Was China's Tartar conqueror Tamerlane?
Editorial contextRicci writes that China had never been wholly conquered by foreigners until a Tartar leader invaded; his line ruled until 1368, when the Chinese threw off the yoke and the Ming founder Hongwu expelled the Tartars. Some Jesuits guessed this conqueror was Tamerlane, because the Chinese called him 'Tiemor'. Ricci gives up and simply calls him 'the Tartar'. The Chinese name was almost certainly Tiemuzhen, that is Temüjin (Chinggis Khan), not Timur, who lived a century later and never reached China.
yet we do not read that it was ever wholly conquered by foreign peoples until, in the year of our salvation …, some leader from Tartary, a conqueror of kingdoms, invaded this kingdom with his victorious army. Some of our men, on conjectures that in my judgement are not slight, think this leader was Tamerlane or one of his successors, for the Chinese call him Tiemor … Whoever he was, I shall call him the Tartar.
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nunquam tamen prius ab externis populis legitur universim esse subactum, quam anno nostrae salutis … e Tartaria Dux nescio quis, regnorum domitor, in hoc regnum sese cum exercitu victore immisisset. Eum Ducem nonnulli e nostris, nec levibus, meo iudicio, coniecturis Tamerlanem, vel e successoribus eius aliquem fuisse arbitrantur. Eum enim Sinae Tiemor appellant … Quisquis is fuerit, Tartarum appellabo.
About Tartars (Mongols) who conquered China
Keep in mind
The year is illegible in both scans and is omitted. The Tamerlane identification is wrong.
The scan is too rough to double-check this quote by machine. Compare it with the page.
The Tatar Hazaras, said to descend from Genghis's army
Editorial contextBurnes notes a Hazara tribe of about a thousand families called Tatar Hazaras, whom tradition made descendants of Genghis Khan's army. He points out that the only other people who called themselves Tatar were the Nogais on the Russian frontier. Earlier (vol. I, p.178) he says the Hazaras looked like Chinese and were 'Tartars by descent'.
Tradition states these people to be descendants of Jengis Khan's army, but their name of Tatar deserves remark, since the only other tribe so denominated by the people themselves is the Nogai on the frontiers of Russia.
About Tatar Hazaras
Keep in mind
The descent from Genghis's army is tradition, which Burnes reports without proving.
Mongol and Tatar: twin sons, and a name that swallowed the rest
Editorial contextKatib Celebi tells the Islamic-Persian genealogy: the children of Turk son of Japheth spread over Turkestan, most of them nomads living in tents. Later Alinja Khan had twin sons, Mongol and Tatar, who divided the kingdom, so two clans arose. Eight Tatar rulers reigned before their line died out, and the Mongol line followed. Then comes a clear statement of the naming problem: 'Mongol' became a generic name for many tribes, so that by extension people say 'Turk', 'Tatar' and 'Mongol' for all of them, although the Mongols were really one kind of Turk.
From one womb he had two sons, one named Mongol and the other Tatar, and he divided his whole kingdom between these two sons … The said word became a generic name for many tribes and peoples, and it is applied by extension even to those who are not of them, so they say Turk and Tatar and Mongol; but in truth the Mongols were one kind of Turk.
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مزبورك بطن واحددن ایکی اوغلی اولدی بری مغول و بری تاتار تسمیه اولنوب جمله مملکتنی بو ایکی اوغلی بیننده تقسیم ایلدی ... نیجه قبایل واقوامه لفظ مزبور اسم جنس اولمشدر انلردن اولمینه دخی مجاز طریقیله اطلاق وتعمیم ایدوب ترك وتاتار مغول دیرلر لکن حقیقتده مغول ترکدن برصنف ایدی
About Turks, Mongols and Tatars
Keep in mind
A legendary genealogy from the Persian historical tradition (Rashid al-Din and later histories; Abu'l-Ghazi tells a version after Katib Celebi's time). The observation about names is Katib Celebi's own.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR of this facsimile is garbled).
