Playing asyk. Dudin S. M. Kazakhs. Kazakhstan. 1899/Wikimedia Commons
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, a great wave of awakening surged through Kazakh intellectuals, sparking a passionate quest for knowledge. This outpouring of intellectual zeal led to an explosion of new magazines and newspapers being published in Kazakh, heralding the dawn of a new era in sharing culture. However, what these intellectuals wrote went beyond only spreading knowledge. Soon, a variety of publications emerged, covering topics like business, society, politics, art, and humor. Qalam invites you to explore snippets from Kazakh publishing culture and history, offering a glimpse into the important issues of the past.
The game of asyqi
An asyq is the ankle bone of a sheep or other small livestock. Asyqs are specially boiled, dried, and often painted for the gamehas an ancient history and hundreds of variations. Medieval Mongolian chronicles mention that Chinggis Khan used to play the ankle bone game with his blood brother Jamukha. In one of the most common versions, asyq atu, or throwing the ankle bone, the bones are arranged in a row, and the player throws a striker (or saqa) from a few meters away to knock other asyqs out of the circle.
Monuments to the game are erected across Eurasia, and it is part of the official program of the World Nomad Games. The striker in this game is especially valuable, so it was sometimes weighted with lead. In well-to-do families, it could even be made of precious metals. A somewhat tragic story about how a Kazakh man found a ‘golden’ asyq is told by the Kirgizskaia stepnaia gazeta in issue No. 49 from 1894, in its regular column titled ‘News from the Steppe’.
News from the Steppe.
Bayanaul
Recently, in the month of May, Amre, the son of Baigoja Kutmukhinov, a Kyrgyz man from the Aqbettau Volost in the Pavlodar Uezd, found a golden ankle bone (asyq) while playing with other children. The bone was slightly larger than that of a sheep and slightly smaller than that of a wild mountain sheep, an argali. Amre brought the find home, much to the delight of his parents, who believed it to be made of gold. The bone weighed 100 zolotniks.iabout 400 gramsIt was valued at 800 rubles, at 8 rubles per zolotnik. To sell the bone, Baijan, the boy's father, went to Pavlodar, where he offered the find to Sorokin, the son of a Pavlodar merchant. After carefully examining and weighing it, Sorokin declared that the bone was not made of gold, but of copper, and therefore he did not wish to buy it. The disappointed Kyrgyz man returned home, still unsure whether Sorokin was right. Nevertheless, he keeps the bone with him. What was it after all? The elders say that, indeed, in ancient times, the children of khans had bones cast from silver and gold, as often recorded in folklore tradition.
Kirghiz Steppe Newspaper/from open sources
The Kirgizskaia Stepnaia Gazeta (In Kazakh, Dala Uälaiatynyñ Gazetі) was a special supplement to the Akmolinsk (1888–1905), Semipalatinsk (1894–1905), and Semirechensk (1894–1901) regional gazettes. It was published in Omsk in Russian with additional content in Kazakh.