Tevkkel

Date of birth unknown; died 1598. Kazakh khan from 1586 to 1598.

Tevkkel waged a struggle for independence against Mogolistan and Bukhara, in the course of which he defeated the army of Abdullah-Khan II ibn-Iskander and seized Tashkent and Samarkand. He sought to establish friendly relations with Russia, which attempted to make him an intermediary in negotiations with the Middle Asian khanates and undertook to bring about the conclusion of an alliance between Tevkkel and the Iranian shah Abbas I against the Bukhara Khanate. In January 1594 the tsarist government promised Tevkkel military aid and proposed that his son Husayn be sent to Moscow as a hostage in return for the release of Tevkkel’s nephew Uraz Muhammad. From May to July 1595, Vel’iamin Stepanov headed a Russian diplomatic mission to Tevkkel. During an attempt to capture Bukhara, Tevkkel was seriously wounded and died soon after.