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Post by snafu on Aug 12, 2006 7:00:22 GMT 3
Tatar, tartar, etc. undoubtedly comes from Tata, an old Altaic word for nomads in general. In his 13th century chronicle of the Mongols (the Mengda Beilu) the Chinese writer Zhao Hong is confused when the famous Mongol general Mukali describes himself as a "Tata." Even though Tatar was a tribal name, it looks like the word Tata was still being used as a general name for all nomads even in Temujin's day.
I'm guessing westerners got the name Tartar from hearing the Mongols refer to themselves as Tata. They mistook it for a proper name and changed it to make it sound like Tartarus (Hell). The place they believed the Mongols came from.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Aug 12, 2006 16:34:12 GMT 3
Today's Tatars and old days' Tatars are not the same... Agreed. The pre-13th century Tatars (mentioned in Turkic, Chinese and Arabic sources) were a Mongolic people, being descendent from the Xianbei.
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Post by sharshuvuu on Jul 4, 2008 7:49:47 GMT 3
Hello Saran,
These names are sometimes recycled--applied to people other than the ones who bore the name first. If I understand correctly, Chingis Khan incorporated all steppe tribes in his realm into the charter population of the empire, including Turkic and Tungusic speakers as well as Mongolian speakers; but those tribes that were implacable enemies he disbanded, distributing the survivors around among the other various tribal groups. So the Tatars did not survive as an identifiable group; but the name did survive, and somehow came to be applied to the mostly Turkic-speaking people who controlled the western steppe. They came to be called and to call themselves Tatars, and since they were the ones in direct contact with the Russians, the Russians always speak of the "Tatar yoke" &c (rather than "Mongol yoke").
When serfdom was introduced among the Russians and Ukrainians, those peasants who refused to be reduced to serfs fled into the western steppe, where the only way to make a living was pastoral nomadism. They therefore had to adopt the way of life of the Tatars, which they did. Those who adopted also the religion of the Tatars (by this time Islam) were simply assimilated and merged into the Tatar people. So right down to the present some Tatar bands look like rather dark-complexioned Europeans while others look quite Asian. If they are lucky the women may even look something like Saran.
Same with Anatolian Turks, who assimilated all the pre-Turkic inhabitants of Anatolia who converted to Islam and now look a lot more European than do, say, the Kalmyks. Or the Uighurs, who assimilated all those redheads and blonds who had been there since 2000 BC.
The Tatars were not all pastoral nomads, however; the Crimean Tatar court at Bakshi Sarai was a cosmopolitan cultural center where the upper classes sent their sons to European universities, and where the plays of Moliere were translated into Tatar while they were still fresh on the stage in Paris (and when you probably could not have found in Moscow anyone who had ever heard of him).
Those of the refugee peasants turned pastoralists who did not convert to Islam but remained staunch Orthodox Christians did not become Tatars (although some Jews did; I have a friend partly descended from them who when he travels in Turkey is sometimes taken for a Kyrym Tatar). They are the ones who adopted the name _Kazak_ 'free warrior', which comes into English as "Cossack." Although they remained separate from the Tatars, they looked on Tatar culture as the high culture, and for several centuries that perspective is hard to dispute. You can read in Tolstoy's story "The Cossacks" how they looked down on the administrators sent from Moscow or Petersburgh as yokels who didn't know the language of culture, Tatar.
The names of the peoples of the heritage of Chaghatai were fluid too, actually until the Soviet regime gave them official names. The Kyrghyz were called in pre-Rev Russian _Kara Kyrghyz_ and the Kazaks or as the Russians say Kazakhs were often called (at least by Russians) _Kyrghyz_. The Kara Kalpaks are just those who settle around the Aral Sea when there was a sea there, learned to fish, and consequently acted eccentrically (staying in the same place most of the time); and wore black hats. Defining them as three different nationalities and giving them different versions of the Cyrillic alphabet was a Soviet divide-and-conquer device.
