In 1567 news reached Moscow that the new Ottoman sultan, Selim II, was preparing an armada of 7,000 ships to sail to Azov under his personal command, and then he and the Crimean khan would set out against Astrakhan'. The Crimean khan, Devlet Girey, expressed his concern over Moscow's expansion to the Muscovite envoy in the Crimea: 'Before Ivan used to send tribute (shuby, literally fur coats) to Kazan', and then he seized Kazan' and Astrakhan', and now he founded Tersk.' With the support of an Ottoman army behind him, the Crimean khan wrote to Ivan raising the price of peace with Moscow. Devlet Girey demanded that Ivan return Kazan' and Astrakhan' to the Crimea ('because from the old days Astrakhan' and Kazan' were part of the Muslim world and the iurt [apanage] of the khans of our dynasty'), send valuable and numerous presents and give up building a fort on the Terek River. Otherwise, the khan warned, there would be no peace.[120]
In the spring of 1569 a large Ottoman-Crimean force set out on the campaign. Digging a canal between the Don and the Volga at their nearest point proved to be too difficult an undertaking, and the work was soon abandoned. The Ottoman-Crimean expeditionary force approached Astrakhan' in September 1569. Instead of continuing the campaign so late in the season, the decision was made not to storm the city but to build a fort nearby and winter there in anticipation ofreinforcements in the following year. In the end, rumours of a large Russian army sailing down the Volga and a Persian army dispatched to assist Astrakhan' forced the Ottoman retreat.
Although a military fiasco, the Astrakhan' campaign of i569 convinced Moscow that the Porte's concerns had to be taken more seriously. Ivan IV's assurances that he meant no harm to Muslims and the Islamic faith, and that he had conquered the Volga khanates merely to ensure their loyalty, did not satisfy Selim II. The sultan insisted that the regions of Astrakhan' and Kabarda in the Caucasus were traditional Ottoman domains with Muslim residents. He demanded that the pilgrims and merchants from Bukhara and elsewhere be allowed to proceed through Astrakhan' en route to Mecca. In 1571, eager to prevent another campaign against Astrakhan', which Moscow could ill afford to defend at the time, Ivan IV informed the sultan that Fort Tersk was being demolished and the Astrakhan' route reopened.[121] Propelled almost instantly into the forefront of a struggle with Islam, Moscow was not yet prepared for such a confrontation. For the time being, the government refrained from missionary or any other activity that could provoke the Ottomans.
The conquest of Siberia
While Moscow's ambitions in the Caucasus collided with the interests of its powerful regional contenders, the Islamic states ofthe Crimea, the Ottomans and the Persians, no such major power stood in Moscow's way in Siberia. Here no other state insisted on its sovereignty over the indigenous peoples or claimed religious affinity with the predominantly animist population. It was not until the Russians reached the distant frontiers on the Amur River in the second half of the seventeenth century that they were confronted with the competing interests of another powerful state, Ming China.
This absence of a rival sovereign state extending its claims to the Siberian lands and the commercial nature of the Siberian frontier may explain why the conquest and colonisation ofSiberia were put into private hands, the powerful family of the Novgorod merchants and entrepreneurs, the Stroganovs. After all, the royal charters to the Stroganovs to colonise Siberia in the sixteenth century and a charter to the Russian-American Company to exploit Alaska in the nineteenth century are the only two known instances, short-lived as they were, when the colonisation of the new frontiers was entrusted to large commercial companies similar to the better-known cases in the history of the Western European expansion.
The Stroganovs' success in colonising the Kama River region, which Ivan IV had entrusted to them in a charter of 1558, encouraged Ivan IV to issue a series of similar charters granting the Stroganovs a twenty-year exemption from customs and taxes and the right to construct the forts and recruit its own military in order to colonise the region east of the Urals.
Moscow's plans for further expansion were impeded by the forces of Kuchum Khan, the ruler ofthe rising Siberian khanate. A former part ofthe Golden Horde, the Siberian khanate mostly comprised the territory between the Tobol' and Irtysh rivers. When in 1563 Kuchum seized the throne of the khan, he only rightfully restored the rule of the Chingisid dynasty over the Siberian khanate, which was wrested away from Kuchum's grandfather Ibak (Abak) in 1495 by the local nobles of the Toibugid clan. In the following decades, relying on the military force of the Nogais and Bashkirs, Kuchum imposed tribute on the local Khanty and Mansi peoples and created a powerful khanate, which he ruled from his winter residence in Sibir' located at the confluence of the Tobol' and Irtysh rivers.[122]
It was not long before the reach of the Stroganovs' entrepreneurial activity encroached on the borders of the khanate. The disputes over tribute-paying Khanty and Mansi led to clashes and raids against the Muscovite forts and settlements. Kuchum and his khanate represented a direct challenge to Moscow's claims of sovereignty over the newly vanquished peoples and to a Muscovite monopoly on the fur trade. Moreover, the privileges granted to the Stroganovs over the Kama region had expired, and the Stroganovs had strong incentives to expand and defend their enterprises east ofthe Urals. With these goals in mind, Grigorii Stroganov undertook to finance and organise a military expedition deep into Kuchum's khanate.
In the autumn of 1581, a Volga cossack named Ermak set out at the head of a 500-strong band of mercenaries to confront Kuchum Khan. Like the Spanish kings, who had hardly expected that the small bands of conquistadors under Hernando Cortez and Francisco Pizarro sent in the early sixteenth century to explore the Americas would in fact conquer the entire continent, neither the Stroganovs nor Ivan IV could have anticipated that Ermak's expedition would lay the foundation for a conquest of Siberia.
Sailing down the rivers, Ermak's mercenaries plundered the natives' villages and met no resistance until they reached the estuary of the Tobol' River. Here, in the autumn of 1582 the first major battle between the cossacks of Ermak and Kuchum Khan was fought. Kuchum's army was devastated by the cossack firepower and the subsequent battles proved again that the arrows of Kuchum's armed men were no match for the cossacks' muskets and cannon.
Kuchum fled and the cossacks triumphantly entered the khan's capital, the town of Sibir'. The joy of easy victory did not last for too long, however, and what the Tatar arrows failed to accomplish, the diseases and inhospitable environment did. In time, some ofthe local chiefs, who initially sided with Ermak, abandoned him after they began to realise that Ermak came simply to replace their former Tatar overlords. In the summer of 1585, isolated and lacking supplies and ammunition, Ermak and his followers were ambushed and killed.[123]
Moscow was caught unaware of the Stroganovs' expedition of 1581 and its initial reaction was that of outrage. Ivan IV chastised the Stroganovs for hiring a band ofthe unruly Volga cossacks without Moscow's consent. Equating their action with treason, Ivan IV accused the Stroganovs of needlessly provoking Kuchum Khan and causing the natives to raid the Muscovite forts and towns. He instructed the Stroganovs to have Ermak and his cossacks return to the Perm' region, and to make sure that it was done promptly, he dispatched a detachment of Muscovite troops with orders to bring Ermak's cossacks back to Perm'.[124] Ivan IV's reluctance to support the Stroganovs' adventure in Siberia eventually doomed Ermak and his companions.
120
121
122
Trepavlov,
124
Aleksandr Andreev (comp.),