Bashkirs as Shown by Records of Al-Mas''udi (X Century): Historical and Archeological Discourse
There are two surviving works (about 896-956) by the Arab scientist al-Mas'udi that provide us with historical and geographical information: 1) Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawhar (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems), written in 943-947 and processed in 956; 2) Kitab at-Tanbih wa-l-'Ishraf (The Book of Admonition and Revision), written in 956. In Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawhar al-Mas'udi writes that the Itil (Volga) river begins in the country of the Turks which is named the country of the Bashkirs in the work by Al-Idrisi (1154 year). It means the Belaya river which the Arab geographers considered the beginning of the Itil river. Such localization of the Bashkirs is confirmed by the mounds of the South Ural of IX-X centuries with the signs of the Oguz-Pecheneg burial rite. Al-Mas'udi puts the Bashkirs together with the Pechenegs to the Black Sea in Muruj adh-dhahab. In Kitab at-Tanbih al-Mas'udi writes that the Pechenegs and the Bashkirs moved westward from the Aral Sea defeated by the Ghuzz, Kimek and Karluk tribes. At the turn of the IX and X centuries this part of the Pechenegs and the Bashkirs reached the Black Sea, the other part of them remained around the Volga. The Pechenegs of the Zavolzhye obeyed of the Ghuzz, and the Bashkirs went to the Southern Ural, marking the beginning of the country of the Bashkirs. The commonality of origin of the Pechenegs and the Bashkirs noted by al-Mas'udi refutes the Ugrian theory of the Bashkirs origin.