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Estonian Tatar history
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 →Soviet occupation
Tallinn's old Roman-Catholic cemetery
Tallinn's old Roman-Catholic cemetery — known popularly as „Poolamägi” (Poland Hill) — lay as part of the Inner City necropolis. It is one of the minority congregations' burial gro…
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Mõigu cemetery
Mõigu cemetery (German Friedhof von Moik) was the cemetery of Tallinn's Baltic-German nobility and wealthier burghers. It is one of the cemeteries razed by the Soviet occupation au…
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Kalamaja cemetery
Kalamaja cemetery (German Fischermay Friedhof) was one of Tallinn's oldest cemeteries, in the Kalamaja district — the burial ground of Estonians and Swedes, chiefly the fishing and…
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No one escaped the Soviet Union
Under the Soviet occupation the authorities systematically razed a series of historic cemeteries in Estonia — above all those of the minority communities and the old congregations.…
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Kopli cemetery and cemetery park
Kopli cemetery (German Friedhof Ziegelskoppel) was Tallinn's largest Baltic-German cemetery, on the Kopli peninsula. It is the third great Tallinn cemetery razed by the Soviet occu…
Read →Tatar heritage
The Orkhon inscriptions
The Orkhon inscriptions are the oldest surviving extensive text in a Turkic language — the oldest written root of Turkic. They are stone memorial steles in the Orkhon valley of cen…
Read →The Tatars' deeper history
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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Tallinn's old Jewish cemetery
Tallinn's old Jewish cemetery stood at Magasini Street 27 in the city centre, beside the Inner City (Alexander Nevsky) cemetery — in the same quarter as the Tatars' Muslim cemetery…
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Proto-Turkic and the Turkic language family
Proto-Turkic is the reconstructed common ancestor of all the Turkic languages — a language preserved in no writing, but rebuilt by the comparative method from later languages. It i…
Read →The Tatars' deeper history
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…
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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 Tatars' deeper history
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 Tatars' deeper history
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 formation map: from the Khazars to Tallinn
This map shows in one picture how the Estonian Tatar people took shape — built from this knowledge base's own articles. The violet points are the deep-history states on the Volga:…
Read →Estonian Tatar history
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 →The Tatars' deeper history
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…
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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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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 →Freedom of religion
The Estonian Tatar Union supports freedom of religion — everyone's right to decide for themselves about their faith and religious customs. Faith is a personal matter and a personal…
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