The Problem of Ethnic Identification of the Yurt Tatars. Translation from Russian

Abstract

In contemporary historiography, the question of the ethnogenesis of the Yurt Tatars on the Astrakhan frontier remains particularly relevant. Various scholars and local historians, drawing on extensive archival sources and accounts by travellers and merchants, offer different interpretations of the ethnic origins of the Astrakhan Tatars. This article presents a systematic analysis of the historiography on the subject, examines diverse archival materials, and argues that the Turkic population of Astrakhan, known as the Yurt Tatars, underwent a complex and prolonged process of development. Beginning in the 16th century, this group was identified in sources as a distinct ethnic community, often contrasted with the Nogais. In the 17th century, the term underwent further semantic evolution and, by the end of the century, came to refer to service-class Turkic groups, including the Edisan Nogais. By the 18th and 19th centuries, Yurt Tatars had ceased to denote a single, unified ethnos and instead functioned as a collective term encompassing various ethnic groups structured into a clear social hierarchy: Tatar and Nogai murzas and herd commanders, service categories, and dependent strata such as yasashnye and Emesh Tatars. In light of this ethno-social complexity, the article concludes that scholarly attempts to assign the Yurt Tatars to any single ethnic category are unfounded.