All about the Bashkirs. Ancient Bashkirs

Bashkirs (Bashk. bashkorttar) are a Turkic-speaking people living on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan and the historical region of the same name. Autochthonous (indigenous) people of the Southern Urals and the Urals.

The number in the world is about 2 million people.

In Russia, according to the All-Russian Population Census of 2010, there are 1,584,554 Bashkirs. The national language is Bashkir.

The traditional religion is Sunni Islam.

Bashkirs

There are several interpretations of the ethnonym Bashkort:

According to the researchers of the XVIII century V. N. Tatishchev, P. I. Rychkov, I. G. Georgi, the word bashkort means “the main wolf”. In 1847, local historian V. S. Yumatov wrote that bashkort means "beekeeper, owner of bees." According to the “Historical note on the area of ​​the former Ufa province, where the center of ancient Bashkiria was”, published in St. Petersburg in 1867, the word bashkort means “head of the Urals”.

The Russian historian and ethnographer A.E. Alektorov in 1885 put forward a version according to which bashkort means “a separate people”. According to D. M. Dunlop (English) Russian. the ethnonym bashkort goes back to the forms beshgur, bashgur, i.e. "five tribes, five Ugrians". Since Sh in the modern language corresponds to L in Bulgar, therefore, according to Dunlop, the ethnonyms Bashkort (bashgur) and Bulgar (bulgar) are equivalent. The Bashkir historian R. G. Kuzeev gave a definition of the ethnonym Bashkort in the meaning of bash - “main, main” and ҡor (t) - “clan, tribe”.

According to the ethnographer N.V. Bikbulatov, the ethnonym Bashkort originates from the name of the legendary commander Bashgird, known from written reports Gardizi (XI century), who lived between the Khazars and Kimaks in the basin of the Yaik River. Anthropologist and ethnologist R. M. Yusupov believed that the ethnonym Bashkort, interpreted in most cases as the “main wolf” on a Turkic basis, at an earlier time had an Iranian-language basis in the form of bachagurg, where bacha is “descendant, child, child”, and gurg - "wolf". Another variant of the etymology of the ethnonym Bashkort, according to R. M. Yusupov, is also associated with the Iranian phrase bachagurd, and is translated as “descendant, child of heroes, knights”.

In this case, bacha is translated in the same way as “child, child, descendant”, and gourd - “hero, knight”. After the era of the Huns, the ethnonym could change to the present state as follows: bachagurd - bachgurd - bachgord - bashkord - bashkort. Bashkirs
EARLY HISTORY OF THE BASHKIRS

The Soviet philologist and historian of antiquity S. Ya. Lurie believed that the “predecessors of the modern Bashkirs” are mentioned in the 5th century BC. e. in the "History" of Herodotus under the name of the Argippeians. The "father of history" Herodotus reported that the Argippeans live "at the foot of high mountains." Describing the lifestyle of the Argippeans, Herodotus wrote: “... They speak a special language, dress in Scythian, and eat tree fruits. The name of the tree whose fruits they eat is pontic, ... its fruit is like a bean, but with a stone inside. The ripe fruit is squeezed through a cloth, and a black juice called “ashi” flows out of it. This juice they ... drink, mixing with milk. They make flat cakes from the thick of the “ashy”. S. Ya. Lurie correlated the word "ashi" with the Turkic "achi" - "sour". According to the Bashkir linguist J. G. Kiekbaev, the word "ashy" resembles the Bashkir "Ase һyuy" - "sour liquid".

Herodotus wrote about the mentality of the Argippeans: "... They settle the feuds of their neighbors, and if some exile finds refuge with them, then no one dares to offend him." The famous orientalist Zaki Validi suggested that the Bashkirs are mentioned in the work of Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century AD) under the name of the Scythian family of Pasirtai. Interesting information about the Bashkirs is also found in the Chinese chronicles of the Sui house. So, in Sui Shu (English) Russian. (VII century) in the "Narrative of the Body" 45 tribes are listed, named by the compilers as Teles, and among them the Alans and Bashukili tribes are mentioned.

Bashukili are identified with the ethnonym Bashkort, that is, with the Bashkirs. In the light of the fact that the ancestors of the Tele were ethnic heirs of the Huns, the report of Chinese sources about the "descendants of the old Huns" in the Volga basin in the 8th-9th centuries is also of interest. Among these tribes are listed Bo-Khan and Bei-Din, who, presumably, are identified, respectively, with the Volga Bulgars and Bashkirs. A prominent specialist in the history of the Turks, M. I. Artamonov, believed that the Bashkirs were also mentioned in the “Armenian Geography” of the 7th century under the name of Bushki. The first written information about the Bashkirs by Arab authors goes back to the 9th century. Sallam at-Tarjuman (IX c.), Ibn Fadlan (X c.), Al-Masudi (X c.), Al-Balkhi (X c.), al-Andaluzi (XII c.), Idrisi (XII c. ), Ibn Said (XIII century), Yakut al-Hamawi (XIII century), Kazvini (XIII century), Dimashki (XIV century), Abulfred (XIV century) and others wrote about the Bashkirs. The first report of Arabic written sources about the Bashkirs belongs to the traveler Sallam at-Tarjuman.

Around 840, he visited the country of the Bashkirs and indicated its approximate limits. Ibn Ruste (903) reported that the Bashkirs were "an independent people who occupied the territory on both sides of the Ural Range between the Volga, Kama, Tobol and the upper reaches of the Yaik." For the first time, an ethnographic description of the Bashkirs was given by Ibn Fadlan, the ambassador of the Baghdad caliph al Muktadir to the ruler of the Volga Bulgars. He visited among the Bashkirs in 922. The Bashkirs, according to Ibn Fadlan, were warlike and powerful, whom he and his companions (only "five thousand people", including military guards) "were wary of ... with the greatest danger." They were engaged in cattle breeding.

The Bashkirs revered twelve gods: winter, summer, rain, wind, trees, people, horses, water, night, day, death, earth and sky, among which the sky god was the main one, who united everyone and was with the rest "in agreement and each of them approves what his partner does. Some Bashkirs deified snakes, fish and cranes. Along with totemism, Ibn Fadlan also notes shamanism among the Bashkirs. Apparently, Islam is beginning to spread among the Bashkirs.

The embassy included one Bashkir of the Muslim faith. According to Ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs are Turks, live on the southern slopes of the Urals and occupy a vast territory up to the Volga, their neighbors in the southeast were the Pechenegs, in the west - the Bulgars, in the south - the Oguzes. Another Arabic author, Al-Masudi (died approximately in 956), narrating about the wars near the Aral Sea, mentioned the Bashkirs among the warring peoples. The medieval geographer Sharif Idrisi (died in 1162) reported that the Bashkirs lived near the sources of the Kama and the Urals. He spoke about the city of Nemzhan, located in the upper reaches of the Lik. The Bashkirs there were engaged in smelting copper in furnaces, mined fox and beaver furs, valuable stones.

In another city of Gurkhan, located in the northern part of the Agidel River, the Bashkirs made art, saddles and weapons. Other authors: Yakut, Kazvini and Dimashki reported "about the mountain range of the Bashkirs, located in the seventh climate", by which they, like other authors, meant the Ural Mountains. “The land of the Bashkars lies in the seventh climate,” wrote Ibn Said. Rashid ad-Din (died in 1318) mentions the Bashkirs 3 times and always among the large nations. “In the same way, the peoples, who from ancient times to the present day were called and are called Turks, lived in the steppes ..., in the mountains and forests of the regions of Desht-i-Kipchak, Russ, Circassians, Bashkirs of Talas and Sairam, Ibir and Siberia, Bular and the river Ankara".

Mahmud al-Kashgari in his encyclopedic "Dictionary of Turkic languages" (1073/1074) listed the Bashkirs among the twenty "main" Turkic peoples under the heading "on the peculiarities of the Turkic languages". “And the language of the Bashkirs,” he wrote, “is very close to Kipchak, Oghuz, Kirghiz and others, that is, Turkic.”

Foreman of the Bashkir village

Bashkirs in Hungary

In the 9th century, along with the ancient Magyars, the foothills of the Urals left the tribal divisions of several ancient Bashkir clans, such as Yurmaty, Yeney, Kese and a number of others. They became part of the ancient Hungarian confederation of tribes, which was located in the country of Levedia, in the interfluve of the Don and Dnieper. At the beginning of the 10th century, the Hungarians, together with the Bashkirs, led by Prince Arpad, crossed the Carpathian Mountains and conquered the territory of Pannonia, establishing the Kingdom of Hungary.

In the 10th century, the first written information about the Bashkirs of Hungary is found in the book of the Arab scholar Al-Masudi "Murudj al-Zahab". He calls both Hungarians and Bashkirs Bashgirds or Badzhgirds. According to the well-known Turkologist Ahmad-Zaki Validi, the numerical dominance of the Bashkirs in the Hungarian army and the transfer of political power in Hungary to the top of the Bashkir tribes of Yurmata and Yeney in the XII century. led to the fact that the ethnonym "Bashgird" (Bashkirs) in medieval Arabic sources began to serve to designate the entire population of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the 13th century, Ibn Said al-Maghribi in his book “Kitab bast al-ard” divides the inhabitants of Hungary into two peoples: Bashkirs (Bashgird) - Turkic-speaking Muslims who live south of the Danube River, and Hungarians (Hunkar) who profess Christianity.

He writes that these peoples have different languages. The capital of the country of the Bashkirs was the city of Kerat, located in the south of Hungary. Abu-l-Fida in his work "Takwim al-buldan" writes that in Hungary the Bashkirs lived on the banks of the Danube next to the Germans. They served in the famous Hungarian cavalry, which terrified all of medieval Europe. The medieval geographer Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Kazvini (1203-1283) writes that the Bashkirs live between Constantinople and Bulgaria. He describes the Bashkirs as follows: “One of the Muslim theologians of the Bashkirs says that the people of the Bashkirs are very large and that most of them use Christianity; but there are also Muslims among them, who must pay tribute to Christians, just as Christians pay tribute to Muslims. Bashkirs live in huts and do not have fortresses.

Each place was given to the fief possession of a noble person; when the king noticed that these fief possessions gave rise to many disputes between the owners, he took away these possessions from them and appointed a certain salary from state sums. When the tsar of the Bashkirs called these gentlemen to war during a Tatar raid, they answered that they would obey, only on the condition that these possessions be returned to them. The king refused them and said: speaking in this war, you are defending yourself and your children. The magnates did not listen to the king and dispersed. Then the Tatars attacked and devastated the country with a sword and fire, finding no resistance anywhere.

Bashkirs

MONGOLIAN INVASION

The first battle between the Bashkirs and the Mongols took place in 1219-1220, when Genghis Khan, at the head of a huge army, spent the summer on the Irtysh, where the Bashkirs had summer pastures. The confrontation between the two peoples continued for a long time. From 1220 to 1234, the Bashkirs were constantly at war with the Mongols, in fact, holding back the onslaught of the Mongol invasion to the west. L. N. Gumilyov in the book “Ancient Rus' and the Great Steppe” wrote: “The Mongol-Bashkir war dragged on for 14 years, that is, much longer than the war with the Khorezmian Sultanate and the Great Western Campaign ...

The Bashkirs repeatedly won battles and finally concluded an agreement on friendship and alliance, after which the Mongols united with the Bashkirs for further conquests ... ". The Bashkirs receive the right to beat (labels), that is, in fact, territorial autonomy as part of the empire of Genghis Khan. In the legal hierarchy of the Mongol Empire, the Bashkirs occupied a privileged position as a people indebted to the kagans primarily for military service, and retaining their own tribal system and administration. In legal terms, it is possible to talk only about relations of suzerainty-vassalage, and not "allied". Bashkir cavalry regiments took part in Batu Khan's raids on the northeastern and southwestern Russian principalities in 1237-1238 and 1239-1240, as well as in the Western campaign of 1241-1242.

As part of the Golden Horde In the XIII-XIV centuries, the entire territory of the settlement of the Bashkirs was part of the Golden Horde. On June 18, 1391, the “Battle of the Nations” took place near the Kondurcha River. In the battle, the armies of the two world powers of that time clashed: the Khan of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh, on whose side the Bashkirs came out, and the emir of Samarkand Timur (Tamerlane). The battle ended with the defeat of the Golden Horde. After the collapse of the Golden Horde, the territory of historical Bashkortostan was part of the Kazan, Siberian khanates and the Nogai Horde.

Accession of Bashkortostan to Russia Establishment of Moscow's suzerainty over the Bashkirs was not a one-time act. The first (in the winter of 1554) to accept Moscow citizenship were the western and northwestern Bashkirs, who were previously subject to the Kazan Khan.

Following them (in 1554-1557), ties with Ivan the Terrible were established by the Bashkirs of central, southern and southeastern Bashkiria, who then coexisted on the same territory with the Nogai Horde. The Trans-Ural Bashkirs were forced to make an agreement with Moscow in the 80-90s of the 16th century, after the collapse of the Siberian Khanate. Having defeated Kazan, Ivan the Terrible turned to the Bashkir people with an appeal to voluntarily come under his highest hand. The Bashkirs responded and at the people's meetings of the clans decided to go under Moscow vassalage on the basis of an equal agreement with the tsar.

This was the second time in their centuries-old history. The first was an agreement with the Mongols (XIII century). The terms of the agreement were clearly defined. The Moscow sovereign retained all their lands for the Bashkirs and recognized the patrimonial right to them (it is noteworthy that, apart from the Bashkirs, not a single people who accepted Russian citizenship had a patrimonial right to land). The Muscovite tsar also promised to maintain local self-government, not to oppress the Muslim religion (“... they gave their word and swore the Bashkirs who profess Islam would never rape into another religion ...”). Thus, Moscow made serious concessions to the Bashkirs, which naturally met its global interests. The Bashkirs, in turn, pledged to carry out military service at their own expense and pay yasak to the treasury - a land tax.

