The Polish Tatars are an intriguing group in the otherwise religiously and culturally homogeneous region that is Wielopolska. They live in Trzcianka, a town in the north of our region, where they came after WWII. They were forced to leave their family homes in the towns and villages around Wilno (Vilnius), Grodno (Hrodna) and Nowogródek (Navahrudak) – all now in Lithuania and Belarus — when Poland’s borders were changed. The Polish Tatars are Muslims, although they subscribe to the liberal Sunni Hanafi school, and have absorbed the customs of the environment in which they live while observing the principles and traditions of Islam.

The Polish Tatars are descended from Mongolian people who settled in Lithuania, where they found suitable living conditions, at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. The Dukes of Lithuania invited military Tartar settlements on their territory as a deliberate and planned strategy to protect their borders from incursion. Their ethnic and cultural identity was guaranteed full recognition. Complete tolerance was undoubtedly crucial to the survival of this group as it let them safeguard their identity and cultivate their religion and traditions. The Tatar villages of Bohoniki and Kruszyniany acquired special significance after the war as they became the only places in Poland with mosques and Muslim cemeteries.