Tartar Khanate of Siberia-Russian

In the late sixteenth century Russia dramatically expanded eastward by overcoming the Khanate of Sibir, a Tatar state lying beyond the Ural Mountains in western Siberia. This conquest, beginning in the 1580s under Czar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), opened the vast expanses of Siberia to Russian penetration and would ultimately enlarge the Russian realm enormously.

The campaign was spearheaded not by the state's regular army but by the Cossack adventurer Yermak Timofeyevich, who led a band of Cossacks and fighters financed by the wealthy Stroganov merchant family, with the czar's sanction. Yermak's forces defeated the army of Khan Kuchum and captured his capital, Isker (Qashliq), near present-day Tobolsk, breaking the khanate's power despite their small numbers.

The fall of the Khanate of Sibir began the steady Russian advance across Siberia toward the Pacific, driven by the lucrative trade in furs. Over the following decades Russian fortified outposts spread eastward, incorporating immense territories and peoples into the empire. The conquest set Russia on the path to becoming a transcontinental power and laid the foundations of its enduring dominion over northern Asia.