Eesti tatarlased

A timeline of the Estonian Tatars

Until the Second World War the Estonian Tatars' story ran a single course. The war and the Soviet occupation split the community in two — those who stayed in Estonia and those who fled west — until Estonia regained its independence in 1991.

3rd c. BCE – 5th c. CE

The Huns and the Xiongnu — powerful steppe peoples before the Turkic age. Often called “the Turks' ancestors”, but unproven: here begins the dim deep edge of our story, not a traceable pedigree.

c. 1st mill. BCE

Proto-Turkic — the reconstructed common ancestor of all Turkic languages and the deepest root of Mišär. Its core (like *kün “day”, *yïr “song”) lives on in Mišär today.

The Turkic Khaganates (Göktürks) — the first states to bear the name “Türk”. The Orkhon inscriptions are the oldest Turkic writing; from here Turkic spreads across Eurasia.

The Uyghur Khaganate inherits Göktürk power in Mongolia — a kindred Turkic people, a carrier of Orkhon writing and steppe literacy, not a direct Mišär ancestor.

7th–10th century

The Khazar Khaganate guards the southern gate of the Volga trade route from its capital Atil — the oldest link in our story.

Old Great Bulgaria: Khan Kubrat unites the Bulgar tribes. At its collapse his son Kotrag leads one group to the Volga — the forerunner of Volga Bulgaria.

Volga Bulgaria adopts Islam — a Turkic trading state on the Volga, forerunner of the Kazan Tatars.

9th–13th century

The Burtas — a middle-Volga people between Volga Bulgaria and the Khazars; one of the substrate peoples that fuse into the Mišärs in Meshchera. Their own origin stays disputed.

11th–13th century

The Kipchak Steppe (Dasht-i Qipchaq) is held by the Cuman-Kipchak confederation — the direct ancestor of the Mišär language.

13th–15th century

The Golden Horde: the Kipchak world in which today's Tatar peoples take shape. On the middle Volga, Bulgars and Kipchaks fuse.

The Qasim Khanate in Meshchera — the Mišär ethnic character takes its final shape here, around 1400–1500.

16th–18th century

The Mišärs serve as the Russian state's serving Tatars on the border defence lines — the price of service being land and the right to remain Muslim; the class scatters the Mišärs across the Volga-Ural.

The first Tatars reach Estonia as soldiers in Russian troops during the Livonian War (1558); some go over to the Swedish king and stay.

After the Great Northern War the first larger community forms — discharged soldiers stay on in Estonia.

The Bashkir peasant leader and bard Salavat Yulayev is sent to Paldiski for life as a convict.

18th century

Tatar sailors settle in Tallinn; the Tatari suburb takes shape (Tatari Street, the “Tatar Nest” in Kadriorg).

Serfdom is abolished in Russia. The poor-soil Mišär villages of the Sergach country turn to itinerant trade — fabrics, furs, soap — and the journeys reach through Saint Petersburg to Finland and Estonia.

c. 1870

The merchant Zäkir Zäkeri (Zakir Zakerov) arrives in Tallinn from the Nižni Novgorod region — one of the first.

The Muslim cemetery is first documented on Tallinn's town plans (Eurich's plan); on the 1885 plan already by name — “Muhammedanischer Kirchhof”. The community later calls it the old cemetery.

Sibgadulla Mähdejev, the future “king of the Tatars”, arrives in Tallinn; in 1892 he opens his first shop.

1897

The census counts 109 Tatars in Tallinn; by 1914 the estimate is up to 2,000.

On the birth of his son Ibrahim, Sibgadulla Mähdejev buys land from the city and builds up the old Muslim cemetery: a limestone wall and a crescent-adorned wrought-iron gate (Fateh Zakerov takes part). By tradition the money came in gratitude from the Jewish community, whom he had helped obtain land for a cemetery of their own.

1918 — free Estonia

Free Estonia gives the community a legal home.

The fire station by the Russian market, where the Muslims held prayers in the early 20th century. Photo: Tallinn City Museum.

2 February 1920 — Treaty of Tartu

With the Treaty of Tartu, Soviet Russia recognises Estonia’s independence “in perpetuity” — the birth certificate of the Estonian state and the legal basis of its continuity, within which the community flourished. It was also the first treaty in which any state recognised the Soviet government.

