Materials on the kyrgiz land use” as a source for studying the historical memory of the Kazakhs of Northern Kazakhstan

Abstract

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The result of the statistical and economic survey of Kazakhstan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the publication of “Materials on the kyrgiz land use”. This multi-volume publication contains, in addition to the statistical information itself, records of historical legends of the Kazakhs about the time of their settlement in certain territories. These legends can be used to reconstruct the traditional historical memory of the Kazakhs. The historical legends of the Kazakhs, recorded by the authors of the “Materials”, correlate with the legends recorded in the works of other researchers and speak of the early settlement of some of the Kazakh communities of the territory of Northern Kazakhstan - from the 14th to the 16th centuries. At the same time, these historical legends contradict some of the written sources, which speak of the appearance of the Kazakhs on the borders of the Russian possessions in Western Siberia not earlier than the late 17th century. This contradiction is resolvable if one takes into account that the Northern Kazakh communities which declared their autochthonous origin, in the 15th - 16th centuries were not part of the Kazakh Khanate, and consequently did not appear in the sources under the polytonym “Kazak”. They appeared under other collective names - “Nogai”, “Siberian Tatars”, etc. and became part of the “Kazakhs” during the 17th century. “Materials” is an important and informative source not only on the socio-economic history of Kazakh society at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, but also contains interesting data on the traditional historical memory of the Kazakhs, allowing us to create models of ethnic and political history of steppe Eurasia in the 15th - 19th centuries. © 2021 International Network Center for Fundamental and Applied Research. All rights reserved.