The Tatars are the second largest nation in Russia after the Russians. According to the 2010 census, they constitute 3.72% of the population of the entire country. This people, who joined in the second half of the 16th century, over the centuries managed to preserve their cultural identity, carefully treating historical traditions and religion.
Any nation searches for its origins. The Tatars are no exception. The origins of this nation began to be seriously studied in the 19th century, when the development of bourgeois relations accelerated. The people were subjected to special study, highlighting their main features and characteristics, and creating a unified ideology. The origin of the Tatars throughout this time remained an important topic of study by both Russian and Tatar historians. The results of this long-term work can be roughly presented in three theories.
The first theory is associated with the ancient state of Volga Bulgaria. It is believed that the history of the Tatars begins with the Turkic-Bulgar ethnic group, which emerged from the Asian steppes and settled in the Middle Volga region. In the 10th-13th centuries they managed to create their own statehood. The period of the Golden Horde and the Moscow State made some adjustments to the formation of the ethnic group, but did not change the essence of Islamic culture. In this case, we are mainly talking about the Volga-Ural group, while other Tatars are considered as independent ethnic communities, united only by the name and history of joining the Golden Horde.
Other researchers believe that the Tatars originate from Central Asians who moved to the west during the Mongol-Tatar campaigns. It was the entry into the Ulus of Jochi and the adoption of Islam that played the main role in the unification of disparate tribes and the formation of a single nation. At the same time, the autochthonous population of Volga Bulgaria was partially exterminated and partially forced out. The newcomer tribes created their own special culture and brought the Kipchak language.
The Turkic-Tatar origins in the genesis of the people are emphasized by the following theory. According to it, the Tatars trace their origins back to the great, largest Asian state of the Middle Ages of the 6th century AD. The theory recognizes a certain role in the formation of the Tatar ethnic group of both the Volga Bulgaria and the Kipchak-Kimak and Tatar-Mongol ethnic groups of the Asian steppes. The special role of the Golden Horde, which united all the tribes, is emphasized.
All of the listed theories of the formation of the Tatar nation highlight the special role of Islam, as well as the period of the Golden Horde. Based on historical data, researchers see the origins of the people differently. Nevertheless, it becomes clear that the Tatars trace their origins back to the ancient Turkic tribes, and historical ties with other tribes and peoples, of course, influenced the current appearance of the nation. Carefully preserving their culture and language, they managed not to lose their national identity in the face of global integration.
Tatars drink tea with milk, wear skullcaps and have Turkic roots. There is hardly a person in Tatarstan who does not know at least a few facts about the largest people in the republic. For details from the story, of course, you can turn to Google, but it’s unlikely that a search engine will tell you which of this is true and which is someone’s wild imagination.
An ethnographer and a doctor of sociological sciences told Enter about whether it is possible to identify a Tatar by appearance, who is studying the structure of the people, and how different groups of Tatars differ.
The influence of the Horde and the mixing of peoples
Scientists still cannot agree on why the Tatars are called this way and nothing else. KFU suggests that the term “Tatars” was introduced by the Turkic and Mongolian peoples of Central Asia. It was first mentioned in the sixth century AD and is slightly different from the shortened modern version: "otuz-Tatar" or "tokuz-Tatar". Until the 12th century, Tatars were the generic name of several tribes in China and Mongolia. This word was used as a synonym for “barbarians” and “savages” by the Chinese, who were not allowed to live in peace by Tatar raids. Over time, most of the Central Asian and Mongolian tribes began to be called Tatars. Batu’s troops, in addition to their aggressive ambitions, brought this term with them to the Volga, after which it stuck with the population of the Golden Horde.
The Mongol invasion also significantly changed the composition of the population: if earlier the Turks, Bulgars and Kipchaks were in contact with each other, then the South Siberian and Central Asian peoples intervened in the ethnic composition of the Volga region. The Kazan Tatars appeared through the mixing of the Bulgar-Kypchak population, who fled from the Mongol invaders, and the Finno-Ugrians. They were finally formed by the 15th century, when the Kazan Khanate was formed. The Siberian and Astrakhan Tatars were formed in approximately the same way. The Mishars were more influenced by the Finno-Ugric peoples, in particular the Mordovians. The origin of the Kryashens is especially controversial: scientists believe that their ancestors were Bulgars who did not convert to Islam, who were then baptized under the influence of neighboring peoples. In addition, there were the so-called “newly baptized” who converted to Orthodoxy after 1552. They can also be called Kryashens.
In 2010, during the last All-Russian Population Census, 5,310,649 people called themselves Tatars. This number included Astrakhan Tatars (7), Kryashens (34,822), Mishars (786), Siberian Tatars (6,779). However, scientists still cannot decide whether the Kryashens are Tatars. The census classified the Crimean Tatars (2,449) as a completely different ethnic group. But if you believe scientific research, there are even more Tatars in Russia and abroad. They are settled in different regions of the country and belong to the Kazan, Lithuanian, West Siberian, Kasimov Tatars and Karaites. In addition, even among the Kazan ones, six smaller groups are distinguished, and among them there are also subgroups. There are 2,012,571 Tatars in Tatarstan, including 29,962 Kryashens. In this case, the Kryashens were recorded as a sub-ethnic group of the Tatar people.
Science studies the structure of a people from several positions at once: for example, sociology. For sociologists, what is most important is what nation a person considers himself to be. The difficulty here is that to the question: “What is your nationality?” Russians mostly answer without specifying their subethnic or ethnographic identity. For example, Tatars from Siberia can write their nationality in the column without reference to their place of residence. Therefore, it is difficult to determine which of the many subgroups a particular Tatar belongs to according to this principle.
The historical and ethnological principle will tell you where the people came from and how they were formed. He will explain how the Tatars, geographically scattered throughout Russia, came into contact with representatives of other nationalities and what came of it: the impact on culture, economy and other features.
The third approach to studying the structure of peoples is ethnographic. It is a little similar to the previous one, but it puts culture first of all: rituals, food, costumes, homes, beliefs. That is, it claims that people can be divided into groups based on their cultural community. This method was especially popular in the USSR. It was believed that a person is already born as a representative of a specific nationality. Therefore, the corresponding line was necessarily filled in in the passports of Soviet citizens.
The scientific and cultural approach identifies three territorial groups of Tatars: Volga-Ural, Astrakhan and Siberian. At the same time, the Crimean Tatars, who by the beginning of the Soviet Union had already formed as a single independent nation, are also considered separately. The development of writing and education turned out to be so high that scientists began to isolate them. The principle of division is logical - if a Tatar lives in Astrakhan, then he belongs to the Astrakhan group of Tatars, if not far from the Volga, then he belongs to the Volga-Ural group. But not everything is so simple - in each of the groups there is also a division into subethnic groups. For example, the Volga-Ural Tatars are divided into Kazan, Kasimov and Mishar Tatars. And within them there is a smaller division. Among the Mishar Tatars, by the way, there are northern, southern, Lyambir, Ural groups, and so on.
Differences in dialect and similarities with Europeans
The Tatar language belongs to the Kipchak subgroup of the Western Hunnic branch of the Turkic group of the Altaic family. For example, “subgroup neighbors” are the Kazakh and Bashkir languages. Tatar emerged from the synthesis of the languages of the Volga-Kama Bulgars and Kipchak (Polovtsian, Cuman) and Turkic tribes. It is based on Kypchak components.
