#or the sibir khanates !!

[madizenmadi]

i hate writing for hetalia when i need to use other characters that either barely exist in canon or don't exist at all, so I have to make up names and personalities and looks and everything for them but also i don't want to get information wrong but also i don't wanna research for DAYS for this ONE scene and ahHHHHHHHHH

[mapsontheweb]

The Shibanid (Shaybanid) Conquests, 1500-1510.

by u/Swordrist

This is my attempt at covering an underapreciated area of history which gets next-to no coverage on the internet. Here's some historical context for those uneducated about the region's history:

Grandson of the former Uzbek Khan, Abulkhayr, Muhammad Shibani (or Shaybani) was a member of the clan labeled in modern historiography as the Abulkhayrids, who were one of the numerous tribes which were descended from Chingis Khan through Jochi's son, Shiban, hence the label 'Shibanid' which is used not only in relation to the Abulkhayrids who ruled over Bukhara but also for the Arabshahids, bitter rivals of the Abulkhayrids who would rule Khwaresm after Muhammad Shibani's death and for the ruling Shibanid dynasty of the Sibir Khanate.

After his grandfather's death in 1468, Shibani's father, Shah Budaq failed to maintain Abulkhayr's vast polity in the Dasht i-Qipchak, as the tribes elected instead the Arabshahid Yadigar Khan. Shah Budaq was killed by the Khan of Sibir and Shibani was forced to flee south to the Syr Darya region when the Kazakhs returned and proclaimed their leader, Janibek, Khan. Shibani became a mercenary, serving both the Timurid and their Moghul enemies in their wars over the eastern peripheries of Transoxiana. After the crushing defeat of the Timurid Sultan Ahmed Mirza, Shibani succeeded in attracting a significant following of Uzbeks which formed the powerbase from he launched his conquests.

Emerging from Sighnaq in 1499, Muhammad Shibani captured Bukhara and Samarkand in 1500. In the same year he defeated an attempt by Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire) to take Samarkand. Over the course of the next six years, Shibani and the Uzbek Sultans conquered Tashkent, Ferghana, Khwarezm and the mountainous Pamir and Badakhshan areas. In 1506, he crossed the Amu-Darya and captured Balkh. The Timurid Sultan of Herat, Husayn Bayqara moved against him however died en-route and his two squabbling sons were defeated and killed. The following year he crossed the Amu-Darya again, this time vanquishing the Timurids of Herat and Jam and subjugating the entirety of Khorasan east of Astarabad. In 1508, he raided as far south as Kerman and Kandahar, however he moved back North and launched two campaigns against the Kazakhs, but the third one launched in 1510 ended in his defeat and retreat to Samarkand at the hands of Qasim Sultan.

The Abulkhayrid conquests heralded a mass migration of over 300 000 Uzbeks to the settled regions of Central Asia from the Dasht i-Qipchak. They heralded the return of Chingissid political tradition and structures and the end of the Persianate Timurid polities which had dominated the region for the last century. It forever after changed the demographic of the region. His reign was also the last time Transoxiana was closely linked with Khorasan, as following the shiite Safavid conquests the divide between the two regions would grow into a permanent one.

In 1510, Shibani faced his end when he moved to face Ismail Safavid, who was making moves on Khorasan. Lacking the support of the Abulkhayrid Sultans, who blamed him for their defeat against the Kazakhs earlier that year, he faced Ismail anyway, where he was defeated, killed and turned into a drinking cup.

Shibani's death caused a complete reversal of the Abulkhayrid fortunes. Khorasan and the rest of his empire fell under Safavid dominion. However in Khwaresm, Sultan Budaq's old rivals the Arabshahids expelled the qizilbash and founded their own Khanate, based first in Urgench and then Khiva. In Transoxiana, Babur lost the support of the populace when he announced his conversion to Shiism and his loyalty to Shah Ismail, which allowed the Abulkhayrids to rally behind Shibani's nephew, Ubaydullah Khan and expel the Qizilbash. Nonetheless, the Abulkhayrids would never again hold as much power as they briefly did when led by Muhammad Shibani Khan.

[mostly-history]

Yermak's Conquest of Siberia (1895), by Vasily Surikov.

[autodidact-adventures]

Siberian History (Part 6): The Time of Troubles

By the late 1500s, Russia was one of the largest nations on earth. Its many principalities had been united by stealth & force under the reign of Moscow, and now that the Khanates of Kazan & Astrakhan on the Volga River had been subjugated, Russia was now a multinational state.

From Ivan the Terrible onwards, the tsar claimed to rule by “divine right”.  This was already common in Europe, but the Russian tsar's power was autocratic and absolute.  One contemporary wrote about Ivan, “like Nebuchadnezzar, he slew, had beaten, elevated, or humbled whomsoever he wished.”

The state bureaucracy was growing, and near the top was the Boyar Dumar, the royal council made up mostly of men of noble birth.  There was also an inner cabinet of councillors, whom the tsar could consult.  But it was said of Ivan that he often did so “in the manner of Xerxes, the Persian Emperor, who assembled the Asian princes not so much to secure their advice...as to personally declare his will.”

Russia had a population of about 13 million people, mostly impoverished peasants who worked on large estates, or worked their garden-like plots in tiny hamlets across the land.

The old aristocracy had been humbled somewhat, and the service gentry had arisen to take its place.  The difference between the two was that the old aristocracy inherited their titles & land by inheritance, whereas the service gentry were awarded estates for service to the tsar.  However, the service gentry would eventually acquire many of the prerogatives of the aristocracy, including titles and inheritable estates.

Russia had no true middle class, independent merchant guilds, or any mercantile economy of the sort that was beginning to grow in many European countries.  The gosts (“great merchants”) were appointed by the Crown.  All offices & positions were in the employ of the state, i.e. “state service”.

Travel within Russia was restricted, and travel abroad was almost unknown, “that Russians might not learn of the free institutions that exist in foreign lands.”  Police surveillance was widespread, and people had the “duty to denounce” – no matter what rank or standing people had, they had to politically inform on each other, and report whatever they knew or heard about disloyal acts or thoughts.

Punishments were harsh, and torture was common.  People could be torn to pieces with iron hooks, beheaded or impaled, branded with red-hot irons, have their limbs cut off, or beaten with the knout.  The “knout” was a short whip with a tapered end, and attacked to this tapered end were three tongs of hard tanned elk hide, which cut like knives.

