Kazakhstan,[d] officially the Republic of Kazakhstan,[e] is a transcontinental

landlocked country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe.[f]
It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the
southeast, Uzbekistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Its capital
is Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana until 2019. Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest
city, was the country's capital until 1997. Kazakhstan is the world's largest
landlocked country, the world's largest Muslim-majority country by land area (and
the northernmost), and the ninth-largest country in the world overall. It has a
population of 19 million people, and one of the lowest population densities in the
world, at fewer than 6 people per square kilometre (15 people per square mile).

The country dominates Central Asia economically and politically, generating 60

percent of the region's GDP, primarily through its oil and gas industry; it also
has vast mineral resources.[12] Officially, it is a democratic, secular, unitary,
constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage.[13] Kazakhstan is a
member state of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Commonwealth
of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Economic
Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the
Organization of Turkic States, and the International Organization of Turkic
Culture.

The territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic groups and
empires. In antiquity, the ancient Iranian nomadic Scythians inhabited the land,
and the Achaemenid Persian Empire expanded towards the southern territory of the
modern country. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states such
as the First Turkic Khaganate and the Second Turkic Khaganate, have inhabited the
country from as early as the 6th century. In the 13th century, the territory was
subjugated by the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. In the 15th century, the Kazakh
Khanate conquered much land that would later form the territory of modern
Kazakhstan.

By the 16th century, the Kazakhs emerged as a distinct Turkic group, divided into
three jüz. They raided the territory of Russia throughout the 18th century, causing
the Russians to advance into the Kazakh Steppe; by the mid-19th century, the
Russians nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire and
liberated all of the slaves that the Kazakhs had captured in 1859.[14] Following
the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent outbreak of the Russian Civil War, the
territory of Kazakhstan was reorganized several times. In 1936, it was established
as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the
last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the
Soviet Union from 1988 to 1991. Human rights organizations have described the
Kazakh government as authoritarian, and regularly describe Kazakhstan's human
rights situation as poor.