137

The Khāns of Kazan (Qāzān)

840–959/1437–1552

The middle Volga region

1. The line of Ulugh Muhammad

840/1437

Ulugh Muhammad b. Jalāl al-Dīn b. Toqtamïsh

849/1445

Maḥmūd (Mahmūdak) b. Ulugh Muḥammad

866/1462

Khalīl b. Mahmūd

871/1467

Ibrāhīm b. Maḥmūd

884/1479

‘Alī b. Ibrāhīm, first reign

889/1484

Muḥammad Amīn b. Ibrāhīm, first reign

890/1485

‘Alī b. Ibrāhīm, second reign

892/1487

Muḥammad Amīn b. Ibrāhīm, second reign

(900/1495

Mamūq b. Ibaq, Khān of the Tatars of Siberia)

901/1496

‘Abd al-Laṭīf b. Ibrāhīm

907–24/1502–18

Muḥammad Amīn b. Ibrāhīm, third reign

2. Khāns from various outside lines

925/1519

Shāh ‘Alī b. Sayyid Awliyār, from the Khāns of Qāsimov, first reign

927/1521

Ṣāḥib Giray (I) b. Mengli I, from the Khāns of Crimea

930/1524

Ṣafā’ Giray b. Fatḥ, from the Khāns of Crimea, first reign

937/1531

Jān ‘Alī b. Sayyid Awliyār, from the Khāns of Qāsimov

939/1533

Ṣafā’ Giray b. Fatḥ, second reign

953/1546

Shāh ‘Alī b. Sayyid Awliyār, second reign

953/1546

Ṣafā’ Giray b. Fatḥ, third reign

956/1549

Ötemish b. Ṣafā’ Giray, from the Khāns of Crimea, regent for Süyün Bike

958/1551

Shāh ‘Alī b. Sayyid Awliyār, third reign

959/1552

Yādigār Muḥammad b. Qāsim, from the Khāns of Astrakhan

959/1552

Russian conquest

The Kazan khanate was another of the groupings founded by a Jochid epigone. Toqtamïsh’s grandson Ulugh Muhammad rose to power in what later became eastern Russia as the Golden Horde decayed, and his son Maḥmūd in 849/1445 seized the actual town of Kazan from a local prince, possibly of Bulghār descent, ‘Alī Beg. It was likewise around this time that the sister khanate of Qāsimov (see below, no. 138) emerged. The khanate spanned the middle Volga basin around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers and in the south bordered on the khanate of Astrakhan (see above, no. 136). It thus covered a region which had been exposed to Islamic influences since the constituting of the Bulghār kingdom towards the opening of the tenth century. Kazan’s position gave it a considerable commercial importance, not least as a mart for slaves.

All through the khanate’s life, its history was bound up with that of the Princedom of Muscovy, its western neighbour, now reasserting itself after some two centuries of thraldom to the Golden Horde and its successors. From the outset, the Princes interfered in succession disputes within Kazan. This intervention intensified after the end of the family of Ulugh Muhammad, and the last three decades or so of the khanate saw rulers installed at Kazan from various outside Chingizid lines, with internal tensions between the partisans of an accommodation with Muscovy and those hoping to preserve Kazan’s independence through links with the Crimean Tatars and the Noghay Horde. Finally, the army of Tsar Ivan IV captured Kazan in 959/1552, and a systematic Russian occupation and colonisation of the lands of the former khanate began. A considerable proportion of the Muslim Tatar population has nevertheless survived over the centuries, and a reduced part of the khanate formed under the Soviets the Tatar Autonomous SSR.

Lane-Poole, genealogical table at p. 240; Zambaur, 249 and Table S.

İA ‘Kazan’ (Reşid Rahmati Arat), with a genealogical table; EI2 ‘Ḳāzān’ (W. Barthold and A. Bennigsen).

Azade-Ayşe Rorlich, The Volga Tatars. A Profile in National Resilience, Stanford CA 1986, 3–33.

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