The name Tatars was once applied by Europeans to almost any Asian nomadic invaders, most often a combination of Mongols and Turkics. In fact lands west of the Ural Mountains in siberia were once known as Tartary. Yet the name is still used in modern times. Modern-day Islamic Turkic-speaking peoples in Russia and elsewhere—those Turkic peoples who never formed part of the Seljuk or Ottoman Empire—are sometimes grouped together as Tatars (or Turko-Tatars). The name is also associated with specific historical groups in eastern Europe, such as the Crimean Tatars in Ukraine and Turkic peoples in Russia, including the Balkars, Bashkirs, Karachay, Kumyks, and Nogay, as well as specific groups in Asia (see Russians: nationality; Ukrainians: nationality).
The name Tatars, as Ta-ta, first appeared among nomadic Turkic-speaking tribes living in Asia in northeastern Mongolia and later was used in association with Turkic peoples around Lake Baikal, such as the Pechenegs, Kipchaks, and Bulgars, who participated with the Mongols in the conquest of eastern Europe in the 13th century C. E. Other peoples intermingled with them, such as Finno-Ugrians and Nenets, who have also been referred to as Tatars.
People known as Tatars throughout history spoke a variety of Turkic or Mongolic dialects. A specific Turkic dialect known as Tatar developed, part of the Uralic (from the Ural Mountains) subgrouping in the Northwestern (Kipchak) language family The Crimean Tatars spoke a distinct Ponto-Caspian dialect. And the Balkars, Karachay, and Nogay, sometimes classified as subtribes of Tatars, spoke Aralo-Caspian dialects.
In the 1230s-40s the Mongols and Tatars, led by Batu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, campaigned in eastern and central Europe, and in 1243 after Batu Khan had laid the groundwork, the Kipchak khanate was founded, its territory including lands between the Volga and Danube
Rivers. It also became known as the Empire of the Golden Horde. Over the next decades those peoples grouped as Tatars carried out raids as far south as the Balkan Peninsula.
In the 1440s the Kipchak khanate broke into independent Tatar khanates: Kazan near the bend of the Volga River; Astrakhan on the Lower Volga near the Caspian sea; sibir in western Siberia (Asia); and the Crimea in present-day Ukraine. The Crimean khanate became a vassal state of the ottoman Turks, expanding from the south in Asia in 1478. As vassals the Crimean Tatars, centered at Stary Krym and at Bakhchisarai, had influence throughout Ukraine, southwestern Russia, and eastern Poland. They carried out raids to the north, including to Moscow, as late as 1572. The Russian Slavs conquered Kazan, Astrakhan, and Sibir in the 16th century Cossacks participated in the fighting against the Tatars and absorbed some groups. The Russians first invaded the Crimea in 1736 and annexed it in 1783. In the 19 th century because of wars in the region— among them the Crimean War of 1854-56 with Russia pitted against Turkey, England, France, and sardinia—many of the Crimean Tatars moved to Turkey.
During the 18th and 19th centuries Tatars earned a favored position within the expanding Russian Empire in positions of authority
Modern Tatars
In 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established as part of the Soviet Union (USSR). This republic was dissolved in 1945, however, when the Soviet leader Joseph stalin accused the Crimean Tatars of collaboration with the Nazis during World War II (1941-45) and had them deported to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where the use of Tatar dialects was forbidden. Although they regained their civil rights in 1956, they were not allowed to return to the Crimea, which had become part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
World History
