Bulat Rakhimzianov is a senior research fellow of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan and lecturer in history at the Russian Islamic University.
This excellent monograph delivers more than its title promises, studies in the history of Muscovy’s vassal khanate of Kasimov. It not only comprehensively analyzes the early history of the Kasimov khanate but also sheds considerable light upon the histories of Russia, the Crimea and Kazan during this period.
Kasimovskoe khanstvo consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography, and appendices. There is no index.
In his Introduction, Rakhimzianov articulates the goals and limitations of the book. This study ends in 1552 when the Muscovite conquest of Kazan rendered Kasimov an anachronism. Kasimov was not called “Kasimov” until the seventeenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was called Gorodets, Gorodets Meshcherskii, Meshchera, or the Meshchera yurt, in Turkic Khan-Kirman. Rakhimzianov proposes that the word “khanate” best reflects its status as one of the successors of the Golden Horde (it would be better to discard this anachronistic Russian term and use “Juchid ulus”). Rakhimzianov poses the central question of Kasimov history, how a Muslim Tatar khanate arose and continued to exist on Orthodox Russian soil. Rakhimzianov’s monograph is based primarily on Russian sources, since sources from the Kasimov Court are almost totally lacking. He consulted Russian- and English-language scholarship.
In Chapter 1, Rakhimzianov notes that most Russian archival materials on Kasimov date to the second period of its history, 1552–1681. He follows those historians who accept the authenticity of the yarlik of Khan Ahmed of the Great Horde to Ivan III and who date the “Kazan History” to 1564–1565. He comments upon nearly every previous historian who has ever expressed any opinion about Kasimov’s history.
Chapter 2 discusses the formation and structure of the Kasimov khanate. Rakhimzianov convincingly argues that the creation of the Kasimov khanate (Pp. 47–65) could only have occurred at the conjuncture of the nascent breakup of the Juchid ulus and the Muscovite “feudal” (i.e., civil) war of the mid-fifteenth century. The establishment of the Kasimov khanate was part of Grand Prince Vasilii II’s payoff to Ulug-Muhammed for his release after he was captured at the battle of Suzdal in 1437. At this time, Muscovy could hardly have been thinking of creating an advance post against steppe raids or using Kasimov as a tool in the battle for succession to the legacy of the Juchid ulus. Only under Ivan III did Muscovy transform the “minus” of Kasimov into a “plus” in its foreign policy. Kasimov began as a tribute-receiving state, not a “vassal” of Muscovy.
There is a peculiar pattern to the titles ascribed by the Russian sources to rulers of Kasimov. Rulers of Kasimov who had not previously sat on the throne of another khanate are called tsarevich, which usually translated the title “sultan” (son of a khan), not “khan.” In the period covered by Rakhimzianov’s book, the exceptions are Nur-Daulet, who had previously been khan of the Crimea, and Shakh-Ali, after he had served as khan of Kazan. Why the Russian sources did not treat the ruler of Kasimov as a khan, when all such rulers were Chingisids, requires explanation. Unfortunately, we cannot know if the Kasimov Tatars called the ruler of Kasimov “khan” because we have no written sources in Tatar from Kasimov from this period. However, it remains odd reading a history of a “khanate” that seems to have been ruled most of the time by a sultan.
Kasimov occupied a different status than the “feedings” (kormlenie) assigned to Tatars in various Russian cities because it could only be held by Chingisids. Rakhimzianov endorses Mikhail Tikhomirov’s intuitive insight that in respect to their Russian subjects, the rulers of Kasimov nevertheless acted as kormlenshchiki but those same rulers of Kasimov were sovereigns vis-à-vis their Muslim Tatar subjects. Unfortunately, no sources corroborate this intriguing theory.
The structure of Kasimov government, society, and economy (Pp. 65–92) derived from that of other successor states of the Juchid ulus. Rakhimzianov helpfully examines the complex Turkic terminology for social and religious offices and groups. He defines kazaki in Kasimov as the lowest level of military servitor without referencing its meaning as freebooters familiar from Russian Cossacks.
