YAKIV SHAH

(1541 - 1583)


Yakov Shah — a Zaporozhian low-ranking Otaman of the second half of the 16th century, a brother of Ivan Pidkova, with whom he went on a campaign to Moldavia (1577), in 1576-1577 defeated a Tatar ambassador returning from Moscow on the Dnieper. The shah, not afraid of the punishment that Pidkova suffered, decided to take revenge for Hetman Pidkova: to attack Wallachia.

Besieged Bucharest and ordered to extradite those who were responsible for the death of Hetman Pidkova. One boyar and 17 others were issued to him. He ordered to cut off their feet and ears and hang them in front of the church of St. Nicholas and ordered to write above them in the church: "this is how traitors and traitors who shed innocent Christian blood are punished."

When news of this reached Constantinople, Sultan Amurat and the Crimean Khan demanded the Shah's execution and the abolition of the Cossacks. Their Sultan demanded compensation from the King of Poland through his envoys, and in the meantime he ordered the arrest of all Polish and Russian merchants who were trading in Moldavia, Wallachia and the Crimea. The Polish king, setting out to satisfy the Turkish demands, put the Hetman on trial and ordered the foreman General to judge the Hetman by universal letter sent to the Little Russian Military Tribunal. He was removed from the Hetmanship and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Kaniv monastery, where he was ordained a monk of his own free will and ended his life peacefully in a monastery in 1583.