The spoken Tatar language is divided into three dialects: Kazan, Mishar, and Eastern (the dialect of the Siberian Tatars). In addition, Tatars from different regions have different dialects. But it won’t be difficult for them all to find a common language: in terms of grammatical structure and lexical composition, all dialects and dialects of the Tatar language have common features. They differ only in small phonetic features and some vocabulary. In the language of the Orthodox Kryashens there are no Arabic-Persian words that entered Tatar through Muslim books.
Appearance Features
The appearance of the Volga Tatars is close to European, but compared to the Finno-Ugric peoples, the Tatars are more Mongoloid. They can be divided into several types. Firstly, the dark Caucasian type (the so-called Pontic). About 40% of the Kazan Tatars, 60% of the Mishars, and 15% of the Kryashens belong to it. Secondly, the light Caucasian type: 20% Kazan Tatars, 20% Mishars, 44% Kryashens. Thirdly, the sublaponoid type (mixed Caucasian and Mongoloid, “Ural”, “Volga-Kama”): 34% of the Kryashens, 25% of the Kazan Tatars, practically not represented among the Mishars. Fourthly, Mongoloid (South Siberian): up to 14% of the total number of Tatars in the Volga region.
Similar climatic conditions and proximity to similar peoples reflected similarities in farming, housing structure and traditions. The Kryashens stand a little apart, they profess Orthodoxy, and not Islam, unlike other groups of Tatars.
Arslan Mingaliev
laboratory assistant at the Ethnographic Museum of KFU, Master of Science in Anthropology and Ethnology, KFU
The single most complete and accurate source of information on the structure of the peoples of Russia is the 2010 All-Russian Population Census. It should also be emphasized once again that the ethnicity of any person is determined only on the basis of his self-identification. Unfortunately, only four groups were indicated separately and numerically in the census: Astrakhan and Siberian, Kryashens, Mishars.
Among the interesting distinctive features in the life and work of Tatar groups, the following can be distinguished. All of them, with the exception of the Kryashens, did not eat mushrooms en masse, which explains the lexical scarcity of mushroom topics in the Tatar language. The Kryashens also kept pigs on their farm, which is again explained by religious reasons. A common feature of the representatives of the Tatar people can be called the ritual of tea drinking, although this also has its own characteristics. For example, among the Mishars and Kryashens, the ritual of treating a guest began with the serving of tea and baked goods. The Kazan Tatars, on the contrary, completed this process with tea. There are some characteristic differences in the traditional costume: this is due to Russian and Finno-Ugric influence.
Gulnara Gabdrakhmanova
Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Head of the Department of Ethnographic Research, Institute of History. Sh. Marjani of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan
In 2001, the book “Tatars” was published in the series “Peoples and Cultures of Russia”, after which it was republished. The volume reflects the latest research related to the physical anthropology of the Tatars. Anthropologists believe that they, like other peoples of the world, are now subject to global trends associated with changes in height, weight of people, a decrease in the number of blondes, and so on. There is also a certain unification of physical characteristics, that is, mixed marriages lead to the fact that the appearance of the peoples of the whole world, and in particular the Tatars, changes. Among them it is difficult to find pure ones, that is, without admixture of blood of other nationalities. For example, in Western Siberia there was a large flow of Kazan Tatars, so the percentage of mixed marriages between Kazan and Siberian Tatars is quite high.
In addition, the Tatars, like the Chuvash, experienced the opposite process - either the Tatarization of some other peoples, or for various reasons they became representatives of other peoples: Chuvash, Mari. In some settlements, people remember that they were once Tatars according to some legends existing in the village, but at the same time they say: “I am a Mari, although I remember that somewhere in my family I had relatives of a different nationality.” If we approach it from the point of view of ethnography, then ethnicity is determined by culture, not genes. You can carry some genes, but over the centuries you and your ancestors have formed a certain culture, the carrier of which you become. You can be Tatar by culture. We must separate the cutlets from the flies: ethnicity is, first of all, culture.
Now it is difficult to estimate the number of ethnographic groups, because people mostly call themselves Tatars, without explaining whether they are Siberian or Astrakhan. First of all, self-awareness is important to them. We all live in European-quality renovations, wear the same clothes, so culture with its specific features does not matter so much.
Images: Sasha Spi
I am often asked to tell the history of this or that people. Among other things, people often ask questions about the Tatars. Probably, both the Tatars themselves and other peoples feel that school history lied about them, lied something to please the political situation.
The most difficult thing when describing the history of peoples is to determine the point from which to begin. It is clear that everyone ultimately descends from Adam and Eve and all peoples are relatives. But still... The history of the Tatars should probably begin in 375, when a great war broke out in the southern steppes of Rus' between the Huns and Slavs on the one hand and the Goths on the other. In the end, the Huns won and, on the shoulders of the retreating Goths, left for Western Europe, where they disappeared into the knightly castles of the emerging medieval Europe.
The ancestors of the Tatars are the Huns and Bulgars.
The Huns are often considered to be some mythical nomads who came from Mongolia. This is wrong. The Huns are a religious-military formation that arose as a response to the disintegration of the ancient world in the monasteries of Sarmatia on the middle Volga and Kama. The ideology of the Huns was based on a return to the original traditions of the Vedic philosophy of the ancient world and the code of honor. It was they who became the basis of the code of knightly honor in Europe. By race, they were blond and red-haired giants with blue eyes, descendants of the ancient Aryans, who from time immemorial lived in the space from the Dnieper to the Urals. Actually, “Tata-Ars” is from Sanskrit, the language of our ancestors, and is translated as “fathers of the Aryans.” After the army of the Huns left Southern Rus' for Western Europe, the remaining Sarmatian-Scythian population of the lower Don and Dnieper began to call themselves Bulgars.
Byzantine historians do not distinguish between the Bulgars and the Huns. This suggests that the Bulgars and other tribes of the Huns were similar in customs, languages, and race. The Bulgars belonged to the Aryan race and spoke one of the Russian military jargons (a variant of the Turkic languages). Although it is possible that the military groups of the Huns also included people of the Mongoloid type as mercenaries.
As for the earliest mentions of the Bulgars, this is the year 354, “Roman Chronicles” by an unknown author (Th. Mommsen Chronographus Anni CCCLIV, MAN, AA, IX, Liber Generations,), as well as the work of Moise de Khorene.
According to these records, already before the Huns appeared in Western Europe in the middle of the 4th century, the presence of Bulgars was observed in the North Caucasus. In the 2nd half of the 4th century, some of the Bulgars penetrated into Armenia. It can be assumed that the Bulgars are not exactly Huns. According to our version, the Huns are a religious-military formation similar to today’s Taliban in Afghanistan. The only difference is that this phenomenon then arose in the Aryan Vedic monasteries of Sarmatia on the banks of the Volga, Northern Dvina and Don. Blue Rus' (or Sarmatia), after numerous periods of decline and rise in the fourth century AD, began a new rebirth into Great Bulgaria, which occupied the territory from the Caucasus to the Northern Urals. So the appearance of the Bulgars in the middle of the 4th century in the North Caucasus region is more than possible. And the reason that they were not called Huns is obviously that at that time the Bulgars did not call themselves Huns. A certain class of military monks called themselves Huns, who were the guardians of the special Vedic philosophy and religion, experts in martial arts and bearers of a special code of honor, which later formed the basis of the code of honor of the knightly orders of Europe. All Hunnic tribes came to Western Europe along the same route; it is obvious that they did not come at the same time, but in batches. The appearance of the Huns is a natural process, as a reaction to the degradation of the ancient world. Just as today the Taliban are a response to the processes of degradation of the Western world, so at the beginning of the era the Huns became a response to the decomposition of Rome and Byzantium. It seems that this process is an objective pattern of development of social systems.
