New Information about the “Tatar War” in 1615–16 in the Kazan Tsardom and the Fate of Family Members of the Leader of Enalei’s Uprising

• Main Author: Liseitsev D.V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: State Institution «Sh.Marjani Institute of History of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences» 2020-03-01
• Series: Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie
• Subjects: time of troubles; kazan tsardom; enalei’s uprising; serving tatars
• Online Access: http://goldhorde.ru/en/stati2020-1-6/
• ISSN: 2308-152X; 2313-6197

Research objective: To identify and introduce the notion of new sources for Enaleev uprising of 1615–16 and to reconstruct the biography of the descendants of Enalei Emmametev. Research material: This research is based on unpublished petitions of direct witnesses of the uprising, dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The fate of the descendants of Enalei Emmametev is reconstructed according to the materials of the estima­ted annual lists of Veliky Novgorod. Results and novelty of the research: The history of the lands and population of the Kazan Tsardom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is poorly studied in Russian scho­larship. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the archive of the office of the Kazan Palace in Moscow had burned down. As a result of this, historians could only hope for the discovery of documents preserved in the archives of other state institutions. Enalei’s upri­sing in 1615–16 is one of the little-studied episodes of the history of Kazan land at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The author of this article managed to find petitions of Kazan noblemen who suffered at the hands of the rebels or participated in the suppression of the uprising. Accor­ding to these documents, the rebels besieged Kazan for some time. Information about the actions of the followers of Enalei Emmametev allows us to see the events of 1615–16 as a national liberation movement rather than an anti-feudal struggle provoked on the basis of economic reasons. The uprising was not long. It lasted about three months and was suppressed by mid-February 1616. The fate of the descendants of the lea­der of the uprising, Enalei Emmametev, have remained unclear to date. However, new sources make it possible to trace the biographies of Enalei’s sons and grandsons until the mid-eighteenth century. The annual estimates of Veliky Novgorod contain information on the annual payments of feed salaries to the Enaleev family. Only one of the five sons of the leader of the uprising conver­ted to Orthodoxy; the rest remained faithful to Islam. Accor­ding to documents, the disgraced Tatars, exiled to the northwest of the country, successfully integrated into their new social and economic reality. At the same time, the connection with their native land was not completely cut off. Their attempt to regain their fatherly possessions in the Kazan district is proof of this. This article’s supplementary material contains the new and extremely valuable documents both on the uprising in 1615–16 and the fate of the Enaleev family.