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УДК 94(47).043(=512.145) DOI: 10.22378/2313-6197.2021-9-1.188-200
IVAN IV AND THE TATARS
Charles J. Halperin
Indiana University Bloomington, USA chalperi@iu.edu
Abstract: Research objectives: To provide a comprehensive overview of Muscovite interaction with Tatars during Ivan IV's reign, both with each successor state of the Jochid ulus and with Tatars who moved to Muscovy and entered Ivan IV's service.
Research materials: This study is based upon Russian sources from the reign of Ivan IV concerning the Tatars, including narratives such as chronicles and documentary evidence such as diplomatic reports.
Results and novelty of the research: Muscovite policy toward the Tatars did not derive from a single dominating motive, neither hostility, such as religious animosity toward Muslims or the drive for imperial territorial expansion, nor the desire to cooperate with Tatars for the sake of commerce or the need for steppe military allies. Ivan adapted his policies to individual circumstances, vassal puppet rulers or outright conquest as needed. Tatars from the vassal khanate of Kasimov helped Ivan conquer Kazan' and Astrakhan' and fight Crimea. Nogai merchants sold the Muscovite army horses. Muscovites possessed intimate knowledge of foreign Tatars, but also lived in close proximity to "native" Tatars who lived on Muscovite soil or traveled to Moscow as envoys or merchants. However expertise on the Tatars, borrowing Tatar institutions, enrolling Tatar servitors, and conquering successor states of the Golden Horde did not make Muscovy a successor state of the Golden Horde. Nevertheless the Tatars were a fact of life in Ivan IV's Muscovy, as both allies and enemies.
Keywords: Ivan IV, Tatars, Kasimov, Kazan', Astrakhan', Sibir', Nogais, Crimea, successor state
For citation: Halperin C.J. Ivan IV and the Tatars. Zolotoordynskoe obozrenie =Golden Horde Review. 2021, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 188-200. DOI: 10.22378/2313-6197.20219-1.188-200
Acknowledgemnts: I would like to express my deep gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable comments.
The reign of Ivan IV was a crucial stage of Muscovy's relations with the successor states of the Golden Horde. Both hostility and accommodation characterized Russo-Tatar relations during Ivan's reign. On the one hand Muscovy conquered the Khanates of Kazan' and Astrakhan', subordinated some of the Nogai Tatars, at least began to conquer the Western Siberian Sibir' Khanate, and at times appeared to aspire to conquer or at least impose a puppet ruler on the Crimean Khanate. On the other hand more and more Tatars immigrated to Muscovy and entered Ivan's service. Such Tatars lived not only in the by-now vassal Kasimov Khanate but in other enclaves as well, not to mention Muscovite lands far from the steppe frontier. While some converted to Christianity, many retained their Muslim faith after becoming subjects of the Orthodox Christian Tsar. Muscovite respect for Chingissid
© Halperin Ch.J., 2021
blood remained in force, to the extreme extent that however briefly an admittedly converted Chinggisid sat on the throne of Moscow. Muscovite expertise on the Tatars reached a peak, if only by necessity, because Muscovy had to deal with so many friendly and unfriendly Tatars. The government was willing and able to adapt its policy goals of subordination, vassalage or conquest to fit each Tatar entity. Nevertheless Muscovy remained a Christian, sedentary society and state; its identity was not as a successor state of the Golden Horde. These complex and even contradictory processes make the overall picture of Russo-Tatar relations complicated. This article will first survey Muscovite relations with each of its Tatar subject groups and neighbors and then address the nature of the Tatar presence in Muscovite politics and culture.
The Kasimov Khanate and Other Enclaves
Although in the middle of the fifteenth century Muscovy was compelled to establish the Kasimov Khanate as part of the ransom for the release of Grand Prince Vasilii II from captivity by the emigre Khan (and founder of the Kazan' Khanate) Muhammed, fairly soon the tables were turned and the Kasimov Khanate became an instrument of Muscovite policy toward the steppe. By Ivan IV's reign, its ruler had to be a Chingissid, but could be from any successor state of the Golden Horde; a Muslim; and a vassal of the Grand Prince of Moscow, from 1547 Tsar. Kasimov provided puppet rulers for Kazan' when Muscovy confined its intentions to reducing the Kazan' Khanate to subservience without imposing direct rule. Kasimov Tatars served as scouts on the steppe and as regular units within the Muscovite armies that fought other Tatars. Kasimov Tatars also served on the northern and western fronts, fighting Lithuanians and Livonians. The sedentary Christian Russian population of the Kasimov Khanate probably remained under the administration of a Muscovite governor, but at least during Ivan's reign in their domestic affairs the Kasimov Tatars were pretty much autonomous. There were tensions, of course. Chingissid Shah ali, installed as khan of Kazan', found he had a conflict of interest concerning Muscovite annexation of territory that was part of the Kazan' Khanate, which deprived his Kazan' Khanate of considerable revenue. Muscovite needs won that struggle. Muscovy dominated the Kasimov Khanate. Still, Muscovite sources appreciated the legitimacy of Shah ali's conflicted obligations, and for his loyal service to Moscow portrayed him very positively in narrative accounts [20; 21; 15].
