4

The Tread of Tatar Hoof

The seeds for the future shape of the Mongol Empire were sown early in the western campaign. At the time, the command to hunt down the disgraced fugitive, the once mighty ʿAla al-Din Muhammad Khwarazmshah, and bring him before his nemesis Chinggis Khan from whom he could beg for an instant rather than a prolonged death, went unremarked. The command to seize the Khwarazmshah was coupled with an understanding that the hunt would double as a reconnaissance trip of northern Iran and Caucasia. In fact, the fugitive proved elusive and reluctant to face his inevitable fate, and the two generals who had been assigned the task, Jebe, the liberator of the Muslims of eastern Turkestan, and Subodai, the slayer of the Merkits, rather than waste time continuing to hunt down the rapidly sickening deserter, requested permission to abandon the dying Khwarazmshah and to concentrate their armies and energies in subduing Azerbaijan, Caucasia and Dagestan.

However, the decision to pursue the disgraced fugitive with ‘Tatar hooves’ and take the destruction that the Khwarazmshah’s treachery had unleashed beyond Turkestan and right into the heartlands of northern Iran and the oases cities of the northern Iranian plateau had unforeseen consequences and repercussions that were still reverberating nearly 200 years later. The significance of what was to prove an infamous reconnaissance trip was twofold: firstly, it cemented the Mongols’ reputation for butchery and invincibility universally rather than locally; and, secondly, it provided a pretext for future conflict and the readymade excuse on which to hang any convenient armed cause, in that the lands of northern Iran subdued by Chinggisid armies, or ‘trod by Tatar hoof’,¹ immediately became part of the future empire and as such assignable to a Chinggisid prince, a complication which would become apparent later.

This infamous reconnaissance trip of the two noyans established the Mongols’ reputation for savagery and blood-letting, not only in those regions through which the Chinggisid armies passed but in neighbouring lands and empires and even in the cold royal chambers and halls of northern Europe, where tales of Tatar atrocities instilled fear and caused pause. Though the initial destruction in Qazvin was considerable, as recorded by the city’s famous son, Zayn al-Din Mustawfi:

[t]hen to the town of Qazvin, Subodai, like a tiger came right speedily […] when it was filled with woe and sore amaze […] a heathen holocaust,²

the city became a favourite of the Chinggisid elite and produced some of the Ilkhanate’s most powerful and influential ministers and officials. However, the creation of this fearsome reputation was in part by design and while unquestionably the infamy was hard earned, many of the stories owed much to the embellishments of repetition and the storytellers’ arts.

The two noyans continued their unstoppable march north through the rugged Caucasus, cleaving asunder at Darband, the biblical barrier restraining Gog and Magog,³ and into the open plains beyond encountering and defeating Cuman Turks from the Qipchaq steppe lands and Rus armies from what is today Russia. In the Chronicle of Novgorod the impact of their coming in 1224 is poignantly expressed in the few startling words of an observer:

The same year, for our sins, an unknown tribe came, whom no one exactly knows, who they are, nor whence they came out, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is; but they call them Tartars […] God alone knows who they are and whence they came out.⁴

Their army was to meet up with the main Mongol armies in Khwarazm and leave it to others to consolidate their gains. In these two short years they had expanded the reach of the Great Khan’s writ as far as the borders of Eastern Europe and the heartlands of the Islamic world. The tales of horror, heroism, cunning and bravery associated with this epic journey have filled the pages of many chronicles in almost as many languages and are too numerous to recount here. Around 30,000 Rus troops, together with Cuman support, were no match for the disciplined and very experienced Chinggisid forces despite the numerical inequality. However, the famous Battle of Kalka 1222,⁵ fought on the river of the same name in the Crimea, deserves special mention. It was carried out with great tactical skill and classic Mongol cunning, and it left the alliance between the Qipchaq/Cuman/Polovtsian Turks and the Rus princes shattered and their armies routed. After the remnants of the defeated Kievan army surrendered to the Mongols, a heavy wooden platform was placed on top of the bodies of the tightly bound Russian generals. As the joyful Mongol leaders celebrated their hard-won victory, their helpless foes, in recognition of their royal status, slowly suffocated to a horrible death.

