Mishar

The Mishars are the western branch of the Volga Tatars, Sunni Muslims speaking western Tatar. From the eleventh century nomadic Turkic groups entered the forest-steppe west of the Sura and along the Oka; during the Golden Horde, Kipchaks built fortresses and merged with earlier settlers. Their name comes from the Meshchera region, and Russian chronicles called them Meshcheryaki.

Their identity took its final shape in the fifteenth century around the Qasim Khanate and the principality of Temnikov. As the Horde weakened they entered Russian service, paying yasak tribute or serving as soldiers.

Between the late 1500s and the 1700s they migrated to the Volga's right bank, the Urals and the southern steppe frontier, where Mishar settlers and Tatar Cossacks guarded the new border lines. Contact with the Kazan Tatars gradually merged the two groups into the single Tatar nation.