The truth about the Bulgarian Tatars
ETHNIC sociology's new approach to the terminology and theory of interethnic relations reflects a trend towards regarding nations as not only durable formations having common characteristics and relatively stable cultural and psychological specifics and speaking one language but as entities that are aware of their unity and their difference from all other similar entities expressed in their names. However an ethnic community may be interpreted - as sociocultural or biospheric, natural (I think it is something intermediate) - every ethnic group relies on its collective memory as a necessary component of its ethnic or national consciousness. In the process it takes account of the circumstances and manner of its joining a polyethnic state. The group's national consciousness interprets the path travelled by it in the course of its evolution according to whether the joining came about through voluntary adherence, forced union under the impact of an external force, territorial expansion or dynastic intermarriage.
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.
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 k*rykan, 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".
Alfred Khalikov, a noted Tatar archaeologist and ethnographer, writes that in the seventh and eighth centuries at the latest, the name of Bulgar or Bolgar appeared in the Middle Volga region and is still used in relating historical events. Before the 10th century, the Bulgars belonged to various tribal groups but in the second quarter of that century Arab historians and geographers mentioned Bulgar as a city and region, which meant that the process of forming a people and country was at an end by then. This is confirmed by Old Russian chronicles. Volume I of Polnoye sobranie russkikh letopisei (Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles, p. 58) says with reference to the year 985 that Prince Vladimir fought and defeated the Bulgars and made peace with them. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the Bulgar state sent embassies to Russia, proposing that pagan Russia adopt Mohammedanism. But from what we read in A Tale of Bygone Years, Vladimir disapproved of circumcision and abstention from pork, and as for drinking, he said that Russia made merry by drinking and could not do without it.
Ukrainian historians, in particular Academician P. Tolochko, write that in the 10th century Volga Bolgari and Kievan Russia were great states that had attained a roughly equal level in economic, social, and cultural potential. A caravan route from Bulgar to Kiev functioned not only before the Mongol invasion but in the period of the Golden Horde and even the Kazan Khanate.
Arab and Egyptian merchants (lbn Batuta, al-Qaiqa Shandi, 1355-1418) wrote about the land of Bulgar and its merchants who delivered fur to Egypt. They held that before the 16th century Egyptian caliphs recognised the Volga Bulgars' ruler as also sovereign of the Danubian Bulgarians and even the Serbs. Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, the Golden Horde minted coins in Bulgar, and in 1242-1246 the city was headquarters to Batu Khan of the Golden Horde, who had to stop on reaching the Volga and to renounce all further inroads into Russian lands.
The 15th century witnessed a considerable weakening of Volga Bolgari. Prince Fyodor Pestry is said by a chronicler to have overrun the country in 1431. The capital was transferred to the city of Kazan, one of whose names is Bulgar al-Jadid (New Bulgar). Many 16th-century Russian sources saw continuity in the transformation of Volga Bolgari into the Kazan Khanate. The Niconian Chronicle repeatedly explains that the Bulgars "are now known as Kazan Tatars". On declaring his protectorate over Kazan in the early 16th century, Grand Duke Vassily III added to his titles that of "Prince of Bolgari", which Russian tsars retained until the October 1917 Revolution.
Kazan Tatars called themselves Bulgars for a long time. Village, river and town names connected with the name of the Bulgar ethnic group are widespread even today, and this not only in Tatarstan but in regions to which inhabitants of Volga Bolgari and subsequently of the Kazan Khanate retreated following its defeat by Ivan the Terrible in 1552.
Maps drawn up by Europeans in the early 18th century still included a country called Bolgaria Regnum and the city of Bulgar Bil Ojir. In the 18th-19th centuries, many noted Tatar scholars, poets, and public figures, such as, say, Utyz Bulgari or Shamsetdin Bulgari, considered it an honour to add "Bulgari" to their names. Nineteenth-century Tatar historian Marjani wrote a book about the continuity of the history of Kazan and the Bulgars. Russian historians drew the same conclusion.
The contemporary approach to this problem is largely prompted by the national intellectual community's desire to revive the people's language and culture and add spiritual and ethical values - traditions end customs - to their life.
The foregoing does not imply that no Mongol blood flows in Tatar veins. I am convinced that some Mongol troop units merged with the population of Volga Bolgari, all the more so since Horde princes married many Bulgar noblewomen.
THE CHRONICLES that I have quoted indicate that as soon as it came into being, Volga Bolgari established close contacts with rising East Slavic states: Kievan Russia, the principalities of Novgorod, Ryazan, Vladimir-Suzdal. Intermarriage already played a role in strengthening the bonds of friendship between neighbouring peoples. For instance, Vladimir's 985 peace treaty with the Bulgars was clinched (in German historian L.Muller's opinion) by his marrying a Bulgar noblewoman. The couple's sons, Boris and Gleb, ruled after their father's death in Rostov and Murom, both of which bordered on the Volga Bulgars' state.
In times hard for Russia, Volga Bulgari did its best to help. During a terrible famine in 1024, people sailed along the Volga to "Bolgary", from where they brought wheat and other cereals (see Polnoye sobranie. Vol. 34, p. 62). A 1229 chronicle says: "Russia was hit by a famine that lasted two years and claimed numerous lives, mostly in Novgorod and Beloozero. The Bulgars, having made peace, carried grain along the Volga and Oka to all Russian towns and sold it there, thus helping them greatly. The Bulgar Prince sent Grand Duke Yuri 30 shipments of grain."
