The word “қазақ,” pronounced more firmly than in Russian, has been known to Turkic nomads since ancient times. It was used to refer to exiles from their tribe who lived separately and did not obey the laws of the steppe, recognizing no authority over themselves.
This word only became the name of the people in 1465 after the formation of the Kazakh Khanate. People dissatisfied with the despotism of the Uzbek khans decided to secede, found their own state, and adopt a new name.
However, this does not mean that the Kazakhs fell from the sky in the 15th century. They have a long ethnic history and are truly the people of their land. Genetically, they are the successors of the population that lived in the same territory during the Iron Age.
So who lived in Kazakhstan before the Kazakhs?
The region, located in the very center of Eurasia, acquired its own population relatively late. Its colonization by early modern humans took place between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago. But it was only thousands of years after the end of the last ice age that humans spread throughout the region. However, the population density of ancient hunters and gatherers was by no means high.
The people of the Atbasar, Kelteminar, Ust-Narym, and Botai cultures were Caucasoids. The Botai people are usually credited with domesticating horses, but there is now a consensus among archaeologists that they did not breed these animals, but only hunted them.
During the early Bronze Age, Indo-Europeans came here from the steppes of Eastern Europe and became the founders of the Andronovo culture. They brought with them agriculture and cattle breeding, as well as certain metallurgical skills. It is the migrating Andronovo people, not the Indo-Europeans of Europe, who are commonly referred to in science as Aryans or Indo-Aryans. They are the direct ancestors of the Iranian peoples and the inhabitants of northern India.
As for those who remained in the steppes, these people were later called Scythians. Their ethnic center was Kazakhstan, from where these nomads went west and east. At various times, different confederations and alliances dominated here: the Saka, Massagetae, Dahi, and Parni. Militarily, they were strong enough to defeat the army and execute the Persian king Cyrus the Great. A couple of centuries later, they prevented Alexander the Great from entering their lands.
In the first century BC, the remnants of the Xiongnu fled here. It is believed that the modern city of Taraz was founded by none other than their last emperor, Zhizhi Shanyu. In the first centuries AD, the European Huns formed in Kazakhstan from the merger of Turkic, Mongolian, Scythian, and Ugric tribes.
The 6th century saw the rise of the Turkic Khaganate, and from that time on, the Turks dominated the Kazakh steppes, gradually absorbing other nomadic peoples. With the collapse of this great power, many medieval alliances fought for control over its western territories.
In the 8th-11th centuries, the northern part of Kazakhstan belonged to the Kimaks and the Kipchaks who absorbed them. The southwestern part belonged to the strong and numerous Oghuz tribe. The southeastern part belonged to the Karluk clans, who were the first of all the Turks to transition to a sedentary lifestyle.
For a number of reasons, it was the Kipchaks who proved to be the most successful. The Karluks became farmers and left the steppe forever, the Oghuz migrated to the Middle East, and those who remained became Turkmen and were driven into the desert. Everything would have been fine if it weren’t for the Mongol invasion.
The Kazakh steppes up to the eastern bank of the Volga were conquered by the descendants of Jochi even before the Mongols’ western campaign of 1236. Subsequently, many tribes and clans defeated by Genghis Khan were resettled here: the Naimans, Jalayirs, Merkits, and Kereits. They all mixed with the Turks and together with them became the ancestors of the modern Kazakhs.
Jochi’s first son, Prince Orda-Ejen, voluntarily ceded supreme power to his younger brother Batu. However, this was done on the condition of internal self-government of his vast possessions, which more or less included the future Kazakhstan. Therefore, with rare exceptions, the inhabitants of the Kazakh steppes did not participate in the politics of the Golden Horde, the center of which was the Volga region.
After Tamerlane’s invasion, they separated completely and founded their own state. Historians conventionally refer to it as the Khanate of Abulkhair, or the Uzbek Khanate, or the Khanate of the Kazakh-Uzbeks.
At that time, it was a single Turkic Kipchak ethnic group. Its division occurred in the field of politics. The supporters of Abulkhair’s descendants preferred to call themselves Uzbeks and gradually migrated or were pushed south. The followers of the khans Kerey and Zhanibek took the name Kazakhs and soon conquered all the surrounding steppes.