The other Tatar enclaves confirmed to roughly the same pattern but had were individually of much lesser importance. Not only did no other enclave require a Chingissid khan. The Romanov yurt was reserved for Nogai Tatars, and for that reason could not have a khan, because the Nogais, alone of the successor states of the Golden Horde, did not establish a khanate, only nomadic hordes. All Tatar enclaves provided military forces for Muscovy's armies, and all threw Tatars and Russians together on a daily basis. Some Tatars in these enclaves retained not only their Muslim faith but also their nomadic life-style.
The Kazan'Khanate
Many historians consider Ivan's conquest of the Kazan' Khanate in 1552 as the crowning achievement of his reign, although that is hardly how the residents of Kazan' thought about it [7, p. 45-48]. It is true that military confrontations between
Muscovy and the Kazan' Khanate were frequent. Moscow disseminated antiMuslim propaganda to its domestic audience and to foreign Christian countries, even to the Pope, and anti-Christian sentiment animated Kazani resistance [17, p. 520-521, 523]. Moreover, Moscow proclaimed its tolerance of Islam to the Ottoman sultan and Nogai princes to deflect their opposition to Muscovite conquest of Muslim yurts. Raiding parties from Kazan' did intrude into Muscovy to acquire slaves to be transported to the slave markets of Central Asia and the Ottoman Empire, but Muscovite invading armies, most successfully in 1552, enslaved Tatars, especially women and children, and deported them to Muscovy to be sold. Muscovite conquest followed failed attempts to impose a pro-Russian puppet khan on the Kazan' throne. It was a last resort not because of respect for Tatar independence or toleration of Islam but because the Muscovites knew full well in advance that conquest would carry greater costs, not least of all in the lives of Muscovite soldiers, than less direct means of control.
Hostility between Muscovy and Kazan' did not derive from ignorance. Even Russian Orthodox clerics had to and did become fully cognizant of the social and political make-up of the Kazan' Khanate. These clerics, quite possibly the metropolitan, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who wrote the Stepennaia kniga, a thematic history of Rus' organized by reigns, not by year, were totally conversant with both the secular and religious establishments of Kazan' [9].
The Muscovite conquest was bloody; most Kazani men were slaughtered. Mosques in the city were destroyed and replaced by Russian Orthodox churches. A Muscovite governor, aided and abetted by a Muscovite garrison, took over the city. The surviving Muslim population was expelled beyond the city walls to suburbs. However, whatever the initial Christian missionary impulse in Kazan', it soon became apparent that the security situation - or, rather, the lack of security because of repeated local rebellions - overrode any thoughts of a coercive conversion campaign. Islam was as tolerated in Kazan' as in Kasimov and the other Tatar enclaves in Muscovy [23].
The Kazan' Tatars obviously did not go away after Muscovy's conquest. Revolts against Muscovite rule, which occupied most of the rest of the 1550s and resumed as late as the early 1580s, were met with major punitive expeditions. Muscovy also had to devise mechanisms during times of relative peace for administering a territory with a large non-Russian, non-Orthodox Christian population, not just Tatars but also animist nationalities occupying the middle Volga River region. Muscovite administrators and clerics had to accommodate the Muslim Tatar population as best they could [22].
The Astrakhan' Khanate
Muscovite conquest of the Astrakhan' Khanate in 1556 followed a similar but not identical pattern. Astrakhan' was much farther away, which made conquest harder, but it had little permanent population and what population it did have fled Muscovite armies, which made conquest easier. Muscovy attempted to impose indirect rule before resorting to annexation. Moscow supported a puppet, Dervysh ali, grandson of the last khan of the Golden Horde, Axmat, famous for the "Stand on the Ugra River" in 1480, but he lacked sufficient support. Military occupation followed [4, p. 257].
