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The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods, Ali Anooshahr, London and New York: Routledge, 2009, ISBN13 978-0-415-46360-7, bibli...

For more than a generation the Ukrainian revolt against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth sparked in 1648 by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the ensuing wars and social upheavals, to greater or lesser extents drew in most near and distant neighbors - in particular the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, Moldavia, Transylvania, Muscovy, and Sweden. Between the Ukrainian revolt of 1648 and the Treaty of Bahcesaray of 1681, when the Porte effectively abandoned its active northern Black Sea policy, though it still held on to Podolia, a major subplot emerged: the search by Cossack hetmans and Ottoman sultans and viziers and their respective envoys for mutually agreeable terms by which Cossack Ukraine, once a fierce foe of the Turks and Tatars, could become a subject of the Porte. This chapter seeks to provide an interpretation and better understanding of the Ukrainian-Ottoman encounter during this turbulent and pivotal period. Keywords:Bohdan Khmelnytsky; Cossack Ukraine; Muscovy; Ottoman orbit; Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; tatars

In terms of military prowess, longevity, and historical impact, the Crimean Khanate was the most successful of the Chinggisid successor states to the Mongol Empire in the West. This chapter brings to the fore, data on Crimean Tatar military expeditions preserved in the sixteenth-century chronicle of Qaysuni-zade Mehmed Nidai, better known as Remmal Khoja, Tarih-i Sahib Gerey Khan, or The History of Khan Sahib Gerey. For the most part, one is forced to glean data from narrative sources relating to the khanate, of which also relatively few are extant. Fortunately, the chronicle on which the chapter focuses here and which is considered as being one of the great works of sixteenth-century Ottoman historiography, is a very rich source on the Crimean military and also other topics. Keywords:Crimean Tatar military expeditions; Mongol empire; Ottoman historiography; Remmal Khoja; Sahib Gerey Khan