Tatars
(Tatarlar / Татарлар)

Ruslan Chagaev • Dinara Safina Şihabetdin Märcani • Pyotr Gavrilov Gabdulkhay Akhatov • Timati • Diniyar Bilyaletdinov • Ğabdulla Tuqay
Total population
ca. 6.8 million
Regions with significant populations
Russia 5,554,601 [1]  Uzbekistan 324,080 [2]  Kazakhstan 261,000  Ukraine 254,400  Tajikistan 97,000 [3]  Turkmenistan 60,000  Kyrgyzstan 52,000
Languages
Tatar, Russian
Religion
Islam majority, Russian Orthodox minority

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

Name[link]

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).

History[link]

Map of Tartaria (1705)

Cossacks fighting Tatars of Crimea.

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.

Subgroups[link]

The Qolsharif Mosque in Kazan.

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.

Volga Tatars[link]

The 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.

Kazan Tatars[link]

Qolsharif and his students defend their mosque during the Siege of Kazan.

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]}

Mishars[link]

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.

Qasím Tatars[link]

The 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]}

Noqrat Tatars[link]

Tatars live in Russia's Kirov Oblast and Tatarstan.

Keräşens[link]

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.

Chinese Tatars[link]

A 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.

Volga Tatars around the world[link]

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)

Astrakhan Tatars[link]

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]

Siberian Tatars[link]

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]

Baraba Tatars[link]

The 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.

Tatars of East Europe[link]

Crimean Tatars[link]

The Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1566, Crimean Tatars as vanguard

At the Battle of Warsaw in 1656 Tatars fought with the Poles against the Swedes

The famous Tatar commander Tugai Bey.

The 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.

Lithuanian Tatars[link]

After 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.

Belarusian Tatars[link]

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.

Polish Tatars[link]

Main articles: Lipka Tatars and Islam in Poland

Tatar cavalry training in their Sarai.

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.

King Charles X Gustav in skirmish with Tatars near Warsaw during the Second Northern War.

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.

Dobruja Tatars[link]

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.

Tatar language[link]

The 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]

Famous Russian Tatars[link]

• Marat Kabaev, association football coach
• Galima Shugurova, former gymnast
• Rudolf Nureyev, dancer & choreographer
• Aliya Garayeva, gymnast
• Dinara Gimatova, former gymnast
• Sultan Galiev, Bolshevik
• Timati, rapper and actor
• Marat Safin, tennis player and politician

References[link]

lez:Татарар

Litas commemorative coin for the 600th anniversary of Karaims and Tatars in Lithuania

The Lipka Tatars (also known as Belarusian Tatars, Lithuanian Tatars, Polish Tatars, Lipkowie, Lipcani or Muślimi) are a group of Tatars who originally settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the beginning of 14th century. The first settlers tried to preserve their shamanistic religion and sought asylum amongst the non-Christian Lithuanians.^[1] Towards the end of the 14th century, another wave of Tatars - this time, Muslims, were invited into the Grand Duchy by Vytautas the Great. These Tatars first settled in Lithuania proper around Vilnius, Trakai, Hrodna and Kaunas ^[1] and later spread to other parts of the Grand Duchy that later became part of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. These areas comprise present-day Lithuania, Belarus and Poland. From the very beginning of their settlement in Lithuania they were known as the Lipka Tatars. While maintaining their religion, they united their fate with that of the mainly Christian Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the Battle of Grunwald onwards the Lipka Tatar light cavalry regiments participated in every significant military campaign of Lithuania and Poland.

The Lipka Tatar origins can be traced back to the descendant states of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan - the White Horde, the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate and Kazan Khanate. They initially served as a noble military caste but later they became urban-dwellers known for their crafts, horses and gardening skills. Throughout centuries they resisted assimilation and kept their traditional lifestyle. While they remained very attached to their religions, over time however, they lost their original Tatar language and for the most part adopted Polish.^[2] There are still small groups of Lipka Tatars living in today's Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, as well as their communities in United States.