The voluntary annexation to Russia and the receipt by the Bashkirs of letters of commendation are also mentioned in the chronicle of foreman Kidras Mullakaev, reported to P.I. Rychkov and later published in his book History of Orenburg: namely, beyond the Kama River and near the Belaya Voloshka (which is named after the White River), they, the Bashkirs, were confirmed, but moreover, many others on which they now live were granted, as evidenced by letters of commendation, which many still have ". Rychkov in the book "Topography of Orenburg" wrote: "The Bashkir people came into Russian citizenship." The exclusivity of relations between the Bashkirs and Russia is reflected in the "Cathedral Code" of 1649, where the Bashkirs, under pain of confiscation of property and the sovereign's disgrace, were forbidden "... boyars, roundabout, and thoughtful people, and stolniks, and solicitors and noblemen in Moscow and from the cities of noblemen and boyar children and Russian local people should not buy or exchange any ranks and mortgage, and rent and rent for many years.

From 1557 to 1798 - for more than 200 years - the Bashkir cavalry regiments fought in the ranks of the Russian army; being part of the militia of Minin and Pozharsky, the Bashkir detachments took part in the liberation of Moscow from the Polish invaders in 1612.

Bashkir uprisings During the life of Ivan the Terrible, the terms of the agreement were still respected, and despite his cruelty, he remained in the memory of the Bashkir people as a kind, “white king” (Bashk. Аҡ batsha). With the coming to power of the Romanov dynasty in the 17th century, the policy of tsarism in Bashkortostan immediately began to change for the worse. In words, the authorities assured the Bashkirs of their loyalty to the terms of the agreement, in deeds, they took the path of violating them. This was expressed, first of all, in the plunder of the patrimonial Bashkir lands and the construction of outposts, prisons, settlements, Christian monasteries, and lines on them. Seeing the massive plunder of their lands, the violation of their primordial rights and freedoms, the Bashkirs rose to revolt in 1645, 1662-1664, 1681-1684, 1704-11/25.

The tsarist authorities were forced to satisfy many demands of the rebels. After the Bashkir uprising of 1662-1664. the government once again officially confirmed the patrimonial right of the Bashkirs to land. During the uprising of 1681-1684. - Freedom to practice Islam. After the uprising of 1704-11. (the embassy from the Bashkirs again swore allegiance to the emperor only in 1725) - confirmed the patrimonial rights and the special status of the Bashkirs and held a trial that ended with the conviction for abuse of authority and the execution of the government "profitrs" Sergeev, Dokhov and Zhikharev, who demanded taxes from the Bashkirs, not provided for by law, which was one of the reasons for the uprising.

During the uprisings, the Bashkir detachments reached Samara, Saratov, Astrakhan, Vyatka, Tobolsk, Kazan (1708) and the mountains of the Caucasus (during an unsuccessful assault by their allies - Caucasian highlanders and Russian schismatic Cossacks, Terek town, one of the leaders of the Bashkir uprising of 1704-11, Sultan Murat). The human and material losses were enormous. The heaviest loss for the Bashkirs themselves is the uprising of 1735-1740, during which Khan Sultan Giray (Karasakal) was elected. During this uprising, many of the hereditary lands of the Bashkirs were taken away and transferred to the Meshcheryak servicemen. According to the estimates of the American historian A. S. Donnelly, every fourth person from the Bashkirs died.

The next uprising broke out in 1755-1756. The reason was rumors of religious persecution and the abolition of light yasak (the only tax on the Bashkirs; yasak was taken only from the land and confirmed their status as patrimonial landowners) while simultaneously prohibiting the free extraction of salt, which the Bashkirs considered their privilege. The uprising was brilliantly planned, but failed because of the spontaneous premature action of the Bashkirs of the Burzyan family, who killed a petty official - the bribe-taker and rapist Bragin. Because of this absurd and tragic accident, the plans of the Bashkirs to simultaneously attack all 4 roads, this time in alliance with the Mishars, and, possibly, the Tatars and Kazakhs, were thwarted.

The most famous ideologist of this movement was the akhun of the Siberian road of Bashkortostan, Mishar Gabdulla Galiev (Batyrsha). In captivity, Mulla Batyrsha wrote his famous “Letter to Empress Elizaveta Petrovna”, which has survived to this day as an interesting example of an analysis of the causes of the Bashkir uprisings by their participant.

During the suppression of the uprising, a number of those who participated in the uprising emigrated to the Kirghiz-Kaisatsky Horde. Participation in the Peasant War of 1773-1775 is considered to be the last Bashkir uprising. Emelyan Pugacheva: one of the leaders of this uprising, Salavat Yulaev, also remained in the people's memory and is considered a Bashkir national hero.

The Bashkir army The most significant of the reforms in relation to the Bashkirs, carried out by the tsarist government in the 18th century, was the introduction of the cantonal system of government, which operated with some changes until 1865.

By decree of April 10, 1798, the Bashkir and Mishar population of the region was transferred to the military service class and obliged to carry out border service on the eastern borders of Russia. Administratively, cantons were created.

The Trans-Ural Bashkirs ended up in the 2nd (Ekaterinburg and Shadrinsk districts), 3rd (Troitsky district) and 4th (Chelyabinsk district) cantons. The 2nd canton was in Perm, the 3rd and 4th - in the Orenburg provinces. In 1802-1803. The Bashkirs of the Shadrinsk district were separated into an independent 3rd canton. In this regard, the serial numbers of the cantons have also changed. The former 3rd canton (Troitsky Uyezd) became the 4th, and the former 4th (Chelyabinsk Uyezd) became the 5th. Major changes in the system of cantonal government were undertaken in the 30s of the XIX century. From the Bashkir and Mishar population of the region, the Bashkir-Meshcheryak army was formed, which included 17 cantons. The latter were united in guardianships.

Bashkirs and Mishars of the 2nd (Ekaterinburg and Krasnoufimsk districts) and 3rd (Shadrinsk district) cantons were included in the first, 4th (Troitsky district) and 5th (Chelyabinsk district) - in the second guardianship with centers respectively in Krasnoufimsk and Chelyabinsk. By the law "On the accession of Teptyars and Bobyls to the Bashkir-Meshcheryak Host" of February 22, 1855, the Teptyar regiments were included in the canton system of the Bashkir-Meshcheryak Host.

Later, the name was changed to the Bashkir Army by the Law “On the future naming of the Bashkir-Meshcheryak army by the Bashkir army. October 31, 1855" With the accession of the Kazakh lands to Russia in 1731, Bashkortostan became one of the many internal regions of the empire, and the need to involve the Bashkirs, Mishars and Teptyars in the border service disappeared.

During the reforms of the 1860-1870s. in 1864-1865 the canton system was abolished, and the management of the Bashkirs and their underlings passed into the hands of rural and volost (yurt) societies, similar to Russian societies. True, the Bashkirs had advantages in the field of land use: the standard for the Bashkirs was 60 acres per capita, while 15 acres for former serfs.

Alexander 1 and Napoleon, representatives of the Bashkirs nearby

Participation of the Bashkirs in the Patriotic War of 1812 28 five-hundred Bashkir regiments participated.

In addition, the Bashkir population of the Southern Urals allocated 4,139 horses and 500,000 rubles for the army. During a foreign campaign as part of the Russian army in Germany, in the city of Weimer, the great German poet Goethe met with the Bashkir soldiers, whom the Bashkirs presented with a bow and arrows. Nine Bashkir regiments entered Paris. The French called the Bashkir warriors "Northern Cupids".

In the memory of the Bashkir people, the war of 1812 was preserved in the folk songs "Baik", "Kutuzov", "Squadron", "Kakhym turya", "Lyubizar". The last song is based on a true fact, when the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, M. I. Kutuzov, thanked the Bashkir soldiers for their courage in battle with the words: “loved ones, well done.” There is data on some soldiers who were awarded silver medals "For the capture of Paris on March 19, 1814" and "In memory of the war of 1812-1814", Rakhmangul Barakov (Bikkulovo village), Saifutdin Kadyrgalin (Bayramgulovo village), Nurali Zubairov ( Kuluyevo village), Kunduzbay Kuldavletov (Subkhangulovo-Abdyrovo village).

Monument to the Bashkirs who participated in the war of 1812

Bashkir national movement

After the revolutions of 1917, the All-Bashkir kurultai (congresses) take place, at which a decision is made on the need to create a national republic as part of federal Russia. As a result, on November 15, 1917, the Bashkir regional (central) shuro (council) proclaims the creation of the territories with a predominantly Bashkir population of the Orenburg, Perm, Samara, Ufa provinces of the territorial-national autonomy of Bashkurdistan.

In December 1917, the delegates of the III All-Bashkir (constituent) Congress, representing the interests of the population of the region of all nationalities, unanimously voted for the approval of the resolution (Farman No. 2) of the Bashkir Regional Shuro on the proclamation of the national-territorial autonomy (republic) of Bashkurdistan. At the congress, the government of Bashkortostan, the pre-parliament - Kese-Kurultai and other authorities and administrations were formed, and decisions were made on further actions. In March 1919, on the basis of the Agreement between the Russian Workers' and Peasants' Government and the Bashkir Government, the Autonomous Bashkir Soviet Republic was formed.

Formation of the Republic of Bashkortostan On October 11, 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic proclaimed the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On March 31, 1992, Bashkortostan signed a federal agreement on the delimitation of powers and jurisdiction between the state authorities of the Russian Federation and the authorities of the sovereign republics in its composition and the Appendix to it from the Republic of Bashkortostan, which determined the contractual nature of relations between the Republic of Bashkortostan and the Russian Federation.

Ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs

The ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs is extremely complex. The Southern Urals and the adjacent steppes, where the formation of the people took place, have long been an arena of active interaction between different tribes and cultures. In the literature on the ethnogenesis of the Bashkirs, one can see that there are three main hypotheses for the origin of the Bashkir people: Turkic Finno-Ugric Iranian

Perm Bashkirs
The anthropological composition of the Bashkirs is heterogeneous, it is a mixture of Caucasoid and Mongoloid features. M. S. Akimova singled out four main anthropological types among the Bashkirs: Subural Pontic light Caucasoid South Siberian

The most ancient racial types of the Bashkirs are light Caucasoid, Pontic and Subural, and the latest - South Siberian. The South Siberian anthropological type as part of the Bashkirs appeared rather late and is closely associated with the Turkic tribes of the 9th-12th centuries and the Kipchaks of the 13th-14th centuries.

Pamir-Fergana, Trans-Caspian racial types, also present in the composition of the Bashkirs, are associated with the Indo-Iranian and Turkic nomads of Eurasia.

Bashkir culture

Traditional occupations and crafts The main occupation of the Bashkirs in the past was semi-nomadic (yailage) cattle breeding. Farming, hunting, beekeeping, beekeeping, poultry farming, fishing, and gathering were widespread. Crafts include weaving, felt making, the production of lint-free carpets, shawls, embroidery, leather working (leatherworking), woodworking, and metalworking. The Bashkirs were engaged in the production of arrowheads, spears, knives, elements of horse harness made of iron. Bullets and shot for guns were cast from lead.

The Bashkirs had their own blacksmiths and jewelers. Pendants, plaques, jewelry for women's breastplates and headdresses were made from silver. Metalworking was based on local raw materials. Metallurgy and blacksmithing were banned after the uprisings. The Russian historian M. D. Chulkov in his work “Historical Description of Russian Commerce” (1781-1788) noted: “In previous years, the Bashkirs smelted the best steel from this ore in hand furnaces, which, after the rebellion of 1735 by them no longer allowed." It is noteworthy that the mining school in St. Petersburg, the first higher mining and technical educational institution in Russia, was proposed by the Bashkir ore industrialist Ismagil Tasimov. Dwelling and way of life House of the Bashkir (Yahya). Photo by S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky, 1910

In the XVII-XIX centuries, the Bashkirs completely switched from semi-nomadic management to agriculture and settled life, since many lands were occupied by immigrants from central Russia and the Volga region. Among the Eastern Bashkirs, a semi-nomadic way of life was still partially preserved. The last, single departures of auls for summer camps (summer camps) were noted in the 20s of the XX century.

The types of dwellings among the Bashkirs are varied, timber (wooden), wattle and adobe (adobe) predominate, among the Eastern Bashkirs a felt yurt (tirma) was still common in summer camps. Bashkir Cuisine The semi-nomadic lifestyle contributed to the formation of the original culture, traditions and cuisine of the Bashkirs: wintering in villages and living in summer nomads brought diversity to the diet and cooking opportunities.

The traditional Bashkir dish bishbarmak is made from boiled meat and salma, sprinkled with plenty of herbs and onions and flavored with kurut. This is another noticeable feature of the Bashkir cuisine: dairy products are often served with dishes - a rare feast is complete without kurut or sour cream. Most Bashkir dishes are easy to prepare and nutritious.

Dishes such as ayran, koumiss, buza, kazy, basturma, plov, manti, and many others are considered national dishes of many peoples from the Ural Mountains to the Middle East.

Bashkir national costume

The traditional clothes of the Bashkirs are very variable depending on the age and the specific region. Clothes were sewn from sheepskin, homespun and purchased fabrics. Various women's jewelry made of corals, beads, shells, and coins were widespread. These are breastplates (yaғa, һаҡаl), cross-shouldered baldrics (emeiҙek, dәғүәт), backs (inңһәlek), various pendants, braids, bracelets, earrings. Women's hats in the past are very diverse, these are the cap-shaped ҡashmau, the girl's hat taҡyya, the fur ҡama burek, the multi-component kalәpүsh, the towel-shaped taҫtar, often richly decorated with embroidery. Very colorfully decorated head cover ҡushyaulyҡ.

Among men: fur hats with earflaps (ҡolaҡsyn), fox hats (tөlkoҩ ҡolaҡsyn), a hood (kөlәpәrә) made of white cloth, skullcaps (tүbәtәй), felt hats. The shoes of the Eastern Bashkirs are original: kata and saryk, leather heads and cloth tops, laces with tassels. The kata and women's "saryks" were decorated with appliqués on the back. Boots (itek, sitek) and bast shoes (sabata) were widespread everywhere (with the exception of a number of southern and eastern regions). Pants with a wide step were an obligatory attribute of men's and women's clothing. Very elegant outerwear for women.

This is often richly decorated with coins, braids, appliqués and a little embroidery robe elәn, аҡ sаҡman (which also often served as a head cover), sleeveless “kamzuly”, decorated with bright embroidery, and sheathed around the edges with coins. Men's Cossacks and chekmens (saҡman), semi-caftans (bishmat). The Bashkir men's shirt and women's dresses differed sharply in cut from those of the Russians, although they were also decorated with embroidery and ribbons (dresses).

