MUSEUMS AND RESERVES

Otrar is not just the ruins of an ancient city. It is a symbol of the flourishing and power of the Great Steppe. The brightest philosopher and writer Abu Nasir Al-Farabi, who is called the "second Aristotle", comes from here.

The Saraishyk State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve is located 50 km from the city of Atyrau and consists of the Saraishyk visitor center, the Saraishyk Ethnographic Museum, the Pantheon of Khans memorial monument and the ruins of buildings and fortifications of the ancient city of Saraishyk.

There are several thousand rock paintings in the Tanbaly Museum, grouped into seven groups. Here you can see running bulls, argali and deer, many warriors and hunters with weapons in their hands, shamans, scenes of rituals and sacrifices. The central petroglyph is an image of the so-called "Sun-headed Deity".

The oldest archaeological traces on the territory of Taraz date back to the time of the Saks and Usuns, who established their first settlements here approximately in the IV-V centuries BC – this is almost 2.5 thousand years ago. A couple of centuries later, Han Xiongnu Zhizhi established his capital here. 500 years later, in 400 AD, the city was first mentioned in Greek sources as Tholos.

The Ulytau National Historical, Cultural and Natural Reserve-Museum contains such sacred monuments as the mausoleums of Alashakhan and Zhoshykhan, the graves of Edyge and Tokhtamysh, the mysterious Dombauyl sanctuary, the place of power of Terekty Aulie, many complexes of spectacular rock carvings, some of the world's oldest metal smelting furnaces and other monuments of all historical eras..

The personality of Abai occupies a special place in the history of the Kazakh people. A great thinker, composer, poet and writer, the founder of Kazakh classical literature. Abai Kunanbayuly is the Alpha and Omega of the Kazakh national culture.

Berel is an outstanding monument of the Kazakh part of Altai. The necropolis of the supreme leaders of the nomads is located 7 km from the village of Berel in the Katon-Karagay district of the East Kazakhstan region and consists of more than 70 burial and memorial structures of various sizes.

Nomads first settled here in the 7th-8th centuries. These were the ancient Turks who founded the fortified city of Bozok - a unique place in terms of economic development, military-strategic bridgehead and control over caravan routes on the Great Silk Road.  

The Botai settlement was discovered in 1980 by Viktor Seibert, a member of the North Kazakhstan archaeological expedition. The first excavations at the settlement yielded up to 40 thousand artifacts to Russian science. The uniqueness of the finds showed that archaeologists are faced with a fundamentally new archaeological culture. The settlement and archaeological culture received the name “Botai” after one of the leaders of the local Kazakh clans.

The importance of Turkestan is difficult to overestimate. This city was once the capital of the Kazakh Khanate. On March 31, 2021, at the VIII informal summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States, a declaration was signed giving Turkestan the status of the spiritual capital of the Turkic world.

The state historical and cultural reserve-museum “Esik” was created in 1970 on the territory of the Issyk necropolis, where the world-famous burial of the Saki prince was discovered.

The historical and cultural national reserve "Ordabasy" is located 40 km west of Shymkent. On the territory of the reserve you can see the monuments of national unity “Ordabasy”, the sacred “Hill of Unity”, Saka burial mounds, ancient Turkic ritual structures and other monuments.