Posted by Copy and Paste on July 11, 2001, 4:02 am The earliest mention of the name of Tatar is found in Orkhon inscriptions left by Turkic khagans. The funeral of one of these, Ku'l Tegin, drew the Avar, Rim, Kyrgyz, Uch Kurykan, Kytai, Tafib and many other tribes, including Otuz Tatars. This last tribe (lit. "Thirty Tatars") lived in the north-east of today's Mongolia while another, apparently a smaller one (because it was called Toguz Tatar, or "Nine Tatars"), lived in the Uighur Khanate. Historic monuments and records indicate that those tribes' history lasted until the 12th century, when the Tatars became vassals of China and helped its troops inflict a major defeat on the Mongols in the Lake Buyir Nur area. Bitter strife between Tatar and Mongol tribes lasted thirty years and came to an end in 1198 with the suppression of Tatar resistance by the combined forces of Genghis Khan and China, for the Tatars rose against Chinese tyranny. Some Tatar tribes retreated with their ruler, Kutlukhan (Kuchluk), to Turkestan in the west while those who remained in the east were finally subdued by Genghis Khan in 1204. Never since then has the name of Tatar been used in historical records as denoting an independent ethnic group. It was disguised as "Mongol", a name with which it changed places. Mongol khans began calling themselves Tatars while "Magul" as the Mongols' ethnic name fell into disuse. After the campaigns of conquest that took Genghis Khan to Asia and Europe in 1210-1240, the Mongols came to be identified as "Tatars" more than ever, for according to Guillaume Roubrouc, "Genghis Khan used to send Tatars forward everywhere, and their name spread wide because people everywhere shouted 'The Tatars are coming!"' Members of nearly all Turkic tribes - the Karluk, Turkmen, Kashgaris, Kucharis - were called Tatars by then. All Arab, Persian, Armenian, Russian, and European sources of the period of the Mongol invasion describe it as "Tatar" and call the Mongols "Tatars". Stephanos Orbelyan, a 13th-century Armenian historian, wrote that the neighbouring peoples called the Tatars "Mugals", which meant that they still remembered the conquerors' real name. Russian chronicles call the Mongols "Tatars" throughout the period of conquest on Russian territory. Even later chronicles, such as those of Moscovy dating from the late 15th century or the Niconian Chronicle of the 16th century, show that their authors were practically unfamiliar with the name of Mongol, for they invariably use the name of Tatar. The foregoing retrospection suggests that the name of the people now living in the Middle Volga region and in areas adjacent to the Urals -"Tatar" - is not a name that they have given themselves but one that has come from lands far removed from present-day Tatarstan. THE POPULATION of Volga Bolgari, which lived on the territory of today's Republic of Tatarstan and constituted the ethnic basis of the future Tatar inhabitants of the Middle Volga region and areas adjacent to the Urals, offered the advancing Mongols bitter resistance. In 1223, the Bulgars inflicted a first reverse on Genghis Khans troops, seen as invincible until then. Julian, a Hungarian monk who visited Bulgaria Magna shortly before the Mongol invasion, described it as a mighty state with rich cities. In 1223-1278, the Bulgars put up resistance to the Mongols, diverting their forces to the suppression of revolts and the stopping of wars and so preventing the incorporation of Russian lands into the Horde. "Bulgar" as the name of an ethnic group was first mentioned in 469 in A Syrian Chronicle by Zacharias Rhetor. He wrote that living north of the East Caucasus were "the Bulgars, a pagan and barbarian people who speak their own language". From the early sixth century on, the name of Bulgar and its modifications spread wide in the North Caucasus, the Don Valley, the Lower Volga and Danubian regions, including what is now Bulgaria. The etymology of Bulgar comprises at least 19 presumable origins of the name ranging from a persons name to the tradesman's or farmers occupation. Specialists give preference to the opinion of Academician J. Nemeth of Hungary, who interprets the name as a "rebel, insurgent". This interpretation is borne out to a degree by the meaning of contemporary Tatar words having the same roof. Thus, bolgatyrga means "to mix", that is, to change quiescence to a different state, while bolgarga means "to wave or swing".
WHY DO THE TATARS who live in the republic and have taken this name as a state-forming factor persistently try to answer the question: "Are we Tatars or Bulgars?" I see one of the various reasons for this in the people's increased and freed consciousness of their ethnic identity, which prevents them from reconciling themselves any longer to the identification of the Kazan Tatars' history with that of the Mongol period of the Golden Horde, which is still interpreted without qualification as a period of darkness, violence, and brutality.
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