Conquest of the Khanate of Sibir
The Khanate of Sibir was a Muslim state located just east of the middle Ural Mountains.
Moscow responded with a charter that effectively authorized the Stroganovs to launch a private war against the Khan, but this was not acted on.
The area was inhabited by the Voguls (Mansi) and, north of Tobolsk, the Ostyaks (Khanty people).
At some date a group of Siberian Tatars established the Khanate of Sibir and formed a military ruling class over a non-Muslim population.
The main problems are the year the expedition started, details of the route, and the location of the battle at Sibir.
When the river grew shallow and the weather turned cold he built winter quarters in the mountains.
Entering the Tura River he sailed downstream (southeast) and defeated a native prince named Epancha at the later site of Turinsk.
(Naumov has Ivan Koltso and 300 men, probably Stroganov's 300, join Ermak at this point, but other sources do not mention this).
Continuing down the Tura, he captured Tyumen (according to the Remizov chronicle, but Bakhruskin thinks that the fort here had been abandoned).
Twenty miles below the Tavda they fought another battle and then captured a native village where they rested for a month.
Leaving camp, they sailed 12 miles[5] down the Tobol to its junction with the Irtysh River at the modern Tobolsk.
Grousset[6] has the battle at 'a fortified camp at the mouth of the Tobol to protect the approaches to Sibir'.
Ermak, perhaps unexpectedly, found himself the ruler of a Khanate and sent Ivan Koltso, 50 men, and 5,200 furs to Moscow to announce his conquest.
His nephew, Mamet-Kul, attacked the Russians several times, but was captured on the Vagai River and sent to Moscow, where he later had an honorable career under the name Sibirsky.
Seid Akhmat, Kuchum's Taibugid rival, returned to the area and gained some supporters.
A punitive expedition was defeated, which seems to have set off a general uprising and it became unsafe to leave the fort at Sibir.
The story, which may be true, is that Ermak tried to flee to a river boat and was drowned by the weight of the armor that the Tsar had sent him.
With only 150 surviving men, he thought it was impossible to hold out and so he sailed down the Irtysh and Ob and crossed into Russia over the northern Urals.
Ali, Kuchum's son, reoccupied the town.but was driven out by Seid Akhmat (Naumov calls him Seidiak).
They wintered somewhere on the Ob and crossed the Urals the following spring, in 1586 (Naumov has Glukhov and Mansurov meeting and returning to Russia together).
The Russians' policy was based on systematic fort-building and were using that method to expand south of Moscow.
