Lipka Tatars

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"Lithuanian Tatars" redirects here. For the Tatar population in Lithuania proper, see Tatars in Lithuania.

Lipka Tatars
Tatarzy polscy
Lietuvos totoriai
Літоўскія татары
Sunni Muslim
Related ethnic groups
Volga Tatars, Crimean Tatars

The Lipka Tatars (Lipka – refers to

Hrodna and Kaunas[5] and later spread to other parts of the Grand Duchy that later became part of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. These areas comprise parts of present-day Lithuania, Belarus and Poland. From the very beginning of their settlement in Lithuania they were known as the Lipka Tatars. While maintaining their religion, they united their fate with that of the mainly Christian Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.[citation needed] From the Battle of Grunwald
onwards the Lipka Tatar light cavalry regiments participated in every significant military campaign of Lithuania and Poland.

The Lipka Tatar origins can be traced back to the descendant states of the

Kazan Khanate. They initially served as a noble military caste but later they became urban-dwellers known for their crafts, horses and gardening skills. Throughout centuries they resisted assimilation and kept their traditional lifestyle. While they remained very attached to their religion, over time they lost their original Tatar language, from the Kipchak group of the Turkic languages and for the most part adopted Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish.[6][7]
There are still small groups of Lipka Tatars living in today's Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, as well as their communities in the United States.

Name

Further information: Tatars and Tartary
Litas commemorative coin for the 600th anniversary of Karaims
and Tatars in Lithuania (1397–1997)

The name Lipka is derived from the old

contamination from contact
with the Polish lipka "small lime-tree"; this etymology was suggested by the Tatar author S. Tuhan-Baranowski. A less frequent Polish form, Łubka, is corroborated in Łubka/Łupka, the Crimean Tatar name of the Lipkas up to the end of the 19th century. The Crimean Tatar term Lipka Tatarłar meaning Lithuanian Tatars, later started to be used by the Polish–Lithuanian Tatars to describe themselves.

In religion and culture the Lipka Tatars differed from most Islamic communities in respect of the treatment of their women, who always enjoyed a large degree of freedom, even during the years when the Lipkas were in the service of the Ottoman Empire.[citation needed] Co-education of male and female children was the norm, and Lipka women did not wear the veil – except at the marriage ceremony. While traditionally Islamic, the customs and religious practices of the Lipka Tatars also accommodated many Christian elements adopted during their 600 years' residence in Belarus, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania while still maintaining the traditions and superstitions from their nomadic past.

Over time, the lower and middle Lipka Tatar nobles adopted the Ruthenian language then later the Belarusian language as their native language.[6][8] However, they used the Arabic alphabet to write in Belarusian until the 1930s. The upper nobility of Lipka Tatars spoke Polish.

Diplomatic correspondence between the Crimean Khanate and Poland from the early 16th century refers to Poland and Lithuania as the "land of the Poles and the Lipkas".[8] By the 17th century the term Lipka Tatar began to appear in the official documents of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

History

Lithuanian Tartars
in the Napoleonic Army with Red and White banners of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Page from the Dastan-ı Miraç a miscellany of religious works written in a Slavic language in the Arabic script, probably copied in the late 18th or early 19th century CE in western Belarus. Although Lipka Tatars are a Turkic people, they have been using Lithuanian, Polish, Belarusian or Russian as their means of daily communication for centuries and the bilingual text of the Dastan gives an example of how important Islamic texts where brought into their actual language. The Slavic translation is written in modified Arabic characters with special letters to indicate sounds that do not exist in Arabic or Turkic.[9] British Library

The migration of Tatars into the lands of Lithuania and Poland from Golden Horde began during the 14th century and lasted until the end of the 17th. There was a subsequent wave of Tatar immigrants from Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, although these consisted mostly of political and national activists.[8]

According to some estimates, by 1590–1591 there were about 200,000

Navahrudak and Iwye. There was a Lipka Tatar settlement in Vilnius, known as Totorių Lukiškės, Tatar quarter in Trakai and in Minsk, today's capital of Belarus, known as Tatarskaya Slabada
.

In the year 1672, the Tatar subjects rose up in open rebellion against the Commonwealth. This was the widely remembered Lipka rebellion. Thanks to the efforts of King John III Sobieski, who was held in great esteem by the Tatar soldiers, many of the Lipkas seeking asylum and service in the Turkish army returned to his command and participated in the struggles with the Ottoman Empire up to the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, including the Battle of Vienna (1683) that was to turn the tide of Ottoman expansion into Europe.

