Kolodziejczyk Dariusz. The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania (ENG)

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xx introduction

written and published in Moscow, also Kazan reclaimed its position as

a major international center of Tatar studies.

Tatar studies also revived in the Ukraine, where many scholars

became aected by the powerful individuality of Omeljan Pritsak, who

had always appreciated the input of Turkic elements in the making

of the Ukrainian culture. A very interesting book has been recently

published (in Russian) in the Crimea: its Ukrainian author, Oleksa

Hajvoronskyj, infatuated with the history of the Crimean Khanate,

aims to make it a common heritage of the peninsula’s contempo-

rary inhabitants with no regard to their nationality: be they Russians,

Ukrainians, or Tatars.

e latter, whose large part has returned to

the Crimea despite ocial bans and economic strains, also vividly

participate in discussing their homeland’s past, although this activ-

ity has so far resulted in multiple historical websites rather than fully

researched scholarly monographs. Before one makes any judgment,

one must keep in mind that many members of the contemporary

Crimean Tatar intelligentsia spent their youth in tents illegally erected

by their parents on the conscated grounds of their grandparents that

no longer belonged to them, and at times these tents were set on re

by “unknown individuals.” How many an Ivy League college student

would have written a decent Ph.D. if he/she were to live in a tent on

the Harvard Yard, temporarily raided by hooligans and secret police?

Outside the Soviet Union, Tatar studies were continued in Turkey,

especially by historians of Tatar origin, to mention only Akdes Nimet

Kurat, Halil Inalcık, and—from a younger generation—Hakan Kırımlı.

Nevertheless, a suspicious attitude towards any pan-Turkic sympathies,

demonstrated by the Turkish authorities especially aer 1944, set vis-

ible limits to the development of this study area until the 1990s.

In Central-Eastern Europe, Turkic and Tatar studies traditionally

ourished in Hungary and Poland, where ideological restraints were

less visible than in other communist countries. e research by István

Vásáry and Mária Ivanics seriously contributed to our knowledge of

Cf. an interesting volume published in result of the international conference held

in Kazan: Istočnikovedenie istorii Ulusa Džuči (Zolotoj Ordy). Ot Kalki do Astraxani

1223–1556. Edited by M. Usmanov (Kazan, 2002).

Oleksa Hajvoronskyj, Poveliteli dvux materikov, vol. 1: Krymskie xany XV–XVI

stoletij i bor’ba za nasledstvo Velikoj Ordy (Kiev-Baghchasaray, 2007); vol. 2: Krymskie

xany pervoj poloviny XVII stoletija v bor’be za samostojatel’nost’ i edinovlastie (Kiev –

Baghchasaray, 2009).

introduction xxi

the Tatar, and especially Crimean Tatar chancery. e Polish input

into the Crimean Tatar studies will be treated below. Here, it is worth

mentioning that before WW2 an émigré Crimean Tatar historian,

Abdullah Zihni Soysal, lived and worked in Warsaw.

In the Western academia, studying the Tatar past was hardly a fash-

ionable topic, but at least scholars were not constrained by ideological

or administrative barriers. During the cold war, the fact that Tatar

studies remained a taboo in the Soviet Union could even make their

funding in the West more likely. For instance, when in 1978 Alan

Fisher published a book that was to become for years the standard

English language narrative of the Crimean Tatar past, it appeared in

the Hoover Institution’s series: Studies of Nationalities in the USSR.

Largely due to one individual, an emigrant from Russia Alexandre Ben-

nigsen, also Paris became a leading center for studying Islamic peoples

of the Soviet Union. Bennigsen gathered an excellent team of schol-

ars able to study Ottoman, Crimean, as well as Russian sources and

initiated the edition of documents from the Topkapı Palace Archives

regarding the Crimean Khanate. He introduced it with a touching and

perhaps still up-to-date statement: Nul état n’a pas été autant décrié,

honni et calomnié que le khanat tatar de Crimée, le dernier survivant

du grand Empire mongol, le plus occidental des héritiers de la Horde

d’Or.

