Bashkirs

The Bashkirs are considered to have some cultural similarities to Iranian tribes who formerly existed in modern Bashkortostan, such as the Bušxk', and may have descended from them.[11] Alternatively, Mikhail Artamonov suggested Bashkirs are descended from the Bušxk', a Scythian tribe that became culturally "Turkified" (including a process of language replacement), during the Turkic migrations of the first millennium AD.[10]

Mausoleum of Husseinbek of the 14th century in Bashkortostan

Mausoleum of Turakhan of the 15th century in Bashkortostan

The first report about Bashkirs might have been found in the Chinese chronicle Book of Sui: around 40 Turkic Tiele tribes were named (636 AD) in "A Narration about the Tiele people"; Bashkirs might have included within that narration: if the tribal name 比干 (Mandarin Bǐgān < Middle Chinese ZS: *piɪ^X-kɑn) were read as 比千 (Bĭqiān < *piɪ^Xt͡sʰen), according to Chinese scholar Rui Chuanming[12]

In the 7th century, Bashkirs are also mentioned in "Ashkharatsuyts".

From the 9th century, the first Arab and Persian written reports about Bashkirs commence. These include reports by:: Sallam al-Tardzhuman (9th century).

10th-century authors on the Bashkir were: Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Al-Masudi, and Abu Zayd al-Balkhi.

In the 12th century, Said Al-Andalusi and Muhammad al-Idrisi mentioned the Bashkirs. The 13th-century authors Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi, Yaqut al-Hamawi and Qazvini and the 14th-century authors Al-Dimashqi and Abu'l-Fida wrote about Bashkirs.

The traveller Sallam an at-Tardzhuman visited Bashkir lands and wrote in circa 840 the first written Arab source on the Bashkirs and a rough description of its borders. In the 10th century, Persian Abu Zayd al-Balkhi (10th century) described Bashkirs as a people divided into two groups: one inhabiting the Southern Urals, the other living on the Danube plain near the boundaries of Byzantium. Ibn Rustah, a contemporary of Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, observed that Bashkirs were an independent people occupying territories on both sides of the Ural mountains ridge between Volga, Kama, and Tobol Rivers and upstream of the Yaik river.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan, ambassador of the Baghdad Caliph Al-Muqtadir to the governor of Volga Bulgaria, wrote the first ethnographic description of the Bashkir in 922. The Bashkirs, according to Ibn Fadlan, were a warlike and powerful people, which he and his companions (a total of five thousand people, including military protection) "bewared... with the greatest threat". They were described as engaged in cattle breeding. According to ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs worshipped twelve gods: winter, summer, rain, wind, trees, people, horses, water, night, day, death, heaven and earth, and the most prominent, the sky god. Apparently, Islam had already begun to spread among the Bashkirs, as one of the ambassadors was a Muslim Bashkir. According to the testimony of Ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs were Turks, living on the southern slopes of the Urals, and occupying a vast territory up to the river Volga. They were bordered by Oghuz Turks on the south, Pechenegs to the south-east and Bulgars on the west.

The first European sources to mention the Bashkirs were the works of Joannes de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruquis of the 13th century.

By 1236, Genghis Khan had incorporated the lands of Bashkortostan were incorporated into his empire. During the 13th and 14th centuries, all of Bashkortostan was a component of the Golden Horde. The brother of Batu-Khan, Sheibani, received the Bashkir lands east of the Ural Mountains.

After the disintegration of the Mongol Empire, the Bashkirs were divided among the Nogai Horde, the Khanate of Kazan and the Khanate of Sibir, founded in the 15th century.

Bashkir riders

In the middle of the 16th century, Bashkirs were gradually conquered by the Tsardom of Russia.[13] Primary documents pertaining to the Bashkirs during this period have been lost, although some are mentioned in the shezhere (family trees) of the Bashkir.

During the Russian Imperial period, Russians and Tatars began to migrate to Bashkortostan which led to eventual demographic changes in the region. The recruitment of Bashkirs into the Russian army and having to pay steep taxes pressured many Bashkirs to adopt a more settled lifestyle and to slowly abandon their ancient nomadic pastoralist past.[13]

In the late 16th and early 19th centuries, Bashkirs occupied the territory from the river Sylva in the north; to the river heads of Tobol in the east; the mid-stream of the river Yaik in the south; in the Middle and Southern Urals, the Cis-Urals including Volga territory and Trans-Uralsto; and the eastern bank of the river Volga on the south-west.

This Bashkir wears a medallion, which identifies him as the village chief. Photo by G. Fisher, Orenburg, 1892

Davlekanovo (Ufa Governorate). Kumis cooking, the beginning of the 20th century

Bashkirs in Orenburg, at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812, 1913

The Bashkirs participated in the 1662–64, 1681–84 and 1704–11 Rebellions. In 1676, the Bashkirs rebelled under a leader named Seyid Sadir or 'Seit Sadurov', and the Russian army had great difficulties in ending the rebellion. The Bashkirs rose again in 1707, under Aldar and Kûsyom, due to perceived ill-treatment by Imperial Russian officials.

