Ufa

The name Ufa comes from the Ufa River on which the city lies, but the origin of the river's name is disputed. The Russian linguist Aleksandr Matveyev proposed that the name is of Iranian origin, from "ap", meaning water. In a paper published in 2014, researchers Karimov and Khabibov from Bashkir State Pedagogical University present and argue for a hypothesis according to which before the construction of the foundational Russian fortress in 1574, which has since grown to become the current city of Ufa, there had already been an ancient settlement called Ufa on a hilltop near the mouth of the Ufa River. According to them, this settlement was founded by Turkic-speaking tribes to perform rituals and sacrifices to the sky god Tengri, and they called this place Upe or Ufe because, they argue, in ancient Turkic languages a place of ritual sacrifice used to be called an "opo" or an "ope. …

Early history of the surrounding area of Ufa dates back to Paleolithic times. Presumably, from the 5th to 16th centuries there was a medieval city on the site of Ufa. On the Pizzigano brothers' map (1367) and on the Catalan Atlas (1375) a town approximately on the Belaya River was designated Pascherti (Bashkort), and Gerardus Mercator's map (1554) also marked the settlement with the name Pascherti. French orientalist Henri Cordier associates the position of Pascherti with the current location of Ufa. Ibn Khaldun called the town, among the largest cities of the Golden Horde, Bashkort. Russian historian of the 18th century Peter Rychkov wrote that there was a great city on the territory of Ufa before the arrival of the Russians. The official of the Orenburg Governorate government Vasily Rebelensky wrote that Ufa was founded by the Bashkirs. …

Ufa is situated in Eastern Europe near its land boundary with Northern Asia, at the confluence of the Belaya (Agidel) and Ufa Rivers, on low hills forming the Ufa Plateau to the west of the southern Urals. The area of the city is 707.93 km2 (273.33 sq mi). It stretches from north to south for 53.5 km (33.2 mi) and from west to east for 29.8 km (18.5 mi). Ufa has a warm summer continental climate (Köppen: Dfb). Ufa's climate is characterized by harsh winters, but in some cases, summers can be quite long and hot. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Ufa was −48.5 °C (−55.3 °F) on January 1, 1979. The highest temperature ever recorded was 39.4 °C (102.9 °F) on July 10, 2023. Periodically, a suffocating, unpleasant chemical odor can be smelled in the Ufa region. The media reports about the smell come out with an impressive regularity. …