Mari

Mari is the Finno-Ugric speech of the Mari people, used along the Volga, Kama and Vyatka rivers in the Mari lands of eastern Russia. Neighbouring peoples long knew it as Cheremis, a name derived from the Khazar word tsarmis recorded in the tenth century, while Mari is the speakers' own autonym.

The Mari country passed from Volga Bulgaria and the Golden Horde to the Kazan Khanate in 1443, and centuries of Turkic rule left a layer of Tatar and Bulgar loanwords. After Ivan the Terrible took Kazan in 1552 and the Cheremis Wars ended in 1584, the Mari came under Russian rule.

The first written records appeared in the early eighteenth century, mostly Orthodox ecclesiastical works produced amid conversion efforts from about 1700. The first Hill Mari grammar, the Cheremis Grammar, was printed in Kazan in 1837.