Volga Tatars

Volga Tatars

Nail Yakupov Marat Izmailov Zemfira Aliya Garayeva Ayaz İshaki Gabdulkhay Akhatov Ğabdulla Tuqay Musa Cälil Vadim Abdrashitov Rudolf Nureyev Rinat Akhmetov Ruslan Chagaev Dinara Safina Irina Shayk Diniyar Bilyaletdinov Rawil Gaynetdin Elvira Nabiullina Marat Safin Chulpan Hamatova Alsou
Total population
c. 6.8 million
Regions with significant populations
Russia :  Tatarstan : 2,012,571  Bashkortostan : 1,009,295  Moscow : 149,043	5,310,649[1]
Turkey	25,500[2]
Uzbekistan	467,829[3]
Ukraine	73,304[4]
Kazakhstan	203,371[5]
Turkmenistan	36,355[6]
Kyrgyzstan	28,334[7]
Azerbaijan	25,900[8]
Romania	20,282
Languages
Tatar, Russian
Religion
Majority Sunni Islam, minority Russian Orthodox (Keräşens) and Atheism
Related ethnic groups
Bashkirs, Chuvash people

The Volga Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group, native to the Volga-Ural region, Russia. They are in turn subdivided into various subgroups. They compose 53% of population in Tatarstan.

Volga Tatar subgroups

Kazan (Qazan) Tatars

The majority of Volga Tatars are Kazan Tatars. They form the bulk of the Tatar population of Tatarstan.

During the 11th-16th centuries, numerous Turkic tribes lived in what is now Russia and Kazakhstan. The present territory of Tatarstan was inhabited by the Volga Bulgars. The Bulgars settled on the Volga River in the 8th century and converted to Islam in 922 during the missionary work of Ahmad ibn Fadlan. After the Mongol invasion of Europe from 1241, Volga Bulgaria was defeated, ruined, and incorporated into the Golden Horde.

Few of the population survived, nearly all of them moved to northern territories. According to one theory, there was some degree of mixing between it and the Cuman-Kipchaks of the Horde during the ensuing period, yet according to another theory called Bulgarism, the Bulgars did not mix with the Cuman-Kipchaks. The group as a whole accepted the language of the Kipchaks and the ethnonym "Tatars" (although the name Bulgars persisted in some places), while the bulk of invaders eventually converted to Islam. Two centuries later, as the Horde disintegrated, the area became the territory of the Kazan khanate, which was ultimately conquered by Russia in 1552.

Mishars

Mishars (or Mişär-Tatars) are an ethnographic group of Volga Tatars speaking Mishar dialect of the Tatar language. They are making up approximately 1/3 of Volga Tatar population. They are descendants of Cuman-Kipchak tribes who mixed with the Burtas in the Middle Oka River area and Meschiora. Nowadays, they live in Chelyabinsk, Ulyanovsk, Penza, Ryazan, Nizhegorodskaya oblasts of Russia and in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Mordovia.

Qasím Tatars

The Qasím Tatars have their capital in the town of Qasím (Kasimov in Russian transcription) in Ryazan Oblast. See "Qasim Khanate" for their history. Today, in Kasimov live 1100 Qasím Tatars. There is no reliable information about their number elsewhere.

Noqrat Tatars

Tatars live in Russia's Kirov Oblast and Tatarstan. Their number in 2002 was around 5.000 people.

Perm (Ostyak) Tatars

Kazan Tatars live in Russia's Perm Krai. Some Tatar scholars (as Zakiev) name them Ostyak Tatars. Their number is (2002) c.130.000 people.

Keräşens

Many Kazan Tatars were forcibly Christianized by Ivan the Terrible during the 16th century, and later, during the 18th century.

Some scientists suppose that Suars were ancestors of the Keräşen Tatars, and they had been converted to Christianity by Armenians in the 6th century while they lived in the Caucasus. Suars, like other tribes which later converted to Islam, became Volga Bulgars, and later the modern Chuvash (who are mostly Christian) and Kazan Tatars (mostly Muslims).

Keräşen Tatars live all over Volga-Ural area. Now they tend to be assimilated among Chuvash and Tatars. Eighty years of Atheistic Soviet rule made Tatars of both faiths not as religious as they once were. Russian names are largely the only remaining difference between Tatars and Keräşen Tatars.

Some Kuman tribes in Golden Horde were converted to Christianity in the 13th and 14th centuries (Nestorianism). Some prayers, written in that time in the Codex Cumanicus, sound like modern Keräşen prayers, but there is no information about the connection between Christian Kumans and modern Keräşens.

