Khanate of Kazan

At a glance

What was the Khanate of Kazan?

It was one of the states that formed as the Golden Horde, the western part of the Mongol Empire, broke apart in the fifteenth century. The others were the Crimean Khanate, Astrakhan, Siberia and the Great Horde on the lower Volga, with the Nogai Horde in the steppe beyond. Kazan lay further north than any of them, in the forest-steppe where the Kama joins the Volga.

The Tatars of Kazan were mostly settled farmers, townspeople and traders, not nomads. Sigismund von Herberstein, the Habsburg envoy who visited Moscow in 1517 and 1526, noted the difference: "These Tartars are more civilized than the rest, in as much as they cultivate their lands, live in houses, and carry on various branches of merchandize." The historian Mikhail Khudyakov, whose Essays on the History of the Kazan Khanate (1923) is still the standard narrative, saw the khanate as an old Bulgar society with a Tatar ruling class and military organisation laid on top.

How large it was is not known. The site's map, based on the Cliopatria border data, draws it at about 171,000 km² at its greatest extent. We have found no historian's estimate of its area, and studies of its historical geography stress that its borders, especially in the east, shifted and are still little researched. The map figure is a modern reconstruction, not a measurement.

When was the Khanate of Kazan founded?

Historians disagree. The traditional date is 1438. Ulugh Muhammad, a grandson of Tokhtamysh, had been khan of the Golden Horde, with interruptions, since the 1420s. Driven out of Sarai, he took refuge near the Russian town of Belev, where on 5 December 1437 he defeated an army sent against him by Grand Prince Vasily II of Moscow. According to the Tatar Encyclopaedia, in 1438 he moved to the middle Volga and founded the Kazan khanate. Khudyakov cites Russian sources saying that 3,000 Tatars came with him. The chronicles say he killed the local prince, called "Libei" in one chronicle and "Azyi" in another.

In 1863 the orientalist Vladimir Velyaminov-Zernov argued instead, from the Voskresensk and Nikon chronicles, that the khanate began only in 1445, when Ulugh Muhammad's son Mahmud took Kazan. Khudyakov rejected this. The Tatar historian Bulat Khamidullin points out that the only source naming Ulugh Muhammad as the first khan of Kazan is the Kazan History, a Russian work of the 1560s, and recent articles in the Golden Horde Review write "1438 or 1445". Others make Ulugh Muhammad the founder of the dynasty and Mahmud the first khan actually resident in Kazan.

The new state was dangerous to Moscow from the start. In June 1439 Ulugh Muhammad burned the outskirts of Moscow, though he could not take the Kremlin. On 7 July 1445, near Suzdal, an army led by his sons Mahmud and Yakub defeated and captured Vasily II himself. The grand prince was released at Kurmysh on 1 October 1445 against a ransom that the sources give variously as "as much as he could pay", 25,000 roubles or 200,000 roubles. After 1445 Ulugh Muhammad disappears from the sources. Two other sons, Qasim and Yakub, entered Moscow's service, and Qasim received a town on the Oka that became the centre of the Qasim Khanate (Kasimov), a Tatar client state of Moscow.

Who ruled the Khanate of Kazan?

Khudyakov counted 15 khans in 118 years (1438–1556), several of whom reigned two or three times. The often-repeated figure of "19 changes of ruler" counts reigns, not persons. Ulugh Muhammad's own dynasty, seven men in four generations, held the throne for about 80 years. After it ended in 1518, Kazan's factions chose khans from other Chinggisid houses, each backed by a foreign power: the Girays by Crimea, the Qasim line by Moscow, the Astrakhan line as a compromise. According to Khudyakov, a khan had to be a descendant of Genghis Khan and a Muslim; when Ulugh Muhammad's descendants in Russia became Christians, they lost their claim.

Dates follow Khudyakov (1923) and the Russian chronicles; several are uncertain, and other works give slightly different years. During the resistance after 1552 the rebels chose further khans, including Ali-Akram, a Nogai prince and brother of Süyümbikä.

How was the Khanate of Kazan governed?

The khan was, in principle, an absolute ruler; Russian documents translated his title as tsar, the same word they used for the Byzantine emperor. In practice he depended on the great nobles. The highest of them were the four karachi beys, heads of the leading clans. A Russian source quoted by the ethnologist Damir Iskhakov names them as the "Shirin, Barin, Argyn and Kipchak" clans, the same four names found in Crimea. In 1519 the karachi Bulat Shirin led Kazan's embassy to Moscow. Below them came princes, murzas and ulans, the khan's guard.

