page_title: Azov
section_title: Fortress
hierarchical_section_title: Azov / Fortress
caption_attribution_description: English: Adriaan Schoonebeek. Taking of en:Azov (1699).
context_page_description: Azov, formerly known as Azoff or Azak,
  is a town in Rostov Oblast, Russia, situated on the Don River just 16 kilometers from the Sea of Azov, which derives its name from the town. Population: 82,937; 82,090; 80,297.
context_section_description: In 1471, the Ottoman Empire gained control of the area and built the strong fortress of Azak (Azov). The fort blocked the Don Cossacks from raiding and trading into the Black Sea. The Cossacks had attacked Azov in 1574, 1593, 1620, and 1626. In April 1637, three thousand Don Cossacks and four thousand Zaporozhian Cossacks besieged Azov (the Turks had four thousand soldiers and two hundred cannons). The fort fell on June 21 and the Cossacks sent a request to the Tsar for re-enforcements and support. A commission recommended against this because of the danger of war with Turkey and poor state of the fortifications. In June 1641, Hussein Deli, Pasha of Silistria invested the fort with 70,000–80,000 men. In September, they had to withdraw because of disease and provisioning shortfalls. A second Russian commission reported that the siege had left very little of the walls. In March 1642, Sultan Ibrahim issued an ultimatum and Tsar Mikhail ordered the Cossacks to evacuate. The Turks reoccupied Azov in September 1642.
  In 1693, the garrison of the fortress was 3,656 of whom 2,272 were Janissaries.
  The fortress, however, had yet to pass through many vicissitudes. During the Azov campaigns of 1696, Peter the Great, who desired naval access to the Black Sea, managed to recover the fortress. Azov was granted town status in 1708, but the disastrous Pruth River Campaign constrained him to hand it back to the Turks in 1711. A humorous description of the events is featured in Voltaire's Candide. During the Great Russo-Turkish War, it was taken by the army under Count Rumyantsev and finally ceded to Russia under the terms of Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji (1774). For seven years Azov was a seat of its own governorate, but with the growth of neighboring Rostov-on-the-Don it gradually declined in importance. The Germans and Austrians occupied Azov in 1917–1918, during World War I. It was occupied by the Germans between July 1942 and February 1943 during World War II.
caption: A 17th-century Dutch engraving representing the Battle of Azov (1696)
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