Problems of Studying the Siberian Statehood of the Shibanids (according to Materials of the Fourth All-Russian Research Conference: “The History, Economy, and Culture of the Medieval Turkic-Tatar States of Western Siberia”)

Abstract

The article summarizes the results of the Fourth All-Russian (national) research conference “History, Economy, and Culture of the Medieval Turkic-Tatar States of Western Siberia”. It took place in the city of Kurgan on October 30, 2020. The conference was held on the Zoom platform due to the current epidemic situation. From various regions of Russia and the Republic of Kazakhstan, 34 researchers took part in it. The reports were chronologically and thematically divided into the following areas: the issues of the historiography and source studies of the political and ethnic history of the Siberian states; the Tyumen Khanate and its heritage, the Siberian Khanate and its neighbors; and Western Siberia from the end of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries: politics, population, and culture. The speakers summed up and set new prospects for research on the problems of archaeological and historical source studies related to Siberian statehood, the ethno-social and political history of the Tyumen and Siberian yurts, and issues of political relations of late medieval Siberian states with their neighbors including the Muscovite state and the Bukhara Khanate. In the latter case, it was proposed to consider these relations in the context of larger geopolitical realities in Eurasia in the sixteenth century. Special attention was paid to the discussion of Tatar-Ugric relations which continue to be a promising research area. The problems and chronology of the entry of the Turkic-Tatar and Ugric peoples of Western Siberia into the Russian state were discussed as well. Further ways of studying the problems of the history, economy, and culture of the medieval Turkic-Tatar states of Western Siberia were considered for the preparation of the next conference in Kurgan in 2023. Using the possibilities of interdisciplinary research by specialists in the field of history, archaeology, ethnology, numismatics, and genetics is of great importance in determining the prospects for further research. Taking into account the limited written base of sources on the history of Western Siberia of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, interdisciplinarity and a combined approach can solve some controversial issues and problems, as well as provide us with new potential opportunities to study the history of the Tyumen and Siberian Khanate.