Search Results - Khakas

Other Turkic peoples

The Khakas, or Khakass, are a Turkic people, who live in Russia, in the republic of Khakassia in the southern Siberia. They speak the Khakas language, which belongs to the family of Turkic languages. They have dark skin and eyes and coarse dark hair and beards. Their face is wide, the cheekbones are not very prominent. The Khakass tend to be short, with the average male height being 162-164 cm. In some Khakass groups characteristics of the Finno-Ugrian ethnic groups are discernible.

The origin of the Khakas people is disputed. Some scholars see them as descendants of the Yenisei Kirghiz, while others believe that, at the behest of the medieval Mongol Khans, the Yenisei Kirghiz migrated to Central Asia, where they became known as the Kyrgyz, the core nation of Kyrgyzstan. Traditional Khakas people currently hold that their ancestors were "tall, blond, with blue eyes" whose appearance was transformed at the arrival of Chinggis Khan^{[citation needed]}.