Comparing historical Russian written sources and Kazakh oral literature, the authors examine the role and the meaning of barymta, a kind of livestock theft, or more precisely, of herds of horses being rounded up and driven away, that was used to settle conflicts between clans. They reveal that, in the description of the Kazakh common law, two institutions showing the alleged savagery of the nomads have often been confused: livestock theft (barymta) and havoc (šabu). Nevertheless these two actions differ in their content and in their form (about the actors involved, where they take place, their objects and their implications). Both actions are reciprocal and collective and they vary with the distance between the two kinship groups in conflict.