Who were the TARTARS...?

 

However, the Tartars (or Tatars) as a nomadic people were not Mongols and here we can see that the Italian merchant was coflating information. The original Tartars were probably a branch of the Oghuz Turks (the Kipchaks), pastoralists inhabiting South Central Asia and Western Siberia. By language they are related to the Pechenegs and Cumans. They came under the influence of the Mongols during the time of Jinghiz Khan and formed the western reaches of his empire. These people were integrated into the Mongol Empire under Juchi, the Khan's son so that by the time of Batu Khan (1227-1255) they formed a major component of the Golden Horde that burst into Europe between 1237-1242, eliminating the Cumans, successors to the Pechenegs along the way. Batu Khan set up his capital at Saray on the lower Volga from whence his rule stretched from the Ob River in Western Siberia to the borders of Poland and Hungary. However, by this time the term Golden Horde is synonymous with the Kipchaks and it was the Europeans who labeled them "Tartars". They were the last of the Turkic tribes to adopt Islam and did so in the 14th century. And here is where matters become fuzzy. The actual Kipchak body politic disintegrates in the 15th century first with the advent of Timur, a Turkicised Barlas Mongol, and subsequently with the rise of both Muscovy and the Ottoman Turks. Several independent khanates emerged and to these the Russians applied the generic "Tartary".

 

Was there ever a "Tartar" tribe? I doubt as much, and other than applying the elusive label Oghuz Turks precious little can be discerned other than their early relationship with the Mongols under the term Kipchaks. By the 16th century, the label is more or less a generic descriptive for the non-Russian inhabitants of the Steppes and the Crimea; however, a caution is in order a Cossack is not a Tartar! 

Linguistically also there is a division between Kypchak and Oghuz dialects within Turkic languages because of some notable differences.

 

Sarmat, regardless of how current identities wish to interpret the term Oghuz, it remains a simply geographic and/or historical description and has nothing to do with ethnicity and discussion would then move into the nebulosity that is the Gogturk. After all even the Seljuks are classified as "Oghuz Turks". Be that as it may, the notion of "Western Turks" does become arbitrary given the fact that the Kipchaks were pretty far West and remained a Turkic people. Even if you go to the niceties of dialectical differences, you run up against the wall of linguistic disntinction premised upon class and not ethnicity (e.g. Ottoman Turkic in Istanbul was quite different from the vulgar Turkic of Ottoman Anatolia). That tribes such as the Azeri later transformed the term Oghuz as a distinctive in their conflicts with the Pecheneg and later Kipchaks [much can be attributed to the process of Islamicization] does not invalidate the supposition that these latter groups had identical origins consequent to the Hunnic disruptions. The connections between the Alpamish and Dede Korkuk dastans suffice for the analogy.

 

 

If you continue to argue that Kypchaks=Oguzs, I will have to say that you are simply not very familiar with the subject.

 

You'll never find any serious historian writing that Kypchaks are the same with Oguz and all these names do not have any meaning except showing "geographical location."

 

 

 

 

Present pretension at defining the term Oghuz as an ethnic rather than geographic reference [West vs East] is in conflict with the original usage of the term. Placing aside traditional nomadism and the misguided attempt to claim Oghuz as a specific identity associated with the Islamic Turks generates as much conflict as it seeks to eliminate. How then does one reconcile the Mamelukes within this schema? Likewise, unless one wishes to entertain persistent genocide as an integral part of confederation movements one has to accept, as Bulldog implies, a commonality between the Turkic migrations westward from the 5th century onward. Try this essay on for size:

 

 

Sarmat,  Turkic languages (precisely after kokturk) had the main seperation of Uyghur and Oghuz-Qipchaq, respectively the eastern and western one.  Oghuz and Qipchaq seperation occured much later. Linguistical history indicates the closer tie between Oghuz and Qipchaq group. Mongol expansion changed the scene quite significantly.  

 

 

 

Exactly

 

This classification of Slavs totally entails cultural and linguistic differences. Slavic languages are divided into Western, Eastern and Southern groups and there is also an obvious specifical cultural affinitty within each group.