At the beginning of the 5th century, wars broke out twice in the northwestern Carpathian region between the Bulgars (Vulgars) and Langobards. At that time all the Carpathians and Pannonia were under the rule of the Huns. But this indicates that the Bulgars were part of the union of Hunnic tribes and that they came to Europe together with the Huns. The Carpathian Vulgars of the early 5th century are the same Bulgars from the Caucasus of the mid-4th century. The homeland of these Bulgars is the Volga region, the Kama and Don rivers. Actually, the Bulgars are fragments of the Hunnic Empire, which at one time destroyed the ancient world, which remained in the steppes of Rus'. Most of the “men of long will,” religious warriors who formed the invincible religious spirit of the Huns, went to the West and, after the emergence of medieval Europe, disappeared into knightly castles and orders. But the communities that gave birth to them remained on the banks of the Don and Dnieper.
By the end of the 5th century, two main Bulgar tribes were known: the Kutrigurs and the Utigurs. The latter settle along the shores of the Azov Sea in the Taman Peninsula area. The Kutrigurs lived between the bend of the lower Dnieper and the Sea of Azov, controlling the Crimean steppes right up to the walls of Greek cities.
They periodically (in alliance with Slavic tribes) raid the borders of the Byzantine Empire. So, in 539-540, the Bulgars carried out raids across Thrace and Illyria to the Adriatic Sea. At the same time, many Bulgars entered the service of the Byzantine emperor. In 537, a detachment of Bulgars fought on the side of besieged Rome against the Goths. There are known cases of enmity between the Bulgar tribes, which was skillfully incited by Byzantine diplomacy.
Around 558, the Bulgars (mainly Kutrigurs), led by Khan Zabergan, invaded Thrace and Macedonia and approached the walls of Constantinople. And only at the cost of great efforts did the Byzantines stop Zabergan. The Bulgars return to the steppes. The main reason was news of the appearance of an unknown warlike horde east of the Don. These were the Avars of Khan Bayan.
Byzantine diplomats immediately use the Avars to fight against the Bulgars. New allies are offered money and land for settlements. Although the Avar army is only about 20 thousand horsemen, it still carries the same invincible spirit of the Vedic monasteries and, naturally, turns out to be stronger than the numerous Bulgars. This is also facilitated by the fact that another horde is moving after them, now the Turks. The Utigurs are the first to be attacked, then the Avars cross the Don and invade the lands of the Kutrigurs. Khan Zabergan becomes a vassal of Khagan Bayan. The further fate of the Kutrigurs is closely connected with the Avars.
In 566, the advanced detachments of the Turks reached the shores of the Black Sea near the mouth of the Kuban. The Utigurs recognize the power of the Turkic Kagan Istemi over themselves.
Having united the army, they captured the most ancient capital of the ancient world, Bosporus, on the shores of the Kerch Strait, and in 581 they appeared under the walls of Chersonesus.
Renaissance
After the Avar army left for Pannonia and the beginning of civil strife in the Turkic Khaganate, the Bulgar tribes united again under the rule of Khan Kubrat. Kurbatovo station in the Voronezh region is the ancient headquarters of the legendary Khan. This ruler, who led the Onnogurov tribe, was raised as a child at the imperial court in Constantinople and was baptized at the age of 12. In 632, he declared independence from the Avars and stood at the head of the association, which in Byzantine sources received the name Great Bulgaria.
It occupied the south of modern Ukraine and Russia from the Dnieper to the Kuban. In 634-641, the Christian Khan Kubrat entered into an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius.
The emergence of Bulgaria and the settlement of the Bulgars around the world
However, after the death of Kubrat (665), his empire disintegrated, as it was divided between his sons. The eldest son Batbayan began to live in the Azov region as a tributary of the Khazars. Another son, Kotrag, moved to the right bank of the Don and also came under the rule of Jews from Khazaria. The third son, Asparukh, under Khazar pressure, went to the Danube, where, having subjugated the Slavic population, he laid the foundation for modern Bulgaria.
In 865, the Bulgarian Khan Boris converted to Christianity. The mixing of the Bulgars with the Slavs led to the emergence of modern Bulgarians.
Two more sons of Kubrat - Kuver (Kuber) and Altsekom (Altsekom) - went to Pannonia to join the Avars. During the formation of Danube Bulgaria, Kuver rebelled and went over to the side of Byzantium, settling in Macedonia. Subsequently, this group became part of the Danube Bulgarians. Another group, led by Alzek, intervened in the struggle for succession to the throne in the Avar Khaganate, after which they were forced to flee and seek refuge with the Frankish king Dagobert (629-639) in Bavaria, and then settle in Italy near Ravenna.
A large group of Bulgars returned to their historical homeland - the Volga region and the Kama region, from where their ancestors had once been carried away by the whirlwind of the passionate impulse of the Huns. However, the population they met here was not much different from themselves.
At the end of the 8th century. Bulgar tribes in the Middle Volga created the state of Volga Bulgaria. Based on these tribes, the Kazan Khanate subsequently arose in these places.
In 922, the ruler of the Volga Bulgars, Almas, converted to Islam. By that time, life in the Vedic monasteries, once located in these places, had practically died out. The descendants of the Volga Bulgars, in the formation of which a number of other Turkic and Finno-Ugric tribes took part, are the Chuvash and Kazan Tatars. From the very beginning, Islam took hold only in cities. The son of King Almus went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and stopped in Baghdad. After this, an alliance arose between Bulgaria and Bagdat. The subjects of Bulgaria paid the king taxes in horses, leather, etc. There was a customs office. The royal treasury also received duties (a tenth of the goods) from merchant ships. Of the kings of Bulgaria, Arab writers mention only Silk and Almus; Frehn managed to read three more names on the coins: Ahmed, Taleb and Mumen. The oldest of them, with the name of King Taleb, dates back to 338.
In addition, Byzantine-Russian treaties of the 20th century. mention a horde of black Bulgarians living near Crimea.
Volga Bulgaria
BULGARIA VOLGA-KAMA, state of the Volga-Kama, Finno-Ugric peoples in the XX-XV centuries. Capitals: the city of Bulgar, and from the 12th century. city of Bilyar. By the 20th century, Sarmatia (Blue Rus') was divided into two khaganates - Northern Bulgaria and southern Khazaria.
The largest cities - Bolgar and Bilyar - were larger in area and population than London, Paris, Kyiv, Novgorod, Vladimir of that time.
Bulgaria played an important role in the process of ethnogenesis of modern Kazan Tatars, Chuvash, Mordovians, Udmurts, Mari and Komi, Finns and Estonians.
Bulgaria at the time of the formation of the Bulgar state (beginning of the 20th century), the center of which was the city of Bulgar (now the village of Bolgars of Tatarstan), was dependent on the Khazar Khaganate, ruled by Jews.
The Bulgarian king Almas turned to the Arab Caliphate for support, as a result of which Bulgaria adopted Islam as the state religion. The collapse of the Khazar Kaganate after its defeat by the Russian prince Svyatoslav I Igorevich in 965 secured the actual independence of Bulgaria.
Bulgaria becomes the most powerful state in Blue Rus'. The intersection of trade routes, the abundance of black soils in the absence of wars made this region rapidly prosperous. Bulgaria became the center of production. Wheat, furs, livestock, fish, honey, and handicrafts (hats, boots, known in the East as “bulgari,” leather) were exported from here. But the main income came from trade transit between East and West. Here since the 20th century. minted its own coin - the dirham.
