Why Kazan Tatars call themselves Bulgars. How Kazan Tatars differ from Siberian

Each nation has its own distinctive features, which allow almost without error to determine the nationality of a person. It is worth noting that the Asian peoples are very similar to each other, since all are descendants of the Mongoloid race. How can you define a Tatar? What is the difference between the appearance of the Tatars?

Uniqueness

Without a doubt, each person is unique, regardless of nationality. And yet there are certain common features that unite representatives of a race or nationality. Tatars are usually attributed to the so-called Altai family. This is a Turkish group. The ancestors of the Tatars were known as farmers. Unlike other representatives of the Mongoloid race, the Tatars do not have pronounced facial features.

The appearance of the Tatars and the changes that are now manifesting in them are largely caused by assimilation with the Slavic peoples. Indeed, among the Tatars, fair-haired, sometimes even red-haired representatives are sometimes found. This, for example, cannot be said about Uzbeks, Mongols or Tajiks. Do the eyes of the Tatars have features? They do not necessarily have a narrow slit in the eyes and dark skin. Are there any common features of the appearance of the Tatars?

Description of the Tatars: a bit of history

Tatars are among the most ancient and populous ethnic groups. In the Middle Ages, mention of them excited everyone around: in the east from the shores of the Pacific Ocean and to the Atlantic coast. A variety of scientists included references to this people in their writings. The mood of these notes was clearly polar: some wrote with rapture and admiration, while other scientists showed fear. But one thing united everyone - no one remained indifferent. It is quite obvious that it was the Tatars who had a huge impact on the course of development of Eurasia. They managed to create a distinctive civilization that influenced a variety of cultures.

In the history of the Tatar people there were both ups and downs. Periods of peace gave way to cruel times of bloodshed. The ancestors of modern Tatars took part in the creation of several strong states at once. Despite all the vicissitudes of fate, they managed to preserve both their people and their identity.

ethnic groups

Thanks to the works of anthropologists, it became known that the ancestors of the Tatars were not only representatives of the Mongoloid race, but also Europeans. It was this factor that led to the diversity in appearance. Moreover, the Tatars themselves are usually divided into groups: Crimean, Ural, Volga-Siberian, South Kama. The Volga-Siberian Tatars, whose facial features have the greatest signs of the Mongoloid race, are distinguished by the following features: dark hair, pronounced cheekbones, brown eyes, a wide nose, a fold over the upper eyelid. Representatives of this type are few.

The face of the Volga Tatars is oblong, the cheekbones are not too pronounced. The eyes are large and gray (or brown). Hump ​​nose, oriental type. The physique is correct. In general, the men of this group are quite tall and hardy. Their skin is not dark. Such is the appearance of the Tatars from the Volga region.

Kazan Tatars: appearance and customs

The appearance of the Kazan Tatars is described as follows: a strongly built strong man. From the Mongols, a wide oval of the face and a somewhat narrowed slit of the eyes are noticeable. The neck is short and strong. Men rarely wear a thick beard. Such features are explained by the fusion of Tatar blood with various Finnish peoples.

The marriage ceremony is not like a religious act. From religiosity - only reading the first chapter of the Koran and a special prayer. After marriage, a young girl does not immediately move to her husband's house: for another year she will live in her family. It is curious that her newly-made husband comes to her as a guest. Tatar girls are ready to wait for their lover.

Only a few have two wives. And in those cases when this happens, there are reasons: for example, when the first has already grown old, and the second - younger - now runs the household.

The most common Tatars of the European type - the owners of blond hair and bright eyes. The nose is narrow, aquiline or aquiline. Growth is not high - in women about 165 cm.

Peculiarities

In the character of a Tatar man, some features were noticed: diligence, cleanliness and hospitality border on stubbornness, pride and indifference. Respect for elders is what distinguishes the Tatars. It was noted that representatives of this people tend to be guided by reason, adapt to the situation, and are law-abiding. In general, the synthesis of all these qualities, especially diligence and perseverance, makes a Tatar man very purposeful. Such people are able to achieve success in their careers. The work is brought to the end, they have a habit of achieving their goal.

A purebred Tatar seeks to acquire new knowledge, showing enviable perseverance and responsibility. Crimean Tatars have a special indifference and calmness in stressful situations. Tatars are very curious and talkative, but during work they are stubbornly silent, apparently so as not to lose concentration.

One of the characteristics is self-esteem. It manifests itself in the fact that the Tatar considers himself special. As a result, there is a certain arrogance and even arrogance.

Cleanliness distinguishes Tatars. In their homes, they do not tolerate disorder and dirt. Moreover, this does not depend on financial capabilities - both rich and poor Tatars zealously monitor cleanliness.

My home is your home

Tatars are very hospitable people. We are ready to host a person, regardless of his status, faith or nationality. Even with a modest income, they show cordial hospitality, ready to share a modest meal with a guest.

Tatar women stand out with great curiosity. They are attracted by beautiful clothes, they watch people of other nationalities with interest, they follow fashion. Tatar women are very attached to their home, they devote themselves to raising children.

Tatar women

What an amazing creature - a Tatar woman! In her heart lies an immeasurable, deepest love for her loved ones, for her children. Its purpose is to bring peace to people, to serve as a model of peacefulness and morality. A Tatar woman is distinguished by a sense of harmony and special musicality. She radiates a certain spirituality and nobility of the soul. The inner world of a Tatar woman is full of riches!

Tatar girls from a young age are aimed at a strong, lasting marriage. After all, they want to love their husband and raise future children behind solid walls of reliability and trust. No wonder the Tatar proverb says: “A woman without a husband is like a horse without a bridle!” Her husband's word is law for her. Although witty Tatars complement - for any law, however, there is also an amendment! And yet these are devoted women who sacredly honor traditions and customs. However, do not expect to see a Tatar in a black veil - this is a stylish lady who has a sense of dignity.

The appearance of the Tatars is very well-groomed. Fashionistas in the wardrobe can see stylized things that emphasize her nationality. Here, for example, there are shoes that imitate chitek - national leather boots worn by Tatar girls. Another example is applications, where patterns convey the stunning beauty of the earth's flora.

And what's on the table?

A Tatar woman is a wonderful hostess, loving, hospitable. By the way, a little about the kitchen. The national cuisine of the Tatars is quite predictable in that the main dishes are often based on dough and fat. Even a lot of dough, a lot of fat! Of course, this is far from the healthiest food, although guests are usually offered exotic dishes: kazylyk (or dried horse meat), gubadiya (a layer cake with a wide variety of fillings, from cottage cheese to meat), talkysh-kaleva (an incredibly high-calorie dessert flour, butter and honey). You can drink all this rich treat with ayran (a mixture of katyk and water) or traditional tea.

Like Tatar men, women are distinguished by purposefulness and perseverance in achieving goals. Overcoming difficulties, they show ingenuity and resourcefulness. All this is complemented by great modesty, generosity and kindness. Truly, a Tatar woman is a wonderful gift from above!

Plan:

Introduction

• 1. History
  • 1.1 Early history
  • 1.2 Formation
• 2 Culture
  • 2.1 wedding ceremonies
  • 2.2 Funeral rite
  • 2.3 National clothes
• 3 Anthropological types of Kazan Tatars
• 4 The theory of ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars
• 5 Settlement areas
Literature
Notes

Introduction

Kazan Tatars. Photo from 1885

Kazan Tatars- one of the main groups that make up the Tatar people. They speak the middle dialect of the Tatar language of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages. The ethnic basis of the Kazan Tatars was made up of the Volga Bulgars and other Turkic, and partly Finno-Ugric tribes of the Volga-Ural region.

1. History

1.1. Early history

After the conquest of the Volga Bulgaria by the Mongols in 1236 and a series of Bulgar uprisings in 1237 and 1240, Volga Bulgaria became part of the Golden Horde. Later, after the collapse of the Golden Horde and the emergence of a number of independent khanates in its place, the Kazan Khanate was formed on the Bulgarian lands. As a result of the consolidation of the Bulgars with another Kipchak, and also partly with the Finno-Ugric population of the region, the people of Kazan Tatars are formed.

1.2. Formation

In the XV-XVI centuries, the formation of the Kazan Tatars takes place. Kazan Tatars, as the most numerous and having a more developed economy and culture, formed a bourgeois nation by the end of the 19th century. The bulk of the Kazan Tatars were engaged in agriculture, highly developed among the Kazan Tatars was the jewelry art, which originated from the Bulgar, as well as leather, woodworking crafts and many others. A significant part of the Tatars was employed in various handicraft industries. The material culture of the Tatars, which was formed for a long time from elements of the culture of the Bulgars and local tribes, was also influenced by the cultures of the peoples of Central Asia and other regions, and from the end of the 16th century - by Russian culture.

[Kazan and Orenburg Tatars]

Since the time when the Kazan kingdom was defeated by Russian forces and added to the Russian state, many Tatars scattered during this war, and the rest moved from part in crowds to the then still undefeated Tatar regions: this is why much more changes were made in the Kazan kingdom, than in other conquered places ...

Under this [Russian] rule, many Kazan Tatars, with his permission, moved from their former places to housing in other countries that seemed more free to them: this is why the number of scattered villages and villages of these Tatars in the border provinces with Kazan increased, namely in Orenburg, Tobolsk, and partly also in Voronezh, and in some others ... however, in their everyday rituals, the faith is consistent with the Kazan Tatars: for some reason I won’t apply, speaking about them, and refer to these.

The Orenburg Kazan Tatars should by no means be confused with the hordes that migrated to this [Orenburg] province, such as with the Kirghiz, and in part with the Ufa Tatars. Direct Orenburg Tatars live in Orenburg and along the fortresses of the Orenburg line along the Ural River, partly scattered, and partly in separate settlements, in their own settlements and the town of Kargale on the Sakmara River, 18 miles from Orenburg ... Ufa city and village Tatars are ancient ancient fugitives Kazan, and they are crowded. In the Orenburg Isesh province, for more than a hundred years, a settlement has been maintained, consisting of some villages, and is nicknamed after the Ichkinsky stream ...

All the Orenburg Kazan Tatars outnumber the real Kazan Tatars, and the rest, living in the dispersion, will be no less than the Kazan ones. The Kazan Tatars got their name from the main city of Kazan ... In other words, according to their own legends, they were not a special tribe, but descended from different generations of warriors who remained here [in Kazan] in the settlement and from foreigners attracted to Kazan, and especially Nogai Tatars, who all, through their union into a single society, constituted a special people.

Miller Karl Wilhelm. "Description of all peoples living in the Russian state, .." Part two. About the peoples of the Tatar tribe. S-P, 1776. Transl. from German.

2. Culture

2.1. wedding ceremonies

The Kazan Tatars had peculiar ways of acquiring a bride, like a remnant of ancient times in the Volga region. Both the methods of acquiring a bride and the wedding customs of the Kazan Tatars are sharply different from the customs and rituals of their other tribesmen and are very similar to the rituals of neighboring foreigners (Chuvash, Cheremis, Mordovians and Votyaks), which indicates their close proximity since ancient times and mutual influence. The Kazan Tatars had three ways of acquiring a bride: 1) Kidnapping by force, that is, against the will of both the girl herself and her relatives; 2) Voluntary departure of the girl from the parental home to the groom - by mutual agreement with him, but without the knowledge and consent of the parents of the parties; 3) In the order of ordinary matchmaking, by the will and prior agreement of the parents of the parties. All these methods are also practiced by other peoples of the Volga region.

2.2. Funeral rite

Many facts of the funeral rites of the Kazan Tatars show complete continuity from the Bulgars, today most of the rites of the Kazan Tatars are associated with their Muslim religion.

Location. The urban necropolises of the Golden Horde were located within the city, as were the burial grounds of the period of the Kazan Khanate. Cemeteries of the Kazan Tatars of the 18th-19th centuries. located outside the villages, not far from the villages, if possible - across the river.

Tomb structures. From the descriptions of ethnographers it follows that the Kazan Tatars used to plant one or more trees on the grave. The graves were almost always surrounded by a fence, sometimes a stone was placed on the grave, small log cabins were made without a roof, in which birch trees were planted and stones were placed, sometimes monuments were erected in the form of pillars.

