page_title: Shoqan Walikhanov
section_title: Childhood
hierarchical_section_title: Shoqan Walikhanov / Childhood
caption_attribution_description: English: Chokan Valikhanov on entrance to Omsk Cadet School 1847
context_page_description: Shoqan Shynghysuly Walikhanov, given name Muhammed Qanafiya was a Kazakh scholar, ethnographer, historian and participant in The Great Game. He is regarded as the father of modern Kazakh historiography and ethnography. The Kazakh Academy of Sciences is named after him. His name is written Chokan Valikhanov in English based on the transliteration of the Russian spelling of his name, which he used himself.
context_section_description: He was born in November 1835 in the newly developed Aman-Karagai district within the Kushmurun fort in what is nowadays the Kostanay Province of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Shoqan was a fourth generation descendant of Ablai Khan, a khan of the Middle jüz.  Shoqan's family was very respected by the government of the Russian Empire, and Walikhanov's father was awarded, during his life, six appointments as senior Sultan of Kushmurun okrug, a term as chief Kazakh advisor to the frontier board, a promotion to Colonel, and a separate term as senior Sultan in the Kokshetau okrug.
  Shoqan spent his youth in his father’s traditional yurt. His father Chingis arranged his son’s early education, enrolling him in 1842 at age six in a small private school, or maktab, which provided a secular education. Here he began his studies of Arabic script, which was widely used as the writing system at that time.
  At an early age Shoqan moved from his father’s home to the estate of his paternal grandmother Aiganym, in Syrymbet. Shoqan was enrolled in the Siberian Cadet Corps by his grandmother.
  Walikhanov entered the military academy in Omsk in 1847.  After graduating from the Omsk Cadet School, where he read not only Russian but also English literature, Walikhanov traveled extensively in Central Asia in the late 1850s.  It was during his stay in Omsk that Walikhanov first made the acquaintance of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
caption: Shoqan in 1847, upon enrolling in the Omsk Military Academy
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