The first ones to recognise the new status of the tsar as a successor to the khans of the Golden Horde were those most interested in seeking Moscow's economic and military assistance. After the conquest of Kazan', recognising the sovereignty and supremacy of the Muscovite ruler, the Nogais began to refer to Ivan IV as the 'White Tsar' more frequently, while one Nogai mirza, Belek-Bulat, decided to surpass others in his flattery and called Ivan IV 'the son of Chingis'.
The Nogais of Ismail and Belek-Bulat mirzas, whose pastures were located along the banks of the Volga, remained Moscow's crucial allies. The fact that Moscow's ambitions did not end with the annexation of Kazan' was made clear in Ivan's letters to Ismail mirza in early 1553. Ivan asked Ismail to let him know of an opportune moment to begin their campaign against Astrakhan' and to advise him how best to conquer the Crimea.[115]
In the spring of 1554, following Ismail's advice, Ivan sent an army of 30,000 men down the Volga to rendezvous with Ismail's Nogais and to install on the Astrakhan' throne a Muscovite and Nogai protege, Dervish Ali from the Astrakhan' dynasty. Unlike the conquest of Kazan', the conquest of Astrakhan' tookplace without much struggle or drama. The Astrakhan' khan, Yamgurchi, fled to Azov with no attempt to resist the Muscovite siege of the city, and Moscow declared Dervish to be the new khan of Astrakhan'. Ismail was given thirty Muscovite musketeers and expected to guard the land approaches to Astrakhan', while Ivan was to secure the water routes.
Ismail's delivery of Astrakhan' into Muscovite hands set off anew the dormant hostilities between the Nogai chiefs. As in the past, the internal wars among the Nogais were waged along the factional lines of a pro-Russian versus an anti-Russian coalition. In early 1555 the members of the victorious pro-Russian coalition assumed the leadership positions among the Nogais and Ismail became their beg (a supreme chief). When in the following year the recalcitrant Nogai nobles rebelled against Ismail beg and Dervish khan chose to forge close ties with the Crimea, Ivan IV dispatched his army against Astrakhan' once again. Dervish khan fled and Astrakhan' fell without any resistance. This time, however, as in his experience with Kazan', Ivan decided to rely on the puppet Chingisids no longer. Astrakhan' was now annexed and was henceforward ruled by the appointed Muscovite voevodas (military governors).[116]
A foothold in the North Caucasus
The Muscovite annexation ofAstrakhan' transformed Moscow overnight into a significant player in the Caucasus region. Throughout the early i550s, the envoys of various Kabardinian princes from the Piatigorsk region in the North Caucasus arrived in Astrakhan' and Moscow. They came to explore the possibility of a military alliance against their adversaries: the Crimeans in the west and the Kumyks in the east. The Crimean khan continued to demand a levy of Kabardinian boys and girls, who were in high demand at the Ottoman court. Any refusal to supply the youths invited punitive raids from the Crimea. On the other side, to the east, the Kabardinian villages suffered from the debilitating raids of the Kumyks. Ruled by the shamkhal (a title of a Kumyk ruler) from his residence in Tarki in northern Daghestan and closely allied with the Crimeans and Ottomans, the Kumyks were one of the most significant military and economic powers in the North Caucasus. The slave trade in captured Kabardinians, Georgians, and other peoples ofthe Caucasus was a vital source of revenue for the Kumyks, who sold their human booty to the merchants from Persia and Central Asia at the thriving slave markets in the Kumyk town of Enderi (Andreevskaia in Russian). Enderi together with Kaffa, the Ottoman port in the Crimea where the human cargo from the Slavic lands had been sold and shipped to distant lands, were the two most important slave-trading centres in the region.
One group of the Kabardinian nobles led by their grand prince Tem- riuk Idarov was particularly enthusiastic about the newly founded alliance with Moscow. In exchange for serving Moscow's interests, Temriuk expected Moscow's help in protecting his people from the Kumyk raids and in suppressing the rival Kabardinian princes. Perceived in terms of traditional political culture, Temriuk was to be Ivan IV's kunak, that is, a valued guest, friend or ally. From Moscow's point of view, however, Temriuk's relationship with the tsar could only be that of a subject with his ruler. The notion that the Kabardinians became Muscovite subjects as early as the 1550s was construed by the Muscovite chroniclers of the latter day and uncritically accepted into the historiographical tradition. More than two centuries later, after the Ottoman Porte was compelled to concede that the Kabardinians were now in Russia's sphere of influence, the Kabardinian nobles refused to swear allegiance to Russia insisting that they had always been Russia's kunaks, but not subjects.[117]
Whatever the differences in the interpretation of their relationship, both the Kabardinians and Muscovites were keenly interested in establishing close ties between them. Probably few expected at the time that these ties would become so close. In 1561, shortly after the death of his first wife, Ivan IV married the daughter of Temriuk Idarov. She was brought to Moscow, baptised, named Mariia and remained Ivan IV's wife until her death in 1569.[118] The marriage was the most eloquent testimony to Moscow's ambitions in the Caucasus and its first attempt to establish a foothold there through the loyal Kabardinian princes.
The royal marriage with the Kabardinian princess may have been prompted by more than geopolitical goals. The Muscovite officials believed that Kabar- dinians were Orthodox Christians before they became Muslims, and because the influence of Islam on the Kabardinians was barely discernible, Moscow hoped to have them converted or reconverted without much difficulty. In 1560, when dispatching Muscovite troops to assist the Kabardinians against the Kumyks, Ivan also included several priests, who were instructed to baptise the Kabardinians. But if any major conversion of the Kabardinians was indeed envisioned, it did not happen. Achieving Moscow's missionary goals as well as military objectives proved to be a more formidable task than Moscow expected.[119]
Moscow's increasing activity in the North Caucasus had finally attracted the attention of the Ottoman sultan, Suleymanthe Magnificent. Despite initial concern over Moscow's conquests of Kazan' and Astrakhan', the issue of containing Muscovite ambitions did not become a priority while the Porte was engaged in a protracted struggle with the Habsburgs in the West and Safavid Persia in the East. By the early 1560s, however, it became apparent that Moscow's rapid expansion southward along the Volga and Don rivers was threatening Ottoman strategic interests in the area and could no longer be ignored. The Don cossacks' raids disrupted land communications with the Ottoman fort of Azov (Azak), and the Russian military governors in Astrakhan' did not allow safe passage of Muslim pilgrims from the Central Asian khanates to Mecca.
In 1567, the sultan and khan discovered that the Muscovites were constructing Fort Tersk on the Terek River in the eastern corner of the North Caucasus. Moscow's expansion further south now suddenly endangered the Porte's vital communications with its newly acquired possessions on the western shore of the Caspian Sea and threatened the Crimea's control of parts of the North Caucasus and its Kabardinian subjects. The Porte revived the plan to send an expeditionary force in order to construct a canal connecting the Don and the Volga rivers. Ottoman success in building such a canal would have allowed Istanbul to conquer Astrakhan', to dominate the entire North Caucasus region and to control the trade routes connecting Bukhara, Khiva, Urgench and Tashkent with the Ottoman markets.
116
Ibid., pp. 122-6,152-6,163-8; V V Trepavlov,
117
(i866), p. 9i.
118
119
Ibid., p. 8: Michael Khodarkovsky, 'Of Christianity Enlightenment, and Colonialism: Russia in the North Caucasus, 1500-1800',