Golden Horde

The Golden Horde grew out of the share of the Mongol Empire that Genghis Khan assigned to his eldest son Jochi: the western steppe beyond the Irtysh and whatever lands further west the Mongols might conquer. Jochi died around 1225–1227, before his father, and his son Batu inherited leadership of the western wing. In 1235 an assembly (quriltai) at Karakorum ordered a great campaign to the west, and from 1236 Batu, with the general Subutai and princes of all branches of the ruling house, conquered Volga Bulgaria, the Kipchak (Cuman) steppe and the principalities of Rus'. Ryazan fell in December 1237, Vladimir in February 1238 and Kiev in December 1240. In 1241 Mongol armies defeated Polish and German forces at Legnica and the Hungarians at Mohi, but in 1242, after news of the Great Khan Ögedei's death, Batu withdrew to the lower Volga. There he established his own ulus, the core of what later Russian sources called the Golden Horde, while his elder brother Orda led the eastern wing in what is now Kazakhstan. Batu built his capital, Sarai, on the lower Volga, and Rus' princes travelled there, and sometimes on to Karakorum, to receive patents of authority. Contemporaries called the state the Ulus of Jochi; the name Golden Horde is attested only from the sixteenth century.

The Mongols were a small ruling minority in the Golden Horde. Most of the steppe population was Kipchak Turkic, and by the fourteenth century the Mongol elite had adopted the Kipchak language and merged into the Turkic population that the Russians called Tatars. Pastoral nomadism remained the basis of life on the steppe, with the khan's camp migrating seasonally along the Volga, but the khanate also ruled settled regions: the towns and farmland of Volga Bulgaria, Khwarazm with its city of Urgench, the Crimea, and the tribute-paying principalities of Rus'. Its wealth depended heavily on trade. Sarai grew into a large city with mosques, workshops and merchants' quarters, and Ibn Battuta, who visited in the early 1330s, counted it among the finest cities he had seen. Caravan routes ran from Sarai to Khwarazm and Central Asia, while the Genoese at Caffa and the Venetians at Tana on the Don, trading under the khans' licence, shipped grain, furs, fish and slaves to the Mediterranean. Enslaved Kipchak youths were sold to Mamluk Egypt, whose rulers became allies of the khans. Berke (r. 1257–1266) was the first khan to become Muslim, and under Uzbek Khan (r. 1313–1341) Islam became the religion of the state, though the khans protected the Orthodox Church and exempted its clergy from tribute.

The Golden Horde inherited the military system of the Mongol Empire. Its army was organised in decimal units of tens, hundreds, thousands and ten-thousands (tümen), formed of mounted archers drawn from the nomadic tribes, increasingly Kipchak rather than Mongol, and led by the khan's relatives and the heads of the leading clans. Its strength lay in mobility, discipline and the ability to raise large armies quickly from the steppe. The conquest of Rus' showed its skill in siege warfare, and for a century after 1242 punitive expeditions, such as the devastating campaign of 1293 led by Duden, kept the Russian principalities obedient. From 1262 the khans fought the Ilkhanate of Persia over Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, a war that drew Berke into alliance with the Mamluk sultan Baybars. The general Nogai led raids into Byzantine Thrace, Hungary and Poland and became a kingmaker until Khan Tokhta defeated and killed him around 1299–1300. The army's weakness showed during the Great Troubles: in 1380 the warlord Mamai was defeated by Grand Prince Dmitry of Moscow at the Battle of Kulikovo, although Khan Tokhtamysh sacked Moscow two years later. Timur defeated Tokhtamysh at the Kondurcha River in 1391 and on the Terek in 1395. Even so, the emir Edigu crushed Vytautas of Lithuania at the Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399 and besieged Moscow in 1408.

Supreme power belonged to the khan, who had to be a descendant of Jochi, chosen and enthroned by an assembly of princes and leading nobles. Until the 1260s the khans acknowledged the overlordship of the Great Khan in Mongolia; Mengu-Timur (r. 1266–1280) was the first to strike coins in his own name, marking the khanate's effective independence. A chief commander, the beklerbeg, and senior emirs of the leading clans assisted the khan, and in the later Horde and its successor khanates the heads of four leading clans formed a council that could make or unmake khans. The khanate ruled its settled subjects indirectly. In Rus' it conducted censuses in the 1250s, placed darughachi and basqaq officials to supervise tribute and recruitment, and granted princes patents (yarlyk) to rule. From the early fourteenth century the khans left the collection of tribute to the grand prince of Vladimir, an office that the princes of Moscow, beginning with Ivan I Kalita, came to monopolise by competing for the khans' favour. The khans also maintained a network of post stations (yam) and customs posts. Uzbek Khan's reign was the high point of central authority; but the system depended on a strong khan and an agreed succession, and after 1359 rival claimants and powerful emirs such as Mamai and Edigu dominated the state.

The Golden Horde shaped the history of Russia and the western steppe for centuries. Its long overlordship, known in Russian historiography as the 'Tatar yoke', separated the northern principalities from their western neighbours, drained them of silver through tribute and favoured Moscow, whose princes rose as the khans' agents. Historians disagree on how far Muscovite institutions were borrowed from the Horde, but the postal system, customs and taxation practices and words such as den'gi (money) and tamozhnya (customs) show its influence. The Horde's role in trade was also far-reaching. By linking the Black Sea to Central Asia and Egypt it sustained the Italian colonies of the Crimea, and the siege of Caffa in 1346, during an epidemic in the besieging army, is often linked with the arrival of the Black Death in Europe through Genoese ships, though the exact routes of the plague remain debated. The alliance with Mamluk Egypt supplied Kipchak recruits to the Mamluk army and kept a diplomatic channel open between the steppe and Cairo. Its successor states, the khanates of Kazan, Crimea, Astrakhan and Sibir, carried its political traditions into the early modern period, the Crimean Khanate surviving until 1783, and the Volga and Crimean Tatars, the Kazakhs and the Uzbeks all trace parts of their history to the Ulus of Jochi.

The decline of the Golden Horde began with a crisis of succession. The Black Death struck the khanate's cities from 1346, disrupting trade and reducing the population. In 1357 Khan Janibeg was murdered by his son Berdibeg, who was himself killed in 1359; the line of Batu died out, and two decades of civil war, the 'Great Troubles', followed, in which more than twenty khans held the throne in quick succession while the emir Mamai ruled the west through puppet khans. Tokhtamysh, a Jochid prince from the east backed by Timur, reunited the Horde after 1378, overthrew Mamai and sacked Moscow in 1382. He then turned against his patron, and Timur's campaigns of 1391 and 1395–1396 destroyed his armies and sacked Sarai, Astrakhan, Tana and other trading cities, ruining the khanate's commercial base. The emir Edigu restored some power, but after his death in 1419 the Horde fragmented. The Khanate of Kazan emerged around 1438, the Crimean Khanate under Hacı Giray around 1441 and Astrakhan around 1466, while the remaining core became known as the Great Horde. Moscow under Ivan III stopped paying tribute, and the Great Stand on the Ugra River in 1480 ended without battle when Khan Ahmed withdrew. In 1502 Meñli I Giray of Crimea defeated Sheikh Ahmed, the last khan of the Great Horde, and sacked Sarai.