Tartaria/tartary
(twitter.com)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (57)
sorted by:
Word "tartar" is a greek word that means something close to "hell".
This have absolutely nothing to do with any nomads at all.
But it have everything with dishonesty of MiddleAge cartographers.
Mid-ages cartographers often draw "misterious" "Tartaia" (as literally Kingdom of Hell) on maps to attract buyers and pose themselves as like they know something about places they don't know shit about.
There also was and is Tatars, an old indo-european ethnos inhabitating region along and beyond Volga river where it merges with Kama river that become at some point Tatar kingdom that now is Tatarstan Republic in Russia. Tatars never was Asian looking. They are Turkich (Not as in Turks, Tatars have nothing to do with Turkey and never ever was even in Osman Empire, but as much larger ethnic family).
Asian looking was Mongols. At the time of Golden Horde Tatars took the side of Mongols after Mongols defeated their kingdom. So Golden Horde became known as Tatar-Mongol Horde.
Words "Tatar" and "Tartar" have absolutely nothing common at all, aside from similar letters. They are from completely different ancient languages and have completely different meaning.
"Tararia" on MidAge maps is a pure bullshit. On very few maps "Tartaria" kind of cover or touch place where real Tataria should be, but that's just a coincidence, because MidAges European cartographers was not aware about anything to the East of Novgorod in the best case.
Again.
None of horse nomads named "taRtars" ever here.
That "taRtar" thing is purely European thing. Ancient Greek and Greek mythology was part of higher education in Europe in MidAges. So "taRtar" came into European culture along with ancient Greek literature. It was used to name something unknown and so horrible and intriguing. When some cartographer had no clue about some area on the map, he, being educated person often name that "terra incognita" as "TaRtaria". Obviously, people that should live in that fictional land named "TaRtars" by ignorant Europeans.
"TaRtaria" is exactly the same as "Atlantis", but unlike Atlantis scary and horrible. Mythical unknown land. Sometimes, due to ignorance, placed in the unknown to Europeans lands to the East of Volga river, to hide absence of real knowledge. That's it.