This page was created by Christopher Matthew Jarmas. 

Imperiia: a spatial history of the Russian Empire

Founding of Ufa: 1574

Ufa's founding is generally associated with the year 1574, when Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of a fortress there to defend the town from steppe invaders. But the land was inhabited prior to Moscow's eastward expansion. Some scholars have posited that the city of Pascherty on various medieval maps existed in the location of modern Ufa (Aybulat, p. 60). Ufa, one can assume from these sources, was first founded as a Bashkir city, perhaps during the rule of the khanate of the Golden Horde. The area fell under Moscow's control in 1552 after Ivan IV's conquest of the Kazan khanate, though one must presume that the center's control over the Bashkir territory was tenuous at best.

It was not by historical accident that Ivan the Terrible decreed that the city would become a defensive position in Russia's eastward expansion - the city's location is strategically valuable, located below the confluence of the Belaya and Ufa rivers. A trade route had developed between Kazan and Tyumen, which one can imagine was a harrowing journey at the very periphery of the tsar's authority. Ufa was granted town status in 1586. Historian Chester Dunning places the city's founding in the context of Russia's continued pressuring of the remnants of the Golden Horde: "The founding of Ufa…directly threatened the Nogai Tatars, who repeatedly but unsuccessfully protested against growing pressure from the Russians" (Dunning, p. 84). Ufa would remain particularly prone to Muslim-minority strife up until the time of the Pugachev rebellion.

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