Tatar

The Tatar group spans the Volga, the Crimea and the Pontic steppe. The name Tatar first belonged to a steppe confederation that Genghis Khan absorbed into the Mongol Empire, and it later became the name for the populations of the Golden Horde. They speak Kipchak Turkic languages.

As the Golden Horde broke up, the khanates of Kazan, Crimea and Astrakhan emerged in the fifteenth century. The Crimean khans became Ottoman vassals in 1475 and burned Moscow in 1571. Ivan IV of Russia conquered Kazan in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556, and Russia annexed the Crimea in 1783.