Исторические значения термина «татар»: критическое и всестороннее исследование

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Introduction

Before the rise of the Mongols at the turn of thirteenth century, the most powerful nomadic people in eastern Mongolia were the Tatars. The Ilkhanid historian Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318), who was commissioned to write a Mongol history by Ghazan Khan (r. 1295–1304), grandson of Chinggis Khan, praised their valor and prowess saying, “With their great numbers, if they had agreed with one another and not fought, neither the Chinese nor any other creature could have withstood them” in his Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh [65, p. 57; 66 p. 44]. Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–27) himself viewed these Tatars as the sworn enemies of the Mongols remarking that “From old days, the Tatar people have been our mortal enemies, the people who have destroyed our fathers and forefather” [76, p. 1:56]. Ironically, the Cilician Armenian historian Het'um (d. c. 1310/1320) wrote in his history and geography of Asia, La Flor des estoires de la terre d' Orient [The Flower of Histories of the East], that Chinggis Khan “became Emperor by the general consent and will of all the Tartars” [26]. About three centuries after Chinggis Khan’s death, his descendant Meḥmed Girāy Khan (r. 1514–23), ruler of the Crimean khanate, styled himself as “the lord of all the lands of the Qipchaq Steppe and the hereditary lord of the Tatars” in a letter he sent to a king of Poland [39, p. 642, 646].

As shown in these examples, the term Tatar was applied to, in different times and regions, a variety of entities, ranging from the sworn enemies of Chinggis Khan to the Chinggisid rulers of Crimea. Still, in modern literature, the term Tatar is often used without being clearly defined.

This article is a critical and comprehensive examination of the historical meanings of the term Tatar. It aims to analyze to whom and by whom the term Tatar was historically applied, drawing on a broad-range of primary sources. It is not concerned with the ethnicity or ethnogenesis of the groups that historically bore this name. This article will demonstrate that the term Tatar denoted a Mongolic nomadic people residing in and around eastern Mongolia in various sources produced during the pre-Mongol period; became an “exonym” for the Mongols in the Mongol period; continued to be used as an exonym for the Mongols and their Mongol descendants, who reserved Tatar for the original Tatars, who were destroyed as a corporate entity by Chinggis Khan, except for the “(Crimean) Tatars” of the western Jochid realm who adopted it as a self-name, in the post-Mongol period¹.

The Term Tatar in the Pre-Mongol Period

During the pre-Mongol period, the term Tatar, which appeared in various sources, including Turkic, Muslim, and Chinese sources, denoted a Mongolic nomadic people residing in and around eastern Mongolia².

Tatar in the Turkic Inscriptions

The term Tatar is first attested in the eighth-century Orkhon Inscriptions³, which were erected by the Eastern Türks who established a revived Türk state known as the Second Türk Qaghanate (682–745 CE). The Kül Tegin and Bilge Qaghan inscriptions list “the Otuz Tatar (Thirty Tatars)” as enemies of the Türks, along with the Qirghiz, the Khitan, and other Inner Asian peoples⁴. Elsewhere, they mention that “the Otuz Tatars” sent delegations, along with the Chinese, Qirghiz, and Khitans, among others, to the funeral of the founders of the Türk Qaghanate as follows:

Then they passed away. People came from the sunrise-place in the east, including Bukli, the land of Collug, Tang China, Tibet, Apar, Purum (Rum, i.e. Byzantium), Kırkız, Uc Kurıkan, Otuz Tatar, Kıtan and Tatabı, to attend the funeral feast and lament⁵.

The Bilge Qaghan inscription also mentions “the Toquz Tatar (Nine Tatars)” as allies of the Oghuz [16, p. 212, 222]⁶. In the Uyghur inscriptions, the Tatars appear as “the Toquz Tatar (Nine Tatars).” For instance, the Shine-Usu inscription, erected for the Uyghur khan Moyun Chor (r. 747–59), states that the Uyghurs subdued the Sekiz Oghuz (Eight Oghuz) and the Toquz Tatars in 749⁷.

Tatar in the Chinese Sources

The Tatars mentioned in the Turkic inscriptions appeared for the first time in the Chinese sources in the ninth century CE⁸. They are mentioned as Dada (逹怛) and Heichezi Dada (黒車子逹怛) in the Tang Chinese writer Li Deyu (李德裕)’s Huichang Yipinji (會昌一品集), a collection of the edicts that Li drafted, which contains information on the Uyghurs [49]⁹. The Jiu Wudaishi (舊五代史) [Old history of the Five Dynasties]¹⁰, compiled in 974, provides the following account of the Tatars:

The Tatars, remnants of the Mohe tribe¹¹, originally resided to the northeast of the Qay and Khitan tribes. As the Khitan tribe gradually gained strength, they frequently launched attacks and raids on the Tatars, causing their tribes to disperse. Some fell under the dominion of the Khitan, while others sought refuge with the Balhae/Bohai state¹². Gradually, they migrated to the Yinshan (陰山) region¹³. Due to linguistic distortions, they were henceforth known as Tatars … They are good at horseback archery and have a lot of camels and horses¹⁴.

Wang Yande (王延德) (938–1006), a Song Chinese envoy who visited the Uyghurs of Qocho, refers to the Tatars as “the Nine Tribe Tatar (九族達靼)” in his travel report known as Gaochang xingji (高昌行紀). He also writes about the Tatars as follows:

The Khitans were once engaged in sheep herding for the Uyghurs, and the Tatars were once engaged in cattle herding for the Uyghurs. When the Uyghurs migrated to Ganzhou, the Khitans and the Tatars began to contend for dominance and attacked each other¹⁵. 

