Chapter 01 · c. 700 BCE – 1219 CE
The Saka and the Turkic Steppe
Iron Age horse-warriors, then Turkic khaganates and Silk Road towns, made the Kazakh steppe a crossroads of Eurasia.
Long before there were Kazakhs, the grasslands of present-day Kazakhstan belonged to mounted nomads. In the first millennium BCE the region was home to the Saka, the eastern branch of the Scythian world: Iranian-speaking horse-warriors whose elite were buried in great burial mounds (kurgans) with lavish gold. The most famous, the 'Golden Man' of the Issyk kurgan near Almaty, was interred around the fourth century BCE in a suit of thousands of gold plaques. Greek, Persian, and Chinese writers knew these peoples as fierce riders and archers who herded sheep and horses across the open steppe between the Caspian and the Altai.
From the sixth century CE the steppe was dominated by Turkic-speaking confederations. The Türk (Göktürk) Khaganate, a nomadic empire reaching from Manchuria to the Black Sea, split into eastern and western halves, and Zhetysu (Semirechye) in the southeast became a heartland of the Western Turkic Khaganate. Successive Turkic states, the Türgesh, the Qarluqs, and from the tenth century the Muslim Karakhanids, ruled the south, while Islam spread among the settled population. These centuries fixed the Turkic language and, gradually, the Islamic faith that would define the later Kazakhs.
Across southern Kazakhstan ran a vital artery of the Silk Road. Caravans moving between China and the Mediterranean passed through a chain of oasis towns, Sayram (Ispijab), Otrar, Taraz, Sauran, and Yasi (later Turkestan), which grew rich as markets and as centres of learning, craft, and Islamic scholarship. Otrar, near the Syr Darya, was among the wealthiest, and Taraz was celebrated as a 'city of merchants.' These towns linked the nomads of the steppe to the wider Muslim and Chinese worlds and made the region a true crossroads of medieval Eurasia, until the Mongol storm of the thirteenth century.
“The Saka elite were buried in kurgans with gold by the thousand-plate; the Issyk 'Golden Man' remains a national emblem of the steppe.”
— Summary of Saka burial archaeology
Turning points
- c. 4th century BCECulture & Ideas
- 6th century CEPeoples & Migration
Turkic khaganates dominate the steppe
Turkic-speaking confederations, beginning with the Türk (Göktürk) Khaganate and later the Karakhanids, take control of the region; Zhetysu becomes a heartland of the Western Turkic realm, fixing the Turkic language and spreading Islam.
See the data - 10th–12th centuriesEconomy & Trade
Silk Road towns of the south flourish
Caravan cities such as Otrar, Taraz, Sauran, and Yasi prosper on the trade between China and the Mediterranean, becoming centres of commerce, craft, and Islamic learning along the southern Kazakh steppe.
See the data
Chapter sources: Ancient Sakas: All You Need to Know, History of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan
Chapter 02 · 1219 – 1465
The Mongol Conquest and the Golden Horde
Genghis Khan razed the Silk Road cities and bound the steppe to the Mongol empire's western wing, the Golden Horde.
In 1219 the governor of Otrar seized and killed a Mongol trade caravan, an act Genghis Khan treated as a mortal insult. The Mongol army descended on the Syr Darya towns, besieging Otrar for roughly five months before sacking it, then sweeping through the wealthy realm of Khwarezm in a campaign of 1219-1221 that devastated the settled south. The conquest shattered the Silk Road cities of the region and incorporated the steppe into the vast empire Genghis Khan was assembling across Eurasia, ending the era of independent Turkic and Karakhanid rule in Kazakhstan.
After Genghis Khan's death his empire was divided among his sons. The lands of the western steppe, including most of present-day Kazakhstan, fell to the line of his eldest son, Jochi, and crystallised into the khanate the Russians later called the Golden Horde, the empire's western wing, which flourished from the mid-thirteenth to the late fourteenth century. Its population was a blend of Mongols and the far more numerous Turks; the Turkic language soon prevailed and Islam became the dominant faith, deepening the Turkic-Muslim character of the steppe peoples.
As the Golden Horde weakened in the fifteenth century it fragmented into rival successor khanates. From the eastern Qipchaq steppe emerged the nomadic Uzbek confederation under Abu'l-Khayr Khan, and it was a breakaway from his rule, led by the Jochid sultans Janibek and Kerei, that produced the Kazakhs. It was also in this period that the steppe's most celebrated monument rose: at Yasi (Turkestan), Timur (Tamerlane) ordered between 1389 and 1405 the great Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi over the tomb of the revered twelfth-century Sufi master, a masterpiece of Timurid architecture left unfinished at Timur's death.
