This dissertation analyzes the relations of the Crimean Khanate with the Ukrainian Cossacks, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy during the reign of Khan Islam Giray III (1644 - 1654). Islam Giray's reign coincided with some of the most turbulent years of the Crimean Khanate's history. Shortly after his accession to the throne in summer 1644, a quarrel between his nobles and palace guards during the return from a Circassian campaign turned into an exhausting civil war between him and his nobility. The Khanate's relations with its northern neighbours were also deteriorating as Warsaw and Moscow decided to take action against the attacks of the Tatars and stopped tribute/gifts payments to Crimea. Under these circumstances, the Cossack rebellion of 1648 against the Commonwealth under the leadership of Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj was a golden opportunity for Islam Giray to reassert his position as ruler in Crimea and strengthen the Khanate's position in eastern European affairs. While the khan gave military support to the Ukrainian Cossacks throughout their war with the Commonwealth, he was never willing to allow the collapse of Warsaw's authority over Ukraine. Instead he aimed to be a mediator between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth forcing them to agree to peace treaties that would reconcile their contending demands. Islam Giray also intended to ally with Warsaw and Xmel'nyc'kyj for the conquest and partition of Muscovy, acquiring the Volga patrimony of the Golden Horde, Kazan and Astrakhan, for the Khanate. However, as the Cossacks and the Commonwealth were overwhelmed by their mutual problems, they were uninterested in participating in an anti-Muscovite alliance. Eventually, a decisive blow to Islam Giray's mediatory position and his anti-Muscovite schemes came as the Ukrainian Cossacks could not reach a settlement with Warsaw and decided to submit to Muscovy in 1654. Now, towards the end of his reign, the khan found himself at a crossroads between maintaining his alliance with the Ukrainian Cossacks and taking sides with the Commonwealth against the Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochement.

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.

Drawing on rich source material in several languages and three scripts (Arabic, Cyrillic, and Latin), this book presents a broad picture of international relations in early modern Eastern Europe, at the crossing point of Genghisid, Islamic, Orthodox, and Latin traditions.

This crucial period in Russia's history has been neglected by historians, but Brian Davies' study provides an essential insight into the emergence of Russia as a great power.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the legendary Cossack general who organized a rebellion that liberated the Eastern Ukraine from Polish rule. Consequently, he has been memorialized in the Ukraine as a God-given nation builder, cut in the model of George Washington. But in this campaign, the massacre of thousands of Jews perceived as Polish intermediaries was the collateral damage, and in order to secure the tentative independence, Khmelnytsky signed a treaty with Moscow, ultimately ceding the territory to the Russian tsar. So, was he a liberator or a villain? This volume examines drastically different narratives, from Ukrainian, Jewish, Russian, and Polish literature, that have sought to animate, deify, and vilify the seventeenth-century Cossack. Khmelnytsky's legacy, either as nation builder or as antagonist, has inhibited inter-ethnic and political rapprochement at key moments throughout history and, as we see in recent conflicts, continues to affect Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, and Russian national identity.