Burial method. The Bulgars of all periods are characterized by the rite of inhumation (deposition of corpses). The pagan Bulgars were buried with their heads to the west, on their backs, with their arms along the body. A distinctive feature of the burial grounds of the X-XI centuries. is the period of the formation of a new rite in the Volga Bulgaria, hence the lack of strict uniformity in the individual details of the ritual, in particular, in the position of the body, hands and face of the buried. Along with observance of the qibla, in the vast majority of cases there are individual burials facing up or even to the north. There are burials of the dead on the right side. The position of the hands is especially diverse during this period. For necropolises of the XII-XIII centuries. the unification of the details of the rite is characteristic: strict observance of the qibla, the orientation of the face to Mecca, the uniform position of the deceased with a slight turn to the right side, with the right hand extended along the body, and the left, slightly bent and laid on the pelvis. On average, 90% of the burials show this stable combination of features, compared to 40-50% in early burials. In the Golden Horde period, all burials were made according to the rite of inhumation, the body was stretched out on its back, sometimes with a turn to the right side, head to the west, facing south. During the period of the Kazan Khanate, the funeral rite did not change. According to the descriptions of ethnographers, the deceased was lowered into the grave, then laid in a side lining, facing Mecca. The hole was filled with bricks or boards. The spread of Islam among the Volga Bulgars already in pre-Mongol times was very clearly manifested in the rite of the Bulgars of the 12th-13th centuries, during the Golden Horde period, and later in the funeral rite of the Kazan Tatars.

2.3. National clothes

The clothes of men and women consisted of trousers with a wide step and a shirt (for women it was supplemented with an embroidered bib), on which a sleeveless camisole was put on. Cossacks served as outerwear, and in winter - a quilted beshmet or fur coat. The headdress of men is a skullcap, and on top of it is a hemispherical hat with fur or a felt hat; for women - an embroidered velvet cap (kalfak) and a scarf. Traditional shoes are leather ichigi with soft soles; outside the home they were worn with leather galoshes. The women's costume was characterized by an abundance of metal jewelry.

3. Anthropological types of Kazan Tatars

The most significant in the field of anthropology of the Kazan Tatars are the studies of T. A. Trofimova, carried out in 1929-1932. In particular, in 1932, together with G. F. Debets, she carried out extensive research in Tatarstan. 160 Tatars were examined in the Arsk region, 146 Tatars in the Yelabuga region, and 109 Tatars in the Chistopol region. Anthropological studies have revealed the presence of four main anthropological types among the Kazan Tatars: Pontic, light Caucasoid, sublaponoid, Mongoloid.

Table 1. Anthropological characteristics of various groups of Kazan Tatars. signs Tatars of the Arsk region Tatars of Yelabuga region Tatars of the Chistopol region Number of cases 160 146 109 Growth 165,5 163,0 164,1 Longitudinal diam. 189,5 190,3 191,8 Transverse diam. 155,8 154,4 153,3 Altitude diam. 128,0 125,7 126,0 Head order. 82,3 81,1 80,2 Altitude-longitudinal 67,0 67,3 65,7 Morphological face height 125,8 124,6 127,0 Cheekbone dia. 142,6 140,9 141,5 Morphological persons. pointer 88,2 88,5 90,0 Nasal pointer 65,2 63,3 64,5 Hair color (% black-27, 4-5) 70,9 58,9 73,2 Eye color (% dark and mixed 1-8 according to Bunak) 83,7 87,7 74,2 Horizontal profile % flat 8,4 2,8 3,7 Average score (1-3) 2,05 2,25 2,20 Epicanthus(% availability) 3,8 5,5 0,9 Eyelid crease 71,7 62,8 51,9 Beard (according to Bunak) % very weak and weak growth (1-2) 67,6 45,5 42,1 Average score (1-5) 2,24 2,44 2,59 Bridge height Average score (1-3) 2,04 2,31 2,33 General profile of the bridge of the nose % concave 6,4 9,0 11,9 % convex 5,8 20,1 24,8 The position of the tip of the nose % elevated 22,5 15,7 18,4 % omitted 14,4 17,1 33,0

These types have the following characteristics:

Pontic type- characterized by mesocephaly, dark or mixed pigmentation of the hair and eyes, high nasal bridge, convex bridge of the nose, with a lowered tip and base, significant beard growth. Growth is average with an upward trend.
Light Caucasian type- characterized by subbrachycephaly, light pigmentation of hair and eyes, medium or high nose bridge with a straight back of the nose, moderately developed beard, medium height. A number of morphological features - the structure of the nose, the size of the face, pigmentation, and a number of others - bring this type closer to the Pontic.
Sublaponoid type(Volga-Kama) - characterized by meso-subbrachycephaly, mixed pigmentation of hair and eyes, wide and low nose, weak beard growth and a low, medium-wide face with a tendency to flattening. Quite often there is a fold of the eyelid with a weak development of the epicanthus.
Mongoloid type(South Siberian) - characterized by brachycephaly, dark shades of hair and eyes, a wide and flattened face and low nose bridge, often occurring epicanthus and poor beard development. Growth, on a European scale, is average.

4. The theory of the ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars

See the section "Theories of ethnogenesis" in the article Tatars .

There are several theories of the ethnogenesis of the Tatars. Three of them are described in the scientific literature in the most detail:

• Bulgaro-Tatar theory
• Tatar-Mongolian theory
• Turko-Tatar theory.

5. Settlement areas

Kazan Tatars (Kazanly) are the main part of the Tatar ethnic group in Tatarstan, yielding only in several areas to the Mishars (in Drozhzhanovsky, Nurlatsky, Chistopolsky, Buinsky and Cheremshansky districts). The main area of ​​settlement of the Kazan Tatars is the so-called Order and Vyatka (Arsky, Baltasinsky, Atninsky, Vysokogorsky, Sabinsky, Tyulyachinsky, Kukmorsky, Zelenodolsky, Pestrechensky, Laishevsky districts), as well as Zakamye, the east and southeast of the republic, where they are known in that including under the name Teptyari (Zainsky, Aktanyshsky, Menzelinsky, Agryzsky, Sarmanovsky, Aznakaevsky, Muslyumovsky, Tukaevsky, Bavlinsky, Yutazinsky, Bugulminsky districts) and Gornaya Storona (Zelenodolsky, Verkhneuslonsky, Kamskoustinsky, Apastovsky, Kaibitsky, districts). They also dominate in Mamadyshsky, Kamsko-Ustyinsky, Tetyushsky, Rybno-Slobodsky, Yelabuga, Mendeleevsky, Nizhnekamsky, Spassky districts. In a number of regions, the ratio of Kazan Tatars and Mishars is equal, or they relatively predominate. Mostly in the south of the republic (Aksubayevsky, Alkeevsky, Spassky, Alekseevsky, Novo-Sheshminsky, Leninogorsky, Almetevsky districts).

Tatars living in the Samara, Kirov, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions, the Perm Territory and the Republics of Bashkortostan and Mari El, for the most part, are also Kazan Tatars and the proportion of Mishar among them is small, but the Tatar assimilation of the Mari should also be considered. As for Bashkortostan, in some areas (Karmaskalinsky, Aurgazinsky, Kushnarenkovsky, Chekmagushevsky, Baltachevsky, Buraevsky, Kiginsky, Chishminsky, Blagovarsky and Buzdyaksky), the majority of Tatars have Mishar roots. Tatars living in Ilishevsky, Yanaulsky, Dyurtilinsky, Tatyshlinsky, Askinovsky, Sharansky, Bakalinsky, Ermekeyevsky, Miyakinsky, Nurimanovsky, Iglinsky, Salavatsky and other regions of the north-west of Bashkortostan have Kazan-Tatar / Teptyar roots.

Literature

• Peter Znamensky. Kazan Tatars.
• Gaynutdin Akhmarov. Wedding ceremonies of the Kazan Tatars.
• Kosach G.G. Tatarstan: religion and nationality in the mass consciousness // Kaariainen K., Furman D.E. (responsible editors). New churches, old believers - old churches, new believers. Religion in post-Soviet Russia. M., Institute of Europe RAS, Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, 2007.

Notes

1. Gaynutdin Akhmarov - Wedding ceremonies of the Kazan Tatars - nevesta-kazan.narod.ru/text/tatar-ahmerev.htm
2. "Modern Remains of Pagan Rites of the Chuvash". Kazan. 1879. P.16
3. Drozdova Galina Ivanovna FUNERAL RITE OF THE VOLGA-KAMIA PEOPLES OF THE XVI-XIX CENTURIES (BY ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS) - www.tataroved.ru/publicat/Drozdova.doc
4. Trofimova T. A. The ethnogenesis of the Tatars of the Middle Volga region in the light of anthropological data. // Origin of the Kazan Tatars. Kazan, 1948 C.30-34.
, Tatars, Budzhak Tatars, Zabolotnye Tatars.

From an article by Peter Znamensky about the Kazan Tatars:

The Kazan Tatar is built, well and strongly built, strong and healthy. For the most part, features of Mongolian origin in him are hardly noticeable in which the expansion of the personal oval, in slightly protruding cheekbones, in the slight narrowing of the rupture of the eyes, in the long ears, somewhat lagging behind the head, in the thickness and shortness of the neck; this can also be partly attributed to the fact that he rarely grows a large and thick beard. Such a modification of the Mongol type among the Kazan Tatars can only be explained by the merger of the Tatar people with the Turkic and various Finnish peoples of the former Bulgarian kingdom, because the admixture to the Tatar blood of other people's blood, Russian, has long been eliminated by the mutual religious alienation of Russians and Tatars. The Tatars themselves sometimes call themselves Bulgars (Bulgarlyk), thus placing themselves in the most direct connection with this disappeared people. The Bashkir and Circassian types that occasionally occur between them are obviously of random origin and are not noticeable in the mass.

In the Kazan province, the Tatars (Muslims and baptized together) constitute the most populous foreign group, extending to 772,700 souls of both sexes, which is more than 31 ° / 0 of the total population of the province (Russians make up less than 40 ° / 0), and are distributed throughout its space, with the exception of the counties of Yadrinsky and Kozmodemyansky, settled by Chuvash and Cheremis. The densest Tatar population is located in the northeast and south of the province, mainly on the left side of the Volga. At their first settlement in this area, the Tatars obviously did not climb deep into the forests, on the right side of the Volga and in the north on the left, where the foreigners of the Finnish tribe lived, and, out of habit of living in open meadow areas, their main mass settled east of the Volga, having it in front of you a fence from attacks from the west, and then, when the Russian colonization of the Kazan region began, occupying everywhere the banks of the rivers and the main roads of the area, they had to give these places to the Russians and make their way to the northeast, as well as to the right and left of the Volga banks in the south . The southeastern settlements of the Kazan Tatars are inextricably merged with the settlements of the Simbirsk Tatars, who are one tribe with the Kazan ones.

Tatar language
Tatar dialects (Tatar language)
Zakazansky (Vysokogorsky, Mamadyshsky, Laishevsky, Baltasinsky districts of Tatarstan)

Tarkhansky (Buinsky, Tetyushsky districts of Tatarstan)
Levoberezhny - Gorny (left bank of the Volga of Tatarstan, Urmarsky district of Chuvashia)
Kryashen dialects (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, see Kryashens)
Nogaybaksky (Chelyabinsk region)
Menzelinsky (Agryzsky, Bugulminsky, Zainsky, Aznakaevsky, Menzelinsky, Sarmanovsky, Bavlinsky, Muslyumovsky, Almetevsky, Aktanyshsky regions of Tatarstan; Udmurtia; Alsheevsky, Bizhbulyaksky, Blagovarsky, Buraevsky, Belebeevsky, Dyurtyulinsky, Ilishevsky, Karmaskalinsky, Krasnokamsky, Kushnarenkovsky, Miyakinsky, Meleuzovsky, Sterlibashevsky, Sterlitamaksky, Tuimazinsky, Fedorovsky, Chekmagushevsky, Chishminsky, Sharansky, Yanaulsky districts of Bashkortostan)
Buraevsky (Buraevsky, Kaltasinsky, Baltachevsky, Yanaulsky, Tatyshlinsky, Mishkinsky, Karaidelsky districts of Bashkortostan)
Kasimovsky (Ryazan region, see Kasimovsky Tatars)
Nokratsky (Kirov region, Udmurtia)
Permsky (Perm region)
Zlatoustovsky (Salavatsky, Kiginsky, Duvansky, Belokataysky districts of Bashkortostan)
Krasnoufimsky (Sverdlovsk region)
Ichkinsky (Kurgan region)
Buguruslansky (Buguruslansky district of the Orenburg region)
Turbaslinsky (Iglinsky and Nurimanovsky districts of Bashkortostan)
Tepekinsky (Gafursky, Sterlitamaksky districts of Bashkortostan)
Safakulsky (Kurgan region)
Astrakhan (Kazan Tatars of the Astrakhan region)

History of the Kazan Tatars

Volga Bulgaria (Volga Bulgaria, Volga-Kama Bulgaria, Silver Bulgaria, Tat. Idel Bolgars, Chuvash. Atӑlçi Pӑlkhar) is a state that existed in the X-XIII centuries in the middle Volga region and the Kama basin.
One of the hordes, consisting mainly of the Kutrigur tribes, under the command of Kotrag moved from the territory of Great Bulgaria to the north and settled (VII-VIII centuries) in the region of the middle Volga and Kama, where the state of Volga Bulgaria was subsequently formed.
This legend is not supported by archaeological evidence. The Bulgars came from Khazaria at the end of the 8th century. The second big wave of migration from Khazaria took place at the beginning of the 10th century.
At the beginning of the 10th century, the Bulgarian Baltavar Almush converted to Hanifid Islam under the name Jafar ibn Abdallah, as evidenced by silver coins minted in Bulgaria. Coins were issued in Bolgar and Suvar throughout the 10th century, the last of which dates back to the year 387 of the Muslim calendar (997/998).
In 922, the Baltavar, in search of military support against the Khazars, whose rulers professed Judaism, invites an embassy from Baghdad, officially declares Hanifid Islam as the state religion and takes the title of emir.