Tatar in the Muslim Sources

The term Tatar in the Muslim sources produced during the pre-Mongol period also referred to the Mongolic nomadic people mentioned in the aforementioned Turkic inscriptions and the Chinese sources. Muslim writers, who used the term Turk as a collective name for the Inner Asian nomadic peoples, including Mongolic-speaking groups [42, p. 108–113, 118–21], often listed the Tatars, along with other Turkic and non-Turkic nomadic peoples, as being Turks. For instance, the Tatars are mentioned in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, a tenth-century concise Persian geography of the then known world, as a branch of the Uyghurs [27, p. 94]. The eleventh-century Qābūs-nāma, a famous Mirror for Princes written by Kai Kāʾūs b. Iskandar, lists the Tatars alongside the Turkic-speaking Oghuz, Qipchaq, and Chigil, and the non-Turkic-speaking Tibetans and Qay, referring to all of them as Turks:

Amongst them the most ill-tempered are the Ghuzz [Oghuz] and the Qipchāqs; the best-tempered and the most willing are the Khutanese, the Khallukhīs and the Tibetans; the boldest and the most courageous are the Turghay [Qay], the most inured to toil and hardship and the most active are the Tatars and the Yaghmā, whereas the laziest of all are the Chigil [34, p. 103; 35, p. 63]¹⁶.

The eleventh-century Qarakhanid lexicographer Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī also mentions the Tatars in his Dīwān Luġāt al-Turk, a compendium of the Turkic dialects. He describes the Tatars as Turks who speak “their own language” but “also know Turkic well” [36, p. 1:85]. When mentioning the Ötükän, the sacred forest of the Türks, Kāshgharī writes that it is the “name of a place in the deserts of Tatār, near Uighur” [36, 1:159]. The mid-eleventh century Persian historian and geographer Gardīzī mentions the Tatars as the ancestral group of the Kimeks, a nomadic confederation that resided in Western Siberia at the turn of the eleventh century, as follows:

The origin of the Kimeks had been that the chief (mihtar) of the Tatars died and left two sons. The elder son seized the kingship and the younger son became jealous of his brother. The name of this younger brother was Shad. He made an attempt to kill his elder brother but could not and became worried about himself. There was a slave girl and she was his lover. He took that girl and ran away from his brother. He arrived at a place where there were a great river, many trees, and abundant game … seven persons from the relative of the Tatars came near them. The first one was Īmī; the second, Īmāk; the third, Tatār; the fourth, Bayāndur; the fifth, Khifchāq; the sixth, Lanīqāz; and the seventh, Ajlād. This folk (qaumī) had brought the horses of their lords to pasture … Other people who heard this news began to come. Seven hundred individuals gathered. For a long time, they stayed serving Shad. Later when they multiplied, they spread to those mountains and formed seven tribes named after these seven persons we have mentioned [2, p. 549–51]¹⁷.

The renowned Arab historian Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1233) also makes mention of the Tatars, whom he identifies with the later Mongols, in his al-Kāmil fī al-tārīkh as follows: “There remained some Turks who had not converted, the Tatars and the Khitay (wa baqā min al-Atrāki man lam yaslam Tatar wa Khaṭā)” [31, p. 520; 32, p. 56].

The Term Tatar in the Mongol Period

During the Mongol period, the term Tatar, which had come into existence with a nomadic people of eastern Mongolia, no longer primarily referred to its original bearers¹⁸. Instead, it began to be used as an exonym for the Mongols by Chinese, European, and Muslim writers, among others.

The Mongol View of the Tatars

It has been noted by Rashīd al-Dīn that as a consequence of the power and prestige that the Tatars commanded, their name became widely used as a self-name by other non-Tatar groups [65, p. 57; 66, p. 44]. However, the Mongols did not identify themselves as Tatars, whom they saw as their ancestral enemies¹⁹. Importantly, the Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century Mongol history of Chinggis Khan and his ancestors, and the Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh, the universal history written for the Ilkhanids by Rashīd al-Dīn, both of which reflect the Mongol view of the Tatars, use the term Tatar only to refer to the original Tatars with whom they had a long-standing blood feud²⁰.

Tatar in the Chinese Sources

However, Chinese writers used the term Tatar (Dada 韃靼) to refer to the Mongols²¹. Notably, the Southern Song envoy Zhao Gong, who visited the Mongols in the early thirteenth century, uses, in his Mengda beilu (蒙韃備錄) [A memorandum on the Mong-Tatars], the term Tatar (Dada in Chinese) to refer to the Mongols and the Turkic Önggüt, who had submitted to the former. He refers to the former as “the Tatar” or “the Black Tatar (Hei Dada黑韃靼)” and the latter as “the White Tatar (Bai Dada白韃靼)”²². Peng Daya and Xu Ting, two other Southern Song envoys to the Mongols, also used the term Tatar to refer to the Mongols. Like Zhao Gong, they call the Mongols and the Turkic Önggüt “the Black Tatar” and “the White Tatar,” respectively, in their Heida shilüe (黑韃事略) [A sketch of the Black Tatars]²³. These Southern Song writers make no mention of the original Tatars, who had been eradicated as a corporate entity by Chinggis Khan in 1202 and therefore remained unseen to their eyes. Tatar continued to be used for the Mongols during the Mongol Yuan period. For instance, in a regulation recorded in the Yuan Dianzhang, the compendium of Yuan administrative law written in the early fourteenth century, the Mongols are referred to as “Tatar (Dada 達達)”²⁴.

