Shaykh Ahmad

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Shaykh Ahmad or Sheikh Ahmed ( Mongolian Шейх Ахмед Schejch Achmed , also Saih Ahmed ; † 1505 or 1528) was the last Khan of the Golden Horde in the southern Volga region from 1481 to 1502 . His state was the rump state of the former Golden Horde and was also known as the Namagan Patrimony at the time. Shaykh Ahmad ruled for a long time with his brothers, especially Murteza (ruled 1481–1499).

origin

Shaykh Ahmad was the son of Ahmad Khan (ruled 1465–1481) and grandson of Kuchuk Mehmed (ruled 1436–1465), a rival of Ulug Mehmed (ruled 1419–1438, d. 1445 as Khan of Kazan ). His father lost control of Russia on the Ugra in 1480 .

government

Ahmad's sons were apparently minors when their father died, and so the horde remained leaderless for a time. Temür, the oldest, submitted to the Crimean Khan Mengli Girej (ruled 1466-1515). In 1484 two other sons, Murteza and Shaykh Ahmad exchanged embassies with Grand Duke Casimir of Lithuania (r. 1440–1492), so that one can assume a common government of the brothers. Murteza was captured by the Crimean Tatars in 1485/6 under unexplained circumstances near Astrakhan, but quickly escaped.

Right from the start, Ahmad's sons were in a bind when it came to foreign policy. On the one hand, they were under pressure to expand from the Crimean Khanate (Mengli Girej hoped to take over their horde and had support from the Ottomans ). On the other hand, Murteza could not persuade the Grand Duchy of Moscow (under Ivan the Great , ruled 1462-1505) to form an alliance against the Crimean Khanate in 1487, and thirdly they got into a dispute with Lithuania and were defeated in two clashes in 1487 and 1491. Little support was to be expected from this side either. An unpredictable power factor was also the Nogay (z. B. Musa 1490/1 on the side of Moscow).

Furthermore, the brothers were not particularly in agreement: Murteza allied himself with his Astrakhan cousin Abdul-Kerim against Shaykh Ahmad at the end of the 1980s , which was also registered in Lithuania. Shaykh Ahmad apparently strove for sole rule and was therefore ousted by his brothers in 1498, but came back in 1499 with the help of the Nogai people. In 1500 the Great Horde advanced against Moscow and reached Koselsk , whereupon negotiations were started.

When Shaykh Ahmad then moved against the Crimean Khan to the Don , his armed forces had already melted due to the apostasy of his brothers Murteza and Sajjid Ahmed (II.), And there was a hard winter 1501/02, which made him divide his troops into a large one Area forced. In the spring of 1502 an important emir surprisingly defected to the Crimean Khan, and so Shaykh Ahmad could no longer counter a rapid attack by the same (June 1502). His people deserted one by one. He fled to Astrakhan, where he rivaled Abdul-Kerim without any results and finally fled to Lithuania. There he was executed in 1505 in the interests of the Crimean Khan.

Remarks

  1. ↑ It is not impossible that he wanted to submit to the Crimean Khan.
  2. ↑ Ivan III. was in a bind himself. He was formally enfeoffed by the Khan in December 1501, promised and apparently even paid a tribute.
  3. ↑ Apart from this particularly severe winter, the Great Horde, according to contemporary reports, generally suffered from hunger and a lack of horses in the 1490s, caused by several years of adverse weather conditions for cattle breeding.
  4. ↑ See Spuler: Goldene Horde, p. 208. The opposite representation says that he was sent to Astrakhan in the spring of 1527 and died the following year. See Byzantine Research Vol. XV, p. 395, note 120.

literature

  • Bertold Spuler: The Golden Horde . Wiesbaden 1965
  • Leslie Collins: On the alleged "destruction" of the Great Horde in 1502. in: AM Hakkert, WE Kaegi (ed.): Byzantinische Forschungen Vol. XV, Amsterdam 1990
personal data
SURNAME Ahmad, Shaykh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ahmed, Saih
BRIEF DESCRIPTION last Khan of the crumbling Golden Horde (1481–1502)
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century
DATE OF DEATH 1505 or 1528