See Abdullah Zihni Soysal, “Przyczynek do historii narodów Kaukazu, Nad-

czarnomorza, Krymu, Moskwy i Polski,” Wschód-Orient. Kwartalnik poświęcony

sprawom wschodu 5 (1934), no. 2–4, pp. 68–98; idem, Z dziejów Krymu. Polityka-

kultura-emigracja (Warsaw, 1938); idem, Jarłyki krymskie z czasów Jana Kazimierza

(Warsaw, 1939); the latter Polish language edition of the Crimean documents sent

to Poland-Lithuania in the years 1648–1668 was nevertheless criticized for too many

mistakes; see Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, “Dokumenty tatarskie i tureckie w zbiorach

polskich,” Przegląd Orientalistyczny (1954), no. 2 (10): 141–148, esp. p. 147; cf. also the

critical review by Bohdan Baranowski in Przegląd Historyczny 37 (1948): 458–460.

Alan Fisher, e Crimean Tatars (Stanford, 1978).

Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du Musée du Palais de Topkapı, présenté

par A. Bennigsen, P. N. Boratav, D. Desaive et Ch. Lemercier-Quelquejay (Paris-e

Hague, 1978), p. 1. is valuable edition should be used along with two meticu-

lous reviews by Victor Ostapchuk that enrich, comment, and sometimes correct its

contents: see idem, “e Publication of Documents on the Crimean Khanate in the

Topkapı Sarayı: New Sources for the History of the Black Sea Basin,” Harvard Ukrai-

nian Studies 6 (1982): 500–528, and idem, “e Publication of Documents on the

Crimean Khanate in the Topkapı Sarayı: e Documentary Legacy of Crimean-Otto-

man Relations,” Turcica. Revue d’études turques 19 (1987): 247–276.

xxii introduction

Yet another Eastern European refugee, Josef Matuz, who had

migrated to Germany from Hungary, made a lasting contribution to

the studying of the Crimean chancery. Still another, Omeljan Prit-

sak, had promoted a number of students in North America before

he returned to his native Ukraine in the 1990s. It is also within the

US academia where a pathbreaking article was published in 1967 by

Edward Keenan, who not only rejected the commonly held Euro- and

Slavocentric views, regarding Tatars and other Turkic nomads as “Asi-

atic barbarians,” but praised the pragmatism and tolerance, character-

istic for the “steppe diplomacy.”

In the Polish modern national historiography, developed in the

19th century, the Crimean Tatars certainly gured as former invaders,

but also at times as allies against Russia. Having in mind the Russian

domination of Poland for the whole of the 19th and most of the 20th

century, no wonder that the Crimean Khanate was typically treated

more favorably by Polish historians than by their Russian colleagues.

In 1935, Ludwik Kolankowski concluded that the political benets

for Poland-Lithuania resulting from the alliance with the Khanate

“had prevailed over the irritating aspects of everyday neighborhood.”

In 1959, Zbigniew Wójcik labeled the Crimean Khanate as “the trusted

ally in the struggle against Muscovy”—a bold compliment indeed if

we remember that his book was published in communist Poland.

Admittedly, such a pro-Tatar attitude can be justly criticized as equally

biased as the anti-Tatar one, since the Tatars were praised not for their

own virtues but merely as a useful instrument against Moscow.

Another aw of the nineteenth-, and even twentieth-century Polish

historiography was the treatment of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as

merely a part of Poland and the resulting disregard of the former’s

separate stateship tradition. For instance, in 1881 a prominent Polish

historian Kazimierz Pułaski published a book entitled “the relations

of Poland with the Tatars,” even though most documents used in his

Edward Keenan, “Muscovy and Kazan: Some Introductory Remarks on the Pat-

terns of Steppe Diplomacy,” Slavic Review. American Quarterly of Soviet and East

European Studies 26 (1967): 548–558.