Muslim Usage of the Term Tatar

When the Mongols first appeared in the Islamic world in the early thirteenth century, Muslim writers applied the term Tatar to the invading Mongols in all likelihood because they identified the latter with the original Tatars²⁵. For instance, Abū Shāma (1203–67), a historian of thirteenth-century Damascus, depicts the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at ʿAyn Jalut calling the latter “Tatars” as follows:

The Tatars conquered the lands and there came to them, from Egypt, a Turk, who was unmindful of his life. In Syria, he destroyed and scattered them (ghalaba al-Tātār ʿalā al-bilādi fajāʾahum, min Miṣra Turkīyyun yajūdu bi-nafsihi, bi-l-Shāmi ahlakahum wa badada shamlahum) [8, p. 208].

Notably, the Mamluk ruler Sulṭān al-Nāṣir (r. 1293–1341, with two interruptions) referred to the Mongols as “Tatars” when explaining the relationship between the Mamluks and the Mongols to French envoys as follows:

The only thing which diverted us from (handling) you was our fighting with the Tatars. Today, however, we are, thank God, at peace (with them). We and they are of the same race (naḥnu wa-iyyāhum min jins wāḥid), and none of us will desert the other [13, p. 122].

The Russian and European Usage of the Term Tatar

The Western European writers and the Rus’ chroniclers during this period also used the term Tatar or Tartar to refer to the Mongols²⁶. For instance, the Novgorod First Chronicle (Novgorodskaya pervaya letopis') refers to the Mongols, whom the Rus’ fought at the Battle of the Kalka River, as “Tatars (татары)” [57, p. 264–7]. John of Plano Carpini, the Franciscan friar sent as an envoy of Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols, refers to the latter as “Tartars” in his travel account, for instance, as follows: “The Tartars also wiped out the Kanghits [Qangli] and now inhabit their country” [15, p. 58–59]²⁷.

The Term Tatar in the Post-Mongol Period

During the post-Mongol period, Ming Chinese, Muslim, and Russian writers, among others, continued to use the term Tatar for the Mongols as well as those whom they viewed as Mongol descendants.

Tatar in the Ming Chinese and Korean Sources

The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the Chinese state that ousted the Mongols from China in 1368, continued to use the term Tatar (Dada 韃靼 or 達達) to refer to the Mongols. Notably, the Mingshi (明史) [History of the Ming Dynasty] refers to the Northern Yuan Mongols as Tatar (Dada) as follows: “The Tatars are Mongols, descendants of the former Yuan Dynasty”²⁸. The Ming shilu (明實錄), the imperial annals of the Ming dynasty, also applies the term Tatar to the Kazakhs calling them Dada huiyi (韃靼回夷), meaning “Tatar Muslim barbarians”²⁹.

The Koreans, who experienced Mongol rule for nearly a century, also used the term Tatar (Dada 達達 or 韃靼) as well as Menggu (蒙古) for the Mongols. For instance, describing the Mongol envoys sent to Korea in 1231 to demand submission, the Goryeosa 高麗史 [History of Goryeo], an official history of Korea’s Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392), composed in the mid-fifteenth-century Joseon Dynasty, uses both Tatar (Dada達達) and Menggu (蒙古) to refer to the Mongols [22]. Elsewhere in this history, the Mongol herders stationed in the Jeju Island, which was used by the Yuan Dynasty as a grazing ground for Mongol horses, are called “Tatar herders (達達牧子 or 韃靼牧子)” [22].

Russian and European Usage of the Term Tatar

After the dissolution of the Ulus of Jochi, also known as the Golden Horde, into several into several states in the mid-fifteenth century, the Muscovites continued to use the term Tatar for the Mongols and their successors, including the Crimean Tatars and the Timurids. Notably, the sixteenth-century Nikon Chronicle describes Temür as belonging to “the trans-Yaik/Ural Tatars from the Samarqand(?) countries (ot" zaits'kikh" tatar" ot" Samarkhiyskiya strany)” [69, p. 258; 55, p. 94]. It also applies the term Tatar to the Crimean Tatars, depicting them and the Mongols as one and the same people [70, p. 179, 192; 56, p. 282, 296]³⁰. Later, in the Russian empire, the term Tatar was used as a broader designation encompassing various Muslim as well as non-Muslim Turkic-speaking groups residing in the Volga-Ural regions, Siberia, Crimea and the South Caucasus³¹.

Western European writers also continued to use the term Tartar for the Mongol descendants of the Ulus of Jochi. For instance, Sigismund von Herberstein (d. 1566), the envoy sent to Muscovy by Emperor Maximilian I in 1517, referred to both Temür and the Jochid nomads of the Qipchaq Steppe as “Tartars” in his work [25, p. 2:49–53]. The Castilian traveler Pero Tafur (c. 1410–c. 1484), who visited Crimea in 1437, used the name Tartar to refer to the Tatars of Crimea, whom he distinguished from the “Turks,” i.e., the Ottomans. He writes as follows:

[The Tartars] are commonly small in stature and broad-shouldered. Their foreheads are wide and their eyes are small. It is said that the most deformed are of the noblest birth. It is said also that when they meet the Turks they always have the better of them, and that the Turks, as a consequence, beat the Greeks, and the Greeks the Tartars [84, p. 136].

Like the Russians, Western European writers later used the term Tartar more broadly to denote the peoples of Inner Asia. Notably, when the Tungusic-speaking Manchus conquered China in the seventeenth century, European Catholic missionaries called them Tartars, a name they had previously applied to the Mongols proper [18, p. 83–89]³².

