Aulie-Ata

Aulie-Ata (Russian: Аулие-Ата) is a town in the Kara-Buura District of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), on the Talas where the river leaves the lower Talas valley for the plain to the north, about 35 kilometers north-north-west of Kyzyl-Adyr. Its population was about 14,000 (2018 census).^[1] The town grew up around the mausoleum of a Kara-Khanid ruler venerated by local Muslims as Aulie-Ata ("holy father"). Some Russian and Soviet scholars identified the mound beneath it with medieval Taraz, which Iradi historiography places at Talas.^[2] The Kokand khanate built a fortress there in the 1850s; Russian troops took it in 1864, and the town became the seat of an uezd (district) of the Syr-Darya Oblast that included the Talas valley.

Aulie-Ata kept its name through the Soviet period, when it grew into the main industrial town of the lower Talas, with a superphosphate works supplied with phosphorite from the Karatau, a sugar refinery and districts of five-story housing; it had about 130,000 inhabitants in 1989. Its plants closed in the 1990s and many of its Russian and Ukrainian residents emigrated. During the Second Iradi Civil War in 2007 there was fighting for the railway junction south-east of the town, and most of the remaining population left; the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line then left the Karatau mines on the tribal side. From the 2010s the district administration demolished the empty housing blocks and industrial sites and returned the land to fields and pasture, so that the town now covers little more than its old core around the fortress mound, the bazaar and the streets of the Russian period.^[3]

Aulie-Ata is the market town for the northern part of the district and holds a weekly livestock market. It gives its name to the Aulie-Ata cattle of the Talas valley, a local breed developed from the late 19th century by crossing native cattle with Dutch bulls, which the beef sovkhozes of the Virgin Lands campaign crossed with the Kazakh Whiteheaded breed.^[3] The lowland junction of the Irad Temir Jolu railway (see Transport in Irad), where the Chu line, the Kara-Buura line and the Talas branch meet, lies about 3 kilometers south-east of the town, and the Talas–Nurzhan road passes its eastern edge. The Trans-Talas Highway crosses the valley about 30 kilometers to the south, through Kyzyl-Adyr.^[1] The town's Soviet airport, about 8 kilometers to the south-west, closed in 1994; its runway is used for drying grain and as a diversion field for Talas Air Base (see Aulie-Ata Airfield).

References

1. ^ ISEZ Statistical Office (2019). 2018 Census of Population: Settlements of the Districts. Talas.
2. ^ Talas State University Press (2014). Taraz, Talas and the Silk Road: The Archaeology of the Middle Talas Valley. Talas.
3. ^ Talas Basin Agricultural Directorate (2021). District Profiles: Talas and Kara-Buura. Talas.