Sprawa chanatu Girejów [. . .] miała w sobie tak ważkie i cenne dla Polski-

Litwy momenty i walory, że górowały one nad drażniącem codziennem sąsiedzkiem

w tych stronach pożyciem; see Ludwik Kolankowski, “Problem Krymu w dziejach

jagiellońskich,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 49 (1935): 279–300, esp. p. 287.

Zbigniew Wójcik, Traktat andruszowski 1667 roku i jego geneza (Warsaw, 1959),

p. 63.

introduction xxiii

study originated from the Lithuanian chancery and were originally

composed in Ruthenian in Cyrillic script.

Given the Polonization of

Lithuanian elites by Pułaski’s times, best illustrated by the fact that

the Polish national epic Pan Tadeusz, published in 1834 by Adam

Mick iewicz, opened with the author’s invocation “O Lithuania, my

fatherland,” pronounced in Polish, this appropriation of the Lithu-

anian tradition into the Polish one was hardly surprising and not

unique in the era of nationalisms. In due time, it was reciprocated

by Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian national historiographies

who all claimed the heritage of the Grand Duchy and in turn tended

to ignore the Polish inuence on the decision making processes in

Vilnius. For instance, even today, the uneasy relations between Jogaila

(i.e., the Polish king Vladislaus Jagiełło) and his cousin, the Lithuanian

grand duke Vytautas, are oen viewed dierently by Polish and Lithu-

anian historians. e former tend to stress Jogaila’s more “mature”

character and dismiss Vytautas’ policy as “adventurous” and “separat-

ist,” while the latter are eager to disregard Jogaila’s role as Vytautas’

suzerain. As we will see, this historiographic conict dates back to the

15th century and is fairly reected in the correspondence that circu-

lated in the triangle between Qırq Yer, Vilnius, and Cracow.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Polish historians have rarely

described the conicts with the Tatars in the frames of the “civili-

zational struggle” between Christianity vs. Islam or Europe vs. Asia,

instead stressing the pragmatic attitude of the two sides. e term

antemurale Christianitatis (“bulwark of Christianity”), popular in

the Polish domestic and external propaganda since the Middle Ages,

was reserved rather for the relations with the Ottoman Empire. Only

the Polish pre-Huntingtonian, Feliks Koneczny, chose to see an anti-

Catholic axis between Istanbul, Qırq Yer, and Moscow already in the

15th century and regarded Mengli Giray’s policy as subject to the

designs of the “Ottoman caliphate” (sic).

Koneczny’s historiosophical

theory that focused on the clash of civilizations, though appreciated

by Arnold Toynbee, had yet—and perhaps luckily—a weak impact on

future generations of Polish historians.

Kazimierz Pułaski (ed.), Stosunki Polski z Tatarszczyzną od połowy XV wieku,

vol. 1: Stosunki z Mendli-Girejem, chanem Tatarów perekopskich (1469–1515). Akta i

listy (Cracow – Warsaw, 1881).

Feliks Koneczny, “Sprawy z Mengli-Girejem 1473–1504,” Ateneum Wileńskie 4

(1927): 138–189 and 287–348.

xxiv introduction

Apart from the studies by Kazimierz Pułaski, Feliks Koneczny, and

Ludwik Kolankowski, devoted to the Polish-Lithuanian, or rather

Lithuanian-Polish, political relations with the Crimean Khanate in the

15th and 16th centuries, one must mention a number of recent publi-

cations by two Ukrainian scholars, Borys Čerkas and Feliks Šabul’do.

All the above studies are primarily based on the Lithuanian Register

books that remain by far the most rich mine of information regarding

this subject.

For the 17th century, we have at our disposal three valuable studies

by Bohdan Baranowski that roughly cover the years 1624–1660.

Recently, these studies have been supplemented by a detailed mono-

graph by Dariusz Skorupa that covers the years 1595–1623.

For the

later part of the century, one should mention a number of publica-

tions by Zbigniew Wójcik as well as other scholars, either focused on

Warsaw’s relations with Baghchasaray or invoking them as the fac-

tor inuencing Warsaw’s relations with other capitals, most notably

Moscow and Istanbul.

