(Komi "Ytva" - spring water). In the 10th-Century work De Administrando Imperio, Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus referred to the Ural River as the "Geich." The name Яйыҡ (Yayıq) is currently used in the Bashkir language and Жайық (Zhayıq) in Kazakhstan. In later European texts it is sometimes mentioned as Rhymnus fluvius and in the Russian chronicle of 1140 as Yaik. The river was renamed Ural in the Russian language in 1775, by Catherine II of Russia. History In the 10th to 16th centuries, the city of Saray-Jük (or Saraichik, meaning "small Sarai") on the Ural River (now in Atyrau Province of Kazakhstan) was an important trade center on the Silk Road. In the 13th century, it became a stronghold of the Golden Horde. It was destroyed in 1395 by the army of Timur but then rebuilt to become the capital of Nogai Horde in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was finally reduced to a village in 1580 by the Ural Cossacks. After the Russian conquest of the Ural basin in the late 16th century, the shores of the Ural became home to the Yaik Cossacks. One of their main activities was fishing for the sturgeon and related fishes (including the true sturgeon, starry sturgeon, and beluga) in the Ural River and the Caspian. A great variety of fishing techniques existed; the most famous of them was bagrenye (, from bagor , meaning pike pole): spearing hibernating sturgeons in their underwater lairs in mid-winter. The bagrenye was allowed only on one day of the year. On the appointed day, a large number of Cossacks with pike poles were gathering on the shore; after a signal was given, they rushed on the ice, broke it with their poles, and speared and pulled the fish. Another fishing technique was constructing a weir, known as the uchug (учуг) across the river, to catch fish going upstream to spawn. Until 1918, an uchug was set up in the summer and autumn near Uralsk, so that the fish would not go upstream beyond the Cossacks' land. While the uchug weirs were also known in the Volga Delta, the bagrenye was thought to be a uniquely Ural technique. The Ural Cossacks (known originally as the Yaik Cossacks) resented the attempts by the central government to impose rules and regulations on them, and on occasions rose in rebellions. The largest rebellion, the Pugachev's Rebellion of 1773–75,