HISTORIOGRAPHY OF «BURTASSKAYA PROBLEM»
IN THE SECOND HALF OF XX – BEGINNING XXI CENTURY 

Stavitsky Vladimir Vyacheslavovich, Doctor of historical sciences, associate professor, professor, sub-department of general history, historiography and archaeology, Penza State University (40 Krasnaya street, Penza, Russia), stawiczky. v@yandex. ru 

930.1[09] 

Background. Despite the 150-year history of the study the «burtasskaya problem » still remains to be of acutely controversial nature. Until the middle of the last century, there existed a prevailing view of Mordovian ethnicity of Burtases. It was based on the data from Arabian sources. Now the materials of complex researches are widely used. The aim of the article is to analyze the current views of orientalists, archaeologists and linguists on «burtasskaya problem».
Results. Burtasy are the medieval people known from the reports by Arabian authors, most of which are dated back to IX century. Fragmentariness of the written sources does not solve the problem of ethnicity and territorial localization, and has speculative reconstruction of the main stages of historical development.
Conclusions. Usage of the data of linguistics and archeology allowed the researchers to focus on three basic concepts of ethnicity of Burtases: Mordovian, Alan and Turkic, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is possible that the name of the people appeared in Alan environment, then was shifted to srednetsninskaya Mordovians and in XVI century was assigned to the Western Turkicspeaking population of the Volga region. 

Burtases, Volga Bulgaria, Mordovians, Alans, Saltovo-Mayak culture, historiography, Middle Ages. 

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