Immigrants included Russians, foreigners, British convicts diverted from Australia, Cossacks and controversially Jews. In 1648 an army of Cossacks and Crimean Tatars besieged the town. Their land was distributed among pro-soviet Cossacks and Chechens. Muslim Cossacks in Siberia requested an Imam. The contradiction was sometimes disguised by reclassification of Slavs as Cossacks. At the beginning of December 1917 groups of volunteers and Cossacks captured Rostov. Khmelnytsky managed to overcome more than a century of mutual hostility between Cossacks and Tatars. The majority of Tisa and Danubian Sich Cossacks returned to Russia in 1828. Black Rada was a council of all cossacks. The Tatar raids also played an important role in the development of the Cossacks. It contains various relics of the Siberian Cossacks. Some escaped to flee southeast to the Ural River, where they joined the Yaik Cossacks. The town of Antratsyt was occupied by a number of renegade Don Cossacks. "On State Service of the Russian Cossacks". The Imperial Government depended heavily on the perceived reliability of the Cossacks.