The Timbaev Murzas and Their Land Possessions in the Astrakhan Province from the Late 18th – Early 20th Century

Introduction. The article is devoted to the fate of the family of non-baptized Astrakhan murzas/princes Timbaevs in the 18th – 20th centuries. The history of this ruling Turkic family, along with the Yusupovs, Urusovs, and Sheydyakovs, which traced its origin to Edigey, has not yet become a subject of special study. Methods and materials. The study is based on the analysis of unpublished documents on the history of the family, its representatives, their possessions, stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Astrakhan region. Analysis. Source study and genealogical research of documents allow us to present the composition of the Timbaev family, to characterize the attempts of its most active part in the dialogue with the Russian local and central authorities to assert their rights to the noble origin and land possessions in the 18th – 20th centuries, and to clarify the fate of the Timbaevs’ possessions in the Krasnoyarsk and Astrakhan districts of Astrakhan province. Results. Timbaevs, included by the Astrakhan nobles’ assembly in the lists of nobility compiled in the late 18th – early 19th centuries, were not approved in these rights and also could not take advantage of the opportunity to earn nobility in the Astrakhan Cossack Host. Collective land ownership and complication of property relations of the family members, custody over the estate, and conflicts with peasants became the reason for the withdrawal by the state department in the 1840s of most of the family lands in the Krasnoyarsk district. However, the land ownership in the Astrakhan district on the river Bakhtemir was a unique case of uninterrupted possession of land by one of the Timbaev families from the middle of the 17th century until 1917.