Crimean Khanate
The Crimean Khanate, self-defined as the Throne of Crimea and Desht-i Kipchak, and in old European historiography and geography known as Little Tartary, was a Crimean Tatar state existing from 1441 to 1783, the longest-lived of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde. Established by Hacı I Giray in 1441, it was regarded as the direct heir to the Golden Horde and to Desht-i-Kipchak.
In 1783, violating the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, the Russian Empire annexed the khanate. Among the European powers, only France came out with an open protest against this act, due to the longstanding Franco-Ottoman alliance.
Naming and geography
The Crimean Khans, considering their state as the heir and legal successor of the Golden Horde and Desht-i Kipchak, called themselves khans of "the Great Horde, the Great State and the Throne of the Crimea". The full title of the Crimean khans, used in official documents and correspondence with foreign rulers, varying slightly from document to document during the three centuries of the Khanate's existence, was as follows: "By the Grace and help of the blessed and highest Lord, the great padishah of the Great Horde, and the Great State, and the Throne of the Crimea, and all the Nogai, and the mountain Circassians, and the tats and tavgachs, and The Kipchak steppe and all the Tatars".According to Oleksa Hayvoronsky, the inhabitants of the Crimean Khanate in Crimean Tatar usually referred to their state as "Qırım yurtu, Crimean Yurt", which can be translated into English as "the country of Crimea" or "Crimean country".
English-speaking writers during the 18th and early 19th centuries often called the territory of the Crimean Khanate and of the Lesser Nogai Horde Little Tartary. The name "Little Tartary" distinguished the area from Tartary – those areas of central and northern Asia inhabited by Turkic peoples or Tatars.
The Khanate included the Crimean peninsula and the adjacent steppes, mostly corresponding to parts of South Ukraine between the Dnieper and the Donets rivers. The territory controlled by the Crimean Khanate shifted throughout its existence due to the constant incursions by the Cossacks, who had lived along the Don since the disintegration of the Golden Horde in the 15th century. The London-based cartographer Herman Moll in a map of c. 1729 shows "Little Tartary" as including the Crimean peninsula and the steppe between Dnieper and Mius River as far north as the Dnieper bend and the upper Tor River.
History
Pre-history
The first known Turkic peoples appeared in Crimea in the 6th century, during the conquest of the Crimea by The Turkic Kaganate. In the 11th century, Cumans appeared in Crimea; they later became the ruling and state-forming people of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate. In the middle of the 13th century, the northern steppe lands of the Crimea, inhabited mainly by Turkic peoples, became the possession of Ulus Juchi, known as the Golden Horde or Ulu Ulus. In this era, the role of Turkic peoples increased. Around this time, the local Kipchaks took the name of Tatars.In the Horde period, the khans of the Golden Horde were the Supreme rulers of the Crimea, but their governors – Emirs – exercised direct control. The first formally recognized ruler in the Crimea is considered Aran-Timur, the nephew of Batu Khan of the Golden Horde, who received this area from Mengu-Timur, and the first center of the Crimea was the ancient city Qırım. This name then gradually spread to the entire Peninsula. The second center of Crimea was the valley adjacent to Qırq Yer and Bağçasaray.
File:Stary Krym Meczet Chana Uzbeka.jpg|thumb|left|Uzbek Khan Mosque in Eski Qırım, built in the Golden Horde period
The multi-ethnic population of Crimea then consisted mainly of those who lived in the steppe and foothills of the Peninsula: Kipchaks, Crimean Greeks, Crimean Goths, Alans, and Armenians, who lived mainly in cities and mountain villages. The Crimean nobility was mostly of both Kipchak and Horden origin.
Horde rule for the peoples who inhabited the Crimean Peninsula was, in general, painful. The rulers of the Golden Horde repeatedly organized punitive campaigns in the Crimea when the local population refused to pay tribute. An example is the well-known campaign of the Nogai Khan in 1299, which resulted in a number of Crimean cities suffering. As in other regions of the Horde, separatist tendencies soon began to manifest themselves in Crimea.
In 1303, in Crimea, the most famous written monument of the Kypchak or Cuman language was created – "Codex Cumanicus", which is the oldest memorial in the Crimean Tatar language and of great importance for the history of Kypchak and Oghuz dialects – as directly related to the Kipchaks of the Black Sea steppes and Crimea.
