ABSTRACT
Traditionally, the biy had two, intertwined roles within the nomadic community: he was both judge and clan leader. He acquired the authority to play both roles by demonstrating exemplary wisdom, fairness and knowledge of customs that were rooted in large part in the imperatives of the nomadic way of life. Under the colonial legaladministrative system that was erected with the promulgation of the Provisional Statute of 1868, Russian lawmakers created a judicial position, which they called biy, and which had as its purpose to adjudicate most civil cases and minor criminal cases among Kazakhs in a court of law governed by Kazakh “popular customs” [adat].1 The official role of biy as judge in this system existed as only one of several legal alternatives theoretically open to the Kazakh litigant who sought just retribution or compensation for wrongs done to him. Aside from the single biy and the appeal instances (volost assembly of biys [volostnyi s’ezd biev] and extraordinary assembly of biys [chrezvychainyi s’ezd biev]) that comprised the court of biys [sud biev] governed by adat, a Kazakh had the right to turn to a fellow Kazakh or group of respected elders [aqsaqat] of his choosing as mediators [posrednik] for dispute resolution in what Russian officialdom called the treteiskii sud [court of arbitration] or the sud aksakalov [court of elders]. Also, an appeals system staffed by Russian administrators and judges was established to adjudicate Kazakh cases according to Russian imperial laws, if both Kazakh litigants in a case agreed, or if the case involved a Kazakh and a non-Kazakh. In addition to these legal venues, other Kazakh colonial officials served in administrative posts alongside the biy. These were: the volost administrator [volostnoi upravitel;] who had a broad range of managerial and police duties within his district; the delegate (vybornyi), whose job was to coordinate Kazakh land use and resolve land disputes; and the aul
elder (aul’nyi starshina), who oversaw daily affairs within his administratively-defined aul. Considered separately, each of these four colonial positions staffed by Kazakhs - the official biy, the volost administrator, the delegate and the aul elder, plus the less formal position of mediator - was endowed by the colonial administration with its own unique set of powers. Taken as a whole, these positions embodied the powers and authority within the nomadic community that the traditional biy had once enjoyed. Within this framework, the biy was a judge who could adjudicate adat only under specific guidelines and with very limited power and authority. How did the invention of this colonial judicial position called “biy” influence the practice of adat among the Middle Horde Kazakh nomads after 1868, and what kind of power and authority did the official biy have?
