Armeno-Tats (Armenian:հայ-թաթեր –hay-tater;Muslim Tat:Армени-Дағли,romanized: Armeni-Daghli) are a distinct group of ChristianTat-speakingArmenians that historically populated eastern parts of theSouth Caucasus, in what constitutes the modern-day Republic ofAzerbaijan.[1] Most scholars researching the Tat language, such as Boris Miller, agree that Armeno-Tats are ethnic Armenians who underwent alanguage shift and adopted Tat as their first language.[2] This is explained on one hand by the self-identification of Armeno-Tats who stated during Miller's research that they consider themselves Armenian as well as by some linguistic features of their dialect.[3] The Armeno-Tats formerly lived inMadrasa andKilvar in Azerbaijan, but have almost entirely moved toArmenia andRussia.[1]
Adam Olearius travelled through the historical region ofShirvan (present-day centralAzerbaijan) in 1637 and mentioned the existence of a community of Armenians in the city ofShamakhi, who "had its own language" but also "spokeTurkic, as did all people in Shirvan".[4] Archaeologist Vladimir Sysoyev, who visited Shamakhi in 1925 and described ruins of a mediaeval Armenian church, held interviews with local residents who dated the first settlement of Armenians in Shamakhi and its vicinities to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.[5] Historically mountainous Shirvan was an area of mixedTat-Azeri settlement with the former slowly assimilating into the latter.
Olearius,Bakikhanov and Miller noted a high rate of assimilation among Shirvan Armenians, with some adopting theMuslim faith and diffusing in the majority (this went on well into the eighteenth century) and others shifting to the Tat language, while remainingChristian.[5] By the early twentieth century, there were only two villages where Tat-speaking Christian Armenians continued to live:Madrasa andKilvar. With regard to the origin of Armeno-Tats, Miller quotes bishop Mesrop Smbatian in stating that at least some groups of them were eighteenth-century migrants fromKarabakh.[3] Armenians of Kilvar claimed descent from medieval migrants fromEdessa (present-dayŞanlıurfa,Turkey).[6] Comparing southern Tat dialects and Armeno-Tat, Miller concluded that Armenians of Madrasa may have been early migrants from theAbsheron Peninsula where the presence of a Christian community was historically attested. Some Armeno-Tats who had earlier switched to Tat as their first language, such as residents ofGarajally, went on to switch toAzeri by the end of the eighteenth century.[3]
In 1796, after thePersian Expedition of 1796 led byValerian Zubov, most residents of Kilvar andTalabi and some residents of Garajally, about 50 families altogether, chose to leave with the troops and founded the village of Edissia (after the city of Edessa where they believed their ancestors had come from) in the present-dayStavropol Krai of Russia.[6] In 1926, they still retained good knowledge of Tat and were referred to by the local population asmalakhantsy (from the Tatmal xan, i.e. "of the khan", meaning they were subjects of theQuba Khanate).[3] According to other sources, Armenians of Edissia, along with those living in the suburbs ofKizlyar, spoke aTurkic idiom they referred to asbizimja ("our talk") which they adopted while still in Shirvan.[7][8][dead link][9]
The remaining Armeno-Tats lived in Madrasa and Kilvar until theFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War, when they were forced to leave forArmenia. Initially Armenians of Madrasa had planned to undergo a population exchange with the residents of the Azeri-populated village ofShidli in Armenia, but theSpitak earthquake in Armenia which destroyed the village made the plan unrealisable. In 1989, they collectively moved to theAragatsotn Province of Armenia where they founded the village ofDprevank.[10] There are 6,000 Armenians living in Edissia.[6]
| Armeno-Tat | |
|---|---|
| Madrasa-Tat, Mədrəsə-Tat | |
| հայ-թաթերեն | |
| Native to | Armenia,Azerbaijan andRussia |
| Region | South Caucasus,North Caucasus andAstrakhan |
| Ethnicity | Armeno-Tats |
| Armenian | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | arme1260 |
Armeno-Tats ofMadrasa andKilvar referred to their language asp'arseren ("Persian"), while Armeno-Tat migrants to theNorth Caucasus andAstrakhan called itkeghetseren ("village talk")[7] and used it within their own community as an in-group language.[12] Armenian researcher Armen Hakobian identifies the eighteenth century as the time when Tat was first mentioned as a mothertongue for some groups of Shirvan Armenians.[13] Boris Miller likened their dialect to central varieties of Muslim Tat, which Armeno-Tat was mutually intelligible with, rather than toJudæo-Tat. Residents of theAbsheron villages ofBalakhany andSurakhany – considered speakers of southern Muslim Tat – also reported ease at understanding Armeno-Tat.[3]
With the exception ofKohna Khachmaz and the extinct Armenian community of Garajally, where the Armenian population was Azeri-speaking, Armeno-Tats spoke and used Tat to communicate with residents of other Armeno-Tat villages. Armeno-Tats of Kilvar were often bilingual in Tat and Azeri and historically used the latter to communicate with Armenian-speaking Armenians as late as in 1912. The introduction of public education in the early twentieth century led to Armeno-Tats acquiringArmenian, which however they used only in communication with outsider Armenians or as a written language. This process intensified in the Soviet times, leading to Armeno-Tats' almost complete shift from Tat to Armenian by the late 1980s.[3]
The Christian dialect of Tat displays typical Tatrhotacism (mutation of Persian/d/ into/r/), but differs from other Tat dialects in lackingpharyngeal consonants/ʕ/ and/ħ/.[3]
Today the Armeno-Tat dialect is considered nearly extinct, with most Armeno-Tats having switched to Armenian and Russian. In 2002, only 36 Armenians in Russia spoke Tat either as a first or second language.[14] There is an unknown number of speakers in Armenia, all of whom, however, are over 50.[15]
(...) and the nearly extinct Christian Tats (pʰarseren; Armeno-Tat; formerly in Madrasa and Kilvar in Azerbaijan, but moved to Armenia and Russia).
