The Tatar ethnic group was formed. Tatars. Origin of the nation

07.04.2019

The leading group of the Tatar ethnic group is the Kazan Tatars. And now few people doubt that their ancestors were the Bulgars. How did it happen that the Bulgars became Tatars? The versions of the origin of this ethnonym are very interesting.

Turkic origin of the ethnonym

For the first time, the name “Tatar” was found in the 8th century in the inscription on the monument to the famous commander Kül-tegin, which was erected during the Second Turkic Khaganate - a Turkic state located on the territory of modern Mongolia, but with a larger area. The inscription mentions the tribal unions "Otuz-Tatars" and "Tokuz-Tatars".

IN X-XII centuries The ethnonym “Tatars” spread to China, Central Asia and Iran. The 11th century scientist Mahmud Kashgari in his writings called the space between Northern China and Eastern Turkestan “Tatar steppe”.

Perhaps that is why at the beginning of the 13th century the Mongols began to be called that way, who by this time had defeated the Tatar tribes and seized their lands.

Turkic-Persian origin

The learned anthropologist Alexey Sukharev, in his work “Kazan Tatars,” published in St. Petersburg in 1902, noted that the ethnonym Tatars comes from the Turkic word “tat,” which means nothing more than mountains, and the word of Persian origin “ar” or “ ir”, which means person, man, inhabitant. This word is found among many peoples: Bulgarians, Magyars, Khazars. It is also found among the Turks.

Persian origin

Soviet researcher Olga Belozerskaya connected the origin of the ethnonym with the Persian word “tepter” or “defter”, which is interpreted as “colonist”. However, it is noted that the ethnonym “Tiptyar” is of later origin. Most likely, it arose in the 16th-17th centuries, when the Bulgars who moved from their lands to the Urals or Bashkiria began to be called this.

Old Persian origin

There is a hypothesis that the name “Tatars” comes from the ancient Persian word “tat” - this is how the Persians were called in ancient times. Researchers refer to the 11th century scientist Mahmut Kashgari, who wrote that

“Tatami the Turks call those who speak Farsi.”

However, the Turks also called the Chinese and even the Uyghurs tatami. And it could well be that tat meant “foreigner,” “foreign-speaking.” However, one does not contradict the other. After all, the Turks could first call Iranian-speaking people tatami, and then the name could spread to other strangers.
By the way, the Russian word “thief” may also have been borrowed from the Persians.

Greek origin

We all know that among the ancient Greeks the word “tartar” meant the other world, hell. Thus, “Tartarine” was an inhabitant of the underground depths. This name arose even before the invasion of Batu’s army in Europe. Perhaps it was brought here by travelers and merchants, but even then the word “Tatars” was associated by Europeans with eastern barbarians.
After the invasion of Batu Khan, Europeans began to perceive them exclusively as a people who came out of hell and brought the horrors of war and death. Ludwig IX was nicknamed a saint because he prayed himself and called on his people to pray to avoid Batu's invasion. As we remember, Khan Udegey died at this time. The Mongols turned back. This convinced the Europeans that they were right.

From now on, among the peoples of Europe, the Tatars became a generalization of all barbarian peoples living in the east.

To be fair, it must be said that on some old maps of Europe, Tartary began just beyond the Russian border. The Mongol Empire collapsed in the 15th century, but European historians until the 18th century continued to call all eastern peoples from the Volga to China Tatars.
By the way, the Tatar Strait, separating Sakhalin Island from the mainland, is called that because “Tatars” - Orochi and Udege - also lived on its shores. In any case, this was the opinion of Jean François La Perouse, who gave the name to the strait.

Chinese origin

Some scientists believe that the ethnonym “Tatars” is of Chinese origin. Back in the 5th century, in the northeast of Mongolia and Manchuria there lived a tribe that the Chinese called “ta-ta”, “da-da” or “tatan”. And in some dialects of Chinese the name sounded exactly like “Tatar” or “tartar” due to the nasal diphthong.
The tribe was warlike and constantly disturbed its neighbors. Perhaps later the name Tartar spread to other peoples who were unfriendly to the Chinese.

Most likely, it was from China that the name “Tatars” penetrated into Arab and Persian literary sources.

According to legend, the warlike tribe itself was destroyed by Genghis Khan. Here is what Mongol expert Evgeniy Kychanov wrote about this: “This is how the Tatar tribe perished, which, even before the rise of the Mongols, gave its name as a common noun to all Tatar-Mongol tribes. And when in distant auls and villages in the West, twenty to thirty years after that massacre, alarming cries were heard: “Tatars!”, there were few real Tatars among the advancing conquerors, only their formidable name remained, and they themselves had long been lying in the land of their native ulus.” (“The Life of Temujin, Who Thought to Conquer the World”).
Genghis Khan himself categorically forbade calling the Mongols Tatars.
By the way, there is a version that the name of the tribe could also come from the Tungus word “ta-ta” - to pull the bowstring.

