Old Tatar language (Iske imla: يسكى تاتار تلى (translit. İske Tatar tele)) is a literary language used in the Khanate of Kazan and among Muslim Tatars. With the Ottoman language and Chaghatay, they were the only three Turkic literary languages used in Middle Ages. Old Tatar Language is a language of Idel-Ural poetry, and until the twentieth century, it was the official language of international communication between Tatars, Russians, all Caucasians and Central Asians.
Language uses Iske imla variant of Arabic script.
Old Tatar is a member of the Kypchak (or Northwestern) group of Turkic languages, although it is partly derived from the ancient Bolgar language (the first poems in Old Tatar dates back to Volga Bulgaria's epoch). It included many Persian and Arabic words. It was actively used in publishing until 1905, when the first Tatar gazette started publishing in modern Tatar, which until then had been used only in a spoken form.
See: Tatar alphabet
