Tats
Encyclopedia
Tats are an Iranian
people, presently living within Azerbaijan
, Armenia
, and Russia
(mainly Southern Dagestan
).
Tats use the Tat language, a southwestern Iranian language. Azerbaijani
and Russian
are also spoken. Tats are mainly Shia Muslim
s, with a sizeable number of Sunni
Muslims.
is found in the Greek
historian Herodotus
' account of the Achaemenid
expansion of 558-330 BC, during which they annexed Transcaucasia(South Caucasus) as the X, XI, XVIII and XIX satrap
ies of their empire.
Archaeological material uncovered in present-day Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia
include Achaemenid architecture, jewelry and ceramics.
There is little information about permanent Persian population in South Caucasus since the Achaemenid period. Likely the ancestors of modern Tats settled in South Caucasus when the Sassanid Empire
from the 3rd to 7th c. built cities and founded military garrisons to strengthen their positions in this region.
Khosrau I
(531-579) presented the title of regent of Shirvan
in eastern South Caucasus to a close relative of his, who later became a progenitor of the first Shirvanshah
dynasty (about 510 – 1538).
After the region had been conquered by Arabs (7-8th c.) islamization
of the local population began.
Since the 11th century Oghuz
tribes, led by Seljuq
dynasts started to penetrate into the region. The gradual formation of the Azeri people started. Apparently in this period the Turkic exonym Tat or Tati, which designated settled farmers, was assigned to the South Caucasian dialect of the Persian language.
The Mongols
conquered South Caucasus in the 1130s and the Ilkhanate
state was founded. Mongol domination lasted till 1360–1370, but that did not stop prominent poets and scientists to emerge.
In the end of the 14th century South Caucasus was invaded by Tamerlane. By the end of the 15th century the state of Shirvanshahs had obtained a considerable power, its diplomatic and economic ties had become stronger. In the middle of the 16th century the state of Shirvanshahs was eliminated and South Caucasus joined to Safavid
Iran almost completely.
In the middle of the 18th century Russia started to widen its influence over South Caucasus. In the course of the Russo-Persian Wars of 1803-1828 South Caucasus became a part of the Russian Empire. After that there is data about quantity and settling of the Tats, collected by tsarist authorities. When the city of Baku
was occupied in the beginning of the 19th century, the whole population of the city (about 8000 people) were Tats.
According to the 19th century Golestan-e-Eram, written by Abbasqulu Bakikhanov, Tati was widespread in many areas of Shamakhi
, Baku, Darband and Guba:
According to the Calendar of the Caucasus of 1894 there were 124,693 Tats in South Caucasus., but because of the gradual spreading of Azeri Turkic, Tati was passing out of use. During the Soviet period, after the official term Azerbaijani had been introduced in the late 1930s, the ethnic self-consciousness of Tats changed greatly and many started to call themselves Azerbaijani. Whereas in 1926 about 28.443 Tats had been counted, in 1989 only 10,239 people recognized themselves as such.
In 2005 American researchers carried out investigations in several villages of Guba, Devechi, Khizi
, Siyazan, Ismailli
and Shemakha districts of the Republic of Azerbaijan, indicating 15,553 Tats in these villages.
There are also a number of tats residing in eastern Turkmenistan
.
At present Tats are making attempts to return to the original Parsi self-designation, together with the use of the Persian language as a literary standard.
On December 14th 1990, the Azeri cultural and educational society for studying and development of Tati language, history and ethnography was founded by the board of the Ministry of justice of the Azerbaijan SSR
. A primer and textbook of the Tat language together with literary and folklore pieces were published.
There is a rich tradition of Tat spoken folk art. Genres of national poetry like ruba’is, ghazals
, beits
are highly developed. While studying the works of Persian medieval poets of South Caucasus like Khaqani
and Nizami some distinctive features of the Tat language have been revealed.
As a result of the long co-existence of Tats and Azerbaijanis many common features in farming, housekeeping and culture have developed. Traditional Tat female clothes are long shirt, wide trousers worn outside, slim line dress, outer unbuttoned dress, headscarf and "Moroccan" stockings. Male clothes are the Circassian
coat and high fur-cap.
The traditional one- or two-storeyed houses made of rectangular limestone blocks or river shingles have blank walls facing the street. The roof is flat with an opening for the stone fireplace chimney. The upper store was used for habitation, household quarters (kitchen etc.) were situated on the ground floor. One living room wall has several niches for the storage of clothes, bed linen and sometimes crockery. Rooms were illuminated by lamps or through the opening in the roof. House furniture consisted of low couches, carpets and mattresses. Fireplaces, braziers and ovens were used for heating.