Tocharian origin

The origin of the name could also be associated with the Tocharians (Tagars, Tugars), who lived in Central Asia starting from the 3rd century BC.
The Tocharians defeated the great Bactria, which was once a great state, and founded Tokharistan, which was located in the south of modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and in the north of Afghanistan. From the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. Tokharistan was part of the Kushan kingdom, and later broke up into separate possessions.

At the beginning of the 7th century, Tokharistan consisted of 27 principalities that were subordinate to the Turks. Most likely, the local population mixed with them.

The same Mahmud Kashgari called the huge region between Northern China and Eastern Turkestan the Tatar steppe.
For the Mongols, the Tokhars were strangers, “Tatars.” Perhaps, after some time, the meaning of the words “Tochars” and “Tatars” merged, and a large group of peoples began to be called that way. The peoples conquered by the Mongols adopted the name of their kindred aliens, the Tokhars.
So the ethnonym Tatars could also be transferred to the Volga Bulgars.

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, went into 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 Aryan race, 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 Northern Urals. So the appearance of the Bulgars in the middle of the 4th century in the region North Caucasus 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. Main reason- 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 Chersonesos.

Renaissance

After the Avar army left for Pannonia and the beginning of civil strife in the Turkic Kaganate, the Bulgar tribes united again under the rule of Khan Kubrat. Kurbatovo station in Voronezh region- 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 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 a 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 a state in the Volga region Golden Horde, 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.

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Turko-Tatar

The Mongol-Tatar theory is based on the fact of the migration of nomadic Mongol-Tatar groups to Eastern Europe from central Asia (Mongolia). These groups mixed with the Cumans and during the UD period created the basis of the culture of modern Tatars. Supporters of this theory downplay the importance of Volga Bulgaria and its culture in the history of the Kazan Tatars. They believe that during the Ud period the Bulgarian population was partially exterminated, partially moved to the outskirts of Volga Bulgaria (the modern Chuvash descended from these Bolgars), while the main part of the Bulgarians was assimilated (loss of culture and language) by the newcomer Mongol-Tatars and Cumans, who brought a new ethnonym and language. One of the arguments on which this theory is based is the linguistic argument (the proximity of the medieval Polovtsian and modern Tatar languages).

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BASIC THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

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PROBLEMS OF ETHNOGENESIS (BEGINNING THE ORIGIN) OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

PERIODIZATION OF TATAR POLITICAL HISTORY

The Tatar people have gone through a difficult path of centuries-long development. The following main stages of Tatar political history are distinguished:

The ancient Turkic statehood includes the state of the Xiongnu (209 BC - 155 AD), the Hun Empire (late 4th - mid 5th century), the Turkic Khaganate (551 - 745) and the Kazakh Khaganate ( middle 7 – 965)

Volga Bulgaria or Bulgarian Emirate (end X – 1236)

Ulus Jochi or Golden Horde (1242 - first half of the 15th century)

Kazan Khanate or Kazan Sultanate (1445 – 1552)

Tatarstan included Russian state(1552–present)

The Republic of Tatarstan became a sovereign republic within the Russian Federation in 1990

ORIGIN OF THE ETHNONYM (NAME OF THE PEOPLE) TATARS AND ITS DISTRIBUTION IN THE VOLGA-URAL

The ethnonym Tatars is national and is used by all groups that form the Tatar ethnic community - Kazan, Crimean, Astrakhan, Siberian, Polish-Lithuanian Tatars. There are several versions of the origin of the ethnonym Tatars.

The first version talks about the origin of the word Tatar from the Chinese language. In the 5th century, a warlike Mongol tribe lived in Machuria, often raiding China. The Chinese called this tribe "Ta-Ta". Later, the Chinese extended the ethnonym Tatar to all their nomadic northern neighbors, including the Turkic tribes

The second version derives the word Tatar from the Persian language. Khalikov cites the etymology (option of the origin of the word) of the Arab medieval author Mahmad of Kazhgat, according to whom the ethnonym Tatar consists of 2 Persian words. Tat is a stranger, ar is a man. Thus, the word Tatar literally translated from Persian means a stranger, a foreigner, a conqueror.

The third version derives the ethnonym Tatars from the Greek language. Tartar – underground kingdom, hell.

By the beginning of the 13th century, the tribal associations of the Tatars found themselves part of the Mongol Empire led by Genghis Khan and participated in his military campaigns. The Ulus of Jochi (UD), which arose as a result of these campaigns, was numerically dominated by the Cumans, who were subordinate to the dominant Turkic-Mongol clans, from which the military service class was recruited. This class in the UD was called Tatars. Thus, the term Tatars in the UD initially did not have an ethnic meaning and was used to designate the military-service class that constituted the elite of society. Therefore, the term Tatars was a symbol of nobility, power, and it was prestigious to treat the Tatars. This led to the gradual adoption by the majority of the UD population of this term as an ethnonym.