In addition to Bulgar, other cities were known, such as Suvar, Bilyar, Oshel, etc.
Cities were powerful fortresses. There were many fortified estates of the Bulgar nobility.
Literacy among the population was widespread. Lawyers, theologians, doctors, historians, and astronomers live in Bulgaria. The poet Kul-Gali created the poem "Kysa and Yusuf", widely known in the Turkic literature of its time. After the adoption of Islam in 986, some Bulgar preachers visited Kyiv and Ladoga and suggested that the Great Russian Prince Vladimir I Svyatoslavich convert to Islam. Russian chronicles from the 10th century distinguish between the Volga, Silver or Nukrat (according to Kama) Bulgars, Timtyuz, Cheremshan and Khvalis.
Naturally, there was a continuous struggle for leadership in Rus'. Clashes with princes from White Rus' and Kyiv were common. In 969, they were attacked by the Russian prince Svyatoslav, who devastated their lands, according to the legend of the Arab Ibn Haukal, in revenge for the fact that in 913 they helped the Khazars destroy the Russian squad who undertook a campaign on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. In 985, Prince Vladimir also made a campaign against Bulgaria. In the 12th century, with the rise of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, which sought to spread its influence in the Volga region, the struggle between the two parts of Rus' intensified. The military threat forced the Bulgars to move their capital inland - to the city of Bilyar (now the village of Bilyarsk in Tatarstan). But the Bulgar princes did not remain in debt. The Bulgars managed to capture and plunder the city of Ustyug on the Northern Dvina in 1219. This was a fundamental victory, since here from the most primitive times there were ancient libraries of Vedic books and ancient monasteries of patronage
worshiped, as the ancients believed, by the god Hermes. It was in these monasteries that knowledge about the ancient history of the world was hidden. Most likely, it was in them that the military-religious class of the Huns arose and a set of laws of knightly honor was developed. However, the princes of White Rus' soon avenged the defeat. In 1220, Russian troops took Oshel and other Kama cities. Only a rich ransom prevented the ruin of the capital. After this, peace was established, confirmed in 1229 by the exchange of prisoners of war. Military clashes between the White Russians and the Bulgars occurred in 985, 1088, 1120, 1164, 1172, 1184, 1186, 1218, 1220, 1229 and 1236. During the invasions, the Bulgars reached Murom (1088 and 1184) and Ustyug (1218). At the same time, a single people lived in all three parts of Rus', often speaking dialects of the same language and descending from common ancestors. This could not but leave an imprint on the nature of relations between fraternal peoples. Thus, the Russian chronicler preserved under the year 1024 the news that in this
That year, famine was raging in Suzdal and the Bulgars supplied the Russians with a large amount of grain.
Loss of independence
In 1223, the Horde of Genghis Khan, who came from the depths of Eurasia, defeated the army of Red Rus' (Kievan-Polovtsian army) in the south in the Battle of Kalka, but on the way back they were badly beaten by the Bulgars. It is known that Genghis Khan, when he was still an ordinary shepherd, met the Bulgar brawler, a wandering philosopher from Blue Rus', who predicted a great fate for him. It seems that he passed on to Genghis Khan the same philosophy and religion that gave rise to the Huns in his time. Now a new Horde has arisen. This phenomenon occurs in Eurasia with enviable regularity as a response to the degradation of the social structure. And every time, through destruction, it gives birth to new life in Rus' and Europe.
In 1229 and 1232, the Bulgars managed to repel the attacks of the Horde again. In 1236, Genghis Khan's grandson Batu begins a new campaign to the West. In the spring of 1236, the Horde khan Subutai took the capital of the Bulgars. In the autumn of the same year, Bilyar and other cities of Blue Rus' were devastated. Bulgaria was forced to submit; but as soon as the Horde army left, the Bulgars left the alliance. Then Khan Subutai in 1240 was forced to invade a second time, accompanying the campaign with bloodshed and destruction.
In 1243, Batu founded the state of the Golden Horde in the Volga region, one of the provinces of which was Bulgaria. She enjoyed some autonomy, her princes became vassals of the Golden Horde Khan, paid him tribute and supplied soldiers to the Horde army. The high culture of Bulgaria became the most important component of the culture of the Golden Horde.
The end of the war helped revive the economy. It reached its greatest prosperity in this region of Rus' in the first half of the 14th century. By this time, Islam had established itself as the state religion of the Golden Horde. The city of Bulgar becomes the residence of the khan. The city attracted many palaces, mosques, and caravanserais. It had public baths, paved streets, and underground water supply. Here they were the first in Europe to master the smelting of cast iron. Jewelry and ceramics from these places were sold in medieval Europe and Asia.
The death of Volga Bulgaria and the birth of the people of Tatarstan
From the middle of the 14th century. The struggle for the Khan's throne begins, separatist tendencies intensify. In 1361, Prince Bulat-Temir seized a vast territory in the Volga region, including Bulgaria, from the Golden Horde. The khans of the Golden Horde only for a short time manage to reunite the state, where everywhere there is a process of fragmentation and isolation. Bulgaria splits into two virtually independent principalities - Bulgarian and Zhukotinsky - with the center in the city of Zhukotin. After the outbreak of civil strife in the Golden Horde in 1359, the army of the Novgorodians captured Zhukotin. The Russian princes Dmitry Ioannovich and Vasily Dmitrievich took possession of other cities of Bulgaria and stationed their “customs officers” in them.
In the second half of the 14th and early 15th centuries, Bulgaria experienced constant military pressure from White Rus'. Bulgaria finally lost its independence in 1431, when the Moscow army of Prince Fyodor the Motley conquered the southern lands. Only the northern territories, the center of which was Kazan, retained independence. It was on the basis of these lands that the formation of the Kazan Khanate began and the degeneration of the ethnic group of the ancient inhabitants of Blue Rus' (and even earlier, the Aryans of the land of seven lights and lunar cults) into the Kazan Tatars. At this time, Bulgaria had already finally fallen under the rule of the Russian tsars, but exactly when it was impossible to say; in all likelihood, this happened under Ivan the Terrible, simultaneously with the fall of Kazan in 1552. However, the title of “sovereign of Bulgaria” was still borne by his grandfather, Ivan Sh. From this time, it can be considered that the formation of the ethnos of modern Tatars begins, which occurs already in the united Rus'. The Tatar princes form many outstanding clans of the Russian state, becoming
are famous military leaders, statesmen, scientists, and cultural figures. Actually, the history of the Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians is the history of one Russian people, whose horses go back to ancient times. Recent studies have shown that all European peoples, in one way or another, come from the Volga-Oka-Don area. Part of the once united people settled around the world, but some peoples always remained in their ancestral lands. The Tatars are just one of these.
Rafael Khakimov
History of the Tatars: a view from the 21st century
(Article from Ivolumes of History of the Tatars from ancient times. About the history of the Tatars and the concept of a seven-volume work entitled “History of the Tatars from ancient times”)
The Tatars are one of those few peoples about whom legends and outright lies are known to a much greater extent than the truth.