'Unknown peoples': nobody knew who the Tatars were
Editorial contextThe chronicler's first notice of the Tatars is an admission of ignorance. Nobody knew who they were, where they came from, what language they spoke or what faith they held. People called them Tatars, Taurmens or Pechenegs, and learned men linked them to the prophecy of Pseudo-Methodius about peoples locked away in the desert who would come out at the end of time.
there came unknown peoples, whom no one clearly knows: who they are and whence they came, and what their language is, and of what tribe they are, and what their faith is; and they call them Tatars, and others say Taurmens, and others Pechenegs, and others say that these are the ones of whom Methodius, bishop of Patara, bears witness: that they came out of the Etrian desert
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придоша языци незнаеми, ихъ же добрѣ никто же не вѣсть, кто суть и отколѣ изъидоша, и что языкъ ихъ, и котораго племене суть, и что вѣра ихъ; а зовуть я Татары, а иніи глаголють Таурмены, а друзіи Печенѣзи, иніи же глаголють, яко се суть, о нихъ же Меѳодій Паторомьскыи епископъ съвѣдѣтельствуеть: яко си суть изъшли изъ пустыня Етріевьскыя
About Tatars (the Mongol army of Jebe and Subutai)
Keep in mind
The Methodius reference is to the apocalyptic Revelation of Pseudo-Methodius, a book legend, not an origin the Mongols gave.
How Mongol conquerors became the Turkic 'Tatars' of Kazan and Crimea
Editorial contextBichurin explains how the name moved: the Mongol lords on the Volga were few among Turkic subjects, married into them, took their language, customs and Islam, and so disappeared, reappearing under the Russian name 'Tatars' as a seemingly new people ruling Kazan, Astrakhan and Crimea. A footnote adds that the Tatars do not call themselves by that name but Uzbeks, Nogais and so on.
The conquerors, taking from the Turkestanis through marriage their manners and customs, their language and religion, little by little were completely lost, so that at last the very name of the Tatans disappeared, and under the Russian name of Tatars they became as it were a new people, which afterwards ruled in the tsardoms of Kazan, Astrakhan and Crimea.
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Побѣдители, перенявъ отъ Туркистанцевъ съ браками ихъ нравы и обыкновенія, ихъ языкъ и религію, мало по малу совершенно потерялись, такъ что наконецъ самое имя Татаньцевъ исчезло, и они подъ Россійскимъ названіемъ Татаръ содѣлались какъ бы новымъ народомъ, который въ послѣдствіи господствовалъ въ царствахъ: Казанскомъ, Астраханскомъ и Крымскомъ.
About Golden Horde Mongols and Turkic peoples
Keep in mind
Bichurin himself calls this a conjecture with probability on its side.
The scan is too rough to double-check this quote by machine. Compare it with the page.
'Sibir' was not the Tatars' name for their capital
Editorial contextMüller corrects a common belief that 'Sibir' is the Tatar word for the capital. When he asked the Tobolsk Tatars, they did not know the word at all; they called the place Isker. He thinks the name Sibir arose in Russia, taken from the Permians or Zyrians who first brought news of the land, and was only later attached to the Tatar capital.
It is commonly believed that Sibir is the Tatar name of the place, meaning a capital or residence. But if one asks the Tobolsk Tatars about this, it is quite unknown to them. They call the place Isker instead
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Man glaubt insgemein, Sibir sey die Tatarische Benennung des Orts, welche soviel, als eine Hauptstadt, oder Residenz, bedeute. Fraget man aber die Tobolskischen Tataren nach diesem Umstande, so ist ihnen solcher ganz unbekannt. Sie nennen vielmehr den Ort Isker
About Tobolsk Tatars
Continue in this sourceMüller's Collection of Russian History, with his history of Siberia1733 to 1743 · 11 passagesPoured forth from Tartarus, so rightly called Tartars
Editorial contextRockhill's introduction quotes the English chronicler Matthew Paris, writing from St Albans, who never met a Mongol. He plays on the name: the Tartars burst out like devils from Tartarus, the classical underworld, so the name fits. The same passage goes on to call them monsters who drink blood and eat the flesh of dogs and men, a good example of wartime rumour.
a detestable nation of Satan, to wit, the countless army of the Tartars, broke loose from its mountain-environed home, and piercing the solid rocks (of the Caucasus), poured forth like devils from the Tartarus, so that they are rightly called Tartari or Tartarians.