Bulgar-Russian cultural and economic contacts did not break off, nor did intermarriage between Bulgars and Russians stop even in periods of tension in relations. Prince Andrei Bogolubski was married to a Bulgar princess. Bulgar craftsmen who maintained ties with Persia, China, and Egypt were invited to Russian towns to build churches, such as those in Yuryev Polsky, the church of the Intercession known as Pokrov-on-Nerl, the cathedrals in Vladimir. Bulgar merchants and handicraftsmen were invited to settle permanently in Russia and were granted "loans and titles".
How very fruitful those ties were is evident from numerous Turkic words borrowed by Russian from the Bulgars' language, such as altyn, arba, barysh, denga, tovar (ishch), bezmen. The Lay of Igor's Host uses many Turkic loan-words: geographic names - Kayala, It'll, Sula, Tmutarakan; bird names - gogol, krechet; ethnic names - Hunnu, Ugr, Olber; various political and other terms - boyar, khagan, saltan, sabre, and many others.
After 1236, when "godless Tatars who came from the East to the Bulgars' land and took the Bulgars' great capital, killing old and young, seizing much booty, setting fire to the city and plundering the land", Prince Yuri readily had many Bulgar refugees settled in towns on the Volga.
The exodus of Turkic feudal lords to Russian territory intensified after the Bulgars' final defeat in the late 13th century. Chura Batyr of Kazan gave rise to the princely family of Churikov. In the same period, Bulgar-Kazan noblemen living in Russia and Lithuania founded the Shakhovskoi, Derzhavin, Tolbuzin, and other families.
In the era of the Golden Horde, the Bulgars and Bulgarised Burtas-Mishar strongly influenced Kipchak-Polovtsi tribes. The centralisation of the Horde power and the nobility's refusal to submit to it resulted in the Godunovs, Aksakovs, Velyaminovs, Mamonovs, Mosolovs - founders of noble families - fleeing to Ivan Kalita (qalta is "bag" or "purse" in Bulgar/Turkic). Marriages between Russian princes and Horde khans' family members became a fairly frequent occurrence. Sartak's daughter was married to Prince Gleb of Rostov; Khan Uzbek's sister became the wife of Prince Yuri of Muscovy (1317). After Dmitry Donskoi had defeated Mamai (1380), he was joined by Oslan (Arslan) Murza, an ancestor of the Adashevs, as well as by Isahar Murza, an ancestor of the Zagryazhskys, and others.
These people of Turkic extraction became part of a military class that provided the basis for the future Russian nobility. This is confirmed by M. Karatayev, A. Khalikov, M. Pokrovsky, N. Firsov, and other historians. They established the Bulgar/Tatar origin of 500 Russian surnames, including those of boyars, counts, and other persons of noble rank.
The rather dramatic history of the formation of the Tatar ethnic group resulted in ifs being scattered all over the world. Today's Tatarstan is home to just a quarter of all members of the ethnic group that calls itself Tatar. According to the 1989 census, the population of the Soviet Union included 6,645,558 Tatars, the Russian Federation accounting for 5.5 million; Uzbekistan 467,000; Azerbaijan 280,000, and Ukraine 86,000. The Tatar diaspora in the far abroad exceeds 50,000: 6,000 of its members live in Bulgaria; 21,000 in Romania, 1,000 in Poland; about 1,000 in Finland; over 10,000 in Turkey, and about 10,000 in China. There are Tatar residents also in Japan, America, and Australia.
Knowledge of and respect for the history of both the Russian and Bulgar/Tatar ethnic groups is bound to add to mutual respect, confidence, and tolerance in building new interethnic relations. While refusing to give in to ethnocentrism, a people having a glorious centuries-old history cannot but speak of its patriotic sentiments.
"The national problem in Russia," wrote Vladimir Solovyev, the Russian philosopher and historian, "concerns life in dignity, not just existence." This is a goal which the peoples of the Russian Federation and Republic of Tatarstan are now working to attain.
Flura ZIYATDINOVA, International Affairs, A Monthly Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relation, January, 1995
The Bulgars did not speak Turkic. Their language is not deciphered.
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| Originally posted by kroraina DJ_SHEMA, these days exactly I had a dispute with one Kabardino-Balkarian guy living in Turkey, who claimed similar things. You can see my replies in the 'Turkey' sub-forum of the Balkan ezboard forum - http://p083.ezboard.com/fbalkansfrm12.showMessage?topicID=2599.topic The Bulgars did not speak Turkic. Their language is not deciphered. |
tatarce jas mislam deka podobro e da si ostanes na tvojot tatarski forum
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| Originally posted by yavor Dokoga ke gi pisuwaate ovie gluposti, da bevte barem i wie nekoa cista rasa, a taka pogledas, cista mjesavina. Dok ni kanese Tito da ulezneme u Yugu, bevme brakja sloveni, sega se najdovte vie naj-pametni. |
Dibek, Dok Vi kanese Tito da uleznete u Yugu imaja ste ga Ruski v gaz.
, yavor!
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| Originally posted by toni_a , " - II " Bulgarian Turkic Calendar http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/25Bulgars/BulgarianKhansListEn.htm Bulgar Ethnonym http://www.turkicworld.org/ "...There are also differring opinions about the continuity between the Bulgars and Tatars. Some, mostly Tatar scientists, believe that Bulgars spoke a common Turkic language and were a language-bearing component of the Tatars. The others believe that Volga Bulgars spoke not a common Turkic, but a Chuvash-like language and that their arrival formed only the Chuvash people, and as to the Tatar people, they officially formed mostly from those Tatars who came to the Volga and Urals together with the Mongolian armies..." http://www.hunmagyar.org/turan/tatar/tatar-origin.html |
da go prefrlam postot tuka...bidejki Car Samuil navistina nema nikakva vrska so central asian, turko-tatarian, chuvash, mongolian...itn
tuka mu e mestoto na postot
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