The Nogai Tatars
The nomadic Nogai Tatars had only a seasonal, winter "capital'Ycamp and after the Muscovite annexation of Kazan' no Chingissid khan. (Before 1552 the Nogais recruited a Chinggisid for the sole purpose of appointing their chief, but they did not have a khanate). Political power was highly decentralized, although the Nogai Horde possessed a nominal suzerainty of a chief ("prince" in the Muscovite sources). In particular, there was a divide between those Nogai Tatars who were oriented toward Moscow and those oriented toward Crimea. As a result some Nogai Tatars fought in Muscovite armies against Livonia and others joined the 1571 Crimean invasion that burned Moscow to the ground. A turncoat Nogai Tatar in service to an oprichnik defected to Lithuania and then made his way to Crimea to inform Devlet Girei that the situation in Muscovy in 1571 was propitious for a major raid. It is therefore possible that a Nogai Tatar was directly responsible for the Crimean burning of Moscow [26; 7, p. 154, 202].
Muscovite relations with the Nogai Tatars included a major commercial segment. The Muscovite cavalry rode Nogai ponies; the horse trade dominated Nogai-Russian commerce. There was another less edifying element to Nogai-Russian commerce. As a reward for their military service Nogais were permitted to purchase non-Russian prisoners-of-war as slaves [7, p. 202]. Such victims were, of course, Christians, not just Catholics and Protestants, but Orthodox residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
To keep the horses coming Muscovy expended considerable diplomatic and commercial resources to cultivate dozens of Nogai notables and their wives. Muscovite envoys cris-crossed the steppe following multiple Nogai uluses, and entertaining and fulfilling requests for gifts. In turn the Nogais paid close attention to Muscovite politics. During Ivan's minority when his mother, Grand Princess Elena Glinskaia acted as not only his guardian but virtually as regent, Nogai leaders addressed correspondence to Ivan and his mother [7, p. 31]. How they addressed Ivan later in his reign will be discussed below.
After the Muscovite conquest of Kazan' and Astrakhan' had altered the balance of power in the Pontic and Caspian steppe, large numbers of Tatars, mostly presumably Nogai, migrated to Muscovy and became conditional-land owners and Ivan's military servitors. Some retained their Muslim faith, others converted and became Novokrekshcheny, who had to be carefully segregated from their former Muslim Tatar environment lest they backslide into Islam. As a whole they were assigned to live in the Northwest, the Novgorod region, as far away as possible from their confrères in the steppe. While they could not remain nomads, the influence of the pastoral life-style affected their sedentary economic pursuits, which tended more to animal husbandry than agriculture [16].
Muscovy did not conquer the Nogai Tatars outright. It is uncertain if Moscow could project permanent military pressure and direct administration deep into the steppe over all the nomadic Nogai camps. The government lacked sufficient administrative resources to do so. However, the conquest of Kazan' and Astrakhan' enabled Moscow to put enough economic pressure on the Nogais via control of access to nomad pastures and trade that Moscow did not need to proceed beyond the vassal-relationship stage.
The Crimean Khanate
Muscovite relations with the Crimean Khanate had been friendly until they succeeded too well against their mutual foe, the Great Horde, the nomadic successor of the Volga Golden Horde. Once that common interest disappeared, the two former allies became increasingly constant foes. Crimean raids devastated the south and southwest frontiers of Muscovy. The Muscovite government engaged in a furious bidding war with Poland-Lithuania to induce the Crimeans to launch their slave-raiding operations against the other. Of course the Crimean khans played both sides, securing as much "tribute" in the form of "gifts" as they could from both countries, and continued to raid both anyway. Distant Astrakhan' could still reached by sailing or rowing down the Volga River, but the arid and unpopulated Pontic steppes separated Moscow and Bakhchisarai.
Muscovite conquest of Kazan' and Astrakhan' had a deleterious effect upon Russian-Crimean relations. Crimea vigorously resented Muscovite expansion, although, fearful of excessive Ottoman power in the region, they unwillingly participated in and simultaneously sabotaged the Ottoman campaign to retake Astrakhan' in 1569. The Crimean perception of the threat posed by Muscovy's push down the Volga River will be discussed below.
Crimean slave-raiding was an annual threat to the Muscovite border and even center. Thousands of Russians captives were eventually sold in Ottoman slave markets. In addition, some prisoners-of-war remained incarcerated in Crimea awaiting ransom. Vasilii Griaznoi, Ivan's drinking buddy, spent five years in Crimean captivity before Ivan and his captors could agree on a ransom price.
