Tatars of the Jochid Ulus: the formation and development of an ethnopolitical identity in the 13th–15th centuries

Abstract

Research objectives: To analyze the processes behind the formation and development of the Tatar ethnopolitical community in the Ulus of Jochi in the XIII–XV centuries. Research materials: The author of the article examines a variety of sources that reflect the progressive development of the Tatar ethnopolitical community in the Ulus of Jochi during the XIII–XV centuries. Results and novelty of the research: The Tatars of the Jochid Ulus during the XIII–XV centuries were usually studied from a socio-political point of view, with little attention being paid to the study of mental structures. Nevertheless, the formation of the ethnopolitical community of the Tatars – something which determines the mental universe of the population of the Ulus of Jochi – deserves and receives here more intensive study. The Mongol invasion brought not only destruction to the countries of Eurasia, but also led to the formation of a new Mongol Empire, and at the end of the XIII century, the successor Chingisid states. In all these khanates, there was a process of formation of their statehood and ethnopolitical consolidation. In the Ulus of Jochi, this process was associated with the formation of the Tatar ethnopolitical community. It turns out that during the conquests of Chingis Khan and his heirs in different countries of Eurasia from the Near and Middle East to Central Asia and Eastern Europe, Tatars were present among the troops of the Khans, playing the role of a military aristocracy. Due to these objective and other subjective reasons, the Tatar identity became the leading one in the Jochid Ulus, manifesting itself in the ideas that the Jochid Ulus was a country of the Tatars, the term itself becoming synonymous with the military service aristocracy. Tatars were also understood as Turkic nomadic people with their own clan structure.