Kara-Kalpaks

(Kara-Kalpaks, Qaraqalpaqs), a people; the principal population of the Kara-Kalpak ASSR. The total number of Kara-Kalpaks in the USSR is 236, 000 (1970, census). Of these, 218, 000 live in the Kara-Kalpak ASSR, and the remainder are in the Fergana and Khorezm oblasts of the Uzbek SSR, in the Turkmen SSR, and in small groups in the Kazakh SSR. Several thousand Kara-Kalpaks live in Afghanistan. They speak the Kara-Kalpak language, and those who profess a religion are Muslims.

The presence of two racial layers has been established in the Kara-Kalpak anthropological type: the Caucasoid race, connected with the local steppe population from the Bronze Age and classical times, and the Mongoloid race, connected with the steppe tribes who arrived later. Some of the Kara-Kalpaks’ most ancient forefathers were the Saka-Massagetae tribes, who lived in the seventh to the second century B.C. on the southern shores of the Aral Sea. From the end of the second century A.D. to the fourth century A.D., the Huns swept into the Aral steppes from the east and partially merged with the native tribes; then in the sixth to the eighth century, the Turks did the same. By this time, the early medieval peoples of the Aral region, the Pechenegs (Petchenegs) and the Oghuz, had arisen; in their midst, the formation of the Kara-Kalpaks begain in the eighth century to the tenth. In the early tenth century, some of the Pechenegs migrated westward to the southern Russian steppes; the tribes that settled in Kievan Rus’ were called chernye klobuki (black hoods) in the Russian chronicles (from the Turkic karakalpak, “black cap”). The eastern Pechenegs, who had remained between the Volga and the Ural rivers, gradually merged with and took the language of the Kipchaks, who had arrived from the basin of the Irtysh River. There is evidence in the sources of the tribe of the Kara-Borkli—an ethnological appellation identical to the name Kara-Kalpak—that it was part of the Kipchak tribal union. In the 14th to the 15th century, the Kara-Kalpaks’ relations with the Nogai exerted a substantial influence on their ethnogenesis.

In the late 16th century, the Kara-Kalpaks already figured in Middle Asian sources under their modern name. They led a semisettled way of life, combining irrigated agriculture with stock breeding (particularly cattle) and fishing. In the 19th and early 20th century, their social structure was feudal with significant survivals of patriarchal relations and some elements of capitalistic relations. The tribal and clan structure and remnants of patrimonial relationships in economic, community, and family life were preserved. Centuries-old links with the peoples of Eastern Europe, the Cisurals, and Middle Asia can be traced in the culture of the Kara-Kalpaks. With the rise of the Soviet system, the Kara-Kalpaks adopted the path of noncapitalistic development, created their own state system, and formed themselves into a socialist nation.