Tartars

Tartars


In addition to the Moors and the Turks, there was a third Muslim
advance into Europe, often overlooked by Western historians but deeply
burned into the consciousness of the East. During the thirteenth century,
Mongol invaders from East Asia conquered much of Russia and eastern
Europe and established a state known in Russian annals as the Khanate
of the Golden Horde. In the third quarter of the century Berke Khan, the
grandson of Jengiz Khan and lord of the Golden Horde, was converted
to Islam. He entered into relations with the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and
began the process by which the mixed Mongol and Turkish people of his
realm became a Muslim nation. They are known in eastern Europe as
Tatars, after the name of one of the Mongol tribes, and the period of their
domination, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, is known in
Russian annals as "the Tatar yoke." Even after the breakup of the Khanate
of the Golden Horde, the successor khanates based in Kazan, Astrakhan,
and the Crimea continued to rule—and where they could not rule, to
raid—parts of eastern Europe until the extinction of the last khanate, that
of the Crimea, in 1783. From 1475, the khans of the Crimea became
vassals of the Ottomans. Tatar forces often fought under Ottoman command
against European enemies, while Tatar raids on Russian, Ukrainian,
Polish, and Lithuanian villages provided merchandise, for centuries, for
the slave markets of Istanbul.


Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis 25