The Tatars' deeper history
The deep layers of our story — from the Khazars and Volga Bulgaria to the Kipchak Steppe, the Golden Horde and the Qasim Khanate: the world from which the Tatar peoples were born.
Heritage and lineages
A genetic profile and the Mišär heritage
A deep analysis of one Estonian Biobank (geenidoonor.ee) profile. The profile owner's mother is a Mišär Tatar and father an Estonian. The analysis splits the profile into two paren…
Read →Tamerlane: Sword of Islam (book)
Timur: (1336–1405). Islami mõõk, maailmavallutaja is the Estonian edition of the English historian and journalist Justin Marozzi's biography of Timur (Tamerlane) — originally Tamer…
Read →The Alimov family of ishans
The Alimovs are a Mišär family of imams and ishans from the village of Kuy Suvõ (Russian: Ovechy Ovrag) in the Sergach country of the Nizhny Novgorod province — the same Mišär hear…
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Steppe peoples and Turkic roots
History of the Tatars
The history of the Tatars covers the long development of the Volga Tatars and their ancestors along the middle Volga and in the Volga-Kama region: from the early Turkic peoples and…
Read →The Huns and the Xiongnu
The Huns and the Xiongnu were powerful steppe peoples who preceded the Turkic age. They are often called “the Turks' ancestors”, but this is disputed and largely unproven. This is…
Read →The Turkic Khaganates
The Turkic Khaganates (Göktürks) were the first states to bear the name Türk and to spread the Turkic language across Eurasia. In their world all the later Turkic peoples took thei…
Read →The Uyghurs
The Uyghurs were a Turkic people whose Khaganate (744–840) inherited the power of the Turkic Khaganates in Mongolia. In our story they are a kindred Turkic people and a carrier of…
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The khanates and Kazan
Tatar life in the Russian Empire
When Kazan fell in 1552, the Volga Tatars became subjects of an Orthodox Christian empire. For nearly 350 years their life swung between two poles — the pressure of forced assimila…
Read →The fall of Kazan and Tatarstan
The history of the Tatars in Russia reaches back to the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan by Ivan IV in 1552. Despite centuries of subjugation, the Tatars have managed to preserve t…
Read →The Qasim Khanate
The Qasim Khanate (1452–1681) was a Tatar khanate on the middle Oka in the Meshchera region, with its capital at Kasimov. As a vassal of Moscow it lasted over two centuries — and i…
Read →The Serving Tatars
The Serving Tatars (Tatar: yomyshly tatarlar) were a class of ethnic Tatar state servants who served Muscovy (and Poland-Lithuania) in the 14th–18th centuries as soldiers, border g…
Read →The Siege and Fall of Kazan (1552)
The fall of Kazan on 2 October 1552 ended the Khanate of Kazan and opened the Volga to Muscovy's eastward expansion. This page describes how the city fell and why — a companion to…
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The Volga and the Golden Horde
Edigü (Yedigei)
Edigü (c. 1352–1419; Idegäj in the Tatar epic, also known via Russian as Yedigei/Jedigei) was a commander of the Manghit tribe who ruled the Golden Horde as its de facto sovereign…
Read →Old Great Bulgaria
Old Great Bulgaria was a 7th-century state of nomadic peoples on the steppe north of the Black and Azov seas. At its collapse one Bulgar group moved to the Volga and founded Volga…
Read →The Burtas
The Burtas were a medieval people of the middle Volga who lived on the river's right bank roughly between Volga Bulgaria and the Khazar Khaganate. They are one of the substrate peo…
Read →The Golden Horde
The Golden Horde (also the Ulus of Jochi or the Kipchak Khanate) was a great power of the 13th–15th centuries, ruling the steppes from the Danube to Siberia, centred on the lower V…
Read →The Khazar Khaganate
The Khazar Khaganate was a great power of Turkic origin that in the 7th–10th centuries ruled the steppes of the lower Volga and the North Caucasus. Its capital was Atil at the mout…
Read →The Kipchak Steppe (Dasht-i Qipchaq)
The Kipchak Steppe (Dasht-i Qipchaq) was a vast grassland from the Danube to the Irtysh, held in the 11th–13th centuries by the Cuman-Kipchak confederation. It was not a centralise…
Read →The Volga Vikings: the Varangians
The Varangians — also known as the Volga Vikings — were Viking warriors, traders and settlers, mostly from present-day Sweden, who in the 8th–11th centuries opened and ruled the ea…
Read →Volga Bulgaria
Volga Bulgaria was a Turkic trading state at the confluence of the Volga and the Kama, lasting from about the 7th–8th century until 1236. It is the direct forerunner of the Kazan T…
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