HERBARZ-L Archives

From: "Leon Stevens" <>
Subject: RE: Tartars in Lithuanian Nobility
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 11:54:32 -0400

According to Dumin in Herbarz rodzin tatarskich Wielkiego Ksiestwa
Litewskiego, toward the end of the 14th century a great number of Tatar
prisoners were given land in exchange for military service and were
joined by the followers of Khan Tochtamish who were granted asylum in
the Grand Duchy by Duke Witold after a conflict with Central-Asian Tatar
ruler Timur obliged them to flee. Those who received land in return for
military eventually acquired the same rights as Lithuanian boyars i.e.
the nobility. Those who wished to add Tatar princely and other titles,
were obliged to obtain letters of confirmation of such ancestral status
from Asian Khans and princes. Tatars were permitted to take Christian
brides and bring up their children in the Islamic tradition, but they
were not permitted to own Christian peasants. In earlier centuries
Christian zealots succeeded in imposing stricter proofs of nobility on
Tatars and temporarily restricted the construction of mosques, but in
1669 by statute noble Tatars were fully integrated into the
Polish-Lithuanian nobility in every sense. Dumin says that the Tatars
quickly became linguistically and culturally Slavized and eventually
Polonized. By 1900 about half of the Lithuanian Tatars has converted to
Christianity. From the 18th century relations between Tatars and their
non-Tatar neighbors was fairly normal. This normalcy can be appreciated
from a reading of Siekiewicz's so-called "Little Trilogy," consisting of
3 related novellas beginning with "Hania." The Little Trilogy is highly
biographical and has been translated into English. Many Tatars adopted
topographic surnames ending in "-ski" but many or most others formed
Belarusified surnames by adding "-ewicz/-owicz" to the names of
ancestors to form names such as "Chazbiejewicz," "Halimowicz,"
"Jozefowicz" etc. Most Tatar "arms" remained non-heraldic property
signs or "tamgas." As far as I know, Dziadulewicz is the first to used
"tamga" as a term of art. In his armorial Dziadulewicz adds gratuitous
generic shields to these Tamgas, but says they never were displayed this
way. He adds that those he includes in his work are only a small
portion of the markings which were actually used, but he was unable to
collect them for most families. If a tamga even vaguely resembled an
established Polish charge, a family might simply call it that and assume
a full Polish pictograph. For example, the Kadyszewiczes and
Minbulatowiczes converted their tamgas, some of which more resembled the
Abdank tamga, into the Radwan coat of arms, substituting a crescent for
a cross. No one ever challenged such usurpations, and some Tatar
families composed myths alleging that these had been awarded by ancient
Polish kings, when it could be easily shown that such ennoblements could
not and did not take place.

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