Muslim Usage of the Term Tatar

During the post-Mongol period, Muslim writers continued to apply the term Tatar to the Mongols and those whom they viewed as Mongol descendants, namely the Timurids, the Uzbeks, and the Crimean Tatars, among others³³. For instance, Ibn ʿArabshāh (d. 1450), the author of a biography of Temür (r. 1370–1405), the ʿAjāʾib al-maqdūr fī nawāʾib Tīmūr, employs the term Tatar (Tatār) for Temür’s army [9, p. 123, 306; 73, p. 64, 169]. Similarly, Ibn Khaldūn, the greatest Arab historian, calls Temür “the sultan of the Mughul and Tatar” when describing his meeting with the latter [28, p. 366]. Tatar was a name Ibn Khaldūn used to refer to the Mongols. Therefore, he named his chapter on the history of the Mongols “Report on the Rule of the Tatars [who are one] of the Turkic Tribes (al-khabar ʿan dawlat al-Tatar min shuʿūb al-Turk)” [29, p. 5:515]³⁴. Similarly, the Ottoman historian Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī (d. 1600) used Tatar, in his universal history, Künhüʾl-aḫbār, to denote the Mongols, the Timurids, and the Crimean Tatars. In the third volume of his work, he refers to the Chinggisids and Timurids (Āl-i Timur u Āl-i Cengizī)” as “the Tatar people (ḳavm-i Tatar)” [20, p. 1:69]³⁵. Elsewhere, he refers to Temür’s tribe as “the Tatar tribe called the Barlas ulus (ulus-i Barlas nām Tatar ḳabīlesi)” [20, p. 3:612]. He also uses the term Tatar for the rulers of the Ulus of Jochi such as Batu Khan, Urus Khan, and Toqtamïsh Khan, among others, [20, p. 3: 606–8] and the Crimean Tatars [20, p. 3:608–12]. Evliyā Çelebi (d. c. 1684), the celebrated Ottoman traveler, also calls both the Mongols and Temür Tatar in his work. Describing the Crimean city Eski Kırım, Evliyā Çelebi writes “because of Eski Kırım, the Tatars of Hülegü, the Tatars of Chinggis Khan, the Tatars of Temür, and the Tatars of Toqtamïsh Khan came to Crimea and left after assaulting and plundering (bu Eski Kırım sebebiyle Hulāgū Tatarı ve Cingiz Hān Tatarı ve Timur Leng Tatarı ve Tohtamış Hān Tatarları Kırım’a gelüp nehb [ü] gāretler edüp gitimişlerdir)” [19, p. 7:251]³⁶.

The Chinggisid and Timurid Views of the Tatars

However, the Chaghatayid and Jochid uluses (peoples) of Central Asian oases and the Qipchaq Steppe, namely, the Timurids, the Moghuls, the (Shibanid) Uzbeks³⁷, and the Kazakhs, who identified themselves as heirs to the Mongol empire³⁸, did not use the term Tatar as a self-name³⁹. Various Chinggisid and Timurid histories they produced reserve the term Tatar for the original Tatars⁴⁰. For instance, in his Introduction (muqaddima) to the Ẓafarnāma, a Timurid history dedicated to Temür’s grandson Ibrāhīm Sulṭān (r. 1415–35), Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (d. 1454) reserves the term Tatar for the original Tatars. Yazdī describes them as the descendants of Tātār Khan, the twin brother of Mughūl Khan, whom he presents as the progenitor of the Mongols including the Chinggisids and the Timurids [81, p. 87–88]. Elsewhere in the Ẓafarnāma, Yazdī mentions the term Tatar only when referring to the original Tatars, who constantly warred against the Mongols until the time of Chinggis Khan [81, p. 99, 103, 105]. Ulugh Beg (r. 1447–49), who succeeded his father, Shāhrukh (r. 1405–1447), son of Temür, also uses the term Tatar in the same sense in his Tārīkh-i arbaʿ ulūs, a history of the Mongol empire. The anonymous Shajarat al-Atrāk, which is an abridgment of the Tārīkh-i arbaʿ ulūs, used the term Tatar for the original Tatars⁴¹ and also defines them as the descendants of Tātār, the twin brother of Mughūl [79, p. 37–38; 80, p. 29–30]. The later Timurid historian Khvāndamīr also reserves the term Tatar for the original Tatars, whom he depicts as the descendants of Tātār, the twin brother of Mughūl, in the Ḥabīb al-siyar [37, p. 6, 15–6 ; 38, p. 2–3, 8–9]. The court historian of the Timurid Mughal empire Abū al-Fażl (d. 1602) also reiterates the Timurid account of the Tatars and use the term Tatar for the original Tatars [7, p. 198, 208, 238 (text), p. 199, 209, 239 (trans.)]⁴².

Likewise, Uzbek historians did not apply the term Tatar to the Mongols or the Uzbeks themselves and reserved it for the original Tatars. For instance, Ötämiš Ḥājī does not use the term Tatar to refer to the Jochid/Uzbek people in his Tārīkh-i Dūst Sulṭān or Chingīz-nāma, a history of the Ulus of Jochi he wrote in the 1550s [59]. Ḥāfiẓ Tanish Bukhārī also reserves the term Tatar for the original Tatars, whom he describes as the descendants of Tātār Khan, the twin brother of Mughūl Khan, whom he portrays as the ancestor of the Mongols including the Chinggisids and the Timurids in his ʿAbdallāh-nāma, or Sharaf-nāma-i shāhī [24, fol. 10b, 24b (text), p. 1:48, 72 (trans.)]. The same holds true for Abū al-Ghāzī Bahādur Khan (r. 1644–63), who describes the Tatars as the descendants of Mughūl’s twin brother, Tātār, and as a nomadic people who constantly warred against the Mongols until the time of Chinggis Khan in his Shejere-i Türk, a history of the Chinggisids up to the ʿArabshāhid Uzbek dynasty [6, p. 11–12, 17–18, 34–35, 43–45 (text), p. 10–11, 17, 33–34, 44–45 (trans.)].