The roads were poor, and there were no inns between towns for travellers.  Alcoholism was a major problem throughout the nation.  There was little intellectual curiosity – even a simple knowledge of astronomy, such as the ability to predict eclipses, could lead to a charge of witchcraft.

One foreign diplomat said that the habit of oppression had “set a print into the very mindes of the people.  For as themselves are verie hardlie and cruellie dealte withall by their chiefe magistrates and other superiours, so are they as cruell one against an other, specially over their inferiours and such as are under them.  So that the basest and wretchedest [peasant] that stoupeth and croucheth like a dog to the gentleman, and licketh up the dust that lieth at his feete, is an intollerable tyrant where he hath the advantage.”

Foreigners saw the Russians as a semi-barbaric, insular people and state, arrogantly self-assured as the true bearer of Christianity, but rife with ignorance, supersitition and immorality.  One visitor to Muscovy made up a rhyme about it:

Churches, ikons, crosses, bells, / Painted whores and garlic smells, / Vice and vodka everyplace – / This is Moscow's daily face.

To loiter in the market air, / To bathe in common, bodies bare, / To sleep by day and gorge by night, / To belch and fart is their delight.

Thieving, murdering, fornication / Are so common in this nation, / No one thinks a brow to raise – / Such are Moscow's sordid days.

But it was not as bad as foreigners claimed.  The common people were genuinely religious, and a renaissance was taking place – through trade and other contracts, Western cultural influences were beginning to have an effect.  These influences, combined with Russia's rich Byzantine heritage, might have brought about a true renaissance, but these currents would be overwhelmed by the bloody legacies of the immediate past.

Ivan the Terrible's tyrrany had divided the nation in two; and the social enmities he had created would outlive him.  In 1581, he killed his eldest son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, during an argument.  When he died himself in 1584, his son Fyodor succeeded him.

Fyodor I was absent-minded and reluctant to be monarch, and he relied heavily on the boyars appointed to be his guardians.  Plots sprung up, a power struggle ensued, and Boris Godunov became the dominant figure behind the throne.  Boris was a noble of Tatar origin, and his sister was married to Fyodor.  Soon, he was recognized as Lord Protector (as the English called him), and the de facto head of state.

Under Godunov's reign, trade prospered, revenue increased, taxes decreased, and peace returned. Fugitive peasants returned to their homesteads, more arable land was cultivated, grain prices fell, and granaries recorded large surpluses.  Construction increased, with stone walls around Moscow and Smolensk; many new churches, expanded port facilities at Arkhangel, and the completion of the Ivan the Great Belltower in the Kremlin, reaching upwards in three tapering octagonal tiers.

There was military progress as well.  Godunov made headway against the nomadic peoples in the southern steppes (between Russia and the Crimea), established a series of important fortified towns, recoered territory lost to Sweden during the Livonian War, and pushed Siberian conquest eastwards from the Ob River.

When Fyodor died in 1598 without an heir, Godunov was offered the crown.  He denied it three times, to demonstrate the inevitability of his succession, and looked to the masses for his support.  At his coronation (in the Dormition Cathedral on September 1st, 1598) , he declared: “As God is my witness, there will not be a poor man in my stardom!” and tore the jewelled collar froms his gown.  Jealous nobles called him Rabotsar, which means “the Tsar of slaves”.

There are no known contemporary portraits of Godunov, but this is what he probably looked like.

After Godunov's coronation, favours were announced, army & administration officials received a substantial salary increase, merchants were granted tax breaks, and the natives of Western Siberia were exempted from taxes for a year. Godunov said: “We take a moderate tribute, as much as each can pay...And from the poor people, who cannot pay the tribute, no tribute is to be taken, so that none of the Siberian people should be in need.”

But this could not solve all the problems.  The biggest problem was the competition among landed proprietors for peasants to work their estates.  The more prosperous of them tempted peasants away from their smaller holdings.  Many of these small holdings were held on military tenure, so their decline affected the security of the nation.

The government tried to solve this problem by binding the peasants to the soil.  Peasants' freedom of movement had already been severely curtailed over the years, but now new decrees pushed them towards serfdom.

The service gentry squeezed everything they could from their peasants, who were already near breaking point because of state taxation.  As a consequence, violence spread.  In Russia's heartland, bands of highwaymen (who were once peasants) ransacked monasteries & manorial estates.  Along the southern frontier, legions of the disaffected accumulated.  Things were moving towards rebellion.

From 1601 – 03, protracted crops failures led to famine and mass starvation.  Godunov distributed money and grain from the public treasury to those who were destitute, but widespread hoarding & profiteering by landlords & merchants (including the Stroganov family) not only negated his actions but made it worse.  

Whole villages were wiped out. People ate cats, dogs and rats, as well as bark and straw.  Human flesh was sold in public markets.  An eyewitness wrote that every day in Moscow, “people perished in their thousands like flies on winter days.  Men carted the dead away and dumped them into ditches, as was done with mud and refuse, but in the morning, “bodies half devoured, and other things so horrible that the hair stood up on end” could be seen.  A court apothecary rescued a little girl from starvation, and entrusted her to a peasant family; he later learned that they had eaten her.

Thousands of unemployed labourers, and peasants abandoned to their fate by uncaring masters, scavenged throughout the countryside, or fled into the wilderness. This was the Time of Troubles, which lasted from 1598 to 1613.

It was beyond Godunov's control, and his standing fell.  He was a legitimate tsar, properly elected; but he couldn't claim any dynastic link with Russia's “sacred” past.  People soon began to see him as a ruthless usurper who had taken the throne through violence, crime and deceit. ��Rumours spread that he'd murdered Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich (Ivan the Terrible's 9-year-old son by his seventh wife); that he'd poisoned his own sister; that he'd poisoned Fyodor I himself.  Godunov's spy network uncovered many plots, but discontent was still growing stronger.

There was an uprising in 1603 by peasants, fugitive slaves and bandits, which the army put a stop to. The people began to long for the protection of a “born tsar”, romanticizing even the worst parts of their past.

Then a rumour sprang up that Tsarevich Dmitry had miraculously survived his assassination, and was about to retake the throne.  The pretender (known later as False Dmitry I) was backed by the Poles, and in October 1604 he crossed into Muscovy, leading an army of mercenaries and volunteers.  This False Dmitry was conventionally ugly, “a strange and ungainly figure with facial warts and arms of unequal length”.  He was a charismatic leader, and many people joined his cause.  His army was over 16,000 men by November.  Godunov, feeling helpless, turned to sorcery & divination to try and alter his fate.

False Dmitry I.

