Peter I of Russia (Peter the Great)

Peter the Great, tsar of Russia, has no article of his own in the Encyclopaedia of Islam. He appears in many articles on the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus, Persia and Central Asia, where he is the Russian ruler whose campaigns changed the frontiers of the Muslim world. This page gathers those passages; the sources give no dates of birth or death, so none are given here.

The article on Azak says that after an unsuccessful attack in 1695, Peter captured the fortress on 6 August 1696. Compelled to surrender it under the Treaty of the Prut in 1711, he evacuated it two years later. ¹ The article on the Crimean khanate dates the loss of Azov to Peter in 1699, which differs from the 1696 date of the Azak article. It adds that the allies succeeded in forcing Peter, hemmed in by Turkish troops near the Pruth, to give Azov back. ³ The article on the palace guard of baltacis names Baltaji Mehmed Pasha as the grand vizier who defeated Peter on the Pruth in 1711. ⁴ See also the Treaty of the Prut.

In July 1709, the article on Ahmad III says, King Charles XII of Sweden, defeated by Peter at Poltava, took refuge at Bender on the Dniester in Ottoman territory. The Ottomans had so far not used the Russian preoccupation with the Great Northern War to undo their concessions to the tsar in the treaty of 1700. ⁵

The article on the Caucasus says that Russian merchants had been killed at Shamakhi, and Peter used this as a pretext to send an expedition to Persia and occupy Derbend in 1722. Soon the other provinces on the western coast of the Caspian submitted to Russia. ² Another article says that he reached Darband on 23 August 1722 and had to return at once to Russia. ⁶ Baku was occupied in 1723, as the article on the Safawids reports. ⁷ Districts such as Lankoran were annexed under treaties of 1723 with Tahmasp II and 1729 with the Afghan Ashraf, then returned to Persia by the treaty of 1732. ⁸

In 1716 Peter commissioned Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkasskiy to investigate a waterway from the Amu Darya to the Caspian. ⁹ Three forts were built near the Caspian coast that year and abandoned the next. ¹⁰ In 1717, the article on Khiva says, attracted by the prospect of overland trade to Bukhara and India and using the release of Russian prisoners as a pretext, he sent a military expedition against Khiva, which failed. ¹¹