Kipchaks in the context of "Volga Tatars"

The Cumans or Kumans were a Turkic nomadic people from Central Asia comprising the western branch of the Cuman–Kipchak confederation who spoke the Cuman language. They are referred to as Polovtsians (Polovtsy) in Rus' chronicles, as "Cumans" in Western sources, and as "Kipchaks" in Eastern sources.

Related to the Pechenegs, they inhabited a shifting area north of the Black Sea and along the Volga River known as Cumania, from which the Cuman–Kipchaks meddled in the politics of the Caucasus and the Khwarazmian Empire. The Cumans were fierce and formidable nomadic warriors of the Eurasian Steppe who exerted an enduring influence on the medieval Balkans. They were numerous, culturally sophisticated, and militarily powerful.

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is a de jure administrative division of Ukraine encompassing most of Crimea that was unilaterally annexed by Russia in 2014. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea occupies most of the peninsula, while the City of Sevastopol (a city with special status within Ukraine) occupies the rest.

The Cimmerians, Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars, Byzantine Greeks, the state of Kievan Rus', Kipchaks, Italians, and Golden Horde Mongols and Tatars each controlled Crimea in its earlier history. In the 13th century, it was partly controlled by the Venetians and by the Genoese, and in the late 15th century, it was partly under Polish suzerainty. They were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire in the 15th to 18th centuries, the Russian Empire in the 18th to 20th centuries, Germany during World War II, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and later the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, within the Soviet Union during the rest of the 20th century until Crimea became part of independent Ukraine with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Bahri Mamluks (Arabic: المماليك البحرية, romanized: al-Mamalik al-Baḥariyya), sometimes referred to as the Bahri dynasty, were the rulers of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt from 1250 to 1382, following the Ayyubid dynasty. The members of the Mamluk ruling class were purchased as slaves (mamluks) and manumitted, with the most powerful among them taking the role of sultan in Cairo. While several Bahri Mamluk sultans tried to establish hereditary dynasties through their sons, these attempts were ultimately unsuccessful, with the role of sultan often passing on to another powerful Mamluk.

The Bahri Mamluks were of mostly Kipchak Turkic origin. Fourteen of eighteen sultans between 1279 and 1390 belonged to the Qalawunid lineage. After 1382/1390, they were succeeded by a second Mamluk regime, the Burji Mamluks, who were largely of Circassian origin. The name Bahri or Bahriyya means 'of the river', referring to the location of their original barracks on Roda Island in the Nile (Nahr al-Nil) in Cairo, at the citadel of Al-Rodah which was built by the Ayyubid sultan as-Salih Ayyub.

Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Bunduqdari (Arabic: الْمَلِك الظَّاهِر رُكْن الدِّين بَيْبَرْس الْبُنْدُقْدَارِيّ; 1223/1228 – 30 June 1277), commonly known as Baibars or Baybars (بَيْبَرْس) and nicknamed Abu al-Futuh (أَبُو الْفُتُوح, lit. 'Father of Conquests'), was the fourth Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria, of Turkic Kipchak origin, in the Bahri dynasty, succeeding Qutuz. He was one of the commanders of the Muslim forces that inflicted a defeat on the Seventh Crusade of King Louis IX of France. He also led the vanguard of the Mamluk army at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, which marked the first substantial defeat of the Mongol army that is considered a turning point in history.

The reign of Baybars marked the start of an age of Mamluk dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean and solidified the durability of their military system. He managed to pave the way for the end of the Crusader presence in the Levant and reinforced the union of Egypt and Syria as the region's pre-eminent Muslim state, able to fend off threats from both Crusaders and Mongols, and even managed to subdue the kingdom of Makuria, which was famous for being unconquerable by previous Muslim empire invasion attempts. As sultan, Baybars also engaged in a combination of diplomacy and military action, allowing the Mamluks of Egypt to greatly expand their empire.

The name Cumania originated as the Latin exonym for the Cuman–Kipchak confederation, which was a tribal confederation in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe, between the 10th and 13th centuries. The confederation was dominated by two Turkic nomadic tribes: the Cumans (also known as the Polovtsians or Folban) and the Kipchaks. Cumania was known in Islamic sources as Dasht-i Qipchaq (دشت قپچاق) which means "Steppe of the Kipchaks" or "Kipchak Plains" in Persian, and al-Qumāniyīn (القمانيين) which means "The Cumans" or "The Cuman people" in Arabic. Russian sources have referred to Cumania as the "Polovtsian Steppe" (Polovetskaia Step), or the "Polovtsian Plain" (Pole Polovetskoe).

A different, more organized entity that was later known as the Golden Horde was also referred to as "Comania" by Armenian chronicler Hethum (Hayton) of Korykos. "Cumania" was also the source of names, or alternate names, for several smaller areas – some of them unconnected geographically to the area of the federation – in which Cumans and/or Kipchaks settled, such as the historic region of Kunság in Hungary, and the former Diocese of Cumania (in Romania and Hungary). Hethum of Korykos described Cumania as "wholly flat and with no trees". Ibn Battuta said of Cumania, "This wilderness is green and grassy with no trees, nor hills, high or low ... there is no means of travelling in this desert except in wagons." Battuta's contemporary, Hamdallah Mustawfi, elaborated,

Cuman or Kuman (also called Kipchak, Qypchaq or Polovtsian, self referred to as Tatar (tatar til) in Codex Cumanicus) was a West Kipchak Turkic language spoken by the Cumans (Polovtsy, Folban, Vallany, Kun) and Kipchaks; the language was similar to today's various languages of the West Kipchak branch. Cuman is documented in medieval works, including the Codex Cumanicus, and in early modern manuscripts, like the notebook of Benedictine monk Johannes ex Grafing. It was a literary language in Central and Eastern Europe that left a rich literary inheritance. The language became the main language (lingua franca) of the Golden Horde.