Kazan Tatars, Tatarlar

However, the "people" (subordinate tribe, clan) Sawan (śśuvanä... "a title received by a person two steps below the khakan = Turk. Yabgu"), led by "King Virag" (apparently, this is a Hungarian name (like Almush) , means "flower", common in Hungary) probably expressed dissatisfaction about this ("refused"), as a result, the aristocracy of the Bulgarians was divided into two parties (the second was headed by "King Askal"). After threats from Almush (to hit with a sword), the first party also obeyed. Obviously, "King" Virag with the title of Shroud was the second person (the second step below the khakan) in Volga Bulgaria after the Baltavar Almush (the first step below the khakan). In addition, it is known that "King Almush" with his tribe had "four subordinate kings" with his subordinate tribes, which corresponds to the structure of the state and the name of the Bulgars - "five tribes".

Ancient Bulgars

These events and facts were described in the notes of Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, a member of the Baghdad embassy to the Volga.
After Almush, his son Mikail ibn Jagfar ruled, and then his grandson Abdullah ibn Mikail.
In 965, after the fall of the Khazar Khaganate, Bulgaria, previously vassal to it, became completely independent, but it also became a victim of the eastern campaign of the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav Igorevich in those years (964-969).
In 985 Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, in alliance with the Torques, led a military campaign against Bulgaria and concluded a peace treaty with it.

the most famous modern Tatars

Early history of the Kazan Tatars
After the conquest of the Volga Bulgaria in 1236 by the Mongols and a series of Bulgarian uprisings in 1237 and 1240, the Volga Bulgaria became part of the Golden Horde. Later, after the collapse of the Golden Horde and the emergence of a number of independent khanates in its place, the Kazan Khanate was formed on the Bulgarian lands. As a result of the consolidation of a part of the Bulgars with another Kipchak, and also partly with the Finno-Ugric population of the region, the people of Kazan Tatars are formed.

Kazan Tatars

The Kazan Khanate (Tat. Kazan Khanlygy, Qazan Xanlığı, قازان خانليغى‎) is a feudal state in the Middle Volga region (1438-1552), formed as a result of the collapse of the Golden Horde on the territory of the Kazan ulus. The main city is Kazan. Ulug-Mukhammed (ruled 1438-1445) was the founder of the dynasty of Kazan khans.
The Kazan Khanate separated itself on the territory of the Kazan Ulus (the former territory of Volga Bulgaria). During its heyday (in the second half of the 15th century), the territory of the Kazan Khanate reached the Sura River basin in the west, the Belaya River in the east, the Upper Kama region in the north, and Samarskaya Luka in the south.

Administrative device
The Kazan Khanate consisted of four darugs (districts) - Alat, Arsk, Galician, Zurei. Later, a fifth daruga, Nogai, was added to them. Darugs were divided into uluses, uniting the lands of several settlements.
The major cities were Kazan (Kazan), Alat, Archa, Bolgar, Dzhuketau, Kashan, Iske-Kazan, Zyuri, Laesh and Tetyushi.
In 1552, Tsar Ivan IV captured Kazan and annexed the territory of the khanate to the Russian kingdom.

Formation of the Kazan Tatars

In the XV-XVI centuries, the formation of the Kazan Tatars takes place. Kazan Tatars, as the most numerous and having a more developed economy and culture, formed a bourgeois nation by the end of the 19th century.
The bulk of the Kazan Tatars were engaged in agriculture, highly developed among the Kazan Tatars was the jewelry art, which originated from the Bulgar, as well as leather, woodworking crafts and many others.
A significant part of the Tatars was employed in various handicraft industries. The material culture of the Tatars, which was formed for a long time from elements of the culture of the Bulgars and local tribes, was also influenced by the cultures of the peoples of Central Asia and other regions, and from the end of the 16th century - by Russian culture.

[Kazan and Orenburg Tatars]
Since the time when the Kazan kingdom was defeated by Russian forces and added to the Russian state, many Tatars scattered during this war, and the rest moved from part in crowds to the then still undefeated Tatar regions: this is why much more changes were made in the Kazan kingdom, than in other conquered places ...
Under this [Russian] rule, many Kazan Tatars, with his permission, moved from their former places to housing in other countries that seemed more free to them: this is why the number of scattered villages and villages of these Tatars in the border provinces with Kazan increased, namely in Orenburg, Tobolsk, and partly also in Voronezh, and in some others ... however, in their everyday rituals, the faith is consistent with the Kazan Tatars: why I won’t apply, speaking about them, and refer to these.
The Orenburg Kazan Tatars should by no means be confused with the hordes that migrated to this [Orenburg] province, such as with the Kirghiz, and in part with the Ufa Tatars. Direct Orenburg Tatars live in Orenburg and along the fortresses of the Orenburg line along the Ural River, partly scattered, and partly in special settlements, in their own settlements and the town of Kargale on the Sakmara River, 18 versts from Orenburg ... Ufa city and village Tatars are the ancient Kazan fugitives, and they are crowded. In the Orenburg Isesh province, for more than a hundred years, a settlement has been maintained, consisting of some villages, and is nicknamed after the Ichkinsky stream ...
All the Orenburg Kazan Tatars outnumber the real Kazan Tatars, and the rest, living in the dispersion, will be no less than the Kazan ones. The Kazan Tatars got their name from the main city of Kazan ... In other words, according to their own legends, they were not a special tribe, but descended from different generations of warriors who remained here [in Kazan] in the settlement and from foreigners attracted to Kazan, and especially Nogai Tatars, who all through their uniting into a single society made up a special people.
(author: Karl Wilhelm Miller. “Description of all peoples living in the Russian state, ..” Part two. About the peoples of the Tatar tribe. S-P, 1776. Translated from German).

Culture of Kazan Tatars

Wedding ceremonies of the Kazan Tatars

The Kazan Tatars had peculiar ways of acquiring a bride, like a remnant of ancient times in the Volga region. Both the methods of acquiring a bride and the wedding customs of the Kazan Tatars are sharply different from the customs and rituals of their other tribesmen and are very similar to the rituals of neighboring foreigners (Chuvash, Cheremis, Mordovians and Votyaks), which indicates their close proximity since ancient times and mutual influence. The Kazan Tatars had three ways of acquiring a bride: 1) Kidnapping by force, that is, against the will of both the girl herself and her relatives;
2) Voluntary departure of the girl from the parental home to the groom - by mutual agreement with him, but without the knowledge and consent of the parents of the parties;
3) In the order of ordinary matchmaking, by the will and prior agreement of the parents of the parties. All these methods are practiced by other peoples of the Volga region.

Funeral rite of the Kazan Tatars
Many facts of the funeral rites of the Kazan Tatars show complete continuity from the Bulgars, today most of the rites of the Kazan Tatars are associated with their Muslim religion.
Location. The urban necropolises of the Golden Horde were located within the city, as were the burial grounds of the period of the Kazan Khanate. Cemeteries of the Kazan Tatars of the 18th-19th centuries. located outside the villages, not far from the villages, if possible - across the river.
Grave structures. From the descriptions of ethnographers, it follows that the Kazan Tatars used to plant one or more trees on the grave. The graves were almost always surrounded by a fence, sometimes a stone was placed on the grave, small log cabins were made without a roof, in which birch trees were planted and stones were placed, sometimes monuments were erected in the form of pillars.
Burial method. The Bulgars of all periods are characterized by the rite of inhumation (deposition of corpses). The pagan Bulgars were buried with their heads to the west, on their backs, with their arms along the body. A distinctive feature of the burial grounds of the X-XI centuries. is the period of the formation of a new rite in the Volga Bulgaria, hence the lack of strict uniformity in the individual details of the ritual, in particular, in the position of the body, hands and face of the buried. Along with observance of the qibla, in the vast majority of cases there are individual burials facing up or even to the north. There are burials of the dead on the right side. The position of the hands is especially diverse during this period. For necropolises of the XII-XIII centuries. the unification of the details of the rite is characteristic: strict observance of the qibla, the orientation of the face to Mecca, the uniform position of the deceased with a slight turn to the right side, with the right hand extended along the body, and the left, slightly bent and laid on the pelvis. On average, 90% of the burials show this stable combination of features, compared to 40-50% in early burials. In the Golden Horde period, all burials were made according to the rite of inhumation, the body was stretched out on its back, sometimes with a turn to the right side, head to the west, facing south. During the period of the Kazan Khanate, the funeral rite did not change. According to the descriptions of ethnographers, the deceased was lowered into the grave, then laid in a side lining, facing Mecca. The hole was filled with bricks or boards. The spread of Islam among the Volga Bulgars already in pre-Mongol times was very clearly manifested in the rite of the Bulgars of the 12th-13th centuries, during the Golden Horde period, and later in the funeral rite of the Kazan Tatars.

National clothes of Kazan Tatars

The clothes of men and women consisted of trousers with a wide step and a shirt (for women it was supplemented with an embroidered bib), on which a sleeveless camisole was put on. Cossacks served as outerwear, and in winter - a quilted beshmet or fur coat. The headdress of men is a skullcap, and on top of it is a hemispherical hat with fur or a felt hat; for women - an embroidered velvet cap (kalfak) and a scarf. Traditional shoes are leather ichigi with soft soles; outside the home, they were worn with leather galoshes. The women's costume was characterized by an abundance of metal jewelry.

Anthropological types of Kazan Tatars

The most significant in the field of anthropology of the Kazan Tatars are the studies of T. A. Trofimova, carried out in 1929-1932. In particular, in 1932, together with G. F. Debets, she carried out extensive research in Tatarstan. 160 Tatars were examined in the Arsk region, 146 Tatars in the Yelabuga region, and 109 Tatars in the Chistopol region. Anthropological studies have revealed the presence of four main anthropological types among the Kazan Tatars: Pontic, light Caucasoid, sublaponoid, Mongoloid.

These types have the following characteristics:
Pontic type - characterized by mesocephaly, dark or mixed pigmentation of the hair and eyes, high nasal bridge, convex nasal bridge, with a lowered tip and base, significant beard growth. Growth is average with an upward trend.
Light Caucasoid type - characterized by subbrachycephaly, light pigmentation of hair and eyes, medium or high nose with a straight back of the nose, moderately developed beard, medium height. A number of morphological features - the structure of the nose, the size of the face, pigmentation, and a number of others - bring this type closer to the Pontic.
Sublaponoid type (Volga-Kama) - characterized by meso-subbrachycephaly, mixed pigmentation of hair and eyes, wide and low nose, weak beard growth and a low, medium-wide face with a tendency to flattening. Quite often there is a fold of the eyelid with a weak development of the epicanthus.
Mongoloid type (South Siberian) - characterized by brachycephaly, dark shades of hair and eyes, a wide and flattened face and low nose bridge, often occurring epicanthus and weak beard development. Growth, on a European scale, is average.

The theory of ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars
There are several theories of the ethnogenesis of the Tatars.
Three of them are described in the scientific literature in the most detail:
Bulgaro-Tatar theory
Tatar-Mongolian theory
Turko-Tatar theory.

Bulgaro-Tatar theory

Within the framework of the theory of the Bulgaro-Tatar origin of the Tatars, the key point in the ethnogenesis of the Tatar people is the period of the existence of the Volga Bulgaria, when the Bulgar ethnos, which began to take shape in the Middle Volga and Urals starting from the 8th century, formed the main ethnocultural features of modern Tatars. According to supporters of the theory, subsequent periods (the period of the Golden Horde, the Kazan Khanate, the Russian period) did not have a significant impact on the language and culture of the Bulgaro-Tatar people, and, during the period of the Kazan Khanate, the Bulgar ("Bulgaro-Kazan") ethnos strengthened ethno-cultural features characteristic of the pre-Mongolian period and retained them (together with the self-name "Bulgars") until the 20s of the XX century.