Beginning in the late 18th and throughout the 19th century the Lipkas became successively more and more polonized. The upper and middle classes in particular adopted Polish language and customs (although they kept Islam as their religion), while the lower ranks became Ruthenized. At the same time, the Tatars held the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas (Wattad in Tatar, or "defender of Muslims in non Muslim lands"), who encouraged and supported their settlement in the late 14th and early 15th century, in great esteem, including him in many legends, prayers and their folklore.[8] Throughout the 20th and since the 21st centuries, most Tatars no longer view religious identity as being as important as it once was, and the religious and linguistic subgroups have intermingled considerably; for example, the Tatar women in Poland do not practice veiling (wearing headscarf/hijab) or view it as a mandatory religious obligation,[11][12] but rather an influence of Arab culture on Islamic customs. Many Polish Tatars, especially and mainly the youth, also drink alcohol.

Timeline

  • 1226: The Khanate of the White Horde was established as one of the
    Urals and the Caspian Sea to Mongolia
    .
  • 1380: Khan Tokhtamysh, the hereditary ruler of the White Horde, crossed west over the Urals and merged the White Horde with the Golden Horde whose first khan was Batu, the eldest son of Jochi. In 1382 the White and Golden Hordes sacked and burned Moscow. Tokhtamysh, allied with the great central Asian Tatar conqueror Tamerlane, reasserted Mongol power in Russia.
  • 1397: After a series of disastrous military campaigns against his former protector, the great Tatar warlord
    Vytautas the Great. The settlement of the Lipka Tatars in Lithuania in 1397 is recorded in the Chronicles of Jan Długosz
    .
Tatar mosque and graveyard in the Lukiškės suburb (1830), Vilnius. It was replaced by another, a more traditional one, in 1867
Lipka Tatar family. Hassan Konopacki served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army
Distribution of Lipka Tatars in Poland (1939)
Jakub Szynkiewicz, first mufti of interwar Poland

Present status

Tatars in Belarus according to 2009 census
A flag of Lipka Tatars in Belarus

Today there are about 10,000–15,000 Lipka Tatars in the former areas of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The majority of descendants of Tatar families in Poland can trace their descent from the nobles of the early Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lipka Tatars had settlements in north-east Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, south-east Latvia and Ukraine. Today most reside in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus.

Most of the Lipka Tatars (80%) assimilated into the ranks of the nobility in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth while some lower noble Tatars assimilated to the Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian townsfolk and peasant populations.[citation needed]

A number of the Polish Tatars emigrated to the US at the beginning of the 20th century and settled mostly in the north eastern states, although there is also an enclave in Florida. A small but active community of Lipka Tatars exists in New York City. "The Islamic Center of Polish Tatars" was built in 1928 in Brooklyn, New York City, and functioned until recently.[6]

After the annexation of eastern Poland into the Soviet Union in 1939 and then following World War II, Poland was left with only 2 Tatar villages, Bohoniki and Kruszyniany. A significant number of the Tatars in the territories annexed by the USSR repatriated to Poland and clustered in cities such as Gdańsk (Maciej Musa Konopacki – patriarch of the Polish Orient[14]), Białystok, Warsaw and Gorzów Wielkopolski totaling some 3,000 people. One of the neighborhoods of Gorzów Wielkopolski where relocated Tatar families resettled has come to be referred to as "the Tatar Hills", or in Polish "Górki Tatarskie".

In 1925 the Muslim Religion Association (Polish: Muzułmański Związek Religijny) was formed in Białystok, Poland. In 1992, the Organization of Tatars of the Polish Republic (Polish: Związek Tatarów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) with autonomous branches in Białystok and Gdańsk, began operating.

In Poland, the 2011 census showed 1,916 people declaring Tatar ethnicity.[4]

In November 2010, a monument to Poland's Tatar populace was unveiled in the port city of

Tatar representatives from across Poland and abroad. The monument is a symbol of the important role of Tatars in Polish history
. "Tatars shed their blood in all national independence uprisings. Their blood seeped into the foundations of the reborn Polish Republic," President Komorowski said at the unveiling. The monument is the first of its kind to be erected in Europe.

