How the Tatars ended up in Iran
In the context of modern globalisation and high information flow, we let more information to pass through ourselves and try to compare various facts. For example, it becomes known about the scattered traditional settlements of the Tatars outside the Russian Federation. One of these regions is Iran, where the Tatars are one of the smallest nations.
The Tatar ethnos began to form on the territory of Southern Siberia and Mongolia at the beginning of a new era. However, it stood out among other peoples of the steppe by about the 6th century AD. Later it was subordinated to the Mongols and, as part of the Mongol army, took part in the aggressive campaigns of Genghis Khan.
As a matter of fact, it was then that the Tatars became widely known. Thus, the Tatars in Iran first appeared in the Mongol army in 1230-1243. After the victory of the Mongols over the army of the Seljuk ruler Kaykhusrav in the Battle of Kose-Dag, most of the Tatars settled in Anatolia.
The leader of the Tatars was the Mongolian commander from the Yesut tribe Baiju-noyon, who received large land grants from Hulagu-khan and whose descendants were the governors of the khan’s Anatolian possessions. These Tatars were named “Kara Tatars” (Black Tatars) or “Kuyin Tatars”.
At the end of the XIV century, Anatolia came under the rule of the Ottomans, like the Tatars, but the latter joined the army of Tamerlane and ensured his victory. In this regard, most of the Tatars migrated from Anatolia to Khorasan.
At first, they served the Iranian rulers, but under the Safavids, the authorities began to fear the influence of the militarized force of the Tatars and began to settle them in the mountainous regions on the borders of Iran and Afghanistan, and for good reason.
In 1735, Nadir Shah gathered about 4,000 Tatar families and settled them in the vicinity of the cities of Torbat-e Heydarieh and Khaf, placing Kara Tatar Najafali Kuli-Khan as their chief. The sons of this commander Sardar Ishak Khan Karai-Turbati and Sardar Muhammad Khan Karai-Turbati took advantage of the chaos and confusion that began after the death of Nadir Shah and created an independent khanate in eastern Iran, which was finally subordinated to the new Iranian dynasty, the Qajars, only at the end of 1820.
Until 1925, members of this family were governors in Torbat-e Heydarieh, one of the important military-political centres in the east of the country. Reza Khan Pahlavi, who came to power in 1925, began a policy of forcibly transferring nomadic peoples to a sedentary lifestyle.
Many Kara-Tatars, who had previously lost their native language and switched to Persian, ended up in cities, where they finally disappeared among the Persian-speaking population. Not all, though. This was the so-called first wave of the appearance of the Tatars in Iran.
The second stage of the spread of the Tatars in Iran fell on the 16th century and is associated with the conquests of the Tatar khanates by Ivan the Terrible. Since that time, a large outflow of migrants to Central Asia begins. People are moving en masse to Bukhara, Urgench, Dashaguz.
However, they do not stay there for a long time and migrate further to the north of Iran, to the Caspian regions, to the wooded foothills of the Alborz (Elburs) ridge. The third wave of resettlement was associated with the forcible christening of the Tatars in Russia. The majority then moved through Astrakhan. They settled in the villages of Gomespede, Khojanepes and others, which are still considered Tatar.
This group best preserved its cultural characteristics inherent in the Tatars, preserved its shezhere lineage, which can be traced back to their origin. They descend from a common ancestor - Anna-Ali Atamyz. He had six sons who formed six clans. There was also a fourth wave - after the October Revolution, the establishment of Soviet power and Stalin’s repressions in the USSR.
The process took place from 1917 to the 1930s. The Iranian border was crossed by both representatives of Muslim peoples, primarily Central Asian, and non-Muslim. However, in modern Iran there are Tatars settlements with a completely different history.
Thus, the village of Nizhniy Tatar (Tatar-e payin, Tatar-e soflya), located in the province of Golestan, about 100 kilometers from the Turkmen border, and the neighboring villages - Upper Tatars and Tatar Baijik (Karasu) - were founded by Tatars from the Russian Empire about 200 years ago.
Their total population is about 12,000 people but not all of them are Tatars, some are Turkmen, Persians, Kurds, Baluchis and families of refugees from Afghanistan. The inhabitants of the village call themselves Tatars, and all bear the same surname Tatari. Their ancestors led a semi-nomadic lifestyle and finally moved to complete settled life only in the 1930s.
According to one theory, the reason for the relocation was some kind of epidemic, their ancestors chose new places to live which had clean running water. The villagers speak Turkmen and adhere to the Sunni Islam (Hanafi madhhab).
When visiting the mosque, most residents wear traditional clothing, which is very different from the Turkmen national costume and resembles the traditional clothing of the Tatars of the pre-revolutionary period.
It should be said that the Tatars and Tatar settlements in Iran have not been studied for a long time. Interest in them developed after an expedition made by the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan which aimed at thr ethnographic study of Tatar settlements in the Iranian province of Golestan.