Theory of Tatar-Mongol origin
Within the framework of the theory of the Tatar-Mongolian origin of the Tatars, the resettlement of nomadic Tatar-Mongolian tribes to Eastern Europe is considered the key moment of ethnogenesis. Mixing with the Kipchaks and adopting Islam during the period of the Golden Horde, these tribes created the basis of the Tatar ethnos, its culture and statehood. As a rule, supporters of the theory tend to either downplay or deny the importance of the Volga Bulgaria in the history of the Kazan Tatars.
The origins of the theory of the Tatar-Mongolian origin of the Tatars should be sought from Western European researchers. True, in their understanding of the ethnonym Tatars, they included the population of all the Chingizid states, including the population of the Dzhuchiev ulus, considering them the descendants of the Mongol-Tatar conquerors. Russian scientists, having a broader idea of ​​the Jochi empire, that is, the Golden Horde, and calling all the Golden Horde Tatars, also, in turn, considered them descendants of the Mongol-Tatar conquerors. And it is no coincidence that, among other things, they referred to the so-called “Kazan history”, the authenticity of which, however, is seriously doubted and in which a certain nameless Russian chronicler derives the origin of the Kazan Tatars from the Tatars of the Golden Horde, thus substantiating the necessity and justice of the conquest of Kazan land by the Moscow state : “beginning to go to the king ... from various countries; from the Golden Horde, from Astrakhan, and from Azov and from the Crimea. And when the Great Horde began to grow weak, the Golden Horde strengthened, and instead of the Golden Horde, Kazan, the new Horde, became stronger ... ". The greatness of the powers founded by the Mongol and Golden Horde khans is mentioned in the legends about Genghis Khan, Aksak-Timur, the epic about Idegei.

mosque and madrasah in Novo-Tatarskaya Sloboda, Kazan

Turko-Tatar theory
The Turko-Tatar concept of the origin of the Tatars is developed in the works of G. S. Gubaidullin, A. N. Kurat, N. A. Baskakov, Sh. F. Mukhamedyarov, R. G. Kuzeev, M. A. Usmanov, R. G. Fakhrutdinov , A. G. Mukhamadieva, N. Davleta, D. M. Iskhakov, Yu. combines the best achievements of other theories. Initially, the theory was developed by foreign authors. In addition, there is an opinion that one of the first to point out the complex nature of ethnogenesis, not reducible to one ancestor, was M. G. Safargaliev in 1951. After the late 1980s. the tacit ban on the publication of works that go beyond the decisions of the session of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1946 has lost its relevance, and accusations of “non-Marxism” of a multicomponent approach to ethnogenesis have also ceased to be used, this theory has been supplemented by many domestic publications.
Proponents of the theory identify several stages in the formation of an ethnos.
Stage of formation of the main ethnic components (mid-VI - mid-XIII centuries). The important role of the Volga Bulgaria, the Khazar Khaganate and the Kipchak-Kimak state associations in the ethnogenesis of the Tatar people is noted. At this stage, the main components were formed, which were combined at the next stage. Great is the role of the Volga Bulgaria, which laid down the Islamic tradition, urban culture and writing based on Arabic graphics (after the 10th century), replacing the most ancient writing - the Turkic runic. Ethnic identity remained local.
Stage of the medieval Tatar ethno-political community (mid-13th - first quarter of the 15th centuries).

Tatar nationalists, Azatlyk, true Tatars

KAZAN TATARS
Pyotr Vasilyevich Znamensky

In the era of the invasion of the Mongol-Tatars, the Bulgar dominion in the Volga-Kama region was replaced by Tatar dominion. At the end of the 20s and in the 30s of the XIII century, the Tatars took possession of all the Bulgars of their land and became the dominant people here, but at the same time, as it always happens when a more civilized people is conquered by a less civilized people, they themselves had to believe in the civilization of the conquered by them ancient, rich and well-organized kingdom, they borrowed from him settled life, urban life, commercial enterprise, Mohammedanism and various traits of the national character, which did little to soften their former steppe customs. The gradual merging of the winners with the vanquished through mutual marriages with the passage of time led here to the formation of even a special and strong Tatar race, significantly different from the Tatars groups in other areas of Russia.

Muslim Tatars everywhere, and in Kazan itself, live separately from Russians. The Russians themselves pushed them away from themselves from the very beginning after the conquest of the Kazan kingdom from reputable species. As a result, a peculiar semi-eastern way of life is still preserved in the Tatar villagers. The Tatar village has something wild in it. Houses, built for the most part without order, are hidden inside the yard, and fences and sheds go out into the street; such a character of the location of dwellings is found even in villages already located according to plan. From under the locked gates and along the street there are a lot of angry dogs, raising a frantic bark when a new face appears in the village, and at night announcing the surroundings with a wild howl. In the middle of the village, on a small square, there is a wooden mosque, the minaret of which rises above all the philistine buildings. Somewhere to the side of the village there is a dull cemetery (mazarki), lined instead of crosses with wooden posts, small log cabins and stone slabs, under which the faithful dead lie in anticipation of a future life, where the Russians will be their slaves. The Tatar settlements in Kazan itself, by the nature of the buildings and the location of the streets, are now quite similar to the rest of the city. The only difference between them is mosques instead of churches, some oriental originality in painting houses, a lot of dogs, constantly locked gates and curtained windows with jars of balsam, a favorite Tatar flower.

In terms of their location, Tatar houses in general parts are similar to Russian ones. Each decent, not poor village house is divided into two parts, the front residential and the rear working or black, between which there are extensive canopies. The residential hut, in addition, is in turn divided by a partition into two sections, male and female, with special doors for each. The doors do not open into shops, like those of Russian houses, but into the hut. The women's department is a necessary accessory of the Tatar dwelling; even in a small shack, which can never be divided in two, at least a small corner behind the stove, covered with a curtain, is certainly separated for the owner’s wife, where she hides from the eyes of strangers. The stove, like that of the Russians, is placed at the entrance to the hut; stuck in it. a boiler for cooking, and for many it also serves for washing clothes. On the stove or behind it there are tin or copper kumgans - jugs with narrow necks and long noses, used for religious ablutions, one for the husband, the other for the wife, because it is forbidden by law to wash them from one vessel. Behind the stove you can always find a large copper basin, also for ablutions, and two towels, one for the hands, the other for the legs. The front wall of the hut is occupied by wide bunks for sleeping, so that something like a Russian front corner cannot be found in a Tatar house. The table that occupies this honorable corner with us is placed on the side of the Tatars, at the side window of the hut. Scattered on the bunk beds are soft down jackets, featherbeds, which are only replaced by felt among the poor, and pillows - it is clear that the Tatar loves to sleep softly and comfortably, and not on a sheepskin coat folded into a hard lump, like a Russian. In most of the huts there are samovars and brightly painted tea utensils, which are usually placed in the most visible place. Among the features of the Tatar utensils are also red or green chests - the wealthy have several of them. upholstered in colored-painted tin, and carpets, or at least mats, with which the floors are covered.

Due to the seclusion of a Tatar woman, the groom does not see his bride before marriage, or at least it is assumed that he does not. Therefore, the engagement is arranged by their parents or through matchmakers; these same representatives of the parties agree on the amount of kalym. After the engagement, the groom does not go to the bride, but sends her only gifts from items of women's attire; at the same time, the cost of the things presented is taken by him not at his own expense, but is deducted from the next bride price. Seven days before the wedding, wedding feasts begin, for which the guests alternately gather either in the groom's house, or in the bride's house, and separately - on one day a man, on another woman, all with different gifts. The last feast, after which the marriage ceremony is also performed, happens with the participation of men in the bride's house. Neither the groom nor the bride are present at it, the first is waiting for its completion outside the door, and the bride is hiding in the bedroom prepared for the wedding night. After the feast, having eaten honey and melted butter with bread - ritual food, the guests put money on the tablecloth as a gift to the bride, which is taken to her bedroom. After that, the mullah, an indispensable guest of this feast, proceeds to perform the marriage ceremony.

The marriage ceremony is not at all like a sacred ceremony. The only religious thing here is the reading of Chapter I of the Koran, the marriage prayer, which has the meaning of an ordinary prayer at the beginning and completion of any business in general, and the pronunciation of the marriage khutba, a glorification to God, who established marriage and said: “Take as many wives as you like, - two, three, four. The essential side of the rite is the witnessing of a purely civil agreement of the parties on the amount of kalym, with which the mullah plays the role of not a clergyman, but a simple notary. Marriage questions are offered not to the spouses, but to their parents or other representatives of their families; father The mullah asks the bride if he agrees to give his daughter to NN and such and such a kalym, and the groom's father, whether he agrees to take her for this kalym as his son's wife. The contract thus witnessed is handed over to the bride's side. Already after the completion of the whole ceremony, the groom is called. The matchmaker takes him to the bedroom, where the young ones are locked up for 3 or 4 days, so that they get used to each other.

After marriage, the young woman does not suddenly move to her husband's house, but remains for a year or more in her family. The husband goes to her like a guest, and in the meantime he arranges for her reception everything that is needed for family life.

Mohammedan polygamy did not take root in the Tatars, most likely due to the economic difficulty of keeping a few wives together and due to the inevitable family strife in polygamy.

Only a very few have two wives, and then another wife is taken when the first is outdated; with a young wife, she usually becomes the main mistress of the house.

Tatar cuisine

A woman, as you know, is humiliated even in the religious view of Islam, as a creature of a lower breed. She is almost completely freed from performing religious rites, does not go to the mosque, except occasionally in her old age, does not even know what will happen to her in the next world, because the prophet did not reveal this, busying himself with describing the bliss of the faithful in paradise with some others. women or divas, houris, in which earthly wives are obviously already superfluous. In family life, she is the complete property of her husband, a creature completely without rights in front of him, which he can drive away from himself at the first whim. All her thoughts therefore concentrate on keeping his love behind her, on decorating yourself with whitewash, rouge, dresses, on satisfying his sensual instincts, etc. When addressing a wife, it is customary to be proud, contemptuous and stern; to show her affection in public is considered reprehensible

As in the entire Nagometant world, the Tatars have to a certain extent the seclusion of women. The richer the Tatar, the more he covers his wife. In the life of the poor, working people, both urban and rural, such concealment of a woman, of course, is impossible; but a poor woman of this class, when meeting with a man, is obliged to cover her face, or at least turn away from him when talking, an exception is allowed only when meeting with Russians, before whom, as before infidels, it is probably not worth hiding. The more liberal urban Tatars now allow their wives to openly come to visit Russians, to public meetings, walks and to the theater. But not very long ago, in the theater for the Tatars, special boxes were purposely arranged, closed with curtains, behind which the rich Tatars hid. Traces of this concealment are now sometimes found, except in the fact that the Tatars are placed in the back of the box, and their husbands occupy the front part of it; in this, however, the high primacy of the male half of the family can also be expressed; when the Tatar family goes somewhere or walks, the man also always goes ahead, and behind him his wife minces, surrounded by her Tatars, not daring to catch up with him, much less overtake him.

The dominant food of the Tatars is all floury and oily, especially in sufficient families, where different kinds of sweets and flaky cookies, dumplings, fatty noodles, thick cream (kaymak), etc. are consumed in large quantities. Among the common people, the usual dish is: pusher or talker, boiled from flour and water with salt, salma from balls of dough in water, buckwheat cakes in vegetable oil; for taste, salma and tolkan are sometimes whitened with milk. On holidays, on the table is stew with meat and roast lamb or horse meat. Tatars do not eat much meat at all, because it is expensive for them. An animal intended for food must be slaughtered without fail by a Tatar and with a well-known prayer; Therefore, the Tatars cannot use the supplies of an ordinary meat market and at an ordinary price. An important help for them could be the horse meat allowed for them to eat, but it is little used by them, because, being usually obtained from old, already worthless horses, it is very harsh and tasteless, and to stab healthy foals and young horses for it - expensive. The most common and, one might say, national meat is mutton from the Tatars. The meat of pigs, so commonly used in Russian villages, is positively prohibited by the Koran and constitutes the same object of disgust for the Tatars as mare is for Russians.

