Talk:Tatars/@comment-2003:DB:F709:7FC8:59B8:B7A7:1D0:A1B6-20191122140948

Wow, that description is off, even for Age of Empires standards!

"Historically, the Tatars are a Turco-Mongol people who originated from the vast plains of North and Central Asia, then known as Tartary (which is why they are also referred to as the Tartars). They eventually became part of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire and participated in the Mongol conquest"

That is not historically accurate AT ALL.

"Tatars" (no second r) was the name Mongols gave to THEMSELVES originally (many sources show that; chinese ones, as the probably oldest of them all, predate the Conquest). The r, in contrast, was added by european christians (either greek-afine eastern orthodox (geographically more likely; see Novgorod and Byzantian Empire) or latin-afine roman christians) for derogatory means: the "tartaros" was, after all, a word for "hell", stemming from greek mythology. The word "tartary" was derived from that, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! No sources outside Europe(!) called them "Tartars" instead of "Tatars".

The so called "mongols" didn't refer to themselves as such, until after the conquest. It was their historians, employed by the royal family, introducing that bit of revisionist history. While the name "Tatars" lived on, with the approach west, and the people they swallowed up in their horde (like some Turk-people!), similarly to the huns centuries prior(?), it was only in the east, in their homelands, where the etonym changed. In europe there are no sources (are there?) mentioning any "Tatars" before the "Mongolian" Hords arrived, which, all throughout the medievals, were called "Tatars" NOT "Mongolian"-

So later certain Turk-peoples called themselves "Tatars" (they probably didn't get the memo...), while the actual Tatars did not. It's a bit like the medieval Germans and byzantine Greek referring to themselves, both, as "Romans", in official letters, one ("Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicæ") because the Roman pope crowned their "Kaiser" (derived from "Caesar"; same with "Tzar", btw.), the other as it was what became of the eastern "Roman" empire, despite the cultural difference (they spoke greek, after all).

If, in contrast, the AoE2DE "Tatars" are to be tied in with the timurids (see special technology), then it's even less historically accurate: the Timurids where persianized "Mongols" (or mongolized Persians?). Last time I checked, Persian and Turk are "quite" distinct people and cultures (fun fact: the Mughal empire also traced back to Timur (hence "Timurids"); which is in the game already, being erroneously called "India"); atleast they didn't refer to themselves as Tatars, afaik... Btw.: that special technology originally gave me a headache. The timurids, I thought, did not deploy trebuchets; their siege-craft relied on other means? But I may have been mistaken. It seems, past 1250, the usage was spread eastward via the mamlucks (and beyond); they called them something like "frankian catapults", as I just learned...