Kazakh Khanate

The Kazakh Khanate was a Turkic nomadic state of the Eurasian steppe, traditionally founded around 1465 when the sultans Janibek and Kerei broke away from the Uzbek Khanate of Abu'l-Khayr and gathered nomadic clans in the Zhetysu region.

It reached the height of its power and consolidation under Kasym Khan, son of Janibek, who reigned from about 1511 to 1521. Through a combination of military campaigns and diplomacy, Kasym extended the khanate's control from the Ural (Zhaiyq) River in the west to the foothills of the Altai Mountains in the east, and secured the Syr Darya trade cities of Turkestan, Sygnak, Sauran and Otrar to the south, raising the population under his authority to roughly one million people and fielding one of the strongest cavalry forces in Central Asia. He defeated the rival Nogai Horde, capturing its capital Saray-Juk around 1520, and is credited with promulgating one of the earliest Kazakh legal codes, traditionally known as the 'Bright Road of Kasym Khan,' which regulated trade, military service and inter-clan disputes. The khanate gained diplomatic recognition in the wider Eurasian arena, including early contact with the Tsardom of Russia. After Kasym's death the state fragmented and recovered repeatedly, eventually dividing into three jüzes (hordes); it was gradually absorbed by the Russian Empire through the 18th and 19th centuries, with the khanate formally abolished in the 1820s and the last restorationist resistance under Kenesary Khan ending in 1847.