Bashkir

Бәләкәй шаһзат (Balakai Shahzat) — in The Bashkir.

Bashkir language (башҡорт теле) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. This language is co-official with Russian in the Republic of Bashkortostan, European Russia and has approximately 1.2 million speakers in Russia. Bashkir has three dialects: Southern, Eastern and Northwestern.

Speakers of Bashkir mostly live in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Many speakers also live in Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan Oblasts and other regions of Russia. Minor Bashkir groups also live in Kazakhstan and other countries.

After the adoption of Islam, which began in the 10th century and lasted for several centuries, the Bashkirs began to use Turki (a Chagatay Turkic language) as a written language. Turki was written in a variant of the Arabic script. In 1923, a writing system based on the Arabic script was specifically created for the Bashkir language. At the same time, the Bashkir literary language was created, moving away from the older written Turkic influences. At first, it used a modified Arabic alphabet. In 1930 it was replaced with the Unified Turkic Latin Alphabet, which was in turn replaced with an adapted Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.