General Dmitry Karbyshev

Another prohibition of the Qur'an regarding wine is far from being observed as strictly as one might think, especially among the working class in cities and among the villagers living adjacent to Russian villages, in which the kabak is, as you know, an indispensable accessory. More conscientious Tatars disguise their opposition to the commandments of the prophet with the consumption of lesh, instead of vodka, some kind of tinctures, balm and sweet vodka. Tea and beer are considered completely bezgrysh-nym drinks and are consumed by the Tatars in incredible quantities. Urban Tatars love to drink beer, as well as tea, especially in taverns and taverns, which, perhaps, expresses the well-known passion of eastern residents for coffee houses. In Kazan there are several specially Tatar taverns and taverns, where you can always meet both tea-drinking and tipsy Tatar friends. Some Tatar virtuoso or several of them are playing violins in a corner, imitating from the ear and completely in the Tatar way some kind of polka or Cossack girl, and drunken couples of friends are sitting at the tables over empty dishes and, staring closely at each other with faces, staring at each other their red eyes, trying to outshout one another, sensitively sing some whining and blissful song. which, by its nature, has nothing to do with the violin polka that immediately cuts the ear. For some reason, the violin managed to become a favorite instrument of the Tatars and even other foreigners of the Kazan province. The national character of the Tatars is more lively and receptive than the Russian. The Tatar is smart, smart and enterprising, sociable, talkative, strangles the guest with tea and food, but at the same time he is rogue, boastful and deceitful, loves to cheat, especially Russians, touchy and hot, loves to sue, with all his enterprise and dexterity he is lazy and unstable. in the matter of labor systematic). The Tatar laborer takes up the job at first very ardently and quickly, and seems much better and more profitable than the Russian worker, who at first usually only sways and adjusts to work for a long time, but does little work; but then the Tatar begins to quickly weaken both in strength and in zeal, when the Russians only enter into the full strength of their work, and the overall results of the entire amount of work done turn out to be more often in favor of the latter, and not the first. In agricultural work, which requires not so much agility as patience and perseverance, the Tatars stand below not only Russians, but also other foreigners of the Kazan region, so that they even arouse general ridicule against themselves. The Tatar field is always worse than others; similarly launched and other articles of their agriculture. In many villages, the Tatars even completely abandoned agriculture and rent out land to Russians, Chuvashs and Votyaks. By its nature, the Tatar loves to make a penny in some easier way: petty trade, lucre, even just fraud. Trade seems to be his natural vocation - it is a true descendant of the ancient Bulgars. As a boy, he walks the streets of Kazan, rummaging through the heaps of garbage in the yards, looking for moslas and rags to sell at factories, or selling bars of soap, matches, oranges and lemons. For the Kazan region, in terms of trade and maklachestvo, the Tatars are almost the same as the Jews for the western region. They are engaged in all kinds of sale and resale, from the sale of robes and old dresses to a large trade in tea, from a wandering trade in whitewash, rouge, beads and all sorts of rubbish in Tatar villages to very solid trade deals with Bukhara, Persia and China. The big merchants conduct their business fairly rationally and honestly, but most hold fast to the zealous tricks of swindling, fooling buyers with an honest look, false ambition, swearing and demanding four and five times the real price of the goods. In addition to trade, the Tatars are also engaged in leather craft, which they also inherited after the Bulgars, soap making, and the preparation of felt products; bast dressing, cart and cooperage trades. In the Kazan province, they own more than 1/3 of all factories and plants. Many hands are busy driving; among the cabbies (mainly draymen) and coachmen of the entire province of the Tatars, they make up a whole half. They love and keep their horses well. Tatar horses and coachmen are considered the best in the region. As a result of the poor state of agriculture in the Tatar villages, thousands of villagers go annually to various seasonal activities in the surrounding Volga cities and the Volga. In Kazan, poor Tatars take on the labors of janitors, porters on the piers, guards, day laborers and water carriers; Drupes simply indulge in poverty, which is extremely developed especially among the female half of the Tatar population, or even in theft and horse-stealing.

Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda, Kazan, Nasyri street

According to the religion of the Tatars, all Mohammedans, with the exception of a small number, up to 42,660 people, were baptized into Orthodoxy, and are distinguished by their ardent and strong adherence to Islam. The latter lies at the basis of their entire worldview and their entire moral makeup and constitutes the main difference between their very nationality, which, both by themselves and by Russians, is conceived in no other way than precisely in a religious form. Aliens, seduced into Islam, at the same time, are Tatarized. To accept Mohammedanism means “to go to the Tatars.” Mohammedanism, which they profess, is of the Sunni persuasion and does not represent any features against the general system of this persuasion, either in doctrine or in rituals: the Tatars have the same dogma, the same five-time prayers, fasts (uraza) , holidays (bairam), etc., like all other Sunni Muslims. Tatars are for the most part very pious, even fanatical and firmly adhere to the performance of the rites of their faith. Every business begins and ends with them with a short prayer: in the name of God, merciful, merciful. Namaz is carefully performed by almost all Tatars, with the exception of laborers or some liberal intellectuals, even while traveling, for example, on a steamer on the Volga. To determine the qibla (the side where Mecca lies and where you need to turn in prayer with your face), rich Tatars purposely carry small compasses with them. During the very main and long fast of Ramadan, which lasts a whole month, even laborers do not eat or drink anything every day throughout the day until night, despite the fact that they suffer terribly from this abstinence at work, especially from thirst, when this transitional Lent happens in the summer heat. Having caught some sinner in violation of Ramadan, the Tatars smear his face with soot and sometimes beat him severely. Between pious people in great respect, hajj, travel to Mecca, from where pilgrims or haji return with various shrines, sacred rosaries, amulets, talismans, wonderful stories about the kaaba, a stone hanging in the air or the coffin of the prophet, etc. and then they use it all their lives special respect among their fellow believers.

The most important holidays of the Tatars are common to all confessors of Islam - this is Bayram in honor of the giving of the Koran, preceded by fasting Ramadan, and Kurban-Bayram 2 months after the first in honor of the sacrifice of Abraham, both passing. In places between ordinary Tatars in the villages, various public and private, family kurmans have been preserved - sacrifices of pagan origin, but very few. The remnants of the old paganism in large numbers and purity survived mainly among the old-baptized Tatars; among the unbaptized, the old folk faith has almost everywhere been completely replaced by Mohammedanism. Of the ancient folk holidays, only two holidays have survived between them, saban and jiin.

Inferior education (literacy) however, is much more widespread among all Tatars, not excluding women. It is obtained in schools at mosques, lower - mektebs and higher - madrasahs. Each mullah is engaged in teaching the boys of his parish, and his wife usually teaches the girls (for which she is called ustabika-madame craftswoman). In addition, many children learn from their fathers and mothers. A very small fee (khair) or money is due for teaching at school - a penny of 2, 3, 5, a lot of 10 a week, or meat, milk, flour, oats, and other products. Mullah teaches poor children without any khair, for nothing, because it is considered extremely soul-saving work. Teaching takes place in all schools only in winter, from the beginning of November to the 1st of May every day, except for the weekly one - Friday, in the morning, at 6 o'clock or at dawn. The initial course of literacy in mektebah consists in studying the primer with warehouses, with the necessary prayers (niata) and forty duties of a Muslim (kalimat) which lasts for 2 years or more due to extremely imperfect, most primitive teaching methods, then in chanting the chosen places of the Koran or the seventh part The Qur'an, Gavtiak, as this book is called, and the Qur'an itself, which lasts from 3 to 7 years, without any understanding of what is being read, because the Qur'an is read in Arabic. At the same time, some Tatar books of moral and religious content are read or, more precisely, memorized by heart: Byaduam (on the obligations of the law), Bakyrgan (moral poem), a book about Yusuf (Joseph the Beautiful), etc. This is how the education of all girls and more ends. parts of boys. For further education, the boys enter madrasas.

A madrasah is usually built at a mosque with donations from more sufficient Tatars and is supported by a combined sum. A donation to a madrasah is considered one of the most charitable deeds. According to the external device, the madrasah is a more or less extensive hut with a somewhat elevated floor; a pit is left between the floor and the threshold, uncovered with boards, in which galoshes are removed, bathing is done, all rubbish is removed from the floor, all school rubbish and dirt are concentrated in general. On the walls on the floor there are partitions or screens, forming around something like cabinets, in which students are placed with all their property; clothes and shelves with books hang on the wall of each such compartment, and on the floor there are beds, chests, dishes, food supplies, etc. Students (shakirds), except for those who come, must constantly be in the madrasah; they are only allowed home on Friday from Thursday evening to Saturday morning. That is why they study here and run their entire household. Since women are not allowed in madrasas, the boys themselves must take turns cooking for themselves, and washing linen, and sewing up various holes, and mending their shoes, which takes them a lot of time from learning. All shakirds should serve as an example of careful observance of all prayers, ablutions and fasts, and in general all their upbringing is based on strictly religious principles. Learning to take place in the morning, hours from 6 to 10 and 11; at the same time, all the youth sit down with their legs tucked under them on the floor and begin to sing their lessons from the Koran and other books in a plaintive ritual recitative or write, holding paper on their left palm above their raised knee. On Thursday, verification of all successes for the week and reprisals against unsuccessful students take place, as was done in our old Skoda on Saturdays; unsuccessful ones are punished by being planted under the floor or by rods. In summer, the students go home; many of them go into petty trade at this time, sell lemons and oranges, for which they even leave for Nizhny, and some disperse to read the Koran in Kyrgyz villages, which also earn money for themselves.

It is remarkable that all the current Muslim education in Kazan owes its prosperity to the Russian government and rose no earlier than the beginning of the 19th century. Until that time, the Tatar population of the region was in the darkest ignorance about their faith. Teachers were rare, because it was possible to educate them only by sending young people to the distant lands of the East, to Bukhara or Istanbul; from there all the necessary books were obtained. In 1802, at the behest of Emperor Alexander I, at the request of the Tatars, the first Tatar printing house was finally opened in Kazan at the gymnasium, and in just three years it managed to print 11,000 Tatar alphabets, 7,000 copies. Gautiaka, 3,000 Qur'an and up to 10,200 other religious books. After that, literacy began to spread rapidly among the Tatars, and printed books began to diverge in huge numbers. Since 1813, when the activity of the Bible Society was opened in Kazan, the Tatar printing house even more intensified its publishing work directly in opposition to the Society. At the end of 1828, she joined a rich university printing house, and the university, in addition to her own knowledge, became some kind of center of religious Muslim civilization for almost the entire Tatar population of the Empire, because Mohammedan books from his printing house through Tatar booksellers, through Nizhny Novgorod and Irbit fairs began to disperse to all ends of Russia, where there are only Mohammedans, to Siberia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, Khiva and Bukhara. The number of these publications reaches amazing proportions and far exceeds the number of Russian editions of the same printing house. According to information for 1855-1864, she published during these 10 years up to 1,084,320 copies of Mohammedan books, including 147,600 Gautiak, 90,000 Koran, etc. To this must also be added the same huge number of Korans, various small books and brochures , who came out of private Tatar and other printing houses. The number of all editions reaches 2,000,000 copies per year. All of these publications are sold at an extremely cheap price.

It is no wonder that, thanks to its numerous schools and the press, the Tatar population at the present time is almost entirely literate and looks with contempt at Russian peasants suffering from illiteracy, and by the way, at all Russian education in general. There is a strong belief among the Tatars that there is no end to Muslim books, and there is an end to Russian books, and that when the Russians read to this end, they will turn to Muslim books and become Muslims themselves. According to his habit of reading, the Tatar learns Russian literacy quite easily, as noted in the regiments: Tatar soldiers become literate rather than pyccsie. It is curious that in the university printing house the Tatars were always considered one of the best workers for local scientific journals of the university and the theological academy.

The Tatars are generally the strongest of the peoples of the eastern foreign region, not susceptible to any influence from the ruling people. They treat the Russians with extreme suspicion, fearing on their part any attempts to convert the Tatars to Christianity and teach them Russian. For three hundred years they have been living together with the Russians and under Russian rule, and not only do they not grow russified like other foreigners, but they themselves develop a huge influence on the neighboring foreigners, turning them into Mohammedanism and gradually becoming Tatar. From the Russians they live apart; many, especially women, do not know the Russian language at all, they are even afraid of it, despite the fact that they cannot but need to learn it at every step. Of course, the Russians themselves are largely to blame for this due to their extremely repulsive attitude towards them, from which even the conversion to Christianity does not save the Tatar. “Tatar shovel, dog” is the most common nickname for Tatars from the mouth of a Russian person, which can be heard all the time. work with their dishes, knowing in advance that otherwise they would have nothing to even drink water from.Of course, they themselves do not remain indebted to the Russians, for example, they do not consider it a sin to cheat, rob or beat them up on occasion, and the same in turn, they are called dogs, kafirs (infidels), chukyngans (pigs), etc. It is impossible, however, to lose sight of the fact that such relations were formed among Russians only towards Tatars; Russians treat other foreigners rather condescendingly ", allowing only good-natured jokes and jokes about them. Obviously, the Tatar is directly antipathetic to him. Reasons for this antipathy can be found enough in the history of all their mutual relations; m many of them even now, and perhaps the main reason lies in the very fortress of the Tatar people. The Tatar is sincerely proud of his origin, and education, and moral qualities, and religion, for which he stands firmly to the point of fanaticism, and of everything in general, despising the Russian no less than that of him.