It's easy to get the impression that the names given by modern nationalist movements to various peoples have "always" been their universal self-designations, but it's an illusion. Germans began to identify as Germans (rather than stopping at Bavarian or Swabian or Prussian &c) in the 19th century, and it became universal only in the 20th (first World War I, then Hitler). They call themselves Deutschen, but are called "Germans" buy the English, "Alemans" by the French & Spanish, "Tedeschi" by the Italians, "Nemtsy" by the Slavs, and by the Balts "Vokieshi" (Lithuanian) or "Vatsieshi" (Latvian; I spell these in English sort-of-phonetic orthography rather than authentic), largely, again, because of the tribes with which these various neighboring peoples dealt. Lithuanians call the Russians _Rusai_, but Latvians call them _Krievi_ because the tribe in that area was the Krivichi. Latvians call the Bielarusians "Baltkrievi" and the Poles "Pol'i"; but the Lithuanians call them respectively "Gudai" ("Goths") and "Lenkai" (Lechs, as in Walesa).
And present Mongols are descended not alone from the ancestral tribe of Temujin, but from the entire melange of tribes that he welded into one nation and to whom he gave the definitive name. Although it seems that family tradition may preserve some knowledge of pre-Empire tribal membership; Subu'atai tells us that he is one of those wild, nutty Merkits who, as we learn from the movie, run around in Haloween masks and live in teepees. Gee, Mongols are almost as bad as Americans . . . .
Sharshuvuu
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jul 4, 2008 13:22:56 GMT 3
One small correction: contrary to the common thought, due to the differences in life style and religion, the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Anatolia did not mix that much with the Turks. The only mixtures were made in the cores of big cities like Istanbul. Otherwise, even the Christians of the Ottoman Empire with different sects did not marry with each other, yet alone marrying with Muslims. The number of Greek-speakers who converted to Islam is also quiet few. Most remained Orthodox Christians. It's true that the inhabitants of big cities in Turkey have non-Turkic look, but don't look at them only; if you go to the countryside, you can still see mass numbers of people who have a very clear Turkic outlook.
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Post by sharshuvuu on Jul 4, 2008 20:33:09 GMT 3
Thanks, Ihsan Erkoc! I accept the correction; you are right that conversion to Islam (or "turning Turk," as it was called) was primarily an urban phenomenon, with some additions from the devs,irme. The comparison with few intermarriages among Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, is only valid up to a point; there was no social or economic advantage involved in such rare unions, whereas there was often some worldly advantage to conversion to Islam. Still, it is as you say--mostly that happened in cities, and the rural population was quite multiethnic until the 20th century.
Sharshavuu
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Post by sarmat on Jul 4, 2008 21:07:40 GMT 3
One small correction: contrary to the common thought, due to the differences in life style and religion, the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Anatolia did not mix that much with the Turks. The only mixtures were made in the cores of big cities like Istanbul. Otherwise, even the Christians of the Ottoman Empire with different sects did not marry with each other, yet alone marrying with Muslims. The number of Greek-speakers who converted to Islam is also quiet few. Most remained Orthodox Christians. It's true that the inhabitants of big cities in Turkey have non-Turkic look, but don't look at them only; if you go to the countryside, you can still see mass numbers of people who have a very clear Turkic outlook. So, what happened to the Greek speaking population of Anatolia? Were they just overwhelmed with the numbers of the new Turk settlers? Also what is the ethnic group with which Anatolian Turks mixed the most? I'm asking this because from the point of view of the lay person a lot of Turks actually look similar to Georgians or Greeks. Are Anatolian Turk who have "Turkic outlook" in majority? Also the intermixing with the Greek speaking population of Anatolia didn't actually have to be "voluntary." Apparently, Turks especially in the beginning of the conquest of Anatolia just took any local women they liked...
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Post by Temüjin on Jul 5, 2008 0:16:31 GMT 3
do you really believe that significant parts of Anatolia, other than Ionia, were ever Greek in the first place?
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Post by sarmat on Jul 5, 2008 1:19:48 GMT 3
Not sure. But obviously those people were Greek speakers. Though perhaps their ethnic origins were very diverse.