Godunov died on April 13th, 1605, from poison or a stroke.  His wife and son were murdered within the next few weeks, and the Kremlin was stormed.  False Dmitry I ruled for nearly a year, from June 10th, 1605, to May 17th, 1606.

Then he was toppled by Vasily Shuisky, who became Tsar Vasily IV.  Shuisky had the right pedigree, but not popular support.

New uprisings and foreign invasions followed this.  In June 1607, False Dmitry II, again backed by the Poles, advanced on Moscow.  This led to Vasily IV's deposition in July 1610, and the installation of a Polish tsar, Vladislav I (he would later become King of Poland, in 1632).

Vasily IV (17th-century painting).

It seemed as if Muscovy would be partitioned.  Russian popular armies rose up in the north and east, and advanced with patriotic fervour.  On October 25th, 1612, the Polish garrison in the Kremlin capitulated, and the foreigners were driven out.

On February 21st, 1613, a national assembly elected a new tsar.  This was Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov (Mikhail I), the grand-nephew of Anastasia Romanova, Ivan the Terrible's first wife.  The Time of Troubles then came to an end.

[tanadrin]

There are plenty of larger regions named for what were once smaller regions; “Italy” once meant a region at the southwestern tip of the peninsula,  “Russia” expanded as a geographical term as the empire marched east, “Yamato” originally applied to a small region around Nara before becoming a metonym for Japan as a whole, but I’m having trouble thinking of many regions or countries which are named after a single city or similarly small place that eventually expanded to encompass a broad area. There’s Mexico, of course; possibly Siberia, since IIRC the Sibir Khanate took its name from its capital (also called Qashliq). Romania and Rum are originally both named after Rome, of course (and get additional points for not containing the place they’re named for!).

[lightdancer1]

This is also where it's worth noting one nuance of the Eurocentric historic bias that prevails all too often:

There is one part of modern Europe that really can rely on a decolonization framework to explain its history and its cultural....issues. The Balkans, where the Osmanli Devleti's power over them was dismantled mostly by outside factors deciding to exploit the Russian provision in an 18th Century treaty that Ottoman Christians were useful pawns. They were conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled them and exploited them as provinces, and did as much as it could to enforce Islamic and Turko-Islamic culture and to convert people who did not want to be converted any more than anyone conquered in any other holy war.

No other part can, though this is a framework that is rather interesting when applied to medieval and early modern Spain and Russia and showcasing how decolonization in one sense can and does lead right into new empires spawning out of the corpses of the older ones. Spain went straight from crushing the last trace of Al-Andalus to the conquest of the Americas, and the foundations of the first core of Latin America (insert obligatory reference to that map showing South America to Mexico scooped out and the wealth on Europe everywhere except Spain and Portugal and how much this shows ahistorical understandings of a significant portion of the Western hemisphere here).

Russia overthrew the Golden Horde and then went straight into the conquest of the Khanates of Astrakhan and Sibir, two of its successors, and from there went overnight from the fringe of northern Europe to the most triumphant example of the space filling empire. Decolonization from the imperialism of the Jochids did not make the Russians empathetic or any less imperialist under the Romanovs.

Given decolonization frameworks applied to the Republic of India annexing Goa, ruled by the Portuguese for around 500 years, long before the Raj, after they conquered it, it's hard to accept any framework that would extend it in some of the ways the Global South is right to insist it should and that the experiences of the Reconquista and the regathering of the Russias is really that different as historical patterns.

One can also argue at least in part that awareness of that vulnerability is why Spaniards and Russians were somewhat more efficiently murderously aggressive than other Europeans at the start and interested in being so.

Not that Al-Andalus and the Khanate of the Golden Horde show up much in Eurocentric takes of European history. It wouldn't do to note Europe's most brilliant civilization in the medieval era was the last redoubt of the Ummayyad Caliphate, nor that its largest medieval state was the Jochid Khanate in the Russian steppe.

[bartholomaus]

Daily reminder that Russia didn't "colonize" her Asian parts. She just fought back against the Mongols, wreaking havoc (enslaving...) in Russia. They conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552, the Khanate of Astrakhan in 1556 & the Khanate of Sibir in 1582. To defend themselves.

Oh, and I can add: they didn't take that land from the Mongols. They took it back from them.... yes, Northern Asia (and Northern America) used to be EUROPEAN (by blood).

[bm2ab]

Arrivals & Departures - 25 August 1530 Celebrate Ivan IV Vasilyevich [Ivan the Terrible] Day!

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (/ˈaɪvən/; Russian: Ива́н Васи́льевич, tr. Ivan Vasilyevich; 25 August 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584), commonly known as Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Ива́н Гро́зный​ (help·info), Ivan Grozny; "Ivan the Formidable" or "Ivan the Fearsome"), was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Tsar of Russia from 1547 to 1584.

Ivan was the crown prince of Vasili III, the Rurikid ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and was appointed Grand Prince at three years-old after his father's death. Ivan was proclaimed Tsar (Emperor) of All Rus' in 1547 at the age of seventeen, establishing the Tsardom of Russia with Moscow as the predominant state. Ivan's reign was characterized by Russia's transformation from a medieval state into an empire under the Tsar, though at immense cost to its people and its broader, long-term economy. Ivan conquered the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Sibir, with Russia becoming a multiethnic and multicontinental state spanning approximately 4,050,000 km sq (1,560,000 sq mi), developing a bureaucracy to administer the new territories. Ivan triggered the Livonian War, which ravaged Russia and resulted in the loss of Livonia and Ingria, but allowed him to exercise greater autocratic control over Russia's nobility, whom he violently purged in the Oprichnina. Ivan was an able diplomat, a patron of arts and trade, and the founder of Russia's first publishing house, the Moscow Print Yard. Ivan was popular among Russia's commoners (see Ivan the Terrible in Russian folklore) except for the people of Novgorod and surrounding areas who were subject to the Massacre of Novgorod.

Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, but also prone to paranoia, rages, and episodic outbreaks of mental instability that increased with age. Ivan is popularly believed to have killed his eldest son and heir Ivan Ivanovich and the latter's unborn son during his outbursts, which left the politically ineffectual Feodor Ivanovich to inherit the throne, a man whose rule directly led to the end of the Rurikid dynasty and the beginning of the Time of Troubles.

