Family and Kinship Groups of the Kyrgyz
The family is the most important institution in the system of social relations in Kyrgyz society. Its history dates back centuries. The roots of many family traditions can be found in the early forms of social relations that existed among the ethnic communities that later became part of the Kyrgyz people.
The family has gone through several stages, each characterized by forms of family and family relations corresponding to the existing social relations. In the early stages, the large patriarchal family predominated, and then, during the period of increasing social differentiation of society based on progressive property stratification, the small family emerged, which became the leading trend in family development. However, due to the conservativeness of patriarchal-clan relations, large family communities in various forms and combinations continued to exist in Kyrgyz society until the 19th century.
In the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the main form of family among the Kyrgyz was the small individual family, alongside which there were undivided families, serving as a transition from large patriarchal family communities to small ones. The father allocated married sons, setting them up in separate yurts, and they received a certain share of livestock - enchi - from the common family household. Such allocation was carried out within the framework of customary law - adata: "Custom establishes specific shares for each son in the family household upon allocation; custom prohibits the father from depriving his sons of inheritance or denying allocation unless there are very compelling reasons" (Kuginer, 1929, p. 69). Although the families of the allocated sons sometimes lived separately, in other cases they spent more than six months apart from the parental family - in the valleys to cultivate the land, they still had the right to a share in the common family property. The family, divided into two parts - pastoral and agricultural - would reunite in the autumn and separate again with the onset of spring. This form of undivided family was also characteristic of those groups of pastoralists where agriculture had developed significantly, particularly in the Issyk-Kul and Chui valleys. The size of undivided families often reached several dozen people. Among wealthy Kyrgyz, members of such families lived in several yurts or stationary-type houses.
The economic basis of these families was family ownership of livestock, and among semi-nomads, also of arable land; the head of the family managed the property and had the right to dispose of the livestock as he saw fit.
The annexation to Russia, the penetration of new capitalist relations into the subsistence economy, the growth of private property interests of each marital couple, and the ongoing sedentarization of nomadic households accelerated the process of disintegration of large undivided families. Usually, after the death of the father, the head of such a family, they would disintegrate. According to the custom of minorata, the father's house and part of the property would pass by inheritance to the youngest son, while the other marital couples lived as small individual families, forming a common aiyl. Initially, the disintegrated families maintained some economic integrity for a time. As small families grew, they eventually separated completely due to the inconvenience of managing a common household.
About the sanjyr in the years of perestroika and sovereignty