The victorious generals met up with the main Chinggisid forces in 1223 in the steppe lands east of the River Syr Darya and received the gratitude and admiration of Chinggis Khan. Jebe died without enjoying the full accolades which were afforded his fellow noyan, Subodai. Subodai returned to the west to consolidate the early gains; in preparation for this he had left a secret army of informants and spies who would provide the intelligence so crucial to Chinggisid success. Jebe and Subodai’s reconnaissance trip around the Caspian and into Russia is considered the longest cavalry ride in history, covering some 8,500 kilometres in three years, with possibly over 12 major battles won against superior forces. They had opened up a corridor of steppe lands that Chinggisid forces could now prepare to conquer. A new quriltai was held to assign forces to the campaign.

Ogodai Qa’an (1186–1241) put Subodai in command of the armies under his nephew, Batu, with the remit to subdue the western steppe lands of the Qipchaq khans. While Subodai could provide the experience and expertise, the young Batu would provide the credibility and status that such an undertaking deserved. Batu Khan, who had inherited the mantle of his father, Jochi (d.1227), was joined by representatives from across the Empire, including the new Chinggisid emperor’s own sons, Guyuk and Qadan. The Chaghadaids were represented by princes Bari and Baidar, and the Toluids by Mongke and Bochek.

CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST

In 1236 Russia was a land of forests, swamps, steppe land and plains inhabited on the east by Turkish tribes, nomadic and semi-nomadic. Severe climatic conditions, vast distances between urban centres and an almost total absence of serviceable roads did not make an easily defended country. In summer what tracks existed were barely usable due to giant pot-holes, and the winters were considered too harsh for anyone but the Mongols to attempt travel. Khazars, Bulgars, Pechenegs and of course Cumans, also known as Polovtsy or Qipchaq, lived in an uneasy peace with their Rus neighbours, and the tactical alliance of the Cumans and Rus had brought disaster on all. The Rus’s bloody reception of the Chinggisid elchis or ambassadors in 1222 certified their fate. The Rus were not united but were rather a collection of weak and usually squabbling feudal principalities, and the Chinggisid tactic was to hit each principality separately and quickly use the element of surprise to maximum advantage. Hence the famous quote introducing the invaders in the Chronicle of Novgorod.

Fig. 4: Sacking of Suzdal by Batu Khan in 1238. Mongol Invasion of Russia. A miniature from the sixteenth-century chronicle

Bulghar was sacked in 1237, and the Turkic Bashkirs people reduced to submission, and by 1239 the collapse of Qipchaq and Cuman resistance in the Qipchaq Steppe caused a swathe of refugees to flood into the settled lands of the Rus, Hungary and the Latin kingdom of Romania. Kiev fell in the winter of 1240 after Prince Michael of Kiev had fled to Hungary and hence to Silesia. Mongke Khan, charged with capturing Kiev, had appealed to Boyar Dmitri to voluntarily surrender and so spare such a magnificent city, but in reply the Boyar had murdered Mongke’s elchis and so sealed the city’s fate. The papal envoy, Carpini, passed through the city ‘now reduced to almost nothing […] hardly two hundred houses’⁶ some six years later and recorded the tragic and unnecessary loss and the collapse of the seat of the metropolitan bishop and prince of Russia. As more towns and principalities fell, Batu noticed that most of the deposed princes fled towards Hungary, which was already the adopted country of the Cumans, and it was there that his attention was inevitably drawn.

Unusually for a ruler of his time, King Bela IV of Hungary believed in peace, possibly because he had no aptitude for war. He had welcomed the various exiled Rus princes and he had even sent clerics eastward to make contact with the Chinggisids, including the Dominican Friar Julien who he had sent to Batu. He had established peace with his Cuman neighbours and welcomed them into his domains though he had stipulated three conditions: firstly, that they swore loyalty to his throne; secondly, that they bolster and integrate with his army; and thirdly, that they adopt Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, his people were not as accommodating as their king and there was considerable tension between the pastoralist Cumans and the agriculturalist Hungarians.

Batu sent elchis to Bela IV warning him not to harbour the Cumans, who Batu considered enemies. More seriously Batu demanded the return of his earlier envoys, numbering 30, some of whom had arrived in Hungary but others of whom had not, having been arrested en route by Rus princes. Bela should have been more mindful of their fate.

Before launching an offensive against Hungary, Batu, doubtless following Subodai’s advice, carried out a classic Mongol strategy. In order to protect the main objective, the flank should be first secured by an offensive. Poland and Germany presented possible threats and therefore Batu thought it prudent to annihilate such a risk first. Batu consolidated his gains and collected his forces while wintering in Galicia–Volynia and prepared for an assault on Poland and Latin Christendom, and the absorption of another swathe of sedentary territory.

