Azak (Azov)

Azak, Russian Azov, was called Tana by the Italians after the ancient Tanais. It is first found on an Italian map of 1306, and the Turkish name Azak appears on coins from 717 AH (1317). The Genoese established trade there around 1316, and the Venetians about 1332. It remained essentially a Muslim-Tatar city, administered by Tatar governors. An emporium of the East-West trade in the fourteenth century, it declined, perhaps more from the competition of the Genoese Kaffa than from the hostile policy of Dinar-bek towards the Italian colonies or from Timur's depredations in 1396. ¹

Conquered by the Ottomans in 1475, Azak is described in the register of 1545 as a kaza of the sanjak of Kaffa. The town had three parts: the Venedik-kal'esi (in Evliya Çelebi, Frenk-hisari), with 198 Muslim families including the garrison; the Dieneviz-kal'esi, later Orta-hisar, with 109 Muslim families including the garrison; and the Toprak-kale, with 500 Tatar akıncı and 104 families of fishermen and 57 Greek families. Fisheries, caviar and the slave trade were its main resources. When the Cossacks, Circassians and Russians began to threaten it, Azak became the main Ottoman bastion in the north. The Cossacks took it in 1637 but abandoned it in 1642. In 1666 Evliya Çelebi saw a garrison of 13,000 men there, and new fortifications such as the Sedd-i Islam were built. Peter the Great captured it on 6 August 1696; it was returned to the Ottomans by the treaty of the Prut (1711), and the Russians recaptured it in 1736. ¹