HERBARZ-L Archives

From: "Glenn Stefanovics" <>
Subject: RE: Tartars in Lithuanian Nobility
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 12:11:36 -0400

Crass and plebian "Rocky" Rokovich is a general contractor for Sears, and
was installing my mother's garage door opener one day. He asked me about my
family name and then I did the same. He said to me "I bet you never heard
about my people! I'm a Lithuanian Tatar!" To which I replied that, indeed,
I had heard of them, and related to him a biography of Suleiman Sulkevich, a
Lithuanian Tatar who was the puppet governor of the Crimean Tatars toward
the end of WWI. That and my mother's Lithuanian ancestry broke ice, so to
speak.

Anyway, he told me his Tatar people were given Jewish brides to marry, and
took their last names as well, and that is why most Lithuanian Tatars have
Jewish surnames, though they are Moslem. Rocky also told me that he goes to
the Mosque for Lithuanian Tatars in New York City quite often "for social
purposes," and that it's the oldest Mosque in the city.

G


>From: "Leon Stevens" <>
>To:
>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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