Dasht-I-Kipchak

(Kipchak Steppe), the name that appears in Arabic and Persian sources of the 11th century to the 15th century for the steppes and deserts extending from the lower reaches of the Syr Darya and Lake Balkhash to the mouth of the Danube. The term “Dasht-i-Kipchak” first appears in a work of the Persian writer Nasir-i Khusrau in the 11th century when the Kipchaks, or Polovtsians, arriving from the shores of the Irtysh, became neighbors of Khwarizm in 1030 and occupied the territory of present-day Kazakhstan and the southern European part of the USSR. In the 13th century the Mongol-Tatars conquered the Dasht-i-Kipchak. The Dasht-i-Kipchak was usually divided into the Western and Eastern Kipchak Territories. The Western Kipchak is known in Russian chronicles by the name Polovtsian Land (Polovetskaia Zemlia).