The Madjars or Madi-yar people are a Turkic ethnic group in Kazakhstan. They number about 1,000–2,000 and live mostly in the Kostanay Region. They are predominantly Muslim.
Ethnonym Turkologist scholar Dr. Imre Baski claims that the ethnonym Madjar means 'faithful Muslim', literally 'friend or follower of Muhammad', ultimately from Muhammad-i-yar. While Madjars have been onomastically linked to the Magyars (Hungarians), Imre Baski argues that because it developed from the name Muhammad-i-yar, the Kazakh clan name Madi-yar "cannot possibly be linked to the Magyar ethnonym and thus cannot serve as proof for a relationship between Madiyar and Magyar."
Genetics Proponents of the view that Madjars are linked to the Magyars (Hungarians) include supporters of "Hungarian Turanism", such as András Zsolt Bíró, who noticed the high frequency of Y-DNA Haplogroup G-M201 among Madiyars and its presence amongst Hungarians. The study concluded that, based on haplogroup frequency, the Madiyars were genetically closer to Hungarians than to their geographic neighbours.
Footnotes
Bibliography Nándor Dreisziger. 2011. "Genetic Research and Hungarian 'Deep Ancestry'": p. 3. D. Vanek, et al." 2009. "Kinship and Y-Chromosome Analysis of 7th Century Human Remains: Novel DNA Extraction and Typing Procedure for Ancient Material". Croatian Medical Journal, 50:3, pp. 286–95.