The official history of the Tatars, both before and after the 1917 revolution, was extremely ideological and biased. Even the most outstanding Russian historians presented the “Tatar question” with bias or, at best, avoided it. Mikhail Khudyakov in his famous work “Essays on the History of the Kazan Khanate” wrote: “Russian historians were interested in the history of the Kazan Khanate only as material for studying the advance of the Russian tribe to the east. It should be noted that they mainly paid attention to the last moment of the struggle - the conquest of the region, especially the victorious siege of Kazan, but left almost without attention the gradual stages that the process of absorption of one state by another took place" [At the junction of continents and civilizations, p. 536 ]. The outstanding Russian historian S.M. Soloviev, in the preface to his multi-volume “History of Russia from Ancient Times,” noted: “The historian has no right from the middle of the 13th century to interrupt the natural thread of events - namely, the gradual transition of clan princely relations into state ones - and insert the Tatar period, highlight the Tatars, Tatar relations, as a result of which the main phenomena, the main reasons for these phenomena must be covered up” [Soloviev, p. 54]. Thus, a period of three centuries, the history of the Tatar states (Golden Horde, Kazan and other khanates), which influenced world processes, and not just the fate of the Russians, fell out of the chain of events in the formation of Russian statehood.
Another outstanding Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky divided the history of Russia into periods in accordance with the logic of colonization. “The history of Russia,” he wrote, “is the history of a country that is being colonized. The area of colonization in it expanded along with its state territory.” “...The colonization of the country was the main fact of our history, with which all its other facts stood in close or distant connection” [Klyuchevsky, p. 50]. The main subjects of V.O. Klyuchevsky’s research were, as he himself wrote, the state and the nation, while the state was Russian, and the people were Russian. There was no place left for the Tatars and their statehood.
The Soviet period in relation to Tatar history was not distinguished by any fundamentally new approaches. Moreover, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, with its resolution “On the state and measures to improve mass-political and ideological work in the Tatar party organization” of 1944, simply prohibited the study of the history of the Golden Horde (Ulus of Jochi), the Kazan Khanate, thus excluding the Tatar period from history of Russian statehood.
As a result of such approaches to the Tatars, an image of a terrible and savage tribe was formed that oppressed not only the Russians, but also almost half the world. There could be no talk of any positive Tatar history or Tatar civilization. Initially, it was believed that Tatars and civilization were incompatible things.
Today, each nation begins to write its own history independently. Scientific centers have become more independent ideologically, they are difficult to control and it is more difficult to put pressure on them.
The 21st century will inevitably make significant adjustments not only to the history of the peoples of Russia, but also to the history of the Russians themselves, as well as to the history of Russian statehood.
The positions of modern Russian historians are undergoing certain changes. For example, the three-volume history of Russia, published under the auspices of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and recommended as a textbook for university students, provides a lot of information about non-Russian peoples who lived on the territory of present-day Russia. It contains characteristics of the Turkic, Khazar Khaganates, Volga Bulgaria, and more calmly describes the era of the Tatar-Mongol invasion and the period of the Kazan Khanate, but it is nevertheless Russian history, which cannot replace or absorb the Tatar one.
Until recently, Tatar historians in their research were limited by a number of rather strict objective and subjective conditions. Before the revolution, being citizens of the Russian Empire, they worked based on the tasks of ethnic revival. After the revolution, the period of freedom turned out to be too short to have time to write a full history. The ideological struggle greatly influenced their position, but, perhaps, the repressions of 1937 had a greater impact. Control by the CPSU Central Committee over the work of historians undermined the very possibility of developing a scientific approach to history, subordinating everything to the tasks of the class struggle and the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The democratization of Soviet and Russian society made it possible to reconsider many pages of history, and most importantly, to rearrange all research work from ideological to scientific ones. It became possible to use the experience of foreign scientists, and access to new sources and museum reserves opened up.
Along with general democratization, a new political situation arose in Tatarstan, which declared sovereignty on behalf of the entire multi-ethnic people of the republic. At the same time, quite turbulent processes were taking place in the Tatar world. In 1992, the First World Congress of Tatars met, at which the problem of an objective study of the history of the Tatars was identified as a key political task. All this required a rethinking of the place of the republic and the Tatars in a renewing Russia. There was a need to take a fresh look at the methodological and theoretical foundations of the historical discipline associated with the study of the history of the Tatars.
“History of the Tatars” is a relatively independent discipline, since existing Russian history cannot replace or exhaust it.
Methodological problems in studying the history of the Tatars were posed by scientists who worked on generalizing works. Shigabutdin Mardzhani in his work “Mustafad al-akhbar fi ahvali Kazan va Bolgar” (“Information collected for the history of Kazan and Bulgar”) wrote: “Historians of the Muslim world, wanting to fulfill the duty of providing complete information about various eras and explaining the meaning of human society, collected “many information about capitals, caliphs, kings, scientists, Sufis, different social strata, ways and directions of thought of ancient sages, past nature and everyday life, science and crafts, wars and uprisings.” And further he noted that “historical science absorbs the destinies of all nations and tribes, tests scientific directions and discussions” [Marjani, p.42]. At the same time, he did not highlight the methodology for studying Tatar history itself, although in the context of his works it is visible quite clearly. He examined the ethnic roots of the Tatars, their statehood, the rule of the khans, the economy, culture, religion, as well as the position of the Tatar people within the Russian Empire.
In Soviet times, ideological clichés required the use of Marxist methodology. Gaziz Gubaidullin wrote the following: “If we consider the path traversed by the Tatars, we can see that it is made up of the replacement of some economic formations by others, from the interaction of classes born of economic conditions” [Gubaidullin, p.20]. It was a tribute to the requirements of the time. His presentation of history itself was much broader than his stated position.
All subsequent historians of the Soviet period were under strict ideological pressure and their methodology was reduced to the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless, in many works of Gaziz Gubaidullin, Mikhail Khudyakov and others, a different, non-official approach to history broke through. The monograph of Magomet Safargaleev “The Collapse of the Golden Horde”, the works of German Fedorov-Davydov, despite the inevitable censorship restrictions, by the very fact of their appearance had a strong influence on subsequent research. The works of Mirkasim Usmanov, Alfred Khalikov, Yahya Abdullin, Azgar Mukhamadiev, Damir Iskhakov and many others introduced an element of alternative into the existing interpretation of history, forcing us to delve deeper into ethnic history.
Of the foreign historians who studied the Tatars, the most famous are Zaki Validi Togan and Akdes Nigmat Kurat. Zaki Validi specifically dealt with the methodological problems of history, but he was more interested in the methods, goals and objectives of historical science in general, as opposed to other sciences, as well as approaches to writing common Turkic history. At the same time, in his books one can see specific methods for studying Tatar history. First of all, it should be noted that he described Turkic-Tatar history without isolating Tatar history from it. Moreover, this concerned not only the ancient common Turkic period, but also subsequent eras. He equally considers the personality of Genghis Khan, his children, Tamerlane, the various khanates - Crimean, Kazan, Nogai and Astrakhan, calling all this Turkic world. Of course, there are reasons for this approach. The ethnonym “Tatars” was often understood very broadly and included almost not only the Turks, but even the Mongols. At the same time, the history of many Turkic peoples in the Middle Ages, primarily within the framework of the Ulus of Jochi, was united. Therefore, the term “Turkic-Tatar history” in relation to the Turkic population of Dzhuchiev Ulus allows the historian to avoid many difficulties in presenting events.
Other foreign historians (Edward Keenan, Aisha Rohrlich, Yaroslav Pelensky, Yulai Shamiloglu, Nadir Devlet, Tamurbek Davletshin and others), although they did not set out to find common approaches to the history of the Tatars, nevertheless introduced very significant conceptual ideas into the study of various periods . They compensated for the gaps in the works of Tatar historians of the Soviet era.
The ethnic component is one of the most important in the study of history. Before the advent of statehood, the history of the Tatars largely boils down to ethnogenesis. Equally, the loss of statehood brings the study of ethnic processes to the fore. The existence of the state, although it relegates the ethnic factor to the background, nevertheless preserves its relative independence as a subject of historical research; moreover, sometimes it is the ethnic group that acts as a state-forming factor and, therefore, is decisively reflected in the course of history.