Hay Mosque in the Old Tatar Sloboda

The Tatar intelligentsia is, of course, not at all more tolerant towards the Russians. She speaks excellent Russian and does not hesitate to send her young generation to study in Russian educational institutions, male and female gymnasiums, and at the university. Some young people even receive education abroad, and not only in Istanbul or Cairo, but also in Paris. A broader education is inevitably accompanied by a weakening of religious fanaticism and even the very religiosity of the admirers of the prophet, but this does not contribute to their rapprochement with the Christian worldview and the Russian people. Reliable strife with the Russian people is replaced in abundance by nationalist strife. A Tatar invariably remains a Tatar with any education, devoted to his nationality and, to one degree or another, an ardent separatist. In the name of nationalism, these intellectuals stand firmly for their national religion, without which the unity and strength of the nation is inconceivable. They diligently participate in the construction of mosques, in supporting confessional schools with them, in the development of religious Muslim literature, book trade, propaganda of Islam and Tatarization of neighboring foreigners, Cheremis, Votyaks, Chuvash, in various petitions and resolutions of Muslim congresses in favor of Islam, on its autonomous position in Pocci, on the autonomy of Muslim censorship and the press, on the prohibition of the activities of missionaries among the Tatars and the freedom of Muslim propaganda, on the cessation of any religious persecution of Muslims, and so on.

adoption of Islam in ancient Bulgar

In the last 20-30 years, a particularly lively movement has been noticeable in the Tatar world, directed towards the revival of Islam and strongly seasoned with the ideas of pan-Islamism. Islam is gathering strength for a stubborn struggle with Christian civilization wherever it exists, and everywhere it has begun to take care of correcting the shortcomings of its old, settled way of life and developing its educational means. This movement also spread to the Tatar Volga region. Old Testament mullahs and teachers are gradually being replaced by new ones of a progressive and nationalist direction. Directly, this noticeably penetrates even into the masses of the people. New madrasahs are being opened, in which, although the old confessional education remains, it is already replenished with new secular and scientific elements, the study of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and European languages. New trends are reflected in the old mektebs and madrasas, their programs are being expanded to the size of Russian elementary schools and new and better teaching methods are being introduced. But it is remarkable that the Russian influence on education in all these schools is carefully eliminated. From the supervision of the officials of the Ministry of National Education, they are jealously guarded; the Russian classes do not take root under them and do not enjoy the sympathy of the Tatars; government schools among the Mohammedans spread extremely slowly.

After the publication of the manifesto on October 17, 1905, the movement described among the Russian Tatars intensified to the highest degree, and during the ensuing state breakdown from the war and the so-called liberation movement, it managed to organize itself to such an extent that it has to be taken very seriously not only by the Orthodox church, but also the state. There can be no talk of any Russification of the Tatars now. The Christian mission in the Mohammedan milieu is completely paralyzed. The Orthodox Church has, at least for a time, to abandon all offensive struggle against Islam and limit itself to a defensive struggle, saving from Muslim propaganda and apostasy from Orthodoxy at least the small number of her children that she managed to acquire during the previous long time, with more favorable circumstances.

Christian enlightenment was very tightly instilled in the Tatars and in the old days, much less than in all other foreigners in Russia who professed pagan faiths. The Tatar faith, as Mohammedanism is called among us, firmly withstood all the pressures of the Christian mission on it, having sacrificed the Russian faith, only by the smallest number of its confessors. The most important eras of the Christian mission among Kazan foreigners were: the time of the first Russian rule was established between them in the second half of the 16th century. and then in the XVIII century. the reign of Empress Elizabeth. The first holy figures of the Christian mission, the famous Kazan wonderworkers of the 16th century, Gury, Varsonofy and German, left behind entire villages of the so-called old-baptized foreigners, including quite a few Tatar villages. Islam then was not yet so strong among the Tatars, who were still experiencing a period of dual faith, the struggle against the Mohammedanism of old pagan beliefs. Unfortunately, the work of the mission then stopped only at the initial conversion of these old-baptized to Christianity; St. Kazan wonderworkers, with all their efforts, did not have time to inform this mass of those converted by them of Christian enlightenment, and their successors did not support their good beginning. Already at the beginning of the XVIII century. the spiritual and civil governments again drew attention to foreigners, started talking about their baptism and, most importantly, about the establishment of missionary schools between them. In the 1740s, such schools were indeed established in Sviyazhsk, Yelabuga and Tsarevokokshaysk, then in 1753 a large central school arose from them in Kazan itself. But even now it was not the school that had to stand in the foreground in solving the foreign question, but again only the mission. In 1740, in Sviyazhsk, at the Bogoroditsky Monastery, a newly baptized office was established, which turned all its attention to one baptism of foreigners in as many as possible. The Kazan apxiepey, who is considered the educator of the Kazan region, Luka Konashevich, was most anxious about this, energetically assisting her. The pious reign of Empress Elizabeth, as well as possible, contributed to the, one might say, total baptism of foreigners, which began then by the missionaries. From 1741 to 1756, up to 430,000 souls of various foreigners were baptized, who have since received the name of the newly baptized. Tatars were baptized less often than all. During all this time, only some 8,000 of them were baptized, and even those were ready at the first opportunity to fall away from the church and return to their former Tatar faith. By their perseverance against all the efforts of the missionaries and the authorities, the Tatars even brought upon themselves real persecution, about the disasters of which they keep embittered traditions even to this day. Bishop Luka forcibly took their children to his schools, broke their mosques, built two churches in their settlement in Kazan and established religious processions in these churches, dismantled the remains of the Bulgar buildings respected by the Tatars in the village of Uspensky and built a church, monastic cellars and so on from their ruins . The government, for its part, assigning various benefits to the baptized, adopted repressive worlds against Islam, forbade the construction of new mosques, broke some old ones, aggravated the stubborn Mohammedans with an increase in dues and duties and resettlement to other places. The result of all these measures was a terrible embitterment of the rest of the mass of the Tatar population, which reached the point that in 1756 the government itself found it necessary to moderate its zeal for the faith and immediately transfer Bishop Luka to another diocese. The unrest aroused in the foreign world did not subside for a long time after this, and back in the 1770s, it resounded bitterly for the Russians in the Pugachev region.

ancient tombstones (Kara pulat, Bolgar)

Under Empress Catherine II, the newly baptized office was finally closed (in 1764). At the same time, under the influence of the then fashionable idea of ​​​​tolerance, the collection of taxes from unbaptized foreigners for baptized was destroyed, the broadest permission was given to build mosques for the Tatars, and the clergy were forbidden to interfere in any business about non-Christians and their prayer houses and send to them preachers missionaries. In the last years of her reign, Catherine even arranged for the Mohammedans special centers for their reputable manager in the person of two mufis, one in Ufa, the other in the Crimea, and thus gave Mohammedans a special and legitimate religious organization. In addition, 3,000 copies of the Koran were printed in St. Petersburg for distribution to the provinces inhabited by Tatars. The Christian mission among foreigners was finally undermined, and by the end of the 18th century. the newly baptized schools were also closed, the only source for the enlightenment of the newly baptized. Meanwhile, Mohammedanism revived and developed, for its part, strong propaganda among the converted Tatars, again attracting them to its side, and in addition, among other foreigners who professed shamanism, the Kirghiz and Bashkirs. Rumors spread that the government itself stands for the Tatar faith, will soon be building mosques for the Tatars at its own expense, and that a decree has been issued allowing the newly baptized to return to Islam again. The establishment of a Tatar printing house at the beginning of the 19th century finally strengthened the position of Mohammedanism in Poccia, strengthening its schools and developing literacy among its confessors. The results of all this did not take long to show up and showed up precisely after as much time as was necessary for the younger generation to grow up, brought up in new schools.

In 1802 and 1803 the falling away of the baptized Tatars began. The government, alarmed by this, began to take measures for their Christian enlightenment. In 1802, a decree was issued on the translation into foreign languages ​​of short catechisms and more necessary prayers. The Bible Society then began to distribute translations of St. scriptures. The Kazan bishop Ambrose Protasov proposed to translate the liturgical books into these languages, but this idea did not find sympathy at that time. At spiritual and educational institutions in dioceses with a foreign population, they began to open classes of local foreign languages, because there was an extreme need for clergy who knew these languages. But the work of the mission had already been launched so far that it could not be corrected for a long time. During the reign of Alexander I and Nicholas I, a lot of cases were made about falling away in Kazan and neighboring eparchies, and more and more about the Tatars. Since 1827, the first mass falling away of baptized Tatars into Mohammedanism began. Petitions were submitted to the Highest Name for a return to Islam from 138 villages; in the petitions of these Tatars, they explained that their ancestors were always Muslims, that they got into Christianity, it is not known how and when, but they were not at all trained in the Christian faith and did not know it at all, in support of the request they referred to the decree of 1764 on the closure of the newly baptized office that baptized them forcibly. This reference is not justified by the meaning of the decree of 1764 itself, but it shows well from what time and for what reason Mohammedanism began to raise its head after the blows of the Elizabethan reign. This falling away of the baptized Tatars was followed by a number of others. To weaken these falling away, the authorities took various measures, corporal punishment, exile, dissolution of marriages between baptized and unbaptized, forced baptism of children in falling away families, and so on. In 1830, missionaries were newly established in the Kazan diocese, but without any benefit. In 1847, at the Kazan Academy, by order of the High Command, a Tatar translation of sacred and liturgical books was undertaken, but the language for these translations, as well as for teaching in schools, was adopted, unfortunately, not a living folk language, but a bookish, understandable only educated Tatars. The biggest retreat of the Tatars occurred in 1866, during the era of the reforms of Alexander II.

prayer in ancient Bulgar Kazan Tatars

With all these apostasy, the same story was repeated everywhere: there was a rumor about a certain royal decree, as if allowing apostasy, petitions were submitted for the return to the old faith in the Highest Name, and in anticipation of their results, the apostates threw their images up into the houses, threw themselves off belts, they put skullcaps on their heads and went to the mosque instead of the church. The authorities began to judge them, dragged them to the consistory for exhortation, whipped them, resettled them in Russian villages, even exiled them to Siberia; but it did not, and indeed could not, extend beyond these purely external measures. The local clergy turned out to be completely unprepared for the enlightenment of the Tatar flock, because they did not know either its language or its old Mohammedan beliefs. Each time, capable people were required in the consistory to exhort the fallen, there was not a single priest in the diocese who knew the Tatar language and the Mohammedan dogma. The theological school, immersed in the study of Latin and in the refutation of the ancient heretics of the Byzantine Empire, did not communicate any idea about what was under her nose, about local foreign languages ​​and beliefs.

It is remarkable that falling away was found mainly among the newly baptized Tatars, and not the old baptized. The reason is clear: although both of them were joined to the church in the same external way only, three centuries had already passed since the latter were joined, which could not but strengthen in them at least the habit of being numbered Christians. In fact, they cannot be called fully Christians either; this is some kind of special inter-wise, albeit very interesting tribe, representing in its beliefs and habits some kind of mixture of Christianity with Mohammedanism and paganism and worthy of special study by ethnographers and historians. There are very few left now. These are the remnants of the Tatars of ancient times, when the Tatar people, having adopted Mohammedanism, did not part with the old pagan beliefs and experienced their period of dual faith. Christianity, into which they were baptized by the Kazan miracle workers, constituted among them the third faith, it must be said, the weakest. They preserved this mixture of three faiths as a curious monument of antiquity, in some remote places almost entirely reaching us from the 16th century, and as a sad evidence of the weakness of Russian influence on them.

water - su anasy

Christianity took root among the old-baptized only to a very weak degree. The identity of the Savior is known to them from some Mohammedan sources, as the identity of one of the prophets. The dogmas about His deity, about the Trinity, about the incarnation, under the influence of Mohammedan monotheism, are positively rejected by them and serve as a constant temptation regarding Christianity, as well as Christian icon veneration, which they identify with pagan idolatry. At the same time, they profess with all their might the symbol of Islam: “There is no God but God; Mohammed is His prophet." Only some, closer to Christianity, consider Mohammed simply a saint. The veneration of the Tatar saints is developed among them almost to the same extent as among the native Muslims. Beliefs regarding the future life and the afterlife also remained purely Mohammedan. Many Koranic legends about the prophets Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, etc. and about Mahomet himself, his moral qualities, prophecies and miracles constitute the same mass of religious knowledge common among the old-baptized, which for the Russian common people is apocryphal legends created on a biblical basis, which directly shows, that it was not the Bible, but precisely the Koran, that served as the root source of the religious worldview for them.The old-baptized is indifferent to the rituals of the church: he doesn’t go to church, and if he comes to it, he doesn’t pray; if he prays sometimes, then in Tatar, raising hands up and reading the Tatar prayers, which they call "make an amen"; before starting work or before eating, instead of "Lord have mercy", say "bismillah"; he does not observe fasts either Tatar or Russian; confession and communion are accepted only when necessary, before marriage and before death. The result of this oscillatory state between different faiths must necessarily have been religious indifference among the old-baptized; between them one can constantly hear the well-known reasoning that God gave both this and that faith, that everyone is saved according to his own faith, and that it is not even known which faith is better.