Perhaps the most neglected is the history of the relations between

Warsaw and Baghchasaray in the 18th

century. Notwithstanding a few

articles devoted to separate subjects, the reader must still rely on the

outdated monograph of the Polish-Ottoman relations by Władysław

Konopczyński, where Baghchasaray plays but a marginal role.

e only book that chronologically covers the entire history of the

Polish-Crimean relations is the popular monograph by Leszek Pod-

horodecki, published in 1987. Although it mostly follows the extant

literature and relies on Alan Fisher’s monograph in the description of

the Tatar state and society, it provides a useful narrative of the long-

term neighborhood that lasted almost four centuries.

Regrettably, with the sole exception of Baranowski, none of the Pol-

ish historians quoted above had a command of Oriental languages that

Bohdan Baranowski, Polska a Tatarszczyzna w latach 1624–1629 (Łódź, 1948);

idem, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie w latach 1632–1648 (Łódź, 1949); idem, “Tatar szczyzna

wobec wojny polsko-szwedzkiej w latach 1655–1660,” in: Polska w okresie drugiej

wojny północnej 1655–1660, vol. 1: Rozprawy (Warsaw, 1957): 453–489.

Dariusz Skorupa, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie 1595–1623 (Warsaw, 2004); although

very valuable, the monograph is based solely on the archival material available in

Poland; moreover, the author does not make use of Oriental sources; cf. my review

from this book in Kwartalnik Historyczny 112 (2005), no. 4, pp. 137–144.

Władysław Konopczyński, Polska a Turcja 1683–1792 (Warsaw, 1936).

Leszek Podhorodecki, Chanat krymski i jego stosunki z Polską w XV–XVIII w.

(Warsaw, 1987).

introduction xxv

would enable them the use of the Crimean and Ottoman chronicles as

well as primary sources. On the other hand, Polish turcologists rarely

endeavored into purely historical topics although they largely con-

tributed towards studying the Khanate’s past by editing heavily anno-

tated source editions and studying the Crimean Tatar language and

historical toponymy.

Even Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, whose impres-

sive knowledge of the Crimean past transpires from his numerous

dispersed publications, usually limited himself to sharing it merely in

footnotes or, at best, in short articles.

e above historiographical sketch does not pretend to list all rel-

evant authors or exhaust the whole literature on the history of the

Crimean Khanate, and especially its relations with Lithuania and

Poland. Its major aim is rather to point out that sometimes the pres-

ent author had to enter in polemics with his predecessors who wrote

a century ago, and at times he had to establish facts on the basis of

primary sources, although initially he considered such task as lying

beyond the scope of the present study.

Part I of the book aims to provide the reader with a basic chronol-

ogy, more detailed in cases when diplomatic negotiations and embas-

sies resulted in formal instruments of peace. A longue durée approach,

adopted in the present study, enables one to see the continuity and

changes more clearly. When studied carefully, the yarlıqs from ca.

1462, 1507, and 1560, at rst sight almost identical in form and con-

tents, disclose as many similarities as dierences, reecting the evolu-

tion of chancery forms and the changing political equilibrium between

the two partners. It is hoped that more detailed narratives will follow,

whose authors will focus on aspects only touched upon, or entirely le

beyond the present study.

Part II traces the evolution of chancery forms, the typology, com-

position and contents of instruments of peace, and the procedure of

peacemaking. As the Lithuanian and Polish chancery practices and

diplomatic procedures are better known than the Crimean ones, the

Among the most valuable publications one should mention: Ananiasz

Zajączkowski (ed.), La chronique des Steppes Kiptchak Tevārīh-i Dešt-i Qipčaq du

XVII

siècle (Ms. Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı, B. 289). Édition critique avec la traduction

française du XVIII

siècle (Ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Turcs, S. 874) (Warsaw,