The Tatar people do not have a single ethnic root. Among his ancestors were the Huns, Bulgars, Kipchaks, Nogais and other peoples, who themselves were formed in ancient times, as can be seen from the first volume of this publication, on the basis of the culture of various Scythian and other tribes and peoples.
The formation of modern Tatars was influenced to a certain extent by the Finno-Ugrians and Slavs. Trying to look for ethnic purity in the person of the Bulgars or some ancient Tatar people is unscientific. The ancestors of modern Tatars never lived in isolation; on the contrary, they actively moved, mixing with various Turkic and non-Turkic tribes. On the other hand, state structures, developing an official language and culture, contributed to the active mixing of tribes and peoples. This is all the more true since the state has always played the function of the most important ethnic-forming factor. But the Bulgarian state, the Golden Horde, the Kazan, Astrakhan and other khanates existed for many centuries - a period sufficient to form new ethnic components. Religion was an equally strong factor in the mixing of ethnic groups. If Orthodoxy in Russia turned many baptized peoples into Russians, then in the Middle Ages Islam in the same way turned many into Turkic-Tatars.
The dispute with the so-called “Bulgarists”, who call to rename the Tatars into Bulgars and reduce our entire history to the history of one ethnic group, is mainly of a political nature, and therefore it should be studied within the framework of political science, and not history. At the same time, the emergence of this direction of social thought was influenced by the weak development of the methodological foundations of the history of the Tatars, the influence of ideological approaches to the presentation of history, including the desire to exclude the “Tatar period” from history.
In recent decades, there has been a passion among scientists for searching for linguistic, ethnographic and other features in the Tatar people. The slightest features of the language were immediately declared a dialect, and on the basis of linguistic and ethnographic nuances, separate groups were identified that today claim to be independent peoples. Of course, there are peculiarities in the use of the Tatar language among the Mishars, Astrakhan and Siberian Tatars. There are ethnographic features of Tatars living in different territories. But this is precisely the use of a single Tatar literary language with regional characteristics, the nuances of a single Tatar culture. It would be reckless to talk about language dialects on such grounds, much less to single out independent peoples (Siberian and other Tatars). If you follow the logic of some of our scientists, Lithuanian Tatars who speak Polish cannot be classified as Tatar people at all.
The history of a people cannot be reduced to the vicissitudes of an ethnonym. It is not easy to trace the connection of the ethnonym “Tatars” mentioned in Chinese, Arabic and other sources with modern Tatars. It is even more incorrect to see a direct anthropological and cultural connection between modern Tatars and ancient and medieval tribes. Some experts believe that the true Tatars were Mongol-speaking (see, for example: [Kychanov, 1995, p. 29]), although there are other points of view. There was a time when the ethnonym “Tatars” designated the Tatar-Mongol peoples. “Because of their extreme greatness and honorable position,” wrote Rashid ad-din, “other Turkic clans, with all the differences in their ranks and names, became known by their name, and all were called Tatars. And those various clans believed their greatness and dignity in the fact that they included themselves among them and became known under their name, similar to the way they are now, due to the prosperity of Genghis Khan and his clan, since they are Mongols - different Turkic tribes, like Jalairs, Tatars, On-Guts, Kereits, Naimans, Tanguts and others, each of whom had a specific name and a special nickname - all of them, out of self-praise, also call themselves Mongols, despite the fact that in ancient times they did not recognize this name . Their present descendants, therefore, imagine that since ancient times they have been related to the name of the Mongols and are called by this name - but this is not so, for in ancient times the Mongols were only one tribe from the entire totality of the Turkic steppe tribes" [Rashid ad-din,
t. i, book 1, p. 102–103].At different periods of history, the name “Tatars” meant different peoples. Often this depended on the nationality of the authors of the chronicles. Thus, monk Julian, ambassador of the Hungarian king Béla IV to the Polovtsians in the 13th century. associated the ethnonym “Tatars” with the Greek “Tartaros” - “hell”, “underworld”. Some European historians used the ethnonym “Tatar” in the same sense as the Greeks used the word “barbarian”. For example, on some European maps Muscovy is designated as "Moscow Tartary" or "European Tartary", in contrast to Chinese or Independent Tartaria. The history of the existence of the ethnonym “Tatar” in subsequent eras, in particular in the 16th–19th centuries, was far from simple. [Karimullin]. Damir Iskhakov writes: “In the Tatar khanates formed after the collapse of the Golden Horde, representatives of the military-service class were traditionally called “Tatars”... They played a key role in the spread of the ethnonym “Tatars” over the vast territory of the former Golden Horde. After the fall of the khanates, this term was transferred to the common people. But at the same time, many local self-names and the confessional name “Muslims” functioned among the people. Overcoming them and the final consolidation of the ethnonym “Tatars” as a national self-name is a relatively late phenomenon and is associated with national consolidation” [Iskhakov, p.231]. These arguments contain a considerable amount of truth, although it would be a mistake to absolutize any facet of the term “Tatars.” Obviously, the ethnonym “Tatars” has been and remains the subject of scientific debate. It is indisputable that before the revolution of 1917, Tatars were called not only the Volga, Crimean and Lithuanian Tatars, but also Azerbaijanis, as well as a number of Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus and Southern Siberia, but in the end the ethnonym “Tatars” was assigned only to the Volga and Crimean Tatars.
The term “Tatar-Mongols” is very controversial and painful for the Tatars. Ideologists have done a lot to present the Tatars and Mongols as barbarians and savages. In response, a number of scientists use the term “Turkic-Mongols” or simply “Mongols,” sparing the pride of the Volga Tatars. But in fact, history does not need justification. No nation can boast of its peaceful and humane character in the past, because those who did not know how to fight could not survive and were themselves conquered, and often assimilated. The European crusades or the Inquisition were no less cruel than the invasion of the “Tatar-Mongols”. The whole difference is that Europeans and Russians took the initiative in interpreting this issue into their own hands and offered a version and assessment of historical events that was favorable to themselves.
The term “Tatar-Mongols” needs careful analysis in order to find out the validity of the combination of the names “Tatars” and “Mongols”. The Mongols relied on Turkic tribes in their expansion. Turkic culture greatly influenced the formation of the empire of Genghis Khan and especially the Ulus of Jochi. The way historiography has developed is that both the Mongols and the Turks were often called simply “Tatars.” This was both true and false. True, since there were relatively few Mongols themselves, and Turkic culture (language, writing, military system, etc.) gradually became the general norm for many peoples. This is incorrect due to the fact that the Tatars and Mongols are two different peoples. Moreover, modern Tatars cannot be identified not only with the Mongols, but even with the medieval Central Asian Tatars. At the same time, they are the successors of the culture of the peoples of the 7th–12th centuries who lived on the Volga and in the Urals, the people and state of the Golden Horde, the Kazan Khanate, and it would be a mistake to say that they have nothing to do with the Tatars who lived in East Turkestan and Mongolia. Even the Mongol element, which is minimal in Tatar culture today, influenced the formation of the history of the Tatars. In the end, the khans buried in the Kazan Kremlin were Genghisids and this cannot be ignored [Mausoleums of the Kazan Kremlin]. History is never simple and straightforward.
