The Mari were first mentioned in Khazar sources in the 10th century, where the then Khazar Kagan Joseph mentiones the 'Tsarmis' among the tribes who paid the Khazars tribute. Around that time, the Mari lived in the area north of ​​the Volga River, between Kievan Rus’ and Volga Bulgaria. At that moment the Mari inhabited appreciably wider areas centered on the present Mari-El. In the west their territory reached the Unzha river in the eastern part of the modern day Kostroma Oblast’. To the north and east, the Vyatka River formed the border with the Permians. A part of the Mari recognized the Volga-Bulgarian rule, but they largely maintained their own autonomy. Contact with the Russians must also have begun early, since the Kievan chronicle mentiones that the Mari were paying taxes to Kievan Rus' already in the 11th century. However, this most likely only refers to a western group, since the Mari were at that time mostly under Turkic influence.

In 1223, the Mongol army defeated the combined Russian and Cuman army in the decisive battle of the Kalka river, which is in present-day eastern Ukraine. After this victory, the Mongol army moved north to subjugate Volga Bulgaria. However, the Mongols were ambushed and defeated by the Volga Bulgarian army, but in 1236 the Mongol army returned and Volga-Bulgaria was subdued in 5 years. As a result of the invasion, many Bolgars moved to the north, where they gradually assimilated with the newly arrived Tatars. Consequently, the Bolgar influence on the culture and language of the Mari grew altough no attempts were made to impose Islam. Even today these Turkish influences are still present, most strongly among the Meadow-Mari and to a lesser extent among the Hill-Mari.

In 1443 they became part of the Khanate of Kazan, which was one of the successor states of the Golden Horde. With the Russian conquest of Kazan in 1552, the Mari also became a part of the Tsardom of Russia. However, during the Kazan rebellion (also known as the ‘First Cheremis war’) which lasted from 1552 to 1556 the Mari fought alongside the Tatars, Chuvash, Mordvins and Udmurts against Russian aiming to restore the Khanate of Kazan, but they were defeated but Ivan IV suppressed the uprising. Two more uprisings followed, but these too were both crushed by the Russian armies. From about 1700, but possibly already eralier, many Mari moved to the east, including Bashkortostan, to escape the Russian Christianization. This group, commonly called ‘Eastern Mari’, still exists to this day and speaks a different dialect. Under the tsars, the Mari managed to preserve their ethnic and cultural identity relatively well. Russian colonization started rather late in comparison to the other Uralic peoples. This is one of the causes that have led to the fact that the Mari have probably best preserved their own culture and identity of all the Uralic peoples in the Russian Federation.

At the time of the Soviet Union, large numbers of Russians entered the territory of the Mari. During the Great Purge under Stalin, many prominent Mari, such as writer Yanysh Yalkayn and poet Sergey Chavayn, were executed. In 1936 the Mari ASSR was founded. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Mari-El Republic, a revival of Mari culture and language arose. Unfortunately, when Leonid Markelov became president of Mari-El in 2001, a period of intense Russification began. In 2017, to the relief of most of the population, he was fired by President Vladimir Putin and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Unfortunatly, when Aleksander Yevstifeyev came to power in 2017 little improved. At the beginning of 2022, Yevstifeyev suddenly resigned and Yuriy Zaytsev became president.

The Mari language is usually divided into 4 different dialects (or people groups), which can also be seen as separate languages:

- The Meadow-Mari are the largest and most dominant people group. When people talk about the 'Mari language', they usually refer to the Meadow-Mari language. The Meadow-Mari live north of the river Volga, in the central and western part of Mari-El, where the capital of the Republic, Yoshkar-Ola, is also located. The Meadow-Mari have their own standard language with its own alphabet.

- The Hill-Mari are the second largest people group. They live mainly in the Gornomariyskiy District, south of the Volga, which is located in the southern part of Mari-El, but also in the far west of Mari-El. They also have a separate language with its own alphabet.

- The Northwestern Mari are another distinctive people group. They have a separate language, with their own alphabet, which is closely related to Hill-Mari language. However, their language is not officially recognized by the Russian Federation.

- The Eastern Mari are the fourth people group. As explained above, they emigrated to the east in the 17th century, where they developed into a distinct group. They speak the so-called Eastern Dialect, which is different from the Meadow- and Hill-Mari languages.  The main reason for this is that this dialect contains many Tatar and Bashkir loanwords. However, since the grammar of Eastern Mari has almost no differences with Meadow Mari, it is usually seen as a dialect of the latter. The present-day Eastern Mari live mainly in Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk (Which is not in European Russia, but in Siberia, i.e. Asia), Udmurtia, Tatarstan and Perm.

In addition to the above-mentioned groups of the Mari, there are several other sub-divisions, but usually this is based more on geography than on linguistics:

- Forest-Mari: they live in the Western part of Mari-El and are a subdivision of the Hill-Mari.

- Vetluzhskiy Mari: they live in the Northeastern part of the Nizhniy-Novgorod province and are a subdivision of the Meadow-Mari.

- Ural Mari: they are a subgroup of the Eastern Mari and settled in the areas even further east, near the Ural Mountains, in the 16th century.

INTRODUCTION

Traditionaly, it was assumed that the Mari languages, together with the Mordvinic languages, formed the Volga-Finnic branch within the Uralic language family. However, recently most linguists have rejected this theory, and it is now generaly accepted that the Mari languages are a linguistic family on its own. 

It is estimated that the Mari language has between 350,000 and 400,000 native speakers worldwide. Both Hill- and Meadow-Mari, along with Russian, are the official languages of the Republic of Mari-El. Mari consists of three separate languages, each with their own written standard form: Meadow-Mari, Mountain Mari and Northwestern Mari. The languages ​​are very similar but far enough apart to cause problems in communication. The Meadow-Mari and Hill-Mari language differ mainly in phonology. The Northwestern Mari language contains elements of both Meadow- and Hill-Mari and its own written language was established only in 1995. Turkic influences are the most numerous in Meadow-Mari.

All three languages ​​have their own variant of the Russian alphabet. The Hill-Mari language can be recognized by its use of the letters ӓ and ӹ, aside of the letters ӧ and ӱ, which are also used in Meadow-Mari. Northwestern Mari adds two other letters: ө and ӫ. The letter ҥ is used in both Meadow- and Northwestern Mari but doesn't exist in Hill-Mari.

The Meadow-Mari language is classified as 'definitely endangered' and Hill-Mari as 'severely endangered' by Unesco. Altough Russian influence in the Mari languages started only late in the 19th century, code-switching to Russian has recently become an increasingly common occuring phenonmenon.

Cuisine