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.

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.