Kirghiz, or KIRGHIZ-KAZAKS, a people spread over the immense territory bounded by the Volga, the Irtish, Chinese Turkestan, Ala-tau Mountains, the Syr-Daria, and Aral and Caspian Seas. A few tribes of Kalmucks also live within these boundaries. Over this vast tract reigns a dismal monotony; the country has scarcely any important elevation or depression, excepting the Mogudjar Mountain in the north-west; no river of consequence runs through it, no great forest breaks the uniformity of the scene; it is a vast steppe, containing 850,000 square miles, sterile, stony, and streamless, and covered with rank herbage of five feet high. It abounds in lakes and marshes, the water of which is generally brackish and unfit for use, and in the southern portion lies the Kara-Kum, an extensive salt desert.—The Kirghiz are a Turkish race, and speak a separate dialect of the eastern Turkish. They have from time immemorial been divided into the Great, Middle, and Little Hordes. The first of these wanders in the south-west portion of the Russian steppe, partly in the Russian possessions north of the Ala-tau and Khokand, and partly in the territory of China. They are subject to the rulers within whose bounds they dwell. The Middle Horde possesses the territory (called the country of the Siberian Kirghizes) between the Ishim, Irtish, Lake Balkhash, Khokand, and the territory of the Little Horde; and also a great portion of the Russian province of Semipalatinsk. Russia has gradually absorbed them, the result being finally achieved by the victory over Khiva in 1873, and the formation of the new province of Amu-Daria. The Little Horde (now more numerous than the other two together) ranges over the country bounded by the Ural, Tobol, the Siberian Kirghiz, and Turkestan. Like the Middle Horde, they are claimed as subjects of the czar, though partly independent. This horde is partly agricultural, partly nomad. A small offshoot of the Little Horde has, since 1801, wandered between the Volga and the Ural River, and used to be under the rule of the governor of Astrakhan.
The total number of the Kirghiz-Kazaks amounts to 2,500,000—a smaller number than in former times when unchecked and uncontrolled they moved from one end of central Asia to the other. The Kirghiz are noted for their unbounded love of adventure, wit, and poetical disposition. As nomads they have retained most of the characteristics of their race, they still cling to their ancient habits and customs, and Islam has never taken a firm hold on them. Since the suppression of baranta ('forays') they have lost their warlike spirit, although they still abhor sedentary life and cannot be persuaded to settle and live by agriculture. Russian schools in the steppes have hitherto vainly striven to transform these inveterate nomads.