ABSTRACT
This study explores one aspect of the social and cultural history of the Kazakh steppe in the nineteenth century by examining the judicial customs (adat) of the Middle Horde (Orta Zhuz) Kazakh nomads as they were practiced within the context of Russian colonial rule. Under adat rules and procedures, the Middle Horde Kazakh nomads resolved disputes, confirmed family and kinship obligations, compensated victims of wrongdoing and punished violent acts within the commu nity. They upheld principles and values associated with land, livestock and kinship relations, which were inseparable from their nomadic way of life. Throughout their history the Kazakh nomads on the steppe had been challenged to practice adat in diverse ways that suited changing socioeconomic and cultural conditions, while still preserving its cultural meanings in traditions associated with kinship and nomadic pastoralism. When Islamic religiosity began to emerge in the Kazakh steppe in the fifteenth century and again in the eighteenth century, Kazakhs adopted the principles of Islamic law {Shariat) to supplement the principles of adat and to provide more rigid guidelines for moral behavior within the nomadic community. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, devastating nomadic Kalmyk (Oirat) incursions prompted the promulgation by Khan Tauke (1680-1718) of a set of new defensive and punitive principles, called the Zheti Zharghϊ, to help hold together a fragile Kazakh polity. And in the nineteenth century, when the Russian Empire constructed a legal-administrative system in the steppe, Russian law served as a legal alternative to adat. The new challenge for the Middle Horde Kazakhs in this period was to practice adat within a colonial legal framework, while adjusting to significant socio-political and economic changes to the nomadic way of life.
