Materials for the cultural genesis of the Volga-Ural Tatars: the Nogai component in the structure of folk costume

Abstract

The Nogai component in the cultural genesis of the Volga-Ural Tatars is identified by a comparative historical analysis of museum sources and field expedition materials on the folk costumes of the Turkic-Nogai ethnic formations of the Lower Volga region and the North Caucasus. The most important sources were typological and cartographic materials on folk clothing of the Tatars (The Historical and Ethnographic Atlas of the Tatar People) and the Nogais (The Historical and Ethnographic Atlas of the Peoples of Dagestan). The earliest and most noticeable Nogai analogies have been found in costume complexes of the southern group of Mishar Tatars (Temnikovo-Azeyevsky, Lyambirsky, Kuznetsk-Khvalynsky), of Kasimov Tatars, and less often the Kryashen. Through the steppe traditions of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea regions, they go back to the Turkic, Turkic-Mongolian cultures of Eurasia, in the ethnogenesis and culture of which the Kipchak-Nogai component is obvious. The Nogai analogies are not accidental in the costume of the Siberian, Crimean Tatars of the steppe subgroup, the Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kirghizes and other Turkic peoples which are connected by the commonality of the Golden Horde and subsequent (Khan’s) period of their history, and continue to maintain close relations, including ethno-cultural links.

Keywords

• tatars
• nogais
• cultural genesis
• folk clothing
• historical and ethnographic atlas