Nogai, Greater and Lesser

feudal states of the Nogai people, which arose after the disintegration of the Nogai Horde in the second half of the 16th century.

The Greater Nogai state was formed out of the uluses (clans) that roamed in the Caspian region, between the left bank of the lower Volga and the Ural River. The princes of the Greater Nogai became vassals of Moscow in 1555–1563, 1564, and 1567. Boris Godunov bound them closer to the Muscovite state in 1600 by making the murza (head of an ulus) Ishterek a prince. In 1634, after an attack by Kalmyks, the Greater Nogai resettled on the right bank of the Volga, where they roamed with the Lesser Nogai.

The Lesser Nogai, also called the Kazy Ulus after their founder, Murza Kazy, consisted of the uluses that had settled on the right bank of the Volga and in the Azov region, between the Kuban’ and the Don, in the mid-16th century. They were vassals of the Crimean Khanate and Turkey until the mid-18th century. In the first half of the 17th century, the Lesser Nogai settled in the steppes of the northern Black Sea coast, as for as the Danube, and broke up into the Burdzhak, Edichkul’, Embuluts, Edissan, and other hordes. From the mid-17th century several uluses, together with the Greater Nogai, roamed in the Caspian region, between the Volga and the Terek rivers. The Edissan and Burdzhak hordes became Russian subjects in 1770. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries some of the Nogai were resettled on their old nomadic grounds in the Azov region, between the Kuban’ and the Don, and some moved to Turkey in accordance with the Bucharest Peace Treary of 1812.