Origin of the term 'Lipka'[link]

Tatar mosque and graveyard in the Lukiškės suburb (1830), Vilnius. It was replaced by another, a more traditional one, in 1867

The name Lipka is derived from the old Crimean Tatar name of Lithuania. The record of the name Lipka in Oriental sources permits us to infer an original Libķa/Lipķa, from which the Polish derivative Lipka was formed, with possible contamination with the Polish lipka "small lime-tree"; this etymology was suggested by the Tatar author S. Tuhan-Baranowski. A less frequent Polish form, Łubka, is corroborated in Łubka/Łupka, the Crimean Tatar name of the Lipkas up to the end of the 19th century. The Crimean Tatar term Lipka Tatarłar meaning Lithuanian Tatars, later started to be used by the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars to describe themselves.

In religion and culture the Lipka Tatars differed from most other Islamic communities in respect of the treatment of their women, who always enjoyed a large degree of freedom, even during the years when the Lipkas were in the service of the Ottoman Empire. Co-education of male and female children was the norm, and Lipka women did not wear the veil - except at the marriage ceremony. While nominally Islamic, the customs and religious practices of the Lipka Tatars also accommodated many Christian elements adopted during their 600 years residence in Belarus, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania while still maintaining the traditions and superstitions from their nomadic Mongol past, such as the sacrifice of bulls in their mosques during the main religious festivals.

Over time, the lower and middle Lipka Tatar nobles adopted the Ruthenian language then later Belarusian language as their mother tongue.^[2][3] However, they used the Arabic alphabet to write in Belarusian until the 1930s. The upper nobility of Lipka Tatars spoke Polish.

Diplomatic correspondence between the Crimean Khanate and Poland from the early 16th century refers to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as the "land of the Poles and the Lipkas".^[3] By the 17th century the term Lipka Tatar began to appear in the official documents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Lipkas in the past[link]

Lithuanian Tatars in the Napoleonic Army with Red and White banners of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth

The migration of some Tartars into the lands of Lithuania and Poland began during 14th century and lasted until the end of the 17th. There was a subsequent wave of Tatar immigrants from Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, although these consisted mostly of political and national activists.^[3]

According to some estimates, by 1591 there were about 200,000 Lipka Tatars living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and about 400 mosques serving them. According to the Risāle-yi Tatar-i Leh (an account of the Lipka Tatars written for Süleyman the Magnificent by an anonymous Polish Muslim during a stay in Constantinople in 1557-8 on his way to Mecca) there were 100 Lipka Tatar settlements with mosques in Poland. The largest communities existed in the cities of Lida, Navahradak and Iwye. There was a Lipka Tatar settlement in Minsk, today's capital of Belarus, known as Tatarskaya Slabada.

In the year 1672, the Tatar subjects rose up in open rebellion against the Commonwealth. This was the widely remembered Lipka Rebellion. Thanks to the efforts of King Jan III Sobieski, who was held in great esteem by the Tatar soldiers, many of the Lipkas seeking asylum and service in the Turkish army returned to his command and participated in the struggles with the Ottoman Empire up to the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, including the Battle of Vienna (1683) that was to turn the tide of Islamic expansion into Europe and mark the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire.

Beginning in the late 18th and throughout the 19th century the Lipkas became successively more and more Polonized. The upper and middle classes in particular adopted Polish language and customs (although they kept Islam as their religion), while the lower ranks became Ruthenized. At the same time, the Tatars held the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas (Wattad, in Tatar or "defender of Muslims in non Muslim lands"), who encouraged and supported their settlement during the 15th century, in great esteem, including him in many legends, prayers and their folklore.^[3]

Timeline[link]

• 1226: The Khanate of the White Horde was established as one of the successor states to the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. The first Khan, Orda was the second son of Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan. The White Horde occupied the southern Siberian steppe from the east of the Urals and the Caspian Sea to Mongolia.

