MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Kazakhstan

ONE LAND · 4 ATLASES

Kazakhstan, on the map of history

What was Kazakhstan before it was Kazakhstan? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

The Qipchaq steppe (mod. Kazakhstan) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

The Qipchaq steppe — the corridor itself. Its Cuman-Qipchaq confederations were broken by the Great Raid and absorbed wholesale after 1236: the Golden Horde’s armies, language and successor peoples are substantially Qipchaq. The steppe did not so much fall to the Mongols as merge with them — and its boys, sold to Cairo, became the Mamluks who stopped their conquerors.

OPEN THE MONGOL EMPIRE ON THE LIVING MAP →

Russian Turkestan (mod. Kazakhstan) · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

The Kazakh steppe saw its own national movement (Alash Orda) caught between Reds and Whites, and was drawn into Soviet Turkestan by 1920. Shown here as part of Russian Turkestan, its nomadic society would be shattered by the famines of Soviet collectivization a decade later.

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Kazakhstan · The Great War, 1914–1918

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

Kazakhstan · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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