1804 - KYRGYZSTAN - SCARCE MAP - Russian Reconnaissance

Title: Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Kirgisenlandes und einiger Angränzenden Länder. Aus Russischen Berichten. [Contributions to the Knowledge of the Kyrgyz Country and Surrounding Regions. From Russian Reports.]

Weimar: Industrie-Comptoirs, 1804. 8vo. Text is in German. 30 pages, plus a large map which measures approximately 21.25 inches x 15 inches (29 cm x 38 cm). This is a complete monthly issue, containing the above mentioned account. Attractively bound booklet style in recent blue paper covers with label.

Drawing from contemporary Russian sources, this issue contains an account outlining geography and statistic pertinent for reconnaissance of Kyrgystan, and surrounding regions including the Kirghiz Steppe, Turkestan, Tashkent, and Alatau. Examines Turkic settlements of the Kazaks Great Horde, only 15 years prior to Russian invasion, as well as Kirgiz trade activity within the Chinese border. With a very scarce map of Kirgistan showing the Talas River, Lake Balkhash and the Tarbagatay Range. Few towns and placenames were known though here is shown Samarkand, which is now in Uzbekistan.

These are the original pages printed in 1804, and NOT a reprint. This narrative is from a rare multi-volume geographical and scientific journal titled "Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden", which issued fifty volumes from 1798-1816 and which encompassed critical contemporary topics of geography and astronomy. Adam Christian Gaspari and Franz Xaver von Zach were editors of this important scientific journal.

Present-day Kazaks became a recognizable group in the mid-fifteenth century, when clan leaders broke away from Abul Khayr, leader of the Uzbeks, to seek their own territory in the lands of Semirech'ye, between the Chu and Talas rivers in present-day southeastern Kazakstan. The first Kazak leader was Khan Kasym (r. 1511-23), who united the Kazak tribes into one people. In the sixteenth century, when the Nogai Horde and Siberian khanates broke up, clans from each jurisdiction joined the Kazaks. The Kazaks subsequently separated into three new hordes: the Great Horde, which controlled Semirech'ye and southern Kazakstan; the Middle Horde, which occupied north-central Kazakstan; and the Lesser Horde, which occupied western Kazakstan.

Russian traders and soldiers began to appear on the northwestern edge of Kazak territory in the seventeenth century, when Cossacks established the forts that later became the cities of Oral (Ural'sk) and Atyrau (Gur'yev). Russians were able to seize Kazak territory because the khanates were preoccupied by Kalmyk invaders of Mongol origin, who in the late sixteenth century had begun to move i nto Kazak territory from the east. Forced westward in what they call their Great Retreat, the Kazaks were increasingly caught between the Kalmyks and the Russians. In 1730 Abul Khayr, one of the khans of the Lesser Horde, sought Russian assistance. Although Abul Khayr's intent had been to form a temporary alliance against the stronger Kalmyks, the Russians gained permanent control of the Lesser Horde as a result of his decision. The Russians conquered the Middle Horde by 1798, but the Great Horde managed to remain independent until the 1820s, when the expanding Quqon (Kokand) Khanate to the south forced the Great Horde khans to choose Russian protection.