Chimgi Tura

Chimgi-Tura was a Tatar town on the Tura River in western Siberia, where the forest and the steppe meet and where river routes ran toward the Ob and the Urals. Its name means 'the city of Chingis' in the Siberian Tatar speech of the region. It was the seat of the Tatar khans who inherited the northern lands of the Golden Horde, and the caravan road between Central Asia and the Volga passed beside it.

The Taibugid khans held the town in the fifteenth century until the Shaybanid prince Ibak seized it after killing the ruler Mar. Around 1493 Mar's grandson Muhammad killed Ibak in battle and decided not to stay at Chimgi-Tura, choosing instead Iskar on the Irtysh as his capital. The old town lost importance, though the name 'Tyumen' was already recorded in a Russian chronicle of 1406. Kuchum, Ibak's grandson, won the khanate in 1563 and was defeated by the Cossacks of Yermak in 1582, after which the old town was abandoned or burned. In 1586 a Russian stockade, Tyumen, was begun beside it on the Tura, the first Russian town in Siberia.