Tängre
Tatar · deity · Tatar traditional religion; continuing · deity
Tängre is the supreme god of the sky in the traditional religion of the Volga Tatars, the local form of the pan-Turkic and Mongolic Tengri worshipped across the Eurasian steppe. Conceived as the boundless blue heaven itself, he presides over fate, the ordering of the world and the granting of rule. The cult descends from the pre-Islamic religion of the Volga Bulgars, ancestors of the Kazan Tatars, whose belief in a single sovereign of the sky was noted by the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan in 922. After the region's Islamisation the older sky-god was not so much abolished as absorbed: the word tängre passed into ordinary Tatar as the common noun for God, so that the ancient deity survives embedded in everyday speech.
Domains
- sky
- sovereignty
- fate
Powers
- ordains fate and lifespan
- grants rule to khans
Epithets
- Кук Тәңре
Sources
- F. I. Urmanche, Татар мифологиясе: энциклопедик сүзлек, 3 vols., Kazan: Tatar kitap näshriyate, 2008–2011, s.v. Тәңре.
- L. N. Gumilyov, Древние тюрки, Moscow: Nauka, 1967.
- Ibn Fadlan, Risāla (account of the embassy to the Volga Bulgars), 922 CE.