Tatars (Tatar: Tatarlar / Татарлар, sometimes spelled Tartars) are a Turkic people, numbering around 7 million. The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of 5.5 million, 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan, 1 million in the republic of Bashkortostan and other 2.5 million in different regions of Russia. Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.
The Tatars originated with the Tatar confederation in the north-eastern Gobi desert in the 5th century. After subjugation in the 9th century by the Khitans, they migrated southward. In the 13th century Mongol Empire, they were subjugated under Genghis Khan and reassigned once again particularly by his son Jochi. Under the leadership of his grandson Batu Khan, they moved westwards, forming part of the Golden Horde which dominated the Eurasian steppe during the 14th and 15th centuries. In Europe, they were assimilated by the local populations or their name spread to the conquered peoples: Kipchaks, Kimaks and others; and elsewhere with Uralic-speaking peoples, as well as with remnants of the ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea and Caucasians in the Caucasus.
Siberian Tatars are survivors of the Turkic population of the Ural-Altaic region, mixed to some extent with the speakers of Uralic languages, as well as with Mongols.
The three ethnic descendants of the 13th-century westward migration are Volga Tatars, Lipka Tatars and Crimean Tatars, most of whom adopted Islam in the medieval period.
The territories inhabited by Tatars
The name Tatar likely originated amongst the nomadic Tatar confederation of northeastern Mongolia in the region around Lake Baikal in the beginning of the 5th century.[4] The Chinese term is Dadan (韃靼) and is a comparatively specific term for nomads to the north, emerging in the late Tang. Other names include Dadan and Tatan. The name "Tatars" was used an alternative term for the Shiwei, a nomadic confederation to which these Tatar people belonged.
As various of these nomadic groups became part of Genghis Khan's army in the early 13th century, a fusion of Mongol and Turkic elements took place, and the invaders of Rus and the Pannonian Basin became known to Europeans as Tatars or Tartars (see Tatar yoke).[4] After the breakup of the Mongol Empire, the Tatars became especially identified with the western part of the empire, known as the Golden Horde.[4]
The form Tartar has its origins in either Latin or French, coming to Western European languages from Turkish and Persian Tātār ("mounted courier, mounted messenger; postrider"). From the beginning the extra r was present in the Western forms, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary this was most likely due to an association with Tartarus (Hell in Greek mythology), though some claim that the name Tartar was in fact used amongst the Tatars themselves. Nowadays Tatar is usually used to refer to the people, but Tartar is still almost always used for derived terms such as tartar sauce or steak tartare.[5]
Many Kazan/Volga Tatars prefer to be called Bulgars and reject the Tatar name, a position known as Bulgarism. Bulgarism pertains to the notion that the Volga/Kazan Tatars are actual Bulgars who did not mix with any other group (additionally, Tatarstan was called Bolgaristan until 1919).
During the 11th to 16th centuries, Tatar tribes lived in what is now Russia and Kazakhstan. The present territory of Tatarstan was inhabited by the Volga Bulgars who settled on the Volga river in the 7th century and converted to Islam in 922 during the missionary work of Ahmad ibn Fadlan. Exact origin of Volga Bulgars is still unknown, possibly descendants of Sarmatian, Scythian and other Uralic tribes inhabiting Eurasian Steppe of modern day Russia. After the Mongol invasion, Bulgaria was defeated, ruined and incorporated in the Golden Horde. Much of the population survived, and there was a certain degree of mixing between it and the Kipchak Tatars of the Horde during the ensuing period. The group as a whole accepted the ethnonym "Tatars" (finally in the end of 19th century; although the name Bulgars persisted in some places; the majority identified themselves simply as the Muslims) and the language of the Kipchaks; on the other hand, the invaders eventually converted to Islam. As the Horde disintegrated in the 15th century, the area became the territory of the Kazan khanate, which was ultimately conquered by Russia in the 16th century.
