Dasht-i Qipchaq

The Dasht-i Qipchaq, "the Kipchak steppe", was the Persian name for the great grassland stretching from the Black Sea across the Volga and Ural rivers to the Irtysh and the Syr Darya. It took its name from the Kipchak nomads who dominated it from the eleventh century. After the Mongol conquest it formed the heartland of the Golden Horde, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries its eastern part was contested by the Uzbek and Kazakh khanates.