The closed yard has a garden. There is a veranda (ayvan), a paved drain or a small basin (tendir), covered cattle-pan, stable and hen-house.
, Islam became widespread. Today the Tats are mainly Shia Muslims, with a sizeable minority of Sunni Muslims.
, part of the Armenians
and the Udins. This has led some to the idea that Muslim Tats, Tat-speaking Mountain Jews and Tat-speaking Christian Armenians are one nation, practicing three different religions.
). The Jews of Central Asia were classified "Mountain Jews" only in 19th century official Russian documentation. The Mountain Jews call themselves Juhuro.
In the year 1888 A. Sh. Anisimov showed the closeness of language of the Mountain Jews and the Caucasian Persians (Tats). In his work Caucasian Jews-Mountaineers he came to the conclusion that the Mountain Jews were representatives of the Iranian family of the Tats, which had adopted Judaism in Iran and later moved to South Caucasus. The ideas of Anisimov were supported during the Soviet period: the popularization of the idea of the mountain Jews Tat origin started in 30's. Through efforts of several Mountain Jews, closely connected with the regime, the idea of mountain Jews being not really Jews at all but judaized Tats became widely spread. Some Mountain Jews started to register themselves as Tats because of secret pressure from the authorities.
As a result of this the words Tat and Mountain Jew became almost synonymous. The term "Tat" was used in research literature as the second or even first name for Mountain Jews. This caused the whole cultural heritage (literature, theatre, music) created by Mountain Jews during the Soviet period to be attributed to the Tats.
Comparing physic-anthropological characteristics of Tats and Mountain Jews together with information about their languages suggests no signs of ethnic unity between these two nations.
Like most "Jewish" languages, the grammatical structure of Juhuri
retains archaic features of the language it is derived from. At the same time all of these languages are satiated with Hebrew
words. The loanwords from Aramaic
and Hebrew in Juhuri include words not directly connected with Judaic rituals (e.g. zoft resin, nokumi envy, ghuf body, keton linen, etc.) Some syntactical features of Juhuri have are ones typical for Hebrew.
The physical-anthropological types of Caucasian Persians (Tats) and Mountain Jews are also dissimilar.
In 1913 the anthropologist K.M. Kurdov carried out measurements of a large group of Tat population of Lahij village and revealed fundamental differences of their physical-anthropological type from the Mountain Jews. Measurements of Tats and Mountain Jews were also made by some other researchers. Cephalic index
measurements have showed that while for Tats mesocephalia and dolichocephalia are typical, extreme brachycephalia is typical for Mountain Jews. Dermatoglyphic
characteristics of the Tats and Mountain Jews also exclude ethnic similarity.
Speakers of Mountain-Jew dialect and Tati language are representatives of two different nations, each with its own religion, ethnic consciousness, self-designation, way of life, material and spiritual values.
In Sassanid time and later under Muslim dynasties, Christianity wasn’t a privileged religion. Zoroastrianism dominated in the time of Sassanids, and later Islam. Under such circumstances there were no stimuli for the Persian population to reduce their social status by adopting Christianity.
If the Tati-speaking Armenians had been descendent to Persians they would have used at least some Iranian terms connected with the Christian way of life and rituals. However there no such words in their language, which they call themselves Parseren, i.e. Persian. All words related to Christianity are Armenian: terter (priest, instead of Persian kešiš), zam (church, instead of Persian kilse), knunk (christening, instead of Persian ghosl ta’mid), zatik (Easter, instead of Persian fesh), pas (Lent, instead of Persian ruze) etc.
There are traces of an Armenian phonological, lexical, grammatical and calque substratum in the dialect of Tat-speaking Armenians. There are also Armenian affricates (ծ, ց, ձ) in words of Iranian origin, which do not exist in the Tat language. This can only be explained by Armenian influence.
Although they have lost their language these Armenians managed to preserve their national identity. It has a distinct "us versus them" dichotomy, "Hay" (us) to "Muslims" (Tajik, Tats and Azeri together), combined with the idea of themselves as a suffering nation with a tragic historical destiny.
.
Currently the term Tati and Tati language is used to refer to a particular group of north-western Iranian dialects (Chali, Danesfani, Hiaraji, Hoznini, Esfarvarini, Takestani, Sagzabadi, Ebrahimabadi, Eshtehardi, Hoini, Kajali, Shahroudi, Harzani) in Iranian Azerbaijan, as well as south of it in the provinces of Zanjan
and Qazvin
. These dialects have a certain affinity to the Talysh language
as one of the descendants of the Old Azari language.
