Toward the History of Tatars of Inner Asia: An Attempt to Identify Tribal Names

Abstract

Research objectives: This article attempts to correlate the names of the tribes of the Tatars mentioned in both the “Secret History of the Mongols” and Rashīd ad-Dīn al-Ṭabīb’s “Jāmī al-Tawārīkh”. Also, it contains separate remarks regarding the localization of certain tribal groups and later historical population groups among the Turkic and Mongol peoples, which could have a historical connection with the considered groups. At one time, P. Pelliot conducted similar work in his exhaustive study. Since then, the extension of the source base allows one to offer some adjustments of the reconstructions undertaken by him and other researchers. Research materials: The authors relied on two main sources: the Mongolian chronicle of the thirteenth century, the “Secret History of the Mongols”, and the composition of the early fourteenth century “Jāmī al-Tawārīkh”, recognized as a work of Rashīd ad-Dīn al-Ṭabīb. The “Altan Tobchi” was also used as auxiliary source, being a Mongol chronicle of the seventeenth century that essentially repeats the content of the “Secret History” in the studied fragments. In some cases, the authors turned to various Turkic texts and Chinese sources. Linguistic data offered from the known information about the languages used, as well as the ethnonymy and onomastics of the Mongolian and Turkic peoples, were used for phonetic reconstructions. Ethnographic materials were also used to a certain extent. Research results and novelty: Based on the data of Rashīd ad-Dīn al-Ṭabīb about the six tribes of the Tatars of Inner Asia, evidenced by a recently discovered document of the Yuan epoch, the authors compared the names given by the “Secret History of the Mongols” and “Jāmī al-Tawārīkh”, then involved the use of an additional source, and as a result reconstructed the names of Totoqli’ut, Alči, Čaγa’an, Küyin, Täräät / *Täräit, leaving the name *Barquy as debatable. For a number of ethnonyms, a broad justification of semantics is proposed. However, not all of them are subject to a single formation system, which is demonstrated in the text of the article.