Kazakh Culture

The Kazakhs are an extremely hospitable people. If you come to a Kazakh home unexpected you will be received as if you had been invited. Since early childhood principles of respect of guests and older people as well as peacefulness and tolerance are instilled in every Kazakh and these are the national features of Kazakh culture and traditions. This is why Kazakhstan didn't have any significant national or religious conflicts in its history. Traditionally every guest is offered dishes of national Kazakh cuisine at the dastarkhan (the low table) in a yurt.

Yurts

The yurt is one of the most sensible movable house. It is a comfortable and practical home, ideally suited to the local conditions and way of life – one of the greatest inventions of Eurasian nomads.

It is easily taken apart (it is said that a Kazakh woman can do it in half an hour) and carried on horses and camels. The yurt consists of three main elements: an extensible trellis base (the kerege), a dome made of poles (the uyk) and a round top (the shanyrak).

In ancient times Turks were reputed as the most skillful felt-makers of portable dwellings. Nowadays the Kazakhs use felt to cover the yurt and for its internal decoration, as well as to make carpets, dresses and shoes. The Kazakhs live in surrounded with ornaments. Each yurt is decorated with beautiful handmade wall carpets and multi-colored embroideries.

Handicrafts

Handicrafts – harnesses, felt mats (tekemets), articles made of wood, bone and metal – are lavishly decorated. Headdresses, dresses, bags and saddle-cloths are beautifully embroidered. They use traditional designs and carvings to make and decorate the wooden cups, large bowls and ladles used to serve for kumis (fermented mare's milk).

The horns of mountain rams and goats are used to decorate beds and caskets. Leather is used to make quivers, belts, harnesses and flasks (torsyks) for water and kumis Kazakh artisans are also very skillful jewelers.

Steppe zergers (jewelers.) favor white silver. Traditional Kazakh bell-shaped earrings, original bracelets (blezics), or the traditional bracelet linked to three rings by fine chains will certainly attract you.

The Kazakh national dress

The Kazakh national dress varies by regions. Men wear chapans, a kind of dressing gown with a belt, made of velvet and richly embroidered. They cover their heads with a soft skullcap (tobetai), a tall felt cap (kalpak) or a fox-fur hat with earflaps (malakai).

The women's national costume consists of a white cotton or colored silk dress, a velvet waistcoat with embroidery and a cap or a silk scarf. Elderly women wear a hood made of white cloth with a hole for the face (the kimeshek). Brides wear a tall pointed, richly decorated hat, topped with feathers (saukele). 

Music and musical instruments

The Kazakhs love the art of words and their akyns (poets), who improvise at public competitions (aitys) accompanied by national stringed musical instruments: the dombra or the kobyz.

National games

National games: these are usually performed on horse-back and are an opportunity to witness the Kazakh's outstanding riding skills. Kazaksha kures (Kazakh wrestling), baiga (horse racing over 25, 50 or 100 km), kokpar (a sort of polo game played with a dead goat), kyz-kuu (catch the girl) and alty bakan (six-pole swing).

Nauryz

Nauryz (the Islamic New Year) is one of the biggest holidays in Central Asia. It is celebrated on the day of spring equinox of March 22. On that day, the streets of villages and towns are transformed. Guests are met in beautiful yurts with the traditional Nauryz kozhe dish made of seven traditional ingredients. People respecting this nearly month-long holiday forgive each other debts and offences.

European Culture. The culture of Europe is rooted in the art, architecture, music, literature, and philosophy that originated from the European cultural region. European culture is largely rooted in what is often referred to as its "common cultural heritage".

Because of the great number of perspectives which can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing conception of European culture. Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:

• A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, the Renaissance and it’s Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;

• A rich and dynamic material culture that has been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";

• A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;

• A plurality of states with different political orders, which are feeding each other with new ideas;

• Respect for peoples, states and nations outside Europe.

Berting says that these points fit with "Europe's most positive realisations". The concept of European culture is generally linked to the classical definition of theWestern world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific,political, artistic and philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.The term has come to apply to countries whose history has been strongly marked by European immigration or settlement during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe..

The Nobel Prize laureate in Literature Thomas Stearns Eliot in his 1948 book Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, credited the prominent Christian influence upon the European culture: "I am talking about the common tradition of Christianity which has made Europe what it is, and about the common cultural elements which this common Christianity has brought with it. If Asia were converted to Christianity tomorrow, it would not thereby become a part of Europe. It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe have--until recently--been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian Faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning. Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith.[. . .] The Western World has its unity in this heritage, in Christianity and in the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome, and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity, we trace our descent."

The european originality of cultural identity.

The European conflict between North and South did not arise out of nothing. Our civilization developed on a foundation of three cultures: first Cretan, then Athenian, then Christian. Rather than eclipsing each other in succession, these identities intermingle, continuing to battle it out today.

Europe draws upon three cultural origins: Cretan, Athenian, and Christian. Cretan culture derives from Minoan civilization, pre-Roman Athenian culture to Greek civilization, and Christian culture spread through Roman civilization after it officially converted to Christianity. These three cultures and their offshoots are the substratum of our European identity. The current crisis in Europe goes back to a clash between the continent’s different cultural origins that can only be solved through mediation.