Yaik

The Yaik rises in the southern Ural Mountains and flows south between wooded hills and open steppe. After rounding the end of the range it turns west, receives the Sakmara and eventually reaches the Caspian Sea. Its river valley provided a route through the country of Bashkir and Kazakh peoples, while its fish sustained communities along the banks. Cossacks settled along the Yaik and took part in the great uprising led by Yemelyan Pugachev in the 1770s. After the revolt was suppressed, Catherine II ordered the river renamed the Ural in 1775. Its older Turkic name, however, survived among the peoples of the steppe as Zhayyq or Yaik.