The Akyrtas palace complex is one of the most mysterious and interesting medieval buildings in Kazakhstan. The history of the study of Akyrtas has more than 150 years. Stone ruins attracted the attention of local historians and scientists from the second half of the 19th century. In the 1890s, orientalist V. V.Bartold and geologist D. L.Ivanov conducted the first studies of Akyrtas. Bartold identified the ruins of Akyrtas with the medieval settlement of Kasri-Bas (Kasribas), mentioned in the written Arabic sources of Ibn Khordadbeh and Kudama (IX­X centuries). At the beginning of the XIII century Taoist monk Chan-Chun in his diaries mentioned the discovery of the ruins of a stone structure on the road to Taraz. The comparison between Akyrtas and Kasri-Bas was supported by    K. M. Baipakov, who considered it to be an unfinished headquarters of the Karluks, who owned Semirechye in the 9th–10th centuries.

The whole complex consists of several objects of different times: the unfinished palace building Akyrtas, residential estates, the ruler's castle, a fortress, houses, a park, quarries for the extraction of stone and clay.