Abstract:
The name of the Doctor of Historical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia), Professor Alfred Khasanovich Khalikov, an outstanding archaeologist and historian, one of the founders of the Kazan Archaeological School, is widely known not only among the scientific community in Russia. He is well known in Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia where his works concerning the ancient and early medieval history of the ancestors of the Finns, the Hungarians, the Bulgarian, and the Turks were published.
Among a wide circle of amateur readers, Khalikov's name has become popular since the early 1970s, when his books about the origin of the Tatars were published one after another in the Tatar book publishing house. Especially popular among the readers were the books published by A. Khalikov during the years of perestroika: "Who are we - Bulgars or Tatars?" (1992), "500 Russian surnames of Bulgaro-Tatar origin" (1992), "Mongols, Tatars, the Golden Horde and Bulgaria" (1994).
Through his works, Alfred Hasanovich made an invaluable contribution to the study of the primitive
history of the Middle Volga and Ural regions. A prominent expert in the field of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Turkic and Finno-Ugric tribes, he created a general concept for the development of the local population of the region, starting from the "ancient antiquity" to the period of the region's accession to the Russian state in the mid-16th century.
