Lithuanian Metrics as a source on the history of the Turkic States of Eastern Europe

Lithuanian Metrica contains a lot of information on the Turkic khanates of Eastern Europe of the 15th–16th centuries. It consists mainly of documents related to foreign relations of the Polish-Lithuanian State and covers its contacts primarily with the Crimean Yurt. In Lithuanian Metrica can be also found valuable information about the Great Horde and the Nogai Horde. Information reflecting contacts of Vilna and Cracow with Kazan and Astrakhan khanates is also presented in metrica although very fragmentary. The Polish-Lithuanian State inherited policy of Vilnius rulers in relation to the khans. This policy emerged in the era of the weakening and disintegration of the Golden Horde during the reign of the Grand Dukes Algirdas and, especially, Vytautas and was expressed in the form of patronage of deposed Tokhtamysh and his children. Later it continued in contacts with the Crimean Girays and (until the beginning of the 16th century) with the khans of Great Horde. In respect of the Golden Horde, the documents of Lithuanian Metrica contain separate memories of participants of diplomatic correspondence concerning order that once existed in this State. In general, such memories occur both as references to the deeds and decrees of the former Horde’s “tsars” justifying the legitimacy of the current policies, and as norms of relations adopted at the time, presented as a model to be followed by descendants. The memory of the Horde-Lithuanian relations of the 13th – the first half of the 15th centuries are reflected in the materials of Lithuanian Metrica in the form of an equally abstract references to the relationship that existed in the times of ancestors. Tatar and Polish-Lithuanian side constantly referred to the relationship of the “brotherhood”, i.e. status equality, which were established between the Grand Duke Algirdas and Vitautas and king Casimierz on the one hand, and the Horde khans on the other. The documents contained in Lithuanian Metrica seem to be a necessary element of the source base for the study of the later Golden Horde and ‘post-Horde’ khanates of the 15th–16th centuries (and of the 17th century for Crimea)