23. Ethno genesis of a Kazakh people. The origin of the ethno name ‘Kazakh’.

The term Kazakh came into use by the residents of the area possibly as early as the end of the fifteenth century and certainly by the mid-sixteenth century. Many theories have been advanced to explain the origin of the term. Some speculate that it comes from the Turkish verb qaz (to wander), because the Kazakhs were wandering steppemen; or that it is the combined form of two Kazakh tribal names, Kaspy and Saki; or that it traces from the Mongol word khasaq (a wheeled cart used by the Kazakhs to transport their yurts [felt tents] and belongings). Another explanation advanced in the nineteenth century is that the term comes from the Turkish words ak (white) and kaz (goose), from a popular Kazakh legend of a white steppe goose that turned into a princess, who in turn gave birth to the first Kazakh.

The tale of the white goose is only one of many legends of the formation of the first Kazakh tribe. The most celebrated is that of Alash (or Alach). In most of these tales, Alash is depicted as the founder of the Kazakh people, whose three sons each established one of the three Kazakh hordes. In other tales he is described merely as a great khan whose last direct "descendant," Tokhtamish, was killed at the battle of Saray Su (1395) when Timur (Tamerlane) defeated the Golden Horde. There is no historical evidence for the existence of a Kazakh nation at this time, but the legend of Alash has always played an important unifying role for the Kazakhs; the first Kazakh political party and autonomous Kazakh government (1917) were named the Alash Orda, the Horde of Alash. Despite such legends, it seems quite certain that all claims of consanguinity, of a single people inhabiting this region from antiquity to the present, are spurious.

The consensus is that the Kazakh people or Kazakh nation was formed in the mid-fifteenth century when Janibek (Dzhanibek) and Kirai (Girei), sons of Barak Khan of the White Horde of the Mongol empire, broke away from Abu'l Khayr (Abulkair), khan of the Uzbeks. Janibek and Kirai sought to capitalize on the power vacuum created by Abu'l Khayr's defeat by the Oirats (Mongols), and they moved with their supporters to western Semirech'e—the land between the Chu and Talas rivers, formerly controlled by the Uzbeks. Here their supporters increased in number, and they established a rival khanate whose center was the Betpak-Dala desert, between the Chu and Sarysu rivers. The territory of the Kazakh khanate continued to expand, so that by the middle of the sixteenth century it included most of the environs of Lake Balkhash and the lands immediately above and below the Syr Darya River, north to the Turg^i River, and west to the lands just northwest of the Aral Sea. The Kazakh khanate was a political confederation composed primarily of Turkish-speaking nomadic tribes of Uzbek-Turkic stock (mostly Nogai) that had migrated to the area from the Dashti-Qipchak (the Kipchak Steppe), and Naiman, Argyn, and Chagatai tribesmen from the Uzbek khanate, as well as some indigenous population. By the time of Qasim (Kasym) Khan (reigned 1511-1523), the Kazakh nation was estimated at over one million people