SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Histories of the Ottoman Empire based on Oriental and Western sources have been written by outstanding scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These histories trace the development of the Empire as a whole without giving too much consideration to the separate contributions of political entities or significant figures within the Empire. In short, the lacunae of Ottoman history must now be filled in by studies of the component parts of that history. The Crimean Khanate is one such political entity which has attracted very little systematic study outside of Russia and Turkey, The Crimean Khanate maintained a significant position in the relations between the Ottoman and Russian Empires from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, during which time a chance took place in the balance of power in Eastern Europe and Western Asia - a change generally to the advantage of Russia and at the expense of the Ottoman State. The present study attempts to make a detailed survey of the relations of the Khanate with the Ottoman Empire and other foreign powers between 1578 and 1608 and, at the same time, to throw light on the institutions and political life of the Khanate by tracing the life of one of the most significant Khans of the Crimean Tatars, Gazi Giray Khar. II (1588-1608). The note on sources discusses systematically the widely scattered sources pertinent to the study of the Crimean Khanate in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the introduction the writer seeks to place the study in a sixteenth century Eastern European and Western Asian context, giving special attention to the Black Sea and the steppe environments of the Khanate, The first three chapters then describe the relations of the Khanate within the three principal orbits of its political activity, the Caucasus, the Steppe and Eastern Europe respectively, between 1573 and l606; Chapter IV provides an evaluation of these far flung activities.