Kalmyk Invasion of Kabardia (1644)

Kalmyk Invasion of Kabardia was a major campaign led by the Kalmyk ruler Kho-Urluk against the Kabardians and other various Caucasian peoples in the North Caucasus, which ended in a fiasco for the Kalmyks^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

The Kalmyks first appeared in the North Caucasiansteppes in the 17th century. but their main nomadic camps were located at that time east of the Volga River, and they did not conduct any military operations against the highlanders of the North Caucasus. They needed to settle into their new surroundings and claim their lands, primarily from the Nogai, who were equally skilled in steppe warfare. A portion of the Great Horde Nogais, who had migrated from the Volga to the Terek, also feuded with the Kalmyk feudal lords.^[3][5]

The first documented meeting between Kabardians and Kalmyks occurred in early 1632 in Moscow. on January 25, the Kabardian princes Kelemet Kudenetovich, Buruk and Tonzhechan Araslanov, Kanshov Bitemryukov, and the Kalmyk ambassadors Taigush, Ugurly, Taizi, and Shoni bowed to the Tsar of Russia^[5]

In early 1644, Kalmyk forces crossed the Volga river and advanced to the south. A part of their army was sent to Terki, while the main army crossed the Terek river and enteres Kabardia, But the Kabardians and Nogais who were prepared and ready repelled the attack and defeated the Kalmyks^{[2][3][5][6][4]}

The Terek voivode M. Volynsky wrote to the Ambassadorial Prikaz; "The Kabardian and Nogai murzas, with their warriors, defeated the Kalmyk people. And they killed, sir, the Kalmyk people's chieftains, Urlyuk-taisu, and his children, Gireisan-taisu, Irgenten-taisu, and Zhelden-taisu, and captured two Taisas alive – Ilgerdei-taisu, and he doesn't remember his other name – and with them, more than a thousand Kalmyk and Etisan people were captured."^[5][3]

“And there were, they say, with those tais of Kalmyk people and Etisan and Yanbuilut murzas and their ulus military people 10,500 people, and they left, sir, from that battle from the Cherkass and from Malovo Nogai about one and a half or two thousand separately on foot, and the Kabardian and Malovo Nogai ulus people took away all their horses and animals”^[5][3]