Caucasus Tatars
Caucasus Tatars is a collective term for the Caucasus -based Turkic peoples . This name replaced the original name mountain tatarlar ( kumyk. Tuvhtatarlar , tatar. Dağtatarları , Turkish dağ tatarları ), which was mainly used since the late 19th century .
For a long time the Caucasus Tatars were simply referred to as " Muslims ".
structure
Today the following peoples are summed up under the term "Caucasus Tatars":
Various Turkologists refer to all Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus as “Caucasus Tatars”. In this sense, the Nogai , Truchmen and Derbent Turkmen as well as the Mescheten , Urum and Karapapaks are counted among these. In many cases, the Azerbaijanis are also assigned to the Caucasus Tatars due to their geographic location. But these assignments are considered controversial.
Main distribution area
The peoples known as the Caucasus Tatars now comprise around 748,300 people. Today they live in the following areas:
religion
The Caucasus Tatars were once predominantly Orthodox Christians . They adopted Sunni Islam between the 17th and 18th centuries and are now predominantly Hanafis .
history
prehistory
In the 9th century, the Magyars invaded the Caucasus and established a Magyar dominion there.
In the 10th century the area belonged to the Christian kingdoms of Georgia and Armenia . The southern regions were ruled by Persia .
In the 11th century , the Turkish Seljuks invaded the Caucasus and used various Atabegs to administer the region. After the fall of the "Greater Seljuk Empire" they founded independent empires.
Mongol period
Between 1219 and 1223 the Mongols of Genghis Khan attacked the Caucasus region several times and finally incorporated it into the later Golden Horde from 1243 onwards . De facto , however, the region was ruled autonomously from 1260 by the rulers of the Nogaier horde . In the 13th and 14th centuries , numerous Mongols and parts of the Central Asian Turkic peoples also settled in the region and these were then culturally assimilated by the indigenous pre-population . However, Turkish languages later prevailed among parts of the Caucasian population .
1375-1405 the Caucasus was attached to the renewed Mongol empire Timur-i Lenk and after his death belonged to various Turkmen tribal federations, who succeeded him there. The Qara Qoyunlu are best known here . Large parts of the Caucasus region came under the loose supremacy of the Mongolian successor empires, which consisted of the Khanate of Crimea and the Khanate of Astrakhan . These Turkic peoples, who come from the Eastern European steppe regions, were the first to call the Caucasian Turkic peoples "Mountain Tatars" and they were primarily associated with the Crimean Khanate. The name "Mountain Tatars", like the name "Tatars" in general, was then adopted or retained by all later rulers of the region as the name of the Caucasian Turkic peoples. For example, by the later Russian administration, which generally referred to the Caucasian Turkic peoples as Горские татары / Gorskie tatary . In 1475, the Khan of the Crimean Khanate submitted to the Ottoman Sultan and the region came into the focus of the Ottoman Empire.
Border wars between the Ottoman Empire and Persia
In the 15th and 16th centuries the Caucasus was fiercely contested , especially between the Persian and Ottoman empires . In the period between 1510 and 1522, the Caucasus was briefly subjugated by the Ottomans. Ottoman "Imperial Turkish" became the official language there . During this time, the regional Turkic peoples began to adapt their language to Ottoman. Finally, in 1555, the region was subjected to the Persian Safavids for the first time and was only able to free itself in the 18th century .
But already in 1736 the Persian ruler Nadir Chan Afshar tried again to subdue the Caucasus region. Persian became the official and administrative language of the Caucasians . In 1747 Nadir Chan was refused the oath of allegiance by various princes of the Caucasus, and he prepared for an army against the apostates. But now the Persian Shah Nadir was murdered shortly before the start of the campaign and the Caucasus region was again subject to independent rulers for a while.
