A special place in the spiritual heritage of the Tatar people belongs to the historical thought of the late XIX – early XX centuries. Tatar historians achieved significant results in the reconstruction and study of the national past in a short time. However, there is no works "where the formation and development of the Tatar historical science of the late XIX-early XX centuries would be considered specially”. Systematized study of the historical thought of the Tatars of the period of Jadidism, the identification of features, trends, directions of its development remains an actual task of modern science. This paper is aimed at investigating the specific features of the spiritual and social and political development of the Tatar people at the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX centuries. The leading method for the investigation of this problem is the comparative-historical one, which includes historical comparisons, and also gives the opportunity to study both historiographic facts relating to a particular historical situation and the phenomena of historiography in their qualitative change, contributing to the elucidation of the laws of the development of historical thought. The main results: the development of the historical thought of the Tatar intelligentsia during the period of Jadidism was generalized for the first time, the features of the development of historical knowledge and the formation of the foundations of historical science in the Tatars at the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX centuries were singled out, its main directions were identified, their problems and development tendencies were shown. Bringing around a wide range of sources and taking into account the estimates existing in the literature, the authors attempted to conduct integrated study and analysis of the discussions on the ethnonym and ethnic self-identification that played an important role in the formation of the historical and national identity of the Tatars.