Qazaq

It was chiefly to protect the mining districts from the Qazaq nomads that a fortified frontier running in a semi-circle from Orenburg to Omsk and thence up the Irtysh, thus cutting off the Urals and the Altai from the steppe, came into existence.

In the spring of 1913 two Qazaq notables, Bay Muhammad Maykutov and Utash Jarasov, achieved the construction of the new mosque-and-madrasa complex in a modern Russian-style four-storey building.

The fortified lines of the Siberian and Orenburg Cossacks largely conform to the modern boundary between Kazakhstan and Russia; the role of the Kereys in resisting its advancement, and defending what is seen as both Qazaq land and the realm of Islam, is clearly evident in these Kerey sources.