The origin of the Tatars in Armenian historiography: the People of Magog or the clan of Тorgom?

This article analyzes the origins of the Tatars in Armenian historiography of the 13th–15th centuries. The aim of the study is to systematize and analyze known and previously unstudied references to the Tatars in Armenian written sources, as well as to identify the evolution of ideas about their ethnogenesis in the context of biblical and Christian historical thought. The research materials include medieval Armenian chronicles, colophons of manuscripts, poetic texts, as well as the works of Armenian historians of the Modern Era; Byzantine and Western European sources of the Christian tradition are used for comparative analysis. The article examines the historical model of associating nomadic peoples – the Scythians, Huns, Seljuk Turks, Tatars, and Mongols – with the biblical peoples of Gog and Magog, which was widespread in medieval Christian historiography. It is shown that in the Armenian historiographical tradition, this scheme was transformed by identifying the Tatars with the descendants of the biblical Togarmah. The results and scientific novelty of the study are the revelation of the specificity of the “Armenian” approach to explaining the origin of the Tatars, which differs from the apocalyptic interpretations dominant in European and Byzantine historiography. It has been established that the identification of the Tatars as “Torgomians” (Torgomazun Torgomac’in) served not only a biblical-genealogical function, but also a socio-political one. The article also shows that this interpretation of the origin of the Tatars remained relevant in Armenian historiographical thought until the end of the 19th century.