It was also common for Eastern Bashkirs to decorate dresses along the hem with appliqué. Belts were an exclusively male piece of clothing. The belts were woolen woven (up to 2.5 m in length), belt, cloth and sashes with copper or silver buckles. A large rectangular leather bag (ҡaptyrga or ҡalta) was always hung from the right side on the belt, and from the left side there was a knife in a wooden sheath sheathed with leather (bysaҡ gyny).

Bashkir folk customs,

Wedding customs of the Bashkirs In addition to the wedding festival (tui), religious (Muslim) ones are known: uraza-bayram (uraҙa bayramy), kurban-bayram (ҡorban bayramy), mawlid (maүlid bayramy), and others, as well as folk holidays - the celebration of the end of the spring field works - Sabantuy (һabantui) and kargatuy (ҡargatuy).

National sports The national sports of the Bashkirs include: wrestling kuresh, archery, throwing a spear and a hunting dagger, horse racing and running, tug-of-war (lasso) and others. Among the equestrian sports are popular: baiga, horseback riding, horse races.

Equestrian folk games are popular in Bashkortostan: auzarysh, kot-alyu, kuk-bure, kyz kyuyu. Sports games and competitions are an integral part of the physical education of the Bashkirs, and for many centuries have been included in the program of folk holidays. Oral folk art Bashkir folk art was varied and rich. It is represented by various genres, among which there are heroic epics, fairy tales and songs.

One of the ancient types of oral poetry was kubair (ҡobayyr). Among the Bashkirs, there were often improvising singers - sesens (sәsәn), combining the gift of a poet and a composer. Among song genres there were folk songs (yyrҙar), ritual songs (senluү).

Depending on the melody, Bashkir songs were divided into lingering (oҙon koy) and short (ҡyҫҡa koy) songs, in which dance songs (beyeү koy), ditties (taҡmaҡ) were distinguished. The Bashkirs had a tradition of throat singing - uzlyau (өzlәү; also һоҙҙau, ҡайҙау, tamaҡ ҡurayy). Along with songwriting, the Bashkirs developed music. WITH

Among the musical instruments, the most common were kubyz (ҡumyҙ) and kurai (ҡurai). In some places there was a three-stringed musical instrument dombyra.

The dances of the Bashkirs were distinguished by their originality. Dances were always performed to the sounds of a song or kurai with a frequent rhythm. Those present beat time with their palms and from time to time exclaimed “Hey!”.

Bashkir epic

A number of epic works of the Bashkirs called "Ural-batyr", "Akbuzat" have preserved layers of ancient mythology of the Indo-Iranians and ancient Turks, and have parallels with the Epic of Gilgamesh, Rigveda, Avesta. Thus, the epic "Ural-Batyr", according to researchers, contains three layers: archaic Sumerian, Indo-Iranian and ancient Turkic pagan. Some epic works of the Bashkirs, such as "Alpamysha" and "Kuzykurpyas and Mayankhylu", are also found among other Turkic peoples.

Bashkir literature Bashkir literature has its roots in ancient times. The origins go back to ancient Turkic runic and written monuments such as the Orkhon-Yenisei inscriptions, to handwritten works of the 11th century in the Turkic language and ancient Bulgarian poetic monuments (Kul Gali and others). In the 13th-14th centuries, Bashkir literature developed as an oriental one.

Traditional genres prevailed in poetry - ghazal, madhya, qasida, dastan, canonized poetics. The most characteristic in the development of Bashkir poetry is its close interaction with folklore.

From the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the development of Bashkir literature is associated with the name and work of Baik Aidar (1710-1814), Shamsetdin Zaki (1822-1865), Gali Sokoroy (1826-1889), Miftakhetdin Akmulla (1831-1895), Mazhit Gafuri ( 1880-1934), Safuan Yakshigulov (1871-1931), Daut Yulty (1893-1938), Shaikhzada Babich (1895-1919) and many others.

Theatrical art and cinema

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only amateur theater groups in Bashkortostan. The first professional theater opened in 1919 almost simultaneously with the formation of the Bashkir ASSR. It was the current Bashkir State Academic Drama Theater. M. Gafuri. In the 30s, several more theaters appeared in Ufa - a puppet theater, an opera and ballet theater. Later, state theaters were opened in other cities of Bashkortostan.

Bashkir enlightenment and science The period that covers historical time from the 60s of the XIX century to the beginning of the XX century can be called the era of Bashkir enlightenment. The most famous figures of the Bashkir enlightenment of that period were M. Bekchurin, A. Kuvatov, G. Kiikov, B. Yuluev, G. Sokoroy, M. Umetbaev, Akmulla, M.-G. Kurbangaliev, R. Fakhretdinov, M. Baishev, Yu. Bikbov, S. Yakshigulov and others.

At the beginning of the 20th century, such figures of the Bashkir culture as Akhmetzaki Validi Togan, Abdulkadir Inan, Galimyan Tagan, Mukhametsha Burangulov were formed.

Religion Mosque in the Bashkir village of Yahya. Photo by S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky, 1910
By religious affiliation, the Bashkirs are Sunni Muslims.

Since the 10th century, Islam has been spreading among the Bashkirs. The Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan met a Bashkir professing Islam back in 921. With the establishment of Islam in the Volga Bulgaria (in 922), Islam also spread among the Bashkirs. In the shezher of the Bashkirs of the Ming tribe living along the Deme River, it is said that they "send nine people from their people to Bulgaria to find out what the Mohammedan faith is."

The legend about the cure of the Khan's daughter says that the Bulgars “sent their Tabigin students to the Bashkirs. So Islam spread among the Bashkirs in the Belaya, Ik, Dyoma, Tanyp valleys. Zaki Validi cited the message of the Arab geographer Yakut al-Hamawi that in Khalba he met a Bashkir who had arrived to study. The final approval of Islam among the Bashkirs took place in the 20-30s of the XIV century and is associated with the name of the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek, who established Islam as the state religion of the Golden Horde. The Hungarian monk Ioganka, who visited the Bashkirs in the 1320s, wrote about the Bashkir Khan, who was fanatically devoted to Islam.

The oldest evidence of the introduction of Islam in Bashkortostan includes the ruins of a monument near the village of Chishma, inside which lies a stone with an Arabic inscription saying that Hussein-Bek, the son of Izmer-Bek, is buried here, who died on the 7th day of the month of Muharrem 739 AH, that is, in 1339 year. There is also evidence that Islam penetrated the Southern Urals from Central Asia. For example, in the Bashkir Trans-Urals, on Mount Aushtau in the vicinity of the village of Starobairamgulovo (Aushkul) (now in the Uchalinsky district), the burials of two ancient Muslim missionaries dating back to the 13th century have been preserved. The spread of Islam among the Bashkirs took several centuries, and ended in the XIV-XV centuries.

Bashkir language, Bashkir writing The national language is Bashkir.

It belongs to the Kypchak group of Turkic languages. Main dialects: southern, eastern and northwestern. Distributed on the territory of historical Bashkortostan. According to the 2010 All-Russian Population Census, the Bashkir language is native to 1,133,339 Bashkirs (71.7% of the total number of Bashkirs who indicated their native languages).

The Tatar language was named native by 230,846 Bashkirs (14.6%). Russian is the native language for 216,066 Bashkirs (13.7%).

Settlement of the Bashkirs The number of Bashkirs in the world is about 2 million people. In Russia, according to the 2010 census, 1,584,554 Bashkirs live, of which 1,172,287 live in Bashkortostan.

Bashkirs make up 29.5% of the population of the Republic of Bashkortostan. In addition to the Republic of Bashkortostan itself, the Bashkirs live in all subjects of the Russian Federation, as well as in the states of near and far abroad.

Up to a third of all Bashkirs currently live outside the Republic of Bashkortostan.

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SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND PHOTO:

Bashkirs // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg, 1890-1907.

Kuzeev R. G. Bashkirs: Historical and ethnographic essay / R. Kuzeev, S. N. Shitova. - Ufa: Institute of History, yaz. and lit., 1963. - 151 p. - 700 copies. (in the lane) Kuzeev R. G.

The origin of the Bashkir people. Ethnic composition, history of settlement. — M.: Nauka, 1974. — 571 p. - 2400 copies. Rudenko S. I.

Bashkirs: historical and ethnographic essays. - Ufa: Kitap, 2006. - 376 p. Kuzeev R. G.

The origin of the Bashkir people. M., Nauka, 1974, S. 428. Yanguzin R.3.

Ethnography of the Bashkirs (history of study). - Ufa: Kitap, 2002. - 192 p.

History of Bashkortostan from ancient times to the 16th century [Text] / Mazhitov N. A., Sultanova A. N. - Ufa: Kitap, 1994. - 359 p. : ill. - Bibliography in the note at the end of the chapters. — ISBN 5-295-01491-6

Journey of Ibn Fadlan to the Volga. Translation, commentary and edition by Academician I. Yu. Krachkovsky. M.; L., 1939 Zaki Validi Togan.

History of the Bashkirs Rashid-ad-Din "Collection of Chronicles" (T. 1. Book 1. M .; L., 1952) "The Turk favors Devon." 1 vol. Tashkent. P. 66 b Nasyrov I. "Bashkirds" in Pannonia // Islam. - M., 2004. - No. 2 (9). pp. 36-39.

History of the Bashkirs. Article on the site "Bashkortostan 450" L. N. Gumilyov.

"Ancient Rus' and the Great Steppe" (135. Scheme of the course of events)

Rychkov Pyotr Ivanovich: "Orenburg Topography" St. Petersburg, 1762 p. 67 Salavat Yulaev in the Concise Encyclopedia

Bashkortostan Bashkir Encyclopedia. In 7 volumes / Ch. editor M. A. Ilgamov. T.1: A-B. Ufa: Bashkir Encyclopedia, 2005. Akimova M.S.

Anthropological research in Bashkiria // Anthropology and Genogeography. M., 1974 R. M. Yusupov "Bashkirs: ethnic history and traditional culture"

SITE Wikipedia.

The history of the Bashkir people is also of interest to other peoples of the republic, because. Based on the theses about the “indigenousness” of the Bashkir people in this territory, unconstitutional attempts are being made to “justify” the allocation of the lion's share of the budget for the development of the language and culture of this people.

However, as it turns out, not everything is so simple with the history of the origin and residence of the Bashkirs on the territory of modern Bashkiria. Your attention is invited to another version of the origin of the Bashkir people.

"Bashkirs of the Negroid type can be found in our Abzelilovsky district in almost every village." This is not a joke... It's all serious...

"Zigat Sultanov writes that one of the other peoples called the Bashkirs Aztecs. I also support the above authors and argue that the American Indians (Astek) are one of the former ancient Bashkir peoples. And not only among the Aztecs, but also among the Mayan peoples, philosophies about the Universe coincide with the ancient worldviews of some Bashkir peoples.The Mayan peoples lived in Peru, Mexico, and a small part in Guatemala, it is called Quiche Maya (Spanish scientist Alberto Rus).

The word "kiche" in our country sounds like "kese". And today, the descendants of these American Indians, like ours, have many words that converge, for example: keshe-man, bacalar-frogs. The joint life in the Urals of today's American Indians with the Bashkirs is noted in the scientific and historical article by M. Bagumanova in the republican newspaper of Bashkortostan "Yashlek" on the seventh page of January 16, 1997.

This opinion is also shared by Moscow scientists, such as the compiler of the first domestic "Archaeological Dictionary", a well-known archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences Gerald Matyushin, which contains almost seven hundred scientific articles by scientists from different countries.

The discovery of an Early Paleolithic site on Lake Karabalykty (again, the territory of our Abzelilovsky district - approx. Al Fatih.) Is of great importance for science. It says not only that the history of the population of the Urals dates back to very ancient times, but also allows you to take a different look at some other problems of science, for example, the problem of the settlement of Siberia and even America, since so far nowhere in Siberia found such an ancient site as in the Urals. It used to be believed that Siberia was first settled from somewhere in the depths of Asia, from China. And only then from Siberia these people moved to America. But it is known that people of the Mongoloid race live in China and in the depths of Asia, and the Indians of the mixed Caucasoid-Mongoloid race settled in America. Indians with large aquiline noses are repeatedly sung in fiction (especially in the novels of Mine Reed and Fenimore Cooper). The discovery of an Early Paleolithic site on Lake Karabalykty allows us to suggest that the settlement of Siberia, and then America, also came from the Urals.

By the way, during excavations near the city of Davlekanovo in Bashkiria, in 1966, we discovered a burial of a primitive man. The reconstruction of M. M. Gerasimov (a famous anthropologist and archaeologist) showed that this man was very similar to the American Indians. Back in 1962, during excavations of a settlement of the Late Stone Age - the Neolithic - on Sabakty Lake (Abzelilovsky District), we found a small head made of baked clay. She, like the Davlekan man, had a large, large nose and straight hair. Thus, even later the population of the Southern Urals retained similarities with the population of America. ("Monuments of the Stone Age in the Bashkir Trans-Urals", G. N. Matyushin, the city newspaper "Magnitogorsk worker" dated February 22, 1996.

In ancient times, Greeks lived with one of the Bashkir peoples in the Urals, in addition to the American Indians. This is evidenced by a sculptural portrait of a nomad, seized by archaeologists from an ancient burial ground near the village of Murakaevo, Abzelilovsky district. The sculpture of the head of a Greek man is installed in the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography in the capital of Bashkortostan.

That is why, it turns out, the ornaments of ancient Greek Athens and the Romans coincide with today's and Bashkir ornaments. To this should be added the similarity of today's Bashkir and Greek ornaments with cuneiform ornaments and inscriptions on ancient clay pots found by archaeologists in the Urals, whose age is more than four thousand years. At the bottom of some of these ancient pots, an ancient Bashkir swastika in the form of a cross is drawn. And according to the international rights of UNESCO, ancient things found by archaeologists and other researchers are the spiritual heritage of the indigenous population, on whose territory they were found.

This also applies to Arkaim, but at the same time, let's not forget about universal human values. And without this, one constantly hears or reads that their people - Uranus, Gaina or Yurmats - are the most ancient Bashkir people. The Burzyan or Usergan people are the purest Bashkirs. Tamyans or Katais are the most numerous of the most ancient Bashkirs, etc. All this is inherent in every person of any nation, even an aboriginal from Australia. Because each person has his own invincible inner psychological dignity - "I". But animals do not have this dignity.

