Mishar Tatars in the context of Finnish Tatars

👉 Mishar Tatars in the context of Finnish Tatars

The Finnish Tatars (Tatar: Финляндия татарлары, romanized: Finləndiyə tatarları; Finnish Tatar: Finlandiya tatarları; Finnish: Suomen tataarit) are a Tatar ethnic group and minority in Finland, consisting of approximately 600–700 people. Tatars practice Sunni Islam and speak the Turkic Tatar language.

The community was formed between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, when Mishar Tatar merchants emigrated from the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire and eventually settled in Finland. Tatars have the main building of their congregation in Helsinki. They have also founded cultural associations in different cities. They are the oldest Muslim community in Finland.

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Mishar Tatars in the context of Meshcherian language

Meshchera is an extinct Uralic language. It was spoken around the left bank of the Middle Oka. Meshchera was either a Mordvinic or a Permic language. Pauli Rahkonen has suggested on the basis of toponymic evidence that it was a Permic or closely related language. Rahkonen's speculation has been criticized by Vladimir Napolskikh. Some Meshchera speaking people possibly assimilated into Mishar Tatars (Meshcheryaki). However this theory is disputed.

The first Russian written source which mentions them is the Tolkovaya Paleya, from the 13th century. They are also mentioned in several later Russian chronicles from the period before the 16th century, and even later, in one of the letters by Andrey Kurbsky written in the second half of the 16th century, where he claimed the language spoken in the Meshchera region to be Mordvinic.

View the full Wikipedia page for Meshcherian language

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