Khan Temir (before 1594 to 1637) was a steppe warlord and raider. He ruled the Budjak Horde in what is now the southwestern corner of Ukraine (Budjak) along the Romanian border. Budjak is the southwesternmost corner of the Eurasian Steppe. He raided mostly along the eastern frontier of the Polish Commonwealth. Nominally a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans used him to pressure the Poles just as the Poles used the Zaporozhian Cossacks to pressure the Ottomans and Crimeans. His habit of acting independently caused problems. The Ottomans several times tried to move him east from Poland and eventually executed him. The most important event in his life was his conflict with the Crimean khan in 1628.
Family
He was the first and greatest leader of the Bujak Horde which seems to have formed up about the time he came to power. A connection to the Cantemirești of Moldavia is likely, but cannot be established exactly. He was associated with the Mansur clan which held the northwestern steppe-like corner of Crimea and had connections with the steppe nomads. He is sometimes described as a Crimean Tatar, but this is not accurate. He traced his ancestry to Edigu (died 1419) and his son Mansur who was executed by Barak Khan in 1427. His grandfather was Divey-Mirza who was captured at the Battle of Molodi and died in Russian captivity around 1575. His father was Araslanay-Mirza who married a daughter of khan Devlet I and died fighting for khan Gazi II in Hungary around 1595. He had several sons who were killed during his lifetime.
Life
Before Mehmed
His early life and rise to power need more documentation. In 1606 he led 10,000 men to raid Podolia and was defeated by Crown hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski at the Battle of Udycz.
In 1610 Janibek became Crimean khan and Shahin Giray fled to Khan Temir. Shahin was a successful raider until the Ottomans forced him out in 1614.
In June 1612 he led a Ottoman-Tatar army to Moldavia where he captured its ruler Constantin Movilă. The young Moldavian prince managed to escape captivity however he drowned in a river and died during his escape from the raiding Tatars. The period 1612-1617 needs more documentation.
In 1617 the Ottoman sultan Ahmed I sent an army north to force the Poles to limit Cossack raids into Ottoman territories. Instead of fighting they made the Treaty of Busza in which they agreed to halt raids by their Cossack and Tatar vassals. However the Cossack and Tatar freebooters ignored the treaty and continued their raids into each others territories. Next year Khan-Temir and his sons raided Galicia, Cossacks raided the Ottoman coastal port city of Khadjibey (modern Odesa) and in response the Ottoman sultan sent Crimeans and Khan-Temir to raid Volhynia (Battle of Orynin (1618)). The following years were a series of bloody battles fought between the Poles and their Cossack vassals against the Ottomans and their Tatar vassals.
In 1620 the ruler of Moldavia switched his allegiance from the Ottomans to the Poles, leading to the Polish-Ottoman War (1620-21). The Poles were defeated at the Battle of Cecora (1620). Stanisław Żółkiewski offered to retreat if he could hold Khan Temir hostage until he reached the Polish border. Khan Temir refused. He retreated anyway, his army was chewed up by Khan Temir’s men and Zolkiewski was killed. The Budjaks then raided the surrounding country. Next spring they raided Galicia again. In 1621 the Ottoman sultan Osman II led a large army north supported by Khan Temir and Crimean khan Janibek. The resulting Battle of Khotyn (1621) was a stalemate with heavy losses on both sides. During and after the battle Khan Temir raided the countryside. For his services he was made governor the Silistra Eyalet along the Black Sea coast. (In July 1623 he was removed for unauthorized raiding.) During the negotiations for the Treaty of Khotyn around October 1621 the Poles asked that Khan Temir be moved away from their border, something that the Ottomans were not strong enough to do. Politicians like Mere Hüseyin Pasha wanted Khan Temir out of the way.
Under Mehmed III
In 1623 Mehmed III Giray became Crimean khan. His first task was to move Khan Temir from the Polish border to stop his private raiding after the Ottoman-Polish peace treaty. He led the Crimean army west and somehow talked Khan Temir into moving east to the Syut-Su river (location?). In 1624, when the Ottomans tried to remove Mehmed, he moved back to Budjak.
In 1624 he led a raid into Polish territory and was defeated by Stanisław Koniecpolski.