Similarly, the Kazakhs did not use the term Tatar as a self-name or for other Jochid peoples. For instance, their oral traditions do not use Tatar to refer to the Crimean and Kazan Tatars and instead use the name Nogai⁴³. Accordingly, the late nineteenth/early twentieth-century Kazakh historian Qurbān-ʿAlī Khālidī refers to the Crimean Tatars as “the Crimean Nogais” [64, p. 82]⁴⁴. Another Kazakh historian Qādir ʿAlī Bek Jalāyirī uses the term Tatar only occasionally in two different senses in his Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh, a continuation of Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh: the Jochid nomadic subjects of the Russian empire and the original Tatars. Qādir ʿAlī Bek uses Tatar in the first sense when he writes that Boris Godunov (r. 1598–1605), to whom he dedicated his work, was the ruler of “the Russians on the plain and the Tatars in the steppe” [63, p. 30, 112 (text), p. 116, 170 (trans.)]. He uses Tatar in the second sense when he describes the Tatars who fought against Chinggis Khan’s Mongols [63, p. 46, 54–57 (text), p. 128, 132–33 (trans.)]. In short, Qādir ʿAlī Bek’s usage of Tatar reflects the traditional Mongol view of the Tatars as well as the Russian usage.

Unlike other Jochid peoples, the Crimean Tatars adopted Tatar, which was an exonym used by the Ottomans and the Muscovites, among others, for the Mongols and their descendants, as a self-designation by the late fifteenth century or earlier. In a yarliq sent to the Sigismund I (r. 1506–48), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the Crimean khan Meḥmed Girāy (r. 1514–23) used the term Tatar to refer to his ulus [39, p. 642, 646]. In another letter sent to Sigismund I, Meḥmed Girāy Khan styled himself as the great khan of “all the Mongols (barča Moġul)”[86, p. 2; 39, p. 652, 655], which demonstrates that he identified the Tatars with the Mongols. The Crimean Tatar chronicles do not depict the Tatars as archenemies of the Mongols. Instead, they use the term Tatar in different but related meanings: the Mongols; the non-Mongol elements that joined Chinggis Khan’s ulus; the Jochid ulus (people) including the Crimean Tatars. The Tārīḫ-i Ṣāḥib Girāy Ḫān, a history of Ṣāḥib Girāy Khan (r. 1532–51), written by Remmāl Ḫoca in the mid-sixteenth century, writes that Ṣāḥib Girāy Khan and his Tatar army marched in accordance with “the law of Chinggis Khan (ḳanun-i Çingiz)” [67, p. 214 (trans.), p. 75 (text)]. The Es-Sebu’s-Seyyar fi Ahbar-ı Mulük-ü Tatar, an early eighteenth-century Crimean chronicle written by Sayyid Muḥammad Rezā in 1737, uses Tatar together with Mongol (Moğol) to refer to the new ulus of the Mongolian steppes united by Chinggis Khan or on its own to refer to the Mongols. For instance, it refers to Chinggis Khan’s Mongol army that raided China as “Tatar Mongol troops (asker-i Moğol-i Tatar)” [77, p. 68; 78, p. 72] and the Mongol army led by Hülegü’s commander Kitbuqa (d. 1260), who was defeated by the Mamluks, as “Tatars” [77, p. 87; 78, p. 104]. It also refers to the Jochid people who converted to Islam during the reigns of Berke Khan and Uzbek Khan as “Tatars” [77, p. 93–94; 78, p. 118–19]. The same holds true for the ʿUmdat al-aḫbār, another eighteenth-century Crimean chronicle written by ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Qırımī in Ottoman Turkish in 1744⁴⁵. For instance, it writes that the four sons of Chinggis Khan including Ögedei (r. 1229–41) were favored by “all the Tatar and Mongol tribes (umumen kabâil-i Tatar ve Moğol)” [4, p. 28; 5, p. 17]. It also refers to the army that Batu sent to conquer Moscow as the “Mongols and Tatars (Moğol ve Tatar)” [4, p. 62; 5, p. 43]. Elsewhere, it refers to Chinggis Khan’s troops that “invaded” the Rus’ and the Qipchaq Steppe as “Tatars” [4, p. 26; 5, p. 15]. Such uses of the term Tatar in these two Crimean Tatar chronicles reflect the Muslim practice of calling the Mongols Tatar, the Crimean Tatar adoption of Tatar as an endonym, and the Crimean Tatar reinterpretation of their ancient history.

Finally, the Kazan Tatars also adopted the term Tatar as their self-name. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Kazan Tatars used the term Tatar to identify themselves when communicating with the Russian authority but Tatar (tatarin) was not their common endonym. Instead, “Muslim” and “Bulghar (bulghārchā / Bulghārī)” were their preferred forms of self-identification [68, p. 132]. However, according to Uli Schamiloglu, their Bulghar identity was “a pre-modern ideology inventing linkages to advocate continuity with an Islamic past” [74, p. 2]. In the pre-modern era, the Kazan Tatars self-identified primarily by “religion (Muslim) or by locality (the name of the village, town, or city of birth)” [74, p. 3; 75, p. 142, 146–47]⁴⁶.