About Tartars (Mongols invading eastern Europe)
Keep in mind
Hearsay and propaganda from a monk in England; the pun on Tartarus is why Europeans wrote 'Tartar' with an extra r.
'Most incorrectly' called Tartars
Editorial contextMuraviev says the scattered Turkmen tribes share a common origin but have been 'most incorrectly' called a Tartar race by European writers. He suggests the word came from Tatar, the founder of a tribe of that name still living in the far steppes.
This people has been most incorrectly denominated the Tartar race by several European authors. The term was probably borrowed from Tatar, the Chief who founded the tribe of that name, existing in the remoter steppes to the present day.
About Turkmens
Keep in mind
The eponymous chief 'Tatar' is a traditional explanation, not established history.
'Those Tatars smell bad': how Chinese turned Mongols into Tatars
Editorial contextThe Naiman ruler Tayang plans to attack the upstart people to his east, and his mother Gurbesu sneers that they stink and wear dirty dark clothes, so only their good-looking women are worth fetching to milk the Naiman herds. In the Mongolian original these people are the Mongols; the Ming Chinese summary calls them Dada, the Chinese word for Tatars, while it keeps a different spelling for the actual Tatar tribe. The same summary has To'oril ask 'how can you Dada be without an emperor?' of Chinggis's people.
Tayang said: 'Over here in the east there are some Dada (Tatars)... Let us go now and take those Dada.' His mother Gurbesu said: 'Those Dada people have a bad smell and their clothes are dark and grimy. What would we do bringing them here? Let them stay far away.'
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塔陽說這東邊有些逹逹…如今咱去将那逹逹取了其母古児别速說那逹逹百姓歹氣息衣服黒暗取将来要做甚麽教逺有者
About Mongols, called Dada (Tatars) by the Ming translators; Naiman
Keep in mind
The Mongolian text (de Rachewiltz p.105) says 'the Mongol people have always smelt bad'; 'Dada' is the Ming translators' word, not the Mongol author's.
Wiped out by the Tatars: the Mongols' escape from Ergenekun
Editorial contextHammer retells the Mongol origin legend: long before Chinggis Khan the Mongols were exterminated by their enemies the Tatars, all but two men, Tegus and Kijan, who fled into a valley walled by steep rocks. Over centuries their descendants multiplied and, tired of their mountain prison and their mining, broke out by driving the flames of great wood piles with seventy bellows against the ore wall until it melted (p. 14). All true Mongols claimed descent from these two. Hammer suspects the story hides the real subjugation of the Xiongnu, who mined for their conquerors in the Altai, and notes that Persian poets placed this mountain prison behind the dam of Gog and Magog.
A couple of thousand years before Chinggis Khan, so the folk legend tells, the Mongols had been exterminated by their enemies, the Tatars, all but two men, one called Tegus, the other Kijan, that is, 'stream'; they fled into a valley enclosed all round by steep rocks, where, multiplying over the course of centuries, and at last weary of their mountain prison and their mining
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Ein Paar tausend Jahre vor Tschengischan, so erzählt die Volkssage, waren die Mongolen von ihren Feinden, den Tataren, bis auf zwei Männer ausgerottet worden, deren einer Tegus, der andere Kijan, d. i. Strom, hiess; sie flüchteten in ein rundum von steilen Felsen umschlossenes Thal, wo sie im Verlaufe von Jahrhunderten sich vermehrend, ihres Bergkerkers und Bergbaues endlich müde
About Mongols and Tatars (in legend)
Keep in mind
An origin legend, not history; the Xiongnu interpretation is Hammer's own guess.
