The earliest known organized state within the boundaries of Tatarstan was
Volga Bulgaria (c. 700–1238 CE). The
Volga Bulgars had an advanced mercantile state with trade contacts throughout Inner
Eurasia, the
Middle East and the
Baltic, which maintained its independence despite pressure by nations such as the
Khazars, the
Kievan Rus' and the
Kipchaks. In 921, Bulgar ruler
Almış sent an ambassador to the
Caliph requesting religious instruction. from
Baghdad around the time of
Ibn Fadlan's journey in 922.
Almış' conversion to Islam made Volga Bulgaria the first Muslim state in what is now
Russia. The Khanate of Kazan
was conquered by the troops of Tsar
Ivan IV the Terrible in the 1550s, with
Kazan being taken in 1552. Many of the inhabitants of Kazan were forcibly converted to Christianity while others were drowned or forced to leave Kazan. Cathedrals were built in Kazan; by 1593, mosques in the area were destroyed, and the Russian government forbade their construction. This prohibition remained in place until
Catherine the Great lifted it in the 18th century. The first mosque to be rebuilt under Catherine's auspices began construction in 1766 and was completed four years later.
Soviet rule On May 27, 1920, the
Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created. Under
Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union began to place restrictions on the use of the Bulgar turki language, which used a variant of
Arabic script. The Bulgar turki alphabet switched to
Cyrillic. The development of national culture declined significantly and religion, including Islam, in Tatarstan was severely repressed. Volga Bulgarians were forcibly renamed to Tatars (an insulting exonym for Volga Bulgarians) by Soviet decree. The
1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan was a period of mass starvation and drought that took place in the Tatar ASSR, in which 500,000 to 2,000,000 peasants died. The event was part of the greater
Russian famine of 1921–22 that affected other parts of the
USSR, in which up 5,000,000 people died in total. In 2008, the All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) asked the
United Nations to condemn the 1921-22 Tatarstan famine as a
genocide of Muslim Tatars. According to
Ruslan Kurbanov, an expert on Islam in modern Russia, Volga Bulgarians have demonstrated a very constructive and effective way of developing their religious and national identity and widening their political autonomy within Russia. In the most difficult years of post-Soviet Russia — years of deep economic crisis and two
Chechen wars — Tatars demonstrated phenomenal results in the economic development of their national republic. with Mufti of Tatarstan in
Kazan ==Recent developments==