“In this khanate the Mongols were greatly outnumbered by Turks; the Turkish language soon displaced Mongol, and Islam became the prevailing religion.”
— Encyclopædia Britannica, on the Golden Horde
Turning points
- 1219–1221War & Rupture
Mongol conquest of the Syr Darya and Khwarezm
Provoked by the killing of his envoys at Otrar, Genghis Khan storms the Silk Road towns and overruns Khwarezm; Otrar falls after a months-long siege, and the steppe is absorbed into the Mongol empire.
See the data - mid-13th centuryPolitics & Power
- 1389–1405Religion
Chapter sources: History of Kazakhstan, Golden Horde, Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi
Chapter 03 · 1465 – 1731
The Kazakh Khanate and the Three Jüz
Janibek and Kerei founded the Kazakh state on the steppe; it grew into three jüz and faced a deadly Dzungar onslaught.
Around 1465 the sultans Janibek and Kerei, descendants of Genghis Khan, led a body of nomads away from the Uzbek khan Abu'l-Khayr and into Zhetysu, in the southeast of present-day Kazakhstan, where they founded an independent realm. The people who followed them came to be called Kazakhs, and the Kazakh Khanate they established is regarded by Kazakhs as the foundation of their statehood, the moment a distinct Kazakh nation entered history. Over the following century the khanate expanded across the steppe, absorbing Turkic clans and asserting control over the old caravan towns of the Syr Darya.
The Kazakhs organised themselves into three great tribal divisions known as jüz, or hordes: the Great Horde (Uly Jüz) in the southeast and Zhetysu, the Middle Horde (Orta Jüz) in the central and northern steppe, and the Little Horde (Kishi Jüz) in the west toward the Caspian and Ural. Each jüz comprised a confederation of tribes with its own pastures and leaders, while khans claiming descent from Genghis Khan provided an overarching, if often loose, political unity. This three-fold structure, bound by a shared language, Islam, and genealogy, became the enduring framework of Kazakh society.
From the late seventeenth century the Kazakhs faced a mortal threat from the east: the Dzungars, a powerful Mongol Buddhist confederation. Repeated Dzungar invasions culminated in the catastrophe Kazakhs remember as the 'Great Disaster' (Aktaban Shubyryndy) around 1723, when whole communities were driven from their pastures with heavy loss of life. The wars exhausted the khanate and shattered its cohesion, and it was this weakness, the need for a powerful protector against the Dzungars, that opened the door to the next great force on the steppe: the expanding Russian Empire.
“The Kazakh Khanate was formed around 1465 by Kerei Khan and Janibek Khan, the foundation of Kazakh statehood.”
— Portal 'History of Kazakhstan' (e-history.kz)
Turning points
- c. 1465Formation
- 16th–17th centuriesPolitics & Power
- c. 1723War & Rupture
The 'Great Disaster' of the Dzungar wars
Devastating invasions by the Buddhist Dzungar confederation drive Kazakhs from their pastures with great loss of life, an episode remembered as the Aktaban Shubyryndy that gravely weakens the khanate.
See the data
Figures of the era
Chapter sources: Establishment of the Kazakh Khanate, History of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan
Chapter 04 · 1731 – 1917
The Russian Conquest of the Steppe
Seeking shelter from the Dzungars, the hordes accepted Russian protection; over a century the empire abolished the khans and colonised the steppe.
Pressed by the Dzungars, the khans of the three jüz turned to Russia for protection. In 1731 Abu'l-Khayr Khan of the Little Horde swore allegiance to the Russian Empire, followed by the Middle Horde in 1740 and part of the Great Horde in 1742. What the Kazakhs intended as a defensive alliance, Russia treated as the first step toward annexation. The great khan Ablai (Abylai), elected ruler of the Kazakhs in 1771, manoeuvred between the Russian and Chinese (Qing) empires to preserve a measure of independence, and remains a national hero, but the long-term tide ran toward Russian control.
Through the nineteenth century Russia tightened its grip, building lines of forts across the steppe and encouraging Slavic settlement on Kazakh grazing land. To break Kazakh autonomy, the empire abolished the khanates one by one: the Middle Horde in 1822, the Little Horde in 1824, and the Great Horde in 1848. Kazakh resistance was fierce and repeated. The most formidable revolt was led by Kenesary Kasymov, a grandson of Ablai Khan, who fought the Russians across the steppe from 1837 until his death in 1847 in a bid to restore the independent khanate.
