Татарская и караимская общины в XIX веке: демографический аспект

Santrauka

This paper is based on the analysis of registers of births, marriages, divorces, and deaths. Records of the Forty Tatars (Keturiasdešimt Totorių, Vilnius province, Trakai district) and Nemėžis (Vilnius district) Tatar communities in Lithuania go back to 1833–1905 (although record books were conducted to 1940); records of the Trakai and Naujamiestis (Kaunas province, Panevėžys district) Karaim communities were compiled in 1859–1904. The demographic behaviour was typical of Tatar and Karaim families (age 25–30 for men, 21–25 for women, but many brides were 25–30). The reason for late marriages could have been the military service of Tatars. Good conjugal circumstances played an important role as well: in both the Tatar and the Karaim communities, the husband had to grant a pay to his wife in the case of divorce; also, in a the Karaim community, gifts to a bride and a woman’s dowry were obligatory. Matrimony usually occurred between members of the same community. There are known very few marriages with the Kazan Tatars and the Crimean Karaims. In both the Tatar and the Karaim communities, the practice of remarrying was spread because of the high mortality. It allowed keeping the structure of a whole family. Divorce was an exceptionally rare phenomenon. The birth rate was higher in the Karaim community. During the period under discussion, their families would gave birth to 3.1 children, versus 2.6 in the Tatars families. However, in both communities there were a lot of large families. True, children’s mortality was very high. The percentage of children who died before the age of 5 comprised 19.1 in the Tatar families and 29.5 in the Karaim families. The reproductive conditions of both communities were poor. In the Karaim community, the number of births only slightly exceeded the number deaths, and, for example, in the Forty Tatars community this ratio was negative. Although both Tatars and Karaims died from similar diseases, tuberculosis was more typical among the Tatars, and the Karaim children often died from epilepsy.