The bulk of the Tatar population are Volga Tatars, centered on Tatarstan. There are scattered minority groups distinct from the Volga Tatars, notably the Crimean Tatars, Lipka Tatars and Astrakhan Tatars in Europe and the Siberian Tatars in Asia.
Main article:
Volga TatarsThe main group of the Volga Tatars are further subdivided into dialect groups. The majority of Volga Tatars are Kazan Tatars. The major group are the Kazan Tatars in Tatarstan proper. They are distinct from the Mişär group and the Qasim group. A minority of Christianized Volga Tatars are known as Keräşens.
The Volga Tatars used the Turkic Old Tatar language for their literature between the 15th and 19th centuries. It was written in the İske imlâ variant of the Arabic script, but actual spelling varied regionally. The older literary language included a large number of of Arabic and Persian loanwords. The modern literary language, however, often uses Russian and other European-derived words instead.
Volga Tatars number nearly 8 million, mostly in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. While the bulk of the population is to be found in Tatarstan (nearly 2 million) and neighbouring regions, significant numbers of Kazan Tatars live in Central Asia, Siberia and the Caucasus. Outside of Tatarstan, urban Tatars usually speak Russian as their first language (in cities such as Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Tashkent, Almaty, and cities of the Ural and western Siberia) and other languages in a worldwide diaspora.
In the 1910s the Kazan Tatars numbered about half a million in the Kazan Governorate in Tatarstan, their historical homeland, about 400,000 in each of the governments of Ufa, 100,000 in Samara and Simbirsk, and about 30,000 in Vyatka, Saratov, Tambov, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm and Orenburg. An additional 15,000 had migrated to Ryazan or were settled as prisoners in the 16th and 17th centuries in Lithuania (Vilnius, Grodno and Podolia). An additional 2000 resided in St. Petersburg. The Kazan Tatars speak the Tatar language, a Turkic language with substantial amount of Russian and Arabic loanwords. Most Kazan Tatars practice Sunni Islam.
Before 1917, polygamy was practised only by the wealthier classes and was a waning institution.
There is an ethnic nationalist movement among Kazan Tatars which stresses descent from the Bulgars and is known as Bulgarism - there have been graffiti on the walls in the streets of Kazan with phrases such as "Bulgaria is alive".[citation needed]
Mişär-Tatars (or Mishars) are a group of Tatars speaking a dialect of the Tatar language. They are descendants of Burtas in the Middle Oka River area and Meschiora where they mixed with the Cuman-Kipchaks tribes. Nowadays they live in Chelyabinsk, Tambov, Penza, Ryazan, Nizhegorodskaya oblasts of Russia and in Bashkortostan and Mordovia. They lived near and along the Volga River, in Tatarstan.
Main article:
Qasim KhanateThe Western Tatars have their capital in the town of Qasím (Kasimov in Russian transcription) in Ryazan Oblast, with a Tatar population of 1100.[citation needed]
Tatars live in Russia's Kirov Oblast and Tatarstan.
A Tatar warrior in battle.
Some Tatars were forcibly Christianized by Ivan the Terrible during the 16th century and later in the 18th century.
Some scientists suppose that Suars were ancestors of the Keräşen Tatars, and they had been converted to Christianity by Armenians in the 6th century, while they lived in the Caucasus. Suars, like other tribes (which later converted to Islam) became Volga Bulgars and later the modern Chuvash (mostly Christians) and Tatars (mostly Muslims).
Keräşen Tatars live all over Tatarstan and in Udmurtia, Bashkiria and Chelyabinsk Oblast. Some of them did assimilate among Chuvash and Tatars with Sunni Muslim self-identification. Eighty years of Atheistic Soviet rule made Tatars of both confessions not as religious as they were. As such, differences between Tatars and Keräşen Tatars now is only that Keräşens have Russian names.
