Bugulma

Bugulma takes its name from the Bugulminka River. The Bugulma sloboda is recorded from 1736, on the site of an older small village also called Ilmukhametova. Its growth was linked to the founding of Orenburg and the new road serving that frontier. A 1747 register lists Tatar inhabitants, and in the early 1760s, as Russian administration expanded in the region, the settlement became the center of a newly organized administrative district.

During Yemelyan Pugachev's rebellion the government commander General Bibikov maintained his headquarters in the Bugulma area. Catherine II granted the settlement the status of an uyezd town in 1781, within the Ufa Viceroyalty. Roads through Bugulma connected Kazan with Ufa and Orenburg, giving it a place in the trade of the region.