[solchrom]

Patrolling the mountainous regions of the Urals separating the historic Tsardom of Muscovy from the Sibir Khanate . . . . . . . . . . . #KobaTheDread #BlackRussianTerrier #HoundOfTheBolsheviks #ScourgeOfTheFascists #StalinsKillingMachine #PrideOfSiberia #SiberianBeast #FirstSovietArmouredDivision #SovietRedBannerNorthernFleet #InSovietUnionDogWalksYou #ToTheGulag #ReleaseTheKraken #140PoundsOfSocialistSavagery #DogsOfInstagram #defendingthemotherland #СлаваРодине! (at David Balfour Park)

[the-rulers-of-russia-en-blog]

Ivan the Terrible (16.01.1547—18.03.1584)

For other uses, see Ivan the Terrible (disambiguation). Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Ива́н Васи́льевич, tr. Ivan Vasilyevich; 3 September [O.S. 25 August] 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584), commonly known as Ivan the Terrible or Ivan the Fearsome (Russian:  Ива́н Гро́зный​ (help·info), Ivan Grozny), was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and 'Tsar of All the Russias' from 1547 until his death in 1584. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan, Khanate of Astrakhan and Khanate of Sibir, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multicontinental state spanning almost one billion acres, approximately 4,050,000 km2 (1,560,000 sq mi). Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias. Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental instability, that increased with his age, affecting his reign. In one such outburst, he killed his groomed and chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich. This left the Tsardom to be passed to Ivan's younger son, the weak and intellectually disabled Feodor Ivanovich. Ivan's legacy is complex: he was an able diplomat, a patron of arts and trade, founder of the Moscow Print Yard, Russia's first publishing house, a leader highly popular among the common people (see Ivan the Terrible in Russian folklore) of Russia, but he is also remembered for his paranoia and arguably harsh treatment of the Russian nobility. The Massacre of Novgorod is regarded as one of the biggest demonstrations of his mental instability and brutality.[better source needed] More details Android, Windows

[autodidact-adventures]

Siberian History (Part 7): Mangazeya

The Russian frontiersmen in Siberia still had to depend on Moscow for support (such as administrative & logistical support).  During the Time of Troubles, the Siberian garrison was mostly left to themselves, which lead to disease, starvation and death.

The natives peoples of Siberia took the opportunity to make several attempts at an uprising.  The most powerful was in 1608, when Princess Anna of Koda, a “Tartar Joan of Arc”, nearly succeeded in uniting the entire native population of Western Siberia to revolt.

In 1612, an attempt was made to re-establish the old Khanate of Sibir “as it had been in the time of Kuchum”.  But it was betrayed at the last minute, and ten of its ringleaders were rounded up and hanged.

By now, the Russian occupation of the Ob-Irtysh Basin had increased the nation's size by a third.  But in Moscow, Siberia still wasn't properly understood as a geographical entity, and so it was used as a political bargaining chip.

Boris Godunov, for example, tried get an influential boyar to support him against False Dmitry I, by promisng him “the Kingdoms of Kazan, Astrakhan, and all Siberia”.  The False Dmitry II promised to reward his brother-in-law, a powerful Polish noble, with “the whole land of Siberia” for his help.

But the Ob-Irtysh Basin had scarcely been secured before the Russian advance into the next great river valley, the Yenisei, began.

The Russians ascended the eastern tributaries of the Ob River, and crossed a low plateau to streams flowing into the Yenisei.  By 1619, they had taken all the important river routes and portages that connected those two rivers.  They organized expeditions from Mangazeya (in the north) and Tomsk & Ketsk (in the south), coming at the river valley from both directions.

The Taz Estuary marks the area where Mangazeya was located.

They met the Tungu people on the lower Yenisei, and the Buryats (whom they'd never heard of before) on the upper Yenisei.  The Buryats lived in a region that was rich in furs, and they practised animal husbandry; they were rumoured to grow crops and have access to silver.  This was guaranteed to interest Russia.

The Tungu people (east of the Yenisei) and the Buryats (around Lake Baikal) fought to prevent Russia from establishing bases in their territory, but failed.  Yeniseysk was founded in 1619 (where the Angara and Yenisei Rivers meet); Krasnoyarsk was founded in 1627 (astride cliffs of red-coloured marl); and Bratsk was founded in 1631 (on the Angara River).

On the upper Yenisei River (the southern part of it), the Russians met the staunch resistance of the Kyrgyz people and the Kalmuks, both steppe nomads.  Their homelands bordered Siberia to the south, and they were continually hostile.  Eventually, a solidly-fortified line was established over the southern frontier, but this would take two centuries.

Meanwhile, Russian mariners had developed the sea route north of Russia from Arkhangel to Mangazeya (which was just a few miles above the Arctic Circle).  At Mangazeya, they bartered goods with the local Khanty and Samoyedic peoples for furs.  Mangazeya prospered and grew, attracting more and more traders, who were willing to navigate the treacherous waters of the Kara Sea.

One contemporary account says that: “Hundreds of thousands of sable, ermine, silver and blue fox skins, and countless tons of precious mammoth and walrus ivory” were shipped every year from Mangazeya and Europe.  This was an illicit trade that had begun during the Time of Troubles, and the government couldn't manage to gain control of it.

Porcelain, silk, and other expensive fabrics were traded (through middlemen) from Central Asia & China to Mangazeya.  The city was “a virtual Baghdad of Siberia, where big commercial deals were celebrated at fabulous feasts that lasted for days, and that featured the best European wines and local delicacies like sturgeon, caviar, mushrooms, berries, and venison and other game.”

By the time stability was restored in Moscow, reports of Siberia's vast wealth in furs had spread far and wide.  This, of course, attracted the attention and greed of European powers who wanted new colonies.  The Russian government worried that foreign agents might try to trade directly with the natives, or even attempt an armed invasion (through the Taz Estuary) to seize the whole of north-western Siberia.

Meanwhile, inland merchants working out of the Urals, Tyumen and Tobolsk were envious of Mangazeya, as it siphoned off commerce that would otherwise have come to them.

So in 1619, the Russian government closed the sea route to Mangazeya. They forbade even Russians to use it, in case foreigners found it out from them.  Anyone who broke this law was to be “put to the hardest possible death, and all their homes and families destroyed branch and root”.

Navigational markings were torn up.  Surveillance posts were established along the coast, to intercept and kill anyone who tried to get through.  A coastal fort was built on the Yamal Peninsula, commanding the portage between the Ob Gulf and the Kara Sea.  Maps were falsified to depict Novaya Zemlya as a peninsula, rather than an island.  This would cause problems for later mariners who were using them as nautical guides.

