Söyembikä, regent of Kazan
"Söyembikä (c. 1516-after 1554), ruler of the khanate of Kazan, one of the successor states to the Turko-Mongol state of the Golden Horde, located in the middle Volga basin around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers.
From 1549 until 1551, Söyembikä ruled in the name of her minor son Utamesh-Garay, before Muscovite Russia took Kazan in 1552. In Tatar national history Söyembikä symbolizes her people’s helpless resistance to Russian invaders. She has been the subject of popular stories, tales, epics, and paintings.
Söyembikä was the daughter of Yusuf (d. 1554), the ruler of the Noghay horde, one of the kingdoms that arose from the breakup of the Golden Horde in modern-day southern Russia. Söyembikä lived in a period of great uncertainty: Noghay, Crimean, and Kazan princes competed to revive the Golden Horde, and Muscovite rulers sought to protect and expand their territory beyond the Volga to the southeast. The grand princes of Moscow paid tribute to the successors of their former suzerains, the Golden Horde, but they also involved themselves in their dynastic disputes.
The Noghay princess Söyembikä became the wife of three successive khans in the middle Volga basin: Jan Ali (or Cangali, r. 1533-1535), Safa-Garay (r. 1536-1549), and Shah Ali (or Şahgali, r.1553). Her marriage to the pro-Muscovite Jan Ali was politically motivated and received the blessing of the Russian grand prince Vasili III (r. 1505-1533), who wished to secure his southern frontier from future Noghay incursions. The anti-Muscovite party in Kazan assassinated Jan Ali, and Söyembikä married the pro-Noghay Crimean Tatar Safa-Garay, a descendant of Genghis Khan. Her new husband ended up alienating non-Tatar indigenous peoples of the middle Volga.
Following the death of Safa-Garay in 1549, Söyembikä became regent for their two-year-old son, Utamesh-Garay. Russian chroniclers described Soyembika as a “lioness” who was energetic, beautiful, and wise. As regent she sought military help from neighboring Muslim states to resist Russian encroachment. Despite all her efforts she was caught between pro-Muscovite and pro-Crimean parties inside her government and proved unable to stop Ivan the Terrible of Moscow (r. 1533-1584) from gaining the support of the non-Tatar peoples of the Volga basin and Tatars who resented the presence of Crimeans on their soil.
In August 1551 a new pro-Muscovite government arrested both mother and son and sent them to Moscow. A year later Ivan the Terrible took Kazan. Exiled in Kasimov, Söyembikä was forced to marry Shah Ali, the pro-Russian khan of Kasimov, and separate herself from her son, who was baptized under the name of Alexander. Her son died in 1566; Söyembikä’s date of death is still unknown, as is the site of her grave.
