Azok

Azak stood at the mouth of the Don, where the river opens into the Sea of Azov. Under the Golden Horde it was a Muslim Tatar town beside the trading establishments of Genoese and Venetian merchants, who called their settlement Tana. Goods from the steppe and lands farther east passed through its markets towards ports of the Black Sea. The Italian colonies built fortifications that later became part of the Ottoman town's defenses.

The Ottomans took Azak in 1475 and made it a northern bastion of their empire. Its quarters included former Venetian and Genoese forts and a larger outer settlement occupied by Tatar raiders, fishermen and Greek families. Fishing, caviar and the slave trade supported its economy. Don and Zaporozhian Cossacks seized the fortress in 1637 and held it against a great Ottoman siege before abandoning it in 1642. The damaged defenses were subsequently rebuilt.

Peter the Great captured Azak in 1696, gaining a foothold towards the southern seas, but Russia returned it to the Ottomans after the Pruth campaign in 1711. Russian forces took it again in 1736; the Treaty of Belgrade required the fortress to be dismantled in 1739. The contests over Azak show the strategic value of the Don's outlet, a gateway coveted by the powers of the steppe and the Black Sea.