Tatars

The Kül Tegin inscription names the Tatars as the Otuz Tatar, the Thirty Tatars. The Bilge Khan inscription and the Uyghur stones of Tariat and Šine-Usu name them as the Toquz Tatar, the Nine Tatars.^[1] The reference literature calls the Thirty Tatars a confederation of thirty clans, Mongolic in all likelihood. It places them east and south-east of Lake Baikal.^[2] The Tatabı who stand beside them in the same lists are another people, the Xi, whom the Chinese write Kumo Xi.^[2]

The Thirty Tatars in the Göktürk inscriptions

The Tatars appear three times in the Kül Tegin inscription. At the funeral of the founders, mourners came from the sunrise: the Chinese, the Tibetans, the Avars, the Romans, the Kırgız, the Three Kurıkan, the Thirty Tatar, the Kıtañ and the Tatabı.^[3] The Bilge Khan inscription gives the same list.^[4]

After the restoration of the state under Ilterish, the khan says, the Chinese were enemies in the south and the Nine Oguz in the north. “The Kırgız, the Kurıkan, the Thirty Tatar, the Kıtañ and the Tatabı — all of them were enemies.”^[3] The Bilge Khan inscription repeats it.^[5] The Thirty Tatars stand in the funeral list in the age of the founders. They stand in the list of enemies in the age of Ilterish, more than a century later.

The third passage is Bilge Khan’s address at the opening of his testament. He names his younger brothers and nephews, his sons and his people, the Šadapıt lords in the south, the tarkans and minister-lords in the north, and then the Thirty Tatar and the lords and people of the Nine Oguz.^[3] The khan names them as hearers whom he expects to persuade, not as an enemy. The Bilge Khan inscription also records a battle in the Oguz wars. The Oguz came united with the Nine Tatars. The khan says that he fought two great fights at a place the translation reads as Agn, destroyed their army and overcame their tribes.^[6]

The Nine Tatars under the Uyghurs

In the Tariat inscription of Bayanchur Khan, the Nine Tatars stand in a passage of 747, where words are restored.^[7] They come with nine ministers, a thousand commanders and the common people before the khan’s father.^[7] The north face of the stone lists the khan’s cavalry as the Nine Tatars, the Az and the Tongra.^[8] Other passages count the Nine Tatars among the great ones of the Uyghur khan and among the peoples of the shad Bilge Tölös, beside the Nine Bayırku, the Kayra and the Basmıl.^[9] The Šine-Usu stone records wars with or involving the Nine Tatars, among other peoples.^[10]

The Tatars in the Tang letters

The first Kirghiz envoy in 842 made an announcement. Once the Kirghiz had moved to He-luo-chuan and held the old Uyghur land, they would also obtain Anxi, Beiting and five tribes of Tatars and others.^[11] The announcement did not become an event. The Kirghiz never attacked or ruled Anxi or Beiting.^[12] Some scholars take the letter to show that the Kirghiz fought the Tatars in 842. They find support in two Kirghiz runiform inscriptions.^[12] Others find the first inscription damaged at the decisive point and without any mention of such a war. They find the second at most naming the Tatars as “enemies”.^[12]

Language and descent

The sources give no word of their language. The literature offers four theories of their descent.

The first holds that the Tatars were Mongolic. It rests on their place in the east and on the later history of the name.^[2] The second holds that they were Turkic. The eleventh-century Turkic dictionary of Kashgar and a part of the Turkologists share this view. The editor of the Tariat inscription calls the question one of the most confused in the history of Inner Asia.^[13]

The third theory equates the Thirty Tatars with the Shiwei and the Nine Tatars with the southern Shiwei.^[2] The Shiwei article gives the Chinese accounts.

The fourth theory derives them from a Rouran following. The name of the Rouran khan Datan has been reconstructed as Tatar. His loyal companions may have become semi-autonomous within the khaganate after his death. They would then be the ancestors of the Thirty Tatars. On this theory, the thirty are sub-tribes or families of a Tatar federation. After the fall of the Rouran, they withdrew to the Khingan and dealt with the Göktürks by embassy and by war.^[14] The name, which the Middle Ages applied to many peoples, would go back to this khan.^[14] The Rouran are not shown to have spoken a Turkic language, so this theory and the Mongolic theory do not exclude each other.

The name afterward

Otuz TatarToquz TatarOld TurkicKül Tegin inscription · Bilge Khan inscription
Ta-taChinese

Chinese sources transcribe the name Ta-tan. A Khotanese text from Dunhuang gives it as ttattara.^[13] In the eleventh century, the Turkic dictionary of Kashgar names the Tatar among peoples who spoke a language of their own besides Turkic.^[15] The Tatars stayed in the Mongol orbit. Their name was afterward attached to the Mongols of the Chinggisid age in Muslim and Christian lands.^[16] Gardīzī’s origin story makes the Kimek Tatar by descent. The Kimek article treats it.^[17] The Minusinsk basin kept a self-name tadar into the twentieth century. The Khakas name debate treats it.

References

^ Kül Tegin inscription; Bilge Khan inscription; Saadettin 1995, p. 73
^ a b c d Golden 1992, p. 145
^ a b c Kül Tegin inscription
^ Bilge Khan inscription; Ross 1930, p. 864
^ Bilge Khan inscription; Ross 1930, p. 865
^ Bilge Khan inscription; Ross 1930, p. 874
^ a b Saadettin 1995, p. 73
^ Aydın 2013, p. 18
^ Saadettin 1995, p. 75–76
^ Golden 1992, p. 158
^ Drompp 2005, p. 103,277
^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 104
^ a b Saadettin 1995, p. 80
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 113–114
^ Golden 1992, p. 184
^ Golden 1992, p. 185
^ Golden 1992, p. 202

Sources

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Gömeç, Saadettin, Terhin Yazıtı'nın Tarihi Açıdan Değerlendirilmesi (1995)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
E. Denison Ross (after Vilhelm Thomsen), The Orkhon Inscriptions; The Tonyukuk Inscription. Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen's Final Danish Rendering (1930)
Erhan Aydın, Tariat Yazıtı’nın kuzey yüzünün 5. satırı üzerine yeni okuma ve anlamlandırma önerileri (2013)