Revival of Nationalism in Bashkortostan

Abstract

Approximately the size of France, the autonomous republic of Bashkortostan is one of the largest republics in the Russian Federation and a neighbour of the autonomous republic of Tatarstan, a fellow Muslim and Turkic state. Before the middle of the sixteenth century the Bashkorts were a part of the Tatar Kazan khanate (1437–1552), and before that belonged to the Golden Horde (1255–1502). The latter state was established by Batu, the Grandson of Genghis Khan, who in 1228 conquered the Bulgar state, which had been established by the ancestors of the Tatars in the ninth century in the Volga–Ural Basin. Russia was then confined to Kiev. An Arab missionary, Ibn-I-Fadhlan, spread Islam among the Tatars and Islam became firmly established in the Bulgar state in the tenth century. Subsequently, through Tatar missionary efforts, it spread among the Bashkorts. When Batu conquered Russia in 1240, Bulgars who had been drafted into his Mongol army fought in the vanguard. Consequently for Russians the Mongol invasion came to be known as the Tatar yoke. The Mongol Tatars ruled over Russia for 250 years.¹