Gradually, Mangazeya declined, and the rich merchants left.  In 1643, its administrative apparatus was moved to Turukhansk – this city was founded at the mouth of the Turukhan River, a tributary of the Yenisei.  For a while, it was known as “New Mangazeya”.

In 1678, Mangazeya was burned to the ground, without any official explanation.  The local Samoyedic peoples called its ruins Tagarevyhard, which means “destroyed town”.  The site wouldn't be rediscovered for almost three centuries.

Mangazeya, perhaps more than any other early settlement, was the proof of the enormous wealth that Siberia possessed.  In 1632, a former military governor of the district strongly encouraged the tsar to press on from the Yenisei to conquer the Lena River Basin.  His encouragement was inspired by the riches of Mangazeya.

[mostly-history]

Messengers from Yermak at the red porch in front of Ivan the Terrible (1884), by Stanisław Jakub Rostworowski.

Cossacks under Yermak Timofeyevich conquered the Khanate of Sibir in the 1580s, marking the beginning of Russia's conquest of Siberia. This was an expedition organized by the Stroganovs, a powerful merchant family, who had originally been given permission by the tsar.  However, the tsar eventually withdrew his permission, afraid that Russia didn't have enough manpower or resources to do the job. The Stroganovs ignored this.

In a letter from November 16th, 1582, the tsar reproved the Stroganovs for “disobedience amounting to treason”. Meanwhile, Yermak had sent Ivan Koltso, his second-in-command, back home to announce the expedition's success.  The tsar planned to hang Koltso, but he prostrated himself before the tsar, proclaimed him lord of the khanate, and displayed his loot (five times the annual tribute the khanate used to pay) to the stunned court.  Ivan immediately pardoned Koltso and Yermak, and promised reinforcements.

[mostly-history]

Portrait of Yermak Timofeyevich (17th century).

Alexei “Yermak” Timofeyevich (d. 1585) was a Cossack ataman, a third-generation bandit and the most notorious pirate on the Volga River at that time.  Army patrols attempting to enforce the tsar's authority on the river forced many Cossacks to flee, and a group under Yermak ended up joining the frontier guard of the Stroganovs, a powerful merchant family.

In 1581, Yermak led the first expedition to Siberia, in which they conquered the capital of the Khanate of Sibir and forced the khan to flee.  However, attrition and declining provisions forced an eventual retreat, and during a doomed river battle with the Tatars, Yermak attempted to escape by boat, but drowned due to the weight of his armour.

[mostly-history]

A miniature from the Kungur Chronicle (late 16th century) showing the fall of Qashliq, capital of the Khanate of Sibir, to the Russians under Yermak.

[autodidact-adventures]

Siberian History (Part 5): Khanate of Sibir

By the end of the 1500s, a large part of the world had been mapped well, but not Siberia – its ice-laden seas along the northern coast had hindered mariners who were searching for China or “Cathay”. Map-makers labelled Northern Asia as Tartary or Great Tartary, but gave it no geographic detail.  The Ob River (thought to have its source in the Aral Sea) was as far east as people had got from the west.

When shown on maps, Tartary was filled in according to the stories and legends the mapmakers had heard – Asiatic nomads among camels and tents, or worshipping idols and pillars of stone.  Sometimes there were accompanying inscriptions identifying them as cannimals, or claiming that they “doe eate serpentes, wormes and other filth”. Other customs ascribed to them were copied from Central Asian tribes that the mapmakers knew about.

Siberia was also seen as an other-worldly, mythological land that extended even as far as the sunrise.  From one contemporary source, “to the east of the sun, to the most-high mountain Karkaraur, where dwell the one-armed, one-footed folk.”

However, a little was known about Siberia.  The Russian Chronicles (chronological records kept by monasteries since the beginning of Russian history) mentioned the territory.  Russian merchants who traded in furs with tribes along the Ob River had long been familiar withYugra (meaning “the land of the Ostyaks”, a local tribe now known as the Khanty).  This was a collective name for the lands & peoples between the Pechora River (west) and the Ural Mountains (east).

In 1236, an itinerant Brother Julian mentioned a “land of Sibur, surrounded by the Northern Sea”.  In 1376, St. Stephen of Perm established a church in the Kama River Valley (west of the Urals), where a former missionary had earlier been skinned alive.

Russia began to give the missionaries military backing in 1455, and soldiers swept along the frontier in 1484.  They captured some tribal chieftains, who were then forced into a treaty that acknowledged Moscow's suzerainty and made them pay tribute.

Khanate of Sibir

The Khanate of Sibir had been established in 1420 when the Mongol Empire was breakking up.  It was a semi-feudal state just east of the Ural Mountains.  It was dominated by the Siberian Tatars, who descended from one of the Mongol fighting groups, or “hordes”. The khanate included Siberian Tatars (Turkic & Muslim), Bashkirs, and various Uralic peoples (including the Khanty, Mansi and Selkup peoples).  Its ruling class was Turco-Mongol.  The khanate's territory stretched east of the Urals to the Irtysh River, and south to the Ishim steppes.

Approximate extent of the Khanate of Sibir in the 1400s - 1500s.

Now it came within the orbit of Muscovite political & military relations.  Moscow had become familiar with the northern sea route from Archangel, although only as far as the northern end of the Ural Mountains.  But there wasn't a southern route into Sibir until Kazan (another Mongol succession state on the Volga River) was captured in 1552.  In 1555, the Taibugid Khan Yadigar acknowledged Ivan the Terrible's suzerainty; Ivan immediately began calling himself the “Tsar of Sibir”.

But Russia still didn't known that beyond the Ob River, Siberia stretched as far as Northern Asia, from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Sibir was a coherent, loosely-confederated state, with trade along ancient caravan routes to western China.  However, it was beset by internal problems as was basically living on borrowed time.  The Siberian Tatars (who had converted to Islam in 1272) clashed with other ethnic groups.  There were inter-tribal hostilities, particularly between the Khanty and Mansi (or Ostyaks and Voguls, as they were called at the time).  From the founding of Sibir, there had been a dynastic struggle between the Shaybanids (descendants of Genghis Khan) and the Taibugids (heirs of a local prince).  Until 1552, the Kazakh Khanate (also Tatar) stood between Sibir and Russia, but now that was not the case anymore.

Along with acknowledging Russia's suzerainty, Yadigar also agreed to pay annual tribute (in the form of furs) to Ivan.  This was an unpopular decision.  It may well have been the reason that in 1563, he was desposed and killed in on the banks of the Irtysh River, in his capital of Qashliq (also called Isker), by Khan Kuchum, who claimed descent from Genghis Khan.