BASIC THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

There are 3 theories that interpret the origin of the Tatar people differently:

Bulgar (Bulgaro-Tatar)

Mongol-Tatar (Golden Horde)

Turko-Tatar

The Bulgarian theory is based on the provisions that the ethnic basis of the Tatar people is the Bulgar ethnos, which developed in the middle Volga region and the Urals in the 19th-9th centuries. Bulgarists, adherents of this theory, argue that the main ethnocultural traditions and characteristics of the Tatar people were formed during the existence of Volga Bulgaria. In the subsequent periods of the Golden Horde, Kazan-Khan and Russian, these traditions and features underwent only minor changes. According to the Bulgarists, all other groups of Tatars arose independently and are in fact independent ethnic groups.

One of the main arguments that the Bulgarists give in defense of the provisions of their theory is an anthropological argument - the external similarity of the medieval Bulgars with the modern Kazan Tatars.

The Mongol-Tatar theory is based on the fact of the migration of nomadic Mongol-Tatar groups to Eastern Europe from central Asia (Mongolia).

BASIC THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

These groups mixed with the Cumans and during the UD period created the basis of the culture of modern Tatars. Supporters of this theory downplay the importance of Volga Bulgaria and its culture in the history of the Kazan Tatars. They believe that during the Ud period the Bulgarian population was partially exterminated, partially moved to the outskirts of Volga Bulgaria (the modern Chuvash descended from these Bolgars), while the main part of the Bulgarians was assimilated (loss of culture and language) by the newcomer Mongol-Tatars and Cumans, who brought a new ethnonym and language. One of the arguments on which this theory is based is the linguistic argument (the proximity of the medieval Polovtsian and modern Tatar languages).

The Turkic-Tatar theory notes the important role in their ethnogenesis of the ethnopolitical tradition of the Turkic and Kazakh Khaganate in the population and culture of the Volga Bulgaria of the Kypchat and Mongol-Tatar ethnic groups steppes of Eurasia. As a key point ethnic history Tatars, this theory considers the period of existence of the UD, when, on the basis of a mixture of alien Mongol-Tatar and Kipchat and local Bulgarian traditions, a new statehood, culture, and literary language arose. A new Tatar ethnopolitical consciousness developed among the Muslim military service nobility of the UD. After the collapse of the UD into several independent states, the Tatar ethnic group was divided into groups that began to develop independently. The process of division of the Kazan Tatars ended during the period of the Kazan Khanate. 4 groups took part in the ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars - 2 local and 2 newcomers. Local Bulgars and part of the Volga Finns were assimilated by the newcomer Mongol-Tatars and Kipchaks, who brought a new ethnonym and language.

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V. “Archaeological” theory of the origin of the Kazan Tatars

In a very respectable work on the history of the Kazan Tatars we read: “The main ancestors of the Tatars of the Middle Volga region and the Urals were numerous nomadic and semi-nomadic, mostly Turkic-speaking tribes, which from about the 4th century. AD began to penetrate from the southeast and south into the forest-steppe part from the Urals to the upper reaches of the Oka River”... According to the theory clarifying the above position, proposed by the head of the archeology sector of the Kazan Institute of Language, Literature and History of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. Khalikov, the ancestors of modern Kazan The Ta-Tar, as well as the Bashkirs, should be considered Turkic-speaking tribes that invaded the Volga and Urals regions in the 6th-8th centuries, speaking a language of the Oguz-Kipchak type.

According to the author, the main population of Volga Bulgaria even in the pre-Mongol period said, likely, in a language close to the Kipchak-Oguz group of Turkic languages, related to the language of the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs. There is reason to believe, he argues, that in Volga Bulgaria, even in the pre-Mongol period, on the basis of the merger of Turkic-speaking tribes, their assimilation of part of the local Finnish-Ugric population, the process of formation of the ethnocultural components of the Volga Tatars took place. The author concludes that there won't be big mistake consider that during this period the foundations of the language, culture and anthropological appearance of the Kazan Tatars took shape, including their adoption of the Muslim religion in the 10th-11th centuries.

Fleeing from the Mongol invasion and raids from the Golden Horde, these ancestors of the Kazan Tatars allegedly moved from Trans-Kama and settled on the banks of the Kazanka and Mesha.

How did the Tatars appear? Origin of the Tatar people

During the period of the Kazan Khanate, the main groups of the Volga Tatars were finally formed from them: the Kazan Tatars and Mishars, and after the annexation of the region to the Russian state, as a result of supposedly forced Christianization, some of the Tatars were allocated to the group of Kryashens.

Let's look at the weaknesses of this theory. There is a point of view that Turkic-speaking tribes with “Tatar” and “Chuvash” languages lived in the Volga region from time immemorial. Academician S.E. Malov, for example, says: “Currently, two Turkic peoples live in the Volga region: Chuvash and Tatars... These two languages are very heterogeneous and not similar... despite the fact that these languages are of the same Turkic system... I I think that these two linguistic elements were here a very long time ago, several centuries before new era and almost in exactly the same form as it is now. If today’s Tatars had met the supposed “ancient Tatar”, a resident of the 5th century BC, they would have explained themselves to him completely. The Chuvash are exactly the same.”

