five separate occasions between 1362 and 1375/1376, losing it to rivals each time. Intervening in the internal conflicts within the Golden Horde, the Central Asian conqueror Timur sacked, leveled, and set on fire Sarai in the winter of 1395–1396. The city had partially recovered by 1402, and by the 1420s minted coins again, although the Golden Horde did not completely stabilize. Shortly after the Russian traveler Afanasy Nikitin passed through in 1469, Sarai was plundered by the Ushkuyniks, riverine pirates from Vyatka, in 1471. The Muscovite commander Vasily Ivanovich Nozdrovaty Zvenigorodsky and the Crimean prince in Muscovite exile Nur Devlet plundered the "Yurt of Batu" in 1480, in a counterattack ordered by Ivan III of Russia in retaliation for the advance of Khan Aḥmad against Moscow. The decisive blow seems to have been the sacking and burning of Sarai by Khan Meñli I Giray of the Crimea in June 1502. The forces of Ivan IV of Russia passed through and destroyed what was left of Sarai while conquering the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556. After it expanded its control over the lower Volga region, Russia established the new fortress cities of Astrakhan in 1558, and Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd) in 1589. Descriptions of Sarai The traveler Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who visited in about 1332, has left a description of Sarai (or, as he called it, "the city of al-Sarā, known also as al-Sarā Baraka, which is the capital of the sultan Ūzbak"). Since the foundation of "New Saray" is estimated to have taken place about this time, it is not entirely clear which Sarai was described by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa; the stated distance of 3 days upstream from Astrakhan (al-Ḥājj Tarkhān) is possibly consistent with the site at Selitrennoe Gorodišče, traditionally identified as "Old Sarai", but the archaeological excavations of that site might not support this identification. The Damascene historian Aḥmad ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī, who died in 1349, has also left a description of Sarai, based on the account of a traveler; once again, it is not entirely clear whether the information refers to Old Sarai or New Sarai, given its date, and references to both Berke and Öz Beg: In 1623–1624, a Russian merchant, Fedot Kotov, traveled to Persia via the lower Volga. He described the site of Sarai: As so often the case, it is difficult to decide to which Sarai (or other center) this description applies. Location of Old Sarai and