Estonian Tatar history
From Mišär merchants to a community: the road to Tallinn, community life in the Republic of Estonia, family stories and the Finnish Boys.
Cemeteries
The cemetery as the community's backbone
The destruction of the Tallinn Muslim cemetery by the occupation authorities is documented as the cultural genocide of the historical Estonian Tatars. It was not merely physical de…
Read →The Narva Tatar cemetery
The Narva Tatar community had its own Islamic cemetery — as did the communities in Tallinn and Rakvere. Narva was, alongside Tallinn, the second centre of the Estonian Tatars, wher…
Read →The old Muslim cemetery of Tallinn
The old Muslim cemetery — officially Tallinna Muhamedi kalmistu (the Muhammadan Cemetery of Tallinn) — is the historical burial ground of the Estonian Tatars in Tallinn's Juhkental…
Read →The Rakvere Tatar cemetery
The Rakvere Tatar community had its own Islamic cemetery — as did those in Tallinn and Narva. According to the Estonian Heritage Yearbook, with the Tatar merchant activity that rev…
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People
Ahmed Haerdinov
Ahmed Haerdinov (Tatar name form Ähmät Hajreddin) was an Estonian Tatar (Mišär Tatar) from Narva, a soomepoiss and later in Sweden one of the founders of Turk-Islam Föreningen — Sw…
Read →Ibrahim Zarip
Ibrahim Zarip (7 October 1925, Tallinn – 22 September 1994) was an Estonian Tatar (Mišär Tatar), a “Finnish Boy” (soomepoiss) and an exile politician. In Sweden he served on the bo…
Read →Sibgadulla Mähdejev
Sibgadulla Mähdejev (b. 1863 in Nizhny Novgorod province – d. 1939 in Tallinn) was, before the First World War, the most honoured and richest Estonian Tatar, whom the Estonian pres…
Read →Timur Seifullen
Timur Seifullen is one of the leaders of the Estonian Tatar community in restored Estonia. He was the first chairman of the Tatar Cultural Society founded in 1988, has chaired the…
Read →Umugulsum Zarip
Umugulsum Zarip (in the exile Estonian press also Ömögölsön Zarip) was an Estonian Tatar (Mišär Tatar), a physician and an active community member in exile. She was a daughter of t…
Read →Veliulla Fetkullin
Veliulla Fetkullin (in Swedish records also Väliulla Fetkullen) was a Narva Tatar who fled to Sweden in 1944 and on 19 November 1949 was elected the first chairman of Sweden's firs…
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Places: Narva, Tallinn, Rakvere
Tatar life in Narva
Narva was, alongside Tallinn, the second heart of the Estonian Tatars: by the community's own estimate about half of the historical Estonian Tatars lived here. It was in Narva that…
Read →Tatar life in Tallinn
Tallinn was the oldest and most enduring centre of the Estonian Tatars. Where the Narva community was destroyed in the Second World War, Tallinn's lives on to this day. The city's…
Read →The history of Narva
Narva is Estonia's easternmost city, on the Narva River at the Russian border. For centuries it was a prosperous trading town and a jewel of Swedish-era Baroque — and also a second…
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The community takes shape
Bulat Murssov
Bulat Murssov (also spelled Bulaat Murssov) was a Tatar boyar (nobleman) mentioned among the events of the Livonian War (1558–1583). According to Balthasar Russow's Livonian Chroni…
Read →Definitions of the Estonian Tatars
In Estonia the word “Tatar” covers several different groups with different relationships to Estonia. For clarity, a distinction is drawn between an Estonian Tatar and a Tatar in Es…
Read →History of Estonia's Muslim Tatars (Abiline and Ringvee)
This article digests what the historian Toomas Abiline and the scholar of religion Ringo Ringvee write about the history of Estonia's Muslim Tatars in the academic volume Muslim Ta…
Read →How the Mišär Tatars came to Tallinn
The community has passed down the following oral tradition about its origins:
Read →Tatar soldiers in Estonia
Tatar soldiers are the starting point of the Estonian Tatars' story: the first Tatars reached the Estonian lands precisely as soldiers — in the 16th century in the armies of the Li…
Read →The Baranovs — a noble family of Tatar origin
The Baranovs (in German form von Baranoff) are the best-known noble family of Tatar origin in the Baltic. Unlike the Muslim Mišär merchants from whom today's Estonian Tatars descen…
Read →The Estonian Tatar community in the Republic of Estonia (1918–1940)
The Estonian Tatars are chiefly Mišär Tatars who migrated to the territory of Estonia from the second half of the 19th century onward, mostly as merchants. During the interwar Repu…
Read →The Estonian time — the best of times
This page is the summary of everything. The historical Estonian Tatars have travelled a long road — from the Kipchak steppe and the Golden Horde, across the centuries, from the vil…
Read →The Nizhny Novgorod migration
The Nizhny Novgorod migration is the emigration wave that in the second half of the 19th century carried Mišär Tatars from the villages of the Sergach country to the Baltic coast.…
Read →Union of Estonian Tatars
The Union of Estonian Tatars (Eesti Tatarlaste Liit) is an association of the historical Estonian Tatars (Mišär Tatars) whose purpose is to preserve and promote the community's lan…
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The Finnish Boys and exile
Estonian Tatar soomepoisid (Finnish Boys)
The Estonian Tatar soomepoisid ("Finnish Boys") were members of the historical Estonian Tatar (Mišär Tatar) community who volunteered for the Finnish armed forces during the Second…
Read →The Estonian Tatars kept the Estonian language even in exile
In exile — above all in Sweden and the United States — the Estonian Tatars kept more than their Tatar heritage. They also preserved the Estonian language and an Estonian identity.…
Read →Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige
Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige för Religion och Kultur (the Swedish Turkish-Islamic Religious and Cultural Association) was Sweden's first Muslim organisation, founded on 22 Octob…
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