Thus, it is not necessary to attribute the appearance of Turkic tribes of the Kipchak (Tatar) linguistic group in the Volga region only to the 6th-7th centuries.

We will consider the Bulgar-Chuvash identity indisputably established and agree with the opinion that the ancient Volga Bulgars were known under this name only among other peoples, and they themselves called themselves Chuvash. Thus, the Chuvash language was the language of the Bulgars, a language not only spoken, but also written, accounting. In confirmation there is the following statement: “The Chuvash language is a purely Turkic dialect, with an admixture of Arabic, Persian and Russian and almost without any admixture of Finnish words.” ,...” the language shows the influence of educated nations”.

So, in ancient Volga Bulgaria, which existed for a historical period of time equal to approximately five centuries, the state language was Chuvash, and the bulk of the population most likely consisted of the ancestors of modern Chuvash, and not the Turkic-speaking tribes of the Kipchak language group , as the author of the theory claims. There were no objective reasons for the merger of these tribes into a distinctive nationality with characteristics later characteristic of the Volga Tatars, i.e. to the emergence in those distant times of their ancestors.

Thanks to the multinationality of the Bulgarian state and the equality of all tribes before the authorities, the Turkic-speaking tribes of both language groups in this case would have to have very close relationships with each other, taking into account the very large similarity of languages, and hence the ease of communication. Most likely, in those conditions, the assimilation of the tribes of the Kipchak linguistic group into the Old Chuvash people should have occurred, and not their merging with each other and isolation as a separate nationality with specific characteristics, moreover, in a linguistic, cultural and anthropological sense, coinciding with the characteristics of modern Volga Tatars .

Now a few words about the adoption of the Muslim religion by the supposedly distant ancestors of the Kazan Tatars in the 10th-11th centuries. This or that new religion, as a rule, was adopted not by the people, but by their rulers for political reasons. Sometimes it took a very long time to wean the people from old customs and beliefs and make them followers of the new faith. So, apparently, it was in Volga Bulgaria with Islam, which was the religion of the ruling elite, and the common people continued to live according to their old beliefs, perhaps until the time when the elements of the Mongol invasion, and subsequently the raids of the Golden Horde Tatars, forced the remaining escape alive from Trans-Kama to the northern bank of the river, regardless of tribes and language.

The author of the theory only briefly mentions such an important historical event for the Kazan Tatars as the emergence of the Kazan Khanate. He writes: “Here in the 13th-14th centuries the Kazan principality was formed, which grew into the Kazan Khanate in the 15th century.” As if the second is only a simple development of the first, without any qualitative changes. In reality, the Kazan principality was Bulgar, with Bulgar princes, and the Kazan Khanate was Tatar, with a Tatar khan at its head.

The Kazan Khanate was created by the former khan of the Golden Horde, Ulu Mohammed, who arrived on the left bank of the Volga in 1438 at the head of 3,000 of his Tatar warriors and conquered the local tribes. In Russian chronicles for 1412 there is, for example, the following entry: “Daniil Borisovich a year before with his squad Bulgarian princes defeated Vasiliev’s brother, Pyotr Dmitrievich, in Lyskovo, and Vsevolod Danilovich with Kazan prince Talych was robbed by Vladimir.” Since 1445, Ulu Mahomet’s son Mamutyak became the Khan of Kazan, having villainously killed his father and brother, which in those days was a common occurrence during palace coups. The chronicler writes: “The same autumn, King Mamutyak, Ulu Mukhamedov’s son, took the city of Kazan and the patrimony of Kazan, killed Prince Lebey, and sat down to reign in Kazan.” Also: “In 1446 700 Tatars Mamutyakov’s squad besieged Ustyug and took a ransom from the city with furs, but, returning, drowned in Vetluga.”

In the first case, Bulgarian, i.e. Chuvash princes and Bulgar, i.e. Chuvash Kazan prince, and in the second - 700 Tatars of the Mamutyakov squad. It was Bulgarian, i.e. The Chuvash, Kazan principality became the Tatar Kazan Khanate.

