THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY

THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY 193
The Mongols established a gorgeous dynasty by securing domination
over China, Central Asia, Caucasus, Russian principalities, Ukraine,
Hungary, Anatolia, Iran, Iraq and Syria via the invasions between
1211 and 1279. Historians point out that the numerically few Mongol
administrators got assimilated by the dependant societies and the
native peoples protected their languages and customs. At the end of
the thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire got fragmented and turned
into a commonwealth of states. The Golden Horde Empire was located
at the western tip of this commonwealth. Caucasus, Crimea, Poland,
Russian principalities, Volga Bulgarians and some parts of Central Asia
and Siberia were under the control of the Golden Horde Empire. 352
Although a population with diverse ethnic backgrounds lived under
Golden Horde domination, the core of the empire was composed of
the steppes (in the north of Black Sea and Caspian Sea) where the
nomadic Mongols freely exercised their traditional lifestyles. Other
regions such as the land of the Russians covered by forests were
perceived as the periphery in this regard. In the steppes, the majority
of the population was composed of the nomadic Kipchak tribes of
Turkish descent. The Mongols had lost their identity within a course
of time. 353 The medieval Arabic and Iranian sources maintained the
tradition of referring to the Mongols as “Tatars” and called the Golden
Horde Empire’s nomadic masses with Turkish majority as “Tatars”
because of the descent of their administrators. This usage of “Tatar”
word was also adopted by the Russian and European sources. 354 In
this way, the physically-exterminated name of the Tatar tribes spread
to other geographies and peoples via Mongols.
One of the reasons for the survival of the word “Tatar” in Medieval
Europe was that this word was associated with the concept of “Tartaros”
(the world of the dead, hell) in religious literature. We should
assert that this association created a special effect on the Medieval
Europeans. The advancement of the Mongol armies created horrific
rumours in Europe; and, as a result, the nomadic invaders began to
be perceived as “hell monsters”. In medieval portraits, the “Tatars”
were depicted as horrific, slant-eyed, bow-legged and horny cannibals.
According to the Russian geographer and historian K. Ritter, the
word “Tartar” subsequently became a common name referring to the
352 “Moğollar”, Büyük Larousse Sözlük ve Ansiklopedisi, V. 16, p. 8255.
353 Halperin, Charles J. The Tatar Yoke, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1986,
p. 19.
354 “Tatarı”, Tatarskiy Entsiklopediçeskiy slovar, p. 566.