When you know that the first civilized people left the Ural Mountains, there will be no sensation if archaeologists even find an Australian boomerang in the Urals.

The racial kinship of the Bashkirs with other peoples is also evidenced by the stand in the Republican Museum of Bashkortostan "Archaeology and Ethnography" called "Racial Types of the Bashkirs". The director of the museum is a Bashkir scientist, professor, doctor of historical sciences, member of the Council of the President of Bashkortostan Rail Kuzeev.

The presence among the Bashkirs of several anthropological types indicates the complexity of ethnogenesis and the formation of the anthropological composition of the people. The largest groups of the Bashkir population form the Subural, light Caucasoid, South Siberian, Pontic racial types. Each of them has its own historical age and specific history of origin in the Urals.

The oldest types of Bashkirs are Subural, Pontic, light Caucasoid, and the South Siberian type is later. Pamir-Fergana, Trans-Caspian racial types, also present in the composition of the Bashkirs, are associated with the Indo-Iranian and Turkic nomads of Eurasia.

But the Bashkir anthropologists for some reason forgot about the Bashkirs living today with signs of the Negroid race (Dravidian race - approx. Aryslan). Bashkirs of the Negroid type can also be found in our Abzelilovsky district in almost every village.

The kinship of the Bashkir peoples with other peoples of the world is also indicated by the scientific article "We are a Euro-Asian-speaking ancient people" by the historian, candidate of philological sciences Shamil Nafikov in the republican journal "Vatandash" No. 1 for 1996, edited by professor, academician of the Russian Federation, doctor philological sciences Gaysa Khusainov. In addition to Bashkir philologists, teachers of foreign languages ​​are also successfully working in this direction, discovering the preserved family ties of the Bashkir languages ​​with other peoples since ancient times. For example, for most Bashkir peoples and all Turkic peoples, the word "apa" means aunt, and for other Bashkir peoples, uncle. And the Kurds call their uncle "apo". As above
wrote, a man in German sounds "man", and in English "men". The Bashkirs also have this sound in the form of a male deity.

Kurds, Germans, English belong to the same Indo-European family, which includes the peoples of India. Scientists all over the world have been looking for ancient Bashkirs since the Middle Ages, but they could not be found, because until today Bashkir scientists have not been able to express themselves since the time of the yoke of the Golden Horde.

We read the seventy-eighth page of the book "Archaeological Dictionary" by G. N. Matyushin: "... For more than four hundred years, scientists have been looking for the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. Why are their languages ​​\u200b\u200bso close, why does the culture of these peoples have much in common? Apparently, they came from some ancient people, scientists considered.Where did this people live?Some thought that the homeland of the Indo-Europeans was India, other scientists found it in the Himalayas, others - in Mesopotamia.However, most of them considered Europe, or rather the Balkans, to be their ancestral home, although there was no material evidence After all, if the Indo-Europeans migrated from somewhere, then material traces of such a migration, the remains of cultures, must remain.However, archaeologists did not find any common tools, dwellings, etc. for all these peoples.

The only thing that united all Indo-Europeans in antiquity was the microliths and later, in the Neolithic, agriculture. Only they appeared in the Stone Age wherever the Indo-Europeans still live. They are in Iran, and in India, and in Central Asia, and in the forest-steppe, and the steppes of Eastern Europe, and in England, and in France. More precisely, they are everywhere where the Indo-European peoples live, but we do not have them, where these peoples do not exist.

Although today some Bashkir peoples have lost their Indo-European dialect, we also have them everywhere, even more. This is confirmed by the same book by Matyushin on page 69, where the photograph shows ancient stone sickles from the Urals. And the first ancient human bread Talkan still lives among some Bashkir peoples. In addition, bronze sickles and a pestle can be found in the museum of the regional center of the Abzelilovsky district. A lot can be said about livestock farming, also not forgetting that the first horses were domesticated several thousand years ago in the Urals. And in terms of the number of microliths found by archaeologists, the Urals are second to none.

As you can see, and archeology scientifically confirms, about the ancient family ties of the Indo-European peoples with the Bashkir peoples. And the Balkan Mountain is located with its caves in the Southern Urals in the European part of Bashkortostan on the territory of the Davlekansky region near Lake Asylykul. In ancient times, even in the Bashkir Balkans, microliths were also in short supply, since these Balkan mountains are located three hundred kilometers away from the Ural jasper belt. Some of the people who came to Western Europe in ancient times from the Urals called the nameless mountains the Balkans, duplicating Mount Balkantau, from where they left, according to the unwritten law of toponymy.

Self-name - Bashkort, people in Russia, the indigenous population of Bashkiria (Bashkortostan). In Russia, according to the All-Russian Population Census of 2010, there are 1,584,554 Bashkirs, including 7,290 people in the Samara region. They live in the south-east of the Samara region, mainly in the Bolshechernigov and Bolsheglushitsky districts. Due to the fact that the main area of ​​traditional settlement of local Bashkirs is located in the valley of the Bolshoi Irgiz River, they are often referred to in historiography as "Irgiz Bashkirs". Part of the Bashkirs settled in the cities of the Samara region, primarily in Samara and Togliatti.

They speak the Bashkir language of the Turkic group of the Altai family. Russian and Tatar languages ​​are widespread. Writing based on the Russian alphabet. Believing Bashkirs are Sunni Muslims.

The decisive role in the formation of the Bashkirs was played by the Turkic cattle-breeding tribes of South Siberian-Central Asian origin, who, before coming to the South Urals, wandered for a considerable time in the Aral-Syrdarya steppes, coming into contact with the Pecheneg-Oghuz and Kimak-Kypchak tribes; here they are recorded in the 9th century by written sources. From the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries. lived in the Southern Urals and adjacent steppe and forest-steppe spaces.

In the X - early XIII centuries. the Bashkirs were under the political influence of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria. In 1236 they were conquered by the Mongol-Tatars and annexed to the Golden Horde. Islam was adopted in the 14th century. After the fall of Kazan (1552), the Bashkirs accepted Russian citizenship (1552-1557) and stipulated the right to own their lands on a patrimonial basis, to live according to their customs and religion.

The traditional type of economy of the Bashkirs is semi-nomadic cattle breeding (mainly horses, as well as sheep, cattle, camels in the southern and eastern regions). They were also engaged in hunting and fishing, beekeeping, collecting fruits and roots of plants. There was agriculture (millet, barley, spelt, wheat, hemp). Agricultural tools - a wooden plow (saban) on wheels, later a plow (huka), a frame harrow (tyrma).

Since the 17th century, semi-nomadic cattle breeding has gradually lost its importance, the role of agriculture has increased, beekeeping has developed on the basis of beekeeping. At the beginning of the 20th century, the transition of the Bashkirs to integrated agriculture was completed, and semi-nomadic cattle breeding gave way to pastoral. Gardening appears.

Home processing of animal raw materials, hand weaving, and wood processing were developed. The Bashkirs knew blacksmithing, smelted cast iron and iron, and in some places developed silver ore; jewelry was made from silver.

After joining the Russian state, the social structure of the Bashkirs was determined by the interweaving of commodity-money relations with the remnants of the patriarchal tribal way of life. Based on the tribal division (there were about 40 tribes and tribal groups: Burzyan, Usergan, Tamyan, Yurmaty, Tabyn, Kipchak, Katai, Ming, Elan, Enei, Bulyar, Salyut, etc., many of which were fragments of ancient tribal and ethno-political associations of the steppes of Eurasia), volosts were formed, which were divided into tribal divisions, uniting groups of kindred families (aimak, tyuba, ara), inheriting from the tribal community the customs of exogamy, mutual assistance, etc.

The ancient Bashkirs had a large family community. In the 16th-19th centuries, both large and small families existed in parallel, the latter gradually establishing themselves as predominant. The family life of the Bashkirs was built on respect for the elders.

The traditional type of settlement is an aul, located on the banks of a river or lake. In the conditions of nomadic life, each aul had several places of settlement: winter, spring, summer, autumn. Permanent settlements arose with the transition to settled life, as a rule, in the places of winter roads.

The traditional dwelling of the Bashkirs is a felt yurt with a prefabricated lattice frame. In the steppe zone, adobe, plast, adobe houses were set up, in the forest and forest-steppe zone - log huts with a canopy. The construction technique of the Bashkirs was greatly influenced by the Russians and neighboring peoples of the Ural-Volga region.

The folk clothes of the Bashkirs combine the traditions of the steppe nomads and local settled tribes. The basis of women's clothing was a long dress cut off at the waist with frills, an apron, a camisole, decorated with a braid and silver coins. Young women wore chest ornaments made of coral and coins. The women's headdress is a cap made of coral mesh with silver pendants and coins, with a long blade going down the back, embroidered with beads and cowrie shells; girlish - a helmet-shaped cap, also covered with coins, they also wore caps, handkerchiefs. Young women wore colorful head coverings. Outerwear - open caftans and chekmens made of colored cloth, trimmed with braid, embroidery, coins. Jewelry - various kinds of earrings, bracelets, rings, braids, clasps - were made of silver, corals, beads, silver coins, with inserts of turquoise, carnelian, colored glass.

Men's clothing - shirts and trousers with a wide step, light dressing gowns (straight-back and flared), camisoles, sheepskin coats. Hats - skullcaps, round fur hats, malachai, covering the ears and neck, hats. Women also wore hats made of animal fur. Boots, leather boots, ichigi, shoe covers, and in the Urals - and bast shoes were widely used.

The diet was dominated by meat and dairy food, they used products of hunting, fishing, honey, berries and herbs. Traditional dishes are finely chopped horse meat or lamb with broth (bishbarmak, kullama), dried sausage from horse meat and fat (kazy), various types of cottage cheese, cheese (korot), millet porridge, barley, spelled and wheat groats, oatmeal. Noodles on meat or milk broth, cereal soups are popular. Bread (cakes) was used unleavened, in the XVIII-XIX centuries. sour bread spread, potatoes and vegetables were included in the diet. Low-alcohol drinks: koumiss (from mare's milk), buza (from sprouted grains of barley, spelt), ball (a relatively strong drink made from honey and sugar); they also drank diluted sour milk - ayran. For dessert, strong tea with milk or cream is most often served, and to it - honey, chak-chak, brushwood, baursaks, urami, koshtel.

The main folk holidays were celebrated in the spring and summer. After the arrival of the rooks, they arranged Karga tui (“rook holiday”). On the eve of spring field work, and in some places after them, a plow festival (sabantuy) was held, which included a common meal, wrestling, horse racing, competitions in running, archery, competitions with a humorous effect. The holiday was accompanied by prayers at the local cemetery. In the middle of summer, Yiyin was held, a holiday common to several villages, and in more distant times - volosts, tribes. In the summer, girls' games take place in the bosom of nature, the rite of "cuckoo tea", in which only women participate. In dry times, a rite of calling rain was performed with sacrifices and prayers, pouring water on each other.

The leading place in oral and poetic creativity is occupied by the epic (“Ural-Batyr”, “Akbuzat”, “Idukai and Muradym”, “Kusyak-bi”, “Urdas-bi with a thousand quivers”, “Alpamysha”, “Kuzy-Kurpyas and Mayankhylu", "Zayatulyak and Khyuhylu"). Fairy-tale folklore is represented by magical, heroic, everyday tales, tales about animals.

Song and musical creativity is developed: epic, lyrical and everyday (ritual, satirical, humorous) songs, ditties (takmak). Various dance melodies. The dances are characterized by narrative, many (“Cuckoo”, “Crow pacer”, “Baik”, “Perovsky”) have a complex structure and contain elements of pantomime.

Traditional musical instruments are kurai (a type of flute), domra, koumiss (kobyz, vargan: wooden - in the form of an oblong plate and metal - in the form of a bow with a tongue). In the past, there was a bowed instrument kyl kumyz.

The Bashkirs retained elements of traditional beliefs: veneration of objects (rivers, lakes, mountains, forests, etc.) and phenomena (winds, snowstorms) of nature, heavenly bodies, animals and birds (bear, wolf, horse, dog, snake, swan, crane, golden eagle, falcon, etc., the cult of rooks was associated with the cult of ancestors, dying and reviving nature). Among the numerous host spirits (eye), a special place is occupied by the brownie (yort eyyakhe) and the water spirit (hyu eyyakhe). The supreme heavenly deity Tenre subsequently merged with Muslim Allah. The forest spirit shurale, brownie are endowed with the features of Muslim shaitans, Iblis, jinn. The interweaving of traditional and Muslim beliefs is observed in rituals, and in epic and fairy tales.

The origin of the Bashkirs still remains an unsolved mystery.

This problem is of interest both in our country and in other countries. Historians of Europe, Asia and America are racking their brains over it. It is certainly not imagination. The Bashkir question, which consists in the desperately fighting history of the people, in its (the people's) incomparable character, original culture, in a peculiar national face different from its neighbors, in its history, especially in ancient history, as it plunges into which it takes the form of a mysterious riddle, where each solved riddle gives rise to a new one - all this, in turn, gives rise to a common question for many peoples.

The written monument, in which the name of the Bashkir people was mentioned for the first time, is said to have been left by the traveler Ibn Fadlan. In 922, he, as secretary of the envoys of the Baghdad caliph Al-Muktadir, passed through the southwestern part of ancient Bashkortostan - through the territories of the present Orenburg, Saratov and Samara regions, where on the banks of the river. Irgiz was inhabited by Bashkirs. According to Ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs are a Turkic people, they live on the slopes of the Southern Urals, inhabit a vast territory from the west to the banks of the Volga; their southeastern neighbors are the Bezheneks (Pechenegs).

As you can see, Ibn Fadlan already in that distant era established the values Bashkir lands And Bashkir people. In this case, it would be useful to explain as widely as possible in the translation of the message about the Bashkirs.

Already closer to the Emba River, the shadows of the Bashkirs begin to disturb the missionary, from which it is clear that the envoy of the Caliph is traveling through the Bashkir land. Perhaps he had already heard from other neighboring peoples about the warlike nature of the owners of this country. During the crossing over the Chagan River (Sagan, a river in the Orenburg region, on the banks of which the Bashkirs still live), the Arabs worried about this:

“It is necessary that a detachment of fighters with weapons with them cross over before anything from the caravan crosses. They are the vanguard for the people (following) them, (for protection) from the Bashkirs, (in case) so that they (i.e. Bashkirs) do not capture them when they are crossing.

