Crimea: Once an Ottoman-Muslim State
By Dr Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
In mid-March, the Russian forces occupied the Crimean peninsula, part of Ukraine, and annexed it to the Russian Federation. In 1954, in a fit of generosity, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union and himself a Ukrainian, had detached Crimea from Russia and awarded it to Ukraine, which at the time was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine became an independent republic and Crimea stayed with it, to the great displeasure of the Russians. President Putin’s recent actions have reprised the specter of the Cold War and have heightened tensions with Europe and the US, reversing some of the progress made during a quarter of a century in reconciling Russia with the Western economic and political institutions.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, rationalized the annexation of Crimea as redressing an injustice perpetrated on Russia 60 years ago when it was capriciously transferred to the Ukraine. Sure enough, Russian’s claim to Crimea is strong; a majority (58 percent) of the two million people living there now identify themselves as ethnic Russians, while only 24 percent are Ukrainian and 12 percent Muslim Tartar. And, the Crimean city of Sevastopol has been the naval headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet since the 18 th century. While ethnic Russians rejoiced in the reunion with the former motherland, Tartar Muslims and Ukrainians were apprehensive about their future. The Turkish government also expressed concern on the fate of the Turkish-speaking Tartars who were once under the protection of Ottoman Caliphs.
Tartars, especially, have good reasons to be uneasy about their new association with Russia. Since the conquest of Crimean more than three centuries ago, successive Russian rulers have strived to alter its demographics, importing outsiders and successfully reducing its native Tartar population to a mere 12 percent. In 1944, Joseph Stalin deported Tartars en masse to Central Asian republics, also part of the Soviet Empire at the time. An estimated 40 percent of the deportees died within two years. Among the survivors, some over the years have managed to trickle back to Crimea.
Crimea was ruled by various conquerors during the past millennium. Most of the Russia steppes and part of Eastern Europe were overrun and occupied in the thirteenth century by the Mongol armies, often euphemistically referred to as the Golden Hordes, led by Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan. Russia was ruled by the Tartars for nearly three hundred years when Crimean became part of the Mongol Empire. It is often mentioned with some relief that Europe was saved from the Mongolian hordes because of an accident of history. Ogodei, the Great Mongol Khan, died and Batu Khan, who was poised to attack Vienna, was recalled in a hurry to Karakorum, the capital city, to help elect a new leader. Mongols never threatened Europe again.
Tamerlane in the 15 th century destroyed the Golden Hordes, permitting the establishment of an independent Crimean Tartar Khanate. Crimean khans had adopted Islam sometime in the 14the century when Sultan Mohammed Ozbeg Khan (1282-1341), the longest ruling Khan of the golden hordes, converted to Islam under the influence of Sheikh ibn Abdul Hamid, a sufi from Bhukhara. The peninsula experienced the fluorescence of a rich culture and civilization during Khanate period. The palace, in the capital city of Bakhchisaray (garden palace), built by the Crimean Khans and an architectural jewel, remains a great tourist attraction even today. The celebrated Russian lyric poet, Alexander Pushkin, in 1823, wrote his most famous poem, The Fountain of Bakhchisara that narrates the story of love between a sorrowful conqueror, Girey Khan, and a captured princess who died young, killed by a jealous rival in the royal harem. The poem has immortalized both the poet and the romantic legend that has resonated with millions of ordinary people. Pushkin had visited the storied palace and the Fountain of Tears located inside it in 1820 and was emotionally moved by the legend to compose the poem.
Crimean history has been driven by its strategic location and access it provides to the Black Sea. In 1475, the Crimean khanate accepted nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror, but it functioned mostly autonomously. Subsequently, the Russian Czars, starting with Peter the Great ( 1672–1725), craved to expand their empire southward at the expense of a weakened Ottoman Sultanate, to gain access to the warm waters of the Black Sea. Catherine the Great (1729-1796) went even further. She dreamed of dismembering the Ottoman Empire, restoring the Byzantine Christian Empire with the capital at Constantinople, and installing her grandson on the throne. She had built a stellar reputation in the European Courts as an enlightened ruler who had cultivated close relations with intellectuals and philosophers of the day, such as Voltaire and Diderot, and had patronized art and literature. But she was a ruthless sovereign when it came to pursuing her territorial ambitions in the south.
Catherine finally succeeded in capturing Crimea in 1783 and gaining access to the Black Sea. The Ottoman Turkey, with Sultan Abdul Hamid 1 on the throne, derisively referred to as the “sick man of Europe”, was too weak to mount an effective defense. The last of the hereditary khans of Crimea, Shagin-Girei, was deposed by the Russians and eventually exiled to Constantinople. In the following years, one-third of the Tartar population fled to the Ottoman territories, to be replaced by imported Russian, Greek and Armenian nationals.
The capture of Crimea, long-coveted, represented a huge triumph for Catherine and Russia. She planned a victory tour of her newly acquired territory to celebrate the victory. In January 1787, four years after the conquest, the 58-year-old Empress embarked on an arduous journey, over a thousand-mile long, from St. Petersburg to Crimea, traversing forbidding terrain that would take six months on horse-drawn carriages to accomplish. Some fascinating details of her travel are narrated in the book, The Great Upheaval, by Jay Winik (2007, HarperCollins Publishers). Catherine was accompanied by a convoy of 2,300 people, including security guards, doctors, footmen, cooks, chambermaids and ladies in waiting. Winik describes the splendor of the procession as follows: “Her carriage, drawn by ten magnificent horses, was furnished with cushioned benches and tables and was so massive that a man could stand up in it.”
The grand procession finally arrived at Crimea, and an exultant empress, following a long-tradition of the victorious, decided to sleep in the ancient palace of the Khans, the Bakhchisarai, a m arvel of beautiful architecture that exquisitely blended the Moorish and Turkish styles, with water fountains irrigating the lush gardens, with rose, jasmine and orange trees exuding an aura of the exotic East. A shrewd ruler, Catherine maneuvered to win the favor of her new subjects, inviting local Imams and muftis and showering them with attention and expensive gifts.
Catherine the Great had finally won Crimea, but this is the closest she would come to Constantinople and realizing her dream of placing her grandson on the Ottoman throne.
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