Between Russians, Ottomans, and Turks

Alan Fisher’s Crimea and Crimean Tatars is a collection of essays pertaining to the Turkish Tatars who inhabit the Crimean peninsula and is the fruit of some 35 years of study. Fisher traces the Tatar history in the Crimea back to the sixteenth century, before the Russian conquest of the region. This period of Crimean history is coloured by the Ottoman presence in the peninsula, a period which is not as well studied as the later Russian one. However, Fisher’s work in the Ottoman archives leads him to take a very different approach to Ottoman-Crimean history than had previous scholars. Fisher does also devote several articles from this volume to the Crimea under Russian – and later Soviet – rule. He pays particular attention to leading Tatar figures and to the Crimea in the context of the Russian state’s relations with its Muslim subjects.