The Tsardom of Muscovy witnessed the early success of its steppe frontier strategies in the North Caucasus in 1567 when Ivan IV constructed the Sunzha fortress on the Terek River and stationed a thousand soldiers in it upon the request of his loyal client and father-in-law Temriuk of Kabarda. While the Muscovites were creating vassals and strengthening their loyalty to the tsar through marriage, conversion of elites, and construction of a fortress in Kabarda, the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars had to repel the incursions and attacks in the Kuban–Taman region of the Muscovite clients led by Dmytro Vyshnevetskyi. This was a brilliant strategy on the part of Muscovy and kept the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars out of Kabarda at this crucial time. Muscovy could also deny its association with Vyshnevetskyi or his Circassian allies when the Ottomans or Crimean Tatars protested. Once the threat of Vyshnevetskyi was eliminated, and understanding the objectives of Muscovy in the North Caucasus, the Ottoman Porte resolved to take a more active stance in the region. Preparing a campaign to conquer Astrakhan was a harbinger of a series of new strategies that the Ottomans were to employ in the North Caucasus in the following decades.

The Astrakhan Ordeal: Preparation, Campaign and its Aftermath

In line with the Ottoman methods of conquest, snatching Astrakhan from the Muscovites, who were engineering their operations in the North Caucasus from there, was naturally the first order of business for the Porte. After conquering and subduing an area, establishing direct rule and imposing the Ottoman rule of law was the desired outcome of the Ottoman methods of conquest. First, the Ottomans sought to create a degree of suzerainty over the area or state they targeted. If this was successful or following their conquest, they gradually eliminated the native ruling elite in those lands and established direct rule by reorganising land ownership under their infamous timar system. The local rulers and other elites, however, were not entirely deprived of their previous rights; on the contrary, they could be included in the timar system and therefore accommodated within the Ottoman administration, whose aim was the assimilation of such elites and nobility.