Old Tatar

The Old Tatar language was a literary language used by some ethnic groups of the Idel-Ural region (Tatars and Bashkirs) from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century.

Old Tatar is a member of the Kipchak (or Northwestern) group of Turkic languages, although it was derived from the ancient Bulgar language. The first poem, considered to be written by Qul Ghali in Volga Turki dates back to the period of Volga Bulgaria. It included many Persian and Arabic loans.

In its written form, the language was spelled uniformly among different ethnic groups, speaking different Turkic languages of the Kipchak sub-group. The pronunciation differed from one people to another, approximating to the spoken language, making the written form universal for different languages.

The language formerly used the Arabic script and its later updated alphabets of İske imlâ and Yaña imlâ. Old Tatar language was a language of Idel-Ural poetry and literature. With the Ottoman Turkish, Azeri, Cuman, Khaqani Turkic and Chagatai, they were the only Turkic literary languages used in the Middle Ages. It was actively used in publishing until 1905, when the first Tatar and Bashkir newspapers begun to be published in modern Tatar and Bashkir language.