The head of the Muslim clergy, the seyid, was also a political figure. The editors of the Kazan History in the Library of Old Russian Literature note that he was considered the second person in the state after the khan. The last seyid, Qol Sharif, died fighting in the defence of Kazan in 1552.

The khanate was ruled from one real city. Other places named in Russian sources were small forts. Herberstein wrote that the king of Kazan "can raise an army of thirty thousand men, principally foot soldiers, amongst whom the Czeremissi and Czubaschi are the most skilful archers". The Cheremis were the Mari, and the Czubaschi the Chuvash: Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples who paid tribute to the khan but kept their own religions and leaders. The Tatar population itself has been estimated by Iskhakov at 180,000–240,000 in the first half of the sixteenth century; no estimate for the whole khanate has been found.

Kazan was also a centre of Muslim learning and literature. The poet Muhammadyar wrote Tuhfa-i mardan ("Gift of the Brave") in 1539/40 and Nur-i sudur ("Light of Hearts") in 1542. The Tatar Encyclopaedia gives his dates as 1496 or 1497 to 1549.

What did the Khanate of Kazan trade?

Kazan's wealth came from the Volga. Every summer a great fair was held on an island near the city, the "Island of Merchants". The Kazan History says it opened on 24 June, when "rich merchants from all the Russian land and many distant foreigners" came to Kazan. Furs, honey and wax came down from the forests of the north; cloth, silk, spices and horses came up the river from Astrakhan, Persia and Central Asia.

Trade bound Kazan and Moscow together, and each side used it as a weapon. In 1523 Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow founded a fortress at the mouth of the Sura, Vasilsursk, "which he called after his own name", and, according to Herberstein, "transferred to Novogorod the fairs which it had been the custom to hold near Kazan, in the Island of Merchants". The fair moved to the region of Nizhny Novgorod and grew into the later Makaryev fair.

Captives were also a commodity. Kazan raided Russian lands and sold prisoners; Herberstein says that after the great raid of 1521 Sahib Giray "sold all the captives which he took from Moscow" at Astrakhan. How far raiding drove the wars is disputed. Some historians see a slave-raiding economy as the main cause of the conflict, others stress that Moscow started more of the wars. Khudyakov counted 13 Moscow–Kazan wars between 1439 and 1550, seven of them begun by Moscow.

Was Kazan a Muscovite protectorate?

For a time it came close. In 1487 Ivan III intervened in a succession struggle. A Russian army besieged Kazan from 18 May and entered the city on 9 July 1487. Khan Ali was sent as a prisoner to Vologda, his family to Beloozero, and his half-brother Muhammad Amin, who had grown up at the Moscow court, was made khan. The Orthodox Encyclopaedia (Pravoslavnaya entsiklopediya) states: "This meant the establishment of a Russian protectorate over the Kazan Khanate." Khudyakov called the years 1487–1521 "the epoch of the Russian protectorate".

Historians disagree. A. A. Zimin and others saw only dependence in foreign policy. Al'bert Aksanov argued in 2016 that the diplomatic documents and unofficial chronicles show "an allied character" in Moscow–Kazan relations from 1487 to 1505: an unequal alliance, not a protectorate.

Moscow's grip did not hold. On 24 June 1505, the opening day of the Volga fair, Muhammad Amin turned on the Russians. According to Khudyakov, Russian merchants in Kazan were killed, their goods plundered, and the Russian envoy arrested. In September a Kazan and Nogai army besieged Nizhny Novgorod, which was saved by Lithuanian prisoners of war whom the governor armed. Two Russian river expeditions against Kazan were defeated in May and June 1506. Peace was restored in 1507, and Muhammad Amin reigned until his death in 1518.

How did the Girays come to rule Kazan?

When Muhammad Amin died without sons, Moscow placed the thirteen-year-old Shah Ali, of the Qasim line, on the throne in 1519. He was deeply unpopular. In the spring of 1521 Sahib Giray, a son of the Crimean khan Mengli Giray, entered Kazan with 300 Crimeans, the Russian shops were plundered, and Shah Ali fled to Moscow. That summer Kazan and Crimea raided Muscovy together.