What was the significance of this event for the population of the local region, how did the historical process go after that, what changes occurred in the ethnic and social composition region during the period of the Kazan Khanate, as well as after the annexation of Kazan to Moscow - there is no answer to all these questions in the proposed theory. It is also not clear how the Mishar Tatars ended up in their habitats, given their common origin with the Kazan Tatars. A very elementary explanation was given for the emergence of the Kryashen Tatars “as a result of forced Christianization,” without citing a single historical example. Why did the majority of Kazan Tatars, despite the violence, manage to maintain themselves as Muslims, while a relatively small part succumbed to violence and converted to Christianity? The reason for what has been said to some extent must be sought, perhaps, in the fact that, as the author of the article himself points out, up to 52 percent of the Kryashens belong, according to anthropology, to the Caucasoid type, and among the Kazan Tatars there are only 25 such percent. Perhaps this is explained by some difference in origin between the Kazan Tatars and the Kryashens, from which their different behavior during “forced” Christianization also follows, if this really happened in the 16th and 17th centuries, which is very doubtful. We must agree with the author of this theory, A. Khalikov, that his article is only an attempt to summarize new data that allows us to once again raise the question of the origin of the Kazan Tatars, and, it must be said, an unsuccessful attempt.

BASIC THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

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PROBLEMS OF ETHNOGENESIS (BEGINNING THE ORIGIN) OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

PERIODIZATION OF TATAR POLITICAL HISTORY

The Tatar people have gone through a difficult path of centuries-long development. The following main stages of Tatar political history are distinguished:

Volga Bulgaria or Bulgarian Emirate (end X – 1236)

Ulus Jochi or Golden Horde (1242 - first half of the 15th century)

Kazan Khanate or Kazan Sultanate (1445 – 1552)

Tatarstan as part of the Russian state (1552 – present)

The Republic of Tatarstan became a sovereign republic within the Russian Federation in 1990

ORIGIN OF THE ETHNONYM (NAME OF THE PEOPLE) TATARS AND ITS DISTRIBUTION IN THE VOLGA-URAL

The third version derives the ethnonym Tatars from the Greek language. Tartar – underground kingdom, hell.

BASIC THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TATAR PEOPLE

There are 3 theories that interpret the origin of the Tatar people differently:

Bulgar (Bulgaro-Tatar)

Mongol-Tatar (Golden Horde)

Turko-Tatar

History of the origin of the Tatars

Supporters of this theory downplay the importance of Volga Bulgaria and its culture in the history of the Kazan Tatars. They believe that during the Ud period the Bulgarian population was partially exterminated, partially moved to the outskirts of Volga Bulgaria (the modern Chuvash descended from these Bolgars), while the main part of the Bulgarians was assimilated (loss of culture and language) by the newcomer Mongol-Tatars and Cumans, who brought a new ethnonym and language. One of the arguments on which this theory is based is the linguistic argument (the proximity of the medieval Polovtsian and modern Tatar languages).

The Turkic-Tatar theory notes the important role in their ethnogenesis of the ethnopolitical tradition of the Turkic and Kazakh Khaganate in the population and culture of Volga Bulgaria of the Kypchat and Mongol-Tatar ethnic groups of the Eurasian steppes. As a key moment in the ethnic history of the Tatars, this theory considers the period of existence of the UD, when, on the basis of a mixture of alien Mongol-Tatar and Kypchat and local Bulgarian traditions, a new statehood, culture, and literary language arose. A new Tatar ethnopolitical consciousness developed among the Muslim military service nobility of the UD. After the collapse of the UD into several independent states, the Tatar ethnic group was divided into groups that began to develop independently. The process of division of the Kazan Tatars ended during the period of the Kazan Khanate. 4 groups took part in the ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars - 2 local and 2 newcomers. Local Bulgars and part of the Volga Finns were assimilated by the newcomer Mongol-Tatars and Kipchaks, who brought a new ethnonym and language.

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Introduction

Chapter 1. Bulgaro-Tatar and Tatar-Mongol points of view on the ethnogenesis of the Tatars

Chapter 2. Turkic-Tatar theory of ethnogenesis of the Tatars and a number of alternative points of view

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. developed in the world and in the Russian Empire social phenomenon– nationalism. Which promoted the idea that it is very important for a person to identify himself with a certain social group - a nation (nationality). A nation was understood as a community of territory of settlement, culture (especially a single literary language), anthropological features (body structure, facial features). Against the background of this idea, in each of the social groups there was a struggle to preserve culture. The emerging and developing bourgeoisie became the herald of the ideas of nationalism. At this time, a similar struggle was being waged on the territory of Tatarstan - global social processes did not bypass our region.

In contrast to the revolutionary cries of the first quarter of the 20th century. and the last decade of the 20th century, who used very emotional terms - nation, nationality, people, in modern science It is customary to use a more cautious term - ethnic group, ethnos. This term carries within itself the same community of language and culture, like people, nation, and nationality, but does not need to clarify the nature or size of the social group. However, belonging to any ethnic group is still an important social aspect for a person.

If you ask a passerby in Russia what nationality he is, then, as a rule, the passerby will proudly answer that he is Russian or Chuvash. And, of course, one of those who are proud of their ethnic origin will be a Tatar. But what will this word – “Tatar” – mean in the mouth of the speaker? In Tatarstan, not everyone who considers themselves a Tatar speaks or reads the Tatar language. Not everyone looks like a Tatar from a generally accepted point of view - a mixture of features of the Caucasian, Mongolian and Finno-Ugric anthropological types, for example. Among the Tatars there are Christians and many atheists, and not everyone who considers themselves a Muslim has read the Koran. But all this does not prevent the Tatar ethnic group from surviving, developing and being one of the most distinctive in the world.

