While also speaking languages belonging to different Kipchak sub-groups, genetic studies have shown that the three main groups of Tatars (Volga, Crimean, Siberian) do not have common ancestors and, thus, their formation occurred independently of one another.

[37][38] Tatar became a name for populations of the former Golden Horde in Europe, such as those of the former Kazan, Crimean, Astrakhan, Qasim, and Siberian Khanates.

The form Tartar has its origins in either Latin or French, coming to Western European languages from Turkish and the Persian (tātār, "mounted messenger").

From the beginning, the extra r was present in the Western forms and according to the Oxford English Dictionary this was most likely due to an association with Tartarus.

[c][39] The Persian word is first recorded in the 13th century in reference to the hordes of Genghis Khan and is of unknown origin; according to the Oxford English Dictionary it is "said to be" ultimately from tata.

[40] Pow (2019) proposes that Turkic-speaking peoples of Cumania, as a sign of political allegiance, adopted the endonym Tatar of their Mongol conquerors, before ultimately subsuming the latter culturally and linguistically.

[47] Eleventh-century Kara-khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari noted that the historical Tatars were bilingual, speaking other Turkic languages besides their own.

In the 7th century AD, the Volga Bulgars settled on the territory of the Volga-Kama region, where Finno-Ugrians lived compactly at that time.

Most of the population of the Bulgars survived and crossed to the right bank of the Volga, displacing the mountain Mari (cheremis) from the inhabited territories to the meadow side.

Sources of Russian chronicles[citation needed] report: "Tatares took the whole Bulgarian land captive and killed part of it" After a while, Tatars from all the outskirts of the Golden Horde began to arrive in the Kazan Khanate, and consisted mainly of Kipchak peoples: Nogais and Crimean Tatars.Kazan was built by the Perekop fugitives from Taurida during the reign of Vasily Vasilyevich in Moscow.

— The journey to Muscovy of Baron Augustine Mayerberg and Horace Wilhelm Calvucci, ambassadors of the August Roman Emperor Leopold to the Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich in 1661, described by Baron Mayerberg himselfKazan Tatars are descendants of the Tatars of the Kazan Kingdom of the Kipchak Horde.

— "Alphabetical list of peoples living in the Russian Empire in 1895"[1]Kazan Tatars got their name from the main city of Kazan—and it is so called from the Tatar word Kazan, the cauldron, which was omitted by the servant of the founder of this city, Khan Altyn Bek, not on purpose, when he scooped water for his master to wash, in the river now called Kazanka.

Description of all the peoples living in the Russian state : their everyday rituals, customs, clothes, dwellings, exercises, amusements, faiths and other memorabilia.

— 1799. page 8[36]Also in Kazan there is a famous "Kaban Lake" similar to the name of the "Kuban River", which translates from Nogai as "overflowing".

from the Central Asian Turkic-Tatar tribes that arrived with the Mongols and appeared in the Lower Volga region in the 11th century.

The Arab historian Al-Omari (Shihabuddin al-Umari) wrote that, having joined the Golden Horde, the Cumans moved to the position of subjects.

In the 1910s the Volga Tatars numbered about half a million in the Kazan Governorate in Tatarstan, their historical homeland, about 400,000 in each of the governments of Ufa, 100,000 in Samara and Simbirsk, and about 30,000 in Vyatka, Saratov, Tambov, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm and Orenburg.

The Tatar settlers were all granted szlachta (nobility) status, a tradition that survived until the end of the Commonwealth in the late 18th century.

Numerous royal privileges, as well as internal autonomy granted by the monarchs, allowed the Tatars to preserve their religion, traditions, and culture over the centuries.

For instance, the women in Lipka Tatar society traditionally had the same rights and status as men, and could attend non-segregated schools.

The Tatars suffered serious losses during World War II and furthermore, after the border change in 1945, a large part of them found themselves in the Soviet Union.

The Tatars played a relatively prominent role for such a small community in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth military as well as in Polish and Lithuanian political and intellectual life.

In 1711, when Peter I of Russia went on a campaign with all his troops (80,000) to gain access to the Black Sea, he was surrounded by the army of the Crimean Khan Devlet II Giray, finding himself in a hopeless situation.

As it was expected by Qaplan Giray, in 1736 the Russian army invaded Crimea, led by Münnich, devastated the peninsula, killed civilians and destroyed all major cities, occupied the capital, Bakhchisaray, and burnt the Khan's palace with all the archives and documents, and then left Crimea because of the epidemic that had begun in it.

Through the fault of the Soviet government, which exported bread from Crimea to other regions of the country, in 1921–1922, at least 76,000 Crimean Tatars died of starvation,[66] which became a disaster for such a small nation.

[73] After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783 Crimean Tatars began emigrating to the Ottoman coastal provinces of Dobruja (today divided between Romania and Bulgaria).

Once in Dobruja most settled in the areas surrounding Mecidiye, Babadag, Köstence, Tulça, Silistre, Beştepe, or Varna and went on to create villages named in honor of their abandoned homeland such as Şirin, Yayla, Akmecit, Yalta, Kefe or Beybucak.

Tatars together with Albanians served as gendarmes, who were held in high esteem by the Ottomans and received special tax privileges.

The Ottomans additionally accorded a certain degree of autonomy for the Tatars who were allowed governance by their own kaymakam, Khan Mirza.

A Dobrujan Tatar, Kara Hussein, was responsible for the destruction of the Janissary corps on orders from Sultan Mahmut II.