When presenting the history of the Tatars, it turns out to be very difficult to separate it from the general Turkic basis. First of all, we should note some terminological difficulties in the study of common Turkic history. If the Turkic Khaganate is quite unambiguously interpreted as a common Turkic heritage, then the Mongol Empire and especially the Golden Horde are more complex formations from an ethnic point of view. In fact, Ulus Jochi is generally considered to be a Tatar state, meaning by this ethnonym all those peoples who lived in it, i.e. Turko-Tatars. But will today's Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and others who were formed in the Golden Horde agree to recognize the Tatars as their medieval ancestors? Of course not. After all, it is obvious that no one will particularly think about the differences in the use of this ethnonym in the Middle Ages and now. Today, in the public consciousness, the ethnonym “Tatars” is clearly associated with modern Volga or Crimean Tatars. Consequently, it is methodologically preferable, following Zaki Validi, to use the term “Turkic-Tatar history,” which allows us to separate the history of today’s Tatars and other Turkic peoples.
The use of this term carries another burden. There is a problem of correlating the common Turkic history with the national one. In some periods (for example, the Turkic Kaganate) it is difficult to isolate individual parts from the general history. In the era of the Golden Horde, it is quite possible to study, along with general history, individual regions that later became independent khanates. Of course, the Tatars interacted with the Uighurs, and with Turkey, and with the Mamluks of Egypt, but these connections were not as organic as with Central Asia. Therefore, it is difficult to find a unified approach to the relationship between common Turkic and Tatar history - it turns out to be different in different eras and with different countries. Therefore, in this work we will use the term Turkic-Tatar history(in relation to the Middle Ages), it’s as simple as that Tatar history(applied to later times).
“History of the Tatars” as a relatively independent discipline exists insofar as there is an object of study that can be traced from ancient times to the present day. What ensures the continuity of this story, what can confirm the continuity of events? After all, over many centuries, some ethnic groups were replaced by others, states appeared and disappeared, peoples united and divided, new languages were formed to replace the ones that were leaving.
The object of the historian’s research in the most general form is the society that inherits the previous culture and passes it on to the next generation. In this case, society can act in the form of a state or an ethnic group. And during the years of persecution of the Tatars from the second half of the 16th century, separate ethnic groups, little connected with each other, became the main custodians of cultural traditions. The religious community always plays a significant role in historical development, serving as a criterion for classifying a society as a particular civilization. Mosques and madrassas, from the 10th century until the 20s XX centuries, were the most important institution for the unification of the Tatar world. All of them - the state, the ethnic group and the religious community - contributed to the continuity of Tatar culture, and therefore ensured the continuity of historical development.
The concept of culture has the broadest meaning, which refers to all the achievements and norms of society, be it economy (for example, agriculture), the art of government, military affairs, writing, literature, social norms, etc. The study of culture as a whole makes it possible to understand the logic of historical development and determine the place of a given society in the broadest context. It is the continuity of the preservation and development of culture that allows us to speak about the continuity of Tatar history and its characteristics.
Any periodization of history is conditional, therefore, in principle, it can be built on a variety of foundations, and its various options can be equally correct - it all depends on the task that is assigned to the researcher. When studying the history of statehood there will be one basis for distinguishing periods, when studying the development of ethnic groups - another. And if you study the history of, for example, a home or a costume, then their periodization may even have specific grounds. Each specific object of research, along with general methodological guidelines, has its own development logic. Even the convenience of presentation (for example, in a textbook) can become the basis for a specific periodization.
When highlighting the main milestones in the history of the people in our publication, the criterion will be the logic of cultural development. Culture is the most important social regulator. Through the term “culture” we can explain both the fall and rise of states, the disappearance and emergence of civilizations. Culture determines social values, creates advantages for the existence of certain peoples, forms incentives for work and individual personality traits, determines the openness of society and opportunities for communication among peoples. Through culture one can understand the place of society in world history.
Tatar history with its complex twists of fate is not easy to imagine as a complete picture, as ups were followed by catastrophic regression, right down to the need for physical survival and preservation of the elementary foundations of culture and even language.
The initial basis for the formation of the Tatar or, more precisely, the Turkic-Tatar civilization is the steppe culture, which determined the appearance of Eurasia from ancient times until the early Middle Ages. Cattle breeding and horses determined the basic nature of the economy and way of life, housing and clothing, and ensured military success. The invention of the saddle, curved saber, powerful bow, war tactics, a unique ideology in the form of Tengrism and other achievements had a huge impact on world culture. Without steppe civilization, the development of the vast expanses of Eurasia would have been impossible; this is precisely its historical merit.
The adoption of Islam in 922 and the development of the Great Volga Route became turning points in the history of the Tatars. Thanks to Islam, the ancestors of the Tatars were included in the most advanced Muslim world of their time, which determined the future of the people and its civilizational characteristics. And the Islamic world itself, thanks to the Bulgars, advanced to the northernmost latitude, which is an important factor to this day.
The ancestors of the Tatars, who moved from nomadic to settled life and urban civilization, were looking for new ways of communication with other peoples. The steppe remained to the south, and the horse could not perform universal functions in the new conditions of sedentary life. He was only an auxiliary tool in the household. What connected the Bulgarian state with other countries and peoples were the Volga and Kama rivers. In later times, the route along the Volga, Kama and Caspian Sea was supplemented by access to the Black Sea through the Crimea, which became one of the most important factors in the economic prosperity of the Golden Horde. The Volga route also played a key role in the Kazan Khanate. It is no coincidence that Muscovy's expansion to the east began with the establishment of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, which weakened the economy of Kazan. The development of the Eurasian space in the Middle Ages cannot be understood and explained without the role of the Volga-Kama basin as a means of communication. The Volga still functions as the economic and cultural core of the European part of Russia.
The emergence of the Ulus of Jochi as part of the Mongol super-empire, and then an independent state, is the greatest achievement in the history of the Tatars. During the era of the Chingizids, Tatar history became truly global, affecting the interests of the East and Europe. The contribution of the Tatars to the art of war is undeniable, which was reflected in the improvement of weapons and military tactics. The system of public administration, the postal (Yamskaya) service inherited by Russia, the excellent financial system, literature and urban planning of the Golden Horde had reached perfection - in the Middle Ages there were few cities equal to Sarai in size and scale of trade. Thanks to intensive trade with Europe, the Golden Horde came into direct contact with European culture. The enormous potential for the reproduction of Tatar culture was laid precisely in the era of the Golden Horde. The Kazan Khanate continued this path mostly by inertia.
The cultural core of Tatar history after the capture of Kazan in 1552 was preserved primarily thanks to Islam. It became a form of cultural survival, a banner of the struggle against Christianization and assimilation of the Tatars.
In the history of the Tatars there were three turning points associated with Islam. They decisively influenced subsequent events: 1) the adoption of Islam as the official religion by the Volga Bulgaria in 922, which meant recognition by Baghdad of a young independent (from the Khazar Kaganate) state; 2) isthe Lama “revolution” of Uzbek Khan, who, contrary to the “Yasa” (“Code of Laws”) of Genghis Khan on the equality of religions, introduced one state religion - Islam, which largely predetermined the process of consolidation of society and the formation of the (Golden Horde) Turkic-Tatar people; 3) reform of Islam in the second half of the 19th century, called Jadidism (from the Arabic al-jadid - new, renewal).
The revival of the Tatar people in modern times begins precisely with the reform of Islam. Jadidism outlined several important facts: firstly, the ability of Tatar culture to resist forced Christianization; secondly, confirmation of the Tatars’ belonging to the Islamic world, moreover, with a claim to a vanguard role in it; thirdly, the entry of Islam into competition with Orthodoxy in its own state. Jadidism has become a significant contribution of the Tatars to modern world culture, a demonstration of Islam's ability to modernize.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Tatars managed to create many social structures: an education system, periodicals, political parties, their own (“Muslim”) faction in the State Duma, economic structures, primarily commercial capital, etc. By the revolution of 1917, the Tatars had matured ideas for restoring statehood.
