Kazakhstan - Central Asia - page 114

remains a barrier to a true free-market econ-
omy: Kazakhstan ranked 133rd out of 174
countries in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions
Index of Transparency International.

of gold jewellery, often with animal motifs,
have been found (many examples can be
seen in Kazakhstan's museums). Most splen-
did of all is the 'Golden Man', a warrior's
costume that has become a Kazakhstan na-
tional symbol (p62).
From 200 BC the Huns, followed by vari-
ous Turkic peoples, arrived from what are
now Mongolia and northern China. The
early Turks left totemlike carved stones
known as balbals, bearing the images of
honoured chiefs, at sacred and burial sites,
and these too can be seen in many Kaza-
khstan museums. From about AD 550 to
750 the southern half of Kazakhstan was
the western extremity of the Manchuria-
based Kök (Blue) Turk empire.
The far south was within the sphere of
the Bukhara-based Samanid dynasty from
the mid-9th century, and here cities such
as Otrar and Yasy (Turkistan) developed on
the back of agriculture and Silk Road trade.
The Karakhanid Turks from the southern
Kazakh steppe ousted the Samanids in the
late 10th century, taking up the Samanids'
settled ways (and Islam) and construct-
ing some of Kazakhstan's earliest surviving
buildings (in and around Taraz).

History
Kazakhstan as a single entity with defined
boundaries was an invention of the Soviet
regime in the 1920s. Before that, the great
bulk of this territory was part of the do-
main of nomadic horseback animal herd-
ers that stretched right across the Eurasian
steppe. At times some of its various peoples
fell under the sway of regional or continen-
tal potentates; at other times they were left
to sort themselves out. From around the
9th century AD the far south came within
the ambit of the settled Silk Road civilisa-
tions of Transoxiana (the area between the
Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers). A peo-
ple who can be identified as Kazakhs first
emerged in southeastern Kazakhstan in the
15th century. Over time they came to cover
a territory roughly approximating modern
Kazakhstan, though some of this continued
to be governed periodically from elsewhere
and/or occupied by other peoples. The bor-
ders of Soviet Kazakhstan excluded some
Kazakh-populated areas and included
some areas with non-Kazakh populations.

Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
Around 1130 AD the Karakhanids were
displaced by the Khitans, a Buddhist peo-
ple driven out of Mongolia and northern
China. The Khitan state, known as the Ka-
rakitay empire, stretched from Xinjiang to
Transoxiana, but in the early 13th century
it became prey to rising powers at both ex-
tremities. To the west, based in Khorezm,
south of the Aral Sea, was the Khorezm-
shah empire, which took Transoxiana in
1210. To the east was Chinggis Khan, who
sent an army to crush the Karakitay in 1218,
then turned to the Khorezmshah empire,

Early Peoples
Kazakhstan's early history is a shadowy pro-
cession of nomadic peoples, most of whom
moved in from the east and left few records.
By around 500 BC southern Kazakhstan
was inhabited by the Saka, part of the vast
network of nomadic Scythian cultures that
stretched across the steppes from the Al-
tay to Ukraine. The Saka left many burial
mounds, in some of which fabulous hoards

ABAY,¨CULTURAL¨ICON
Writer, translator and educator Abay (Ibrahim) Kunanbaev (1845-1904) was born in the
Shyngytau hills south of Semey. Son of a prosperous Kazakh noble, he tudied at both
a medressa and a Russian school in Semey. His later translations of Russian and other
foreign literature into Kazakh, and his public readings of them, as well as his own work
such as the philosophical Forty-One Black Words, were the beginning of Kazakh as a
literary language and helped to broaden Kazakhs' horizons.
Abay valued Kazakh traditions but was also pro-Russian. 'Study Russian culture and
art - it is the key to life,' he wrote. In Soviet times Abay's reputation had Moscow's tamp
of approval, and his Russophile writings were enshrined. Today he remains the number
one Kazakh cultural icon.