Conclusion

This article conducted a critical and comprehensive examination of the term Tatar drawing on a broad-range of primary sources. It analyzed to whom and by whom the term Tatar was historically applied. During the pre-Mongol period, the term Tatar that appears in the Türk, Uyghur, and Qirghiz inscriptions, the Jiu Wudaishi, a history of the Five Dynasties, and Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī’s Dīwān Luġāt al-Turk, among others, all referred to a Mongolic-speaking nomadic people residing in and around eastern Mongolia. Their direct descendants became the archenemies of the Mongols from the mid-twelfth century and were destroyed as a corporate entity by Chinggis Khan in 1202. Ironically, the term Tatar came to be used as an exonym for the Mongol conquerors by various writers in China, Western Europe, the Rus’, and the Islamic world, among others. The Southern Song envoys who visited the Mongols, the Rus’ chroniclers who recorded the first Mongol invasion of their land, and the Muslim writers who described the Mongol defeat at the hands of the Mamluks in 1260 were among those who referred to the Mongols as “Tatars.” During the post-Mongol period, Ming Chinese, Muslim, and Russian writers continued to use the term Tatar to refer to the Mongols as well as those whom they viewed as Mongol descendants. However, the Timurids, the Moghuls, the Uzbeks, and the Kazakhs, who identified themselves as heirs of the Mongol empire, like the Mongols, did not use the term Tatar as a self-name. Various Chinggisid and Timurid histories that they produced reserved the term Tatar for the original Tatars, with whom the Mongols were constantly at war until the time of Chinggis Khan. These histories often depicted the Tatars as the descendants of Tātār, the twin brother of Mughūl, whom they presented as the progenitor of the Mongols including the Chinggisids and the Timurids. Unlike other heirs of the Mongols, the Crimean Tatars, who were called “Tatars” by the Muscovites, and the Ottomans, among others, adopted Tatar as their self-name by the late fifteenth century or earlier. In the Russian empire, the term Tatar was more broadly used to denote not only the Mongols and their direct descendants, but also various Turkic-speaking subjects of the expanding empire. Similarly, Western European writers used the name Tartar more broadly during the post-Mongol period and applied it to Inner Asians, including the Manchus, who conquered China in the seventeenth century. In the contemporary world, the term Tatar is used as an endonym by the modern Crimean and Kazan Tatars.

There exists an interesting parallel between the terms Turk and Tatar. Both of them began as a name of a particular people (the Türks and the original Tatars) but later became a widespread exonym denoting “the Inner Asian steppe nomads” and “the Mongols and their descendants,” respectively. Eventually, they were adopted as a self-name by the Turks of Türkiye and the Tatars of Crimea and Tatarstan, respectively. More specifically, Türk was the self-name of the Türks, which was not adopted by other Turkic-speaking peoples (the Uyghurs and the Qirghiz), who succeeded them in the Mongolian steppes⁴⁷. It became a synonym for the Inner Asian or Eurasian steppe nomads by the Muslim writers, who also viewed the Mongols and other non-Turkic-speaking nomadic peoples as Turks. Tatar was originally the name of a Mongolic nomadic people in eastern Mongolia, which, from the Mongol period, became widely used as an exonym to denote the Mongols and their descendants although the latter did not identify themselves with that name or the original Tatars. One should not forget that the use of the term Turk became widespread thanks to the grandeur of the Türk empire⁴⁸. As for the term Tatar, it gained prominence due to the might of the Mongol empire. In this sense, the modern ethnonym Tatar is arguably a product of the Mongol empire.

Appendix: The Meanings of the Term Tatar in Various Sources [49]

¹ Later, the Kazan Tatars also adopted Tatar as a self-name. In the Russian empire, Tatar became a broader term that encompassed various Muslim and non-Muslim Turkic-speaking groups.

² These Tatars were in all likelihood a Mongolic-speaking nomadic people. However, in pre-modern Inner Eurasia, nomadic confederations were often made up of tribes of diverse linguistic backgrounds. Therefore, some Turkic-speaking elements may have been present among the Tatars. On this point, see Lee [42, p. 113–17].

³ The Orkhon Inscriptions are two stone monuments erected in the valley of the Orkhon River in northern Mongolia by the Second Türk Qaghanate in honor of the Türk qaghan Bilge and his brother Kül Tegin. Along with the Tonyuquq inscription, which was erected by the Türk commander and statesman Tonyuquq, the Orkhon Inscriptions are considered the first native history writing produced by the Inner Asian nomads themselves.

⁴ See line 12 (east side) of the Bilge Qaghan inscription and line 14 (east side) of the Kül Tegin inscription [16, p. 182, 200, 208, 219].

⁵ Line 5 (east side) of the Bilge Qaghan inscription and line 4 (east side) of the Kül Tegin inscription. The English translation is from Chen [16, p. 180, 199, 207, 218].

⁶ The Otuz Tatars and the Toquz Tatars were two different Tatar groupings. The relationship between the two remains unclear. This article does not seek to explore their relationship.

⁷ Line 3 (east side) of the Šine-Usu inscription [52, p. 13 (text), p. 26 (trans.)]. For the Oghuz, also known as Tiele in the Chinese histories, see Lee [47, p. 12–21]. The Tatars are also mentioned in the Qirghiz inscriptions. For instance, see Kyzlasov [41, p. 22–23] and Klyashtornyi [40, p. 35].

⁸ In the Songshu (宋書) [Book of the Song Dynasty], a fifth-century history of the short-lived Liu-Song Dynasty (420–479), which ruled in southern China, the Rourans, a nomadic people of Para-Mongolic or mixed origin, are referred to as Datan (大檀) and Tantan (檀檀) (“芮芮一號大檀，又號檀檀”). However, the connection between the fifth-century Rourans and the later Tatars remains speculative. For the Datan (大檀) and Tantan (檀檀), see Shen [82].

⁹ The “Heichezi Dada (黒車子逹怛)” were a clan of the Shiwei (室韋), a Proto-Mongolic people who resided in far-eastern Mongolia and northern Manchuria. The Otuz Tatars and the Shiwei were likely the same nomadic entity. If so, one may argue that the Tatars (Shiwei) first appeared in the Chinese histories in the seventh century CE, in the Suishu (隋書), the official dynastic history of the Sui Dynasty, which was compiled in the seventh century.

