Mythologies of the Tat Tribe

The Tat tribe or Transcaucasian Persians (also: Tat, Parsi, Daghli, Lohijon) are an Iranian people presently living within Azerbaijan and Russia (mainly Southern Dagestan). The Tats are part of the indigenous peoples of Iranian origin in the Caucasus. Tats use the Tat language, a southwestern Iranian language somewhat different from standard Persian, as well as Azerbaijani and Russian. Tats are mainly Shia Muslims with a significant Sunni Muslim minority. As late as the turn of the 20th century, the Tat constituted about 11% of the population of the entire eastern half of Azerbaijan (see Baku Governorate, the section on Demography). They formed nearly one-fifth (18.9%) of the population of the Baku province and over one-quarter (25.3%) of the Kuba Province—both on the Caspian Sea. Either through misrepresentation, data manipulation, or simple assimilation, the Tat portion of the population of Azerbaijan has shrunk to insignificance, facing assimilation. The 1886–1892 Tsarist population figures counted 124,683 Tats in the Russian Caucasus of which 118,165 were located in the Baku Governorate and 3,609 in the Dagestan Oblast. The 1897 Russian Empire census recorded 95,056 Tats, of which 89,519 were in the Baku Governorate and 2,998 in the Dagestan Oblast.^[8] The 1926 Soviet census only counted 28,705 Tats of which 28,443 were in the Azerbaijan SSR and 1,237 in the Dagestan ASSR.^[8] Arthur Tsutsiev notes that a major portion of Tats in the 1926 census were listed under the categories "Persians" and "Azerbaijani Turks". This was particularly the case within the Azerbaijan SSR, where some 38,327 individuals were recorded as "Turks whose native language is Tat".^[10] The 1979 Soviet census counted 22,441 Tats of which 8,848 were located in the Azerbaijan SSR and 7,437 in the Dagestan ASSR.

Tat is a historical ethnonym for various ethnic and social groups in the Caucasus, Crimea, and Iran. The term Tat was used in a verse included in the 11th-century dictionary Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk by Mahmud al-Kashgari, where it was similar to a pejorative synonym of the ethnonym Tajik. Medieval Bavarian traveler Johann Schiltberger, who visited Crimea in 1396, mentioned that Islamized Goths inhabiting the mountains of southern Crimea were contemptuously designated as Tat (German: Thatt) by the Muslim Kipchaks dwelling the northern Crimean plains. Professor P. Brunn held that this term meant a "religious renegade" or a "conquered race" in the Turkic dialect, whereas the local Tat people were thought to be of heterogenous descent, mixed with the Greeks and the Genoese settlers. History professor Brian Glyn Williams links the root of the Crimean ethnonym with the term employed by the Caucasian Turkic peoples, namely the Karachays, Kumyks, and Balkars, for their non-Turkic neighbors, such as the Mountain Jews. Although the term Tat continues to be utilized by Turkic groups in and around Azerbaijan (the region in Iran) for non-Turkic groups, a second meaning is also prevalent in Azerbaijan, where nomadic tribal groups, such as the Shahsevans, refer to their settled and non-tribal counterparts, who also speak the same Turkic language, as "Tat". Anthropologist Richard Tapper points out that despite great commonalities between the so-called Tats and the nomads, the latter speaks a Turkic dialect with less borrowings from other languages. While both of these two groups claim they follow more efficient and healthier lifestyles fueled by the lack of understanding of each other, Tats generally differ in valuing their "varied diet," strictly following the law, and observing more conservative religious practices. There is traditionally little interaction between them and the nomads apart from the practice that roughly one-tenth of nomads marry originally settled women and one-fifth of women from nomad groups marry into settled households.