They are concentrated in Bashkortostan, a republic of the Russian Federation and in the broader historical region of Badzhgard, which spans both sides of the Ural Mountains, where Eastern Europe meets North Asia.

Smaller communities of Bashkirs also live in the Republic of Tatarstan, the krai of Perm, the oblasts of Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan and other regions in Russia; sizeable minorities exist in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Bashkirs are mainly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab, or school of jurisprudence, and follow the Jadid doctrine.

This prevailing folk etymology relates to a legend regarding the migration of the first seven Bashkir tribes from the Syr Darya valley to the Volga-Ural region.

Although this is the prevailing theory for an etymology of the term bashqurt, other theories have been formulated: The Bashkir group was formed by Turkic tribes of South Siberian and Central Asian origin, who, before migrating to the Southern Urals, wandered for a considerable time in the Aral-Syr Darya steppes (modern day central-southern Kazakhstan), coming into contact with the Pecheneg-Oghuz and Kimak-Kipchak tribes.

Around 40 Turkic Tiele tribes were named in the section "A Narration about the Tiele people"; Bashkirs might have been included within that narration, if the tribal name 比干 (Mandarin Bǐgān ← Middle Chinese ZS: *piɪX-kɑn) (in Book of Wei) were a scribal error for 比千 (Bĭqiān ← *piɪXt͡sʰen) (in History of the Northern Dynasties), the latter reading being favored by Chinese scholar Rui Chuanming.

However, these mentions may refer to the precursors of the Kipchak Bashkir tribes who travelled in the Aral-Syr Darya region before the migration.

In the 10th century, the Persian historian and polymath Abu Zayd al-Balkhi described Bashkirs as a people divided into two groups: one inhabiting the Southern Urals, the other living on the Wallachian Plain–Danubian Plain near the boundaries of Byzantium.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan, ambassador of the Baghdad Caliph Al-Muqtadir to the governor of Volga Bulgaria, wrote the first ethnographic description of the Bashkir in 922.

According to the testimony of Ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs were Turks, living on the southern slopes of the Urals, and occupying a vast territory up to the river Volga.

The first European sources to mention the Bashkirs were the works of Joannes de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruquis of the 13th century.

In 1676, the Bashkirs rebelled under a leader named Seyid Sadir or 'Seit Sadurov', and the Russian army had great difficulties in ending the rebellion.

The consequence of the Aral Sea fort would involve crossing Bashkir and the Kazakh Lesser Horde lands, some of whom had recently offered a nominal submission to the Russian Crown.

[29] After the Russian Revolution, the All-Bashkir Qoroltays (convention) concluded that it was necessary to form an independent Bashkir republic within Russia.

North-eastern group: Aile, Badrak, Bikatin, Bishul, Duvan, Kalmak, Katai, Kossy, Kuvakan, Kudey, Kumruk, Murzy, Salyut, Syzgy, Synryan, Syrzy, Tabyn, Tersyak, Upey.

[citation needed] Northwest group: Baylar, Balyksy, Bulyar, Gaina, Gere, Duvaney, Elan, Adyak, Adey, Irekte, Kanly, Karshin, Kirghiz, Taz, Tanyp, Uvanysh, Un, Uran, Jurmi.

[33] In some specific regions and clans of ethnic Bashkir, the North Asian and Eastern Siberian haplogroup (N3) range from moderate to high frequencies (29 to 90%).

[33] Archaeogenetic analyses show a similarity between historical Hungarians, whose homeland is around the Ural Mountains, and Bashkirs; analysis of haplogroup N3a4-Z1936 which is still found in very rare frequencies in modern Hungarians, and showed that Hungarian "sub-clade [N-B539/Y13850] splits from its sister-branch N3a4-B535, frequent today among Northeast European Uralic speakers, 4000–5000 ya, which is in the time-frame of the proposed divergence of Ugric languages", while on N-B539/Y13850+ sub-clade level confirmed shared paternal lineages with modern Ugric (Mansis and Khantys via N-B540/L1034) and Turkic speakers (Bashkirs and Volga Tatars via N-B540/L1034 and N-B545/Y24365); these suggest that the Bashkirs are mixture of Turkic, Ugric and Indo-European contributions.

[34] A genetic study published in Scientific Reports in November 2019 examined the remains of 29 Hungarian conquerors of the Carpathian Basin.

A wide variety of phenotypes were observed, with several individuals having blond hair and blue eyes, but also East Asian traits.

The Hungarian conquerors appeared to be a recently assembled heterogenous group incorporating both European, Asian and Eurasian elements.

[35][36] A group of Bashkirs from the Burzyansky and Abzelilovsky districts of the Republic of Bashkortostan in the Volga-Ural region who belong to the R1a subclade R1a-SUR51 are the closest kin to the Hungarian Árpád dynasty, from which they got separated 2000 years ago.

[41] A full genome study by Triska et al. 2017 found that the Bashkir genepool is best described as a multi-layered amalgamation of Turkic, Uralic, and Indo-European contributions.

At the start of the 20th century, particularly during the Russian Revolution, Bashkortostan and Tatarstan emerged as separate republics, leading to the recognition of Bashkir and Tatar as distinct literary languages.

[26] Traditional Bashkir dish bishbarmaq is prepared from boiled meat and halma (a type of noodle), sprinkled with herbs and flavored with onions and some qorot (young dry cheese).

Through the works of their oral folk art, the views of ancient Bashkirs on nature, their wisdom, psychology, and moral ideals are preserved.

Other poems constitute a great part of the Bashkir national identity, other tales apart from the Ural Batyr include "Aqbuzat", "Qara yurga", "Aqhaq qola", "Kongur buga", and "Uzaq Tuzaq".

Through the actions and divisions of the world related in the Ural Batyr, the Bashkirs express a manichaean view of good and evil.

Ural thus obtains the "living water" in order to defeat death in the name of the eternal existence of man and nature.

Catherine the Great established the Orenburg Mohammedan Spiritual Assembly in 1788 in Ufa, which was the first Muslim administrative center in Russia.