TAR 



73 



TAR 



changed in commemoration of the day ; but his new name 

 was not Mongol, but Tader. A further proof of the great 

 numerical preponderance of the tributary nations over the 

 true Mongols is, that an army of 600,000 men, with which 

 Batu occupied Russia and the Ural country, contained 

 only 160,000 Mongols ; while 500,000 belonged to the 

 subdued Turkish, Finnish, and Slavonic nations. (Ham- 

 mer, Geschichte der Gold/ten Horde in Kiptshak, p. 114, 

 115, 141 ; Karamsin, iii., p. 275.) 



These well-known facts, which might easily be aug- 

 mented, are sufficient to prove that the name of Tatars 

 was first known in Europe in its etymological signification ; 

 that it got a political signification, and was applied to 

 nations which were not of Mongol origin ; and that it had 

 lost all precise ethnographical signification even before it 

 reached the West. Tatars became a general name for any 

 nomadic and barbarous hordes which invaded Europe 

 from Western Asia, and thus it appears why in Sweden 

 the gipsies were once known under the name of Tattars, and 

 why in the duchy of Holstein they are still called either 

 by the name of Zikhainers or by that of Tatars. (Benzelius, 

 Epitome Commentariurum Moysis Armeni, Stockholm, 

 1723, 4to., p. 89.) 



The incorrect orthography Tartars occurs as early as the 

 appearance of the Mongols in Europe, and was probably 

 introduced by superstitious monks and writers, who, struck 

 with the seeming analogy between Tatar and Tartarus, be- 

 lieved them to have come from the infernal regions. This 

 at least is more probable than the opinion that the name 

 Tartars was introduced by Saint Louis, who, in a letter to 

 his queen Blanche, about the approaching danger of the 

 Tatars, speaks of them in the following terms:' This di- 

 vine consolation will always exalt our souls, that in the 

 present danger of the Tartars either we shall push them 

 back into the Tartarus whence they are come, or they will 

 bring us all into heaven.' (Klaproth, Asia Polyglutta, 

 p. 202.) These words rather prove that in King Louis's 

 time the name and its origin were known. 



If the empire of Genghis Khan had lasted longer, the 

 name of Mongols would certainly have prevailed over that 

 of the tributary nations, in the same way as that of the 

 Franks supplanted the names of the Gauls, the Romans, 

 the Goths, and the Burgundians. But the name of Mongols 

 disappeared in Europe, and was no longer heard of except 

 in the remote deserts of eastern Asia. The old name of Tatars 

 however lasted as a designation of the different inhabitants 

 of the empire of Kiptshak, which was founded by the de- 

 scendants of Genghis Khan on the frontiers of Asia and 

 Europe. There the princes only and part of the nobles 

 were Mongols, and they were sometimes called so by those 

 foreigners who were able to perceive the ethnographical 

 differences among the inhabitants of Kiptshak (Treaties 

 between Venice and the Golden Horde, cited below), but 

 the remaining population was composed of Turkish and 

 Finnish tribes, of which the former were the more numerous. 

 The Russians, who were under the dominion of the Mongols 

 for above two centuries, knew the Finnish tribes by the name 

 of Tshudes, and their application of the name of Tatars ex- 

 clusively to the Turks of Kiptshak gave rise to the present 

 signification of the name. The other nations of Europe 

 were less able to make such distinctions. Thus, for in- 

 stance, Olearius, the secretary to the duke of Holstein's 

 embassy to Persia, says, in his ' Travels,' that Moruma 

 (Murom on the Oka) was ' the first town of Tartary on the 

 \\ay from Moscow, and that at Wasiligrod, at the entrance 

 of the Sura into the Wolga, began the country of those 

 Tatars who are called Tsheremisses.' But Murom is situ- 

 ated just at the entrance of the country of the Mordwins, 

 one of the oldest Finnish tribes known to history, and the 

 Tslicii'nii?si's are likewise of Finnish origin. Nevertheless 

 Olearius calls them Tatars. He observes however that 

 their language had a particular character, and resembled 

 neither the Turkish nor the Tatar language, an observation 

 which proves that Tatar has here two meanings : it first 

 .'nates the inhabitants of the conquered territory of 

 Kiptshak (Tartary), and then in a narrower sense the 

 Turkish inhabitants of that country. 



At present the name of Tata* is still given to the Turkish 

 inhabitants of southern and eastern Russia, and as their 

 origin is well known, there is no more reason for dropping 

 the name for that of Turks, than there is for refusing 

 the French their name, and calling them Gauls. It 

 it nevertheless an important fact that the Tatars call 

 P. C., No. 1407. 



themselves Turks, and feel highly offended by being called 

 Tatars, a name which in their idiom signifies ' robbers.' 