But as early as 1783 the Qajar ruler Aga-Mohammed of Persia tried to subdue the Caucasus again and finally to incorporate it into the Persian Empire . Parts of the Caucasian princes now sought protection from neighboring Russia and became its vassals . In 1795 Aga-Mohammed invaded eastern Georgia and quickly subjugated the Caucasus region. Now Russia stepped in: on the orders of Catherine the Great , the Persians were expelled by the army and various Cossack units within five years , and around 1800 the Caucasus was once again considered autonomous.
But as early as 1801 the first Caucasus princes submitted to direct Russian rule and were appointed by the Russian tsar as " governors " in their tribal areas. For them, this meant that Russia did not interfere with the old tribal rights for the time being.
In the Russian Empire
In 1878, after the end of the Persian-Russian Wars, the borders in the region were redrawn and divided between Russia and Persia along the Arak. The northern areas now belonged to Russian and the southern to Persia. Russia now discovered the "Muslim market" in Persia and Turkestan and increasingly used Tatars , Bashkirs and Crimean Tatars as interpreters for the Caucasian Turkic peoples , and Tatar traders also came to them. Due to the ethnic-linguistic proximity of the actual Tatars and these Caucasian Turkic peoples, it was easily possible to Islamize the latter once and for all. But with the conquest of Turkestan by Russia, the route via the Caucasus to Persia was no longer needed and the Turkic peoples were now persecuted and disenfranchised like all " Tatars " of the Russian Empire.
Soviet time
In 1917 the Caucasian Turkic peoples united to form the " North Caucasian Federation ", which was dissolved again in 1918. They now belonged to the Russian Federation under an ASSR .
Between 1921 and 1936, the settlement areas of the Turkic peoples were divided into different Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republics: ASSR Dagestan (1921), Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR (1936).
In 1944, the Muslim ethnic groups of the Caucasus were forcibly relocated to Siberia on the orders of Josef Stalin , as parts of them worked together with the short-term German occupation forces. They were only allowed to return to the old settlement areas in 1967.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the attempt at Iranian influence
With the collapse of the Soviet Union , the regional Turkic peoples became aware of their national character again and formed numerous citizens' movements in 1989/90. In 1991 they demanded national independence within the framework of a federative Russia and the formation of a Turkish-Tatar Caucasus Federation, which would also have included northern Azerbaijan. This economic-cultural Caucasus Federation was called by the Caucasian Turkic peoples "Union of the Mountain Tatars" ( Azerbaijani Dağtatarlari Birliqi ). In this union, the modern Azerbaijani would have had the role of a “common language” and the reintroduction of the Arabic script was called for.
The neighboring Iran , for its part, promoted re-Islamization between 1989 and 1991 and, with regard to the writing system, re-Arabization of the Caucasus region. This was generally viewed with suspicion by the West as a “renewal of the former Persian-Iranian sphere of influence”, as radicalization and the creation of an “Islamic Caucasus republic” based on the Iranian model were accused. But this was not the case, because Iran was (and is) in favor of maintaining the state status quo vis-à-vis the successor states of the USSR, as it (probably rightly) feared that its NATO partner Turkey would exert its ethnic and cultural influence wants to renew and expand the Caucasus region. Well over 20 million people of Turkic origin live in Iran, the majority of whom , the Azeri and Turkmen , have a closed settlement area on the former Iranian-Soviet border. As early as the summer of 1989, the Iranian Azerbaijanis demanded for the first time since 1917 reunification with the then still Soviet North Azerbaijan. In the eyes of Tehran, it was precisely such situations that had to be prevented at all costs. In 1992, the "Union of Mountain Tatars" broke apart again due to the newly awakened Azerbaijani striving for independence towards complete political independence. With the signing of the Federation Treaty (1992), the Caucasian Turkic peoples are granted extensive autonomy within Russia, while Turkey now regards itself as the “official protective power” of these ethnic groups.
See also
literature
- Heinz-Gerhard Zimpel: Lexicon of the world population. Geography - Culture - Society , Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft mbh & Co. KG Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-933203-84-8