Central Eurasians

Nomad’s Art

Central Asia in the Middle Ages
Central Eurasia was the home of the Indo-Europeans, who expanded across Eurasia from sea to sea and established the foundations of what has become world civilization.
Central Asia in the Middle Ages was the economic, cultural, and intellectual center of the world, and Central Asians are responsible for essential elements of modern science, technology, and the arts.

Turkic khanates
In the 5th and 6th centuries a.d. , after successive invasions by the Altai Turks much of the population remained in the area, but came under the rule of the western Turkic khanates (formed from Turkic-speaking tribes from southern Kazakhstan and Semi­rech'e) and then under their successor, the Turgesh khanate, with its center at Shash, near present-day Tashkent.
Turkic khanates were complex and stratified societies consisting of aristocrats, urban traders, oasis farmers, pastoral nomads, and a professional warrior class sufficiently skilled to prevent the Arab armies from crossing the Syr Darya until A.D. 739

Turkic khanates and Silk Way
The steppe economy flourished under Karakhanid rule; the number of sedentary farmers increased
the system of irrigation was sufficiently advanced to allow for the cultivation of fruits and vegetables as well as grains.
Taraz, the Karakhanid capital, developed into a city of more than ten thousand people, and a number of new cities developed along the Syr Darya, including Otrar (the rebuilt Farab), Sygnak, and Suan.

Silk Way
In the 10-14th c.c. the cities situated in the territory of “Large Almaty” are drawn into the orbit of trade relations functioning on the highway of the Great Silk Way.
Almaty becomes one of commercial, trade and agricultural centers on the Great Silk Way having a mint. (This is testified by a finding dated by the 13th century of two silver dirhams on which the name of Almaty is mentioned for the first time)

Preconditions of nationhood
Preconditions of nationhood had been presented in Kazakhstan land under the Karakhanids and Karakitae by the 13 century AD because of:
a single language;
common economy;
shared way of life.

Silk Way and Mongol’s invasion
The Silk Road with its three variants is world’s oldest trading road. It is a 8000 km way leading up to Rome for example, from China. The Silk Road was an engine and a lung for the developing of all neighboring countries and cultures (Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, roman, mongol, central Asia etc). Along it flourished also the culture, and are situated some important cities, some of them lasting even today.
Controlling the Silk Road was vital for any growing empire, and many wars have been led with this wish.

Invasion of Chingis Khan Army
In 940 the Karluks lost a dynastic struggle to the Karakhanid family, who ruled the steppe for another two hundred years.
In 1130 the Kara-khanids were overthrown by the Karakitae, a Mongol people who invaded from the west.
The Karakitae ruled the steppe for nearly a century. In the first decade of the X111 century the Naimans and Kerei, Turkic tribes from the Altai, invaded the steppe and overthrew the gur (khan) of the Karakitae. They in turn were quickly defeated by the armies of Chingis Khan, which conquered Semirech'e in 1218.

SHENGIS KHAN EMPIRE

The end of Mongol rule
1395 A.D. marked the end of Mongol rule in Central Asia. The Golden Horde, Kok and White Hordes quickly broke up.
The first two decades of the XY century - the creation of two new confedera­tions of nomadic Turkish tribes in Central Asia, the Nogai Horde (a union of Kipchak tribes living between the Ural and Volga rivers) and the more impor­tant Uzbek khanate (1420), which controlled the steppe land from the head­waters of the Syr Darya river basin to the Aral Sea and north to the Irtysh River. It was in this period that the term Uzbek came into common use to designate the Turkish tribes that migrated over present-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Mongol conquest
The Mongol conquest (1219-1224) had a disruptive economic effect on the region, destroying the preconditions of nationhood that had been present under the Karakhanids and Karakitae
destroyed the Syr Darya River towns and trading posts of Sauran, Otrar, and Sygnak,
destroyed sedentary culture that had provided a basis for the unity of these tribes.
The Mongol rulers influenced language and culture