 This fact refutes the hypothesis of Klaproth, who believes 

 that the subjects of the Mongol empire adopted the name 

 of Tatars as a title of honour, on account of its being the 

 antient name of the chief tribe of the ruling nation. 

 Klaproth's opinion becomes also entirely untenable if put 

 in connexion with a fact stated by Sherefeddin and Arab- 

 shah, who tell us that Timur, who, as a descendant of 

 Genghis Khan, undoubtedly belonged to the Mongol race, 

 in a letter to Bayazid, calls himself a Turk, upbraiding 

 this sultan of the Osmanlis with being a vulgar Turko- 

 man. Can we believe that the subdued nations should 

 have distinguished themselves by an ignoble name of 

 their masters, while these, at the same time, made a boast 

 of that of their Turkish subjects ! It must be repeated 

 that the tributary nations were called Tatars by the Mon- 

 gols and by foreigners, and disliked the name on account 

 of its meaning ; and that the ethnographical signification 

 of it was supplanted by the general and glorious name 

 of Mongols. [TURKS.] 



This account of the origin and the gradual diffusion of 

 the name Tatar is more or less different from those given 

 by Klaproth, Abel Remusat, and Schmidt, but it is founded 

 entirely on facts the knowledge of which we owe to these 

 authors, and especially to Julius von Klaproth. Besides 

 the above-cited works, the reader may consult Schmidt, in 

 Hammer, Fundgruben des Orients, vol. vi., heft 3 ; Klap- 

 roth, Beleuchtung und Widerlegung der Forschungen 

 des Herrn Schmidt; Abel Remusat, Recherches sur les 

 Langues Tartares ; Abulghasi Bayadurkhan, Histoire Ge- 

 ncalogique des Tartars, Leyden, 1726, 8vo. ; Ahmtdis 

 Arabsiadae, Vita et Res gestae Timuri, ed. Manger, ii., 

 cap. 19 ; Sherefeddin Ali, Hist, de Timour Bey, trad, par 

 Petis de la C'roix, 1. v., c. 14.) 



The above-mentioned Turkish nations were known in 

 history long before they were called Tatars. Part of them 

 founded the empire of Khazaria, between the Dniepr and 

 the YaTk. 



The Khazars, the Ghysser or Ghazar of Moses of Kho- 

 rene, inhabited in the time of this Armenian author, in the 

 fifth century A.D., the country north of the Caspian Sea ; 

 and in the sixth century they penetrated into the coun- 

 tries north of the Kuban and the Black Sea, where they 

 founded a powerful empire. Among the Byzantine his- 

 torians, Theophanes is the first who mentions them. As 

 early as A.D. 625 they allied themselves with the emperor 

 Heraclius, and in conjunction with him attacked Anushir- 

 w an, the king of Persia, and from that time were in con- 

 tinual political intercourse with the Byzantine emperors, 

 who were always anxious to maintain peaceful relations 

 with this people. Contemporary historians state that the 

 Khazars consisted of two principal races : one of them 

 was little, ugly, with black hair, and probably of Finnish 

 origin ; the other was tall and handsome, and spoke 

 a Turkish dialect : many other races however were mixed 

 up with them, so that Leo Diaconus justly calls them a 

 ' colluvies gentium." 



(Ouseley, Oriental Geography ofEbn Haukal, pp. 185- 

 190 ; Frahn, Veteres Memories Chazarorum ex Ibn Tusz- 

 lano, #c. ; Memoires de VAcadbnie de St. Petersbourg, 

 vol. viii. ; Theophanes, iii. 28 ; vi. 9.) 



Their kings were called Chagan, or more correctly Kha- 

 ghan, which was the name of the old Mongol kings a thou- 

 sand years before the appearance of the Khazars. In the 

 time of the emperor Constantinus Porphyrogenitus the Kha- 

 zarian empire extended in the south to the Black Sea, and 

 contained the northern part of the Crimea, which preserved 

 the name of Khazaria until the thirteenth century, and the 

 island of Taman, then inhabited by Goths ; on the Caucasian 

 isthmus it was separated from the Alans by the present river 

 of Manytsh. The western coastof the Caspian Sea belonged 

 to it as far as Derbent in the present country of Daghestan, 

 where they were contiguous to the Arabs. The eastern 

 boundaries of it were probably the river of Yai'k or Ural. 

 On the north it extended even beyond Kasan, and on the 

 west it was bounded by the Dniepr. In the eighth cen- 

 tury the Khazars made the Russians of Kiew for some time 

 tributary, as well as the Sewerians, the Radiwitshcs, the 

 Viatitshes, and other Slavonic nations. Constantinus Por- 

 phyrogenitus recommends his son to maintain an alliance 

 with the mighty Khazars, but he severely blames his pre- 

 I decessor Leo, who had assumed the imperial dignity 



VOL. XXIV.-L 