1921–22 famine in Tatarstan

The famine deaths of 2 million Muslim Volga Tatars in Tatar ASSR and in Volga-Ural region in 1921-1922 was catastrophic as half of Volga Tatar population in USSR died. This famine is also known as "terror-famine" and "famine-genocide" in Tatarstan.^[9] The Soviets settled ethnic Russians after the famine in Tatar ASSR and in Volga-Ural region causing the Tatar share of the population to decline to less than 50%. All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) has asked the United Nations to condemn the 1921 Tatarstan famine as Genocide of Muslim Tatars.^[10] The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan has been compared to Holodomor in Ukraine.^[11]

Traditional culture

Festivals

Historically, the traditional celebrations of Tatars depended largely on the agricultural cycle.

Spring/summer period

• Sabantuy
• Sowing
• Dzhien

Fall/winter period

• Pomochi
• Nardugan

Cuisine

Tatar cuisine is rich with hot soups (şulpa), dough-based dishes (qistibi, pilmän, öçpoçmaq, etc.) and sweets (çäkçäk, göbädiä, etc.). Traditional Tatar beverages include ayran, katyk and kumys.

Population figures

In the 1910s, they numbered about half a million in the area of Kazan. Nearly 2 million Volga Tatars died in man-made 1921–22 famine in Tatarstan by Joseph Stalin. Some 15,000 belonging to the same stem had either migrated to Ryazan in the center of Russia (what is now European Russia) or had been settled as prisoners during the 16th and 17th centuries in Lithuania (Vilnius, Grodno, and Podolia). Some 2,000 resided in St. Petersburg. Volga-Ural Tatars number nearly 7 million, mostly in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. While the bulk of the population is found in Tatarstan (around 2 million) and neighbouring regions, significant number of Volga-Ural Tatars live in Siberia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Outside of Tatarstan, urban Tatars usually speak Russian as their first language (in cities such as Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Ufa, and cities of the Ural and Siberia).

Volga Tatar diaspora

Places where Volga Tatars live include:

• Ural and Upper Kama (since 15th century) 15th century—colonization, 16th-17th century—re-settled by Russians; 17th-19th—exploring of the Urals, working in the plants
• West Siberia (since 16th century): 16th—from Russian repressions after conquering of Khanate of Kazan by Russians 17th–19th—exploring of West Siberia; end of 19th—first half of 20th—industrialization, railways constructing; 1930s–Joseph Stalin's repressions; 1970s–1990s—oil workers
• Moscow (since 17th century): Tatar feudals in the service of Russia, tradesmen, since 18th—Saint-Petersburg
• Kazakhstan (since 18th century): 18th–19th centuries—Russian army officers and soldiers; 1930s–industrialization, since 1950s—settlers on virgin lands - re-emigration in 1990s
• Finland (since 1804): (mostly Mişärs) – 19th – Russian military forces officers and soldiers, and others
• Central Asia (since 19th century) (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan; for Xinjiang see Chinese Tatars) – 19th Russian officers and soldiers, tradesmen, religious emigrants, 1920-1930s – industrialization, Soviet education program for Central Asia peoples, 1948, 1960 – help for Ashgabat and Tashkent ruined by earthquakes. - re-emigration in 1980s
• Caucasus, especially Azerbaijan (since 19th century) – oil workers (1890s), bread tradesmen
• Northern China (since 1910s) – railway builders (1910s) - re-emigrated in 1950s
• East Siberia (since 19th century) - resettled farmers (19th), railroad builders (1910s, 1980s), exiled by the Soviet government in 1930s
• Germany and Austria - 1914, 1941 – prisoners of war, 1990s - emigration
• Turkey, Japan, Iran, China, Egypt (since 1918) – emigration
• England, USA, Australia, Canada – (1920s) re-emigration from Germany, Turkey, Japan and China. 1950s – prisoners of war from Germany, which did not go back to the USSR, 1990s – emigration after the breakup of USSR
• Sakhalin, Kaliningrad, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Karelia – after 1944-45 builders, Soviet military personnel
• Murmansk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Northern Poland and Northern Germany (1945–1990) - Soviet military personnel
• Israel – wives or husbands of Jews (1990s)

Bulgarism

"Bulgarism" is a term for the position that the Volga Tatars are significantly descended from the Volga Bulgars.^[12][13][14]

A more accepted position, however, is that Volga Tatar ethnogenesis was completed upon the arrival of the Kipchaks, Cumans and Mongols.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tatar xalıq kiemnäre.

• Tatars
• Tatar nobility
• Chinese Tatars
• Finnish Tatars
• Tatars of Kazakhstan
• Tartary
• Little Tartary
• 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tatar xalıq kiemnäre.

• Tatars in Congress Library (1989)
• The Origins of the Volga Tatars
• Tatar.Net
• (Russian)
• (Russian) Tatar Name
• (Russian) Tatar history
• (Russian) Tatar world-wide server
• (Russian) Tatar Names
• (Russian) Anthropology of Tatars. By R.K. Urazmanova and S.V. Cheshko
• (Russian) (Tatar) Tatar Electronic Library
• (Russian) (Tatar) Tatar music & video catalog