Anatolia however was always a backbone of the Byzantinne emprie and as soon as they complitely lost it they didn't last for long.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jul 6, 2008 0:47:52 GMT 3
You are welcome. No, they kept their identity all the time. In 1923, they, including the Karamanlı Christian Turks, were sent to Greece. After the Tanzimat period, the Turks started mixing with others, especially in the big cities. Today, most mixings I see are between the Turks, Circassians-Caucasians, Georgians, Laz, Pomaks, Albanians and Bosniacs (I have a Circassian-Turkish mixed relative who married with an Albanian lady - just imagine their children ;D). Though I also met with several people from Trabzon who have partial Rum (Greek-speaker) ancestry from 3-4 generations ago. Yes, the Turks in the big cities, who have been mixing with non-Turks since the 19th century, have lost their original look. But if you go to the countryside, you can see countless examples of how those who did not mix still keep their Turkic looks. I saw many examples of that in Anamur in the Taurus, in Teke-Antalya next to the Mediterenean, in Kastamonu near the Black Sea, in Edremit on the northern Aegean coast and today in Kırşehir in Central Turkey, just east of Ankara. I have many friends who keep their Turkic look, especially the high cheek bones and slanted eyes. And believe me, they are from all over the Yörük/Türkmen-inhabited places of Turkey, with vast differences. I am myself and especially my ancestors from 2-3 generations ago are very valid prooves of that. One of my great-grandfathers was identical with the Turkmens in Turkmenistan, for example. Some people I know, also I, still know which Oghuz tribe they belong to (I am from the Karakeçili clan of the Kayı tribe, for example); there are also still hundreds of villages and towns that carry the names of Oghuz tribes and clans - indicating that the inhabitants are from those. Yesterday and today, I was in a village in the Kırşehir province and oh man, how come every single person in the village, and even in the bigger town close to there, look exactly the same with the Trans-Caspian Turkmens! Well, there are approx. 55 million people in Turkey who have Turkic origins. The vast majority of them are Oghuz (Yörük-Türkmens), followed by Crimean Tatars, followed by the Kazan Tatars and Caucasian Turkics, followed by recent refugees of Uyghur, Qyrghyz, etc origin. The number of Turks who mixed with other ethnicities is quiet few. The reason why we tend to look non-Turkic from outside Turkey is because foreign people usually go to big cities in Turkey and don't visit rural towns or villages. There is also the climate and weather factor. Most of the time, the peasants or those who live in flatlands/coasts tend to have darker skin while those who live in higher place or in mountains are usually having lighter skin. Yes, that would be true for big cities, as I mentioned before (however, contrary to popular belief, there was a big number of Armenians and Greeks who volunteerly joined or submitted to the Turks, due to religious or economic pressure from the Roman [Byzantine] Empire). Though in the rural areas, Greek-speakers lived separately in their villages and Turks were living in their separate villages (during and after the time the Turks came, the vast majority did not even live in villages - they were nomads who prefered unoccupied countryside). Even if there were villages that had multi-ethnic populations, they had their own districts or neighborhoods which were separate from each other. The same goes for non-Muslims too. For example, the Jews and Armenians had their own parts in the cities or towns, also separate from the Greeks. During the 19th-20th centuries, when Catholicism and Protestanism spread among the Greeks and Armenians, converts to these branches from those people also established their own neighborhoods and prefered marrying with their fellow sect-people. It would be next to impossible for Gregorian Armenians to marry with Protestant Armenians, for example; even today, it's usually hard for a Sunni Turk to marry with an Alevite Turk (though now there are some such marriages); but a Sunni Turk would allow his/her child to marry with a Sunni Circassian, while an Alevite Turk would prefer marrying his/her chiled to an Alevite kurd or zaza. However, in the countryside, as far as I have withnessed so many times, especially in Central and Eastern-Southeastern Turkey, Turks dislike (and sometimes even hate) non-Turkic Muslims like kurds or Circassians (though I have seen in Aegean and Black Sea coasts that Turks and Circassians get along pretty well). Sounds