Posología y Método de administración

3.2.1 Origins and Early Development of the Kazakhs

The area of present-day Kazakhstan, known as Descht-e-Kipchak in the Middle Ages and as the Kazakh or Eurasian steppe in the tsarist period, was inhabited by a complex mixture of peoples, cultures, languages and religions generating a variety of political and social institutions. But underlying them all, from the Mongols of the 11th -12th centuries to the Kazakhs in the 15th to 18th centuries, was a nomadic pastoral type of socio-economic

organization which changed little over the centuries (Khazanov, 1984: xxiii, Masanov, 1995, 2001).

There is no consensus over the chronology or precise circumstances of the Kazakh origins. The term Kazakh as a form of self-identification came into use by the residents of the area as early as the end of the fifteenth century and certainly by the mid-sixteenth century (Masanov, 2001). It was not an ethnic category but rather meant a person who led a free and unencumbered life-style associated with nomads. Many theories have been put forward to explain the origin of the term. Some speculate that it can be traced back to the Turkish verb qaz (to wander), because the Kazakhs were wandering nomads, or that it comes from the Mongolian word khazaq – a wheeled cart used by the Kazakhs to transport their yurts

(felt dwellings) and belongings. As to the origins of the people themselves, the most celebrated explanation is that of the mythical Alash (or Alash(a) khan). In various popular songs and tales Alash is described as the founder of the Kazakh people, whose sons each established one of the three Kazakh zhuz or clan agglomerations – Elder (ulu), Middle (orta) and Younger (kishi). This legend has always played an important unifying role for the Kazakhs (Olcott, 1995:4, Seidimbek, 2000).

In order to distinguish the Kazakh nomads from the new Cossack settlers in the steppe, tsarist administrators referred to Kazakhs as ‘Kirgiz’ (whom they saw as essentially similar in clan structure and language) and this name persisted in all official correspondence between the Kazakh elites and colonial administrators during the period of the Russian empire. Some Russian ethnographers and geographers started to label steppe nomads as

kirgiz-kaisak or qazakh to differentiate them from kara-kirgiz (mountain Kirghiz) and

buruts (Kirgiz). Chokan Valikhanov, for example, wrote in the mid 19th century: The Great, Middle and Small kirgiz-kaisak hordes constitute one Kazakh people, which should be differentiated from the ‘Kirgyz’ who are referred to as burut by the Chinese and ‘mountain’ (dikokamennye) or black (kara) by the Russians. Even in the physiognomy of

the burut (Kirgiz) there is something distinctive, non-kaisak (non-Kazakh) (Valikhanov, quoted in Masanov, 2001:57).

Nevertheless, even at the beginning of the 20th century kara-kirgiz were considered to be one of the kirgiz-kaisak tribes and during the first universal census of the Russian empire in 1897 Kazakh and Kirgiz were lumped in as one people. It has to be stressed that none of the above ethnonyms were understood in ethno-national terms. Indeed, the Kazakh ‘national’ consciousness started to develop only at the beginning of the 20th _{century, when the leaders}

of the first Kazakh nationalist movement Alash Orda started to refer to their people as a

narod or natsiya, adopting Leninist terminology on the subject (Suny, 2001, Sabol, 2003, Dave, 2007:31).

3.2.2 The Early Kazakh Socio-Political Organisation

A unified, although loose and decentralised Kazakh Khanate was the only common political formation among the steppe nomads, which existed from the mid-15th to the late 16th century. This disintegrated in the 16th century into a tripartite structure of 'hordes' (zhuz) or clan agglomerations related to the three climatic zones of the steppe: the Elder Horde in the south and east, the Middle Horde in the northern and part of the central regions and the Younger Horde in the west, from the Caspian Sea south of the Urals to the Aral Sea. The Middle Horde was the largest and Younger Horde the smallest in population terms. But all three stressed their common origins in their mythical common progenitor,

Alash (ibid: 32).

Political authority in these hordes was fluid, diffuse and highly localized. Traditional Kazakh society, to cite Bacon (1980), was ‘conical’ in shape, or ‘pyramidal’ to use the taxonomy developed by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1963). The small part at the top represented the Kazakh hereditary stratum, the ak suiek or ‘white bone’, while the wider lower segment consisted of the non-hereditary masses, the kara suiek, or ‘black bone’. ‘Bone’ here refers to lineage and the colours ‘white’ and ‘black’ were inherited from

Mongol practice. At the top of the hierarchy were the sultans, presiding over local clan (ru) organizations, who claimed direct descent from Genghis Khan. Also part of the top 'white- bone' (aq suiek) stratum, known as tore, were the clergy (hoja), who were of Arabic origin and claimed descent from the Prophet Mohammed. They had great influence in their role as tutors to the sultans and khans but did not have high material status. The khans who

headed the hordes were not hereditary rulers but were elected by a gathering of sultans, judges (bi) and clan elders (aqsaqals). The judges, clan elders and poets (aqyn) were closer to the people (kara suiek) and helped to maintain social cohesion within the system (ibid.). The lineage system of the Kazakh clan (which lay at the heart of the nomadic social organization) was of the ‘segmentary’ type, i.e. a patrilinear unit tracing descent from a single ancestor but divided by 'segmentation' into smaller sub-units of parent lineages (Khazanov, 1984). These lineages were central to nomadic life, having extensive social, not merely biological associations, and nomads were expected to be able to name ancestors at least to the seventh generation, with some, of the highest status, going back forty

generations. Lineages exercised various functions. Firstly, they functioned as a marker of exogamy, i.e. marriage among nomads was permitted only in the seventh and in some cases in the eighth or tenth ascending generation. Secondly, as a socio-legal unit, the lineage, used interchangeably with 'clan', affected the issue of property. The property of an

individual who died without any immediate relatives simply passed to the clan. Moreover, without written chronicles or monuments these transmitted lineages were essential to nomadic group identity (Dave, 2007: 33).

The clan and tribal organization of the Kazakh nomads was very fluid and adaptable as it had to preserve their way of life in the face of the harsh environment and the threat from new settlers. Both Masanov (1995) and Olcott (1995:69) argue that, although nomadic pastoralism originated as a means of survival and an ecological adaptation, it became through its epics and folklore a system of values and a way of life in itself. Even sedentarisation did not immediately undermine this culture. As Armstrong points out (1982:16), some ex-nomadic groups retained a strong ‘nostalgia’ for the old ways,

preserving 'a persistent image of a superior way of life in the distant past. Such nostalgia and collective memory became more enduring than the material circumstances of life’.