The development of national culture entails the development of the history of the nation, especially if the study of this history has been prevented for a long time. As a result, the unspoken, and sometimes open, ban on studying the region led to a particularly rapid surge in Tatar historical science, which is observed to this day. Pluralism of opinions and lack of factual material led to the formation of several theories trying to combine the greatest number known facts. Not just historical doctrines were formed, but several historical schools who are conducting a scientific dispute among themselves. At first, historians and publicists were divided into “Bulgarists,” who considered the Tatars to be descended from the Volga Bulgars, and “Tatarists,” who considered the period of formation Tatar nation the period of existence of the Kazan Khanate and the Bulgars who denied participation in the formation of the nation. Subsequently, another theory appeared, on the one hand, contradicting the first two, and on the other, combining all the best of the available theories. It was called “Turkic-Tatar”.

As a result, we can, based on the key points outlined above, formulate the purpose of this work: to reflect the largest range of points of view on the origin of the Tatars.

The tasks can be divided according to the points of view considered:

— consider the Bulgaro-Tatar and Tatar-Mongol points of view on the ethnogenesis of the Tatars;

— consider the Turkic-Tatar point of view on the ethnogenesis of the Tatars and a number of alternative points of view.

The chapter titles will correspond to the designated tasks.

point of view ethnogenesis of the Tatars

Chapter 1. Bulgaro-Tatar and Tatar-Mongol points of view on the ethnogenesis of the Tatars

It should be noted that in addition to linguistic and cultural community, as well as general anthropological features, historians pay a significant role to the origin of statehood. So, for example, the beginning of Russian history is considered not to be the archaeological cultures of the pre-Slavic period or even the tribal unions of those who migrated in the 3rd and 4th centuries Eastern Slavs, and Kievan Rus, which developed by the 8th century. For some reason, a significant role in the formation of culture is given to the spread (official adoption) of the monotheistic religion, which happened in Kievan Rus in 988, and in Volga Bulgaria in 922. Probably, the Bulgaro-Tatar theory arose primarily from such premises.

The Bulgar-Tatar theory is based on the position that the ethnic basis of the Tatar people was the Bulgar ethnos, which formed in the Middle Volga region and the Urals since the 8th century. n. e. (recently, some supporters of this theory began to attribute the appearance of Turkic-Bulgar tribes in the region to the 8th-7th centuries BC and earlier). The most important provisions of this concept are formulated as follows. The main ethnocultural traditions and features of the modern Tatar (Bulgaro-Tatar) people were formed during the period of Volga Bulgaria (X-XIII centuries), and in subsequent times (Golden Horde, Kazan Khan and Russian periods) they underwent only minor changes in language and culture. The principalities (sultanates) of the Volga Bulgars, being part of the Ulus of Jochi (Golden Horde), enjoyed significant political and cultural autonomy, and the influence of the Horde ethnopolitical system of power and culture (in particular, literature, art and architecture) was purely external in nature, which did not have any impact significant influence on Bulgarian society. The most important consequence of the dominance of the Ulus of Jochi was the disintegration of the unified state of the Volga Bulgaria into a number of possessions, and the single Bulgar nation into two ethno-territorial groups (“Bulgar-Burtas” of the Mukhsha ulus and the “Bulgars” of the Volga-Kama Bulgar principalities). During the period of the Kazan Khanate, the Bulgar (“Bulgaro-Kazan”) ethnos strengthened the early pre-Mongol ethnocultural features, which continued to be traditionally preserved (including the self-name “Bulgars”) until the 1920s, when it was forcibly imposed on it by Tatar bourgeois nationalists and the Soviet government ethnonym "Tatars".

Let's go into a little more detail. Firstly, the migration of tribes from the foothills of the North Caucasus after the collapse of the state of Great Bulgaria. Why is it that at present the Bulgarians, the Bulgars assimilated by the Slavs, have become a Slavic people, and the Volga Bulgars are a Turkic-speaking people who have absorbed the population that lived in this area before them? Is it possible that there were much more newcomer Bulgars than local tribes? In this case, the postulate that Turkic-speaking tribes penetrated this territory long before the Bulgars appeared here - during the times of the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Khazars, looks much more logical. The history of Volga Bulgaria begins not with the fact that alien tribes founded the state, but with the unification of the door cities - the capitals of the tribal unions - Bulgar, Bilyar and Suvar. The traditions of statehood also did not necessarily come from alien tribes, since local tribes neighbored powerful ancient states - for example, the Scythian kingdom. In addition, the position that the Bulgars assimilated local tribes contradicts the position that the Bulgars themselves were not assimilated by the Tatar-Mongols. As a result, the Bulgar-Tatar theory is broken by the fact that the Chuvash language is much closer to the Old Bulgar than the Tatar. And the Tatars today speak the Turkic-Kipchak dialect.

