Lidiya Poltoratskaya (1833–1940). View of an aul, 1870. / Library of Congress
Central Asia, the cradle of ancient traditions and a crossroads of diverse ideologies, cultures, and beliefs, has long captivated the imagination of travelers from both near and far. Through their detailed notes and vivid reflections, they have, for centuries, offered a unique, albeit not always impartial, glimpse into the rich mosaic of life in this region: bustling bazaars, nomadic customs, and enduring cultural heritage. In this series of articles, Qalam presents excerpts from their accounts and memories, spanning different eras and revealing the many facets of Central Asia.
Today, we share excerpts from the travel notes of the renowned American traveler and diplomat Eugene Schuyler. His observations shed light on the Kazakhs, the confusion surrounding their names, and their kinship with the Uzbeks
Eugene Schuyler (1840–90), a native of Ithaca, New York state, had an illustrious academic career at Yale University, where he earned a doctorate in psychology, becoming one of the first three recipients of a Ph.D degree in the history of the United States. He later pursued a career in law and diplomacy, becoming the first American diplomat to visit Russian Central Asia. His travel notes were published in a two-volume work titled Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja, published in 1876.
Photographer known. Kazakh horsemen, 1885/ Library of Congress
In his book, Eugene Schuyler shares his firsthand observations on the nomadic lifestyle of the Kazakhs:
All through the Kara-Kum we met numbers of Kirghiz families, who were going from their winter to their summer quarters, seeking pasturage for their cattle and flocks in the Steppe south of Orenburg—long caravans of horses and camels laden with piles of felt, tent-frames, and household utensils, on top of which sat a woman, perhaps with an infant in a cradle before her. Sometimes we caught them as they were setting up their kibitkas or arranging the fences of reed-mats to protect their flocks from the prowling wolves. Some of them spend the winter in the Kara-Kura itself, but the most of them pass south of the Syr Darya, near the bounds of Khiva.
As a great connoisseur and translator of Russian literature, he does not overlook the distortions in the use of Central Asian ethnonyms in the Russian language:
These nomads who inhabit the western steppe are not the same people as the true Kirghiz or Burutsi
He also reflects on the origins of the Kazakhs and the Kazakh language:
The Kirghiz speak a language which is one of the purest dialects of Tartar, though as a race, they contain many foreign elements. They originated from several Turkish tribes and families, which in the second half of the fifteenth century followed Sultans Girei and Jani Bek in their flight from the tyranny of their rulers to the neighbourhood of Lake Balkash. They were soon joined by others, and rapidly became a flourishing community, known by their neighbours as Kazaks. The kernel of the race is evidently Turkish, and many of the tribes and families have the same names as Uzbek tribes in Khokand and Bukhara. Gaining more and more strength and importance, they soon numbered a million of men, with over 300,000 warriors, and in 1598, their khan, Tevvekel, conquered the cities and provinces of Tashkent and Türkistan, which were the seat of the Kirghiz dynasty till 1723.