The Ural Mountains ( YOOR-əl), or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan near the Caspian Sea. The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia, marking the separation between European Russia and Siberia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form continuations of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The average altitudes of the Urals are around 1,000–1,300 metres (3,300–4,300 ft), the highest point being Mount Narodnaya, which reaches a height of 1,894 metres (6,214 ft). The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and the Ural economic region. Their resources include metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century, the mountains have contributed significantly to the mineral sector of the Russian economy. The region is one of the largest centers of metallurgy and heavy industry production in Russia.
Etymology As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century, Russians called the Ural range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock (stone) and belt. The modern Russian name for the Urals (Урал, Ural), first appearing in the 16th–17th centuries during the Russian conquest of Siberia, was initially applied to its southern parts and gained currency as the name of the entire range during the 18th century. It might have been borrowed from either Turkic "stone belt" (Bashkir, where the same name is used for the range), or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century in Bashkortostan, there has been a legend about a hero named Ural who sacrificed his life for the sake of his people who then poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр "elevation; upland" and Mansi ур ала "mountain peak, top of the mountain", V.N. Tatischev believes that this oronym is set to "belt" and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- "gird". I.G. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar–Chuvash dialects. Geographer E.V. Hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. The Evenk geographical term era "mountain" has also been theorized. (cf also Ewenkī ürǝ-l (pl.) "mountains") Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Ostyak word urr meaning "chain of mountains". Turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that 'ural' in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was 'stone belt'. Indigenous peoples of the Urals have various namings for the mountain range. Komi Iz and Northern Khanty Kew both mean 'stone, rock', Tundra Nenets Ngārka pe 'big rock'. The Mansi name Nyōr means 'mountain', in geographic use also 'west'.
History
As merchants from the Middle East traded with the Bashkirs and other people living on the western slopes of the Ural as far north as Great Perm, since the 10th century, medieval mideastern geographers had been aware of the existence of the mountain range in its entirety, stretching as far as the Arctic Ocean in the north. The first Russian mention of the mountains to the east of the East European Plain is provided by the Primary Chronicle, where it describes the Novgorodian expedition to the upper reaches of the Pechora in the year 1096. During the next few centuries, the Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the local population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm, slowly expanding southwards. The city-state of Novgorod established two trade routes to the Ob River, both starting from the town of Ustyug. The rivers, Chusovaya and Belaya, were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, respectively. In 1430, the town of Solikamsk (Kama Salt) was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III, the grand prince of Moscow, captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472. With the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural, Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Russians received tribute, but contact with the tribes ceased after they left.
Nevertheless, around the early 16th century, Polish geographer, Maciej of Miechów, in his influential Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis (1517) argued that there were no mountains in Eastern Europe at all, challenging the point of view of some authors of Classical antiquity, which were popular during the Renaissance. Only after Sigismund von Herberstein in his Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549) had reported, following Russian sources, that there are mountains behind the Pechora and identified them with the Riphean Mountains and Hyperboreans of ancient authors, did the existence of the Ural, or at least of its northern part, become firmly established in the Western geography. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers.
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