Russian rule transformed the steppe. The seizure of pasture for Slavic colonists strained the nomadic economy, while contact with Russian and European ideas produced a new Kazakh intelligentsia. Its towering figure was the poet and thinker Abai (Abay) Kunanbaiuly (1845-1904), an aristocrat who blended Kazakh oral tradition with Russian literature, translating Pushkin and Lermontov and laying the foundation of the modern Kazakh literary language. By 1917, on the eve of revolution, Kazakhstan was a colonised borderland of a Russian Empire about to collapse into war and revolution.
“Abai laid the basis with his verse for the development of the modern Kazakh literary language and its poetry.”
— Encyclopædia Britannica, on Abai Kunanbaiuly
Turning points
- 1731Colonisation
The Little Horde accepts Russian protection
Abu'l-Khayr Khan of the Little Horde swears allegiance to the Russian Empire for protection against the Dzungars; the Middle Horde follows in 1740 and part of the Great Horde in 1742, opening the steppe to Russian power.
See the data - 1771Politics & Power
- 1822–1848Colonisation
Russia abolishes the Kazakh khanates
To end Kazakh autonomy, Russia abolishes the khanate of the Middle Horde in 1822, the Little Horde in 1824, and the Great Horde in 1848, dismantling the political structure of the Kazakh Khanate.
See the data - 1837–1847War & Rupture
Kenesary Kasymov's revolt
Kenesary Kasymov, a grandson of Ablai Khan, leads the largest Kazakh uprising against Russian rule, fighting to restore the independent khanate until he is killed in 1847.
See the data
Figures of the era
Ablai Khan (Abylai)c. 1711–1781
Khan of the Kazakhs
Elected ruler of the Kazakhs in 1771, Ablai Khan defended the steppe against the Dzungars and manoeuvred between the Russian and Qing empires to preserve Kazakh independence; he is revered as a unifier and national hero.
Abai Kunanbaiuly (Abay Kunanbayev)1845–1904
Poet, composer, and philosopher
The founder of modern written Kazakh literature, Abai fused Kazakh oral verse with Russian models, translating Pushkin and Lermontov and laying the basis of the modern Kazakh literary language and national thought.
Chapter sources: History of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, Abylai the King: A Warrior, Diplomat and Patriot, Abay Ibrahim Kūnanbay-ulï, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan: Country Studies
Chapter 05 · 1917 – 1991
Soviet Kazakhstan
Collectivisation brought a famine that killed a third of the Kazakhs; later came the Virgin Lands, the Gulag, and the nuclear steppe.
After the 1917 revolution and the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks fastened Soviet control on the steppe. An autonomous republic created in 1920 was renamed the Kazak A.S.S.R. in 1925, and Kazakhstan became a full union republic of the USSR on 5 December 1936. From the late 1920s the Soviet state forced the nomadic Kazakhs to settle and collectivised their herds. The result was the deadliest catastrophe in Kazakh history: the famine of 1930-33 (Asharshylyk), driven by collectivisation and ruthless requisition under the republic's leader Filipp Goloshchekin, which killed an estimated 1.5 million people, on the order of a third or more of all Kazakhs, the highest proportional toll of any people in the Soviet famines. The figures are estimates, but scholars agree the losses were vast.
Stalinist Kazakhstan also became a vast prison and dumping ground. The steppe held some of the largest camps of the Gulag, including Karlag near Karaganda and the Alzhir camp for the wives of 'enemies of the people,' while entire nationalities, Koreans, Volga Germans, Chechens, and others, were deported to Kazakhstan in the 1930s and 1940s. After 1953 Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign ploughed up millions of hectares of northern Kazakh steppe for grain, drawing in hundreds of thousands of mostly Slavic settlers and shifting the republic's demography so far that Kazakhs became a minority in their own land for a generation.
The steppe paid a further, hidden price for Soviet power. From 1949 the Semipalatinsk Test Site in the northeast served as the principal proving ground for Soviet nuclear weapons; some 456 nuclear explosions were carried out there until 1989, exposing surrounding communities to fallout with lasting effects on health that are still being measured. By the late 1980s discontent was surfacing: anti-Russian protests erupted in Almaty in December 1986 (the Jeltoqsan events) after Moscow installed a non-Kazakh party boss, and a popular anti-nuclear movement, Nevada-Semipalatinsk, helped force the closure of the test site in 1991, the year the Soviet Union itself dissolved.
“Between roughly a third and a half of all Kazakhs perished in the famine of 1930-33, the highest proportional toll of any people in the Soviet famines.”
