The Karakalpaks: Language, Epics, Yurts and Identity
Who the Karakalpaks are: a Kipchak language close to Kazakh, zhyrau bards and the Forty Girls epic, the black yurt, and what the Aral Sea cost them.
The bow goes on first, a rough, breathy drone from two strings of twisted horsehair. Then the voice slides in underneath: low, grainy, pushed from the throat, so close to the instrument's rasp that for a few seconds you can't tell which is which. That's a Karakalpak zhyrau at work, reciting an epic to the qobyz (also spelled kobyz), and it's the quickest proof that the Karakalpaks, the people Karakalpakstan is named after, aren't just Uzbeks by another name.
Who the Karakalpaks are
The name means "black hat": qara, black, and qalpaq, hat. The first written mention of the Karakalpaks dates to 1598, and during the 18th century they settled in the delta of the Amu Darya on the southern shore of the Aral Sea, the flat reed-and-channel country they still call home.
Karakalpaks aren't the majority in their own republic. Uzbekistan's statistics agency put the permanent population of Karakalpakstan at 2,053,200 on 1 January 2026 (Statistics Agency of Uzbekistan, last checked: September 2026), and ethnic Karakalpaks are roughly a third of that, alongside Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Turkmens.
The Karakalpak language: closer to Almaty than Tashkent
Karakalpak is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch. That puts it in the same family as Kazakh and Nogai, and the three are highly mutually intelligible. Uzbek sits on a different branch, so a Samarkand Uzbek follows Karakalpak only in patches, while a Kazakh follows most of it.
You'll see the difference before you hear it. Karakalpak is written in its own Latin alphabet, with letters like á, ó, ú and ń that Uzbek doesn't use, which is why district names on road signs read Tórtkúl or Qaraózek. Say "raxmet" for thank you, the Kazakh-style form, rather than the Uzbek "rahmat". Both will be understood; only one sounds like you noticed where you are. Our phrasebook for Uzbekistan covers the Uzbek basics, which work fine in Nukus shops and taxis.
Zhyrau, baqsy and the Forty Girls
There are two kinds of Karakalpak epic singer. The baqsy sings lyrical tales of love and adventure to the dutar, a long-necked lute. The zhyrau sings heroic epics to the qobyz, and that's the older, rougher and rarer of the two.
A qobyz is carved from a single piece of wood, an open scoop-shaped body with an arched neck and a membrane of camel skin, strung with two bundles of horsehair and played with a horsehair bow. Makers avoided joins, on the old Turkic belief that a tree's voice survives only in an unbroken block.
The epic at the top of the repertoire is Qyrq Qyz, "Forty Girls". It was written down in 1939 and 1940 from the recitation of the zhyrau Kurbanbay Tazhibaev, and the recorded text runs to about 20,000 lines. The heroine is Gulayim, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Allayar, a Karakalpak ruler at the fortress of Sarkop. Her father gives her land on the island of Miueli, where she trains forty young women as warriors; when the Kalmyk khan Surtaishi invades and kills Allayar, her company drives him out. In 2018 and 2019 the Aga Khan Music Initiative turned it into an 86-minute live-music-and-film production directed by Saodat Ismailova.
The tradition is fragile. In December 2025 UNESCO placed the art of crafting and playing the qobyz on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, the first Uzbek element ever put on that list (UNESCO file 2329, last checked: September 2026). A zhyrau from a village near Nukus told Euronews that he could count the remaining real masters on one hand.
Our take: an hour with a live zhyrau beats a second afternoon at anything else in Nukus. For maqom, wedding bands and the rest, there's our overview of Uzbek music and dance.
The black house
Karakalpaks call their yurt qara úy, "black house", for the dark felt stretched over a lattice of poplar or willow. A wedding yurt is covered in white felt instead. Herders still lived in them into the 1930s and 1940s; today you'll meet them mostly at camps and festivals. Chimbay, north of Nukus, is still the centre of yurt-making and embroidery. On 10 December 2025 UNESCO extended the existing Kazakh and Kyrgyz yurt listing to include the Karakalpak yurt.
The Savitsky connection, seen from the other side
Igor Savitsky started with the Karakalpaks, not the banned painters, and the folk-art galleries are the collection's original core. The Savitsky Museum covers the paintings; the ethnographic rooms are where to look for the kiymeshek, a woman's hooded headdress in red and black cloth and crimson silk, silver jewellery set with carnelian and turquoise, and the long woven strips that once bound and decorated the inside of a yurt.
For the Karakalpak story told on its own terms, try the Berdakh Museum at Karakalpak State University. It opened in 1998, named for Berdakh (1827–1900), the poet counted as the founder of Karakalpak literature, and holds halls of archaeology, ethnography and old manuscripts.
What the Aral Sea cost the people
The ships at Moynaq are the image; the human cost is less photogenic. The collapse of the fishery took roughly 2,000 fishing-industry jobs out of Moynaq alone, and the dust and saline water that followed showed up in hospital wards. In 2003 Médecins Sans Frontières reported a tuberculosis rate of about 220 cases per 100,000 people in Karakalpakstan, against a WHO epidemic threshold of 50 to 70, with multidrug resistance in 13 percent of new cases (MSF). Those figures are two decades old and health programmes have worked on them since, but they explain why the sea is remembered here as much through illness as through the stranded ships at Moynaq.
Identity is also political here. In July 2022, proposed constitutional changes that would have removed Karakalpakstan's status as a sovereign republic and its constitutional right to a secession referendum brought thousands onto the streets of Nukus. The president withdrew the changes, but officially 21 people died, most of them protesters, and dozens have since been jailed (RFE/RL). Don't raise it casually.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Karakalpaks the same as Kazakhs?
No, though they're close relatives. Both speak Kipchak Turkic languages that are highly mutually intelligible, and both share the zhyrau and yurt traditions. But Karakalpaks have their own delta homeland since the 18th century, their own literary language and alphabet, epics such as Qyrq Qyz, and a republic within Uzbekistan.
Do people in Nukus speak Karakalpak or Uzbek?
Both, plus Russian. Karakalpak is the language of home and much local media, Uzbek is the national language, and Russian is still common in the city. A traveller with basic Uzbek or Russian phrases will manage everyday transactions without trouble, and the Karakalpak "raxmet" goes down well.
Where can I hear a zhyrau perform?
Arrange it rather than hoping to stumble on one. We know of no regular public schedule, so ask your Nukus guesthouse or guide a day or two ahead and be flexible about the evening. Outside the region, recordings and the Aga Khan Music Initiative's Qyrq Qyz production are the easiest way in.
How many Karakalpaks are there?
Something over 700,000 in Uzbekistan, on 2017 government data (reported by Minority Rights Group) that put them at about 2.2 percent of the national population. They make up around a third of Karakalpakstan's 2.05 million residents (official figure for 1 January 2026). Smaller communities live in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; published totals differ, so treat exact numbers loosely.
Planning the trip itself? Our Nukus and Aral Sea planner has the flights, trains and day-trip logistics.