The problem of Yurt Tatars' ethnic identity

Abstract

In modern historiography the question of ethnogenesis of the Yurt at the Astrakhan Tatars frontier remains particularly relevant. Various scholars and historians give their explanations of ethnicity Astrakhan Tatars on the basis of a set of historical data and testimonies of travelers and merchants. The author of this article attempts to analyze of historiography on this issue, considering the various historical data and concludes that the Turkic population of Astrakhan, known as «Tatars Yurt» has passed a long way of development. Starting from the XVI century this population is a separate ethnic group, opposes in the Nogais sources. In the XVII century there is a further development of the term and its transformation the designation of the serving of the Turkic population to the end of the century in, which includes the same and the Edisan-Nogai. And in the XVIII-XIX centuries Yurt Tatars are characterized not as a single monolithic ethnic group, as well as the collective name of different ethnic groups, lined up in a clear social structure: Tatar and Nogai Murza and the heads of the herds of origin, service categories, dependent ‘yasashnye’, ‘emeshnye’ and the Tatars, etc. Thus, taking into consideration the complexity of the social and ethnic structure of the Yurt Tatars, all attempts by some scientists to classify the Yurt Tatars to  specific ethnic group are groundless.