...Kazan.

Numerous Turkic tribes during the eleventh to sixteenth centuries live in what is now Russia and Kazakhstan.

The present territory of Tatarstan had been inhabited by the Volga Bulgars, who had settled on the Volga River in the eighth century and converted to Islam in 922 during the missionary work of Ahmad ibn Fadlan.

After the Mongol invasion of Europe from 1241, Volga Bulgaria had been defeated, ruined, and incorporated into the Golden Horde.

Few of the population survived, nearly all of them moved to northern territories.

According to one theory, there was some degree of mixing between it and the Cuman-Kipchaks of the Horde during the ensuing period, yet according to another theory called Bulgarism, the Bulgars did not mix with the Cuman-Kipchaks.

The group as a whole accepted the language of the Kipchaks and the ethnonym "Tatars" (although the name Bulgars persisted in some places), while the bulk of invaders eventually converted to Islam.