For the next three decades the throne swung between a pro-Crimean and a pro-Moscow party. Sahib Giray's nephew Safa Giray reigned three times. In 1531 he was driven out and Moscow's candidate Jan Ali, Shah Ali's younger brother, was installed in his place. Jan Ali was killed in 1535, and Safa Giray returned. A coup in January 1546 drove Safa Giray out again, and in March Shah Ali was elected khan, but only for weeks; Safa Giray returned and ruled until March 1549. The Nikon chronicle records that news reached Moscow on 25 March 1549 that he had died after a fall "in his own chambers", and that "the Kazanians and Crimeans set on the throne his son Utyamysh Giray, a prince of two years".

Who was Süyümbikä?

Süyümbikä (Russian Syuyumbike; Tatar Söyembikä) was a daughter of Yusuf, bey of the Nogai Horde. She was married first to Khan Jan Ali and, after his murder in 1535, to Safa Giray. Their son Utyamysh was born around 1546 (some editors say 1549). After Safa Giray's death she ruled Kazan as regent for her infant son, with a Crimean commander, the oglan Kuchak (Koshchak).

Her regency lasted only about two years. In August 1551, when Kazan accepted Moscow's terms, she and her son were sent up the Volga to Russian custody, arriving in Moscow on 5 September 1551. In 1552 she was married to Shah Ali, by then ruler of Kasimov. Her son was baptised as "Tsar Alexander" on 8 January 1553. The Kazan History adds a love affair with Kuchak and gives her regency as five years; Khudyakov doubted both.

In Tatar memory Süyümbikä became a symbol of the lost khanate, and the tall tower in the Kazan Kremlin bears her name. The legend that she threw herself from it is not history: she left Kazan alive, and the Kazan Kremlin museum states that the tower was "most likely built in the 17th–18th centuries".

Why did Ivan the Terrible build Sviyazhsk?

Ivan IV led two winter campaigns against Kazan himself. The first, in 1547–1548, stalled when the ice on the Volga thawed. The second besieged Kazan from 12 to 25 February 1550, and again the thaw forced a retreat. The lesson was that an army needed a base near Kazan.

In the spring of 1551 the Russians built one. A fortress was prepared in timber up the Volga and floated down the river. The Nikon chronicle records that "on 24 May, on the Sunday of All Saints, Tsar Shigalei and the commanders came to the Sviyaga", cleared the hill at the river mouth, upstream from Kazan, and set up the fortress: "The town that was brought from upstream took up half of the hill, and the commanders and the boyars' sons built the other half with their own men at once … and finished the town in four weeks." It was named Ivangorod and later Sviyazhsk.

The new fortress split the khanate. The Mari and Chuvash of the "Hill Side", the right bank of the Volga, went over to Moscow. On 14 August 1551 an assembly in Kazan accepted Moscow's terms: the Hill Side was ceded, all Russian captives were to be freed, and Shah Ali would return as khan. He entered Kazan on 16 August. On the first day, the chronicle says, he handed over 2,700 captives; it puts the total freed from the city and the land of Kazan at 60,000. The Kazan History claims "more than 100,000 men and women, boys and girls" taken over thirty years. Aksanov notes that round numbers in Old Russian writing "had symbolic meaning". Either figure is a chronicler's claim, not a count.

How did Ivan the Terrible capture Kazan in 1552?

Shah Ali could not hold Kazan. Moscow planned to rule it through a Russian governor, and on 6 March 1552 the khan left for Sviyazhsk. Three days later, on 9 March, the Kazan nobles shut the gates against the governor, Prince Semyon Mikulinsky, and invited a prince of the Astrakhan line, Yadigar-Muhammad, to be khan. In June, as the Russian army set out, Khan Devlet Giray of Crimea raided as far as Tula to distract it.

Ivan IV reached Sviyazhsk on 13 August 1552. On 23 August his camp was set up before Kazan, the conventional start of the siege. The size of his army is uncertain. Khudyakov gave 150,000 besiegers against 33,000 defenders, without a source; the Tatar Encyclopaedia estimates the Russian army at about 50,000–60,000, including some 5,000 musketeers (streltsy) and up to 3,000 of Shah Ali's Tatars, against about 3,000 Nogai horsemen and a city militia of up to 10,000, with a Tatar cavalry force harassing the besiegers from the Arsk forest.

