Lietuvos totorių istorija

LT„Lietuvos totorių istorija“ - pirmas lietuviškas sintetinis darbas apie išeivius iš byrančios Aukso ordos ir Krymo chanato, atmigravusius į Lietuvos Didžiąją Kunigaikštystę ir čia įleidusius šaknis. Knygoje sudėtos žinios, kurias sukaupė Azerbaidžano, Baltarusijos, Didžiosios Britanijos, Lenkijos, Lietuvos, Rusijos, Šveicarijos, Tatarstano ir Ukrainos istorikai ir filologai, tyrinėjantys totorių religinę literatūrą. Taip pat remiamasi skelbtais ir neskelbtais istorijos šaltiniais. Diskutuojama su įsisenėjusiais istoriografiniais teiginiais, pateikiama nauja Lietuvos totorių XIV-XX a. šeštojo dešimtmečio istorijos interpretacija. [Anotacija knygoje]

ENLithuania’s Tatars were emigrants from the disintegrating Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate, who migrated to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania where they set down roots. Their community formed at the end of the 14th and in the early 16th centuries, and established close relations with local society. However, their religion kept them from complete assimilation - the Tatars were believers of the Islamic faith and created their own unique culture. This book contains information that was collected by historians from Azerbaidjan, Belarus, Great Britain, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Switzerland, Tatarstan and Ukraine, and philologists who study the religious literature of the Tatars. Thus, the book is a historical synthesis, written based on the prevailing historiography and published sources. Archival sources were used, some that had been referred to earlier by the author but were read again in a different light; new sources were also incorporated. The chronology of the book ranges from the 14th century to the 1950s, when some ofthe community left their historic homeland, joining others who had emigrated and had been repatriated. The first chapter, ‘Formation and Spread of the Community’, traces the first knowledge we have about the Tatars’ support for Grand Duke Gediminas in a battle against the Teutonic Order in 1318 or 1320. However, sources do not indicate that the Tatars who helped Gediminas actually sought refuge in Lithuania. Nor do they prove that the Tatars moved to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reign of Grand Duke Algirdas after his success in the Battle of Blue Waters against the Tatars in 1362. The mass settlement of Tatars in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) is associated with Grand Duke Vytautas’ eastern policy and his relations with the ruler of the Golden Horde.The Tatars could settle in the GDL after the campaigns of Vytautas and Khan Tokhtamysh in 1397 and 1398 into the steppes as far as the Dnieper River delta, when Tokhtamysh granted Vytautas the Golden Horde’s rights to the steppe territory that belonged to the Tatars. However, the surviving sources do not allow determining the location of the first Tatar settlements. Tatars were first mentioned at the duke’s residence in Trakai at the beginning of the 15 th century, while a network of Tatar settlements formed near important centres in the GDL: Trakai, Vilnius, Hrodno and Navahrudak. One version claiming that the first Tatars were war captives cannot be confirmed. Some were the followers of Tokhtamysh and other Golden Horde khans supported by Vytautas, driven from their lands due to the political upheavals, others could have moved to the GDL due to the plague epidemic within the Golden Horde in 1396-1399 and the resulting famine. It cannot be dismissed that Tatar settlements were also being founded by Tatar Cossacks hired to serve the grand duke. In the second half of the 15 th century, Tatars from the circle of the Great Horde khan Sayid- Ahmad I also sought refuge in the GDL, where he had been imprisoned. Family members of Khan Haci I Giray, Sayid-Ahmad’s opponent, also settled in the GDL, and in the early 16th century, some Tatars from the entourage of the last khan of the Great Horde, Sheikh Ahmed, stayed on in the GDL. Tatars who had been taken captive at the Battle of Kletskin 15 06 were settled in the GDL in the early 16 th century. They were allowed to live in the domains of the GDL magnates, the Radziwills and the Ostrogskis.Tatar villages were established in the Kletsk ordynacya, in the Nesvyzh, Slutsk and Kopyl duchies, and at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries, in the Biržai duchy as well. The Tatars also founded settlements in the Ostrogski domains in Vblhynia, and in the Wisniowiecki domains in Podolia. The range of Tatar settlements in the GDL expanded in the second half of the 17th and the 18th centuries when in 1676, King John Sobieski recovered Lithuanian Tatar banners (cavalry) that had been lost to the Ottoman Empire. They received land in the royal economies of Brest, Hrodno and Kobryn, and also in Podlasie where Tatar settlements already existed. In the I7th-i8th centuries, the Tatars also received lands in the Alytus Economy. In the second chapter, ‘The Accepting Society Sets Boundaries’, the duties and rights of the Tatars are discussed. During their early period in the GDL, Tatars had to perform military service as a duty in return for the land they had been allocated, thus they were not expected to pay taxes. When legal norms were systematised in the First Statute of Lithuania (1529), new conditions were set: Tatars were prohibited from acting as witnesses in land ownership cases, nor could they keep Christians of any estate as servants. Having taken into consideration the Tatars’ participation in the Livonian War, on November 25, 1561, King Sigismund Augustus issued a privilege to the ulans, murza, princes, marshals, flag-bearers and all the Tatar banners to be able to act as witnesses in court on terms equal to those granted to Christians. The previous prohibition was repeated in the Second Statute of Lithuania (1566), but in 1568 the king awarded Tatars certain rights that applied to the nobles estate without them actually being members of the nobility. [From the publication]