The hero of the novel by Jules Verne is the "Rebellious" khan of the Kazakh steppes of Kenesary

Abstract

The article is dedicated to an in-depth examination of the historical context surrounding the national liberation movement of the Kazakh people, led by the last independent khan of the Kazakh steppes, Kenesary Kasymov, during the 1830s and 1840s. It draws upon a wealth of recently unearthed archival materials from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, alongside the recently discovered source of the 19th-century 'Nasab-name-yi-Sadyk' – 'Pedigree of Sadyk'. The article is devoted to the biographies of Kenesary Khan and his son Sadyk, as well as to the field of Russian historiography. The relevance of this issue is twofold: firstly, due to the continued attention paid to the personality of Kenesary Khan in modern Kazakh society, and secondly, due to the limited historiographical tradition in the region, with only a handful of articles having been published on this topic in recent times.