Fundamentals of the Lithuanian Tatars’ identity: the historical basis and contemporary aspects

Abstract

The subject of the author’s research work, the results of which are presented in the article, is the ethnic group of the Lithuanian Tatars. This group derived its name from the Great Lithuanian Principality, where its formation began in the Middle Age. At present this group is indivisible in its cultural-historical dimension and consists of three communities that reside in Poland, Lithuania, and Byelorussia and that have the legal status of ethnic minorities as part of the population of the three listed independent states. The history and culture of the Lithuanian Tatars (mainly the monuments of the material culture: wood and stone mosques, Muslim graveyards – mizars, manuscripts – books – kitabs, prayer-books – hamails, original paintings and graphic works – muhirs, similar to the shamails of the Kazan Tatars) has been in the focus of the European researchers’s attention, including the scholars from the Lithuanian Tatars’ milieu, for quite a long timealready. They are also provided with the rich literature in the sphere of the closelyrelated humanities. At the same time, there are some obvious essential contradictions and remarkable gaps in this literature. Contentious debates on the terminological definition of the given group are being unfolded: whether it is possible to call all of the group’s members “Lithuanian Tatars” regardless of their current citizenship; whether they form a separate, independent ethnos (ethnic group) or it should be considered an ethnographic group (a part of an other, greater ethnos). The least studied problem related to the foundation of the group’s identity under the current conditions of its division between the three states. The author focuses her attention on these particular questionable, disputable, and insufficiently studied issues.

Keywords

• ethnic self-consciousness
• identity
• lithuanian tatars’ culture lithuania and byelorussia
• tatar communities in poland