The Narva Muhammadan Congregation is registered (renamed the Narva Muhammadan religious society in 1937); the former North Estonian Bank building is adapted as its religious centre.

The Narva community building, the former North Estonian Bank, on a postcard.

The other side of the postcard — a surviving stamp reading “Narva Muhamedi Kogudus”.

28 September 1928

The Narva Tatar Cultural Society is founded.

1934

The census counts ~166 Tatars; the community's own estimate is ~180.

Estonian Tatars at the tea table in the 1930s. Photo: Tallinn City Museum.

Imam Alimdžan Idris addresses the local Tatars: “Consider the Estonian Republic as your state!”

1936

Eid al-Fitr prayers in Narva — a documented prayer for the Estonian government.

Estonia's first mosque opens — in Narva at Kiriku Street 2; the ceremony is led by the spiritual head of Finnish Muslims, Väliahmäd Hakim.

1935–1938

Tatar schools run: a Sunday school in Tallinn (Raua Street 57) and an evening school in Narva.

The Berlin-based Volga Tatar imam Alimdžan Idris visits Estonia repeatedly and teaches Arabic at the summer schools in Narva-Jõesuu.

Imam Alimdžan Idris with his pupils, 1930s. Private collection.

The new Muslim cemetery of Tallinn opens as part of the Liiva cemetery.

31 January 1938

A separate strand of the Great Terror targeted diaspora nationalities suspected of foreign loyalty. The Politburo decision of 31 January 1938 authorised operations against Poles, Latvians, Germans, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians, Chinese, Romanians and others. All this happened inside the USSR, still before the occupation of Estonia (1940) — the decision did not reach the citizens of free Estonia, but it shows what came with the occupation authorities.

Tatarising the names: inspired by the Estonians' name-Estonianisation campaign, the Tatar community discusses removing the Russian suffixes from its family names already in the era of the Republic (“Estonian Tatars ask for the Tatarisation of their names”, Uus Eesti, 27 June 1938).

1939

Sibgadulla Mähdejev dies; the Estonian papers report: the king of the Tatars has died.

Summer 1939

A great gathering at Narva-Jõesuu — almost all the Estonian Tatars are represented.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: the USSR and Nazi Germany divide Europe by secret protocol — Estonia is assigned to the Soviet sphere. Estonia's fate is our fate.

28 September 1939

The Soviet Union forces the bases treaty (the “mutual-assistance” pact) on Estonia — the turning point.

28 September 1939

The same day, in the same Kremlin: the USSR and Nazi Germany sign the Boundary and Friendship Treaty. Estonia's last free moments pass between two devils.

The Tallinn Muhammadan religious society is registered.

The last gathering, at Narva-Jõesuu — Ali Zakerov's wedding.

The war split the community into two paths.

Those who stayed in Estonia

1940 — occupation and the economy

The occupation also plunders Estonia's economy: nationalisation, the confiscatory ruble conversion and the deportation of the propertied class begin at once. In half a century Estonia falls from Finland's level to a fraction of it.

1940–41

The occupation begins; the authorities dissolve the congregations.

The Soviet occupation expropriates the old Muslim cemetery — along with the dissolution of the congregations.

The Rakvere Tatar cemetery is handed over to the town of Rakvere by act — as part of the municipalisation of the Tallinn, Narva and Rakvere associations' cemeteries.

The handover act: F. Sakerov, I. Mähdejev and A. Megdejev hand the cemetery over to the city — together with the burial list and the key to the gate.

The June deportation: the occupation authorities deport over 10,000 innocent people from Estonia to Siberia in cattle cars — while the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were still cooperating.

Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany attacks its erstwhile ally the USSR — just 8 days after the June deportation. The two devils' friendship is over.

18 November 1941

The fur merchant Hairulla Mähdejev (Mehdi) is arrested and dies in a Gulag camp in the Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) region.

1944

Narva is destroyed in the war. The Soviet occupation authorities do not allow the city to be rebuilt, and the families are forced to move to Tallinn and Rakvere — after which the community falls apart.

