THE ORIGIN OF THE BASHKORTS
The Bashkort1 nomadic tribe came from the area where the Turks lived. There, in the settlement of Garbale (Carbale), lived four brothers. They lived in peace and friendship, and they all could foretell the future. And one day a man came to the eldest brother in his dream, and he said to him, "Leave this place, you arc holy people, and you should find a better place for you to live in, so you go east to find a better lot." When morning came, the man told his brothers about his dream. "But where is this land and where shall we find a better lot?" they asked. And nobody could tell because nobody knew. When night came, the eldest brother had the same dream and the same man said to him again, " Leave this place and take your cattle away with you. As soon as you set out on your way you will see a wolf. The wolf will do you no harm. He will go his way, and you will follow in his steps. When the wolf stops, you will stop, too."
When morning came, they set out on their way and no sooner had they started when they saw a wolf, and they followed the wolf and went wherever it went. To the east they went, and they went long, and they came to a place, and the wolf stopped, and they stopped, too, that was where now the Kugarsen region of Bashkortostan is. The four brothers chose the land for them to live on, and thus they settled. The brothers had sons, and the sons chose the land for themselves, too. And thus they settled on seven plots of land, and they owned those seven plots of land, and they were called Bashkorts, as they came to that place following the wolve's leader, the bash kort.
1) It can be surmised that the legend reflects historical facts in a specific way. In historical research literature it is admitted that there are grounds to surmise that a part of the Bashkorts' ancestors lived by the Black Sea up to the Byzantian border {Kuzeyev, 1974. Pp. 150-151).
In a vanant of a legend recorded in Abyalil region is recounted that the Bashkort's ancestors came to the Urals from Araby under the leadership of a wolf. They were accompanied by Kazakhs. When they reached the Yayik (the Ural river), they threw lots, according to which the over - Yayik steppes went to the Kazakhs, while lands of plenty by the Ural went to the Bashkort's ancestors. So they settled but later the two peoples began to quarrel over good lands. Then the legend tells of later events: the appeal of the Bashkorts to the Russian Tsar with the request to decide the conflict, the construction of Cossack borderline.
The plot of Bashkort legends about a wolf - the leader and protector - have similar features with legendary narratives of other peoples. Thus, in legends of Oguz-kagan there are two kinds of motifs, connected with wolf; a blue wotf - a sacred animal, which marked the beginning of legendary Oguz, the forefather of Turkic peoples, and a wolf, which helped the kagan dtfwg an unsuccessful battle, showing him the way to saving.