The path from Muscovy to Crimea could also be more circuitous. Boyar Semen Bel'skii defected to Lithuania in 1534 during Ivan's minority, was captured by the Nogai Tatars, and was then ransomed by the Crimean Khan. Bel'skii entered the khan's service and advised him on his 1541 raid into Muscovy [14, p. 23].
Other Muscovites defected directly to Crimea. Several Muscovite gentry from the south and southeast assisted Devlet-Girei to find his way to Moscow in 1571. Some thought it best thereafter not to remain in Muscovy and joined the Crimeans on their return home. One later petitioned to be allowed to return to Muscovy, but the outcome of his petition is unknown [7, p. 202].
Another Muscovite, Semen Mal'tsev, was captured by the Nogais and sold to the Ottoman governor of Azov. His peripatetic life after that included stays in Kaffa in the Crimea, administered by the Ottomans, and Bakhchisarai. Along the way he wrote a valuable account of the 1569 Ottoman-Crimean campaign against Astrakhan' [24].
To interdict Crimean raids Moscow eventually developed a system of border lookout posts and scouts to warn Muscovite forces of the approach of Crimean raiding parties. This system was not in place before the 1571 Crimean raid that burned Moscow, but became increasingly effective after the Muscovites defeated the Crimeans at Molodi in 1572, the last time Crimea launched a major raid against Muscovy. During Ivan's entire reign a major Muscovite field army was mobilized almost every year to stand guard on the Oka River crossings to interdict Crimean incursions.
Embassies traveled back and forth between Muscovy and Crimea. The Crimean diplomatic papers demonstrate convincingly how closely Moscow followed developments, not just political, in Crimea. Bad weather or epidemics in Crimea
impugned the khanate's ability to launch raids; civil war among the Gireed Chingissids, especially if the Ottomans felt the need to intervene, had the same effect. The Muscovite diplomatic establishment, which included Ivan personally, acquired enormous amounts of intelligence information on Crimea, all to be put to good use in checking the Crimean threat to Muscovy [8]. Of course, the Crimeans stayed equally well-informed of developments in Muscovy. As mentioned, they knew about the disruption of the country by the oprichnina. Earlier, they tried to take advantage of Ivan's minority but were repulsed by Grand Princess Elena [7, p. 31]. In 1571 when the Crimeans captured two of Ivan's in-laws, two brothers of his late second wife, the Kabarda Circassian Mariia Cherkasskaia, they knew exactly who they were [7, p. 69].
In the late 1550s Muscovite forces crossed the steppe, and even reached the Crimean peninsula. A base was established on the Psel' River to interdict Crimean raiding parties. However, lack of fodder for horses and provisions for men made maintaining such outposts well-nigh impossible, not to mention severe Ottoman displeasure at Muscovite intrusion into the domain of an Ottoman vassal. Ivan pulled his forces back. In the opinion of some historians Ivan contemplate at least converting Crimea into a vassal khanate on the order of Kasimov, as had been attempted and failed in Kazan' and Astrakhan'. Of course Ivan did not rationalize his strategic plans in geopolitical terms. According to him the Muscovite troops were defending Russian Christians from Muslin Tatars. Historians can only infer his goal. It is open to question whether Ivan's intentions were as ambitious as installing a puppet khan in Crimea. Certainly outright conquest was out of the question for logistical reasons. It seems more likely that Ivan appreciated the military and political obstacles to projecting Muscovite force of arms across the steppe to Crimea. Rather, the purpose of the campaigns of the late 1550s was to neutralize the Crimean threat sufficiently to allow Ivan to reallocate his main military forces toward Livonia without worrying about a second front. Of course he miscalculated catastrophically; the burning of Moscow testified to his underestimation of the extent of the Crimean threat. Ivan had stripped too many troops from the southern border [7, p. 154-156, 170, 201-202; 18, p. 101, 103-104, 236].
