The city of Almaty began in the 1800's as the Russian fort town of Verney. It was renamed Alma Ata around the turn of the century and was the capitol of the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. Since the late 1990's Astana in the north has been given the role of capital.

Kazakhstan is the size of most of Western Europe, with 16 million inhabitants. Of those, 9 million traditionally share the religion of folk Islam. Whereas there were hardly any Kazak believers in 1990, they are estimated to number over 10,000 today!