The Crimean Khanate between East and West presents a collection of studies exploring the politics, society, and culture of the Crimean Khanate, as well as the khanate's place within early modern Europe. Twelve articles in English and German, written by scholars of different backgrounds and perspectives, introduce one of the least studied regions in Eastern Europe, from the emergence of the khanate as a successor of the Golden Horde in the fifteenth century until the end of Tatar rule with the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Empire in 1783. The volume offers new research on the steppe traditions and the socio-political order of the Crimean heir to the empire of Genghis Khan as well as on the geopolitical role of a state that stood at the intersection between the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox East, and the Latin West. It reveals the considerable freedom the khans enjoyed while being under Ottoman suzerainty and the various contacts the Islamic khanate maintained with its Christian neighbors. The volume also provides insight into a society of exceptional cultural diversity and into Tatar elite and popular culture. Finally, it traces how Christians' perceptions of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars impacted the formation of the European 'self' and European politics, until long after the end of Tatar rule.

The Crimean Khanate between East and West presents a collection of studies exploring the politics, society, and culture of the Crimean Khanate, as well as the khanate's place within early modern Europe. Twelve articles in English and German, written by scholars of different backgrounds and perspectives, introduce one of the least studied regions in Eastern Europe, from the emergence of the khanate as a successor of the Golden Horde in the fifteenth century until the end of Tatar rule with the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Empire in 1783. The volume offers new research on the steppe traditions and the socio-political order of the Crimean heir to the empire of Genghis Khan as well as on the geopolitical role of a state that stood at the intersection between the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox East, and the Latin West. It reveals the considerable freedom the khans enjoyed while being under Ottoman suzerainty and the various contacts the Islamic khanate maintained with its Christian neighbors. The volume also provides insight into a society of exceptional cultural diversity and into Tatar elite and popular culture. Finally, it traces how Christians' perceptions of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars impacted the formation of the European 'self' and European politics, until long after the end of Tatar rule.

The Crimean Khanate was often treated as a semi-nomadic, watered-down version of the Golden Horde, or yet another vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. This book revises these views by exploring the Khanate’s political and legal systems, which combined well organized and well developed institutions, which were rooted in different traditions (Golden Horde, Islamic and Ottoman). Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the Crimean court registers from the reign of Murad Giray (1678-1683), the book examines the role of the khan, members of his council and other officials in the Crimean political and judicial systems as well as the practice of the Crimean sharia court during the reign of Murad Giray.

With implications for the war in Ukraine, a surprising history of the Crimean Tatars from the fifteenth century to the present day. The Crimean Tatars were the Turkic-speaking native peoples of Crimea who established a powerful khanate in the 1440s, which remained in power until 1783. In this, the first history in English of this khanate for over one hundred years, eminent scholar Donald Rayfield shows that this misunderstood and much-feared nation was, in fact, a flourishing state with a vibrant literary culture, religious tolerance, a sophisticated constitution, and a prosperous economy. Rayfield’s book describes the establishment of the khanate, its reign, and its eventual fall, concluding with a vivid portrayal of the ruthless suppression of the Tatars—first by Russia and then the Soviet Union—and the final, effectively genocidal, invasion under Vladimir Putin. This vibrant and ultimately tragic chronicle is essential reading for anyone interested in the background of the current war in Ukraine.

The monograph realigns political culture and countermeasures against slave raids, which increased during the breakup of the Golden Horde. By physical defense of the open steppe border and by embracing the New Israel symbolism in which the exodus from slavery in Egypt prefigures the exodus of Russian captives from Tatar captivity, Muscovites found a defensive model to expand empire. Recent scholarly debates on slaving are innovatively applied to Russian and imperial history, challenging entrenched perceptions of Muscovy.

This is an extensive study, supplemented by an edition of relevant sources, of the diplomatic contacts between Poland-Lithuania and the Crimean Khanate between the early 15th and the late 18th century. It contains a chronology of mutual relations, a formal analysis of various types of documents, and a glimpse into the working of the Crimean chancery, where Genghisid and Islamic forms mixed with those borrowed from Christian Europe. The book provides a fascinating insight into the intercultural exchange between Catholic Poland (with Latin and then Polish as the main chancery language) and predominantly Orthodox Lithuania (with Ruthenian as the main chancery language) on the one hand, and the Muslim Crimean Khanate (with Khwarezmian Turkic and then Ottoman Turkish as the main chancery language) on the other. It depicts Eastern Europe as a zone of contact, where the relations between Slavs and Tatars were by no means always hostile.