The Khanate of Sibir'
Last and definitely least among the successor states of the Golden Horde during Ivan's reign was the Western Siberian khanate of Sibir'. In 1555 the non-Chingissid bii (called "prince" in the Muscovite sources) Yadigar, who had taken control over the Sibir' Khanate, asked to become Ivan's vassal and promised an unrealistic tribute in furs. The Shaybanid Chingissid khan Kuchum, whose relatives conquered Bukhara, overthrew him. At first Kuchum promised to pay the tribute, but later reneged. As a result of border warfare between Kuchum and the possessions of the Stroganovs, those merchants hired Ermak and his Cossacks to invade the Sibir' Khanate, which they conquered, although Ermak and most of them died without returning home. After the fact Ivan "accepted" the conquest and sent reinforcements, who initially did not do well either. It was only after Ivan's death, during the reign of Ivan's son Tsar Fedor, that Muscovy actually established a viable presence in Siberia, and it took most of the seventeenth century for Muscovite expansion to reach the border of the Manchu Empire in Eastern Siberia. Therefore, although Ivan had rather little contact with the Sibir' Khanate, Muscovite-Sibir'
relations began with a vassal relationship, like Muscovy and Kazan' in 1487, and progressed to military conquest [19, p. 248; 7, p. 151; 4, p. 257].
Muscovy as a Golden Horde Successor State
Muscovite relations with the successor states of the Golden Horde were conducted with great expertise and considerable flexibility. Vassalage and conquest were used as and when necessary. Commerce and warfare were not mutually exclusive. Most of all, Muscovy - and Ivan - possessed, and worked hard at continuing to possess - reliable intelligence information and access to all Golden Horde successor states, those already friendly, those sometimes friendly, and those almost always hostile. Muscovy played steppe politics with the professionalism of a Tatar insider. This feature of Muscovite culture has suggested to some historians that Muscovy under Ivan was also a successor state of the Golden Horde. Of course concluding that Muscovy was a successor state of the Golden Horde, like Tatar successor states, depends upon how one defines the criteria that qualify an entity as a successor state.
Muscovite expertise on Poland-Lithuania was just as great as on the Tatars. Knowledge about the successor states of the Golden Horde did not make Ivan IV's Muscovy a successor state of the Golden Horde.
It has been argued that Ivan was crowned "tsar" in 1547 in order to make him eligible to conquer Kazan' [4, p. 255-254]. The logic derives from the fact that ever since the Mongol conquest of Rus' in 1237-1240 the Rus' translated "khan" as "tsar'." However, "tsar'" also translated "basileus," the title of the Byzantine emperor, and Ivan's 1547 coronation was based upon a Byzantine coronation ordo. Ivan was not awarded the title "tsar" in a Mongol fashion; he was not thrown in the air on a blanket. A Byzantine coronation rite could not make Ivan a khan and Muscovy a successor state of the Golden Horde.
Although the extent of Muscovite institutional borrowing from the Mongol Empire and the Golden Horde is disputed, the fact that Muscovy did borrow some administrative, military, and fiscal institutions cannot be denied [12, p. 90-95; 10]. Such institutional borrowing does demonstrate Mongol/Tatar influence on Rus' and later Muscovy, but in and of itself, even though the borrower had been conquered by the borrowee, does not identify a successor state [11]. To be a successor state of the Golden Horde Muscovy had to consider itself a successor state of the Golden Horde. Being a successor state is a matter of identity. Even when seemingly acting like a successor state of the Golden Horde, by conquering territory that had belonged to the Golden Horde, Muscovy under Ivan made no such assertions. Ivan claimed Kazan' and Astrakhan' by right of conquest and various fabricated claims, but never because they had belonged to the Golden Horde. Ivan's titles proclaim him as "Tsar' of Kazan'" and "Tsar' of Astrakhan," but never "Tsar' of the Juchid ulus" or "Tsar' of the Great Horde," the name of the last incarnation of the nomadic Volga Horde or "Tsar' of the Golden Horde." Even if Ivan had attempted to conquer Crimea, he was still not trying to recreate the Golden Horde. To do so he would first of all have had to conquer Kiev and Galicia-Volhynia, and then the territories in the Balkans that had been ruled by Horde power-broker Nogai in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and probably Azerbaijan and Khwarezm. Ivan had no such aspirations.
If we define being a successor state as a matter of consciousness and mentality, then we can dismiss out of hand the argument that Muscovy was a successor state of the Golden Horde but was unaware that it was a successor state of the Golden Horde, or that Muscovy was aware of that it was a successor state of the Golden Horde but denied it. To be a successor state of the Golden Horde Muscovy had to acknowledge itself as such. Muscovy did precisely that in articulating its relationship to Kievan Rus'. Ivan repeatedly invoked his Kievan ancestors and Kievan history to justify his coronation as tsar and his territorial expansion. Of course there are cases of would-be successor states who proclaimed they were but were not, but we do not have to deal with any such case here.