The use of the name Tati to two different Iranian languages erroneously suggests that the Caucasian Tats also live in Iran.
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...
people, presently living within Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, and Russia
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...
(mainly Southern Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
).
Tats use the Tat language, a southwestern Iranian language. Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
are also spoken. Tats are mainly Shia Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s, with a sizeable number of Sunni
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....
Muslims.
History
The earliest mention of Persians in the CaucasusCaucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
is found in the Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
historian Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
' account of the Achaemenid
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire , sometimes known as First Persian Empire and/or Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation...
expansion of 558-330 BC, during which they annexed Transcaucasia(South Caucasus) as the X, XI, XVIII and XIX satrap
Satrap
Satrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic empires....
ies of their empire.
Archaeological material uncovered in present-day Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
include Achaemenid architecture, jewelry and ceramics.
There is little information about permanent Persian population in South Caucasus since the Achaemenid period. Likely the ancestors of modern Tats settled in South Caucasus when the Sassanid Empire
Sassanid Empire
The Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān in Middle Persian and resulting in the New Persian terms Iranshahr and Iran , was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651...
from the 3rd to 7th c. built cities and founded military garrisons to strengthen their positions in this region.
Khosrau I
Khosrau I
Khosrau I , also known as Anushiravan the Just or Anushirawan the Just Khosrau I (also called Chosroes I in classical sources, most commonly known in Persian as Anushirvan or Anushirwan, Persian: انوشيروان meaning the immortal soul), also known as Anushiravan the Just or Anushirawan the Just...
(531-579) presented the title of regent of Shirvan
Shirvan
Shirvan , also spelled as Shirwan, Shervan, Sherwan and Šervān, is a historical region in the eastern Caucasus, known by this name in both Islamic and modern times...
in eastern South Caucasus to a close relative of his, who later became a progenitor of the first Shirvanshah
Shirvanshah
Shirvanshah also spelled as Shīrwān Shāh or Sharwān Shāh, was the title in mediaeval Islamic times of an Arab in Ethnos but speedily Persianized dynasty within their culturally Persian environment. The Shirvanshah established a native state in Shirvan...
dynasty (about 510 – 1538).
After the region had been conquered by Arabs (7-8th c.) islamization
Islamization
Islamization or Islamification has been used to describe the process of a society's conversion to the religion of Islam...
of the local population began.
Since the 11th century Oghuz
Oghuz
Oghuz may refer to:*an early Turkic word for "tribe", see Oghuz * Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic language family.* Oghuz Turks, the Turkic groups speaking Oghuz languages* Oghuz Khan, a legendary and semi-mythological Turkic khan....
tribes, led by Seljuq
Seljuq dynasty
The Seljuq ; were a Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries...
dynasts started to penetrate into the region. The gradual formation of the Azeri people started. Apparently in this period the Turkic exonym Tat or Tati, which designated settled farmers, was assigned to the South Caucasian dialect of the Persian language.
The Mongols
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...
conquered South Caucasus in the 1130s and the Ilkhanate
Ilkhanate
The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate , was a Mongol khanate established in Azerbaijan and Persia in the 13th century, considered a part of the Mongol Empire...
state was founded. Mongol domination lasted till 1360–1370, but that did not stop prominent poets and scientists to emerge.
In the end of the 14th century South Caucasus was invaded by Tamerlane. By the end of the 15th century the state of Shirvanshahs had obtained a considerable power, its diplomatic and economic ties had become stronger. In the middle of the 16th century the state of Shirvanshahs was eliminated and South Caucasus joined to Safavid
Safavid dynasty
The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran. They ruled one of the greatest Persian empires since the Muslim conquest of Persia and established the Twelver school of Shi'a Islam as the official religion of their empire, marking one of the most important turning...
Iran almost completely.
In the middle of the 18th century Russia started to widen its influence over South Caucasus. In the course of the Russo-Persian Wars of 1803-1828 South Caucasus became a part of the Russian Empire. After that there is data about quantity and settling of the Tats, collected by tsarist authorities. When the city of Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
was occupied in the beginning of the 19th century, the whole population of the city (about 8000 people) were Tats.