1966); Hadży Mehmed Senai, Historia chana Islam Gereja III. Edited by Z. Abraha-

mowicz with historical commentaries by O. Górka and Z. Wójcik (Warsaw, 1971);

Henryk Jankowski, A Historical-Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Russian Habitation

Names of the Crimea (Leiden, 2006).

xxvi introduction

author focuses especially on the latter. In order to shed more light on

the khan’s chancery, Crimean documents sent to other capitals, espe-

cially to Moscow, are oen invoked for comparative reasons, along

with extremely rich reports of Russian envoys, who described the cer-

emonial at the khan’s court.

e largest part of the present volume consists of the instruments of

peace, published in original languages along with English translations

(apart from the documents in Latin and Italian that are published

only in the original). Out of the seventy-one instruments, selected for

publication, forty-six were issued by the Crimean side: three of them

can be classied as donation yarlıqs, nine as “donation yarlıqs cum

şartnames,” six as şartnames, nineteen as ‘ahdnames, three as oath-

yarlıqs, and six as “others.” Most of these documents were issued by

the khans, but four were issued by the qalgas (1527, 1637, 1640, and

1667, the latter issued collectively by the qalga and other Crimean

notables), one by the nureddin (1640), one by the khan’s son and heir

apparent who yet was not a qalga (1517), and two by the Crimean

envoys sent to Poland (1541 and 1599). Moreover, eight formulas of

the oaths, taken by the khans, the Crimean envoys sent to Poland-

Lithuania, or the Crimean plenipotentiaries appointed to negotiate the

peace, which have been recorded and preserved, are published as well.

e number of Polish-Lithuanian instruments, whose texts are pre-

served, is much smaller: these are eleven royal instruments of peace,

one of them addressed only to the qalga (1637). In addition, three

formulas of the oaths, taken by the king, the Senate members, and the

commissioners appointed to negotiate the peace, have been recorded

and preserved. e author also decided to publish three ready for-

mulas of the khans’ instruments, prepared by the royal chancery in

1535, 1619, and 1622, although these formulas could not be regarded

as instruments of peace unless they were accepted by the other side,

rewritten in the Crimean chancery and corroborated by the khan

(on the typology of documents, see Part II; cf. also the list of Instru-

ments exchanged between the Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania,

appended on pp. 516–518).

Only een instruments are preserved in the original, all issued by

the Crimean side and today held in Warsaw. In addition, the texts

of the oaths, taken in 1667 reciprocally by the Crimean and Polish

commissioners, were written down and authenticated by Grand Het-

man Jan Sobieski. Today they are also preserved in the Polish archives,

bearing Sobieski’s handwritten signature, so they can be considered as

introduction xxvii

“the originals,” too. e facsimiles of the above mentioned seventeen

instruments are enclosed at the end of the present volume.

Of the seventy-one texts preserved today in the original, copies, or

translations, only twelve are written in Turkish: one in Khwarezmian

Turkic and the remaining eleven in a mixture of Crimean Tatar and

Ottoman Turkish, with the rising impact of the latter. One Crimean

instrument is composed in Italian (1514), although it also contains

seals (nişans) engraved in Arabic script. Twenty-three texts are extant

in Ruthenian, thirty-one in Polish (including two Crimean documents

corroborated with seals engraved in Arabic script), and four in Latin.

e şartname of 1520, luckily preserved in the Khwarezmian Turkic

original, is published along with its contemporary Ruthenian transla-

tion; the comparison between the two language versions facilitates one

to reconstruct the original terminology of other Crimean instruments

that are today preserved only in Ruthenian translations.