Due to the extreme weakness of Russian influence on the Tatars, Mohammedanism turned out to be much stronger in the extermination of the remnants of paganism than Christianity, which is why they now constitute an almost exclusive belonging of some old-baptized people. His Christian influence turned out to be stronger in general on the education of the Tatars. At the time when Mohammedanism started its schools everywhere, it taught almost all of its confessors to read books, gave through this a strong support for the national religion and exterminated old superstitions, baptized Tatars, but at least until the end of the 1860s, before the spread of brotherhood schools between them St. Guria, remained in the darkest ignorance, having neither schools nor teachers. If some of them began to study, for example, for the better conduct of commercial affairs, then they applied directly to the Tatar schools, to the mullahs, where they lost the last glimpses of Christianity. The Orthodox clergy, for their part, could not compete with the mullahs in any way, because they were purely folk teachers, and they did not even know the Tatar language. It was even more impossible to expect any religious influence from the Russian population; unless sometimes some schismatic zealot takes it into his head to talk with a Tatar about two fingers or seven prosphora at the liturgy, but this, of course, enlightened the old baptized person very little, who had absolutely no interest in Christian worship, which was incomprehensible to him. In addition, the Russians themselves pushed their Tatar co-religionists away from themselves, treating them with the same national disgust as they did the unbaptized Tatars. It is remarkable that marriages between Russians and baptized Tatars are still quite rare and are considered even humiliating for Russians, both for boys and girls. It is very natural that the baptized should constantly gravitate not to Russians, but to their unbaptized fellow tribesmen, to seek moral poverty not in Christianity, but in Islam, which they had not forgotten. It is clear how strongly the Mohammedan propaganda must have had an effect on them, it must be said - very energetic and possessing great means in their native language, in many mullahs, mosques and schools.

clothes of Kazan Tatars

After the publication of the manifesto on freedom of conscience on October 17, 1905, a new period of apostasy from the church began in the baptized Tatar population. The Tatar propaganda of Islam has intensified to extreme tension, although the Tatar newspapers deny this, presenting Mohammedanism as the most peaceful religion and averse to any proselytism, not like Orthodoxy, which has always cruelly persecuted the faithful. Demanding, through its rulers, that Orthodox missionaries not be allowed into their villages, who themselves do not look there because of serious fears even for their very lives ("sekim head"), Mohammedanism sends crowds of its mullahs, shakirds and simple zealots to baptismal and pagan alien villages - preachers of Islam, who dart around here in their native and familiar houses and bazaars, using all sorts of means to incline the population into Mohammedanism, slandering the Russian faith, deceitful assurances with references to the tsar's manifesto that the tsar ordered all foreigners to be brought into Mohammedanism and he himself will soon move into him that in Russia there will be only two faiths - the Russian and the Tatar, that whoever does not want to be in the Russian faith would rather go over to Mohammedanism, otherwise they will soon be forcibly baptized, and so on.
Wealthier and more influential Mohammedans and apostates attract the baptized to apostasy with kindness, material benefits and help. Having recruited two or three dozen seduced people in the Epiphany village, they rush to quickly arrange a mosque and a school in it, even if it is directly against the law and contrary to the wishes of the local Epiphany population, which makes up the majority of the inhabitants. Where the majority and strength are on the side of the apostates, the inhabitants, who are firm in Orthodoxy, do not live from all sorts of insults, ridicule, oppression, chicanery, etc., so that, having strengthened themselves, as much as they have enough patience, they involuntarily go over to Islam. The newly baptized Tatars can no longer remain at all in Tatar or apostate villages, because of fear for life itself, and they have to move somewhere. The propaganda of Islam has lately taken on a bold and even violent character.

Moslem literature, which revived and also became extraordinarily bold after the 1905 manifesto on freedom of conscience, is also doing its propaganda work. In seven Kazan Tatar newspapers and in tens of thousands of books and pamphlets published in Kazan, the question of religion, praise of Islam, exaggerated news of its successes and censure of Christianity occupy a very large place. These publications are sold at the cheapest price in all rural bazaars and in Tatar bookstores, where there are foreigners. It is remarkable that religious books and brochures in foreign languages ​​of the Russian edition cannot be found in any such village bazaar. An important drawback of the book propaganda of Islam was that the Tatar editions were printed exclusively in one Arabic alphabet, which the baptized Tatars and other foreigners do not know; The Tatars even considered it a sin to print their books in the more common Russian alphabet. Now they decided to take this sin on their souls and began to print the books needed for propaganda, either together with a Russian translation or one Russian font. Publications of this kind are produced by them, obviously for the edification of the baptized, who know only the Russian alphabet. In 1906, from the Kazan printing house of the Karimov brothers, a wonderful brochure was published in the Tatar language with the Russian transcription “Islam Deni” (The Faith of Islam); she dismantled the holy. S. Baginym (missionary) in Pravoslav. Interlocutor 1909

Museum of Gabdulla Tukay, Tukay-Kyrlay

The title page says that this pamphlet was printed on the basis of the Supreme Manifesto on Freedom of Faith of 17 Oct. 1905. The first sheets contain a convincing appeal to the baptized Tatars about the return to their former native faith of their fathers and grandfathers. “This book is for our ancient relatives, in the old days, by force, taken out of the faith of Islam, about whose beloved faith this book speaks. These relatives of ours were not given the opportunity to live in Islam: they were driven to church by force, icons were placed in their houses by force, they were forced to celebrate Easter, on the feast of red eggs priests entered their houses by force, "etc. It is described what kind of violence they endured, what torments - whips, exile to Siberia, hard labor, they were subjected to because, even after transferring their Christianity, they did not forget the creed of Islam and remained faithful to it.
On the day of the general judgment, they will come forward with bright faces ahead of all Muslims and the prophets themselves. The peoples will ask: “what kind of Muslims are they with bright faces.” Then the angels will answer: “They have suffered great oppression in the world for their faith,” and so on. Then, in case the baptized return to their folk old faith, instructions are given on how to proceed when building a mosque and school for themselves, on inviting a shakird to teach the faith, mullahs, etc. The content of the brochure consists in expounding the doctrine and rituals of Islam. Among the baptized, as one would expect, it has become widespread, although it is kept a great secret. In the same printing house and obviously with the same goal of promoting Islam in Russian and Tatar, a manifesto was printed on October 17. 1905 and the approval of the Committee of Ministers on April 17, 1905, and completely prepared forms of petitions addressed to the governor for conversion to Islam, in which the applicants only have to enter their names.

Among the Tatar population, the memory of the former greatness of the Tatar kingdom and faith in its future will still be restored. It expects the restoration of this from the assistance of the Sultan, who enjoys reverent respect from him, as the only king of the faithful throughout the world. Muslim sympathies draw the Tatars not to St. Petersburg or Moscow, but to Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul, these holy cities of Islam. There are various wonderful legends about them, like our common people about St. places. Beliefs connect the end of the world with the capture of Istanbul by the Kapirs. The Turks, in the imagination of the Tatar common people, before his personal acquaintance with them, when they were led into the last war of 1877 through the Kazan province as captives, were presented in the form of gigantic angels, as the Quran depicts angels. The captives, despite their usual miraculous image, were nevertheless met in the Tatar villages with extraordinary enthusiasm, as one should meet elder brothers in Islam.

During the Crimean War, the Tatars, as you know, showed a very unpleasant coldness towards their fatherland. Their recruits, with the assistance of the rich, fled from military service in such large numbers that, for example, up to 200 fugitives were counted in one Mamadysh district. In general, the Tatars said then that their conscience forbids them to fight against fellow-believing Turks. At that time, confidence spread throughout the Kazan region that the Sultan would soon appear and free them from the power of the Russians. At the conclusion of peace, when the Crimean Tatars began to move to Turkey, several families from the Kazan Tatars also expressed a desire to follow their example. After 20 years, the same phenomena were repeated during the war of 1877. Russian peasants and priests in places had to hear very frank boasting and warning from the Tatars that soon "the sultan will come, the Russians will be kunched." People who came to their liking, they reassured: "you are a good person, - we will quietly cut you." It was also heard about cases of betrayal of Tatar soldiers in the army. In Tatar houses everywhere you could find portraits of the Sultan and his generals. In continuation of the protracted peace negotiations after the war, persistent rumors spread around the Tatar villages that the sultan demanded that the tsar give him all Muslim Tatars, and the tsar, in order to evade this demand, ordered all the Tatars to be baptized as soon as possible: “then I’ll say to the sultan that this not yours, but our people." These rumors were of no small importance in the ensuing Tatar unrest in various places of the Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara provinces.

As a sin, by this time some orders of the local spiritual and civil administration arrived, which, in addition to the will of the authorities themselves, confirmed these rumors in the eyes of the already suspicious and excited Tatars. The Samara diocesan authorities ordered to make a more correct postscript of baptized Tatars by parishes; the unbaptized took this innocent order personally, since many of them live with the baptized, and became agitated, thinking that they wanted to be forcibly joined to the church. At the same time, the Kazan administration sent out circulars to the rural police authorities with orders to monitor, among other things, cleanliness near churches, about precautionary measures against fires, hanging alarm bells on tall buildings, etc. These Tatars also interpreted the rules in the sense of their stubborn suspicions, since the Russian villages in the circular were not separated by a special clause from the Tatar Muslim ones; they started talking about the fact that they want to force them to hang bells on mosques and take care of the churches, in other words, forcefully baptize them. The word itself, circular, was translated in its own way: churches (lyar is the ending of the plural), then, without listening to the paper itself, by its name alone, they were assured that it was really about churches. The unrest was stopped by the usual measures and very soon, but it greatly and permanently damaged the Russian cause in all the agitated areas.

In 1897, the general census of the population of the empire aroused the same excitement throughout the Tatar world, which met with strong opposition among the Tatars and gave rise to various absurd suspicions about religious violence on the part of the government. There were several more Tatar unrest at different times, in different localities and on different occasions (for example, due to the introduction of the Russian language into the Tatar schools) of a less general nature.

The general attraction of Muslims to Istanbul and the Sultan of Turkey, which was noticed during our previous wars with Turkey, also continued uninterruptedly. In peacetime, it could not be revealed with such frankness as then, but among the Tatar people and among the Tatarized foreigners, restless talk about the strength of Turkey and its significance for the faithful did not cease to circulate. According to the Tatar newspapers, the reading of which is widely spread even among the Tatar common people, the Tatars have followed and are following all the events taking place in Turkey and Persia with great interest. A particularly great sensation was made between them by the news of the concentration of Turkish troops in 1907 on the Caucasian border. In Tatar villages and villages of Tatar foreigners, rumors are still circulating that the Turks will soon defeat the Russians and conquer Russia, after which they will force everyone to accept the Mohammedan virus. According to other rumors, the Tatars themselves will soon separate from Russia and will choose their own tsar.

The recently intensified pilgrimage of young Tatars to Istanbul for science and their close acquaintance with Turkey had an effect on them far from being in favor of Turkey and the Sultan. They saw with their own eyes here the clear signs of the decay of the Turkish Empire and the decline of the Sultan's power, and they were convinced that he could in no way become some kind of general pan-Islamist padishah. To this was added their close acquaintance with the Young Turks, to whom they willingly joined in a party way. The very science of Istanbul turned out to be far below the science of Cairo with its European knowledge and secular direction. Recently, young people have begun to go more to Cairo than to Istanbul. Upon returning from there, these young people began to spread the new science at home; educational institutions of a new type in Kazan are now attracting a lot of students, it is clear that they have come to the liking of the young Tatar generation. The new movement is not against Islam as a necessary nationalist element of life, but it must, of course, significantly weaken the old narrowly religious direction of this life. The old, obsolete generation of Tatars, with its fanatical mullahs and old-fashioned madrasahs, lags noticeably behind and fades into the background before the new demands of the century. Lagging behind the new course of life is pan-Islamism itself in its original form, together with its initiator and leader Gasprinsky; his ideal of uniting all Muslims near Istanbul and a common padishah is beginning to be replaced by other, more liberal ideals in the new generation.

The new people are almost without exception of the extreme left direction of political views. Like pan-Islamists, they strongly stand for the independence of the Muslim nationality and for the worldwide fraternal unity of all its tribes, but no longer around a single padishah and under a single state power, but through only one religion and a single Muslim culture and in the form of a free federation of these kindred tribes. , as special state units, with the preservation of each of them full independence and all kinds of freedoms. How should such a movement respond to the life of the states among which Muslims live in citizenship, will they confine themselves to one desire to acquire only a certain degree of autonomy for themselves, or will their ideal federation, gradually developing and strengthening, show a series of active actions towards acquiring full state independence for their members, it is impossible to guess ahead. But the prudent policy of England has long been keenly eyeing both the old and the new Muslim movement in India.

Source of information and photo:
Team Nomads.
Tatar folk dialects. Bayazitova F.S., Khairutdinova T.Kh. - Kazan: Magarif, 2008,
Peter Znamensky. Kazan Tatars.
http://kitap.net.ru/
Gaynutdin Akhmarov. Wedding ceremonies of the Kazan Tatars.
Kosach G. G. Tatarstan: religion and nationality in the mass consciousness // Kaariainen K., Furman D. E. (responsible editors).
Wikipedia site.
Origin of the Kazan Tatars: Materials of the session of the Department of History and Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, organized jointly with the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Kazan Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, April 25-26, 1946 in Moscow. Kazan: Tatgosizdat, 1948, p.4.
Tatars. — M.: Nauka, 2001. — 43 p.
The specified chronicle is also known as the "Kazan Chronicler" or "The History of the Kazan Kingdom".
Kazan history. - M.-L.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1954, p.53.
Gubaidullin G.S. To the question of the origin of the Tatars // VNOT. Kazan, 1928, No. 8.
http://artcyclopedia.ru/

In the VIII century, a state arose on the Middle Volga and in the Kama region, the inhabitants of which called themselves Bulgars. For a long time this country peacefully coexisted with Russia. Tatarstan - this is the name of the republic, located now on the site of the Volga Bulgaria.