Some Turkic (Kuman) tribes in Golden Horde converted to Christianity in the 13th and 14th centuries (Catholicism and Nestorianism). Some prayers, written in that time in the Codex Cumanicus, sound like modern Keräşen prayers, but there is no information about the connection between Christian Kumans and modern Keräşens.
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Chinese TatarsA significant number of Volga Tatars emigrated during the Russian Civil War, mostly to Turkey and Harbin, China. According to the Chinese government, there are still 5,100 Tatars living in Xinjiang province.
Places where Volga Tatars live include:
- Ural and Upper Kama (since 15th century) 15th century - colonization, 16th - 17th century - re-settled by Russians, 17th - 19th century - exploring of Ural, working in the plants
- West Siberia (since 16th century): 16th - from Russian repressions after conquering of Khanate of Kazan by Russians, 17th - 19th century - exploring of West Siberia, end of 19th - first half of 20th - industrialization, railways constructing, 1930s - Joseph Stalin's repressions, 1970s - 1990s oil workers
- Moscow (since 17th century): Tatar feudals in the service of Russia, tradesmen, since 18th - Saint-Petersburg
- Kazakhstan (since 18th century): 18th – 19th centuries - Russian army officers and soldiers, 1930s – industrialization, since 1950s - settlers on virgin lands - re-emigration in 1990s
- Finland (since 1804): (mostly Mişärs) - 19th - from a group of some 20 villages in the Sergach region on the Volga River. See Finnish Tatars.
- Central Asia (since 19th century) (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Xinjiang ) - 19th Russian officers and soldiers, tradesmen, religious emigrants, 1920-1930s - industrialization, Soviet education program for Central Asia peoples, 1948, 1960 - help for Ashgabat and Tashkent ruined by earthquakes - re-emigration in 1980s
- Caucasus, especially Azerbaijan (since 19th century) - oil workers (1890s), bread tradesmen
- Northern China (since 1910s) - railway builders (1910s) - re-emigrated in 1950s
- East Siberia (since 19th century) - resettled farmers (19th), railroad builders (1910s, 1980s), exiled by the Soviet government in 1930s
- Germany and Austria - 1914, 1941 - prisoners of war, 1990s - emigration
- Turkey, Japan, Iran, China, Egypt (since 1918) - emigration
- UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Mexico - (1920s) re-emigration from Germany, Turkey, Japan, China and others. 1950s - prisoners of war from Germany, which did not go back to the USSR, 1990s - emigration after the breakup of USSR
- Sakhalin, Kaliningrad, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Karelia - after 1944-45 builders, Soviet military personnel
- Murmansk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Northern Poland and Northern Germany (1945–1990) - Soviet military personnel
- Israel - wives or husbands of Jews (1990s)
The Astrakhan Tatars (around 80,000) are a group of Tatars, descendants of the Astrakhan Khanate's agricultural population, who live mostly in Astrakhan Oblast. For the 2000 Russian census 2000, most Astrakhan Tatars declared themselves simply as Tatars and few declared themselves as Astrakhan Tatars. A large number of Volga Tatars live in Astrakhan Oblast and differences between them have been disappearing.
The Astrakhan Tatars are further divided into the Kundrov Tatars and the Karagash Tatars. The latter are also at times called the Karashi Tatars.[6]
Text from Britannica 1911:
- The Astrakhan Tatars number about 10,000 and are, with the Kalmyks, all that now remains of the once so powerful Astrakhan empire. They also are agriculturists and gardeners; while some 12,000 Kundrovsk Tatars still continue the nomadic life of their ancestors.
While Astrakhan (Ästerxan) Tatar is a mixed dialect, around 43,000 have assimilated to the Middle (i.e., Kazan) dialect. Their ancestors are Khazars, Kipchaks and some Volga Bulgars. (Volga Bulgars had trade colonies in modern Astrakhan and Volgograd oblasts of Russia.)