• 1380: Khan Tokhtamysh, the hereditary ruler of the White Horde, crossed west over the Urals and merged the White Horde with the Golden Horde whose first khan was Batu, the eldest son of Jochi. In 1382 the White and Golden Hordes sacked and burned Moscow. Tokhtamysh, allied with the great central Asian Tatar conqueror Tamerlane, reasserted Mongol power in Russia.

• 1397: After a series of disastrous military campaigns against his former protector, the great Tatar warlord Tamerlane, Tokhtamysh and the remnants of his clan were granted asylum and given estates and noble status in Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Vytautas the Great. The settlement of the Lipka Tatars in Lithuania in 1397 is recorded in the Chronicles of Jan Długosz.

• 1397: The Italian city state of Genoa funded a joint expedition by the forces of Khan Tokhtamysz and Grand Duke Vytautas against Tamerlane. This campaign was notable for the fact that the Lipka Tatars and Lithuanian armies were armed with handguns, but no major victories were achieved.

• July 15, 1410 The Battle of Grunwald took place between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on one side (c. 39,000 troops), and the Teutonic Knights on the other (c. 27,000 troops). The Teutonic knights were defeated and never recovered their former influence. After the battle, rumours spread across Europe that the Germans had only been defeated thanks to the aid of tens of thousands of heathen Tatars, though it is likely there were no more than 1,000 Tatar horse archers at the battle, the core being the entourage of Jalal ad-Din, son of Khan Tokhtamysh. At the start of the battle, Jalal ad-Din led the Lipka Tatar and Lithuanian light cavalry on a suicide charge against the Teutonic Knights' artillery positions - the original "Charge of the Light Brigade". The Teutonic Knights' Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen responded by ordering his own heavy cavalry to pursue the Lipkas away from the field of battle, trampling through their own infantry in the process. The resulting destruction of the Teutonic Knights' line of battle was a major factor in their subsequent defeat. This incident forms one of the highlights of Aleksander Ford's 1960 film Krzyżacy (Knights of the Teutonic Order), based on the historical novel of the same name by Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz.

Mosque in Bohoniki.

• 1528: The Polish (szlachta) and Lithuanian nobility's legal right to retribution on the grounds of the wounding or killing of a nobleman or a member of his family is extended to the Lipka Tatars.

• 1569 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is founded at the Union of Lublin. Companies of Lipka Tatar light cavalry for a long time constituted one of the foundations of the military power of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Lithuanian Tatars, from the very beginning of their residence in Lithuania were known as the Lipkas. They united their fate with that of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the Battle of Grunwald onwards they participated in every significant military campaign.

• 1591: The rule of the fervent Catholic Sigismund III (1587–1632) and the Counter-Reformation movement brought a number of restrictions to the liberties granted to non-Catholics in Poland, the Lipkas amongst others. This led to a diplomatic intervention by Sultan Murad III with the Polish king in 1591 on the question of freedom of religious observance for the Lipkas. This was undertaken at the request of Polish Muslims who had accompanied the Polish King's envoy to Istanbul.

• 1672: This was the year of the Lipka Rebellion. As a reaction to restrictions on their religious freedoms and the erosion of their ancient rights and privileges, the Lipka Tatar regiments stationed in the Podolia region of south-east Poland abandoned the Commonwealth at the start of the late 17th century Polish–Ottoman Wars that were to last to end of the 17th century with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. The Lipka Rebellion forms the background to the novel Pan Wolodyjowski, the final volume of the historical Trylogia of Henryk Sienkiewicz, the Nobel Prize winning author (1905) who was himself descended from Christianised Lipka Tatars. The 1969 film of Pan Wolodyjowski, directed by Jerzy Hoffman and starring Daniel Olbrychski as Azja Tuhaj-bejowicz, still remains among the biggest box-office success in the history of Polish cinema.

