How to call “Transcaucasian Muslims”?
Until recently, the Transcaucasian Mohammedan population was called “Muslim” in Russian, meaning not religious people at all, but the Turkic-speaking population of Russian Transcaucasia. A similar naming of a nation after its religion was borrowed by the Russians from the Transcaucasian Mohammedans themselves, who still call their nation and their language only “Muslims”, having sacrificed the concept of language in favor of the concept of religion. The Transcaucasian Mohammedan does not give another answer to the questions of what nationality and what language he speaks, except that he “is Muslim” and “speaks Muslim”. Catholic Armenians also call their nationality and their language just “Catholic”.
I want to give the Transcaucasian Mohammedans a name coming not from their faith, but from their nationality. Recently, in the Caucasus, they began to call the Transcaucasian Mohammedans “Tatars” in Russian. This innovation can in no way be called successful.
The language spoken by the Transcaucasian Mohammedans is not “Tatar”, but “Turkish” or - which is one and the same - “Turkic”, that is divided into the main dialects: Ottoman, Seljuk and Azerbaijani.
The inconvenience of calling the Transcaucasian Muslims “Tatars” in practice is felt in Baku. Here the Russians, better acquainted with the Tatar population of the inner provinces, are more likely to understand the great difference between the Transcaucasian Turks and the Tatars of the inner governorates (means Volga region — C.A.) in terms of language, appearance, rights and customs. Therefore, in Baku, where there is also a need to give the Transcaucasian Mohammedans a name coming from its nationality, they call them “loyal local Persians”. Of course, this name is inconvenient either. For the Transcaucasian Turks are not Tatars, but they are not Persians either. These peoples differ in language, and the Turkic and Persian languages are completely different from each other.
It’s also inconvenient to call the Transcaucasian Muslims “Tatars” because these Muslims, whom their closest neighbors — Persians, Ottomans, Kurds and Armenians — have never called them with this name. To tell the truth, it just offends them (Muslims — C.A.). Since the time of Tamerlane’s invasion, the name Tatar was not pronounced without malice and hatred throughout Asia, which the formidable Mongol conqueror had so unforgettably devastated.
It would be most convenient to call the Transcaucasian Muslims “Azerbaijanis”, and their language “Azerbaijani”. The province of Azerbaijan, most of which has detached from Persia to Russia and constitutes the present Transcaucasia, is populated almost exclusively by these Turkic people, whom, Eastern writers as well as European geographers and ethnographers, do not call “Azerbaijani Turks”. In everyday life, it is inconvenient to call a people or a language in two words, for example: an “Azerbaijani Turk” or an “Azerbaijani Turkish”. Therefore, it would be more appropriate in the Russian language that the Transcaucasian Muslims, instead of the “Tatars”, to be called “Azerbaijanis”, and the language “Azerbaijani” instead of “Tatar”.
Muhammad agha Shahtakhtinski
The Caspian, №93 (1 May 1891) [Каспий]