However, the theory is not without merits. For example, the anthropological type of the Kazan Tatars, especially men, makes them similar to the peoples of the North Caucasus and indicates the origin of their facial features - a hooked nose, a Caucasian type - in the mountainous area, and not in the steppe.

Until the early 90s of the 20th century, the Bulgaro-Tatar theory of the ethnogenesis of the Tatar people was actively developed by a whole galaxy of scientists, including A.P. Smirnov, Kh.G.

Tatar history

Gimadi, N. F. Kalinin, L. Z. Zalyay, G. V. Yusupov, T. A. Trofimova, A. Kh. Khalikov, M. Z. Zakiev, A. G. Karimullin, S. Kh. Alishev.

The theory of the Tatar-Mongolian origin of the Tatar people is based on the fact of the migration of nomadic Tatar-Mongolian (Central Asian) ethnic groups to Europe, who, having mixed with the Kipchaks and adopted Islam during the period of the Ulus of Jochi (Golden Horde), created the basis of the culture of modern Tatars. The origins of the theory of the Tatar-Mongol origin of the Tatars should be sought in medieval chronicles, as well as in folk legends and epics. The greatness of the powers founded by the Mongolian and Golden Horde khans is spoken of in the legends of Genghis Khan, Aksak-Timur, and the epic of Idegei.

Supporters of this theory deny or downplay the importance of Volga Bulgaria and its culture in the history of the Kazan Tatars, believing that Bulgaria was an underdeveloped state, without urban culture and with a superficially Islamized population.

During the period of the Ulus of Jochi, the local Bulgar population was partially exterminated or, retaining paganism, moved to the outskirts, and the main part was assimilated by incoming Muslim groups, who brought urban culture and the language of the Kipchak type.

Here again it should be noted that, according to many historians, the Kipchaks were irreconcilable enemies with the Tatar-Mongols. That both campaigns of the Tatar-Mongol troops - under the leadership of Subedei and Batu - were aimed at the defeat and destruction of the Kipchak tribes. In other words, the Kipchak tribes during the period Tatar-Mongol invasion were exterminated or driven to the outskirts.

In the first case, the exterminated Kipchaks, in principle, could not cause the formation of a nationality within the Volga Bulgaria; in the second case, it is illogical to call the theory Tatar-Mongol, since the Kipchaks did not belong to the Tatar-Mongols and were a completely different tribe, albeit Turkic-speaking.

Tatars(self-name - Tat. Tatar, tatar, plural Tatarlar, tatarlar) - a Turkic people living in the central regions of the European part of Russia, in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Xinjiang, Afghanistan and the Far East.

Tatars are the second largest ethnic group ( ethnicity- an ethnic community) after the Russians and the most numerous people of Muslim culture in the Russian Federation, where the main area of their settlement is the Volga-Ural region. Within this region, the largest groups of Tatars are concentrated in the Republic of Tatarstan and the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Language, writing

According to many historians, the Tatar people with a single literary and practically common spoken language emerged during the existence of the huge Turkic state - the Golden Horde. The literary language in this state was the so-called “idel terkise” or Old Tatar, based on the Kipchak-Bulgar (Polovtsian) language and incorporating elements of Central Asian literary languages. The modern literary language based on the middle dialect arose in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In ancient times, the Turkic ancestors of the Tatars used runic writing, as evidenced by archaeological finds in the Urals and Middle Volga region.

Since the voluntary adoption of Islam by one of the ancestors of the Tatars, the Volga-Kama Bulgars, the Tatars used Arabic writing, from 1929 to 1939 - Latin script, and since 1939 they have used the Cyrillic alphabet with additional characters.

Earliest surviving literary monuments in the old Tatar literary language (Kul Gali’s poem “Kyisa-i Yosyf”) was written in the 13th century. From the second half of the 19th century. The modern Tatar literary language begins to take shape, which by the 1910s had completely replaced the old Tatar language.

The modern Tatar language, belonging to the Kipchak-Bulgar subgroup of the Kipchak group of the Turkic language family, is divided into four dialects: middle (Kazan Tatar), western (Mishar), eastern (language of the Siberian Tatars) and Crimean (language of the Crimean Tatars). Despite dialectal and territorial differences, Tatars are one nation with a single literary language, a single culture - folklore, literature, music, religion, national spirit, traditions and rituals.

Even before the 1917 coup, the Tatar nation occupied one of the leading places in the Russian Empire in terms of literacy (the ability to write and read in its own language). The traditional thirst for knowledge has survived in the current generation.