The Crimea fell and became another princely appanage while the Crimean Cumans retreated to the mountains. However, though the forces of the steppe were indeed sweeping into the lands of the sown, the soldiers that comprised those forces were no longer solely men of the steppe. Mongols were certainly outnumbered by Turks, but now other people from semi-sedentary and sedentary communities were filling the ranks of the Chinggisid armies and populating the growing administration. In addition, an army of merchants was growing behind the lines and spreading fast into the cities, towns and villages that had escaped or were recovering from the turmoil. With the armies there travelled the princely ordus, which were themselves essentially mobile cities.

While Batu moved north, his cousins Mongke, Qadan and Guyuk turned south and entered the land of the Alans and the Caucasus. The fugitive Qipchaqs provided Batu with a convenient casus belli as he extended his campaign west, deep into Christian Europe. The two-pronged attack sent a smaller force north against the Poles and Teutonic knights into Poland heading for eastern Germany while his main force struck King Bela’s army on the River Sajo.

On 9 April 1241 the Battle of Liegnitz in the Polish province of Silesia saw the nobility and knights of northern Europe, Poles, Czechs, Germans and Papal military orders under the command of the Polish duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia, attempt unsuccessfully to halt the Mongol invasion of Europe. Traditional styles and practices of European knightly warfare proved hopelessly ineffective against the disciplined and experienced Chinggisid forces, and once again the Mongols’ famed feigned retreats proved devastatingly successful. The recorded numbers of combatants and casualties vary wildly, with the army of Henry II almost completely destroyed and estimates of casualties ranging from 2,000 to 40,000 dead, essentially the entire army.

Batu occupied Hungary and gave signs that he intended to stay and incorporate the grasslands into the greater empire, striking coins as an indication of permanence. Why he did not return to consolidate his gains after the grand quriltai to decide on Ogodai’s successor is open to conjecture. Nogai Khan, who some consider as a joint ruler of the western provinces, did establish a base in Bulgaria, but Batu remained firmly rooted in the steppe lands of Russia, the Qipchaq Khanate. It has been suggested that the Hungarian steppe lands could not have supported a major Mongol settlement because there would not have been sufficient grass for the horses and insufficient space for wandering nomads, but Stephen Haw has convincingly argued against these views championed by Denis Sinor.⁷

Batu’s prime reason for abandoning his campaign against Hungary was his need to thwart Guyuk’s election to the throne. Batu believed that he could exert maximum influence on the unfolding events from his own ulus and that his refusal to attend the quriltai might frustrate his cousin’s ambitions. Whether Batu had intended to build on his conquest of Hungary or whether he would have been content with Bela’s fall remains unknown.⁸ Bela IV fled to exile on an island in the Adriatic, but unlike his fellow toppled ruler in the east, the despised Khwarazmshah, he returned from his island haven and remained on his throne until 1270.

Europe was spared the fate of other would-be challengers of Chinggisid might by the timely death of the Great Khan, Ogodai, in 1241. Batu suspended his campaigns, lifted his siege of Vienna and turned his attention to domestic political concerns. His armies turned east and retreated through Hungary, destroying Pest on the way and subjugating Bulgaria until finally establishing a capital, Serai, on the lower stretches of the River Volga on the site of the Khazarian capital of Atil. Batu, the king-maker who had apparently foregone any possibility of claiming the Chinggisid throne for himself, knew that his support was essential for any aspirant to the leadership of the Empire. When William of Rubruck travelled through the lands under Batu Khan’s sovereignty, he was of the opinion that Batu was the joint ruler of the mighty Empire along with his cousin, the newly elected Mongke Khan, the Toluid usurper, some would say, of the House of Ogodai. The Jochid khanate seemed secure and firmly established, and indeed Batu’s ‘Golden Horde’ as it became known was the first of the successor states to achieve real and recognised autocracy and independence.

THE GOLDEN HORDE

The Golden Horde was a Mongol, and later Turkic, khanate that was established in the thirteenth century and formed the north-western sector of the Mongol Empire. The khanate is also known as the Qipchaq Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi and in many ways was the successor state to the Qipchaq Khanate. The Golden Horde, in reference possibly to the Khan’s tent of royal gold, was a name given to the state later by the Russians. At the time its usual name was the Qipchaq Khanate, in recognition that the state was based on the Qipchaq steppe and that the majority of the subjects were in fact Qipchaq Turks. The speed by which the Mongol element had been absorbed by the more numerous Qipchaq Turkish component is indicated by the coinage on which Mongolian had been replaced by Turkish by the reign of Tode-Mongke (r.1280–7). Also living with the Turkish majority in the vast lands of the Golden Horde were communities of ethnic Mongols and Iranians, found particularly in the northern Caucasus and Khwarazm; smaller settlements of Greeks, Italians, Jews and Armenians could be found in the Crimea. The borders of the state were also rather fluid, possibly because of the continuing nomadic nature of the ruling elite who had long resisted the compelling call of the cities. This fluidity was particularly noticeable along the southern borders and in the east where conflict was not uncommon.