But not all residents of Kazan and neighboring cities agree with the ethnonym "Tatars". Many people, remembering their historical heritage, consider themselves Bulgars - the descendants of an ancient people who founded more than one state.

Who are the Bulgars?

The origin of the Bulgars (Bulgars - depends on the pronunciation) is still being debated among scientists. Some ethnographers and historians rank these people among the descendants of the Turkic-speaking tribes of Central Asia. Other experts do not doubt that the Bulgars were an Iranian-speaking people and lived in the historical region, which the Greeks called Bactria. And the inhabitants of these places, located to the west of the Hindu Kush mountain system, called their country Balkhara, as some scientists explain the emergence of the ethnonym.

The era of the great migration of peoples set in motion many tribes, including the Bulgars. In search of better lands, they went west. In the 4th century, this people settled in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, also occupying the lands of the North Caucasus up to the Caspian Sea. The life of the Bulgars was restless, they were periodically attacked by the Huns, then the Avars, then various Turkic-speaking tribes.

Like many other peoples whose lands bordered on the superpower of that time - the Byzantine Empire - the Bulgars were forced to build diplomatic relations with their powerful neighbor. Even their legendary ruler Khan Kubrat (605-665) was brought up in Constantinople. The Byzantines often forced the heads of neighboring states to give them their heirs in order to keep them at the imperial court as hostages, and at the same time to instill their own spiritual values ​​in future rulers.

In the history of every nation there is a person whose decisions determine the fate of the whole country. For the Bulgars, Khan Kubrat was such a person. In 632, he founded the state, which the Byzantines called Great Bulgaria. According to some researchers, its territories covered the Eastern Sea of ​​Azov and the Kuban, other experts believe that the lands of the Bulgars extended from the Southern Bug to the Stavropol Upland.

However, after the death of the legendary founder, the state fell apart, divided by his sons. The eldest of them, whose name was Batbayan, remained in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov with part of the people. His Brother Kotrag took his people to the Don steppes. Another group of Bulgars, led by Alcek, after long wanderings, settled in the region of Italian Ravenna.

Under the leadership of the third son of Khan Kubrat, whose name was Asparuh, part of the people moved to the Danube. They founded modern Bulgaria, subsequently experiencing a strong influence of local Slavic tribes. Like many allies of Byzantium, the Bulgarians adopted Christianity. It happened in 865.

Volga Bulgaria

The Bulgars who remained in the Sea of ​​Azov faced frequent raids by the warlike Khazars. In search of a new haven, they moved to the territory of modern Tatarstan. Volga Bulgaria was founded in the second half of the 8th century.

For its time it was an advanced state. The Bulgars became the first of the European peoples who mastered the technology of making steel and smelting cast iron. And the fame of local leather craftsmen spread to Iran and Central Asia. Already in the 9th century, having fortified themselves in new lands, these people began to build stone palaces.

Thanks to their favorable location, the Bulgars established trade with Russia, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, and Byzantium. Goods were transported mainly along the Volga. The Bulgars established economic ties with their eastern neighbors. Caravans from China, India and Persia regularly arrived here.

In 922, Islam became the official religion of the Volga Bulgaria, spreading to these lands along with preachers from the Baghdad Caliphate. It so happened that the Danube Bulgars declared themselves Christians, and the Volga - Muslims. The once united people were divided by religion.

The first capital of the state was the city of Bulgar, and in the XII century Bilyar became the official center of the country. Kazan, founded in 1005, did not yet have the status of a capital.

In the XIII century, the Volga Bulgaria was captured by the Mongols. The once powerful and independent state turned into one of the provinces of the Golden Horde. From that moment, the gradual displacement of the ethnonym "Bulgars" began.

Kazan Khanate

After the collapse of the Golden Horde, the Bulgars had a hope to regain statehood. In 1438, on the territory of modern Tatarstan, the Bulgar Vilayat was formed, which in Russia was called the Kazan Khanate. But the head of this state was no longer the Bulgars, but the descendants of the legendary conqueror Genghis Khan. One of the Horde khans, whose name was Ulug-Mukhammed (Ulu-Mukhammed), together with his army captured Kazan and founded a ruling dynasty there.

In the second half of the 15th century, the Kazan Khanate occupied the entire Middle Volga and the Kama River basin, including the lands of the Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Mordovians, Cheremis and Votyaks. In addition to Kazan, there were many large cities here: Bulgar, Alat, Kashan, Archa, Dzhuketau, Zyuri, Iske-Kazan, Tetyushi and Laesh. And the total population exceeded 400 thousand people.

The ethnonym "Bulgars" began to be gradually forgotten, people more often called themselves "Kazanly" (Kazan) or simply on a religious basis - Muslims. Perhaps the aristocratic elite of the khanate, who did not belong to the Bulgars, was interested in their subjects forgetting about their nationality, customs and traditions as soon as possible.

In the 16th century, Kazan began to feel the growing influence of Moscow. Russian princes have repeatedly tried to put a person loyal to them on the throne of a neighboring state. After numerous strife, military clashes and political intrigues in 1552, the khanate was captured by the troops of Tsar John IV Vasilyevich the Terrible. Kazan officially became part of Russia. From that moment on, the ethnonym "Bulgars" was finally lost.

Who are the Tatars?

Tatars are a Turkic-speaking people living mainly in Russia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. For the first time, representatives of some Manchurian-Mongolian tribes who roamed the Baikal region in the 6th-9th centuries began to call themselves that. It is clear that these people had absolutely nothing to do with the Bulgars. They joined the conquests of Genghis Khan. That is why the Russians called the Horde Mongols-Tatars.

Subsequently, the ethnonym "Tatars" spread to many peoples, often having nothing in common with each other. So they began to call some ethnic groups that were previously part of the Golden Horde. Therefore, a historical paradox arose: the descendants of the Bulgars, conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century, are now called the name of their invaders.

As genetic studies have shown, Kazan, Crimean, Astrakhan and Siberian Tatars are representatives of different nationalities. They do not have common ancestors, and their ethnogenesis occurred independently of each other. This fact may explain why the languages ​​of, for example, the Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars differ so much from each other that people simply do not understand each other.

When examining the Kazan Tatars, geneticists discovered their undoubted kinship with the inhabitants of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. And the contribution of people from Central Asia to the ethnogenesis of the population of modern Tatarstan is only 1-6% (depending on the region). Still, among the Bulgars there were mixed marriages with the Horde, although quite rarely.

Many indigenous people of modern Kazan do not agree that they are called Tatars. Not surprising. After all, this is almost the same if the Russians were confused with the Germans.

Describing the main national composition of the [Kazan] Khanate, the "Kazan chronicler" of the 16th century. notes that "there are two more Cheremis in the Kazan region, and there are three of their languages, the fourth language is barbarian, the one who owns them."

From the sources it can be seen that the Chuvash, Mari, Votyaks, the ancestors of modern Udmurts and Kazan Tatars lived on the territory of the Kazan Khanate. In addition to these peoples, part of the Bashkirs and a small group of Ostyaks (“Ishtyak”) lived on the lands subject to the Khanate. The Kazan Tatars, who constituted the main population of the Khanate, formed on the basis of the Turkic-speaking population of the Volga Bulgaria. There was no new population compactly penetrated into the Middle Volga region during the formation of the Kazan Khanate.

A small military detachment of 3000 people, who came to Kazan in 1445 together with Ulu-Muhammed, probably consisted mainly of the Horde feudal lords, who, being close in language to the local population, quickly disappeared into this environment. The feudal elite of the Kazan Khanate, continuing the Golden Horde policy towards Russia and the local peoples of the Volga-Kama region, sought to impose on the people of the region the name characteristic of the population of the Golden Horde - "Tatars". The indigenous population of the country resisted this alien name and preferred to call themselves Bulgars or Kazanians. Only after the fall of the Kazan Khanate, in the 17th-18th centuries, the ethnonym "Tatars" was finally approved for the local Turkic-speaking population. The Kazan Tatars were formed as a nationality on the basis of the indigenous Turkic-speaking population, which penetrated the Volga-Kama region as early as the 1st millennium AD. e. and here it was gradually enriched during the period of the Volga Bulgaria and the Kazan Khanate due to new Turkic-speaking inclusions.

In the 15th-16th centuries, that is, in the era of the Kazan Khanate, the necessary conditions were created for the ethnic consolidation of the Kazan Tatars - territorial and economic ties were strengthened, the national self-consciousness of the people was strengthened. Most of the modern Tatar villages, especially in the Pre-Kama and Zakazan, apparently appeared during the period of the Kazan Khanate, and many of them continued to exist on the sites of the settlements of the Volga Bulgaria. Archaeologists at the site of the modern villages of Bolshaya Elga, Khodyashevo, Nyrsy and others recorded the remains of the Bulgar settlements. In the cemeteries of many Tatar villages, tombstones of the 14th-16th centuries are preserved.

"History of the Tatar ASSR", Tatknigoizdat, 1968.

There were Mongols - there were Tatars

In medieval and modern historical literature, the integrated terms "Mongol-Tatar era", "Mongol-Tatars", etc. were widely used. Moreover, the ethnonym "Mongols" was often replaced by medieval authors with the name "Tatars". In the Chinese political and historiographic tradition, starting from the Sung period, the name of the Mongols as Tatars decisively prevailed. Why did the Mongols of Temujin, who defeated the Tatars, begin to be called the name of the conquered people? The Arab medieval historian Rashid ad-Din gives his explanation: “Their name has been known in the world since ancient times. Numerous branches also separated from them ... If, in the presence of their multiplicity, they had unanimity with each other, and not enmity, then other peoples from the Chinese and others ... would not be able to resist them.<...>Because of [their] extraordinary greatness and honorary position, other Turkic clans, with the difference in their ranks and names, became known under their name, and all were called Tatars.

What is the history of this ancient Mongolian people?

For the first time, the Tatars are mentioned under the name Otuz-Tatars (30 Tatars) by the largest known runic inscription - a monument in honor of Kul-Tegin (732). They are mentioned as enemies of Kül-Tegin's father, Ilteres-Kagan (d. 691). Then the Tatars supported the Tokuz-Oghuz, who fought against the Turks. In 723-724. the Tatars (Tokuz-Tatars), together with the Tokuz-Oguzes, rebel against Bilge-Kagan. Together with the Oghuz tribes of the Tatars in the late 40s of the VIII century. rise up against the Uighur Khagan and are defeated. As part of the Uighur Khaganate (744-840), the Tatars were one of the vassal tribal unions; According to a 12th-century Chinese author Wang Mingji, then "Tatars were shepherds of cows among the Uighurs." But already in the Uighur era, the possessions of the Tatars are mentioned not only in Eastern Mongolia, but also in the Western Territory, and in the 10th century. the whole East Turkestan is called "the country of the Toguzes and Tatars". In the pre-Mongol era, at least in the 10th-12th centuries, the ethnonym "Tatars" was well known not only in the Middle Empire, but also in Central Asia and Iran. Mahmud of Kashgar, a competent source of the 11th century. He calls the vast region between Northern China and Eastern Turkestan the "Tatar steppe" - in the same way, the southern Russian and Kazakh steppes were then called by Muslim authors "Dasht-i Kipchak" ("Kypchak steppe"). The name "Tatar steppe" is in good agreement with other information about the settlement of the Tatars in the 9th-10th centuries. and explains why a century later the Mongols, who occupied the same space, in the Turkic Muslim environment, as in China, were called Tatars. This Turkic designation of the Mongols took root not only in Central Asia and the Middle East, but also in Russia and Western Europe, despite the fact that the Mongols themselves did not call themselves Tatars. The Central Asian Tatars remain largely a mystery. If written sources provide us with information, albeit rather scarce, about their tribal composition, area of ​​residence, political structure and some historical events, then archaeologically their material culture is still a white spot, since the excavation materials (if they were carried out on the Tatar burial grounds) have not yet received wide coverage in the literature. Nevertheless, the appearance of the Tatars of the 12th century, especially their ruling class, can be imagined, and even quite in detail: the fact is that magnificent Chinese images, very realistic and detailed, have come down to us in a considerable number. The Chinese knew the Tatars very well, who roamed along the Great Wall of China and were the closest inhabitants of the Great Steppe to the Celestial Empire.

Atlas of Tatarstan. Story. Culture. Ethnos" ("Tartarica"). Section "Tatars of the Great Steppe".

"Kazan stories", No. 10-14, 2005

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