The Tatars, like any large ethnic group, have a rather complex internal structure and consist of three ethno-territorial groups: Volga-Ural, Siberian, Astrakhan Tatars and the sub-confessional community of baptized Tatars. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Tatars went through a process of ethnic consolidation ( Consolidtion[lat. consolidatio, from con (cum) - together, at the same time and solido - compacting, strengthening, merging], strengthening, strengthening something; unification, rallying of individuals, groups, organizations to strengthen the struggle for common goals).

The folk culture of the Tatars, despite its regional variability (it varies among all ethnic groups), is fundamentally the same. The vernacular Tatar language (consisting of several dialects) is fundamentally unified. From the 18th to the beginning of the 20th centuries. A national (so-called “high”) culture with a developed literary language emerged.

The consolidation of the Tatar nation was strongly influenced by the high migration activity of Tatars from the Volga-Ural region. So, by the beginning of the 20th century. 1/3 of the Astrakhan Tatars consisted of immigrants, and many of them were mixed (through marriages) with local Tatars. The same situation was observed in Western Siberia, where by the end of the 19th century. about 1/5 of the Tatars came from the Volga and Urals regions, who also intensively mixed with the indigenous Siberian Tatars. Therefore, today it is almost impossible to identify “pure” Siberian or Astrakhan Tatars.

The Kryashens are distinguished by their religious affiliation - they are Orthodox. But all other ethnic parameters unite them with other Tatars. In general, religion is not an ethnic-forming factor. The basic elements of the traditional culture of baptized Tatars are the same as those of other neighboring Tatar groups.

Thus, the unity of the Tatar nation has deep cultural roots, and today the presence of Astrakhan, Siberian Tatars, Kryashens, Mishars, Nagaibaks has a purely historical and ethnographic significance and cannot serve as a basis for identifying independent peoples.

The Tatar ethnic group has an ancient and vibrant history, closely connected with the history of all the peoples of the Ural-Volga region and Russia as a whole.

The original culture of the Tatars has worthily entered the treasury of world culture and civilization.

We find traces of it in the traditions and language of the Russians, Mordvins, Mari, Udmurts, Bashkirs, and Chuvashs. At the same time, the national Tatar culture synthesizes the achievements of the Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Indo-Iranian peoples (Arabs, Slavs and others).

Tatars are one of the most mobile peoples. Due to landlessness, frequent crop failures in their homeland and the traditional desire for trade, even before 1917 they began to move to various regions of the Russian Empire, including the provinces of Central Russia, the Donbass, Eastern Siberia and Far East, North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. This migration process intensified during the years of Soviet rule, especially during the period of the “great construction projects of socialism.” Therefore, at present there is practically no federal subject in the Russian Federation where Tatars live. Even in the pre-revolutionary period, Tatar national communities were formed in Finland, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and China. As a result of the collapse of the USSR, Tatars who lived in the former Soviet republics - Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and the Baltic countries - ended up in the near abroad. Already due to re-emigrants from China. In Turkey and Finland, since the mid-20th century, Tatar national diasporas have been formed in the USA, Japan, Australia, and Sweden.

Culture and life of the people

The Tatars are one of the most urbanized peoples of the Russian Federation. The social groups of the Tatars, living both in cities and in villages, are almost no different from those that exist among other peoples, especially Russians.

In their way of life, the Tatars do not differ from other surrounding peoples. The modern Tatar ethnic group arose in parallel with the Russian one. Modern Tatars are the Turkic-speaking part of the indigenous population of Russia, which, due to their greater territorial proximity to the East, chose Islam rather than Orthodoxy.

The traditional dwelling of the Tatars of the Middle Volga and Urals was a log hut, separated from the street by a fence. The external façade was decorated with multicolor paintings. The Astrakhan Tatars, who retained some of their steppe cattle-breeding traditions, used a yurt as a summer home.

Like many other peoples, the rituals and holidays of the Tatar people largely depended on the agricultural cycle. Even the names of the seasons were designated by a concept associated with a particular work.

Many ethnologists note the unique phenomenon of Tatar tolerance, which consists in the fact that in the entire history of the existence of the Tatars, they have not initiated a single conflict on ethnic and religious grounds. The most famous ethnologists and researchers are sure that tolerance is an invariable part of the Tatar national character.

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 much more widely. to a 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 ideologically they have become more independent, 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 scientific approach to history, subordinating everything to the tasks of the class struggle and the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Democratization of the Soviet and Russian society allowed us 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 is a need to take a fresh look at methodological and theoretical foundations historical discipline related to 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 much 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]. This 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.

From 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 distinguishing 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 to the fore the study ethnic processes. 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 side, government agencies, 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 poor 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 last decades Among scientists there was a passion 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 that was favorable to them. historical events.

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, the Ulus of 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 explore, along with general history, separate 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 generalized 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 XVI centuries, 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 up to today is an important factor.

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. In 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) isLama's “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 public structures: the 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, the 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. 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 presented 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 field of science and to offer new methodological approaches, when the history of the Tatars is presented in the broad context of world processes, covering the destinies of many peoples, and 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 Metropolitan Peter of Rus', 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 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 special role 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.