Russia is |
Peoples of Russia
Bashkirs
Their self-designation is Bashkort. They are a Turkic people mostly living in the Republic of Bashkortostan.
Language
They speak the Bashkir language (the Kipchak-Bulgarian subgroup of the Kipchak group of the Turkic branch of the Altai linguistic family). The Bashkirs of the Western Bashkiria, Tatarstan, Sverdlovsk region and Perm territory speak a dialect that is close to the Tatar language. The Bashkirs can speak Russian.
Holidays
Sabantuy takes place on the eve of the spring sowing or before ploughing and hay harvest. During this holiday, a common feast was usually organized, for which a horse, a cow or a ram was specially butchered, and various competitions in strength and agility (sack races, tug-of-war, archery) were held.
Kargatuy is a holiday before the arrival of the rooks. On this day, people danced circle dances and treated each other to gruel and tea. Some of the food was left on the stones for the rooks.
Dwellings
The traditional dwelling of the Bashkirs is a yurt with a conic or round top. In the steppe zone, adobe and mud houses were also used. In the forest zone, the Bashkirs built log dwellings. Those were most often five-walled houses or bicameral houses connected by a common seni antechamber. Rich Bashkirs built cross houses or double-storey houses.
Food
Meat and dairy food predominates, in combination with cereal and ground corn products, wild herbs and honey. Popular dishes include horse meat or mutton broth, cured horse meat sausage, curd, korot cheese (dry cheese).
Occupations
Before the 17th century, the Bashkirs lived by semi-nomadic cattle breeding and hunting. Then they gradually switched to agriculture, which became the main occupation of the population of Bashkiria. Honey hunting, and then bee keeping also became widely spread. In the 18th-19th century, there was a Bashkir-Meshcheryak Host, an irregular military detachment of a type similar to Cossack hosts. The Bashkirs attached to it did frontier guard duty on the borders of Russia. Nomadic cattle breeding survived until the end of the 19th century in the south and east of the territory of the settlement of the Bashkirs, but by the beginning of the 20th century on these lands, too, the transfer to agriculture was completed. As for crafts, weaving, felt making, rug making, embroidery and leather working were popular.
