Tatar traditions and customs

Note. The customs and holidays described here (Sabantuy, Narduğan, Cıyın, etc.) are Volga Tatar traditions. They differ from the customs of the historical Estonian Tatars, which are closer to Estonian customs.

Tatars in festive folk dress and fur hats, a 19th-century ethnographic lithograph

Tatars in traditional folk costume, a hand-coloured lithograph from 1862 (Gustav-Theodor Pauli (Gustav-Fyodor Khristianovich Pauli); Public domain; Wikimedia Commons)

Tatar traditions and customs encompass the folk traditions of the Volga Tatars — seasonal festivals, family and wedding customs, and tea culture. The main source for this overview is Aygul Ahmetcan's website learntatar.com, which gathers sub-articles on spring and summer festivals (Saban tuyı, i.e. Sabantuy, and Cıyın), the winter-solstice rite Narduğan, courtship, funeral customs, and tea culture. The core traditions are largely of pan-Volga-Tatar origin, though some carry documented Mišär-specific variants.

Sabantuy — the spring festival

Sabantuy (Tatar Saban tuyı) means "plough's feast/festival" in Turkic languages, from saban (plough) + tuy (feast/festival), and is an agricultural celebration marking the end of spring field work. It traces to pre-Islamic times and was documented by the Arab traveller ibn Fadlan in 921; originally celebrated before the sowing season, it became a secular holiday as Islam and Christianity spread among the peoples who kept it.

Sabantuy is celebrated by Tatars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs and Chuvash; the Bashkirs call it Habantuy and the Chuvash call it Akatuy.
In its modern form it is held roughly from 15 June to 1 July on Sundays, beginning in villages and culminating in major cities.
It is celebrated internationally by the Tatar diaspora, including in Tallinn, alongside Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Prague, Istanbul, Kyiv and Tashkent; in China it is recognized as intangible cultural heritage.

Sabantuy contests

The central Sabantuy competition is köräš (kurash), a traditional wrestling in which opponents grip each other with towels or sashes. The champion becomes the batır ("hero") and wins prizes ranging from a ram to a car. Other contests include horse racing, sack races, pole climbing, egg-and-spoon races and pot-smashing.

In the pole-climbing contest, participants climb a slippery pole roughly 15–25 metres tall to retrieve a rooster or an embroidered towel.
The sack race covers about 75–100 metres.
learntatar.com lists Sabantuy egg games such as kükäyle uyın / yomırqalı uyın and the gift-collecting custom büllek cıyu, in which embroidered items and towels were gathered from households.

Cıyın — the summer gathering and Soviet suppression

Cıyın was a summer folk gathering held between spring fieldwork and haymaking, timed by phenological signs (for example, "when the rye is in bloom"). Until the 1920s it was more significant than Sabantuy; it was eradicated by the Bolsheviks and forgotten within two to three generations.

In 1925 the Tatar Communist Party Committee recommended merging the spring festival Sabantuy with the summer gathering Cıyın and moving Sabantuy to the post-sowing period.
The aim was to suppress Cıyın, which served as a platform for discussing local affairs and was seen as a source of dissent against Soviet authority.

Narduğan — the winter-solstice rite

Narduğan is an ancient winter-solstice rite among Tatars and other Volga-region peoples, observed on 21–22 December (for Christianized Keräšen Tatars, 25 December – 5 January). Its name derives from the Mongolian nar ("sun") and the Tatar tuğan ("born"), reflecting reverence for the sun and the sky-deity Tengri.

Narduğan featured costumed house-to-house processions in which participants portrayed bears and goats, cross-dressed, disguised their voices and concealed their faces.
Muslim clergy opposed it as a pagan practice; the ethnographer H. Gatina documented its survival into the early 20th century.
According to learntatar.com, among Mišär Tatars the rite is called "Raštuwa"; Mišärs made a sweet called "bawırsak" and practised marriage and fate divination, including ring divination with water drawn from an ice hole.
In Mišär regions the festive egg-dyeing custom was called "olı kön."

Tea culture

Tea reached the Tatars via the Great Tea Road in the 17th–18th centuries, introduced by Tatar merchants from East Turkestan and Bukhara who obtained it from China and India. It was first an elite drink, while common people used taqta çäy (brick tea) diluted with milk, and the quality of the tea served came to symbolize a hostess's hospitality.

Wedding and family customs

The culmination of a traditional Tatar wedding is serving tea with the sweet pastry chak-chak, presented as a treat from the bride; sweets, pies and tea are set out on the table.