This paper will analyze the objectives, policies, and strategies of the four North Caucasus rulers who submitted both to the Ottoman sultan and the Muscovite tsar either simultaneously or at different times during the second half of the sixteenth century. The local chiefs to be examined are Solokh of the Kabardinians, Kansavuk and Sibok of the Janeys, and Urus of the Greater Nogays. Since no sources written in the local languages of the North Caucasus are extant, any study of these regional actors and their strategies has to be based on Ottoman and Muscovite sources. This presentation, therefore, relies on the Ottoman mühimme defters (registers of important affairs), materials of the Muscovite Posol’skii prikaz (Ambassadorial Office), and Ottoman and Russian chronicles. A comparative analysis of these sources allows us to achieve a more precise understanding of the internal mechanisms and functioning of the North Caucasus polities in relation to the expanding imperial powers. The prevailing scholarly opinion has held that the North Caucasus rulers—be they Adyghe, Kabardinian, or Daghestani chiefs—tried to gain utmost advantage out of the imperial rivalry over their territories among the Ottomans, Muscovites, and Safavids. They were “greedy” and “needy” and consequently always in pursuit of higher salaries, loftier titles, and more gifts from the rival powers. Pledges of allegiance meant little to these rulers who broke their promises easily and even changed their religion whenever that promised greater reward. The paper proposed, however, will challenge this interpretation. The perceived “greediness” should be understood as a reflection of the Ottomans, Muscovites, and Safavids trying to outbid each other by offering the North Caucasus rulers titles, salaries, and gifts. The “neediness” of North Caucasus polities is clearly contradicted by the fact that they occupied a strategically advantageous location controlling several important trade routes and were the source of slaves, renowned swords, and many other goods and raw materials. This paper will argue that the North Caucasus polities under discussion were largely self-sufficient economically, but they had no choice but to play double in order to preserve their power and authority in the face of the imperial rivalry between the Ottomans and Muscovites. The paper will also explore the meaning of the Ottoman-Muscovite imperial rivalry from the perspective of the North Caucasus rulers and ruling families.

Despite its role as the premier slaving power in the Northern Black Sea region and the main supplier of East European slaves to the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries, the Crimean Khanate’s own system of slavery remains understudied. Among the reasons for this are the paucity of extant primary sources of Crimean provenance and the under-utilization of non-Crimean sources. The study proposed will rely on the materials of the Muscovite Ambassadorial Office (Posol’skii prikaz) pertaining to frontier conferences between Crimean and Muscovite diplomats for the purpose of ransom and exchange of slaves, freedmen, and prisoners of war. These materials, held in the Russian State Archives of Early Acts in Moscow, have been used in scholarship only superficially. The paper will focus on the 1649 conference, the only one whose extant records include comprehensive lists of the returning Russian subjects indicating their name, gender, social status, place of origin, and the length of time spent in the Khanate. The paper will demonstrate the value of these materials for an analysis of Crimean attitudes towards captives and of the dynamics of the mass movement of manpower across the East European steppe frontier. The nature of the records of the 1649 conference allows for a quantitative analysis of the repatriated party’s demographic profile. The age and gender distribution of the 878 Russians is skewed towards older people (58%) and women (72%), with 55% of the women reporting having spent upward of twenty years in the Crimea. This data indicates the perceived diminished usefulness of older people, especially women, as slaves or even as manumitted residents in the Khanate. The willingness of their owners and of the Crimean authorities to allow the ransom and exchange of such a comparatively large number of slaves and freedmen on one single occasion suggests that these people were viewed as a disposable means of commercial, political, or personal expediency. This attitude correlates with the steady influx of newly captured East Europeans into the Khanate and with a similarly steady outflow of some of the captives to the Ottoman slave markets. The materials under discussion also help us envisage the movement of enslaved and manumitted manpower across the Crimean-Muscovite section of the East European steppe frontier at the time as two sizable, though uneven, currents going in the opposite directions.

The reign of Khan Islam III Geray of the Crimea coincided with one of the most chaotic eras in East European history which was sparkled by the Cossack rebellion of 1648 under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The subsequent anti-Polish alliance between Islam III Geray and Bohdan Khmelnytsky has been seen in scholarship as a classical example of the Crimean Khanate's policy towards its northern neighbours. According to this view, Islam III Geray supported the Zaporozhian Cossacks against the Polish crown in order to weaken both of them as well as to present his subjects with an opportunity of plunder-raids. It has also been argued that the Crimean khan betrayed Bohdan Khmelnytsky by concluding agreement with the Polish crown on several occasions without consent or even knowledge of his Cossack allies. However, this mainstream interpretation does not survive a close scrutiny of primary sources. Crimean diplomatic correspondence and other materials originating in the circle of Islam III Geray strongly suggest that the khan did not want to get involved in a prolonged war against the Commonwealth lest it undermined the possibility of restoring the Polish authority over the Zaporozhian Cossacks. From the perspective of Islam III Geray, the conflict between Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Polish crown had to be resolved by an agreement that would guarantee the Zaporozhian Cossacks their traditional rights and privileges in return for their acceptance of the continuation of Polish suzerainty. The principal objectives of Islam III Geray in supporting Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s uprising were to punish the Polish crown for its failure to pay the tribute due to the khanate, to retaliate for the recent expeditions of the Polish troops, and also to provide his subjects with an opportunity of looting and slave raiding which would help erase the unfortunate effects of livestock epidemics, harvest failures, and a recent civil war between the khan’s troops and the Khanate’s tribal forces. This paper will substantiate the interpretation proposed with a detailed analysis of Islam III Geray’s attitude towards the Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Polish crown in the course of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s uprising.