Astrakhan

Capital city, economic and cultural centre of Astrakhan oblast (region), southwestern Russia, population 500,000. Astrakhan is sited in the Volga River delta on the northeastern shore of the Caspian Sea. It is one of the Russian principal ports, which developed rapidly in the 1870s with the growth of the oil industry at Baku (now in Azerbaijan). There is a major fishing and canning industry here, together with shipbuilding and cotton manufacturing.

Astrakhan was founded by the Tatar Golden Horde in 1240-50, near the site of the earlier Khazar capital of Itil (7th-10th centuries). Timur the Lame destroyed the city in 1395. It became an important trading centre and the capital of Astrakhan Khanate; in 1558 it was conquered by Ivan the Terrible, who built a large citadel (Kremlin) on the left bank of the Volga, around which a new city developed. Throughout the 16th-19th centuries it was a leading centre for trade with Central Asia, Persia and India.