Centuries later the Balkar homeland was finally annexed to Russia. The Russians used the name of “Mountain Tartars” or “Mountain Turks” for all of the Turko-Tatar people groups of the Caucasus.
In the last 15 years there has been a significant surge of Islam in Tatarstan, though the majority of the Tatar population remains nominally or culturally Muslim. In 1990 there were about 100 mosques in the entire Republic, and by 2004 there were over 1000.