According to the 19th century Golestan-e-Eram, written by Abbasqulu Bakikhanov, Tati was widespread in many areas of Shamakhi
Shamakhi
Shamakhi or Shamakhy is a rayon of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and a town in the rayon. It is the historical center of the region of Shirvan.The town is west of Baku. It has more than 20,000 inhabitants, among them Azerbaijanis and Russians...
, Baku, Darband and Guba:
According to the Calendar of the Caucasus of 1894 there were 124,693 Tats in South Caucasus., but because of the gradual spreading of Azeri Turkic, Tati was passing out of use. During the Soviet period, after the official term Azerbaijani had been introduced in the late 1930s, the ethnic self-consciousness of Tats changed greatly and many started to call themselves Azerbaijani. Whereas in 1926 about 28.443 Tats had been counted, in 1989 only 10,239 people recognized themselves as such.
In 2005 American researchers carried out investigations in several villages of Guba, Devechi, Khizi
Khizi
Khizi is the least-populous rayon of Azerbaijan. Its capital is the village of Xızı. The rayon has a remarkable variety of landscapes. On the flat Caspian coast there are irrigated cattle and chicken-breeding lowlands around Shurabad. West of Giläzi, the Xızı road climbs gently through stripily...
, Siyazan, Ismailli
Ismailli
Ismailli is a rayon of Azerbaijan.-History:Ismailly district was created with the center in the Ismailly village on November 21, 1931...
and Shemakha districts of the Republic of Azerbaijan, indicating 15,553 Tats in these villages.
There are also a number of tats residing in eastern Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...
.
Local self-designation
Although the majority of the Tat population of Azerbaijan and southern Dagestan uses the Turkic exonym Tati or Tat as a self-designation, there remain some local self-designations:- Parsi — The term Parsi has been used till the present day by the Tats of Apsheron as self-designation and zuvan Parsi as an indication of Tat language. This term relates to Pārsīk, the Middle PersianMiddle PersianMiddle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...
self-designation of Persians, cf. Middle Persian Pārsīk ut Pahlavīk – Persian and Parthian. During the New Persian language period the final consonant was lost and the ethnonym became Pārsī. Some groups of Persian-speaking populations in Afghanistan together with the Zoroastrians of India (the Parsis) also use the term Parsi as a self-designation.
- Lohijon — The citizens of the Tat settlement Lahij in the Ismailli district name themselves after their village Lohuj, plural Lohijon. Lahij is the largest Tat village (about 10.000). Its isolation has prevented local population from contacts with the outside world which has led their own isolated self-designation.
- Daghli — The Tats in Khizi district and parts of Devechi and Siyazan districts use another Turkic exonym, Daghli (mountaineers) for themselves. As a result of the spread of Azeri Turkic the term Daghli has strongly come into use and the local Tats started to use it themselves.
At present Tats are making attempts to return to the original Parsi self-designation, together with the use of the Persian language as a literary standard.
On December 14th 1990, the Azeri cultural and educational society for studying and development of Tati language, history and ethnography was founded by the board of the Ministry of justice of the Azerbaijan SSR
Azerbaijan SSR
The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Azerbaijan SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union....
. A primer and textbook of the Tat language together with literary and folklore pieces were published.
Culture
The Persian settlers of South Caucasus have long interacted with the surrounding ethnic groups, exchanging elements of their cultures. Arts like carpet-making, hand-weaving, metal manufacture, embossing and incrustation are highly developed. The arts of ornamental design and miniature are also very popular.There is a rich tradition of Tat spoken folk art. Genres of national poetry like ruba’is, ghazals
Ghazal
The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century...
, beits
Beit
A beit is a metrical unit of Arabic, Iranian and Urdu poetry. It corresponds to a line, though sometimes improperly renderered as "couplet" since each beit is divided into two hemistichs of equal length, each containing two, three or four feet, or from 16 to 32 sylables.William Alexander Clouston...
are highly developed. While studying the works of Persian medieval poets of South Caucasus like Khaqani
Khaqani
Khāqāni or Khāghāni was a Persian poet. He was born in the historical region known as Shirvan , under the Shirvanshah and died in Tabriz, Iran.- Life :Khaqani was born into the family of a carpenter in...
and Nizami some distinctive features of the Tat language have been revealed.
As a result of the long co-existence of Tats and Azerbaijanis many common features in farming, housekeeping and culture have developed. Traditional Tat female clothes are long shirt, wide trousers worn outside, slim line dress, outer unbuttoned dress, headscarf and "Moroccan" stockings. Male clothes are the Circassian
Adyghe people
The Adyghe or Adygs , also often known as Circassians or Cherkess, are in origin a North Caucasian ethnic groupwho were displaced in the course of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century, especially after the Russian–Circassian War of 1862.Adyghe people mostly speak Adyghe and most...
coat and high fur-cap.
