Paper long abstract:

Mangystau is an area in the south-west of Kazakhstan that has a very ancient history. On the territory of Mangystau, monuments of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, even in the first millennium BC were found. The paths of the Great Silk Road passed along the lands of the peninsula. A feature of Mangystau has become numerous sacred objects - especially revered monuments of the natural landscape, religious and burial complexes, monuments of natural cultural heritage, mausoleums, places associated with historical and political events, monuments of secular and religious architecture.

Ten objects of the Mangystau region were included in the national project of Kazakhstan "Sacral Kazakhstan". The category "Religious and cult objects that are places of worship" includes necropolises and underground mosques of Mangystau: Beket ata in the Oglandy area dating from the 18th century, Shopan ata (10th – 19th centuries), Old Beineu and Beket ata (11th – 19th centuries), Karaman ata (13th – 19th centuries), Masat ata (10th – 19th centuries), Shakpak ata (9th – 10th – 14th – 19th centuries), Sultan epe (10th – 19th centuries), Sisem ata (13th – 19th centuries). The list of sacred places associated with historical figures includes the memorial complex of Taras Shevchenko in the city of Fort Shevchenko. The historical and cultural complex "Otpan Tau" on the slope of Mount Karatau "is identified as a particularly revered monument of natural heritage.

Twenty-eight sacred objects of the Mangystau region are included in the list of sacred objects of local importance. Work is underway to create an interactive map "Sacred Geography of the Mangistau Region", which will indicate 15 monuments included in the national list of sacred places of Kazakhstan from the Mangistau region and 28 monuments included in the list of 500 sacred places of local significance in Kazakhstan.

At the same time, near the Bozzhyra mountain, located 300 km from Aktau, which is one of the sacred objects of Kazakhstan, the construction of a tourist facility has begun under the Rukhani Zhagyru program. In defense of the object, activists and ecologists from the Kazakhstan Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity (ACBK) spoke out from the Ustyurt National Reserve.

In the report, we would like to analyze the global significance of a number of sacred objects of Mangystau, their history, as well as the implementation in Kazakhstan of the program of the national project "Sacred Geography".

The study is funded by the Russian Science Foundation (project No.19-18-00162 «Central Asia and International Relations in the 18th-19th centuries») and carried out at the Leo Tolstoy Institute of Languages and Cultures.