Bashkir people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| approx. 2 million | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Russia
|
1,584,554 |
 Kazakhstan
|
17,263 |
| Languages | |
| Bashkir, Russian | |
| Religion | |
| Sunni Islam | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Turkic peoples | |
The Bashkirs (Bashkir: башҡорттар, başqorttar, باشقۇرتتار; Russian: башкиры, baškiry) are a Turkic people indigenous to Bashkortostan, extending on both sides of the Ural Mountains, in the area where Eastern Europe meets North Asia. Groups of Bashkirs also live in the Republic of Tatarstan, Perm Krai, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan Oblasts and other regions of Russia, as well as in Kazakhstan and other countries.
Most Bashkirs speak the Bashkir language, which belongs to the Kypchak branch of the Turkic languages and share cultural affinities with the broader Turkic peoples. In religion the Bashkirs are mainly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab.
On the most popular and early hypothesis widespread in the Bashkir legends and according to the theory of 18th-century ethnographers V. N. Tatishchev, P. I. Richkov, and Johann Gottlieb Georgi, the word Bashqort means "main wolf, wolf leader" (bash — "main, leader" and qort — "wolf").
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