Numerous Nogai leaders called Ivan "the White Tsar," perhaps meaning Western Khan in the steppe color schema, but Ivan never used the title himself. Indeed, although he did not forbid the Nogais to accord him that title, he never even acknowledged it. Only Khan Kuchum of Sibir' addressed Ivan as "White Tsar'," and he did so only once, and very much under duress [11, p. 15]. No other Chingissid ever elevated Ivan to the status of "khan."
Similarly the Nogai Belek Bulat Mirza called Ivan a direct descendant of Chinggis Khan, but Ivan never claimed to be a dynastic heir of Chinggis Khan [6]. There is no evidence that Ivan punished Belek Bulat Mirza for doing so, but there is considerable evidence that Ivan did not legitimize this phoney genealogy. In Muscovite diplomatic discourse Ivan claimed to be a direct heir of Prus, brother of Augustus Caesar, via Riurik, founder of the Rus' dynasty, an equally fictitious descent, but one which left no place for Chinggis on Ivan's family tree2. Ivan might have been flattered by Belek Bulat Mirza's rewriting of Daniilovich genealogy, but he was not convinced.
Ivan's self-proclaimed descent from Prus via the male line obviated any need, let alone necessity, for Ivan to indulge the legendary genealogy of his female line, included in the Muscovite genealogy books. Supposedly the Glinskii clan of his mother, Elena Glinskaia, descended from Mamai, who himself descended from Chinggis Khan, who had invaded Rus' and attacked Kiev. Batu, Chinggis Khan's grandson, attacked Kiev and Mamai was not a Chinggisid, as anyone familiar with the descriptions of the Mongol invasion and the battle of Kulikovo Field in Rus' chronicles and tales would know. In addition anyone familiar with Mongol society would know that Chinggisid descent devolved only in the male line. A mother who was a Chingissid could not confer Chinggisid status on her son. Despite these gross historical and social flaws, Ivan could still have endorsed his Chinggisid origin if he wanted to; after all, the theory of his descent from Prus via Riurik was equally ludicrous. Fortuitously, for Ivan claiming Chinggisid origin was superfluous. Roman Imperial descent sufficed.
Medieval Rus' ambivalence at even admitting that the Mongols had conquered Rus' would surely have inhibited the development in Muscovy of a consciousness as a Golden Horde successor state. The at best uneasy admission that the Tatars had altered Rus' sovereignty persisted in the 1530s when the Nikon Chronicle rewrote the history of Rus'-Tatar relations from 1223 to 1480 [5]. A passage in Muscovite-Lithuanian negotiations in 1566 demonstrates the glaring persistence of East
2 Why Ivan wished to have Roman ancestry remains a mystery. If he hoped to impress his European neighbors, he failed. Regardless, on numerous occasions in conversations with Europeans Ivan claimed various European origins, including Scandinavian and German.
Slavic denial of the Mongol conquest. Lithuanian representatives, objecting to Muscovite claims in the Lithuanian view that because Muscovy had attacked Livonia, Livonia was a Muscovite patrimony, commented that according to their (the Lithuanians') "chronicles" (khroniki) the Tatars had attacked (voevali, "made war on") Moscow, and asked the Muscovite boyars sitting across the table if that made Moscow the patrimony of the Tatars. The boyars replied that the Lithuanians could write whatever they wanted in their chronicles, but the Tatars had not attacked Moscow, and that it was not written anywhere that they had [25, p. 392-395]. In 1566, having established the oprichnina, Ivan was in firm control of the Muscovite government, including foreign affairs. We may very safely infer that Ivan shared his boyars' willingness to lie about the passages in Rus' chronicles that listed the city of Moscow among those cities that fell to Batu in 1237-1238 and that described in graphic detail the sack of Moscow by Khan Toqtamysh in 1382, among the more notable cases confirming the Lithuanians' chronicles.
Gerasimov et al. assert that Crimea, Astrakhan', the Nogais and Muscovy interpreted Moscow's conquest of Kazan' as a manifestation of Muscovite pretensions to the entire Golden Horde inheritance. If Moscow had conquered Crimea, they continue, Ivan could have claimed to occupy the throne of a Golden Horde khan. Ivan had as much right to the throne of the Golden Horde as the Gireeds of Crimea, who were not Chingissids [4, p. 257, 262]. Haci I Giray, founder of the Crimean khanate in 1441, descended from Toqa Temur, thirteenth son of Jochi, son of Chingis. The Muscovites called the rulers of Crimea "khans," which could only have applied to Chingissids. As we have seen, the Muscovites knew Yadigar of Sibir' was not a Chinggisid; they could hardly have been ignorant of the putatively non-Chingissid status of an entire dynasty in Crimea. Various Gireed khans sat on the thrones of the Kasimov and Kazan' Khanates, which they could not possibly have done if they were not Chingissids. The issue of the Chingissid status of the Gireeds aside, Muscovy interpreted the conquest of Kazan' as the triumph of Russian Orthodox Christianity over Islam, not as Moscow's ascension to the legacy of the Golden Horde.