Trembling with fear of the Bashkirs, they cross the river and continue on their way.

“Then we traveled for several days and crossed the Jakha River, then the Azkhan River after it, then the Badzha River, then the Samur, then the Kabal, then the Sukh, then the Ka (n) Jala, and now we arrived in the country of the people Turk, called al-Bashgird". Now the path of Ibn Fadlan is known to us: already on the banks of the Emba, he began to warn the courageous Bashkirs; these fears haunted him during the whole journey. Having crossed the fast Yaik near the mouth of the Sagan River, it goes straight along the roads Uralsk - Buguruslan - Bugulma, crosses in the order indicated by itself through the Saga ("Zhaga") River, which flows into the Byzavlyk River near the modern village of Andreevka, the Tanalyk ("Azhan" River) ), then - Small Byzavlyk ("Bazha") near Novoaleksandrovka, Samara ("Samur") near the city of Byzavlyk, then Borovka ("Cabal" from the word boar), Mal. Kyun-yuly ("Dry"), Bol. Kun-yuly ("Kanzhal" from the word Kun-yul, Russians write Kinel), reaches the area densely populated by the people "Al-Bashgird" of the Bugulma upland with picturesque nature between the rivers Agidel, Kama, Idel (now the territory of the republics of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and the regions of Orenburg and Samara). As you know, these places make up the western part of the Ancestral home of the Bashkir people and are called by Arab travelers such geographical names as Eske Bashkort (Inner Bashkortostan). And the other part of the Bashkir Ancestral Motherland, stretching across the Urals to the Irtysh, was called Tyshky Bashkort - Outer Bashkortostan. There is Mount Iremel (Ramil), allegedly descended from the phallus of our deceased Ural Batyr. Known from the myths, the eminence of Em-Uba 'Vagina-Height' of our Ese-Khaua - Mother-Heaven, which is a continuation of the southern ridge of the Urals and towering over the Caspian Sea, colloquially sounds like Mugazhar-Emba, in this place the r. Emba (Ibn Fadlan passed by her).

Strangers could go to the open international Bashkir city-bazaar of Bulgar along the path made by Ibn Fadlan, along the southern edge of the Int. Bashkortostan. Penetration into the sacred mountains - "The body of Shulgan-batyr" and "The body of the Ural-batyr", etc. - the mountain of the gods - was forbidden by a deadly taboo. Those who tried to break it, as Ibn Fadlan warned, were sure to be beheaded (this strict law was violated after the Tatar-Mongol invasion). Even the strength of the heavily armed 2,000 caravan could not save the traveler from the impending threat of being deprived of his head:

“We were wary of them with the greatest caution, because they are the worst of the Turks, and ... more than others encroaching on murder. A man meets a man, cuts off his head, takes it with him, and leaves him (himself).

Throughout his journey, Ibn-Fadlan tried to ask in more detail about the indigenous people from the Bashkir guide, who was specially assigned to them, who had already converted to Islam and was fluent in Arabic, and he even asked: “What do you do with a louse after you catch it? ". It seems that the Bashkir turned out to be a rogue, who decided to play a trick on the meticulously curious traveler: “And we cut it with a fingernail and eat it.” After all, one and a half thousand years before Ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs, to the question of the same curious traveler Greek Herodotus, they say, how do you get milk from the udder of a mare, so they propped it up to a crooked birch (in other words: they joked, deceived): “Very simple. We insert a kurai cane into the anus of the mare and all together inflate her belly, under air pressure, the milk itself begins to splash from the udder into the bucket ”... Anyway, Ibn Fadlan, who did not understand the trick, hastened to record the answer verbatim in his travel notebook as There is. “They shave their beards and eat lice when one of them is caught. One of them examines in detail the seam of his jacket and chews the lice with his teeth. Indeed, there was one of them with us who had already converted to Islam, and who served with us, and now I saw one louse in his clothes, he crushed it with his fingernail, then ate it.

In these lines lies the black seal of that era rather than the truth. What remains to be expected from the ministers of Islam, for whom Islam is the true faith, and those who profess it are the chosen ones, all the rest are unclean for them; they called the pagan Bashkirs who had not yet converted to Islam “evil spirits”, “eating their own lice”, etc. He hangs the same dirty label on his way and on other peoples who did not have time to join the righteous Islam. According to the bucket - a lid, according to the era - views (opinions), today one cannot be offended by a traveler. Here is a kind of different definition: “They (Russians. - Z.S.) are the dirtiest of the creatures of Allah, -- (they) are not cleansed of feces, nor of urine, and are not washed from sexual impurity and do not wash their hands before and after food, they are like wandering donkeys. They arrive from their country and moor their ships on Attila, and this is a large river, and build large houses of wood on its banks, and there are (their) in one (such) house ten and (or) twenty, - less and ( or) more, and each (of them) has a bench on which he sits, and girls (sit) with him - a delight for merchants. And now one (of them) is combined with his girlfriend, and his friend looks at him. Sometimes many of them join together in such a position one against the other, and a merchant enters to buy a girl from one of them, and (thus) finds him combined with her, and he (Rus) does not leave her, or ( satisfies part of his need. And it is obligatory for them to wash their faces and their heads every day with the dirtiest water that exists, and the most impure, namely, that the girl comes every morning in the morning, carrying a large tub of water, and offers it to her master. So he washes both his hands and his face and all his hair in it. And he washes them and combs them with a comb into the tub. Then he blows his nose and spits into it and does not leave anything of the dirt, he (all this) does into this water. And when he finishes what he needs, the girl carries the tub to the one who (sits) next to him, and (this one) does like his friend does. And she does not cease to carry it from one to another, until she goes around with it all those in (this) house, and each of them blows his nose and spits and washes his face and his hair in it.

As you can see, the envoy of the caliph, as a devoted son of the era, evaluates the culture of the "infidels" from the height of the Islamic minaret. He sees only their dirty tub and he does not care about condemning the future generation ...

Let's go back to the memories of the Bashkirs. Worried about the "lower" people, deprived of the Islamic faith, he sincerely writes the following lines: or meets an enemy, then kisses him (a piece of wood), bows to him and says, "O lord, do me such and such." And so I said to the interpreter: “Ask one of them, what is their justification (explanation) for this and why did he make this his master (god)?” He said, "Because I came out of something like this and know of no other creator of myself besides this one." Of these, some say that he has twelve masters (gods): master of winter, master of summer, master of rain, master of wind, master of trees, master of people, master of horses, master of water, night lord, lord of the day, lord of death, lord of the earth, and the lord who is in the sky is the largest of them, but only he unites with them (the rest of the gods) in agreement, and each of them approves what his partner does . Allah is above what the wicked say, in height and majesty. He (Ibn-Fadlan) said: we saw how (one) group worships snakes, (another) group worships fish, (third) group worships cranes, and I was informed that they (enemies) put them (the Bashkirs) to flight and that the cranes screamed behind them (enemies), so that they (enemies) were frightened and themselves were put to flight after they put to flight (the Bashkirs), and therefore they (the Bashkirs) worship the cranes and say: “These (cranes) are our lord, since he put our enemies to flight,” and therefore they worship them (and now).” The monument of worship of the Usyargan-Bashkirs is an identical myth and a hymn-like song-melody "Syngrau Torna" - the Ringing Crane.

In the chapter "On the Peculiarities of the Turkic Languages" of the two-volume dictionary of the Turkic peoples by M. Kashgari (1073-1074), Bashkir is included among the twenty "main" languages ​​of the Turkic peoples. The language of the Bashkirs is very close to the Kypchak, Oguz and other Turkic languages.

The prominent Persian historian, the official chronicler of the Genghis Khan's court, Rashid ad din (1247-1318) also reports on the Turkic people of the Bashkirs.

Al-Maqsudi (X century), Al-Balkhi (X century), Idrisi (XII), Ibn Said (XIII), Yakut (XIII), Qazvini (XIV) and many others. everyone claims that the Bashkirs are Turks; only their location is indicated in different ways - sometimes near the Khazars and Alans (Al-Maqsudi), sometimes near the state of Byzantium (Yakut, Kazvini). Al-Balkhi with Ibn Said - the Urals or some western lands are considered the lands of the Bashkirs.

Western European travelers also wrote a lot about the Bashkirs. As they themselves admit, they do not see the difference between the Bashkirs and the ancestors of the current Hungarians of the Ugr tribe - they consider them the same. Another version is directly added to this - the Hungarian story, written down in the 12th century by an unknown author. It tells how the Hungarians, i.e. Magyars, moved from the Urals to Pannonia - modern Hungary. “In 884,” it says, “the seven ancestors, born of our god, called Khettu Moger, left the west, from the land of Scyth. Together with them, the leader Almus, the son of Ugek from the clan of King Magog, left with his wife, son Arpad and other allied peoples. After passing through the flat lands for many days, they crossed the Ethil in their haste and found neither the roads between the villages nor the villages themselves anywhere, they did not eat food prepared by man, however, before reaching Suzdal, they ate meat and fish. From Suzdal they went to Kyiv, then in order to take possession of the inheritance left by Almus' ancestor Attila, they came to Pannonia through the Carpathian mountains.

As you know, the Magyar tribes that settled in Pannonia for a long time could not forget their ancient homeland of the Urals, in their hearts they kept stories about their pagan tribesmen. With intentions to find them and help get rid of paganism and convert them to Christianity, Otto, Johannka the Hungarian, embarks on a journey to the west. But their trip failed. In 1235-1237. with the same purpose, another missionaries arrive to the banks of the Volga under the leadership of the brave Hungarian Julian. After long ordeals and hardships on the way, he finally reached the international trading city of the Bashkirs Veliky Bulgar in Inner Bashkortostan. There he met a woman who was born in the country he is looking for and married in these parts, with whom he makes inquiries about her homeland. Soon, Julian finds his fellow tribesmen on the banks of the Big Itil (Agidel). The chronicle says that "they listened with great attention to what he wanted to talk to them about - about religion, about other things, and he listened to them."

Plano Carpini, a traveler of the 13th century, the envoy of Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols, in his work “History of the Mongols” several times calls the country of the Bashkirs “Great Hungary” - Hungaria Mayor. (It is also interesting: the Orenburg Museum of Local Lore keeps a bronze ax found on the banks of the Sakmara River in the village of Mayor, adjacent to the village of Senkem-Biktimer. ). And here is what Guillaume de Rubruk, who visited the Golden Horde, writes: “... After we had traveled a 12-day journey from Etil, we went to a river called Yasak (Yaik - modern Ural. - Z.S.); it flows from the north from the lands of the Paskatiers (that is, the Bashkirs. - Z.S.) ... the language of the Hungarians and the Paskatiers is the same ... their country rests on the Great Bulgar from the west ... From the lands of these Paskatiers came the Huns, later the Hungarians, and this is Great Hungary ".

After the Bashkir land, rich in natural resources, "voluntarily" became part of the Muscovite state, popular uprisings that broke out there for centuries forced the tsarist autocracy to look at the Bashkirs differently. Apparently, in search of new opportunities for conducting colonial policy, a thorough study of the life of the indigenous people begins - its economy, history, language, worldview. The official historian of Russia N.M. Karamzin (1766-1820), based on the reports of Rubruk, concludes that the Bashkir language was originally Hungarian, later, one must think, they began to speak “Tatar”: “they adopted it from their conquerors and because of the long coexistence and communication, forgot their native language. This, if we do not take into account the work of M. Kashgari, who lived a century and a half before the invasion of the Tatars and considered the Bashkirs one of the main Turkic peoples. However, until now, among the scientists of the world, disputes have not stopped regarding the fact that the Bashkirs are Turks or Uighurs by origin. In addition to historians, linguists, ethnographers, archaeologists, anthropologists, etc. also take part in this battle. There are interesting attempts to solve the riddle with the help of a non-rusting key - the ethnonym "Bashkort".

V.N. Tatishchev:"Bashkort" - means "bash bure" ("chief wolf") or "thief".

P.I.Rychkov:"Bashkort" - "main wolf" or "thief". According to him, the Bashkirs were called so by the Nugays (that is, a fragment of the Usyargan-Bashkirs) because they did not move with them to the Kuban. However, back in 922, Ibn Fadlan wrote down the “Bashkirs” by their own name, while the time of the resettlement of the Usyargan-Nugais to the Kuban dates back to the 15th century.

V. Yumatov:“... They call themselves “bash court” - “beekeepers”, patrimonial owners, owners of bees.”

I.Fisher: this is an ethnonym, called differently in medieval sources "...paskatir, bashkort, bashart, magyar, all are of the same meaning."

D.A. Khvolson: The ethnonyms "Magyar" and "Bashkort" originated from the root word "bazhgard". And the "bazhgards" themselves, in his opinion, lived in the Southern Urals, later decomposed and were used to name the Ugric tribes. According to the assumption of this scientist, one of the branches headed west and there formed the ethnonym "bazhgard", where the capital "b" is transformed into "m", and the final "d" is lost. As a result, “Mazhgar” is formed… It, in turn, is transformed into “Mazhar”, which subsequently transforms into “Magyar” (and also into “Mishyar”, we add!). This group managed to preserve their language and laid the foundation for the people of the Magyars.

The remaining second part "Bazhgard" turns into "Bashgard" - "Bashkart" - "Bashkort". This tribe became Turkic over time and formed the core of the current Bashkirs.

F.I. Gordeev: “ The ethnonym "Bashkort" must be restored as "Bashkair". From this the following is formed: it is quite possible that "Bashkair" was formed from several words:

1) "ir"- means "man";

2) "ut"- goes back to plural endings -T

(-ta, tә) in Iranian languages, is reflected in Scythian-Sarmatian names...

Thus, the ethnonym “Bashkort” in the modern language is the people inhabiting the banks of the Bashka (us) River in the Ural region.

H.G. Gabashi: The name of the ethnonym "Bashkort" occurred as a result of the following modification of the words: "Bash Uigyr - Bashgar - Bashkort". Gabashi's observations are interesting, but the reverse order is closer to the truth (Bashkort - Bashgyr, Bashuigyr - Uygyr), because, according to history, the ancient Uyghurs are neither modern Uyghurs nor Ugrians (because they are ancient Usyargans).

The determination of the time of the formation of the Bashkirs as a people in the history of the Bashkirs themselves still remains, like an ununtied Gordian knot, an unraveled tangle, and everyone is trying to unravel it from the height of their minaret.

