Balkar

The Balkars are a Kipchak Turkic people of the high central Caucasus, holding the gorges east of Mount Elbrus; they call themselves Alans. Their tongue, shared with the Karachays, is Ponto-Caspian Kipchak, and their ancestry joins native highlanders to Bulgar and Khazar Turks, Iranian Alans and two waves of Kipchak migrants, the second driven into the mountains when Timur shattered Tokhtamysh's armies in 1395.

Most Balkars accepted Islam only in the eighteenth century, under the influence of Kumyks and Circassians. Their high valleys made them allies of the Kabardians against the Russian advance: they fought at the Chegem in 1804 and held the Cherek gorges against Bulgakov in 1810.

In 1828 Emanuel's snow-pass expedition imposed Russian rule on the Karachay and Balkar highlands, yet in 1830 and 1831 mountain communities leagued with the Circassians and fought on into 1833.