The Permians are the peoples who speak the

Permic languages The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,0 ...

, a branch of the Uralic language family, which includes Komis, Udmurts, and Besermyans.

History

The ancestors of the Permians originally inhabited the land called

Permia Great Perm, or Perm Land, also known as the Principality of Perm (1451–1505), is a historical region and former principality along the Kama River in Russia. The city of Cherdyn was the center of the region. The region is first mentioned in 1 ...

covering the middle and upper

Kama River The Kama ( , ; ; ), also known as the Chulman ( ; ), is a long«Река КАМА»
Russian St ...

. Permians split into two groups, probably during the 9th century. The Komis came under the rule of the

Novgorod Republic The Novgorod Republic () was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries in northern Russia, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east. Its capital was the city of Novgorod. The ...

in the 13th century and were converted to Russian Orthodoxy in the 1360s and 1370s. From 1471 to 1478, their lands were conquered by the

Grand Duchy of Moscow The Grand Principality of Moscow, or Muscovy, known as the Principality of Moscow until 1389, was a late medieval Russian monarchy. Its capital was the city of Moscow. Originally established as a minor principality in the 13th century, the gra ...

, which would later become the

Tsardom of Russia The Tsardom of Russia, also known as the Tsardom of Moscow, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of tsar by Ivan the Terrible, Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721. ...

. In the 18th century, the Russian authorities opened the southern parts of the land to colonization and the northern parts became a place to which criminal and political prisoners were exiled. The Udmurts came under the rule of the

Tatars Tatars ( )Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary are a group of Turkic peoples across Eas ...

, the

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as ''Ulug Ulus'' ( in Turkic) was originally a Mongols, Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the division of ...

and the

Khanate of Kazan The Khanate of Kazan was a Tatar state that occupied the territory of the former Volga Bulgaria between 1438 and 1552. The khanate covered contemporary Tatarstan, Mari El, Chuvashia, Mordovia, and parts of Udmurtia and Bashkortostan; ...

until their land was ceded to Russia, and the people were Christianized at the beginning of the 18th century. A connection between Permians and Bjarmians, a northern people mentioned in Old Norse sources, has been suggested. Recent research on the

Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic languages, Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in ...

substrate in northern Russian dialects suggests that in Bjarmaland there once lived speakers of other Finno-Ugric languages beside the Permians.Saarikivi, Janne: ''Substrata Uralica. Studies in Finno-Ugric substrate in northern Russian dialects.'' Doctoral dissertation. Tartu 2006: 294-295. http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/hum/suoma/vk/saarikivi/substrat.pdf

Notes

References

{{Ethnic groups of Russia Finno-Ugric peoples

History

See also

Notes

References