The importance of Ulytau for Kazakh people
As is known, everyone associates in his consciousness abstract concepts of motherland. Such ancestors’ home for all Kazakhs is the Ulytau mountains.
As is known, everyone associates in his consciousness abstract concepts of motherland, the land of ancestors with a concrete notion of the centre about which the rest of the world circles and to which all elements of national culture, customs and traditions of his own people do back. Such ancestors’ home for all Kazakhs is the Ulytau mountains.
In translation from Kazakh the word ‘Ulytau’ means ‘the Great mountains’. But they owe their greatness to the significance and greatness of those historical processes that took place in this region and led to the unification of all Kazakh tribes rather than to their height and size.
The Ulytau region can rightfully lay claim to any of the epithets so liberally endowed to it in recent years by scientists, journalists and with ever increasing attention investigate this “historical centre”, the true “cradle of the Kazakh people”, one of “the Kazakh people”, one of “the epicentres of nomadic culture and steppe civilization”.
The Ulytau area is a region of grey antiquity. Even a cursory enumeration of the memorials can strike one by their antiquity and diversity. Numerous Paleolithic and neolithic encampments in a literal sense strewn all over this region, hundreds of thousand tools of primitive people can be encountered around every spring and on every meadow as if adding to the proof that it was since antiquity indeed that these lands attracted our ancestors by their beauty anl fertility.
One is struck by the scale of one of the greatest in
Among the striking rarities of the Ulytau region are the so called mounds “ with moustaches”. Their mystery has not yet been solved. They may well be taken for a sort of the grave structure or an ancient observatory or a kind of the ritual complex or the first, the second and the third taken together. The “moustaches” of such memorials are as a rule eastward-directed, but some memorials well preserved in this region strike one by the variety of their directions, forms and quantity.
Striking by their greatness and beauty are also the mounds of the Huns epoch rising above the flat places of this picturesque area. Here, in these places you can also come upon the traces of the culture of ancient Turks, oquzo – kipchaks. Well preserved in the Arganaty and Kishitau mountains as well as in the Tleugabyl and Korgantas areas are the Turkic funeral enclosures with stone sculptures.
The scope of mining and metallurgical activities of the ancient residents of the Ulytau region still surprises the scientific world. Numerous mines and careers, metallurgical furnaces and molds indicate that local tribes exported copper, tin and gold to
One of the curiosities of the original culture of the Ulutay region is the entire galleries of cliff drawings reflecting the world outlook of ancient artists. Scenes of ordinary life, hunting, wonderful animal kingdom are engraved by the chisel of the first artists on the granite cliffs of Terekty-aulie, Zyngyrtas, Arhanaty along the banks of the Baykonyr, Tamdy, Zhangabyl, Zhetukyz rivers. In Middle ages this region whose territory was divided amond big tribal unions of kipchaks, kimaks, great oguzes was called Dehst-I-Kipchak (in translation fromArabic –‘the land of kipchaks’). The Ulytau region was never in the possession of any one kin of tribe. These rich lands favourite places of the khans of nomadic tribes, were regarded as a sacred and forbidded corner.
It is no mere chance that Shingizhan’s eldest son zhoshykhan established here his general headquarters. It is from this plact that the subjugator of
It was in the XIV century that the mazar was erected over the grave of Alasakhan, one of the founders of Turkic tribes who lived presumably in the VII-VIII centuries. One of the tops of the Ulutau mountains is the place where lie the remains of the great general, politician and orator, emir of Golden Horde Ediqe whose legendary name is mentioned in heroic legends and eposes of the people of Altai, the Urals. The
Memories of his stay in the Ulutau mountains were left by allpowerful Tamerlan on the stone plate on the Altyn-shoky mountain. Fantastic granite cliffs of the Ulutau mountains remember khan of Bukhara Abdallakh and
The Ulutau region is a geographical centre of
A the time of “all national disaster” (“aktaban shubyryndy”) the Ulutau region became famous for the fact that on its southeast outskirts the united forces of all Kazakh tribes dealt their first blow to zhungars. Since that time this region has been called Kalmakkyrgan which means ‘the place where zhungars were defeated’. And in the years of the tsarist colonial policy the great and indocile Ulutau region remained the centre of resistance and independence as can be evidenced by the armed revolts headed by Kenesary in the of the XIX century and by Amangeldy Imanov in 1916-1917.
The convenient geograhical position of the Ulutau area can also be confirmed by the fact that one of the main Saryarka branches of the Great Silk Road from Central Asia to Siberia ran across the Ulutau region and was called the “sarysu” or “copper” way as evidenced by the tens of caravanserals, fortified settlements , feudal palaces, sentrytowels situated along the caravan routes. The fortified settlements were centres of urban culture, handicraft and trade as revealed in the course of archaeological investigations of the sites of such ancient tovns as Basksmyr, Zhoshyhorde, Ayakkamyr, Horde-bazar. The scientists are of the opinion than this trade route had been in operation well before that of the Great Silk Road and persisted up to the 1930-s of this century which undoubtedly affected the development of culture in this region.
But the nature has itself endowed this region with countless riches outlined long before by Firdousi in his poem-epos “Shakhname”. Unique landscapes of the Ulutau area are depicted by the Arabic traveler of the VI century al-ld… in his itinenary notes. Mention is made of the Ulutau mountains in the Kazakh tale “Er-Tostic”. As is known, the “philosopher of the steppe” Asan Kaygy visited many corners of Saryarka to find the best lands for his people and stopped his search here, in the Ulutau mountains. Academician Kanysh Satpaev called the Ulutau steppe the pearl of
Though the Ulutau region with its relief and aspen and birch groves does remind one of the health resort places of Kokshetau, Bayanaul, Karakaraly it is primarily the historical centre of Kazakhstan, and it is no mere chance that during the World Kurultay of Kazakhs the participants of this forum wished first of all to visit this sacred national place of the Kazakh people. At the same time President of Kazakhstan N.A.Nazarbayev participated here in the establishment of the memorial sign in commemoration of the historical role of the Ulutau region in the making of the Kazakh statehood.
The Ulutau area is really a geograhical phenomenon. Like a small island surrounded by steppe and desert it provides for travelers the cool of its springs and the shade of its asps and birches. Not without reason the region is called ‘the land of lakes’. Every spring lakes Barakkol, Koskol, Ashikol, Kurkol attract the feathered from
With a view to preserving unique historical and archaeological memorials and rare natural components in 1992 here was established a natural and historical museum-reservation.
Today the region that absorbed a three thousand-years-old spirit of the nomads and their legends, the region sung by the poets and charming people up to these days is still wrapped in a shroud of mystery.
Bakhtiar Koznakhmetov
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