Military and Political Rivalry of Shibanids and Kazakh Khans in the Syr Darya Region: Processes of Ethnic Demarcation in Central Asia in the 15th –16th Centuries

The history of the Shibanid dynasty is directly related to the history of medieval states – the Deshti-Kipchak, the Crimean Khanate and Astrakhan (Hajji-Tarkhan). A representative of the Shibanid dynasty, Muhammad Shahbakht (1451–1510) is a descendant of Shiban, son of Juchi, grandson of Genghis Khan. He is known in history as Shaibak, Shaybani Khan, Shahibek, Shah Bakht (“The Happy Sovereign”). The description of his life and activities is supported by a wide range of sources, but the circumstances, motives and results of some of his actions during his most active rivalry with the Kazakh Khans in the Syr Darya region at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries remain incompletely elucidated. This period is crucial in the final split of the state established earlier by Abu’l Khair Khan. From this point of view, the existing sources warrant closer attention and additional interpretations. Muhammad Shahbakht had to confront the Kazakh sultans Buryndyk and Kasym in the battles for Turkestan, Sygnak, Sauran and Suzak. Both sources and contemporary publications primarily emphasise Sheibani Khan’s military and diplomatic talent, his desire to retain or regain his ancestral lands, where many Shibanid representatives, including his grandfather Khan Abulkhair, were buried, in an effort to revive the state of nomadic Uzbeks. This is confirmed by the fact that it was on Shahbakht’s personal order that Abu’l Khair’s mausoleum was built in Sygnak and other memorial sites, which he visited repeatedly. Furthermore, the reconstruction of historical events in the Syr Darya region at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries is also significant in terms of refining the ideas about the ethnogenesis of Uzbeks and Kazakhs in the early period of formation of their identity, the blurred ethnicity of “Deshti-Уipchak nomads”, “the descendants of Juchi”. Having eventually ceded the region to the Kazakh khans, Muhammad Shahbakht led his supporters away from the territory of Deshti-Kipchak and Turkestan towards Samarkand and Bukhara. This nomadic movement was the key historical event that confirmed the final disintegration of the Abu’l Khair Khanate and the further formation of new ethnic communities – the Kazakhs and Uzbeks, as well as the independent Uzbek and Kazakh Khanates.