Simeon Bekbulatovich Tatar Khan, Grand Prince of Rus  , Monastic Elder

1. Simeon BekbulatovichTatar Khan, Grand Prince of Rus, Monastic Elder Donald Ostrowski

2. Is this Simeon Bekbulatovich?

3. Three Identities • (1) • As Saín Bulat he became khan of the Kasimov Khanate by 1570

4. Minaret for the mosque in Kasimov (dated to the 15th century)

5. Three Identities (continued) • (2) • As Simeon Bekbulatovich he was a Muscovite serving prince, a commander of the main regiment (bol'shoi polk) and in 1575–1576, he replaced Tsar Ivan IV as grand prince of all Rus , then until 1585 as Grand Prince of Tver 

6. A Tatar khan occupied the position of the second most powerful individual in the Muscovite army and, thereby, the Muscovite state. • Such an occurrence, of a Tatar tsar’s or tsarevich’s commanding a regiment in the Muscovite army had ample precedence.

7. Precedents of Tatar commanders • – In 1450, Tsarevich Kasim commanded a regiment against the Tatars of Kazan’. • – In 1452, Tsarevich Yakup commanded a regiment against Dmitrii Shemiaka in Kokshenga. • – In 1467, Tsarevich Kasim commanded a regiment against Kazan’. • – In 1471, Tsarevich Danyar commanded a regiment against Novgorod. • – In 1473, Tsarevich Danyar commanded a regiment against Khan Ahmed at the Oka River. • – In 1478, Tsarevich Danyar commanded a regiment against Novgorod. • – In 1487, Tsarevich Mehmed Emin commanded a regiment against Kazan’.

8. Precedents of Tatar commanders (continued) • – In 1491, Tsarevich Saltagan (Saltygan) commanded a regiment against the Great Orda. • – In 1496, Tsarevich Mehmed Emin commanded a regiment against Kazan’. • – In 1499, Tsarevich Saltagan (Saltygan) commanded a regiment helping Khan Abdul Leitif regain the throne of Kazan’. • – In the first Muscovite campaign against Livonia in 1558, Tsar Shah-Ali commanded the main regiment, Tsarevich Tokhtamyshcommanded the vanguard, and Tsarevich Kaibula (Abdulla) commanded the right wing. • – During the reign of Vasilii III, Tsarevich Peter commanded the main regiment from 1506 until his death in 1523, but by then he had already converted to Christianity.

9. Map of the Moscow Kremlin, 17th century

10. Ivan IV, parsuna, 16th-century. National Museum of Denmark

11. Ioannes Basilius Magnus Imperator Russic, Dux Moscovic by Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), 1574

12. Forensic facial reconstruction of Ivan IV by Mikhail Gerasimov

13. Ivory throne of Muscovite rulers

14. Sources contemporary to Ivan’s placing Simeon on the throne as grand prince of all Rus’ • In the spring of 1576, Simeon married Anastasiia Ivanovna Mstislavskaia, the great granddaughter of Tsarevich Peter (Kudai Kul) and Evdokhiia Ivanovna, the sister of Grand Prince Vasilii III (Ivan’s father).

15. Sources contemporary to Ivan’s placing Simeon on the throne as grand prince of all Rus’ • Daniel Printz von Buchau, the ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor, who arrived in Moscow in December 1575.In his report to the Emperor Maximilian II, Printz said that Ivan appointed Simeon because there had been a plot on his life and “because of the deceit of his subjects”(ob improbitatem subditorum).

16. Sources contemporary to Ivan’s placing Simeon on the throne as grand prince of all Rus’ • Daniel, an interpreter with the Russia Company, wrote that he had two private talks with Ivan IV, who gave him the reason for making Simeon Bekbulatovich the grand prince of Muscovy. Both these talks occurred while Simeon was on the throne. The first was on November 29, 1575, in which Ivan cited “the perverse and evill dealinge of our subjects”as the reason for placing the “government ... intothe hands” of Simeon.

17. Sources contemporary to Ivan’s placing Simeon on the throne as grand prince of all Rus’ • Petition that is dated to October 30, 1575, from Ivan andhis sons Ivan and Fedor to Simeon, in which Ivan requests that he be allowed to choose “from all the members of the court” servitors without their losing their possessions

18. Letter to Metropolitan Afanasii in 1565: reasons for his leaving Moscow and residing in Aleksandrovasloboda. • “whenever he, the sovereign, wanted to investigate and punishhis boyars and all the bureaucrats as well as the servingprinces and deti boiarskie for their misdeeds, the archbishops, bishops, archimandrites, and hegumens, colluding with boyars, courtiers, d’iaki, and all the bureaucrats would begin to protect them from the sovereign tsar and grand prince.”

19. Sources written within a few decades of Ivan’s death in 1584 • Ivan wanted to secularize church and monastic lands (Horsey and Fletcher); • Soothsayers predicted the Muscovite tsar would die in that year (Piskarev Chronicle); • Ivan wanted to find out what the people thought (i.e., whether they were loyal to him) (Piskarev Chronicle and Margeret); • Ivan detected a threat to take over his throne from his son Ivan (Moscow Chronicle).

20. Historians’ Explanations • To summarize, the explanations that historians have proposed for Ivan's placing of Simeon Bekbulatovich on the throne include:Ivan wanted to hide from the boyars (Kliuchevskii); • Ivan planned to flee to England (Lileev); • Ivan wanted to be elected as king of Poland-Lithuania (Sadikov),

21. Historians’ Explanations (cont.) • It was an attempt by Ivan to secularize church and monastic lands (Koretskii [1959]), • It was a partial revival of the Oprichnina (Koretski [1967]) • It strengthened Ivan's hold over Kazan’ (Kashtanov); • The appointment of a Chinggisid was to gain ruling charisma (Pritsak);

22. Historians’ Explanations (cont.) • Ivan believed soothsayers' predictions that the ruler would die within the year and he wanted to test the loyalty of his subjects (Vernadsky); • The creation of an anti-Oprichnina was meant to get at the former members of the Oprichnina (Zimin); • Ivan’s creation of a second Oprichnina was to get at those who had escaped the first Oprichnina (Skrynnikov and, perhaps, Lur’e); • Ivan wanted to demonstrate his own divinely ordained power (Uspenskii);

23. Historians’ Explanations (cont.) • It was a “political masquerade” (Kobrin); • The usual means of ruling Russia were insufficient and Ivan wanted to continue the war against Livonia (Floria); • It was a “crude parody” of relationships found in steppe politics between non-Chingissid appointers and Chingissid appointees (Ostrowski 2002);

24. Historians’ Explanations (cont.) • The executions resulted from Ivan’s mental illness, but the location ofhis appanage was part of a rational attempt to revive the Livonian War (de Madariaga); • Bekbulatovich was in charge only when Ivan was out of town (Pronina) • Ivan was engaged in an “elaborate” attempt to deny Simeon's succession to the throne of Muscovy (Bogatyrev).

25. Aleksei Maksimov (1870-1921). An Old Princely Estate in Russia

26. Three Identities (continued) • (3) • As the monk (later, elder) Stefan, he resided in the Kirillo-Belozersk and Solovki monasteries, and in Simonov Monastery where he died in 1616 and was buried.

27. View of Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery from across Lake Belozero

28. A wooden chapel on the monastery grounds, originally built in 1485

29. View of the Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery from one of the monastery towers

30. Solovetskii Monastery as seen from the White Sea. Photo by Mikhail Vasil’ev (2004)

31. Simonov monastery in Moscow. A painting from Sights of Moscow water-color album, 1846, by L.P.A. Bishbua (1801—1850)

32. The End