a bit like contradiction, but we are really a weird people ;D There were of course exceptions in the crowded urban areas. The Ottoman law system allowed Muslim men to marry with non-Muslim women but usually, this was only in theory. The common people usually regarded this very bad and did not do it. My grandmother always used to tell me that if a Muslim and non-Muslim married in a village or town in the countryside, they would be lynched by the followers of both religions. As you know, in the Ottoman Empire, people lived together in cities and towns according to their religions and sects, rather than their social classes or level of income, contrary to today's - hence, the "Millet System". So, in Muslim areas, you could see a rich Muslim mansion next to a very poor Muslim house. The same goes for other religious groups. Even today, if you go to the older parts of cities, you can see the same. The only real "Greeks" among the Greek-speakers of Anatolia would have been the ones living on the coasts, which were Greek colony settlements before the 4th century BC indeed. It was during the Hellenistic and finall the Roman period when all the other non-Greek people of Anatolia like the Luvians, Carians, Lydians, Phryghians, Galatians, etc started speaking Greek and eventually became Hellenized. During the Turkish rule, these Hellenized non-Greek Anatolians kept their Greek language because of the Greek Church. So, most of those "Rums" who were sent to Greece were in fact not real Greeks unlike as the Greeks claim. The Greeks like to call us non-Turks but in fact, we are still much more Turkic than they are Hellenic (they got Italic, Slavic, Albanian and Anatolian blood) ;D This confusion was caused because of religion. The Turks called every member of the Greek Patriarkhate of Istanbul as "Rûm (Rum, Roman)" and it's coverage changed in the course of history. For example, for some time, the Serbs and Bulgarians were also considered "Rûm" because their national churches were closed down and incorporated into the Greek Patriakhate of Istanbul ;D So, when Turkey and Greece decided to make population exchanges, Orthodox Turks were also sent because they were considered "Rum"s (by that time, the term "Rum" had gained an ethnic meaning), though they tried to resist, openly saying that they were Turkic.
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Post by sarmat on Jul 6, 2008 3:16:53 GMT 3
Thank you very much for such a detailed explanation. BTW there is a theory that European Greeks are actually not original Greeks as well but just Hellinized Slavs, which I find quite plausible. Slavic migration to the Byzantinne empire reached as far as Crete island and Anatolia.
Also if it's possible can you post some internet links with the pictures of Anatolian Turks with Mongoloid features?
Thanks
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jul 6, 2008 3:56:18 GMT 3
You're welcome, with my pleasure Yes indeed, an important amount of modern "Greeks" are Hellenized Slavs who settled in Thessalia and Southern Macedonia. There is also this high percentage of Hellenized Albanians (the region of Athens had an Albanian majority during or just before the time of the Greek Revolution, AFAIK). I am not sure if the Turks mixed that much with the Greeks, because there was also this religious barrier I explained above. Surely, I can post examples Just tomorrow, because it's very late here.
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Post by sharshuvuu on Jul 6, 2008 6:49:45 GMT 3
Nowadays we have the resources to give some objective answers (*some*, not all) to questions of this sort through DNA analysis. A sample of urban and rural Turks from all over Turkey would give some fairly clear idea of the extent to which they are descendants of the Oghuz, of the pre-Turkish Anatolians, or of other people who came in after the Turkish conquest (a lot of Caucasian--in the authentic sense, not in the ridiculous sense in which the word is now used in English--Muslims fled to Turkey as a result of the Russian conquest in the 19th century, for example), Kurds, or who knows what other origins may be found here and there. Similarly, the Greek populace could contribute DNA samples to permit an objective view of how many are descendants of Slavs. Sooner or later I expect that this will be done.
Sharshuvuu
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jul 6, 2008 14:41:04 GMT 3
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jul 6, 2008 19:05:18 GMT 3
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Post by qypchaq on Jul 6, 2008 19:09:55 GMT 3
good photos:D
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