Farming
Traditional occupations of the Tat population are agriculture, vegetable-growing, gardening and cattle-breeding. The main cultures are barley, rye, wheat, millet, sunflower, maize, potatoes and peas. Large vineyards and fruit gardens are widespread. Sheep, cows, horses, donkeys, buffalos and rarely camels are kept as domestic cattle.The traditional one- or two-storeyed houses made of rectangular limestone blocks or river shingles have blank walls facing the street. The roof is flat with an opening for the stone fireplace chimney. The upper store was used for habitation, household quarters (kitchen etc.) were situated on the ground floor. One living room wall has several niches for the storage of clothes, bed linen and sometimes crockery. Rooms were illuminated by lamps or through the opening in the roof. House furniture consisted of low couches, carpets and mattresses. Fireplaces, braziers and ovens were used for heating.
The closed yard has a garden. There is a veranda (ayvan), a paved drain or a small basin (tendir), covered cattle-pan, stable and hen-house.
Religion
Originally the Persians were Zoroastrians. After they had been conquered by the Rashidun CaliphateRashidun Caliphate
The Rashidun Caliphate , comprising the first four caliphs in Islam's history, was founded after Muhammad's death in 632, Year 10 A.H.. At its height, the Caliphate extended from the Arabian Peninsula, to the Levant, Caucasus and North Africa in the west, to the Iranian highlands and Central Asia...
, Islam became widespread. Today the Tats are mainly Shia Muslims, with a sizeable minority of Sunni Muslims.
Other Tat-speaking Nations
The Tat language was widely spread in Eastern South Caucasus. Up to the 20th century it was also used by non-Muslim groups: Mountain JewsMountain Jews
Highland Jews, Mountain Jews or Kavkazi Jews also known as Juvuro or Juhuro, are Jews of the eastern Caucasus, mainly of Azerbaijan and Dagestan. They are also known as Caucasus Jews, Caucasian Jews, or less commonly East Caucasian Jews, because the majority of these Jews settled the eastern part...
, part of the Armenians
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
and the Udins. This has led some to the idea that Muslim Tats, Tat-speaking Mountain Jews and Tat-speaking Christian Armenians are one nation, practicing three different religions.
Tats and Mountain Jews
The "Mountain Jews" belong to the community of Persian-speaking Jews. Some groups of this community live in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia (Bukharan JewsBukharan Jews
Bukharan Jews, also Bukharian Jews or Bukhari Jews, or яҳудиёни Бухоро Yahūdieni Bukhoro , Bukhori Hebrew Script: יהודיאני בוכאראי and יהודיאני בוכארי), also called the Binai Israel, are Jews from Central Asia who speak Bukhori, a dialect of the Tajik-Persian language...
). The Jews of Central Asia were classified "Mountain Jews" only in 19th century official Russian documentation. The Mountain Jews call themselves Juhuro.
In the year 1888 A. Sh. Anisimov showed the closeness of language of the Mountain Jews and the Caucasian Persians (Tats). In his work Caucasian Jews-Mountaineers he came to the conclusion that the Mountain Jews were representatives of the Iranian family of the Tats, which had adopted Judaism in Iran and later moved to South Caucasus. The ideas of Anisimov were supported during the Soviet period: the popularization of the idea of the mountain Jews Tat origin started in 30's. Through efforts of several Mountain Jews, closely connected with the regime, the idea of mountain Jews being not really Jews at all but judaized Tats became widely spread. Some Mountain Jews started to register themselves as Tats because of secret pressure from the authorities.
As a result of this the words Tat and Mountain Jew became almost synonymous. The term "Tat" was used in research literature as the second or even first name for Mountain Jews. This caused the whole cultural heritage (literature, theatre, music) created by Mountain Jews during the Soviet period to be attributed to the Tats.
Comparing physic-anthropological characteristics of Tats and Mountain Jews together with information about their languages suggests no signs of ethnic unity between these two nations.
Like most "Jewish" languages, the grammatical structure of Juhuri
Juhuri language
Juhuri, Juwuri or Judæo-Tat is a form of the Tat language and is the traditional language of the Mountain Jews of the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Azerbaijan and Dagestan, now mainly spoken in Israel....
retains archaic features of the language it is derived from. At the same time all of these languages are satiated with Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
words. The loanwords from Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
and Hebrew in Juhuri include words not directly connected with Judaic rituals (e.g. zoft resin, nokumi envy, ghuf body, keton linen, etc.) Some syntactical features of Juhuri have are ones typical for Hebrew.
