Burtas were a tribe of uncertain ethnolinguistic affiliation inhabiting the steppe

Steppe

In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

 region north of the Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

 in medieval times (modern Penza Oblast

Penza Oblast

-External links:* *...

, Ulyanovsk Oblast

Ulyanovsk Oblast

Ulyanovsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Ulyanovsk...

 and Saratov Oblast

Saratov Oblast

Saratov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Saratov. Population: -Demographics:Population:...

 of the Russian Federation

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

). They were subject to the Khazars

Khazars

The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...

.

The Burtas are generally believed to be a Uralic

Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...

 tribal confederacy (probably later assimilated to Turkic language), the ancestors of the modern Moksha people

Mokshas

The Mokshas are an ethnic group belonging to Volgaic branch of Finnic peoples who live mostly on the west side and to the south of the great bend of the Volga river, and along a tributary of the Oka, the Moksha river in Russian Federation.Their native language is Moksha , one of the three...

 as well as some groups (such as Mishars) of Volga

Volga River

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...

 Tatars

Tatars

Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...

 and Chuvash

Chuvash people

The Chuvash people are a Turkic ethnic group, native to an area stretching from the Volga Region to Siberia. Most of them live in Republic of Chuvashia and surrounding areas, although Chuvash communities may be found throughout all Russia.- Etymology :...

.

Recently, some scholars have challenged the conventional theory, suggesting that the Burtas were actually Alans

Alans

The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.-Name:The various forms of Alan —...

 or another Iranian

Iranian peoples

The Iranian peoples are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group, consisting of the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of Indo-European-speaking peoples...

ethnolinguistic group.

Literature

• Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2010.ISBN: 978-0-7425-4981-4