Kuchum then surrounded himself with a palace guard composed of Uzbeks, purged the local leadership of opponents, and tried to impose Islam on the pagan tribes (with the help of mullahs from Bukhara, now in Uzbekistans.

By 1571, Russia was struggling and appeared to be in the process of falling apart.  Kuchum took the opportunity to renounce the tribute to Moscow.  In 1573, he sent a punitive expedition against the Khanty people in Perm (west of the Urals), who had recognized Russian suzerainty.  Moscow gave no response, so in 1579 he also intercepted and killed a Muscovite envoy that was en route to Central Asia.

The Stroganovs

During the Livonian War (1557 – 1581), in which Ivan the Terrible tried to force his way to the Baltic, Moscow's government had handed the defence of their eastern frontier and Urals dominions to the Stroganov family.  They were a powerful family of industrial magnates and financiers.  According to legend, they were descended from a Christianized Tartar called Spiridon, who had introduced the abacus to Russia.  Their wealth was founded on furs, ore, salt and grain (the mainstays of the economy).  They had accumulated a great deal of assets & properties over the past 200yrs, extending from Kaluga and Ryazan eastwards to the current Vologda Oblast.  They traded with the English & Dutch on the Kola Peninsula, established commercial links with Central Asia, and had foreign agents who travelled as far abroad as Antwerp and Paris for them.

They were originally centered on their saltworks at Solvyechegodsk (Russia's “Salt Lake City”), but a rapid series of land grants secured their absolute commercial domination of the Russian north-east.  In 1558, Ivan the Terrible authorized a charter giving Anikey Stroganov and his successors large estates along the eastern edge of Russian settlement, along the Kama and Chusovaya Rivers – this gave them access to much of Perm, on the Upper Kama River almost to the Urals.

Map of the Kama River Basin.  A black diamond shows the location of Perm; grey rectangles show the Kama and Chusovaya Rivers.

The 1558 charter served as a model for future dealings with the Stroganovs.  In each case, the Stroganovs pledged to fund and develop industres; break the soil for agriculture; train and equip a frontier guard; prospect for ore and mineral deposits, and mine whatever was found.  In return, they were given long-term tax-exempt status for themselves and their colonists.

The Stroganovs had jurisdiction over the local population, and had the right to protect their holdings with garrisoned stockades and forts equipped with artillery.  A chain of military outposts and watchtowers was soon growing along the river route to the east.

Colonization was advancing to the foot of the Ural Mountains, and the Stroganovs tried to subject a number of native tribes to their authority, including the Khanty and Mansi peoples, who lived on both sides of the Urals.  The native peoples fought back – they destroyed crops; attacked villages, saltworks and flour mills; and massacred settlers on the western slopes of the Urals.  Soldiers were sent to deal with uprisings, but they couldn't be spared for very long from the tsar's western fronts.

Meanwhile, prospectors had found silver and iron ore deposits on the Tura River, east of the Urals.  It was assumed (correctly) that the districts it was found in also had sulphur, lead and tin.  Also, scouts had seen the rich pastures by the Tobol River where the Tatars' cattle grazed.

In 1574, the Stroganovs petitioned for a new charter “to drive a wedge between the Siberian Tartars and the Nogays” (a tribe to the south), by means of fortified settlements.  In return, they would be given a licence to exploit the region's resources.  Moscow (in response to Kuchum's aggression) agred.

Because the Livonian War meant that soldiers couldn't be spared for long, the Stroganovs were also given permission to enlist runaways or outlaws in their militia; and to finance a campaign against Kuchum “to make him pay the tribute”.  The campaign would be spearheaded by “hired Cossacks and artillery”.  The government promised that those who volunteered would be rewarded with the wives & children of natives as their concubines & slaves.

Cossacks

“Cossacks” were independent frontiermen who lived along the empire's fringes.  Some were solitary wanderers, or mixed-race peoples.  There was also a turbulent border population of itinerant workers, tramps, runaways, bandits, adventurers and religious dissenters, who had been forced to move to this no-man's-land of forest & steppe by taxation, debt, repression, famine, or refuge from Muscovite law.  Here they mingled and clashed with the Tatars, adopted Tatar terminology, and created a new independent life for themselves.  The term “Cossack” comes from the Turkish kazak, meaning “rebel/freeman”.

Some Cossacks had banded together under elected atamans (chieftains) into semi-military groups along the Volga, Dnieper and Don Rivers, in order to protect their homesteading communities. They raided Tatar settlements, poached on Tatar land, preyed on Moscow river convoys, and ambushed government army patrols who had been sent to catch and hang them.

Vasily “Yermak” Timofeyevich was the leader of a Cossack band. He was a third-generation bandit, and the most notorious pirate on the Volga River of the time.  He was powerfully-built, medium height, and had a flat face, black beard and curly hair.  According to the Siberian Chronicles, “his associates called him 'Yermak,' after a millstone.  And in his military achievements he was great.”

Regular army patrols (with gallows built on rafts) attempted to enforce the tsar's authority along the Volga trade route.  There was a series of expeditions intended to crush or subdue outlaw bands, culminating in 1577 in a great sweep along both sides of the Volga. Many Cossacks were forced to flee, with the tsar's cavalry after them – some fled downstream to the Caspian Sea; some scattered across the steppes.  According to legend, a third group under Yermak raced up the Kama River into the wilds of Perm, where they joined the Stroganovs' frontier guard and were enthusiastically welcomed into it.

The Expedition

A few years later, the Stroganovs organized an expedition to secure the Kama frontier, bring part of the Siberia within their mining monopoly, and gain access to Siberian furs.  This did not fall under the tsar's commission.

The expedition began on September 1st, 1581.  A Cossack army of 840 men (including 300 Livonian POWs, two priests, and a runaway monk impressed into service as a cook) assembled under Yermak's leadership on the banks of the Kama River near Orel-Gorodok, south of Solikamsk.  According to the Chronicles, they set off “singing hymns to the Trinity, to God in his Glory, and to the most immaculate Mother of God,” but this probably didn't happen.

The military force had a rough code of martial law.  Insubordination was punished by being bundled head-first into a sack, with a bag of sand tied to your chest, and being tipped into the river.  About twenty people were tipped in at the start.