Recently, in the study of this problem, there has been a desire to penetrate deeper into the layers of history. Let us note some thoughts concerning this sacrament.

S.I. Rudenko, ethnographer, author of the monograph "Bashkirs". From the ethnic side of the “ancient Bashkirs, relative to the north-west. Bashkiria, can be associated with Herodotus Massagets and, relatively east. territories - with Savromats and Iiriks. Consequently, the history of the Bashkir tribes has been known since the time of the life of Herodotus in the 15th century. d.c.»

R.G. Kuzeev, ethnographer. “It can be said that almost all researchers in their assumptions do not take into account the last stages in the ethnic history of the Bashkirs, but they are actually important in the formation of the main ethnic characteristics of the Bashkir people.” Apparently, R. Kuzeev himself is guided by this point of view in the issue of the origin of the Bashkirs. According to his main idea, the Burzyn, Tungaur, Usyargan tribes form the basis of the formation of the Bashkir people. He argues that in the process of complex self-education of the Bashkir people, numerous tribal groups of the Bulgar, Finno-Ugric, Kipchak associations participated. To this ethnogenesis in the XIII-XIV centuries. the Tatar-Mongol horde is added with Turkic and Mongol elements who came to the South Urals. According to R. Kuzeev, only in the XV-XVI centuries. the ethnic composition and ethnic characteristics of the Bashkir people are fully looming.

As you can see, although the scientist openly indicates that the basis of the Bashkir people, its backbone is made up of the most ancient strong tribes of Burzyn, Tungaur, Usyargan, nevertheless, in the course of his reasoning, he for some reason evades them. The scientist somehow loses sight of, bypasses the eye-catching reality that the aforementioned tribes existed even before our era, and already “since the time of the prophet Nuh” they were Türkic-speaking. It is especially important here that the Burzyan, Tungaur, Usyargan tribes still form the core, the center of the nation, moreover, in all the monuments of the 9th-10th centuries. Bashkort is clearly marked as Bashkort, the land is Bashkir land, the language is Turkic. For reasons unknown to us, it is concluded that only in the XV-XVI centuries. Bashkirs formed as a people. Worthy of attention are those pricking in the eyes XV-XVI!

The famous scientist apparently forgets that all the main languages ​​of our continent (Turkic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric) in ancient times were a single proto-language, developed from one stem and one root, and then formed different languages. The times of the parent language could not, as he thinks, refer to the XV-XVI centuries, but to very distant, ancient times BC.

Another opinion of the scientist is directly opposite to these statements of his. On page 200 of his book “Bashkir Shezheres” it is said that Muitan Bey, the son of Toksoba, is considered the great-grandfather not of all Bashkirs, but of the Bashkir clan Usyargan. The mention in the shezher of Muitan (great-grandfather of the Bashkirs) is of interest in relation to the ancient ethnic ties of the Usyargan Bashkirs. The Bashkir clan Usyargan, according to Kuzeev, in the second half of the first millennium was ethnically connected with the most ancient layer of the Muitan tribe as part of the Karakalpak people.

As you can see, here the main root of the Bashkir people, through Usyargan-Muytan, is transferred from the period assumed by the scientist (XV-XVI centuries) one millennium earlier (deeper).

Consequently, we seized on the deep roots of the Bashkirs called Usyargan, got the opportunity to trace its continuation to the end. I wonder how deep the fertile soil that gave birth to Usyargan will pull us? Undoubtedly, this mysterious layer extends from the ancestral home of the ancestors from the Urals to the Pamirs. The path to it, perhaps, is laid through the Bashkir tribe of Usyargan and the Karakalpian Muytan. According to the statements of the famous Karakalpak scientist L.S. Tolstoy, perhaps already at the beginning of our era, the historical ancestors of the Muitans, who make up the main part of the modern Karakalpak people, having entered the confederation with the Massaget tribes, lived in the Aral Sea. The ethnogenetic ties of the Muitans, the scientist continues, on the one hand, lead to Iran, Transcaucasia and Middle Asia, on the other hand, to the northwest to the shores of the Volga, the Black Sea and the North. Caucasus. Further, as Tolstoy writes, the Karakalpak clan Muitan is one of the most ancient clans of the Karakalpak people, its roots go deep into distant centuries, it goes beyond the scope of the study of ethnographic science. The problem of the most ancient roots of this genus is very complex and controversial.

As a result, two things became clear to us:

Firstly, the oldest roots of the Muitan clan (we will assume that Usyargansky) lead us to Iran (we should take into account the Iranian elements that are widespread in the hydrotoponymy of the Bashkir language), to the Transcaucasus and to the countries of Near Asia, to the Black Sea to the North. Caucasus (meaning related Turkic peoples living in these parts) and to the banks of the Volga (hence, to the Urals). In a word, completely and completely to our ancient ancestors - to the world of the Sak-Scythian-Massagets! If we investigate more deeply (from the point of view of language), then the intuitive thread of the Iranian line of this branch stretches right up to India. Now the main root of one surprisingly huge "Tree" - "Tirek" looms before us: its strong branches splayed in different directions from the south cover the river. Ganges, from the north the river Idel, from the west the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, from the east - the sandy Uighur steppes. If we assume that this is so, then where is the trunk that unites these spreading mighty branches into one center? All sources first of all lead us to the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and then to the junction of the roots and the trunk - to the lands between the Urals and Idel ...

Secondly, as L.S. Tosloy says, it becomes clear that the Usyargan-Muitan tribes go back to the depths of centuries (before the creation of the world), go beyond the scope of ethnographic research, the problem is very complex and controversial. All this confirms our first conclusions, the controversy and complexity of the problem only doubled the inspiration in his research.

Is it true that the people living on the Orkhon, Yenisei, Irtysh, according to the Bashkir shezher and legends, were "Bashkorts"? Or are those scientists who argued that the ethnonym Bashkort originated in the 15th-16th centuries right? However, if the time of origin of the Bashkirs belonged to this period, then there would be no need to waste words and effort. Therefore, you should turn to scientists who have eaten more than one dog in the study of this problem:

N.A. Mazhitov: middle of the first millennium AD - the threshold of the emergence of the Bashkir people in the historical arena. Archaeological materials indicate that at the end of the first. thousand AD there was a group of related tribes in the South Urals, we have the right to assert in the broad sense of the word that they were the people of the country of the Bashkirs. According to the scientist, only when the question is posed in this way can one understand the notes of M. Kashgari and other later authors who speak of the Bashkirs as a people inhabiting both slopes of the South Urals.

Mazhitov approaches the problem very carefully, but all the same, regarding Usyargan, he confirms the date given by R. Kuzeev. Moreover, he confirms the periods indicated by the last scientist in relation to other tribes of the Bashkir people. And this means a shift in the study of the problem two steps forward.

Now let us turn to learned anthropologists who study the typical features of the structure of the human body, their similarities and differences among peoples.

M.S. Akimova: according to the investigated chain of signs, the Bashkirs stand between the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races ... According to some signs, the Usyargans are closer to the Chelyabinsk Bashkirs ...

According to the scientist, the Trans-Ural Bashkirs and Usyargans are closer to their southeastern neighbors, the Kazakhs and the Kirghiz, in their individual qualities. However, their similarities are determined only by two features - by the height of the face and height. According to other important features, the Bashkirs of the Trans-Urals and the southern regions of Bashkortostan, on the one hand, stand in the middle between the Kazakhs, on the other hand, between the Tatars, Udmurts and Mari. Thus, even the most Mongoloid group of Bashkirs differs to a greater extent from the Kazakhs with a pronounced Mongoloid complex, especially from the Kirghiz.

The Bashkirs, according to the scientist, also differ from the Ugric peoples.

And as a result of the research of the Moscow scientist, the following was revealed: at the end of the first millennium BC. and at the beginning of our era. the northern part of present-day Bashkortostan was inhabited by people with the lowest content of the Mongoloid mixture, and the people of the southern part belonged to the Caucasoid type with a low face.

Consequently, firstly, the Bashkir people, being the most ancient both in their modern characteristics and in anthropological type, occupies one of the leading main places among other peoples; secondly, according to all paleoanthropological features, their roots go back to the interval between the end of the first millennium BC. and the beginning of AD. That is, one more ring of the first millennium is added to the annual rings of the trunk cut, which determines the age of the world Tirek Tree. And this is another - the third - step in moving our problem forward. After the third step, the real journey begins for the traveler.

On our route there are no straight roads with distance indicators, bright traffic lights and other road signs and instruments: we must find the right way by feel in the dark.

Our first groping searches stopped at the line of Usyargan - Muitan - Karakalpak.

The etymology of the word "Karakalpak" appears to us as follows. At first there were "punishments ak alp-an". In ancient times, instead of the current "punishment" - "punishment ak". “Alp” still exists in the meaning of a giant, “an” is an ending in the instrumental case. Hence the name "Karakalpan" - "Karakalpak" came from.

"Karakalpan" - "Karakalpak" - "Karaban". Wait! Certainly! We met him in the book "Ancient Khorezm" by S.P. Tolstoy. It dealt with dual tribal organizations and secret primitive associations in Central Asia. Karaban is just one of such associations. In fragments of the records of ancient authors that have come down to us, one can find very scanty information about carabans - about their customs, traditions and legends. Among them, we are interested in holding the New Year holiday - Nauruz in Firgan. In the Chinese monument "History of the Tang Dynasty" this holiday is described as follows: at the beginning of each new year, the kings and leaders are divided into two parts (or divided). Each side chooses one person who, dressed in military clothes, begins to fight with the opposite side. Supporters supply him with stones and cobblestones. After the extermination of one of the parties, they stop and looking at it (each of the parties) determine whether the next year will be good or bad.

This, of course, is the custom of primitive peoples - a struggle between two phratries.

The well-known Arabic author Ahman-at-Taksim fi-Marifat al-Akalim al-Maqdisi (10th century) in his notes reports how on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea in the city of Gurgan (the name is from the variant pronunciation of the Usyargan ethnonym ) the Usyargans held a rite of struggle on the occasion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, when “in the capital Gurgan you can see how two sides fight for the head of a camel, for which they wound, beat each other ... In matters of divination in Gurgan, fights often arise between themselves and among the people of Bakrabad : on a holiday there are fights for a camel's head.

Here we are talking about a fight between the inhabitants of the urban settlements of Shakharistan and Bakrabad (between the Usyargans and the Bashkirs), located on both sides of the river of the city of Gurgan and connected by bridges. In many sources, there are often lines that tell about hostility and cruel fights that have become commonplace that break out between the two sides of the townspeople of Central Asia (by the way, in the fights in early spring between the Bashkir boys of the upper and lower parts of the village, you can see echoes of this ancient custom. - J.S. .).

In the history of the Tang dynasty mentioned earlier, there is valuable information about the people of the city - the state of Kusya, who have fun for seven days in a row on the new year, watching the battles of rams, horses, camels. This is done in order to find out if the year will be good or bad. And this is a valuable find in our journey: here the mentioned custom of “struggle for a camel’s head” and “Firgan Nauruz” are directly connected by a bridge!

Close to these customs is also the annual ritual of sacrificing a horse in ancient Rome, which begins with a chariot race. The horse harnessed to the right, which came first in one shaft paired with another, is killed on the spot with a blow of a spear. Then the inhabitants of both parts of Rome - the Sacred Road (Kun-Ufa road?) and Subars (is it not connected with Asa-ba-er with the name of the city and the Suvar tribe in the Urals?) - began to fight for the right to own the severed head of a slaughtered horse. If people from the Sacred Road won, then the head was hung on the fence of the royal palace, and if the Subarovites won, then it was put on the Malimat minaret (Malym-at? - literally in Russian it sounds: “my cattle is a horse”). And pouring horse blood on the royal palace threshold, and storing it until spring, and mixing this horse blood with the calf blood that was sacrificed, then in order to protect it by setting fire to this mixture (the Bashkirs also preserved the custom of protection from misfortunes and troubles by wiping the horse blood and skin!) - all this, as S.P. Tolstov, is included in the circle of rituals and customs associated with land and water in ancient Firgan, Khorosan and Kus. And according to the traditions of Central Asia, and according to the traditions of ancient Rome, the king has always occupied an important place. As we can see, the scientist continues, the complete similarity makes it possible to assume that the ancient Roman customs help to unravel the mysteries of the rather sparingly described traditions of ancient Central Asia.

Now in science, it is indisputable that there was a close connection between the states of Central Asia, ancient Rome and Greece, and there is a lot of factual material proving their comprehensive relationships (culture, art, science). It is known that the capital of Greece, Athena, was founded by the ancestors of Usyargan, who worshiped the She-Wolf Bure-Asak (Bele-Asak). Moreover, it is indisputable that the ancient legend about the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, sucking Bure-Asak (Fig. 39), was transferred to ancient Italy from the East; and the twin boys (Ural and Shulgan) and the she-wolf Bure-Asak, who nursed the Usyargan ancestor, are the central link of the Bashkir myth (in our opinion, in the ancient original of the Ural-Batyr epic, the brothers are twins. - J.S.).

In the ruins of the ruined city of Kalai-Kakhkah of the ancient state of Bactria, now the territory of Sr. Asia, a painted wall was discovered on which twins sucking Bure-asak - a girl (Shulgan) and a boy (Ural) (Fig. 40) - exactly like in the famous sculpture in Rome! The distance between the two monuments from Bure-Asak is the distance of so many peoples and years, a distance of thousands of kilometers, but what a striking similarity!.. The similarity of the traditions described above only strengthens this amazing commonality.

A pertinent question arises - does the influence of those ancient customs exist today, if so, among which peoples?

Yes, I have. Their direct "heir" is the custom "kozader" ("blue wolf"), which exists today in different forms and under different names among the peoples of Central Asia among the Kazakhs, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks. And among the Bashkirs at the end of the 19th century, P.S. Nazarov stumbled upon him. “Before and now, in some places, the rite of the “cozader” dominates. It consists of the following: Bashkir horsemen gather in a certain place, one of them drags a refreshed goat. According to a certain sign of the Bashkirs, the one who brought the goat jumps on his horse, while others must catch up with him and take away his burden from him. Children's game "Come back, geese-geese!" is an echo of this ancient custom. Moreover, examples can be given that prove the connection between the Bashkir custom and the ancient Roman ones:

1) the Romans sacrificed a horse, immediately after the race, the Bashkirs also had a tradition before slaughtering cattle, they first made him gallop (it was believed that this improved the taste of the meat);

2) the Romans smeared the palace threshold with the blood of a sacrificed horse (healing, sacred blood), but the Bashkirs today have a custom when, immediately after steaming the skin of cattle, they smeared the face with fresh fat (protects from various diseases);

3) the Romans solemnly hung the head of a killed sacrificial horse on the palace wall or on the bell tower, the Bashkirs still have a custom to hang horse skulls on external fences (from the side of the street) (protects from all kinds of misfortunes).