• 1674: After the famous Polish victory Chocim, the Lipka Tatars who held the Podolia for Turkey from the stronghold of Bar were besieged by the armies of Jan Sobieski, and a deal was struck that the Lipkas would return to the Polish side subject to their ancient rights and privileges being restored.

• 1676: The Treaty of Zurawno that brought a temporary end to the Polish-Ottoman wars stipulated that the Lipka Tatars were to be given a free individual choice of whether they wanted to serve the Ottoman Empire or the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

• 1677: The Sejm in March 1677 confirmed all the ancient Tatar rights and privileges. The Lipka Tatars were permitted to rebuild all their old mosques, to settle Christian labour on their estates and to buy up noble estates that had not previously belonged to Tatars. The Lipka Tatars were also freed from all taxation.

• 1679: As a reward for their return to the Commonwealth the Lipka Tatars were settled by King Jan Sobieski on Crown Estates in the provinces of Brest, Kobryn and Hrodna. The Tatars received land that had been cleared of the previous occupants, from 0.5 to 7.5 square kilometres per head, according to rank and length of service.

• 1683: Many of the Lipka Tatar rebels who returned to the service of the Commonwealth in 1674 were later to take part in the Vienna Campaign of 1683. This included the 60 Polish Tatars in the light cavalry company of Samuel Mirza Krzeczowski, who was later to save the life of King Jan III Sobieski during the disastrous first day of the Battle of Parkany, a few weeks after the great victory of the Battle of Vienna that was to turn the tide of Islamic expansion into Europe and mark the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire. The Lipka Tatars who fought on the Polish side at the Battle of Vienna, on 12 September 1683, wore a sprig of straw in their helmets to distinguish themselves from the Tatars fighting under Kara Mustafa on the Turkish side. Lipkas visiting Vienna traditionally wear straw hats to commemorate their ancestors’ participation in the breaking of the Siege of Vienna.

• 1699: Some of the Kamieniec-based Lipka Tatars who had remained loyal to the Turkish Sultan were settled in Bessarabia along the borderlands between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth as well as in the environs of Chocim and Kamieniec-Podolski and in the town known as Lipkany. A further large scale emigration of Lipkas to Ottoman controlled lands took place early in the 18th century, after the victory won by King Augustus II over the Polish-born King Stanisław Leszczyński, whom the Lipkas had supported in his war against the Saxon King.

• 1775: The Polish Lipkas came back into favour during the reign of the last King, Stanislas Augustus (1765–95). In 1775 the Sejm reaffirmed the noble status of the Polish Lithuanian Tatars. After the Partitions of Poland, the Lipkas played their part in the various national uprisings, and also served alongside the Poles in the Napoleonic army.

• 1919 The Polish Lipkas joined the newly created Polish Army formations; Pułk Jazdy Tatarskiej and later, 13th Regiment of Wilno Uhlans.

• 1939: With the re-emergence of the Polish state after the First World War, a Polish Tatar regiment was re-established in the Polish Army which was distinguished by its own uniforms and banners. After the fall of Poland in 1939, the Polish Tatars in the Wilno (Vilnius) based 13th Cavalry Regiment were one of the last Polish Army units recorded carrying on the fight against the German aggressors while lead by Major Aleksander Jeljaszewicz.^[4]

Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in Bohoniki, Poland gallery[link]

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery enternce in Bohoniki, Poland

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery sign in [[Bohoniki, Poland

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  Ruthenian language Arabic script of a tombstone in the Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in Bohoniki, Poland

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  Damaged Tombstone at Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in Bohoniki, Poland

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in [[Bohoniki, Poland 1

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in Bohoniki, Poland 2

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in [[Bohoniki, Poland 3

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in [[Bohoniki, Poland 4

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  Muslim Lipka Tartar cemetery in Bohoniki, Poland 5

Lipkas today[link]

Charles Bronson was born to a Lithuanian immigrant father of Lipka Tatar ancestry.