Chapter 3 presents a detailed political history of Kasimov. Rakhimzianov emphasizes Kasimov’s pivotal role in Muscovite policy toward Crimea and Kazan. Kasimov became a Muscovite weapon and its rulers Muscovite puppets, especially Shakh-Ali and Dzhan-Ali as Muscovite-imposed khans of Kazan. Rakhimzianov analyzes the relative statuses and relationships to Moscow of Kasimov and Kazan. Kasimov’s rulers can be divided into three periods based upon their points of origin, Kazan (Ulug-Muhammed, Kasym, Daniiar), Crimea (the Gireids Nur-Daulet, Dzhanai, Satylgan), and the Great Horde (Sheikh-Auliiar, Shakh-Ali, Dzhan-Ali). The Crimeans were employed to checkmate and destroy the Great Horde, after which Great Horde Chingisids were used to counterbalance former-ally Crimea. Rakhimzianov rightly observes that there was no “Kasimov dynasty.”
The apotheosis of Kasimov was of course the use of its rulers as instruments of Muscovite policy toward Kazan, but before that, Kasimov contingents had been crucial in the Muscovite civil war and in Ivan III’s campaigns against Novgorod. Only in passing does Rakhimzianov mention that the Kasimov cavalry took part in every Muscovite campaign against Lithuania, Livonia, and the Crimea (P. 81). He does not detail this participation, nor does he assess its significance or consequences to Muscovy or Kasimov.
Rakhimzianov cleverly singles out one incident in which Edward Keenan’s privileging of diplomatic sources over “biased” chronicles does not hold: the diplomatic explanation for the overthrow of Dzhan-ali in Kazan was less accurate than the chronicle version (Pp. 153–154).
The Conclusion notes that Muscovite religious tolerance of Islam in Kasimov came in handy in Muscovite diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.
The Bibliography (Pp. 171–190) contains citations to eleven articles by Rakhimzianov of the more than twenty he has written. The four Appendices contain genealogical tables of Kasimov rulers; a chronology; a list of various spellings in Russian sources of the names of Kasimov rulers; and a Glossary. The book concludes with Tatar- and English-language summaries. Between pages 192 and 193 are nineteen magnificent glossy color illustrations, some of which are photographs by the author, and other reconstructions. Striking are the Kasimov mosque and minaret, Shakh-Ali’s mausoleum, the Tatar cemetery, and the khan’s palace.
Rakhimzianov follows some recent scholarship that exaggerates the Tatar element of Muscovite political consciousness and foreign policy. That Muscovy wanted to be the heir of the Juchid ulus, that Moscow’s rulers needed Chingisid charisma via subordinate Chingisid vassal rulers to substantiate their pretensions to the title tsar’ (Pp. 5, 62, 135, 163) is not convincing. Ivan IV was crowned in 1547 as a Byzantine basileus, not a khan; Muscovy did not try to conquer all the territory of the Juchid ulus in the sixteenth century, certainly not Crimea, lest that provoke an Ottoman war, and never Bulgaria, Khwarizm, or Azerbaijan. Moscow declined the denomination of its rulers as “White Khans” or their descent from Chinggis proffered by the Nogais. Muscovy was intimately familiar with Horde ways but manipulated that knowledge to its own advantage in dealing with steppe entities. Muscovite knowledge of Tatar society and polities equaled that of any steppe “insider,” but to the Muscovites the Tatars were still “outsiders,” Them, not Us.
Rakhimzianov’s divergent evaluations of how aggressive the Kazan state was (Pp. 52, 135) would have been clearer if he had emphasized his chronology that Kazan was aggressive in 1438 – c. 1487, but hardly so from the 1530s on. It is a bit of a surprise that a historian in Kazan should debunk the concept of Kazan independence as a myth (P. 135), although Rakhimzianov is certainly correct that at times Russia, Crimea, or the Nogais dominated Kasimov. The argument that Moscow did not abolish the Kasimov khanate after, or even before, 1552 because it did not want to administer non-Russian non-Christian ethnic groups directly (Pp. 61–63) needs to be reconciled with Muscovy’s willingness in the late fourteenth century to rule (to be sure, and try to convert) Permians (Zyrians) and after 1552 to undertake the arduous task of administering directly, after pacifying, much larger populations of non-Slavic non-Christian Mordva and Cheremis on Kazan territory.
These comments only raise questions meriting further discussion. They do not impugn the irrefutable conclusion that Kasimovskoe khanstvo (1445–1552 gg.) is a major contribution to our understanding of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history of Kasimov and all the successor states of the Juchid ulus, and incidentally, no small contribution to Muscovite history as well. One looks forward eagerly to Rakhimzianov’s further research on cities in Muscovy assigned to Tatars in Muscovite service and on the later history of Kasimov after 1552.