During Ivan's reign Muscovy demonstrated great respect for the Chingissid lineage. After the conquest of Kazan' a widow of the last adult Kazan' khan, Suyun bike, was married to the Muscovite pretender to the Kazan' throne, Shah ali, a fellow-Muslim Chingissid. The boy-heir to Kazan', Utiamysh, was converted to Orthodox Christianity. He died young, and was buried in the Moscow dynasty's necropolis, the Archangel Cathedral. As we have seen, at this time the Muscovites permitted only legitimate Chingissids to become khans of Kasimov. Ivan and Muscovite diplomats never questioned Crimea's claim to be heir of the Volga Horde. Perhaps the only two rulers whom Ivan did not insult at least once in his colorful diplomatic correspondence were the khans of Crimea and the sultans in Istanbul, neither of whom, to repeat, ever addressed Ivan as "White Khan" [7, p. 46, 75].
Ivan's selection of Simeon Bekbulatovich, a converted Chingissid, to sit on the throne of Moscow in 1575-1576 reflected just that respect for the Chingissid dynasty [7, p. 245-247]. Gerasimov et al. insist that Ivan's action did not result from his mental degeneration. Simeon's official coronation was quite logical. The "unprecedented arbitrariness" of Ivan's masquerade demonstrated his unlimited authority, but also legitimized that authority by the sanction of Muscovy's Horde inheritance [4, p. 267]. In fact Simeon was never crowned, officially or unofficially. If Simeon's as-
cent personified Horde legitimation of Moscow's ruler, then Ivan's choice of Simeon could not be considered "unprecedented" or "arbitrary." Rather it was a retro throwback to the "pre-1480" relationship of Rus' to the Tatars when a Chinggisid khan ruled Rus' and chose which Rus' princes could sit on which thrones. Unfortunately for this line of thought implicit in the argument of Gerasimov et al., Simeon, a tsar because he had been khan of Kasimov, did not hold the title of Tsar' of All Rus'. He was "Grand Prince of All Rus'". The Simeon episode reflects Tatar influence but not Muscovy's succession to the Golden Horde [13].
There are two pieces of evidence that the Muscovite dynasty considered itself to be on a par in terms of status with the Chingissids. After 1480 Ivan III's name in Arabic, Ibak, replaced that of the khan on Muscovite coinage. Michael Cherniavsky interpreted that change as a signal of the accession of a new khan from a new and legitimate dynasty [2, p. 73]. Cherniavsky also asserted that the concept of Ivan's dynasty pictured in the frescoes of the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the dynasty's family church, imitated the biological dynastic conception of the Chingissids [1]. I would argue that the "new" Muscovite dynasty ruled Muscovy and only Muscovy, that Muscovy was no longer a vassal of the Tatar Horde, not that Muscovy had replaced the Golden Horde as rightful ruler of all territory subservient to the Golden Horde khans.
Ivan's frequent socializing with Tatars probably did not result in his becoming fluent in the Turkic (Tatar) language. We know only of two words in Turkic that Ivan ever spoke. As a boy he uttered, "tabug salam", a traditional polite greeting [19, p. 104]. We cannot therefore demonstrate that he was conversant in Tatar, but certainly he would have been exposed to hearing it on more than one occasion3. The prevalence of interpreters - mostly Turkic-speaking nomads in Muscovite service who learned Russian - made communication easy. No doubt some Muscovite servitors who frequented the steppe acquired a smattering of Tatar.
Of course Crimea, and behind Crimea's back, the Ottoman Empire, opposed and resented Ivan's conquest of Kazan' and Astrakhan'. Such opposition was more than verbal, although no more efficacious: the 1569 Ottoman-Crimean campaign to recapture Astrakhan' failed, and Devlet Giray's attempts to reacquire Kazan' and Astrakhan' (both thrones which various Gireeds had sometimes occupied) were equally futile. The Nogais might have perceived Muscovite annexation of Kazan' and Astrakhan' as legitimate expressions of the rights of the White Khan, although no Nogai communication to Moscow ever voiced such a theory explicitly. Crimea, on the other hand, never recognized Moscow as a legitimate candidate to become the successor of the Golden Horde. To Crimea, Muscovite annexation of Chingissid yurts in Kazan' and strakhan' was unjustified aggression by a Horde vassal who was still obligated to pay Crimea tribute, if more politely in the form of "gifts".