Are these similarities an accident or do they testify to the kinship-unity of the ancient Romans and the Bashkirs?!

History itself, as it were, brings clarity to this.

We have already spoken about the unity of the twins fed by the She-Wolf Bure-Asak. How two drops are similar to each other, and the enmity between them lies in the destruction of each other (Romulus is Remus, and Shulgan is the Urals). Therefore, there is some reason here that requires the clarification of things that have hitherto been a mystery.

It is known that founded by the legendary Romulus and Remus until 754-753. BC. The "eternal city of Rome" stood on the banks of the Tiber River. It also became known that this river at the time of the two brothers was called Albala (k). It's not Latin. But then what is this language? Latin-speaking authors translated it from the language of Romulus and Remus as "pink-scarlet river." Consequently, the word consists of two words (a two-part word), "Al-bula (k)", in addition, exactly in our way, in Bashkir, where "al" is a pink color, "bulak" is a river, like a river Kizil, in the Urals! .. It should be remembered that the modified word "bulak" as a result of the modification of "r" into "l" in its original form was "burak" ("bure" 'wolf') and after the modification retained its meaning (bulak - wolf - wolf - Volga!). As a result of the language law, the name "Bureg-er" (i.e. "Bure-ir" - Usyargan wolves) turned into "Burgar> Bulgar".

Thus, it turns out that the founders of the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus, spoke our language. And the ancient Roman historians all unanimously wrote that they were not really Indo-Europeans (that means the Ural-Altaic Turks!), that they came from Scythia, located in the north of the Black Sea, that by their tribal affiliation they are - Oenotras, Avzones, Pelasgians. Based on the indicated similarities between the Bashkirs and the ancient Romans, we can correctly read the names of the clans distorted in a foreign (Latin) language: Bashkirs-Oguzes (Oguz - from the word ugez 'bull'), bowing to "enotru" - Ine-toru (Cow-goddess) ; "Avzones" - Abaz-an - Bezheneks-Bashkirs; "Pelasgians" - pele-eseks - bure-asaki (she-wolves), i.e. Usyargans-Bilyars.

The state system of Rome during the reign of Romulus is also instructive: the people of Rome consisted of 300 “orugs” (kinds); they were subdivided into 30 "curii" (cow circles), each of which consisted of 10 genera; 30 genera branched into 3 "tribes" (Bashk. "turba" - "tirma" - "yurt") of 10 cows (Bashk. k'or - community). Each clan was headed by a "pater" (Bashk. batyr), these 300 batyrs constituted the Senate of the aksakals near King Romulus. Elections of the tsar, declaration of war, inter-clan disputes were resolved at the nationwide kors - yyyns - at the “koir” (hence the Bashkir kurultai - korltai!) By voting (each kor - one vote). There were special places for holding kurultais, meetings of aksakals. The royal title sounds like “(e) rex”, which in our language corresponds to “Er-Kyz” (Ir-Kyz - Man-Woman - a prototype of Ymir-hermaphrodite, i.e. his own master and mistress), combines both wing of the clan (male, female - Bashkort, Usyargan). After the death of the king, until the election of a new one, representatives of 5-10 cows (communities) temporarily stayed on the throne and ruled the state. These kors, elected by the Senate (in Bashkir hanat) aksakals, were the very heads of 10 cows. Romulus had a powerful foot and cavalry army, and the personal guard (300 people), who saddled the best horses, were called "celer" (Bashk. Eler - swift horses).

The rites and traditions of the people of Romulus also have many similarities with the Bashkir ones: everyone should know the genealogy (shezhere) of their ancestors up to the 7th generation, it was possible to marry only with strangers bypassing seven generations. Sacrificial cattle in honor of the gods were cut not with an iron knife, but with a stone one - this custom existed among the Ural Bashkirs: which is confirmed by stone finds discovered by local historian Ilbuldin Fashetdin in the Usyargan village of Bakatar - sacrificial implements.

As for the land issue, Tsar Romulus endowed each clan with land called “pagos” (Bashk. bagysh, baksa - garden, vegetable garden), and the head of the plot (bak, bey, bai) was called pag-at-dir - bahadir, i.e. . hero. The significance of the partial division of state land, the protection of the territory was as follows. When the need arose for a god, who is a god for grinding the earth, as a way of grinding grain, this god was called "Term" (Bashk. Tirmen - Mill) ... As you can see, the life of the ancient Romans and Bashkirs are similar and therefore understandable. In addition, we should not forget about the perpetuation of the name of our ancestor Romulus in the Urals of Bashkortostan in the form of Mount Iremel (I-Remel - E-Romulus!) ...

The Italians of the middle of the first millennium AD probably recognized the historical unity of the Bashkirs and the ancient Romans, as well as the right of the Bashkirs to the lands. Because after the insidious defeat in 631 in Bavaria of the Usyargan-Burzyansky rearguard under the leadership of Alsak Khan by the allies of the Franks, the surviving part of the army flees to Italy and to the duchy of Benevento (this city still exists) near Rome, where it lays the foundation cities Bashkort , known by the same name in the 12th century. The Byzantine historian Pavel Deacon (IX century) knew those Usyargan-Bashkirs well and wrote that they speak Latin well, but they have not forgotten their native language either. Considering that the images of winged horses, common in the myths and epics of the Greeks, as well as the peoples of Cf. Asia in the form of Akbuzat and Kukbuzat, constitute the central link in the Bashkir folk epics, it remains to be recognized that these similarities are not accidental, we see the connection with the ancient Junos (Greece) in one of the main shezhere of the Bashkirs in "Tavarikh name-i Bulgar" Tazhetdin Yalsygul al-Bashkurdi(1767-1838):

“From our father Adam... to Kasur Shah, there are thirty-five generations. And he lived on the land of Samarkand for ninety years, died adhering to the religion of Jesus. From Kasur Shah was born a ruler named Socrates. This Socrates came to the region of the Greeks. At the end of his life, being a ruler under Alexander the Great, a Roman, expanding the boundaries of his possession, they came to the northern lands. They founded the country of the Bulgarians. Then the ruler Socrates married a girl from the Bolgars. He and Alexander the Great spent nine months in Bolgar. Then they went into the unknown towards Darius I (Iran). Before leaving the country of obscurity Darius I, the ruler Socrates died in the country of obscurity Darius I. A son was born from the named girl. And his name is known...

If one inaccuracy in the names is eliminated by inserting the name of the successor of his teachings, Aristotle, instead of the ruler Socrates, then the mentioned information in the Bashkir shezher will coincide with the records of historians of the old world. Since the ruler Socrates (470/469) - 399) died before the birth of Alexander the Great (356-326), he could not be the teacher of the second, and it is known from history that Aristotle (384-322) was his teacher. It is known that Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira on the outskirts of Thrace in Scythia (the country of our ancestors!) and, like Socrates from the Bashkir shezhere, in search of teachings (education) went to the capital of Juno to Athena. Also, history is silent about the fact that Alexander's teacher married a Bulgar girl and that Aleksandar himself was married to Rukhsan, the daughter of Oksiart, the Usyargan-Burzyan bek of Bactria conquered by him. There is also evidence that from this marriage his son Alexander was born. And in the further campaign, Macedonian died of his own death, and not Socrates or Aristotle. The saying “They made the Bulgars the homeland” can also be true if it is not a city on the Kama-Volga, but the city of Belkher (now Belkh) on the banks of the Belkh River in Bactria (northern Afghanistan). Consequently, it turns out that Alexander the Great married the Usyargan-Burzyan girl Rukhsana and their son Alexander was born from their marriage... because the cities just mentioned mean "Man-Wolf" ("Usyargan-Burzyan").

Meanwhile, the origin of the Bashkir people and the ethnonym Bashkor / Bashkort (Bashkirs) is very clearly “recorded” by our ancestors in the main tamga of the Usyargan clan (Fig. 41), where the main myth about the origin of mankind is encrypted:

Fig.41. Tamga of the Usyargan clan - the origin of the Bashkirs (the first ancestors of mankind).

Deciphering the figure, where the thick (solid) line indicates the tamga of the Usyargan clan, the dotted lines indicate the paths of the migration of the first ancestors to the place of the first tirma (yurt):

1. Mount Kush (Umai/Imai) ‘Ymir’s maternal breast’.

2. Mount Yurak (Khier-ak) 'Cow-milk' - the nipple of the northern breast, the she-wolf-nurse was born there, and the cow-nurse brought there the newborn first ancestor of the Bashkirs and all mankind Ural-pater.

3. Mount Shake 'Mother-Wolf-nurse' (destroyed by the Sterlitamak Soda Plant) - the nipple of the southern breast, the Cow-nurse was born there, and the She-wolf-nurse brought there the newborn first ancestor of the Bashkirs and all mankind Shulgan-mother.

4. Mount Nara ’testis of the male half of the great-ancestor Ymir’, there, with the help of the “midwife” of the Nurse Cow, Ural-pater was born and was led to Mount Yurak (their path is shown by dotted lines).

5. Mount Mashak 'fried eggs of the female half of the great-ancestor Ymir', there, with the help of the "midwife" of the she-nurse, Shulgan-mother was born and was led to Mount Shake (their path is shown by dotted lines).

6. Atal-Asak 'Father-Fire and Mother-Water', the place of combination (marriage) of the first ancestor of the Ural-pater (Father-Fire) with the Shulgan-mother (Mother-Water) for living together (original Korok/Krug), having formed the original (bash) circle of people (kor), which by adding these two words "bash" and "kor" became known as bash-kor> bashkor / bashkir, that is beginnings of human society. Term Bashkor by attaching the plural indicator "t" to it, took the form bashkort-t>bashkort 'a person from the original circle of people'. At this place, where the first round tirma (yurt) of the first family allegedly stood, now the ancient village of Talas (name from the word A[ tal-As] ak 'Father-Fire - Mother-Water'), the name of the great Bashkir river Atal / Atil / Idel (Agidel-White) comes from the same word.

7. River Agidel.

8. Crossing point (junction) of the sacred roads Mount Tukan (the word tukan > tuin means "knot").

Routes 3 - 8 - 4 -2 - 6 are the road of the Cow and the Ural Pater; 2 - 8 -5 -3 -6 - She-wolves and Shulgan-mothers.

The present version of the origin of the national ethnonym "Bashkort/Bashkir" reflects the last stage in the development of world mythology, but the version based on the data of the first stage also remains valid. In short, in the first stage of the formation of world mythology, the formation of the main two ethnonyms, it seems to me, was associated with the names of the totems of the two phratries, since the primary association of people was understood as “people of the bison-cow tribe” and “people of the she-wolf tribe”. And so, in the second (last) stage of the development of world mythology, the origin of the main two ethnonyms was rethought in a new way:

1. Name of the totem animal: boz-anak 'ice cow (buffalo)'> Bazhanak/Pecheneg ; from the abbreviated version of the same name "boz-an" the word was formed: bozan> bison 'ice cow'. A variant name for the same totem gives: boz-kar-aba 'ice-snow-air' (buffalo) > boz-cow 'ice cow (buffalo)'; which in abbreviated form gives: boz-car> Bashkor/Bashkir , and in the plural: bashkor + t> bashkort .

2. Name of the totem: asa-bure-kan 'mother-wolf-water'> asaurgan> usyargan . Over time, the ethnonym-term asa-bure-kan came to be seen as simplistic es-er-ken (water-earth-sun), but this does not change the previous content, because according to the mythology of the Bashkirs Kan / Kyun (Sun) could go down and run through the water-earth (es-er) in the form of the same she-wolf es-ere> sare (grey)>soro/zorro (she-wolf). Therefore, the authors of the Orkhon - Selenginsky runic monuments under the term "er-su" meant earth-water in the form of a she-wolf.

When you drive along the main road from Sterlitamak to Ufa (the mythical "abode of the gods"), on the right side along the right bank of the river. Magnificent mountains-shikhans turn blue in Agidel: the sacred Tora-tau, Shake-tau (barbarously destroyed by the Sterlitamak Soda Plant), the two-headed Kush-tau, Yuryak-tau - only five peaks. We, the Usyargan-Bashkirs, pass on from generation to generation a sad myth associated with these five peaks and annually in the first decade of April, the severe snowstorm "Bish Kunak" 'five guests' that repeats in our country: supposedly from the far side five followed us guests (bish kunak) and, not having reached the goal, they were subjected to the named seasonal snowstorm, from the cold everyone was numb, turning into snow-white mountains - therefore this snowstorm was called "Bish kunak". Obviously, we have before us a fragment of some epic legend, which in a more complete version was preserved in Iranian-Indian mythology (from the book by G.M. Bongard-Levin, E.A. Grantovsky. From Scythia to India, M. - 1983, p. .59):

The bloody war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas ended with the victory of the Pandavas, but it led to the extermination of entire tribes, the death of many heroes. Everything around was empty, the mighty Ganges flowed quietly, "but the sight of those great waters was bleak, dull." The time has come for bitter doubts, deep disappointments in the fruits of aimless enmity. “Tormented by grief,” the righteous king Yudhishthira mourned for the dead. He decided to abdicate the throne, handed over the throne to another ruler "and began to think about his journey, his brothers." “I threw off my jewelry in the house, my wrists, dressed in matting. Bhima, Arjuna, the Twins (Nakula and Sahadeva), the glorious Draupadi - all also put on mats ... and set off on the road. The path of the wanderers lay to the north (to the country of the gods - Bashkortostan. - Z.S.) ... Terrible difficulties and trials fell on the lot of Yudhishthira and his five companions. Moving north, they passed the mountain ranges and, finally, they saw the sandy sea ahead and “the best of the peaks - the great Mount Meru. They went to this mountain, but soon the strength left Draupadi. Yudhishthira, the best of the Bharatas, did not even look at her, and silently continued on his way. Then, one after another, courageous, strong knights, righteous and wise men fell to the ground. Finally, the “tiger-man” fell down - the mighty Bhima.

