Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie (Jan 2016)
Siberian Tatar States in the System of the Late Golden Horde World (Review of the Book: The History of Tatars from the Earliest Times. Volume 4. Tatar States in the 15th–18th centuries. Kazan, 2014. 1080 p.; 32 p. ill.) »
Abstract
The fourth volume of “The History of Tatars” dedicated to the Tatar states in the 15th–18th centuries was published in 2014. Modern tendencies in historical writing of separate Tatar khanates and hordes in the late Golden Horde period as well as the key points of their culture, religion, economy, and internal structure found reflection in this book. 10 authors in 13 sections also presented varied material on the history of the Siberian Tatar statehood in the 15th–16th centuries. This review only concerns the periodization and chronology of these states and their place at a foreign-policy arena of the given period. Essays by A.G. Nesterov also contain information on this topic. To understand these processes we have to consider a question of applicability of some politico-legal terms (khanate, yurt, ulus, vilayet, land) to the Siberian states. At different stages of statehood and depending on the descent of the author of every source, the terms stated above had clearly different meanings, which is why we need to constantly explain the necessity of using these terms by the authors in order to understand their conceptions correctly. The authors of the review suggest the returning to an already existing concept of “khanate” in respect to administrative formations with the centres in Chimgi-Tura and Isker in order to avoid misunderstanding. In the meantime the political status of these city centres has to be reconsidered in the nomadic political traditions of Shibanid statehood where the Khan was attached to the horde. Equally important is to understand stages of the Siberian statehood development and the chronology of its dissolution and extinction. The authors of the essays didn’t work out a single conclusion on this question and suggested two contradictory conceptions instead. The first conception suggests the disruption of Siberian Khanate after Kuchum’s defeat in the battle at the Ob in 1598 and the second conception suggests that Siberian Khanate continued to exist in the early 17th century. At the same time while considering the history of this khanate they have got three points of view, which can be called “historiographical myths”: the Shibanids took power as invaders who destroyed the local legal princely dynasty of the Taibugids. Bokharan Khan Abdallah II helped them and Siberian khanate was a part of Shibanid state. But these standpoints are not fixed in the sources of the same period, so that another version of events can’t be provided. It is obvious that it needs to stop spreading myths in respect of the Siberian Tatar statehood and return to studying the sources.
