page_title: Ufa
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ufa / History
context_page_description: Ufa is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia, and is considered to be the industrial, economic, scientific and cultural center of the republic. As of the 2010 Census, the population of Ufa was 1,062,319, making it the eleventh most populous city in Russia, and the fourth most populated in the Volga Federal District. Ufa lies on the confluence of the Belaya and Ufa Rivers in the centre-north of Bashkortostan, on hills forming the Ufa Plateau to the west of the southern Urals.
  The city is considered to have been founded in 1574, when a fortress was built on the site of the city by order of Ivan the Terrible. Ufa was made capital of Ufa Governorate in 1865, when the governorate split from Orenburg Governorate. Ufa's population expanded during the early 20th century. Today, Ufa's economy consists primarily of the oil refining, chemistry, and mechanical engineering industries; the petroleum company Bashneft and several of its subsidiaries are headquartered in Ufa.
  Ufa hosted separate summits of the BRICS group as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the same year, 2015.
context_section_description: Early history of the surrounding area of Ufa dates back to Paleolithic times. Presumably, from the 5th to the 16th century there was a medieval city on the site of Ufa. On the Pizzigano brothers' map (1367) and on the Catalan Atlas (1375) a town approximately on the Belaya River was designated Pascherti (Bashkort), and Gerardus Mercator's map (1554) also marked the settlement with the Pascherti name. French orientalist Henri Cordier associates the position of Pascherti with the current location of Ufa.
  Ibn Khaldun called the town, among the largest cities of the Golden Horde, Bashkort.
  Russian historian of the 18th century Peter Rychkov wrote that there was a great city on the territory of Ufa before the arrival of the Russians.
  The official of the Orenburg Governorate government Vasily Rebelensky wrote that Ufa was founded by the Bashkirs.
  By order of Ivan the Terrible a fortress was built on the site of modern Ufa in 1574, and originally bore the name of the hill it stood on, Tura-Tau. 1574 is now considered to be the official date of Ufa's foundation. Town status was granted to it in 1586.
  Before becoming the seat of a separate Ufa Governorate in 1781, the city, along with the rest of the Bashkir lands, was under the jurisdiction of the Orenburg governors. And even though the 1796 reform reunited Orenburg and Ufa again, in 1802 the city of Ufa became a new center of the entire Orenburg Governorate that included large territories of modern-day Republic of Bashkortostan, Orenburg Oblast, and Chelyabinsk Oblast. During the 1800-1810s, Scottish Russian architect William Heste developed a general city plan for Ufa as a regional capital shaping the modern outline of its historical center.
  The Belaya River Waterway (1870) and the Samara-Zlatoust Railroad (1890) connected the city to the European part of the Russian Empire and stimulated development of the city's light industry. As a result, by 1913 the population of Ufa grew to 100,000. During World War II, following eastward Soviet retreat in 1941, the Abwehr operated in Ufa, 1941–1943, some German infiltration, occurred 1914–1943 in espionage, a number of industrial enterprises of the western parts of the Soviet Union were evacuated to Ufa. The city also became the wartime seat of the Soviet Ukrainian government.
  During 9—10 July 2015 Ufa hosted summits of the BRICS group and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
caption: Gerardus Mercator's map of Europe with Pascherti (Bashkort) settlement presumably in the position of modern Ufa.[16] The map was compiled in 1554, twenty years before the official date of the foundation of Ufa.
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