Only Yudhishthira remained, "he left without looking, scorched by grief." And then the god Indra appeared before him, he raised the hero to a mountain monastery (to the Urals - to the country of the gods of Bashkortostan. - Z.S.), to the kingdom of bliss, to where "the gods of Gandharva, Aditya, Apsara ... you, Yudhishthira , waiting in shining clothes", to where "tours-people, heroes, estranged from anger, abide." This is how the last books of the Mahabharata - "The Great Exodus" and "Ascension to Heaven" tell.

Pay attention to the five companions of the king - frozen in a snowstorm and turned into five peaks of the sacred mountains-shikhans along the road leading to the abode of the gods Ufu: Tora-tau (Bhima), Shake-tau (Arjuna), Kush-tau / Twins (Nakula and Sahadeva), Yuryak-tau (Draupadi)...

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Bashkirs- people in Russia, the indigenous population of Bashkiria (Bashkortostan). population b ashkir in Russia is 1 million 584 thousand 554 people. Of these, 1,172,287 people live in Bashkiria. live Bashkirs also in the Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Tyumen regions and the Perm region. In addition, 17,263 Bashkirs live in Kazakhstan, 3,703 in Uzbekistan, 1,111 in Kyrgyzstan and 112 in Estonia.

They say Bashkirs in the Bashkir language of the Turkic group of the Altai family; dialects: southern, eastern, the northwestern group of dialects stands out. Russian and Tatar languages ​​are widespread. Writing based on the Russian alphabet. believers Bashkirs- Sunni Muslims.
Most of the Bashkirs, in contrast to the surrounding population, are descendants of the Paleo-European population of Western Europe: the frequency of the R1b haplogroup varies significantly and averages 47.6%. It is assumed that the carriers of this haplogroup were the Khazars , although other evidence suggests that the Khazars wore the haplogroup G.

Share of haplogroup R1a among Bashkir is 26.5% , and Finno-Ugric N1c - 17%.

Mongoloidity among the Bashkirs is more pronounced than among Tatars, but less than Kazakhs.
In formation Bashkir the decisive role was played by the Turkic pastoral tribes of South Siberian-Central Asian origin, who, before coming to the South Urals, wandered for a considerable time in the Aral-Syrdarya steppes, coming into contact with the Pecheneg-Oguz and Kimak-Kypchak tribes; here they are recorded in the 9th century by written sources. From the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries they lived in the Southern Urals and adjacent steppe and forest-steppe spaces.
Even in Siberia, the Sayano-Altai Highlands and Central Asia, the ancient Bashkir tribes experienced some influence of the Tungus-Manchus and Mongols. Settling in the Southern Urals, Bashkirs partly ousted, partly assimilated the local Finno-Ugric and Iranian (Sarmatian-Alanian) population. Here they apparently came into contact with some of the ancient Magyar tribes.
In the 10th - early 13th century Bashkirs were under the political influence of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria, coexisted with the Kipchaks-Polovtsians. In 1236 Bashkir were conquered by the Mongol-Tatars and attached to the Golden Horde.

In the 14th century Bashkir nobility converted to Islam. During the period of Mongol-Tatar rule, the Bashkir some Bulgarian, Kypchak and Mongol tribes joined. After the fall of Kazan in 1552 Bashkirs accepted Russian citizenship, retaining the right to have armed formations. It is authentically known about the participation of the Bashkir cavalry regiments in battles on the side of Russia since the Livonian War Bashkirs stipulated the right to own their lands on a patrimonial basis, to live according to their customs and religion.

In the 17th and especially the 18th century Bashkirs revolted many times. In 1773-1775, the resistance of the Bashkirs was broken, but patrimonial rights were retained. Bashkir on the ground; in 1789 the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia was established in Ufa.

By decree of April 10, 1798, the Bashkir and Mishar the population of the region was transferred to the military service class, equated to the Cossacks, and was obliged to carry out border service on the eastern borders of Russia. Bashkiria was divided into 12 cantons, which put up a certain number of soldiers with all the equipment for military service. By 1825, the Bashkir-Meshcheryak Army consisted of over 345,493 people of both sexes, and about 12 thousand of them were in active service. Bashkir. In 1865, the canton system was abolished, and the Bashkirs were equated with rural residents and subordinated to the general provincial and district institutions.
After the February Revolution of 1917 Bashkirs entered into an active struggle for the creation of their statehood. The Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed in 1919.
As a result of World War I and the Civil War, the drought and famine of 1921-22, the number of Bashkirs was almost halved; by the end of 1926 it amounted to 714 thousand people. The large losses in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, as well as the assimilation of the Bashkirs by the Tatars, had a negative impact on the number of Bashkirs. The pre-revolutionary number of Bashkirs was reached only by 1989. There is a migration of Bashkirs outside the republic. The proportion of Bashkirs living outside of Bashkiria in 1926 was 18%, in 1959 - 25.4%, in 1989 - 40.4%.
Significant changes have taken place, especially in the post-war decades, in the socio-demographic structure of the Bashkirs. The share of townspeople among the Bashkirs was 42.3% by 1989 (1.8% in 1926 and 5.8% in 1939). Urbanization is accompanied by an increase in the number of workers, engineering and technical workers, creative intelligentsia, increased cultural interaction with other peoples, and an increase in the proportion of interethnic marriages. In recent years, there has been an activation of the national identity of the Bashkirs. In October 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic adopted the Declaration on State Sovereignty of the Bashkir ASSR. In February 1992, the Republic of Bashkortostan was proclaimed.

The traditional type of economy of the Bashkirs is semi-nomadic cattle breeding (mainly horses, as well as sheep, cattle, camels in the southern and eastern regions). They were also engaged in hunting and fishing, beekeeping, collecting fruits and roots of plants. There was agriculture (millet, barley, spelt, wheat, hemp). Agricultural tools - a wooden plow (saban) on wheels, later a plow (huka), a frame harrow (tyrma).
From the 17th century, semi-nomadic cattle breeding gradually loses its importance, the role of agriculture increases, beekeeping develops on the basis of beekeeping. In the northwestern regions, already in the 18th century, agriculture became the main occupation of the population, but in the south and east, nomadism remained in places until the beginning of the 20th century. However, here too, by this time, the transition to an integrated agricultural economy was completed. The shifting and slashing systems are gradually giving way to the fallow-fallow and three-field systems, and, especially in the northern regions, the sowings of winter rye, and of industrial crops - flax, are increasing. Gardening appears. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, factory plows and the first agricultural machines came into use.
Home processing of animal raw materials, hand weaving, and wood processing were developed. Bashkirs they knew blacksmithing, they smelted cast iron and iron, in some places they developed silver ore; jewelry was made from silver.
In the 1st half of the 18th century, the industrial exploitation of the ore deposits of the region began; by the end of the 18th century, the Urals became the main center of metallurgy. However Bashkirs were employed mainly in auxiliary and seasonal work.
During the Soviet period, a diversified industry was created in Bashkiria. Agriculture is complex, agricultural and livestock: in the southeast and in the Trans-Urals, horse breeding retains its importance. Developed beekeeping.
After joining the Russian state, the social structure of the Bashkirs was determined by the interweaving of commodity-money relations with the remnants of the patriarchal tribal way of life. Based on the tribal division (there were about 40 tribes and tribal groups: Burzyan, Usergan, Tamyan, Yurmaty, Tabyn, Kipchak, Katai, Ming, Elan, Enei, Bulyar, Salyut, etc., many of which were fragments of ancient tribal and ethnopolitical associations of the steppes of Eurasia) volosts were formed. Volosts, large in size, possessed some attributes of a political organization; they were divided into tribal divisions that united groups of related families (aimak, tyuba, ara), which inherited the customs of exogamy, mutual assistance, etc. from the tribal community. At the head of the volost was a hereditary (after 1736 elected) foreman (biy). In the affairs of volosts and aimaks, the leading role was played by tarkhans (a class exempted from taxes), batyrs, and the clergy; the nobility complained to individual families. In 1798-1865 there was a paramilitary cantonal system of government, Bashkirs were turned into a military class, among them stood out cantonal chiefs and officer ranks.
The ancient Bashkirs had a large family community. In the 16-19 centuries, both large and small families existed in parallel, the latter gradually asserting themselves as predominant. In the inheritance of family property, they mainly adhered to the minority principle. Among the rich Bashkirs there was polygamy. In marital relations, the customs of levirate, the betrothal of young children, were preserved. Marriages were made by matchmaking, but there was also the kidnapping of brides (which exempted them from paying bride price), sometimes by mutual agreement.

The traditional type of settlement is an aul, located on the banks of a river or lake. In the conditions of nomadic life, each aul had several places of settlement: winter, spring, summer, autumn. Permanent settlements arose with the transition to settled life, as a rule, in the places of winter roads. Initially, the cumulus arrangement of dwellings was common; close relatives settled compactly, often behind a common fence. In the 18th and 19th centuries, street planning began to predominate, with each kindred group forming separate "ends" or streets and quarters.
The traditional dwelling of the Bashkirs is a felt yurt with a prefabricated lattice frame, of the Turkic (with a hemispherical top) or Mongolian (with a conical top) type. In the steppe zone, adobe, plast, adobe houses were set up, in the forest and forest-steppe zone - log huts with a vestibule, houses with a connection (hut - canopy - hut) and five-walls, occasionally there were (among the wealthy) cross and two-story houses. For log cabins, conifers, aspen, linden, oak were used. Temporary dwellings and summer kitchens were wooden booths, wattle huts, and huts. The construction technique of the Bashkirs was greatly influenced by the Russians and the neighboring peoples of the Ural-Volga region. Modern rural dwellings Bashkirs they are built from logs, using log cabin equipment, from bricks, cinder concrete, concrete blocks. The interior retains traditional features: the division into household and guest halves, the arrangement of bunks.
The folk clothes of the Bashkirs combine the traditions of the steppe nomads and local settled tribes. The basis of women's clothing was a long dress cut off at the waist with frills, an apron, a camisole, decorated with a braid and silver coins. Young women wore chest ornaments made of coral and coins. The women's headdress is a cap made of coral mesh with silver pendants and coins, with a long blade going down the back, embroidered with beads and cowrie shells; girlish - a helmet-shaped cap, also covered with coins, they also wore caps, handkerchiefs. Young women wore colorful head coverings. Outerwear - open caftans and chekmenies made of colored cloth, trimmed with braid, embroidery, coins. Jewelry - various kinds of earrings, bracelets, rings, braids, clasps - were made of silver, corals, beads, silver coins, with inserts of turquoise, carnelian, colored glass.

Men's clothing - shirts and trousers with a wide step, light dressing gowns (straight-back and flared), camisoles, sheepskin coats. Hats - skullcaps, round fur hats, malachai covering the ears and neck, hats. Women also wore hats made of animal fur. Boots, leather boots, ichigi, shoe covers, and in the Urals - and bast shoes were widespread.
Meat and dairy food predominated, they used products of hunting, fishing, honey, berries and herbs. Traditional dishes are finely chopped horse meat or lamb with broth (bishbarmak, kullama), dried sausage from horse meat and fat (kazy), various types of cottage cheese, cheese (korot), millet porridge, barley, spelled and wheat groats, oatmeal. Noodles on meat or milk broth, cereal soups are popular. Bread (cakes) was consumed unleavened, sour bread spread in the 18-19 centuries, potatoes and vegetables were included in the diet. Low-alcohol drinks: koumiss (from mare's milk), buza (from sprouted grains of barley, spelt), ball (a relatively strong drink made from honey and sugar); they also drank diluted sour milk - ayran.

In wedding rituals, the customs of hiding the bride stand out; on the day of the wedding feast (tui), wrestling competitions and horse races were held in the bride's house. There was a custom of avoiding the daughter-in-law father-in-law. The family life of the Bashkirs was built on reverence for the elders. Nowadays, especially in cities, family rituals have been simplified. In recent years, there has been some revival of Muslim rituals.
The main folk holidays were celebrated in the spring and summer. After the arrival of the rooks, they arranged a kargatuy ("rook holiday"). On the eve of spring field work, and in some places after them, a plow festival (sabantuy, habantuy) was held, which included a common meal, wrestling, horse racing, competitions in running, archery, competitions with a humorous effect. The holiday was accompanied by prayers at the local cemetery. In the middle of summer, jiin (yiyin) was held, a holiday common to several villages, and in more distant times - volosts, tribes. In the summer, girls' games take place in the bosom of nature, the rite of cuckoo tea, in which only women participate. In dry times, a rite of calling rain was performed with sacrifices and prayers, pouring water on each other.
The leading place in oral and poetic creativity is occupied by the epic ("Ural-Batyr", "Akbuzat", "Idukai and Muradym", "Kusyak-bi", "Urdas-bi with a thousand quivers", "Alpamysha", "Kuzy-Kurpyas and Mayanhylu", "Zayatulyak and Khyuhylu"). Fairy-tale folklore is represented by magical, heroic, everyday tales, tales about animals.
Song and musical creativity is developed: epic, lyrical and everyday (ritual, satirical, humorous) songs, ditties (takmak). Various dance melodies. The dances are characterized by narrative, many ("Cuckoo", "Crow Pacer", "Baik", "Perovsky") have a complex structure and contain elements of pantomime.
Traditional musical instruments are kurai (a kind of flute), domra, koumiss (kobyz, vargan: wooden - in the form of an oblong plate and metal - in the form of a bow with a tongue). In the past, there was a bowed instrument kyl kumyz.
Bashkirs retained elements of traditional beliefs: veneration of objects (rivers, lakes, mountains, forests, etc.) and phenomena (winds, snowstorms) of nature, heavenly bodies, animals and birds (bear, wolf, horse, dog, snake, swan, crane , golden eagle, falcon, etc., the cult of rooks was associated with the cult of ancestors, dying and reviving nature). Among the numerous host spirits (eye), a special place is occupied by the brownie (yort eyyakhe) and the water spirit (hyu eyyakhe). The supreme heavenly deity Tenre subsequently merged with Muslim Allah. The forest spirit shurale, brownie are endowed with the features of Muslim shaitans, Iblis, jinn. The demonic characters of Bisur and Albasty are syncretic. The intertwining of traditional and Muslim beliefs is also observed in rituals, especially in native and funeral rites.