Tatar Kipchaks. In the 1930s, tribal names were often used in the toponymy of the steppe Crimea, including the ethnonym «kipchak», but in the 1940s and 50s they were renamed.
The origin of some ethnic groups of northern Azerbaijanis, in particular Kazakhs (Gazakhlyar, Kazakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan), goes back to the Kipchaks, as evidenced by their ethnonym from the word known in the Codex Cumanicus and the peculiarities of their dialect. Finally, in Afghanistan, the Taymani tribe roams as part of the Char Aimak tribes, divided into two groups: the Derezai and the Kipchak.
As for the Kipchaks, who were numerous in China and Mamluk Egypt in the Middle Ages, they disappeared without a trace and disappeared into the local population.
So, before finishing the story about modern Kipchaks / Kipsaks / Kipshaks / Kipchaks (all these names in different modern languages of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages go back to the ethnonym of medieval Kipchaks and have come down to our days only slightly phonetically changed), you should think a little. The question arises – what will be the fate of these ethnic groups – to one degree or another descendants of a well-known people (or tribes) in the Middle Ages? The available data on the current ethnic situation of these groups does not provide an answer to this question. One can only assume that the assimilation of the Kipchaks into the Uzbek people is at the stage of completion, as in the collective monograph of Uzbek researchers «Ethnic Atlas of Uzbekistan». Publishers «IOFS – Uzbekistan» and LIA– R.Elinika, 2002, reports on Uzbek «tribes» do not mention anything about the Kipchaks. However, many modern researchers write about them as an existing ethnic group with a «tribal» identity (Abashin, 2007, chapter 1). The Kipchaks as part of the Altaians and Telengites are reported in the context of the revival of the Seok system as a self-governing form of organization of the Altai peoples headed by an elected Zaisan (Tadina N.A.). Nothing definite can be said about the other groups of Kipchaks. The data of Nogai researchers, in particular, K.N. Kazalieva, indicate that as the basis for the lower level of ethnic self-identification, «the meaning of gender … has still been preserved» (Kazalieva, 2006, p. 15), but the author has not said anything definite about the fate of this «identification» in the future.