Astrakhan Tatars Erotic

Astrakhan Tatars are the Turkic Muslims of the lower Volga. They live in the delta country where the river splits into hundreds of channels before it reaches the Caspian Sea. They are Tatars, but not simply Kazan Tatars who moved south. Their roots go back to the nomads of the Golden Horde and the Nogai steppe. Their sense of place is tied to one city, Astrakhan, and to the fishing and farming villages around it.

This stretch of river was once the heart of a steppe empire. Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, stood on the Akhtuba channel upstream of the modern city. The trading town of Hajji Tarkhan, which came before Astrakhan, was sacked by Timur in 1395. As the Horde broke apart in the fifteenth century, the Astrakhan Khanate took shape: a small state that lived off river trade and the herds of its nomadic subjects. Muscovy conquered it in 1556 and gained control of the whole Volga. That conquest is the turning point in their history. From then on, Tatar life in the delta went on under Russian rule, around a fortress town that grew into a port full of different peoples.

The community has several layers. Yurt Tatars descend largely from Nogai herders who settled near the city. The Kundrov Tatars and the Karagash also trace their roots to Nogai groups, and the Karagash are sometimes counted as Nogai. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tatars from the middle Volga came downriver for work and married into local families, which pulled local speech toward standard Tatar. The result is a Kipchak Turkic dialect that sits between Tatar and Nogai, with Nogai features strongest among the Yurt Tatars. Kazakhs, whose language is closely related, live throughout the region. Across the western border live the Kalmyks, who speak a Mongolic language and are Buddhist. Russian is now the everyday language for most people, especially the young.

The faith is Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school. Islam reached this country through the Golden Horde, whose khans adopted it in the fourteenth century. Astrakhan's old mosques were mostly closed in the Soviet decades, and several have since reopened. Some people are devout and some are Muslim mainly by heritage, but the two great feasts, Kurban Bayram and Uraza Bayram, still mark the year, and weddings and funerals follow Muslim custom. Work has always followed the river and the soil: fishing the delta channels, keeping cattle, and growing the vegetables and melons the region is known for. In early summer, Tatar communities hold Sabantuy, an old plowing festival that is now a day of wrestling, horse racing and outdoor games.