Genetics

Lipka Tatars' paternal gene pool comprises 15 haplogroups. Some have clear geographical affinities, including east Europe and the Volga–Uralic region (N-Tat, R1a-M458, R1a-M558, R1b-M412 and R1b-M478), Central Asia (R1a-Z2125 and Q-M242), South Siberia (Q-M242 and R1b-M478), the Caucasus and the Middle East (G2a-U1, J1-P58, J2a-M410 and J2b-M12).[15]

Dominant Y-DNA haplogroups among Lipka Tatars are R1a (54 %) – both Slavic and Steppe Asiatic one[16] – J2 (18,9 %) which is of Middle Eastern and south Asian origin, and haplogroup Q (10,8 %). Other haplogroups are G (8.1 %), N (5.4 %) and J1 (2.7 %).[17]

According to the whole genome sequencing, around two-thirds of the Lipka Tatar genomes are composed of the European and Middle Eastern/Caucasus components, with remaining one-third belonging to two sub-variants of the general east Eurasian component: east Asian and Siberian. Taken together, both PC and ADMIXTURE analyses suggest the presence of a significant amount of east Eurasian-specific alleles among the autosomal genomes of Lipka Tatars.[15]

Famous Lipka Tatar descendants

See also: List of Tatars
Charles Bronson, actor

Two distantly related members of the Abakanowicz family

  • Bruno Abakanowicz – mathematician, inventor and electrical engineer (distant paternal Lipka Tatar ancestry)[18]
  • Magdalena Abakanowicz – Polish artist whose family is of distant Tatar origin (distant paternal Lipka Tatar ancestry)

Lipka Tatar mosques

  • Tatar mosque in the town Iwye, Belarus
    Tatar mosque in the town Iwye, Belarus
  • Tatar mosque in the city Navahrudak, Belarus
    Tatar mosque in the city
    Navahrudak
    , Belarus
  • Tatar mosque in Nemėžis, Lithuania
    Tatar mosque in Nemėžis, Lithuania
  • Mosque in Keturiasdešimt Totorių, Lithuania
    Mosque in Keturiasdešimt Totorių, Lithuania
  • Mosque, built in Kaunas in 1930, quincentennial year of Vytautas the Great passing
    Mosque, built in Kaunas in 1930, quincentennial year of
    Vytautas the Great
    passing
  • Mosque in Bohoniki, Poland
    Mosque in Bohoniki, Poland
  • Mosque in Kruszyniany, Poland
    Mosque in Kruszyniany, Poland

Tatar graves at
Powązki
cemetery in Warsaw

See also

References

  1. ^ "Перепись-2019". Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  2. ^ "Gyventojų ir būstų surašymai – Oficialiosios statistikos portalas". Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  3. ^ "Eastern Europe and migrants: The mosques of Lithuania". The Economist. 14 September 2015. Retrieved 20 September 2015.
  4. ^ a b "Ludność. Stan i struktura demograficzno-społeczna – NSP 2011" (PDF) (in Polish).
  5. ^ a b (in Lithuanian) Lietuvos totoriai ir jų šventoji knyga – Koranas Archived 29 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b c Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, "Polish or Lithuanian Tartars", Harvard University Press, pg. 990
  7. ^ Leonard Drożdżewicz, Biographical Dictionary of Polish Tatars of the Twentieth Century, „Znad Wilii", nr 4 (68) z 2016 r., pp. 77–82, http://www.znadwiliiwilno.lt/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Znad-Wilii-68.pdf
  8. ^ a b c d Selim Mirza-Juszeński Chazbijewicz, "Szlachta tatarska w Rzeczypospolitej" (Tartar Nobility in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), Verbum Nobile no 2 (1993), Sopot, Poland, "Szlachta tatarska w Rzeczypospolitej". Archived from the original on 5 January 2006. Retrieved 23 February 2006.
  9. ^ "Dastan-i Mirac". British Library.
  10. ISBN 0-313-27497-5
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-85785-336-3
    .
  12. ^ Agata S Nalborczyk. "Muslim women in Poland and Lithuania" (PDF). islamicreligiouseducation.univie.ac.at.
  13. ISBN 83-88067-81-8
  14. ^ Leonard Drożdżewicz, Maciej Musa Konopacki (1926–2020). Patriarch of the Polish Orient, „Znad Wilii", nr 4 (84) z 2020 r., s. 10–12, http://www.znadwiliiwilno.lt/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Znad-Wilii-4-84m.pdf.)
  15. ^
    doi:10.1038/srep30197. Retrieved 22 March 2024. This article incorporates text from this source, which is available under the CC BY 4.0
    license.
  16. ^ https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/geneticheskiy-portret-litovskih-tatar-i-fenomen-mongolskie-zavoevaniya-13-veka Генетический портрет литовских татар и феномен «Монгольские завоевания 13 века»
  17. ^ "Lithuanian Tatars Nobility DNA Project - Y-DNA Classic Chart". familytreedna.com. Retrieved 22 March 2024.
  18. ^ Por. S. Dziadulewicz, Herbarz rodzin tatarskich, Wilno 1929, s. 365.

External links

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