It is not certain whether the Stroganovs voluntarily provided full assistance to this expedition, or were coerced into it.  However, they always drove a hard bargain, and intended their aid to be a loan “secured by indentures”.  The Cossacks rejected this, and agreed to compensate them from their plunder; or if they failed to return, to redeem their obligations “by prayer in the next world”.  The Siberian Chronicles portrayed this military expedition as a holy crusade against the infidel, so this sarcastic promise was reinterpreted as genuine and as religious fervour.  One passage in the Siberian Chronicles states, “Kuchum led a sinful life.  He had 100 wives, and youths as well as maidens, worshipped idols, and ate unclean foods.”

The army was organized into disciplined companies, each with its own leader and flag.  Although they were vastly outnumbered by the khanate's troops, it wasn't as bad as it seemed.  They were well-led, well-armed, and well-provisioned (with rye flour, buckwheat, roasted oats, butter, biscuit and salt pig).  It was their military superiority through firearms that would prove decisive.

They moved along a network of rivers in doshchaniks (flat-bottomed boats that could be rowed with oars, mounted with a sail, or towed from the shore) to the foothills of the Urals (from the headwaters of the Serebryanka River to the banks of the Tagil River, at a site known today as Bear Rock).  This was a distance of about 29km.  Yermak then stopped and pitched his winter camp.

In spring, Yermak dammed the water with sails so that he could float the boats over the river's shallows.  He boarded his boat downstream, swung into the Tura River, and for a some distance advanced without resistance into the heart of Kuchum's domain.

There was a costly skirmish at the mouth of the Tobol River.  Then downstream, where the river surged through a ravine, the Tatars had laid a trap.  There was a barrier made of logs and ropes, and hundreds of warriors hiding in the trees on either side of it.  The first of Yermak's boats hit the barrier at night.  The Tatars attacked, but in the darkness most of the boats managed to escape upstream.  The Cossacks disembarked at a bend in the river, made mannequins out of twigs and fallen branches, and propped them up in the boats, with only skeleton crews at the oars.  The others (half-naked) crept around to surprise the Tatars from behind.  At dawn, they opened fire just as the flotilla floated into view.  It was a complete rout, a great success for Yermak's men.

Kuchum resolved to destroy the Cossacks before they could even reach the capital of Qashliq.  Yermak knew that he had to capture the town before winter, or his men would die from the cold.  Their provisions were low, and ambush & disease had reduced their force by half. But they kept going towards Qashliq.

The decisive confrontation was in late October, at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh Rivers.  Here, the Tatars had erected a palisade at the base of a hill.  The Cossacks charged, firing their muskets into the densely-massed defenders, killing many.  Many of the Tatars, conscripted by force, immediately deserted.  More fled as the palisade was stormed.  The battle continued until evening with hand-to-hand fighting.  107 Cossacks died, but they won the battle.

Kuchum is said to have had a vision on that day: “The skies burst open and terrifying warriors with shining wings appeared from the four cardinal points.  Descending to the earth they encircled Kuchum's army and cried to him: 'Depart from this land, you infidel son of the dark demon, Mahomet, because now it belongs to the Almighty.'”

The Cossacks arrived at Qashliq a few days later.  It was deserted, with few of its fabled riches left behind.  However, they found stocks of flour, barley and dried fish.

Soon afterwards, Yermak began accepting tribute from former subjects of the khan, and there were scattered defections to the Cossacks' side.  Yermak needed reinforcements & artillery to consolidate his position, so he sent his second-in-command Ivan Koltso (also a renowned bandit) to Moscow with 50 others.  They took the fabled “wolf-path” shortcut over the Urals (up the Tavda River to Cherdyn), travelling on skis and reindeer-drawn sleds.  This path was shown to them by a Tatar chieftain who acted as their guide.

But the tsar was not pleased with the expedition (he didn't yet know of Yermak's success).  In response to the invasion, the Mansi had been burning Russian settlements to the ground in the Upper Kama Valley.  Apparently on the day Yermak set out, they'd attacked Cherdyn and burned neighbouring villages.  The military governor of Perm then accused the Stroganovs of leaving the frontier undefended, as they'd stripped the frontier guard for their expedition.

In a letter from November 16th, 1582, the tsar reproved the Stroganovs for “disobedience amounting to treason”.  And the Livonian War, as it drew to a close, was being lost by the Russians.  Narva had fallen to the Swedes, and the Poles were tightening their blockade on Pskov.

Koltso arrived in the capital, where the tsar was planning to hang him.  He prostrated himself before Ivan, announced Yermak's capture of Qashliq, and proclaimed Ivan lord of the khanate. Then he displayed his spoils before the stunned court – these included three captured Tatar nobles and a sledload of pelts (2,400 sables, 2,000 beaver and 800 black foxes).  This was equal to five times the annual tribue the khan had paid.

Ivan immediately pardoned Koltso, and Yermak in absentia.  He promised reinforcements, and sent a suit of armour embossed with the imperial coat of arms to Yermak.  Koltso kissed the cross in obedience to the tsar.

Failure

Back in Siberia, Yermak was struggling to extend his authority up the Irtysh River.  He forced the native peoples to swear allegiance by kissing a bloody sword.  The penalty for resisting was to be hanged upside-down by one foot, an agonizing death.

Yermak also tried to Christianize the tribes.  In one contest of power, the local wizard ripped open his stomach with a knife, then miraculously healed the wound by smearing it with grass. In response, Yermak simply tossed the local wooden totems onto the fire.

By the end of summer 1584, Yermak had managed to extend his jurisdiction almost as far east as the Ob River.  One sortie had surprised and captured Mametkul (Kuchum's nephew and minister of war).  Things appeared to be going well.

Meanwhile, however, the Tatar raiders who had been attacking the Russian settlements returned.  Yermak's strength declined by attrition.  500 Russian reinforcements tramped into Qashliq on snowshoes in November, but they'd brought no provisions of their own, and rapidly used up Yermak's resources.  During the long winter, part of the garrison starved; some were forced to resort to cannibalizing their dead companions.

Kuchum's followers were aware of all this, and in the spring they increased their attacks on foraging parties.  There were two major blows to the Russians: 1) 20 Cossacks were killed as they dozed by a lake, and 2) Koltso and 40 others were lured to a friendship banquet and killed.

Then in early August 1585, the Tatars laid a trap for Yermak himself.  Yermak was told that an unescorted caravan from Bukhara was nearing the Irtysh River, so he hurried to meet it with a company of Cossacks.  He found that the report was false, and the men had to bivouac on an island in midstream for the night.  There was a wild storm during the night, which drove the watchmen back into their tents.