¹⁰ The term “Five Dynasties” in Chinese history denotes the five states that succeeded one another in northern China between 907 and 979 CE, that is, the period between the fall of the Tang dynasty and the rise of the Song dynasty.

¹¹ This is an incorrect statement. The Mohe were an ancient people of Manchuria, who are considered ancestors of the Tungusic Jurchens and Manchus.

¹² The Khitans were a Para-Mongolic people who founded the Liao dynasty (916–1125). They used the term Zubu (阻卜) for the Tatars. Balhae/Bohae (698–926) was a successor state to the northern Korean kingdom of Goguryeo.

¹³ The Yinshan Mountains (陰山) is located in modern-day Inner Mongolia.

¹⁴ “韃靼, 靺鞨之遺種, 本在奚, 契丹之東北, 契丹漸盛, 多爲攻劫, 部衆分散, 或屬契丹, 或依渤海, 漸徙陰山, 語訛謂之韃靼 … 其俗善騎射, 畜多駝·馬.” This passage, which is missing in the copies of the Jiu Wudaishi edited in the Qing period, is included in Chapter 69 of the Dashiji Xubian (大事記續編) [A continuation of the great historic events] by the Ming Chinese scholar Wang Yi (王禕), who drew on both old and new Wudaishi histories [88]. Also, see [17]. I would like to thank Pu Xiaoping (蒲小平), Ph.D. candidate at the Renmin University of China, for offering me indispensable assistance in clarifying the source of this passage. A slightly modified passage is included in Xin Wudaishi (新五代史) [New History of the Five Dynasties] [60].

¹⁵“契丹舊為回紇牧羊，達靼舊為回紇牧牛，回紇徙甘州，契丹、達靼遂各爭長攻戰.” [87].

¹⁶ The word in the brackets is mine.

¹⁷ For the Russian translation of Gardīzī’s account of the Kimeks, see [14, p. 43–45]; and for the English translation of this text, see [51, p. 109–217].

¹⁸ The original Tatars–namely, the direct descendants of the pre-Mongol era Tatars–were destroyed as a corporate entity by Chinggis Khan in 1202.

¹⁹ By contrast, Stephen Pow speculates that the Mongols used Tatar as a self-name in the first three or four decades of their expansion [62, p. 545–67].

²⁰ For instance, see [76, p. 1:10–11, 13, 16, 56–59, 76–77; 65, p. 57–71; 66, p. 43–52]. However, Vaṣṣāf, another fourteenth-century Persian historian of the Ilkhanate, uses the term Tatar for the Mongols unlike Rashīd al-Dīn. See [3, p. 291]. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā Malik Juvaynī also refers to the Mongols as Tatar occasionally. For instance, he writes, “The home of the Tartars, and their origin and birthplace, is an immense valley” [11, p. 20].

²¹ Tatar was written in different Chinese characters such as 韃靼 (Dada), and 達達 (Dada), among others. 達子(Dazi) was a derogatory form of Dada.

²² Zhao Gong also uses the term “Raw Tatar (Sheng Dada 生韃靼)” to denote some obscure nomadic tribes of Mongolia. However, he does not necessarily use the term Tatar as a collective name for the Inner Asian nomadic peoples since he describes the Tatars as a specific people descending from the Shatuo, a Turkic nomadic people who established the Later Tang (923–936), Later Jin (936–943), and Later Han (947–951) in North China in the tenth century CE. See [23, p. 3–4; 12, p. 72–73]. For the Chinese text, see https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=730764 (date accessed 9.09.2024).

²³ Peng Daya and Xu Ting also does not use the term Tatar as a collective name for the Inner Asian nomadic peoples. The Merkit, Naiman, Qangli, and Qipchaq, among others, are called by their own name in their work [23, p. 87, 209–10; 12, p. 93–94, 127–8].

²⁴ See [90, 8.9a–b].

²⁵ On the reason why the term Tatar became widespread before the rise of the Mongols, see [65, p. 57; 66, p. 1:44]. Muslim writers also often referred to the Mongols as Turks. See [42, p. 118–21; 46, p. 4–6].

²⁶ In medieval Europe, Tatar was distorted to “Tartar,” a name that depicts the Mongols as coming from Tartarus (hell).

²⁷ The word in the brackets is mine.

²⁸ “韃靼 卽蒙古故元後也” [92, Chapter 327, p. 8463]. In the late Qing period, Chinese revolutionaries including Sun Yat-sen, who overthrew the Qing dynasty and founded the Republic of China, applied the derogatory term Tatar (Dalu 韃虜) to refer to the Manchu rulers.

²⁹ See [52]. The Ming shilu applied the term Dada to the Kazakhs probably because the Ming believed that the “western lands” were still being ruled by Mongol descendants. According to Nurlan Kenzheakhmet, the Shuyu zhouzi lu (殊域周咨錄) [Informative records on countries far away], written by Yan Congjian (嚴從簡) in 1574, describes the Kazakh khans as being half Tatars (達子) [58, p. 137]. The relevant passage in the Shuyu zhouzi lu reads as follows: “The Kazakh king (哈辛王) and others originally resided in the Uzbek (Ejibie额即癿) territory in the northern mountains of Samarqand, and they claimed to be partially Tatar (Dazi達子) (哈辛王等原在撒馬兒罕北山額即癿地面居住，且言半是達子) [83]. Dazi (達子) was a derogatory term for the Tatars. The Mingshi also describes the Timurids of the fifteenth century as Mongol descendants as follows: “[Chinggis Khan] mopped up and pacified the Western Regions (西域) and appointed kings and royal son-in-laws (駙馬) as their rulers. The name Samaerhan (撒馬兒罕) [Samarqand] came into existence when he changed the former name of the state into a Mongolian one … In the later years of the Yuan Dynasty, the royal son-in-law (駙馬) Temür became its king … After the royal son-in-law of the Yuan Dynasty Temür became the ruler of Samarqand, he again sent his son Shahrukh (沙哈魯) to conquer Herat (哈烈) (元太祖蕩平西域, 盡以諸王·駙馬爲之君長. 易前代國名以蒙古語, 始有撒馬兒罕之名 … 元末爲之王者, 駙馬帖木兒也 … 元駙馬帖木兒旣君撒馬兒罕  又遣其子沙哈魯據哈烈 )” [92, Chapter 332, p. 8597, 8609].