File:Мавзолей Джанике-ханым.jpg|thumb|right|Dürbe of Canike Hanım
There are legends that, in the 14th century, the Crimea was repeatedly ravaged by the army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Grand Duke of Lithuania Algirdas broke the Tatar army in 1363 near the mouth of the Dnieper, and then invaded the Crimea, devastated Chersonesos and seized valuable church objects there. There is a similar legend about his successor Vytautas, who in 1397 went on a Crimean campaign to Caffa and again destroyed Chersonesos. Vytautas is also known in Crimean history for giving refuge in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to a significant number of Tatars and Karaites, whose descendants now live in Lithuania and Belarus. In 1399 Vytautas, who came to the aid of the Horde Khan Tokhtamysh, was defeated on the banks of the Vorskla River by Tokhtamysh's rival Timur-Kutluk, on whose behalf the Horde was ruled by the Emir Edigei, and made peace.
During the reign of Canike Hanım, Tokhtamysh's daughter, in Qırq-Or, she supported Hacı I Giray in the struggle against the descendants of Tokhtamysh, Kichi-Muhammada and Sayid Ahmad, who as well as Hacı Giray claimed full power in the Crimea and probably saw him as her heir to the Crimean throne. In the sources of the 16th–18th centuries, the opinion according to which the separation of the Crimean Tatar state was raised to Tokhtamysh, and Canike was the most important figure in this process, completely prevailed.
Establishment
The Crimean Khanate originated in the early 15th century when certain clans of the Golden Horde Empire ceased their nomadic life in the Desht-i Kipchak and decided to make Crimea their yurt. At that time, the Golden Horde of the Mongol Empire had governed the Crimean peninsula as an ulus since 1239, with its capital at Qirim. The local separatists invited a Genghisid contender for the Golden Horde throne, Hacı Giray, to become their khan. Hacı Giray accepted their invitation and travelled from exile in Lithuania. He warred for independence against the Horde from 1420 to 1441, in the end achieving success. But Hacı Giray then had to fight off internal rivals before he could ascend the throne of the khanate in 1449, after which he moved its capital to Qırq Yer. The khanate included the Crimean Peninsula as well as the adjacent steppe.Ottoman protectorate
The sons of Hacı I Giray contended against each other to succeed him. The Ottomans intervened and installed one of the sons, Meñli I Giray, on the throne. Menli I Giray, took the imperial title "Sovereign of Two Continents and Khan of Khans of Two Seas."In 1475 the Ottoman forces, under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, conquered the Greek Principality of Theodoro and the Genoese colonies at Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa. Thenceforth the khanate was a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman sultan enjoyed veto power over the selection of new Crimean khans. The Empire annexed the Crimean coast but recognized the legitimacy of the khanate rule of the steppes, as the khans were descendants of Genghis Khan.
In 1475, the Ottomans imprisoned Meñli I Giray for three years for resisting the invasion. After returning from captivity in Constantinople, he accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, Ottoman sultans treated the khans more as allies than subjects. The khans continued to have a foreign policy independent from the Ottomans in the steppes of Little Tartary. The khans continued to mint coins and use their names in Friday prayers, two important signs of sovereignty. They did not pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire; instead the Ottomans paid them in return for their services of providing skilled outriders and frontline cavalry in their campaigns. Later on, Crimea lost power in this relationship as the result of a crisis in 1523, during the reign of Meñli's successor, Mehmed I Giray. He died that year and beginning with his successor, from 1524 on, Crimean khans were appointed by the Sultan.
The alliance of the Crimean Tatars and the Ottomans was comparable to the Polish–Lithuanian union in its importance and durability. The Crimean cavalry became indispensable for the Ottomans' campaigns against Poland, Hungary, and Persia.
Victory over the Golden Horde
In 1502, Meñli I Giray defeated the last khan of the Great Horde, which put an end to the Horde's claims on Crimea. The Khanate initially chose as its capital Salaçıq near the Qırq Yer fortress. Later, the capital was moved a short distance to Bahçeseray, founded in 1532 by Sahib I Giray. Both Salaçıq and the Qırq Yer fortress today are part of the expanded city of Bahçeseray.Slave trade
The slave trade was the backbone of the economy of the Crimean Khanate.The Crimeans frequently mounted raids into the Danubian principalities, Poland–Lithuania, and Muscovy to enslave people whom they could capture; for each captive, the khan received a fixed share of 10% or 20%. These campaigns by Crimean forces were either sefers, officially declared military operations led by the khans themselves, or çapuls, raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers.
For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland–Lithuania over the period 1500–1700, mainly into the Ottoman Empire. Caffa, an Ottoman city on the Crimean peninsula, was one of the best known significant trading ports and slave markets. In 1769, a last major Tatar raid resulted in the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves.
Author and historian Brian Glyn Williams writes:
Early modern sources are full of descriptions of sufferings of Christian slaves captured by the Crimean Tatars in the course of their raids: