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The Khāns of the Golden Horde, Descendants of Jochi

624–907/1227–1502

Western Siberia, Khwārazm and South Russia

1. The line of Batu’ids, Khāns of the Blue Horde in South Russia, Khwārazm and the western part of the Qïpchaq steppe

2. The line of Orda, Khāns of the White Horde in western Siberia and the eastern part of the Qïpchaq steppe, and, after 780/1378, of the Blue and White Hordes united into the Golden Horde of South Russia

Chingiz’s eldest son Jochi had been allotted as his appanage western Siberia and the Qïpchaq Steppe, and on his death in 624/1227 the eastern part of all this, namely western Siberia, fell to his eldest son Orda, who became titular head of the descendants of Jochi and who founded in his territories the White Horde. Little is known about the early White Horde khāns, but the forceful and energetic Toqtamïsh (d. 809/1406) is a figure of major importance in steppe and eastern European history. He united the Batu’id Blue Horde (by now known as the Golden Horde) with the White Horde, and once more made the Golden Horde a power of importance in Russia, sacking Nizhniy Novgorod and Moscow in 784/1382. However, he had the misfortune to come up against Tīmūr Lang, who drove him out of his capital Saray on the Volga, so that Toqtamïsh was forced to flee into exile with Vitold (Vitautas), Grand Duke of Lithuania.

The western half of Jochi’s appanage, Khwārazm and the Qïpchaq Steppe of South Russia, went to his second son Batu. Batu ravaged Russia almost as far as Novgorod, captured Kiev and attacked Poland and Hungary. Christian Europe was only saved from further molestation after Batu’s Liegnitz victory of 638/1241 and the pursuit of the Hungarian King Béla IV to the shores of the Adriatic by the news of the Great Khan Ögedey’s death. Based on the capital Saray, Batu’s Blue Horde became the nucleus of the Golden Horde (a name apparently given to them by the Russians, Zolotaya Orda, although Russian and Polish-Lithuanian sources most usually refer to it simply as ‘the Great Horde’). From Özbeg onwards (d. 742/1341), the khāns of the Golden Horde were all Muslims, and this meant that there was a religious gulf fixed between the ruling Golden Horde and the mass of their Orthodox Christian Russian subjects, although Latin Christian missionaries continued to work for some time in the Qïpchaq Steppe. The Horde had important commercial links with Anatolia and the Mamlūk empire in Syria and Egypt; slave replenishments were sent to the Mamlūks, while the culture of the Horde received a definite Islamic-Mediterranean impress, in contrast to the Persianised Il Khānids. However, the growth of Ottoman Turkish power and the Ottoman control of the Dardanelles after 755/1354 cut the Horde off from the Mediterranean and contact with the Mamlūks and made them purely a power within Russia.

After Toqtamïsh’s death, real power in the Golden Horde was held by the capable ‘Mayor of the Palace’ Edigü, but after the latter’s death in 822/1419 a process of disintegration, involving much internal discord, set in. Already in the later fourteenth century, the rise of Poland-Lithuania and the Princedom of Muscovy had seriously checked the authority of the khāns, and the Ottomans and their allies the Crimean Tatars were also hostile. It was, indeed, the Crimean khān, Mengli Giray, who in 907/1502 defeated the leader of the Horde and incorporated the major part of its manpower into his own forces. But before that date, other khanates had split off from the Golden Horde, under various descendants of a third son of Jochi, Toqa Temür; these included the khanates of Astrakhan (until the Russian conquest of 961/1554: see below, no. 136), of Kazan (until the Russian conquest of 959/1552: see below, no. 137); of Qāsimov (around Ryazan, untile. 1092/c. 1681: see below, no. 138); and of the Crimea (see below, no. 135).

Lane-Poole, 222–31 and table at p. 240; Zambaur, 244, 246–7 and Table S; Album, 44.

L. Hambis, Le chapitre CVII du Yuan Che, 52–7.

B. Spuler, Die Goldene Horde. DieMongolenin Russland 1223–1502, 2nd edn, Wiesbaden 1965, with genealogical tables and lists at pp. 453–4.

J. A. Boyle, The Successors of Genghis Khan, with a genealogical table at p. 344.

D. O. Morgan, The Mongols, with a genealogical table at p. 224.