2025. no 1. Oleg Komarov

Sources about the Battle of Molodi

Oleg Komarov
Scientific Research Centre “Military Archaeology”

Abstract.The article studies the sources about the Crimean Khan’s campaign to Moscow in July-August of 1572 and about the battles that took place there. These sources are represented by a large number of military documents and chronicles written in the 16th–18th centuries. Their texts have been studied and compared. Comparison of sources with each other allowed us to separate out the array of unreliable rumors and distortions. Service documents of the military department are designated as the main sources. The view from the Crimean side is represented by the letter of the Khan. False rumors are also of research interest, as they reflect the view of contemporaries on this war. The involvement of topographical data allows to clarify the places of battles and routes of troops movement. The article is intended to help researchers of the 1572 campaign.

Keywords: Devlet Girey I, Ivan IV, Divey-Murza, Mikhail Vorotynsky, Molodi, Bereg, gulai-gorod, Russian chronicle, razryad (rank) books.

For citation: Komarov O.V. Sources about the Battle of Molodi. Krymskoe istoricheskoe obozrenie=Crimean Historical Review. 2025, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 35–71. DOI: 10.22378/kio.2025.1.35-71 (in Russian)

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About the author: Oleg V. Komarov – Military Historian, member, Research center “Military Archeology” with the support of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kulikovo Field Museum-Reserve (19, Dmitry Ulyanov Str., Moscow 117232, Russian Federation); oleggg888@yandex.ru