An important distinguishing feature of rivers is the presence of forest and other vegetation on their banks. Along with the Russian Elshanks (elkha – alder) in the upper part of the Ural basin there are Zerikla and Irikla (from it the Iriklinskoe reservoir), which in translation from Bashkir means “alder”. We recognize the nature of woody plants by the names Terekla – poplar, Usakla – aspen, Muyuldy, Moyldy – bird cherry, Kaindy – birch. The names of the bushes are reflected in the hydronyms of Karagasht, Karaganda (chilizhnaya), Taldy, Chilik, Shilikty – willow, talnik, Shieli – cherry. Grassy steppe and near-water vegetation can be traced by the names Chiyli or Chiybulak – a spring, a stream with Chiya thickets, Kinderlaya – hemp, Shagyrly (from “chagyr”) – wormwood, Bidaik – wheatgrass, Kugala – rogozovaya, Miyalyov – sedge or by the name of the kurai plant, etc. The names of some reservoirs are associated with the animal world. Among them Ayuly – bear, Burlyuk – wolf, Donguz – boar, Koyandy – hare, Tanalyk – veal, Chebenka, Chibenda – midge, mosquito, Oysylkara – camel, Conduz la, Kondurcha – beaver. Many names have two to three reasonable explanations. For example, Ilek can be translated as “windy, steppe” and “wild goat”, Chagan (Shagan) as “white, clean”, “maple” and “river with whirlpools”. The names of reservoirs with the word sirs are ambiguous – Sarybulak, Sarysu. “Sary” can mean “yellow”, “wide”, “main”, “clear”, “spacious”, etc.
Researchers suggest that the toponym Sakmar is of Iranian origin, that is, belongs to the Savromato-Sarmatian tribes. In this regard, a close toponym Samara gives a hint – the left-bank tributary of the Volga, the upper reaches of which are 40 km from the confluence of the Urals and Sakmara. There are rivers with the name Samara in the basins of the Don and Dnieper, as well as on the border of steppe and forest-steppe landscapes. Of the many versions about the origin of the toponym Sakmar, there is also one: translated from Iranian languages, it means “sheep river” (“shu” – “sheep”, “mara” – “big river”). Apparently, during seasonal migrations from south to north, on the banks of these rivers herds of nomad sheep were concentrated. Here they found wonderful pastures and watering places, good conditions for lambing sheep and raising young animals. By analogy with the “sheep rivers” were called “veal” – Tanalyk, “bull” – Buzuluk, etc. From the language of the Turkic-speaking Khazar tribe, the word that served as the name of the fortress – Sarkel on the Don, on the site of the modern Tsimlyansk reservoir, was preserved in 965 by Prince Svyatoslav and became the Russian fortress of Belaya Vezha. Gumilev L.N. translates this word as “white house” (Gumilyov L. N. From Russia to Russia). This beautiful fortress was designed and built by Byzantine architects, among other things, from red burnt brick.
The ethnonym Türks (Turks) from “teryuk” is a man. During the tribal system, all tribes called their fellow tribesmen people, but all the rest – just some kind of living creatures.
The ethnic basis of the Tatars of the Middle Volga and Ural regions was composed of Turkic-speaking tribes that penetrated into the Middle Volga and Prikamye from the second half of the first millennium AD. The Volga-Kama Bulgars, together with the Turks and Finno-Ugrians, created the state of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria at the beginning of the 10th century. The main ethnic component in it was the Turkic-speaking peoples. Volga Bulgaria used all the benefits of its geographical location for trade with Europe and Asia. The trade route between the Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus totaled 60 days. As a result of the Mongol conquest in the 30s of the XIII century, the Volga Bulgaria lost its state independence and soon became part of the Golden Horde. Historians say that in the XV century the Tatar Khanates arose on the dismembered territory of the Golden Horde: Kazan, Kasimov, Crimean, Siberian, Astrakhan and Nogai Horde. The Nogais lived in the Orenburg steppes.