— Consensus of scholarly estimates
Turning points
- 1930–1933Catastrophe
The Kazakh famine (Asharshylyk)
Forced collectivisation and the settling of nomads under Filipp Goloshchekin produce a man-made famine that kills an estimated 1.5 million people, around a third of all Kazakhs, the deadliest catastrophe in Kazakh history; the toll is an estimate.
See the data - 5 December 1936Politics & Power
- 1949–1989Catastrophe
Semipalatinsk nuclear test site
The Soviet Union conducts some 456 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk site in northeastern Kazakhstan between 1949 and 1989, exposing local populations to radioactive fallout with severe long-term health effects.
See the data - from 1954Peoples & Migration
Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign
Nikita Khrushchev's drive to plough up the northern Kazakh steppe for grain brings hundreds of thousands of mostly Slavic settlers, transforming the republic's demography so that Kazakhs become a minority in Kazakhstan.
See the data
Figures of the era
Filipp Goloshchekin1876–1941
First Secretary of the Kazak A.S.S.R.
The Soviet party leader who imposed forced collectivisation and the settling of nomads in Kazakhstan, policies that produced the catastrophic famine of 1930-33; he was himself executed in 1941 during the Stalinist purges.
Chapter sources: History of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, The Kazakh Famine of the 1930s, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan: Country Studies
Chapter 06 · 1991 – present
Independent Kazakhstan
The last republic to leave the USSR became an oil-rich state under Nazarbayev, a new capital at Astana, and a turbulent transition to Tokayev.
Kazakhstan declared its independence on 16 December 1991, the last of the fifteen Soviet republics to do so; days later the USSR ceased to exist. Its first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the republic's Communist Party leader, would dominate the new state for nearly three decades. Independent Kazakhstan voluntarily renounced the large Soviet nuclear arsenal it had inherited, closing the Semipalatinsk test site and transferring the warheads to Russia, a decision that won it international goodwill. In 1997 Nazarbayev moved the capital from Almaty in the southeast to Akmola on the northern steppe, renamed Astana ('capital') in 1998 and rebuilt as a showcase city of modern architecture.
Nazarbayev's long rule rested on the country's immense natural wealth, vast reserves of oil, gas, uranium, and metals that made Kazakhstan the largest economy in Central Asia, alongside a tightly controlled political system with little real opposition. The state pursued a 'multi-vector' foreign policy, balancing Russia, China, and the West. In 2019 Nazarbayev stepped down as president, handing power to his chosen successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, while retaining sweeping influence as head of the Security Council and 'Leader of the Nation'; the capital was briefly renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour.
In January 2022 that arrangement broke apart. Protests that began on 2 January over a sharp rise in fuel prices in the western oil town of Zhanaozen spread nationwide and turned violent, especially in Almaty, in the unrest Kazakhs call Qandy Qantar ('Bloody January'). President Tokayev declared a state of emergency, called in troops from the Russian-led CSTO alliance, and authorised the use of lethal force; by official counts about 227 people died. Tokayev used the crisis to sideline Nazarbayev's allies and consolidate his own authority, the capital reverted to Astana, and he won a fresh seven-year term later in 2022, leaving Kazakhstan, in 2026, a resource-rich state still navigating a fraught transition from its founding leader's long shadow.
“On 16 December 1991 Kazakhstan became the last of the Soviet republics to proclaim its independence.”
— Encyclopædia Britannica
Turning points
- 16 December 1991Independence
Kazakhstan declares independence
Kazakhstan proclaims itself a sovereign, independent state, the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence, with Nursultan Nazarbayev as president; the USSR formally dissolves days later.
See the data - 1997Politics & Power
- March 2019Politics & Power
Nazarbayev resigns; Tokayev succeeds
After nearly three decades in power, Nazarbayev steps down as president, handing office to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev while retaining major influence; the capital is briefly renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour.
- January 2022Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Nursultan Nazarbayevborn 1940
First President of Kazakhstan
Soviet-era party chief who led independent Kazakhstan from 1991 to 2019, renounced its nuclear arsenal, moved the capital to Astana, and built an oil-rich but tightly controlled state, retaining influence as 'Leader of the Nation' until the 2022 unrest.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayevborn 1953
President of Kazakhstan
Career diplomat who succeeded Nazarbayev in 2019 and, after the violent 'Bloody January' of 2022, used the crisis to break his predecessor's network and consolidate power, restoring the capital's name to Astana and winning a new term that year.
Chapter sources: Kazakhstan: Independent Kazakhstan, History of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, A regime transition in action: Bloody January in Kazakhstan