The physical-anthropological types of Caucasian Persians (Tats) and Mountain Jews are also dissimilar.
In 1913 the anthropologist K.M. Kurdov carried out measurements of a large group of Tat population of Lahij village and revealed fundamental differences of their physical-anthropological type from the Mountain Jews. Measurements of Tats and Mountain Jews were also made by some other researchers. Cephalic index
Cephalic index
Cephalic index is the ratio of the maximum width of the head multiplied by 100 divided by its maximum length ....
measurements have showed that while for Tats mesocephalia and dolichocephalia are typical, extreme brachycephalia is typical for Mountain Jews. Dermatoglyphic
Dermatoglyphics
Dermatoglyphics is the scientific study of fingerprints. The term was coined by Dr. Harold Cummins, the father of American fingerprint analysis, even though the process of fingerprint identification had already been in use for several hundred years. All primates have ridged skin...
characteristics of the Tats and Mountain Jews also exclude ethnic similarity.
Speakers of Mountain-Jew dialect and Tati language are representatives of two different nations, each with its own religion, ethnic consciousness, self-designation, way of life, material and spiritual values.
Tats and Armenians
Some 19-20th c. publications describe the citizens of several Tat-speaking village of South Caucasus as Armenian Tats, Armeno-Tats, Christian Tats or Gregorian Tats. It was suggested that a part of the Persians of Eastern South Caucasus had adopted Armenian Christianity, but this did not take into consideration the fact that those citizens identify themselves as Armenians.In Sassanid time and later under Muslim dynasties, Christianity wasn’t a privileged religion. Zoroastrianism dominated in the time of Sassanids, and later Islam. Under such circumstances there were no stimuli for the Persian population to reduce their social status by adopting Christianity.
If the Tati-speaking Armenians had been descendent to Persians they would have used at least some Iranian terms connected with the Christian way of life and rituals. However there no such words in their language, which they call themselves Parseren, i.e. Persian. All words related to Christianity are Armenian: terter (priest, instead of Persian kešiš), zam (church, instead of Persian kilse), knunk (christening, instead of Persian ghosl ta’mid), zatik (Easter, instead of Persian fesh), pas (Lent, instead of Persian ruze) etc.
There are traces of an Armenian phonological, lexical, grammatical and calque substratum in the dialect of Tat-speaking Armenians. There are also Armenian affricates (ծ, ց, ձ) in words of Iranian origin, which do not exist in the Tat language. This can only be explained by Armenian influence.
Although they have lost their language these Armenians managed to preserve their national identity. It has a distinct "us versus them" dichotomy, "Hay" (us) to "Muslims" (Tajik, Tats and Azeri together), combined with the idea of themselves as a suffering nation with a tragic historical destiny.
The Tati people of North-West Iran
Starting from the middle ages, the term Tati was used not only for the Caucasus but als for north-western Iran, where it was extended to almost all of the local Iranian languages except of Persian and KurdishKurdish language
Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
.
Currently the term Tati and Tati language is used to refer to a particular group of north-western Iranian dialects (Chali, Danesfani, Hiaraji, Hoznini, Esfarvarini, Takestani, Sagzabadi, Ebrahimabadi, Eshtehardi, Hoini, Kajali, Shahroudi, Harzani) in Iranian Azerbaijan, as well as south of it in the provinces of Zanjan
Zanjan Province
Zanjan Province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. Located in the North West of Iran, its capital is Zanjan city. Zanjan province with an area of 36,400 km² has a mostly rural, population of 964,601 . The province lies 330 km northwest of Tehran, connected to it via a freeway.Zanjan...
and Qazvin
Qazvin Province
The Qazvin Province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the north-west of the country, and its center is the city of Qazvin. The province was created in 1993 out of part of Tehran Province and includes 20 cities: Qazvin, Takestan, Abyek, Buin-Zahra, Eqhbalieh, Mohammadieh, Alvand,...
. These dialects have a certain affinity to the Talysh language
Talysh language
The Talyshi language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Historically, the language and its people can be traced through the middle Iranian period back to the ancient...
as one of the descendants of the Old Azari language.
The use of the name Tati to two different Iranian languages erroneously suggests that the Caucasian Tats also live in Iran.