At the founding of Orenburg in 1735, the fourth insurrection occurred in 1735 and lasted six years. Russians had discussed from the times of Peter the Great a desire to expand Russian sovereignty south-east toward Persia and India. Ivan Kirillov formed a plan to build the fort to be called Orenburg at Orsk at the confluence of the Or River and the Ural River, south-east of the Urals where the Bashkir, Kalmyk and Kazakh lands met. Work on Fort Orenburg commenced at Orsk in 1735. However, by 1743 'Orenburg' was moved a further 250 km west to its current location. The next planned construction was to be a fort on the Aral Sea. The consequence of the Aral Sea fort would involve crossing Bashkir and the Kazakh Lesser Horde lands, some of whom had recently offered a nominal submission to the Russia Crown.

Kirillov's plan was approved on May 1, 1734 and he was placed in command. Although Kirillov was warned that this may provoke a Bashkir rebellion, the warnings were ignored. Kirillov left Ufa with 2,500 men in 1735.

Warfare commenced on the first of July, 1735. The war consisted of many small raids and complex troop movements, so it cannot be easily summarized.

For example: In the spring of 1736, Kirillov burned 200 villages, killed 700 in battle and executed 158. An expedition of 773 men left Orenburg in November and lost 500 from cold and hunger. At Seiantusa the Bashkir planned to massacre sleeping Russians, however, the ambush failed. In retaliation, one thousand villagers, including women and children, were put to the sword and another 500 driven into a storehouse and burned to death. Raiding parties then went out and burned about 50 villages and killed another 2,000. Eight thousand Bashkirs attacked a Russian camp and killed 158, losing 40 killed and three Bashkir prisoners were promptly hanged by the Russians. Rebellious Bashkirs raided loyal Bashkirs. Leaders who submitted were sometimes fined one horse per household and on other occasions, hanged. Kirillov died of disease during the war and there were several changes of commander. The Baskir War occurred during the reign of Empress Anna of Russia and the Russo-Turkish War (1735–1739).

Although the history of the 1735 Bashkir War cannot be easily summarized, its results can be.

• The Russian Imperial goal of expansion into Central Asia was delayed to deal with the Bashkir problem.
• Bashkiria was pacified in 1735–1740.
• Orenburg was established.
• The southern side of Bashkiria was partitioned by the Orenburg Line of forts. The forts ran from Samara on the Volga east as far as the Samara River headwaters.. It then crossed to the middle of the Ural River and following the river course east and then north on the eastern side of the Urals. It then went east along the Uy River to Ust-Uisk on the Tobol River where it connected to the ill-defined 'Siberian Line' along the forest-steppe boundary.
• In 1740 a report was made of Bashkir losses which listed: Killed: 16,893; sent to Baltic regiments and fleet: 3,236; women & children distributed (presumably as serfs): 8,382 with a grand total of 28,511. Fines were reported as: horses: 12,283; cattle and sheep: 6,076; money: 9,828 rubles; villages destroyed: 696. The compilation was from army reports and excluded losses from irregular raiding, hunger, disease and cold. At the time, the Bashkir population was estimated at 100,000.

Next major rebellion occurred in 1755–56. In its suppression, 36,000 Russian regular troops were involved. The number of rebels was about 50,000. The rebellion was cruelly crushed.

Later, 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.

There are many museums in the Republic where you can get acquainted with the history of the region. The National Museum of the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Bashkir Nesterov Art Museum , the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography are the largest of them.

During the Napoleonic Wars, many Kalmyks and Bashkirs served in the Russian army to defend the Russian nation from the French invaders during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. [14] Many Bashkir regiments served in Battle of Paris and the subsequent occupation of France by the coalition forces.[15]

The Members Of The Bashkir Government, 1920

Monuments to Bashkir soldiers in Leipzig

After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the All-Bashkir Qoroltays (convention) concluded that it was necessary to form a national federal Bashkir republic within Russia. As a result, on 15 November 1917, the Bashkir Regional (central) Shuro (Council) proclaimed the establishment of the Bashkir republic in areas of predominantly Bashkir population: Orenburg, Perm, Samara, Ufa provinces and the autonomous entity Bashkurdistan.

In December 1917, delegates to the All-Bashkir (constituent) Congress, representing the interests of the population edge of all nationalities, voted unanimously for the Resolution (Farman #2) of the Bashkir regional Shuro on the proclamation of national-territorial autonomy (of the republic) Bashkurdistan. From the Congress, the government of Bashkurdistan, the Pre-parliament – Kese-Qoroltay and other bodies of power and administration, were formed and decisions made on how next to proceed.

In March 1919, the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed based on agreements of the Russian Government.

On October 11, 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty by the Supreme Council of the Republic was proclaimed. On March 31, 1992 Bashkortostan signed a federal agreement on the delimitation of powers and areas of jurisdiction and the nature of contractual relations between the authorities of the Russian Federation and the authorities of the sovereign republics in its composition including the Republic of Bashkortostan.

During World War II, Bashkir soldiers served in the Red Army to defend the Soviet Union and fought against the Germans during the German invasion of the Soviet Union.[16][17]