1. Thank you Jim for your kind words, but my contribution was rather insignificant.
2. When it comes to tatar history, while I'm pretty sure there should be some (probably polish ?) books on lithuanian and polish tatars, the whole topic is very poorly researched. The reasons in my opinion being current poverty of tatars, endless inter-tribal warfare that in the past have led to the destruction of major centers of tatar civilization, preserverance of nomadic lifestyle (extremely complicating the efforts of archeology), relative isolation from other centers of civilization, replacement of yasa by islam (in my opinion have lead to acceptance of arab/mamluk point of view on mongol/tatar history).
A good example - why there are so many hexagrams on tatar coats of arms ? The obvious answer is an islamic one - it's a seal of Solomon. Unfortunately it creates more questions than answers:
While another extremely popular symbol is an eight point star (octagramm) ? It has no specific symbolism in Islam. Why hexagrams very often appear multiple times - 3 hexgrams in Bucharin's symbolics, 4+1 in Usupov's ? Why this symbol sometimes predates what we consider an islamic period in turkish history, if not islam itself ? Sometimes it's been explained as a jewish symbol, but it does not remove the main problem, which is that besides speculations we know very little.
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