Tatar confederation in the context of "Liao dynasty"

Tatars (/ˈtɑːtərz/ TAH-tərz) are a group of Turkic speaking peoples found across Eastern Europe and Asia who bear the name "Tatar".

Initially, the ethnonym Tatar possibly referred to the Tatar confederation. That confederation was eventually incorporated into the Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan unified the various steppe tribes. Historically, the term Tatar (or Tartar) was applied by western cartographers to anyone from the vast Northern and Central Asian landmass then known as Tartary, a term that was falsely conflated with the Mongol Empire. More recently, the term has come to refer more narrowly to related ethnic groups who call themselves Tatars.

The Rouran Khaganate (Chinese:柔然; Róurán), also known as Ruanruan or Juan-juan (蠕蠕; Ruǎnruǎn) (or variously Jou-jan, Ruruan, Ju-juan, Ruru, Ruirui, Rouru, Rouruan or Tantan), was a tribal confederation and later state. The Rouran state was undoubtedly multi-ethnic. As the ancient sources regard the Rouran as a separate branch of the Xiongnu Book of Song and Book of Liang connected Rourans to the earlier Xiongnu while the Book of Wei connected them to Proto-Mongolic Donghu. The Rouran supreme rulers used the title of khagan, a popular title borrowed from the Xianbei. The Rouran Khaganate lasted from the late 4th century until the middle 6th century with territory that covered all of modern-day Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, as well as parts of Manchuria in Northeast China, Eastern Siberia, Xinjiang, and Kazakhstan. The Hephthalites were vassals of the Rouran Khaganate until the beginning of the 5th century, with the royal house of Rourans intermarrying with the royal houses of the Hephthalites. The Rouran Khaganate ended when they were defeated by a Göktürk rebellion at the peak of their power, which subsequently led to the rise of the Turks in world history.

Their Khaganate overthrown, some Rouran remnants possibly became Tatars while others possibly migrated west and became the Pannonian Avars (known by such names as Varchonites or Pseudo Avars), who settled in Pannonia (centred on modern Hungary) during the 6th century. These Avars were pursued into the Byzantine Empire by the Göktürks, who referred to the Avars as a slave or vassal people, and requested that the Byzantines expel them. While this Rouran-Avars link remains a controversial theory, a recent DNA study has confirmed the genetic origins of the Avar elite as originating from the Mongolian plains. Other theories instead link the origins of the Pannonian Avars to peoples such as the Uar.

The Turco-Mongol or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 14th century among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The ruling Mongol elites of these khanates eventually assimilated into the Turkic populations that they conquered and ruled over, thus becoming known as Turco-Mongols. These elites gradually adopted Islam, as well as Turkic languages, while retaining Mongol political and legal institutions.

The Turco-Mongols founded many Islamic successor states after the collapse of the Mongol khanates, such as the Kazakh Khanate, the Tatar khanates that succeeded the Golden Horde (e.g., Crimean Khanate, Astrakhan Khanate, Khanate of Kazan), and the Timurid Empire, which succeeded the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. Babur (1483–1530), a Turco-Mongol prince and a descendant of Timur, founded the Mughal Empire, which ruled much of the Indian subcontinent. The Turks and Tatars also ruled part of Egypt, exercising political and military authority during the Mamluk Sultanate.

Shiwei (simplified Chinese: 室韦; traditional Chinese: 室韋; pinyin: Shìwéi; Wade–Giles: Shih-wei) were a Mongolic people that inhabited far-eastern Mongolia, northern Inner Mongolia, northern Manchuria and the area near the Okhotsk Sea beach. Records mentioning the Shiwei were recorded from the time of the Northern Wei (386–534) until the rise of the Mongols under Genghis Khan in 1206 when the name "Mongol" and "Tatar" were applied to all the Shiwei tribes.

The Shiwei-Mongols were closely related to the Khitan people to their south. As a result of pressure from the west, south and south-east they never established unified, semi-sedentarized empires like their neighbors, but remained nomadic confederations led by tribal chieftains, alternately submitting to the Turks, the Chinese and the Khitan as the political climate changed. The Mengwu Shiwei, one of the 20 Shiwei tribes during the Tang dynasty (618–907), were also called the Menggu during the Liao dynasty (907–1125) and are generally considered to be the ancestors of the Mongols of Genghis Khan. The modern Korean pronunciation of Mengwu (蒙兀 Měngwù) is Mong-ol (/moŋ.ol/). Mongolia is still called "Menggu" (蒙古 Měnggǔ) in Chinese today.