Malye derbety

Malye Derbety takes its name from the Lesser Derbet ulus of the Kalmyks, whose pastures stretched across the steppe west of the Volga. The Derbet ulus was divided into Greater and Lesser branches in 1788. In 1803 a headquarters for the Lesser Derbets was established between the Amta-Zelmen and Almaty streams, in a landscape of grassland and shallow lakes.

The ulus extended for hundreds of kilometers from north to south. Its chiefs and officials administered communities whose herds moved across these pastures, and routes through the steppe linked the Volga with the northern Caucasus. A wooden house for the ruler's winter residence and buildings for the administration were begun at the headquarters in 1837, giving more permanent form to a center of a largely mobile society.