"NATIONES QUE SE TARTAROS APPELLANT": AN EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORICAL PROBLEM OF THE USAGE OF THE ETHNONYMS TATAR AND MONGOL IN MEDIEVAL SOURCES
Objective: An attempt is made to explain why Mongols were so often referred to as Tatars in thirteenth-century primary sources and to offer a new interpretation of how the usage of both ethnonyms evolved over the course of the Mongol Empire’s expansion and dissolution. Research materials: Primary sources were used which originated from Russian, Mongolian, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean authors. The Russian Novgorod and Galicia-Volhynia Chronicles, Secret History of the Mongols, Rashid-al Din, the Yuan Shi, and the Mengda Beilu were the most significant in formulating an argument. Secondary literature by leading figures in the field of Mongol history was consulted. Research results and novelty: The main finding is that the different explanations found in primary source texts composed under Mongol governments for how these names were used in the pre-imperial period and for the double-naming phenomenon seem implausible when compared to the broader body of primary sources whose authors were not directed by an evolving Mongol imperial ideology. Furthermore, the various explanations cannot be combined into some workable model for how the double-naming phenomenon happened in the thirteenth century, since they contradict one another on fundamental issues such as whether Tatars still existed or were an extinct nation. As such, it is more plausible that the Mongols used the name “Tatar” to self-identify in the first three or four decades of the Mongol Empire’s expansion. The gradual replacement of “Tatar” by “Mongol” was solidified by the development of imperial historiography in the 1250s and 1260s. This proposed scenario can make sense of the strange dichotomy in the primary sources regarding ethnonyms. Novelty is found in the comparison of Chinese and European sources and the attempt to synthesize their claims - an approach which highlights potential avenues of research for experts in Islamic, Russian, and Chinese sources.