Sergei Pavlovitch Tolstov, the founder and head of the Khorezm Archaeological-Ethnographical Expedition.
The 18th century Karakalpak irrigation network on the Jana Darya was investigated by members of that Expedition
under the leadership of B. V. Andrianov and Ya. G. Gulymov. Photo courtesy of the Regional Studies Museum, No'kis.

Karakalpak history is a contentious subject. The formation of the Soviet Socialist Republics along ethnic lines in 1924 and 1925 inevitably led to a drive to construct a history for each of the newly formed ethnic groups, applying the new Marxist pseudo-science of ethnography. Roughly summarised, this “history” traces the origin of the Karakalpaks back to the cattle-breeding Apasiak marsh dwellers, part of the Saka-Massagetae, who occupied the shores of the Aral Sea in the early part of the 1st millennium BC. Following centuries of intermixing with immigrant Huns and Turks from the east they emerged as the Pechenegs in the 7th century, still breeding cattle in the Aral marshes. Many were forced westwards by the arrival of the Oghuz, but others – the eastern Pechenegs – remained in the Aral region. It was they who would eventually form the basis of the new Karakalpak nation. Some were pushed into the Ukraine following the arrival of the Qipchaks in the 11th century, whilst others fled west as a result of the Mongol invasion of Khorezm in 1221. The Karakalpak confederation was supposedly completed within the eastern part of the Nogay Horde during the 15th century, in the region of the Crimea. The Karakalpaks began to return eastwards in the mid-16th century following the Nogay civil war, first to the Syr Darya and later into the Amu Darya delta - their original “motherland”.

In essence this remains the official history of the Karakalpaks today, expounded by local ethnographers and taught in schools and colleges. Yet crucial parts are fatally flawed or have no archaeological or historical foundation. The link with the Crimea is based solely on tribal legends, which might have been introduced after the formation of the Karakalpaks by small groups of immigrant Nogay. This is not history but wishful thinking, constructed to legitimise Karakalpak beliefs in an ancient origin within their present homeland - beliefs that have become even more important following Uzbek independence.

In reality, the original Saka population of the Aral region was transformed beyond recognition by waves of foreign immigrants: Sarmatians from the trans-Urals, Huns from the Altai, and the first Turks in the 6th and 7th centuries AD. It was the Oghuz not the Pechenegs who settled in the Aral region. The Pechenegs came from the middle Syr Darya, and whilst they were displaced westwards by the Oghuz in the 9th century, they moved swiftly through the Aral region towards the lower Volga and beyond. Some were absorbed within the unique Kerder culture of the Amu Darya delta, but were dispersed following the eventual drying out of the Kerder oasis. The arrival of Qipchak immigrants from Siberia caused a further wave of westward migration. Many Qipchaks settled but others continued migrating into southern Russia, the Ukraine and even Hungary. The Chernye Klobuki or Black Hats who were recruited as frontier guards by the Kievan Rus from itinerant Pechenegs, Oghuz and many other tribes are often mistakenly cited as the ancestors of the Karakalpaks, despite the fact that many became settled agriculturalists and adopted Christianity.

At the time of the Mongol invasion, all of the nomads throughout Khorezm were referred to as Qipchaks despite their multi-racial origins. Although Khorezm was temporarily devastated, it was quickly rebuilt into a thriving Golden Horde trading centre. It was Timur not Chinggis Khan who destroyed Khorezm for good, demolishing its irrigation system and plunging the northern Amu Darya delta into a 200-year-long ecological crisis. Its nomadic population was forced to leave – not to the Ukraine but more locally to the Sarykamysh Lake and the lower Syr Darya.

Timur’s subsequent defeat of the Golden Horde in 1395 left a mêlée of different tribes and confederations between the Black Sea and the middle Syr Darya, including the Nogay Horde to the west and the Shaybani (Uzbek) Horde centred in south-western Siberia. During the 15th century many nomads began migrating eastwards into the Syr Darya valley. These were not Nogay from the Ukraine but nomads from Siberia, led by the early Uzbek Khan, Abul Khayr. Devastating attacks by Dzhungars, Uighur tribes from the east, led to a tribal division along the Syr Darya in the 1460’s and the emergence of separate Kazakh and Uzbek confederations.

Until recently, the earliest historical mention of the Karakalpaks was more than one century later - in 1598, at Signaq in the middle Syr Darya. Although the datings are still only tentative, some very recent and important archaeological excavations of early Karakalpak burial sites suggest that the Karakalpaks were not only at Signaq at this time but also at many downstream locations, stretching along the old Jana Darya channel as far as the Krantau burial site, close to No'kis in the Amu Darya delta. It seems that just like their Uzbek and Kazakh cousins, the Karakalpaks emerged as a separate tribal confederation at some location along the lower Syr Darya – possibly the Jana Darya – at some time in the 15th or early 16th century, and by the late 16th century had spread along a considerable stretch of the river.

The Amu Darya changed its direction again in the last quarter of the 16th century, flowing northwards back into the Aral Sea and creating an island of virgin marshlands known as Aral. Nomadic Qon'ırat and Man'g'ıt Uzbeks were the first to enter this empty region in 1620. The majority of Karakalpaks remained settled along the upper Jana Darya and the Syr Darya until the 1720’s when they and their Kazakh neighbours came under further attack from the Dzhungars. Some Karakalpaks fled into the Ferghana Valley but the majority moved downstream into the lower Jana Darya. Constant harassment by Kazakhs from the Lesser Horde eventually forced them into the “badlands” of the Amu Darya delta, where they lived and mixed with the Aral Uzbeks. They were finally subjugated and settled by the ruthless Khan of Khiva, Muhammad Rakhim Khan, in 1812.

The life of the Karakalpaks during the 19th century was a tough one - living in yurts in the mosquito and disease-ridden lands of the delta; subject to the whims of the Amu Darya; building irrigation ditches by hand to water their crops; unfairly taxed by Khiva; their lives and livestock vulnerable to raids by local Yomud tribesmen during the bitter winters. The majority lived in abject poverty, only their tribal and religious leaders being wealthy enough to maintain a semblance of their traditional material culture. Their plight was not greatly alleviated by the Russian conquest in 1873, although the Russians did improve security and stimulated trade and agricultural growth. It was the Soviets who eliminated their corrupt leaders and radically improved their standard of living. Collectivisation of the Karakalpaks (but not the Turkmen) went relatively smoothly in Khorezm, removing the hated landlords and expanding the cultivation of cotton, or “white gold”, a profitable crop that gave Karakalpaks their first taste of prosperity.

The 1920’s saw a flowering of Karakalpak textile art. The majority of the population still lived in yurts although single storey adobe homes or tams were becoming increasingly popular. Even so, the yurt was retained for use in the hot summers as it continues to be up to the present day in the more remote areas. The construction of yurts and the weaving of traditional tent bands continued under the Soviets but at an ever decreasing pace, especially after the Great Patriotic War.

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