To conclude, the Tatars were a constant and not always friendly presence in Ivan's reign. Militarily it took Ivan three major campaigns to conquer Kazan' and decades of punitive expeditions to repress native revolts and definitively install Muscovite rule. Annually Ivan had to mobilize troops to defend the "shore", the Oka River crossings, from Crimean incursions. His armies failed to stop the Crimeans from reaching and burning Moscow in 1571 but did defeat the Crimean
3 For a more positive assessment of the possibility of Ivan's linguistic familiarity with Tatar, see [3, p. 104].
khan in 1572 before he could duplicate his achievements of the past year. On the other hand, serving Tatars from the Kasimov Khanate and other Tatar enclaves, and even from conquered Kazan', aided Ivan's armies on the northwest front against Livonia and Lithuania. Diplomatically during Ivan's entire reign he had to expend considerable financial and human resources carrying out communications and negotiations with multiple Nogai leaders, and his ambassadors and envoys to Crimea spent considerable time there, not always voluntarily. Nogai envoys to Moscow brought with them the merchants who sold tens of thousands of horses to the Muscovite army. Ivan's Tatar servitors, not just senior advisors and tools like Shah ali, were frequently visible in Moscow and on the roads between Moscow and their enclaves. All in all, Tatars were a part of Ivan's life. He probably could not have imagined a world in which he did not have Tatar servitors and Tatar enemies.
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About the author: Charles J. Halperin - Ph.D. (History), Research Fellow of the Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana, USA); chalperi@iu.edu
Received November 24, 2020 Accepted for publication March 4, 2021
Published March 29, 2021
ИВАН IV И ТАТАРЫ
Чарльз Дж. Гальперин
Индианский унверситет Блумингтон, США chalperi@iu.edu
Цель исследования: дать всесторонний обзор взаимодействия московитов с татарами во время правления Ивана IV, как с каждым государством-преемником улуса Джучидов, так и с татарами, которые перешли в Московию и поступили на службу к Ивану IV.
Материалы исследования: это исследование основано на русских источниках времени правления Ивана IV, касающихся татар, включая такие нарративные источники, как летописи, а также такие документальные свидетельства, как дипломатические отчеты.
Результаты и новизна исследования: политика московитов по отношению к татарам не проистекала из единого доминирующего мотива, ни из враждебности, как, например, религиозной неприязни к мусульманам или стремления к имперской территориальной экспансии; ни из желания сотрудничать с татарами в интересах торговли или из надобности в степных военных союзниках. Иван адаптировал свою политику в зависимости от индивидуальных обстоятельств по отношению к вассальным марионеточным правителям или в стремлении к прямому завоеванию по мере необходимости. Татары из вассального ханства Касимова помогли Ивану завоевать Казань и Астрахань и сражаться с Крымом. Ногайские купцы продавали московитам армейских коней. Московиты хорошо знали чужеземных татар, но также жили в непосредственной близости от «коренных» татар, которые жили на московской земле или приезжали в Москву в качестве послов или купцов. Однако близкое знакомство с татарами, заимствование татарских институтов, нанятие служилых татар и завоевание государств-преемников Золотой Орды не сделали Московию государством-преемником Золотой Орды. Тем не менее татары были жизненной реальностью в Московии Ивана IV в качестве союзников и врагов.
Ключевые слова: Иван, татары, Касимов, Казань, Астрахань, Сибирь, ногаи, Крым, наследник Золотой Орды
Для цитирования: Halperin Ch.J. Ivan IV and the Tatars // Золотоордынское обозрение. 2021. Т. 9, № 1. С. 188-200. DOI: 10.22378/2313-6197.2021-9-1.188-200
Благодарности: Хотелось бы выразить огромную признательность рецензентам за ценные замечания.
Сведения об авторе: Чарльз Дж. Гальперин - Ph.D. (история), внештатный научный сотрудник Института исследований России и Восточной Европы, Индианский унверситет (Блумингтон, Индиана, США). E-mail: chalperi@iu.edu
Поступила 26.11.2020 Принята к публикации 04.03.2021
Опубликована 29.03.2021
