Devlet I Giray

The Tatar khanate of Kazan, one of Russia’s three Tatar states, is a successor state of the Golden Horde, together with the khanates of Astrakhan and of the Crimea.

Its capital city, Kazan', had been established on the left bank of the Volga River in the early fifteenth century.

Kazan’s reinforcement of Crimea had displeased the pro-Moscow elements of the Kazan Khanate, and some of these noblemen had provoked a revolt in 1545.

The result was the deposition of the khan, Safa Giray, the son of Sahib Giray of the Crimean Khanate.

A Moscow supporter, Şahğäli, had occupied the throne.

Moscow had organized several subsequent campaigns to impose control over Kazan, but these have been unsuccessful.

Safa Giray had returned to the throne with the help of the Nogai Horde, a confederation of Turkic nomads that has occupied the Pontic-Caspian steppe from about 1500.

He had executed seventy-five noblemen, and the rest of his opposition had escaped to Russia.

Dying in 1549, his three-year old son Ütämeşgäräy had been recognized as khan; his mother Söyembikä, who acts as regent, is the khanate's de facto ruler.

The administration of the ulan Qoşçaq, head of government during the reigns of Safagäräy and Söyembikä, gains a degree of independence under her rule.

At this time Safa Giray's relatives (including Devlet I Giray) are in Crimea.

Their invitation to the throne of Kazan is vitiated by a large portion of the nobility.

Relations with Russia have continued to worsen under Qoşçaq's government.

A group of disgruntled noblemen had at the beginning of 1551 invited a supporter of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Şahğäli, for the second time.

Qoşçaq had been forced to escape from Kazan after Şahğäli's successful coup d'etat, but Russian troops had caught him and executed him after he refused baptism.

At the same time, the Kazan lands to the east of the Volga River are ceded to Russia, and Ütämeşgäräy, along with his mother, has been sent to a Moscow prison.

Şahğäli occupies the Kazan throne until February 1552, when anti-Moscow elements in the Kazan government exile him and invite the Astrakhan prince Yadegar Moxammad, along with the Nogays, to aid them.

Tsar Ivan IV leads a one hundred and fifty thousand-strong Russian army from Moscow towards Kolomna on June 16, 1552, ...

...routing the Crimean Tatars under Devlet Giray near Tula before turning to the east.

The tsar presses on towards Kazan, commencing the siege of the Tatar capital on August 30.

Under the supervision of Prince Alexander Gorbaty-Shuisky, the Russians use ram weapons, a battery-tower, mines, and one hundred and fifty cannon.

The Russians also have the advantage of efficient military engineers, such as Ivan Vyrodkov and the foreigner Rozmysl (Butler).

Kazan's water supply is blocked and the walls are breached before the final storming of the city on October 2 leads to Kazan being taken, its fortifications razed, and much of the population massacred.

The Kazan Chronicle reports about one hundred and ten thousand killed, both civilians and garrison members; sixty thousand to one hundred thousand Russians who had been kept captive in khanate are released.

The fall of Kazan has as its primary effect the outright annexation of the Middle Volga.

Kazan is the first non-Slavic state to be integrated with the Russian empire.

A guerilla war begins in the region after the city's fall.

The Tsar, in suppressing the uprising, responds with a policy of Christianization and Russification of his Tatar subjects and other indigenous peoples; this policy will not be reversed until the reign of Catherine the Great.

Muscovy is transformed as a result of the Kazan campaigns into the multinational and multi-faith state of Russia.

The city of Kazan is today the sixth largest city of Russia.

What had once been Russia's best and most fertile areas have been devastated and have fallen well below the rest of the country.

Those that have not been killed by the Oprichniks have often fled into other areas of Russia.

Tax revenues, instead of increasing (as Ivan had hoped), have fallen, and Russia is badly prepared when the Crimean Tatars attack.

Devlet I Giray, the khan of the Crimean Tatars, has mounted several attacks on Moscow during Ivan’s long war against Poland-Lithuania, Livonia, and Sweden, his main purpose being the annexations of Kazan and Astrakhan, lost by the Muslim world to the Russians in the previous years.

Having seen an opportunity in Ivan’s involvement in the Russo-Turkish War of 1568-69, he sets out with a body of cavalry and advances northward to Moscow, ravaging the countryside.

Reaching Moscow’s walls in 1571, they capture and burn the city, save for the fortified Kremlin, and supposedly carry off some one hundred thousand captives before being driven off.

The Crimean Tatars, undertaking another assault against Moscow in 1572, encounter Russians returning from the Russo-Turkish War of 1568-69, who help their countrymen defeat the Tatars at the battle of Molodi, about twenty-five miles from Moscow, after which the Tatars withdraw to the Crimea.

Devlet Giray's attempts have been unsuccessful, but still he manages to impose annual monetary and fur tributes on some of the Russians and Ukrainians living in the south.