Bayanaul

Bayanaul stands in the Kazakh Uplands just below the slopes of the Bayanaul Range, close to Lake Sabyndykol. This setting is unusual within the wider upland country because mountain slopes and a lake concentrate vegetation and shelter in one place, while open steppe spreads beyond them.

The settlement itself began in 1826, when Siberian Cossacks founded the village of Bayan-Aul. In 1833 the government ordered the formation of the Bayanaul external district within Omsk region, and Shon Yedigin was elected its senior sultan.

The first ataman was appointed in 1834 as head of Bayanaul district: Nikolai Ilyich Potanin, father of the later geographer, ethnographer, and traveller Grigory Potanin.