Tatar mosque in the village of Bohoniki, Poland

Tatar mosque in Nemėžis, Lithuania

Today there are about 10,000-15,000 Lipka Tatars in the former areas of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The majority of descendants of Tatar families in Poland can trace their descent from the nobles of the early Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lipka Tatars had settlements in north-east Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, south-east Latvia and Ukraine. Today most reside in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. Most of the Lipka Tatars (80%) assimilated into the ranks of the nobility in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth while some lower noble Tatars assimilated to the Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian townsfolk and peasant populations.

Charles Bronson was a descendant of the Lipka Tatars of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which caused many people to think that he looked like a Chicano or Mexican-American who was a Mestizo (mixture of Spanish and Indian ancestry). Thus, due to his looks, Bronson sometimes played characters who were Mexican or who were part-Indian.

A number of the Polish Tatars emigrated to the US at the beginning of 20th century and settled mostly in the north eastern states (although there is also an enclave in Florida). A small but active community of Lipka Tatars exists in New York City. "The Islamic Center of Polish Tatars" in New York City until recently had its own mosque in Brooklyn (106 Powers Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 USA, originally build in 1928).^[2]

After the annexation of eastern Poland into the Soviet Union following World War II, Poland was left with only 2 Tatar villages, Bohoniki and Kruszyniany. A significant number of the Tartars in the territories annexed to the USSR repatriated to Poland and clustered in cities such as Gdańsk, Białystok, Warsaw and Gorzów Wielkopolski totaling some 3,000 people. One of the neighborhoods of Gorzów Wielkopolski where relocated Tatar families resettled has come to be referred to as "the Tatar Hills", or in Polish "Górki Tatarskie".

In 1925 the Muslim Religion Association - Muzułmański Związek Religijny was formed in Poland in Białystok. In 1992, the Organization of Tatars of the Polish Republic (Związek Tatarów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) with autonomous branches in Białystok and Gdańsk began operating.

In Poland, the Tatar population reached approximately 100,000 in 1630 but the 2002 census showed only 447 people declaring this ethnicity.^[5]

In November 2010, a monument to Poland's Tatar populace was unveiled in the port city of Gdańsk at a ceremony attended by President Bronislaw Komorowski, as well as Tatar representatives from across Poland and abroad. The monument is a symbol of the important role of Tatars in Polish history.

"Tatars shed their blood in all national independence uprisings. Their blood seeped into the foundations of the reborn Polish Republic," President Komorowski said at the unveiling.

The monument is the first of its kind to be erected in Europe.

Famous Lipka Tatar descendants[link]

• Charles Bronson - Lithuanian American actor whose father was a Lipka Tatar, born in Druskininkai (Druskienik)
• Aleksander Romanowicz - general of cavalry in Russian Imperial Army and Polish Army.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz - Polish Nobel Prize-winning novelist.; on his father's side deriving from the Lipka Tatars
• Aleksander Sulkiewicz - Polish politician of Tatar ethnicity, activist in socialist and independence movements and one of the co-founders of Polish Socialist Party

Two distantly related members of the Abakanowicz family

• Bruno Abakanowicz - mathematician, inventor and electrical engineer whose family was of distant Lipka Tatar origin.^[6]
• Magdalena Abakanowicz - Polish artist whose family is of distant Tatar origin.

See also[link]

• Lipka Rebellion
• Tatar invasions
• List of Polish wars
• Aleksander Sulkiewicz
• Kaliz
• Almış (Almas) iltäbär
• Aleksander Jeljaszewicz
• Belarusian Arabic alphabet

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2009)

External links[link]

• A Short History of the Lipka Tatars of the White Horde Jakub Mirza Lipka
• Tartar Nobility in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth Selim Mirza-Juszenski Chazbijewicz - translated into English by Paul de Nowina-Konopka
• The Lithuanian Tatars article in The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire