Tartary on an old map: a name or an empire?
Three Library of Congress maps label northern Asia Tartary. That historical name is not evidence of a single empire ruling the whole region.
How Ortelius named these lands
The Library of Congress catalogues a 1603 edition of Ortelius's map Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus, covering northern Asia. The research record transcribes the label Tartaria as a geographic term and notes that catalogue metadata establishes the map's identity and terminology, not political semantics. Library of Congress ↗
A century later
Guillaume de L'Isle's Carte de Tartarie of 1706, also in the Library of Congress, repeats the label across Siberia and northern Asia. The record marks the map-level meaning and boundaries as still to be analyzed against contemporary geographic writing. Library of Congress ↗
Empire and region in one title
A 1739 general map of the Russian Empire and of Great and Lesser Tartary in Europe and Asia separates the two terms in its very title. The record reads this as evidence about historical cartographic terminology, not by itself evidence of a state structure. Library of Congress ↗
Region name or evidence of a state?
Label presence alone is not evidence of centralized sovereignty, the record says. What other sources, administrative, diplomatic, or travel accounts, would you need before reading a regional name as a political claim?