³⁰ The Polish-Lithuanian chroniclers also used the same term Tatar to refer to the Mongols and the Crimean Tatars. For instance, Jan Dlugosz refers to the Crimean Tatars as Tatars mentioning their raid into Poland in 1469 [33, p. 243–44].

³¹ For instance, the Khakas, a non-Muslim Turkic group residing in South Siberia, were called “Abakan Tatars(Abakanskie Tatary)” or “Minusa Tatars(Minusinskie Tatary)” by the Russians. Similarly, the latter used the name “Caucasian Tatars” for the Turkic-speaking Azeris of the South Caucasus.

³² For a detailed discussion of how Europeans (including Russians) defined “Tartary,” see [21].

³³ Muslim writers applied the term Tatar to these peoples regardless of the fact that they were Turkic-speakers. One should note that Muslim writers also applied the term Turk to the Mongols and other non-Turkic Inner Asian nomadic peoples. In short, they did not view linguistic affiliation as a primary factor in identity formation. On this point, see [42, p. 113–17].

³⁴ Mamluk chroniclers also used the term Tatar for the Mongols. For instance, the later Mamluk historians al-Malaṭī and Ibn Taghrībirdī referred to the ruler of the Ulus of Jochi as “the king of the Tatars in the Land of the Qipchaqs (malik al-tatār bi-Dasht Qibjaq)” [1, p. 2:332] and “the king of the Tatars (ṣāḥib al-Dasht wal-tatar)” [91, p. 4:107], respectively, in their works. The English quotations are from Koby Yosef [89, p. 180, 183n221].

³⁵ On Temür’s Mongol identity, see [45, p. 200–16].

³⁶ Elsewhere, Evliyā argues that the Ottomans, the Muscovites, and the Persians, among others, evolved from the Tatars, making the latter “universal nomads.” See [61, p. 4].

³⁷ The Shibanid Uzbeks were the Uzbeks who migrated south from the Qipchaq Steppe when Muḥammad Shībānī Khan (r. 1501–10) conquered the Timurid states of Transoxiana and Khorasan in the early sixteenth century. A number of Central Asian writers used the term “Shibanid Uzbek (Uzbak-i Shībān or Uzbakān-i Shībānī)” to refer to the Uzbeks led by Muḥammad Shībānī Khan, differentiating them from the Kazakhs, whom they called “Qazaq Uzbek (Uzbak-i Qazāq).” See [43, p. 97n1, 125–26].

³⁸ For studies on this topic, see [44; 46].

³⁹ Interestingly, I. L. Izmailov argues that because the Mongol invasion destroyed the ruling dynasties in the East European steppes, “all people got mixed within the new ulus structure” and, as a result, “the term Tatar was actively introduced into population’s public mind, especially that one of military nobility” [30, p. 753].

⁴⁰ The seventeenth-century Northern Yuan Mongol Chronicles Erdeni-yin Tobci and Altan Tobči also use the term Tatar only for the original Tatars [71, p. 50–1; 72, p. 43, 45; 50, p. 7–8, 11].

⁴¹ For instance, see [79, p. 87–88; 80, p. 62–63].

⁴² Likewise, the Tārīkh-i Rashīdī, a history of the Moghul (eastern Chaghatayid) Khanate by Muḥammad Ḥaidar Dughlāt (d. 1551), does not use the term Tatar as a self-name of the Moghuls. Interestingly, in mentioning a war between the Moghuls and the Qalmaqs, it applies Tātār to the latter, most likely to differentiate between the two peoples [54, p. 1:35 (trans); p. 2:40 (text)].

⁴³ I first learned about this practice from the Kazakh historian Qanat Uskenbay.

⁴⁴ However, Qurbān-ʿAlī Khālidī refers to Chinggis Khan’s ulus as “the Mongols and Tatars,” like the two eighteenth-century Crimean Tatar chroniclers who will be discussed below, and depicts them as the ancestors of the Kazakhs [64, p. 219–20].

⁴⁵ Like the Ẓafarnāma, this history relates that the Mongols and Tatars are descended from the two sons, Mongol and Tatar, of Alanja Khan, a descendant of Japheth [4, p. 21–22; 5, p. 12–13].

⁴⁶ According to Chantal Lemercier-Quelqujay, when the reformer Abdul Kayyum al-Nasyri first used Tatar to identify himself in the second half of the nineteenth century, he was ridiculed by other Volga Tatar intellectuals [48, p. 20].

⁴⁷ One should note that the Oghuz Turkic groups, who were not direct descendants of the Türks, also adopted the name Turk after entering the Islamic word. Turk was not a name they inherited from the Türks.

⁴⁸ On this point, see [85, p. 537–53].

⁴⁹ This table is not exhaustive.

Об авторах

Джу-Юп Ли

Автор, ответственный за переписку.
Email: jooyup.lee@mail.utoronto.ca
ORCID iD: 0009-0001-6525-6782

Ph.D. в области центральноевразийских исследований, преподаватель

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