The siege was decided by gunpowder. On 30 August the Russians defeated the Tatar field force on the Arsk Field. On 31 August, the chronicle says, the tsar ordered a "German" engineer called Razmysl to dig a mine; on 4 September a mine destroyed the passage to the city's water source. On 30 September further charges were blown before the Tsar's and Arsk gates. On 1 October, after a day of bombardment, the Kazanians were called on to surrender; they answered "with one voice": "We will not submit!" The storm was set for the next morning.

The storm came at dawn on Sunday 2 October 1552. According to the Nikon chronicle, two mines exploded as the deacon at the tsar's field liturgy read the Gospel words "and there shall be one fold and one shepherd". The Russians broke in through the gaps. The fighting went on street by street to the khan's court. Prince Andrei Kurbsky, who fought in the storm and was badly wounded, describes the last stand of the clergy around the mosques, led by "their chief bishop … named Kulsherif-mulla", who "fought so stubbornly that all perished to the last man". The defenders handed over Yadigar-Muhammad alive and, in Kurbsky's account, said: "As long as the yurt stood and the chief city where the khan's throne was, we stood to the death for the khan and the fatherland. Now we give you the khan alive … and the rest of us will go out into the open field to drink the cup of death with you."

The chronicle records the tsar's order: "women and small children were to be taken captive, and the fighting men, for their treason, all killed". Kazan was cleared of bodies on 4 October, and on 12 October Ivan began his journey home. Kurbsky put the siege at "seven weeks"; counted from 23 August it lasted about six.

What happened after the fall of Kazan?

The war was not over. In the countryside the Mari, Udmurts and Tatars rose in what Russian historians call the Kazan or Cheremis war. The rebels chose new leaders, among them Mamysh-Berdy, built a fortress at Chalym and invited Ali-Akram, a Nogai prince, as khan. Khudyakov cites a Russian report that a punitive campaign in the winter of 1553–1554 took "6,000 men and 15,000 women and children". Chalym fell in the spring of 1556, taken like Kazan by mines, and in 1557 the war was not renewed. Astrakhan fell to Moscow in 1556, which gave Russia the whole course of the Volga.

The Tatars were expelled from the walled city, which was rebuilt as a Russian fortress with Orthodox churches. The two captured khans were baptised in Moscow: Utyamysh as Alexander on 8 January 1553, Yadigar-Muhammad as Simeon on 26 February 1553. The historian Matthew Romaniello, in The Elusive Empire (2012), describes Russian rule over Kazan in the following century as a series of compromises with local elites rather than a simple imposition of power.

The conquest also shaped Moscow. Ivan IV marked it with the church of the Intercession on the Moat, now known as St Basil's Cathedral, whose central church was finished in 1561. The Kazan History, written in the 1560s by a Russian who had spent twenty years as a captive and servant of the khans, made the fall of Kazan one of the great stories of Russian literature; the Orthodox Encyclopaedia warns that its author "made numerous errors".

How is the fall of Kazan remembered today?

For many Tatars, 2 October 1552 is a day of national loss. A Day of Memory (Xäter köne) for the defenders of Kazan has been held since 15 October 1989, the Gregorian equivalent of 2 October in the old calendar. It began as a march through central Kazan ending with prayers at the Süyümbikä tower; since 2017 it has been held in Tinchurin Park. In 2020 the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan proposed a second date, the 13th day of the month of Shawwal in the Muslim calendar, while activists kept 15 October.

UNESCO inscribed the Kazan Kremlin on the World Heritage List in 2000, describing a site that "dates from the Muslim period of the Golden Horde and the Kazan Khanate" and was "conquered by Ivan the Terrible in 1552". Sviyazhsk followed in 2017, as the outpost from which Ivan "initiated the conquest of the Kazan Khanate". The large Kul Sharif mosque in the Kremlin, named after the last seyid, opened on 24 June 2005 for Kazan's millennium. It is a modern building on the presumed site of the khans' mosques, not a reconstruction. Kurbsky remembered five tall stone mosques with the khans' tombs.

Common myths about the Khanate of Kazan

Timeline of the Khanate of Kazan

What the map shows next

At 1440 the new khanate appears beside the Golden Horde and the Grand Principality of Moscow. At 1500 Kazan is Moscow's client, while the Crimean Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate and the Nogai Horde surround it to the south. The last year the khanate is drawn is 1551. At 1553 its lands belong to the Tsardom of Russia.