A party of Tatars disembarked without being seen, and managed to kill nearly all of the Cossacks.  Yermak struggled into his armour and fought his way to the embankment, but the boat floated out of his reach.  He plunged into the water after it, but sunk beneath the waves due to the weight of his armour.

1,340 Cossacks had started out on the expedition to Siberia, and now only 90 remained.  They retreated to the Urals, and as they made their way through a mountain pass, they met 100 Russian streltsy (musketeers) with cannon moving east.

Reconquest

Whatever the Stroganovs intended, Yermak hadn't intended to conquer Siberia, merely to carry out a typical Cossack raid for spoils.  He'd probably not intended to hold Isker, just to sack it and withdraw before deep snow & ice prevented him from escaping upstream.  But despite this, the way had been shown.  The Khanate of Sibir had been dealt an irreversible blow, and it would never be able to pull itself back together.  Within two decades of Yermak's death, the “colourless hordes” of Russia (as the natives called them) would have taken much of Western Siberia.

The Livonian War ended with an armistice with Poland and Sweden, which allowed Russia to plan an organized reconquest of the territory Yermak had taken.  They used river highways to make their advance easier, and immediately retook Isker and destroyed it.

In 1586, they founded Tyumen to consolidate Russia's position on the Tura River.  In 1587, Tobolsk was established where the Tobol and Irtysh Rivers met, about 19km from where Isker had been.  Now no tribe could doubt that the Russians were there to stay.

By 1591, they'd extended southwards down to the Barabinsk Steppes.  There, they founded Ufa (between Tobolsk and Kazan), to secure a new trans-Urals route for the movement of troops and supplies.  For the next decade, Russian outposts continued to be built further and further eastwards.

In 1593, Pelym and Beryozov were founded, in order to control and Khanty and Samoyed population in the north.

The historical town of Pelym is in the modern-day Garinsky District. Beryozov is now Beryozovo.

In 1594, the fort of Tara was founded between the Ishim and Barabinsk steppes.  The largest expedition ever sent to found a new Siberian fort was sent – 1,200 cavalry soldiers and 350 foot soldiers, including Tatar auxiliaries, and Polish & Lithuanian POWs.

In 1596, Surgut, Obdorsk and Narym were founded, in order to strengthen Russia's hold.

Obdorsk is now called Salekhard.

Verkhoturye was established in 1598 on the Tura River as a gateway to Siberia.

Verkhoturye is in the middle Ural Mountains.

In 1600, Turinsk was established as an ostrog (a small fort usually made of wood), in place of Yepanchin, which Yermak had razed to the ground.

Verkhoturye, Turinsk and Tyumen are marked with grey rectangles.

Also in 1600, 100 Cossacks sailed down the Ob River in four ships, from Tobolsk to the Arctic Coast.  From there, they went north-east towards Taz Bay.  They had a shipwreck, and then an ambush by Samoyeds, reducing their party by half.  However, they still found a spot near the Taz estuary that was suitable for building the fort of Mangazeya.

By 1600, Russia had a fortified route into Siberia, with Verkhoturye, Turinsk and Tyumen standing guard over it.  They had secured the Lower Ob basin (in the north) with Berezov, Obdorsk and Mangazeya. Its middle and upper courses were secured with Surgut, Narym and Ketsk (a fort built a few miles above the Ob in 1602).

The forts were headquarters for the army of occupation, and bases for further expansion.  Giles Fletcher, the English ambassador to Russia at the time, wrote: “In Siberia, [the tsar] hath divers castles and garisons...and sendeth many new supplies thither, to plant and to inhabite as he winneth ground.”

In 1604, the major outpost of Tomsk was established, in order to guard the Ob River basin from Central Asian nomads raiding across the borders from the south.  Now “the cornerstone of the Russian Asiatic empire had been laid.”

Results of the Conquest

The Stroganovs received more trading privileges, and new grants of land west of the Urals, where their empire of trading posts, mines and mills could grow.  But they weren't given any of the lands Yermak had advanced into, and got less out of his conquest than they'd hoped. The government realized what a great opportunity Sibir was, and its reoccupation became a state venture.  Blockhouses and forts were built to dominate the rivers and portages (paths where craft or cargo are regularly carried between bodies of water).

Russia chose sites for their outposts that had previously been used by Tatar princelings to wield their own authority, thus helping them with native recognition of their legitimacy.  They also exploited local enmities – for example, the local Khanty helped the Russians to subdue the Mansi in the neighbourhood of Pelym.  For the most part, the Khanty were consistent allies of the Russians (apart from a considerable uprising of their own in 1595).

However, for the most part the natives were not happy with Russian rule, and the Tatars least of all.  Khan Kuchum had escaped south to the steppes before the capture of Qashliq, and continued to harass them for the next 14yrs.  The Russians undertook campaigns against him in 1591, 1595 and 1598.  Most of Kuchum's followers and family were eventually captured or killed, but he refused to be defeated.  He continued to fight a futile rear-guard action, attacking isolated Russian companies and posts.

Kuchum offered to negotiate a just peace at one point, one that would allow his followers to live according to their ancient ways in the Irtysh Valley.  Instead, Russia tried to tempt him with money, property, and recognition of his royal rank.  In response, Kuchum burned a Russian settlement.

Kuchum died in 1598.  He was almost blind by then, and he was kiled by the Nogai assassins whom he had turned to for help.

After Kuchum had died, Moscow took steps to prevent his heirs from trying to take the khanate's throne.  His heirs had settled in Russia, where they were indulged as royal exiles, and adopted by the Muscovite elite as their own.  Kuchum's daughters were married to young nobles, and the sons were given noble rank.  One grandson was given the town of Kasimov on the Oka River (this had long been a showcase for puppet Tatars).  Kuchum's nephew Mametkul was recognized as a prince, and became a general in the Russian Army.

Yermak became an important figure in both Russian and Tatar folklore.  The Cossacks who fell in the battle for Sibir had their names engraved on a memorial tablet in the cathedral of Tobolsk.

There is a legend that sometime after Yermak's death, a Tatar fisherman dredged his body up from the Irtysh, recognizing him by the double-headed eagle emblazoned on the chainmail hauberk.  Upon removing the armour, it was found that Yermak's flesh was uncorrupted, and that blood gushed from his mouth and nose.  His body and clothing could work miracles, and mothers & babies were preserved from disease.  The natives buried him at the foot of a pine tree by the river, and for many years afterwards the spot was marked by a column of fire.

[mapsontheweb]

The Khanate of Sibir — the northernmost Muslim state in recorded history.