The first attempt to recreate statehood by the Tatars dates back to 1918, when the Idel-Ural State was proclaimed. The Bolsheviks managed to forestall the implementation of this grandiose project. Nevertheless, a direct consequence of the political act itself was the adoption of the Decree on the creation of the Tatar-Bashkir Republic. The complex vicissitudes of the political and ideological struggle culminated in the adoption in 1920 of the Decree of the Central Executive Committee on the creation of the “Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic”. This form was very far from the formula of the Idel-Ural State, but it was undoubtedly a positive step, without which there would not have been the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Republic of Tatarstan in 1990.
The new status of Tatarstan after the declaration of state sovereignty put on the agenda the issue of choosing a fundamental path of development, determining the place of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation, in the Turkic and Islamic world.
Historians of Russia and Tatarstan are facing a serious test. The 20th century was the era of the collapse of first the Russian and then the Soviet empire and a change in the political picture of the world. The Russian Federation has become a different country and it is forced to take a fresh look at the path traveled. It faces the need to find ideological reference points for development in the new millennium. In many ways, it will be up to historians to understand the deep processes taking place in the country and the formation of an image of Russia among non-Russian peoples as “our own” or “foreign” state.
Russian science will have to reckon with the emergence of many independent research centers that have their own views on emerging problems. Therefore, it will be difficult to write the history of Russia only from Moscow; it should be written by various research teams, taking into account the history of all the indigenous peoples of the country.
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The seven-volume work entitled “History of the Tatars from Ancient Times” is published under the stamp of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, however, it is a joint work of scientists of Tatarstan, Russian and foreign researchers. This collective work is based on a whole series of scientific conferences held in Kazan, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. The work is of an academic nature and is therefore intended primarily for scientists and specialists. We did not set ourselves the goal of making it popular and easy to understand. Our task was to present the most objective picture of historical events. Nevertheless, both teachers and those who are simply interested in history will find many interesting stories here.
This work is the first academic work that begins to describe the history of the Tatars from 3 thousand BC. The most ancient period cannot always be represented in the form of events, sometimes it exists only in archaeological materials, nevertheless we considered it necessary to give such a presentation. Much of what the reader will see in this work is subject to debate and requires further research. This is not an encyclopedia, which provides only established information. It was important for us to document the existing level of knowledge in this area of science, to propose new methodological approaches, when the history of the Tatars appears in the broad context of world processes, covers the destinies of many peoples, not just the Tatars, to focus attention on a number of problematic issues and thereby stimulate scientific thought .
Each volume covers a fundamentally new period in the history of the Tatars. The editors considered it necessary, in addition to the author's texts, to provide illustrative material, maps, and also excerpts from the most important sources as an appendix.
This did not affect the Russian principalities, where the dominance of Orthodoxy was not only preserved, but also developed further. In 1313, Uzbek Khan issued a label to the Metropolitan of Rus' Peter, which contained the following words: “If anyone blasphemes Christianity, speaks badly about churches, monasteries and chapels, that person will be subject to the death penalty” (quoted from: [Fakhretdin, p.94]). By the way, Uzbek Khan himself married his daughter to the Moscow prince and allowed her to convert to Christianity.
The origin of the name “Tatars” has attracted the attention of many researchers. There are different interpretations about the origin of this name, and to this day there are different opinions about the etymology of the word “Tatars” itself. Some derive the etymology of this word from “mountain resident,” where “tat” supposedly means mountain, and “ar” means resident.” The component ar, as is known, is found in the names of many peoples: Bulgarians, Magyars, Avar, Khazars, Mishar, Suvar, etc. Ar is considered a word of Persian origin meaning “person”. The Turkic ir - man - is usually identified with ar. With this etymology, it seems that the ethnonym “Tatars” is of Turkic origin.
O. Belozerskaya, based on works on the etymology of other authors, connects the origin of the name “Tatars” with the Persian word tepter (defter - a notebook written in a list) in the sense of “colonist”. The ethnonym, or rather microethnonym Tiptyar, is of later origin. This name began to denote the Bulgars and others who moved from the Middle Volga region, from the Kazan Khanate to the Urals, Bashkiria in the 16th-17th centuries, and, as we see, there is nothing in common in the etymology of “Tatars” and “Tiptyars”. There are attempts to explain the etymology of “Tatars” from the Tungus word ta-ta in the meaning of “archer”, “to drag”, “to pull”, which is also doubtful.
The famous Turkologist D.E. Eremeev connects the origin of this ethnonym with the ancient Persian word and people: “In the ethnonym “Tatar”, the first component Tat can be compared with one of the names of the ancient Iranian population. As Mahmut Kashgari reports, “Tatami the Turks call those who speak Farsi,” that is, Iranian languages in general, since, for example, he also calls Sogdians Farsi. In addition, the Turks also called their other neighbors - the Chinese and the Uyghurs - tatami. The original meaning of the word “tat” was most likely “Iranian”, “speaking Iranian”, but then this word began to designate all foreigners, strangers” (D. E. Eremeev. On the semantics of Turkic ethnonymy. - In the collection: Ethnonyms .M., 1970, p. 134).
In medieval Western European literature, even Russians began to be identified with the Tatars; Muscovy was simultaneously called “Tartaria,” since at one time both Russians and Bulgars were subjects of the Golden Horde. Like the Chinese, medieval Europe considered itself the center of the Earth and culture, and therefore Western Europeans (read: clerics, churchmen, first of all) considered all other peoples to be barbarians - Tartars! Thus, a vicious circle emerged: the fusion of “ta-ta” coming from China and “tartar” from the West in the same meaning of barbarian, which contributed to the consolidation of this name in a common sense in the consciousness of the masses of Europe. The phonetic similarity between "ta-ta" and "tartar" further facilitated this identification.
In such “favorable” conditions, it was not difficult for priests, official ideologists and historians to present the Tatars as barbarians, savages, descendants of the Mongol conquerors, which led to the confusion of different peoples in one name. The consequence of this is, first of all, a distorted idea of the origin of modern Tatars. All that has been said ultimately led and continues to lead to the falsification of the history of many Turkic peoples, primarily modern Tatars. The outstanding Russian geographer and historian, teacher of the Turkologist Academician V.V. Radlov, the aforementioned K. Ritter correctly noted: “And therefore, despite the abuse of it (the name “Tatars.” - L.K.) in ethnography and geography, where it is erroneous transferred to the Western Turks, and to the Eastern Manchu people of the Mongol tribe, this name, as an updated concept, means a chaotic mass of people in the country of Central Asia, it is very difficult to study them - historical and geographical descriptions of this part of the world.” As we see, even in the middle of the 19th century, some Russian scientists were well aware of the urgent need to distinguish the names of Mongols and Tatars from the names of Turkic peoples and pointed out that their free use leads to a distortion of history, the past of individual peoples, and complicates the objective study of history, culture, language, origin peoples
The question of the specificity of terms is one of the most pressing in any field of knowledge. It is not without reason that scientists write that if it were possible to eliminate different understandings and interpretations of individual terms, science would get rid of a large burden, the husk of antinomy, and its development would go much faster. We see this kind of phenomenon in different understandings of the ethnonym “Tatars”, leading to various kinds of fictions, confusion, and ultimately to a distortion of the history of the origin of an entire people.