In place of old Narva a new, Soviet-style city is built. The locals have been driven away, and Russian-speaking settlers are brought in en masse from outside Estonia to replace them.

The old Muslim cemetery: after the March 1944 bombing the Soviet authorities do not allow the cemetery to be repaired — the land has been expropriated and the authorities have other plans for it: even the drainage may not be fixed, and the sacred place decays into mud. The newest known gravestone is the merchant Fateh Zakerov's (4 June 1951), the last burial his wife Bebefaticha Zakerova (7 January 1953); the cemetery is officially closed in 1955. The community is forced to dig up their relatives' remains themselves and rebury them at the Liiva cemetery.

The Muslim cemetery gate.

Around 1959 warehouses rise on the plots south of the cemetery; a motor depot and a wood yard operate on the former grounds. The west wall with the wrought-iron gate is demolished only in the 1980s — Karl Laane photographs the gate on 20 October 1980, shortly before its disappearance. The gate's fate is unknown; according to Timur Seifullen it was taken to Crimea.

Soviet in-migration: in 1947 Tatars are brought to build a chemical factory in Maardu, in the 1950s a hydroelectric plant in Narva, in the 1970s Olympic facilities. By 1989 there are 4,058 Tatars in Estonia — mostly Russian-speaking newcomers, not the historical Estonian Tatars.

The threat of Russification, and Estonianisation — the community becomes an invisible part of society; often only a name remains.

In exile

Ibrahim, Umugulsum and Rähimä Zarip flee west; in October 1943 Ibrahim is taken into the Finnish navy as a sailor.

The Finnish Boys

Three Estonian Tatar Finnish Boys are known by name, who joined the Finnish forces: Ibrahim Zarip (Finnish navy, later Sweden and the USA), Ahmed Haerdinov (later Sweden) and Rafik Moksanov (later Canada).

Ibrahim reaches Sweden as a political refugee; he is formally released from Finnish naval service on 18 September 1944.

Ibrahim in the Frösåker refugee camp (Sweden); Umugulsum in a D.P. camp.

Umugulsum Zarip's D.P. registration record, 1945.

1945–1946 — the Estonians at Nuremberg

Innocent Estonia: before 28 September 1939 the Mišär Tatars lived a good life in free Estonia. Twice-occupied Estonia was a victim of the Second World War, not a perpetrator — Estonian innocence and Nuremberg.

22 October 1949

Sweden's first Muslim organisation, Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige, is founded in Stockholm — four of the five provisional board members are Estonian Tatars.

In Sweden Ibrahim sits on the board of the Estonian Socialist Party's Foreign Association (ESPVK) — the exile organisation of Estonia's social democrats and forerunner of today's Social Democrats, which fought against the Soviet occupation — alongside Johannes Mihkelson and Gustav Suits.

Ibrahim moves to New York and becomes an offset printer; Umugulsum works as a doctor in New York.

Umugulsum Zarip, M.D., New York (1963).

Estonian language and identity are kept alive in exile (“Eesti türklased”).

“Eesti türklased” — an exile-Estonian newspaper article.

During perestroika, Tatars with pre-war roots found the Tatar Cultural Society (chairman Timur Seifullen), which also supports Estonia's independence movement.

1991

Estonia restores its independence; the occupation ends.

In New York, Ibrahim helps sort out the Estonian House renovation papers and takes part in preparing ESTO ’92.

14 August 1992

Ernst Jaakson, Estonia's ambassador — who preserved the diplomatic continuity of the Estonian state through the occupation — writes to thank Timur Seifullen, head of the Tatar Cultural Society, whose material correctly illuminates Estonia's attitude toward minority nationalities. The letter notes it is useful for rebutting the false information then being spread — a testament to the Estonian Tatars' bond with the restored Estonian state.

Letter from Estonia's ambassador Ernst Jaakson to Timur Seifullen, 14 August 1992 (Embassy of the Republic of Estonia, New York).

The President of the Republic honours Timur Seifullen's services in organising cooperation among the national minorities with the Order of the White Star.

The first full Estonian translation of the Quran appears — initiated by Timur Seifullen, translated by the Orientalist Haljand Udam.

Today — the Estonian Tatars' Union is active; the work of recovering the language, history and identity continues.