There is a version that the name of the city of Kiev goes back to the ancient Turkic “kuyavia” and means “hare”, this word with the same meaning is preserved in the Chuvash language, which is considered one of the ancient archaic Turkic languages. The fortified city of Orenburg was founded on the current site on April 19 (30), 1743. This was the third bookmark of the fortress with the name Orenburg. Originally, the fortress with this name was founded on the site of the modern city of Orsk in 1735, where the river Or (in Türkic “duck river”) flows into the Yaik river (in Türkic “wide riverbed” or “wide spreading”). After the Pugachev revolt in 1775, the river was renamed the Urals (it goes back to the Turkic name of the Southern Urals – Araltov or Oraltov Hill and means “island” or “interfluve”). Then Orenburg was moved in 1741 to the place where the village of Krasnogor of the Saraktash district is now located. And, finally, for the third time Orenburg was founded at the confluence of the Sakmara River in Yaik (Ural). However, there was already the Byrd fortress (located in the area of modern Ivanovsky Lane), which was transferred to the left bank of Sakmara (translated from Iranian languages as “sheep river”, the legacy of the Sarmatian-Savromat tribes that roamed here in ancient times), now it is part of the city – Byrds. The name is most likely connected with the old Slavic word “bird” – “weaving ridge”, apparently, initially the landscape of Orenburg alternated with small hills and lowlands, which resembled a weaving ridge.
Many scholars considered the Huns a model of “pure” nomads. But new archaeological materials and a careful study of Han (Chinese) written sources showed that not only the Huns, but also their ancestors built fortified cities. After the Hunish state split, it was the Western Huns under the pressure of the Eastern, that is, the ancestors of the Mongols, in the II century BC. e. moved west with their religion and after mixing with the Scythian tribes (female Amazonian priestly communities, the Amazonian from the Greek “breastless”, removed one woman’s breast so that she could better fight and kill the enemy, only after that she could get married) and the Ugrian population in the second half of the 4th century became known in European historiography as the Huns. Following them, during another great migration of peoples in the early Middle Ages, various peoples descended from the same regions from the crossbreeding of Indo-Europeans, Indo-Iranians, Iranians with local Finnish tribes: Kipchaks (Polovtsy) from Altai and a conglomerate of other ethnic groups named in the VI century the Chinese “tyukyu”, and the Europeans – “Turki”. For many millennia, nomadic life has proven to be the most stable. He provided tremendous military advantages. The nomadic world must be seen as something fluid. Unlike settled peoples, the nomadic people could easily get away from the blow of the enemy army. For nomads, it’s just their way of life. For the enemy army, moving across the steppe without settlements and the availability of agriculture is a problem. The nomadic world, based entirely on the principle of nomadism, is adapted to overcome land spaces. Of course, there were clashes between sedentary and nomadic peoples, which was reflected in the Bible in the conflict between Abel and Cain. Nomads could not exist without a settled population, they needed clothes, weapons, and these are the results of the labor of farmers and artisans, that is, a settled population.
At the first alarm, the nomads threw everything, and women, children and the elderly were taken in wagons, later they tried to leave them protected by reliable fortifications, if possible. Such a way of life was preserved among the peoples of the southern Russian steppes, who led a nomadic and semi-nomadic way of life, and after a thousand years, of which Batu organized detachments along the border strips to protect the borders. They were called the Turkic word “Cossack.” One of the first references to the term “Cossack” in Muslim written sources is found in an anonymous Turkic-Arabic dictionary, probably compiled in Egypt, known from the manuscript of 1245 with the meaning “homeless”, “homeless”, “wanderer”, “exile”. It is known that until Catherine II, correspondence with the Cossacks was conducted in Turkic (Tatar), that is, in their official language, as evidenced by letters preserved in the archives.
The word “Cossack” existed in the Russian language for a long time and was a borrowing