e above statistics demonstrate that most of the published instru-

ments are preserved merely in Ruthenian or Polish copies or trans-

lations. As such, they have not evoked so far much interest among

scholars specializing in Oriental chanceries. On the other hand, histori-

ans who have studied these translations without referring to analogous

documents preserved in the Turkish originals, oen have been unable

to determine their function and reconstruct their proper composi-

tion and terminology. Although most of the instruments, published

in the present volume, have already been published before (references

to previous editions are provided in the headings of respective docu-

ments), these editions are dispersed, typically devoid of annotations,

and quite oen contain faults. It is for the rst time when they are

published together in a volume devoted to the diplomatic relations

between the Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania. It is hoped that

by this means scholars specializing in diplomatic history, Islamic chan-

ceries, or simply Eastern Europe, will receive rich material, reecting

the diplomatic relations between two (originally three) early modern

states situated on the edge of the Western Latinity, Eastern Slavonic

Orthodoxy, Islamic Middle East, and the steppe nomad world extend-

ing between the Black Sea and northern China.

e very term “European Periphery,” used in the title of the present

volume, is somewhat provocative. At the outset, it is worth stressing that

there is nothing inherently positive in the adjective “European” as con-

trasted with “non-European” or “Asian.” As to the noun “Periphery,”

long time ago scholars like Immanuel Wallerstein, and before him

xxviii introduction

Marian Małowist, demonstrated that no “center” could survive with-

out a “periphery” and the latter not only depended but also inuenced

the former.

To be sure, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, extending to the

lands of modern Belarus, Ukraine, and even western Russia, can be

described as Eastern rather than Central European, notwithstanding

the amusing fact that today no nation and no government in Europe

wants to be located in “Eastern Europe.” e Crimean Tatars and

Nogays, relative newcomers from Central Asia attached to Islam, even

though settled in the old nest of Greek civilization and mixed with

its ancient inhabitants, were still more “Eastern European,” if they

were—or wanted to be—European at all. A telling proof of the two

states’ peripheral status in regard to Europe is provided by the fact that

the Crimean Tatar documents were usually drawn on Italian paper

while the Polish gis to the khans consisted mostly of English cloth.

Nevertheless, if early modern Europe is sometimes identied with the

radiation of Italian renaissance, all three East European states, Poland-

Lithuania, the Crimean Khanate, and Muscovy, should be dened as

fully European. e Polish royal court was one of the leading centers of

renaissance art to the north from the Alps. Acquainted with the Italian

art at the court of his older brother in Buda, in 1502 Sigismund—still

as a prince—committed an Italian master from Florence, Francesco,

with a renaissance reconstruction of the Wawel Castle in Cracow.

ree years earlier, another Italian master, Aloisio Lamberti da Mon-

tagnana, was hired by the envoys of Ivan III with the task of rebuilding

the Moscow Kremlin. Yet, on his way from Italy to Moscow, Aloisio

was detained in the Crimea, where Mengli Giray put him in charge

of embellishing his new residence in Saladjıq near Qırq Yer. Only in

1504 he was allowed to proceed to Moscow to become famous as Ale-

viso Nuovo (Rus. Aleviz Novyj), the coauthor of the renaissance recon-

struction of the Kremlin.

e early modern “European Periphery,” depicted in the present

study, was tremendously rich if measured by cultural traditions, reli-

Pamjatniki diplomatičeskix snošenij Moskovskago gosudarstva s Krymskoju i

Nogajskoju ordami i s Turciej, vol. 1: c 1474 po 1505 god. Edited by G. Karpov, in:

Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoričeskago Obščestva, vol. 41 (St. Petersburg, 1884),

pp. 551–552; a portal designed by Aleviso, preserved today in the Palace of Baghcha-

saray, was originally made for the palace named Devlet-saray in nearby Saladjıq; cf.

Hajvoronskyj, Poveliteli dvux materikov, vol. 1, pp. 83 and 113, notes 149–150.

introduction xxix

gions, and languages. It is there where one could nd multilingual

neighborhoods, Roman Catholic chapels illuminated with Byzantine

frescos, wooden mosques remindful of parochial churches, and renais-

sance synagogues designed by Italian architects, who were simultane-

ously commissioned to execute royal tombstones.

Much of this world perished during the last “modern” and “ratio-

nal” century of nationalisms, to be recently reappreciated in the new

mosaic known as the European Union.