SIBERIA

Siberia is a vast region of Russia constituting almost all of Northern Asia. It extends eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhestan and the borders of both Mpngolia and China. All but the extreme south-western area of Siberia lies in Russia, and it makes up about 56% of that country's territory.

The history of Siberia may be traced to the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) and the Xiongnu, both flourishing before the Christian era. The steppes of South Siberia saw a succession of nomadic empires, including the Turkic Empire and the Mongol Empire. In the late Middle Ages, the Lamaist Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal. A milestone in the history of the region was the arrival of Russians in the 16th and 17th centuries, contemporaneous and in many regards analogous to the European settlement in the Americas. During the imperial period of Russian history, Siberia was an agricultural province and served as a place of exile for Avvakum, Dostoevsky, and the Decembrists, among others. The 20th century witnessed the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the industrialization and the discovery of vast reserves of Siberian mineral resourses.

Khanate

In the beginning of the 16th century Tatar fugitives from Turkestan subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the east of the Urals. Agriculturists, tanners, merchants, and mullahs (priests) were called from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang up on the Irtysh and the Ob. These were united by Khan Ediger, and conflicts with the Russians, who were then colonising the Urals, brought him into collision with Muscovy. Khan Ediger's envoys came to Moscow in 1555 and consented to a yearly tribute of a thousand sables.