Yermak Timofeyevich

Yermak Timofeyevich, who lived from about 1532 until August 1585, was a Cossack ataman who began the Russian conquest of Siberia in the reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Russian interest in the fur trade drove eastward expansion, and in the late 1570s the Stroganov merchant family recruited Cossack fighters to invade Asia on the tsar's behalf. The Cossacks elected Yermak leader of their forces, and in 1582 he set out with an army of 840 against the Khanate of Sibir. On 26 October 1582 he and his men overthrew Kuchum Khan's Tatar realm at Qashliq, a battle that marked the conquest of Siberia. He kept fighting the Tatars until 1584, when a raid organized by Kuchum Khan ambushed and killed him and his party. Historians dispute the specifics of his life because the texts about him are unreliable, and he remains a hero of Russian folklore.