The Astrakhan Tatars also assimilated the Agrzhan.[7]
The Siberian Tatars occupy three distinct regions—a strip running west to east from Tobolsk to Tomsk—the Altay and its spurs—and South Yeniseisk. They originated in the agglomerations of various Uralo-Altaic stems that, in the region north of the Altay, reached some degree of culture between the 4th and the 5th centuries, but were subdued and enslaved by the Mongols. According to the 2002 census there are 400550 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization.[8]
Main article:
Baraba TatarsThe Baraba Tatars take their name from one of their stems (Barama). After a strenuous resistance to Russian conquest, and much suffering at a later period from Kyrgyz and Kalmyk raids, they now live by agriculture—either in separate villages or along with Russians.
They numbered at least 9000 in 1990.
Main article:
Crimean TatarsThe Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate. The Crimean Khanate was a Turkic-speaking Muslim state which was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century.[9] The rulers of the Crimean Tatars were the progeny of Hacı I Giray a Jochid descendant of Genghis Khan.
Main article:
Lipka TatarsAfter Tokhtamysh the Khan of the Golden Horde and a direct Jochid descendant of Genghis Khan was defeated by Timur, some of his tribesmen and loyalists sought refuge in Grand Duchy of Lithuania. These Muslim Tatar's were given land and nobility in return for military service and were known as Lipka Tatars. They are known to have taken part in the Battle of Grunwald.
Another group appeared in Jagoldai Duchy (Lithuania's vassal) near modern Kursk in 1437 and disappeared later.
The Lipka Tatars were among the first founders of Muslim communities in the United States.
Islam spread in Belarus from the 14th to the 16th century. The process was encouraged by the Lithuanian princes, who invited Tatar Muslims from the Crimea and the Golden Horde as guards of state borders. Already in the 14th century the Tatars had been offered a settled way of life, state posts and service positions. By the end of the 16th century over 100,000 Tatars settled in Belarus and Lithuania, including those hired to government service, those who moved there voluntarily, prisoners of war, etc.
Tatars in Belarus generally follow Sunni Hanafi Islam. Some groups have accepted Christianity and been assimilated, but most adhere to Muslim religious traditions, which ensures their definite endogamy and preservation of ethnic features. Interethnic marriages with representatives of Belarusian, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian nationalities are not rare, but do not result in total assimilation.
Originating from different ethnic associations, Belarusian (and also Polish and Lithuanian) Tatars back in ancient days lost their native language and adopted Belarusian, Polish and Russian. However, the liturgy is conducted in the Arabic language, which is known by the clergymen. There are an estimated 5,000-10,000 Tatars in Belarus.
- Main articles: Lipka Tatars and Islam in Poland
From the 13th to 17th centuries various groups of Tatars settled and/or found refuge within the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. This was promoted especially by the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, because of their reputation as skilled warriors. The Tatar settlers were all granted with szlachta (nobility) status, a tradition that was preserved until the end of the Commonwealth in the 18th century. They included the Lipka Tatars (13-14 centuries) as well as Crimean and Nogay Tatars (15th-16th centuries), all of which were noticeable in Polish military history, as well as Volga Tatars (16th-17th centuries). They all mostly settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, lands that are now in Lithuania and Belarus.
Various estimates of the number of Tatars in the Commonwealth in the 17th century are about 15,000 persons and 60 villages with mosques. Numerous royal privileges, as well as internal autonomy granted by the monarchs allowed the Tatars to preserve their religion, traditions and culture over the centuries. The Tatars were allowed to intermarry with Christians, a thing uncommon in Europe at the time. The May Constitution of 1791 gave the Tatars representation in the Polish Sejm.
Although by the 18th century the Tatars adopted the local language, the Islamic religion and many Tatar traditions (e.g. the sacrifice of bulls in their mosques during the main religious festivals) were preserved. This led to formation of a distinctive Muslim culture, in which the elements of Muslim orthodoxy mixed with religious tolerance formed a relatively liberal society. For instance, the women in Lipka Tatar society traditionally had the same rights and status as men, and could attend non-segregated schools.
About 5,500 Tatars lived within the inter-war boundaries of Poland (1920–1939), and a Tatar cavalry unit had fought for the country's independence. The Tatars had preserved their cultural identity and sustained a number of Tatar organisations, including a Tatar archives, and a museum in Wilno (Vilnius).
The Tatars suffered serious losses during World War II and furthermore, after the border change in 1945 a large part of them found themselves in the Soviet Union. It is estimated that about 3000 Tatars live in present-day Poland, of which about 500 declared Tatar (rather than Polish) nationality in the 2002 census. There are two Tatar villages (Bohoniki and Kruszyniany) in the north-east of present-day Poland, as well as urban Tatar communities in Warsaw, Gdańsk, Białystok, and Gorzów Wielkopolski. Tatars in Poland sometimes have a Muslim surname with a Polish ending: Ryzwanowicz; another surname sometimes adopted by more assimilated Tatars is Taterczyński, literally "son of a Tatar".
The Tatars were relatively very noticeable in the Commonwealth military as well as in Polish and Lithuanian political and intellectual life for such a small community.[citation needed] In modern-day Poland, their presence is also widely known, due in part to their noticeable role in the historical novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz, which are universally recognized in Poland. A number of Polish intellectual figures have also been Tatars, e.g. the prominent historian Jerzy Łojek.
A small community of Polish speaking Tatars settled in Brooklyn, New York City in the early 1900s. They established a mosque that is still in use today.
- Main articles: Tatars of Romania, Crimean Tatars in Romania and Crimean Tatars in Bulgaria
Tatars were present on the territory of today's Romania and Bulgaria since the 13th century. In Romania, according to the 2002 census, 24,000 people declared their ethnicity as Tatar, most of them being Crimean Tatars living in Constanţa County in the region of Dobruja. The Crimean Tatars were colonized there by the Ottoman Empire beginning with the 17th Century.
Main article:
Tatar languageThe Tatar language together with the Bashkir language forms the Kypchak-Bolgar (also "Uralo-Caspian") group within the Kypchak languages (Northwestern Turkic).
There are three Tatar dialects: Eastern, Central, Western.[10] The Western dialect (Misher) is spoken mostly by Mishärs, the Central dialect is spoken by Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars, and the Eastern (Sibir) dialect is spoken by Siberian Tatars in western Siberia. All three dialects have subdialects. Central Tatar is the base of literary Tatar.
Tatar was written with the Arabic alphabet prior to 1928, in the so-called İske imlâ alphabet and from 1920 to 1928 in the Yaña imlâ alphabet. In 1928 the Soviet Union introduced a Latin orthography, known as Jaŋalif. Jaŋalif was replaced by a Cyrillic orthography in 1940. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, use of Jaŋalif was revived, but the Cyrillic script was again enforced in 2002, when the Russian Federation passed a controversial law enforcing the use of Cyrillic for all official languages.[11]
- ^ "Демоскоп Weekly - Приложение. Справочник статистических показателей". Demoscope.ru. http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_nac_02.php. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ^ "Uzbekistan - Ethnic minorities". http://ula.uzsci.net/portal/library/atlas/ethnic_minorities.pdf. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
- ^ Про кількість та склад населення України за підсумками Всеукраїнського перепису населення 2001 року (Ukrainian)
- ^ a b c Tatar. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 28, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9071375
- ^ "Tartar, Tatar, n.2 (a.)". (1989). In Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 11 September 2008, from Oxford English Dictionary Online.
- ^ Olson, James S., An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994) p. 55
- ^ Wixman, Ronald. The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc, 1984) p. 15
- ^ Siberian Tatars
- ^ Halil İnalcik, 1942[page needed]
- ^ Akhatov G. "Tatar dialectology". Kazan, 1984.(Tatar language)
- ^ Russia reconsiders Cyrillic law BBC News, 5 October 2004.
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