Batu Khan had been instrumental in Mongke’s accession to the Imperial throne and had firmly supported Mongke’s aggressive assertion of his rights to rule. However, it is unknown how he would have viewed Hulegu’s establishment of the Ilkhanate and the subsequent Toluid claims on the rich grazing lands of Azerbaijan and the fertile, coveted pastures of the southern Caucasian slopes, which certainly the Qipchaq Turks, now Jochid subjects, had grazed for centuries past. Batu Khan died peacefully in his sleep in 1255. He would not have witnessed what is sometimes regarded as a Toluid coup d’état following the collapse of the ʿAbbasid regime when Mongke called on his younger brother Hulegu to quietly and surreptitiously assume sovereignty over Iran from the Oxus to the Nile.⁹

Even though Batu had built himself a capital, Serai, and his brother, Berke, too had established another capital, New Serai, neither prince had abandoned their nomadic ways and they continued to reside in their tents and camps. Alexander Nevsky, the prince of Novgorod, supported Chinggisid rule and cooperated in the implementation of census between 1252 and 1259 and the subsequent demands for taxes, not out of any love for the Mongols but because he was a realist and recognised their unassailable military superiority. For him the Germans, the Swedes and the Lithuanians were a threat to his power, and he concentrated on manipulating the situation to his own advantage. For the most part, the khans remained in the south and the Rus continued to dwell undisturbed in the north. They continued to pay tribute, and the leaders of the different principalities had to travel south to seek legitimisation for any official appointment. It is said that they always made their wills before travelling south to seek an audience with the khans. They administered their own affairs, but a resident basqaq (daraghuchis or shaḥna) supervised the administration in order to ensure that the correct taxation was promptly paid.

Initially supervision of Rus affairs was close and strict and Batu interfered frequently in the Rus administration, especially militarily, though the integration was not comparable to that in the Ilkhanate. Eventually this control slackened until even the collection of taxes was delegated and the Prince of Moscow, the Grand Prince of Russia, took control of such essential services. It was this gradual relaxation of control and devolution of authority which led to the ultimate collapse of the Qipchaq Khanate.

THE JOCHID ESTRANGEMENT

The tamma make-up of the vast army under Hulegu’s command meant that the Jochids were well represented in the army’s ranks. It also meant that Jochid soldiers and officers participated fully in all military operations, including the ‘liberation’ of Baghdad.

An incident involving three Jochid princes was allowed to develop into a full casus belli. One of the Jochid princes, Balagha, who had joined Hulegu’s tamma army, was accused of witchcraft and sorcery against the Ilkhan, and after receiving permission from Berke, Hulegu had him executed. However, when two other Jochid princes, Tutar and Quli, died suspiciously, rumours began circulating¹⁰ that there were other reasons behind these seemingly selective deaths, and according to some Muslim sources, Hulegu was loathe to share his war booty with Berke in accordance with Genghis Khan’s Great Yasa. The incident is reported fully not only by the partisan Rashid al-Din but also by the Armenian cleric Grigor of Akanc’, who throws some interesting light on this intriguing affair.

For Rashid al-Din, Hulegu had finally exhausted his patience with his overbearing elder cousin forever ‘barking orders on every front’ and the accusations of murder meant Berke knew ‘nothing of shame or modesty’ and Hulegu would ‘no longer treat him with forbearance’.¹¹ Grigor lays the blame for the murder of the Jochids firmly with Hulegu and claims that when Hulegu revealed publicly the Qa’an Mongke’s appointment of himself as Ilkhan with dominion over Iran, Azerbaijan and the southern Caucasus, the Jochid princes refused to bow down and acknowledge Hulegu’s appointment. For their refusal to honour Hulegu and the command of the Qa’an, they paid with their lives.¹² The Jochid troops that made their way eastward were under the command of Negudar, and they joined forces with a renegade group in eastern Afghanistan known as the Qaraʿunas. Thereafter, secure in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, this independent armed element was known both as the Qaraʿunas and Negudaris, a thorn in the side of all their neighbours.¹³

By 1260, following the death of Mongke Qa’an, the Empire was on the brink of civil war, and Berke Khan (d.1266), Batu’s brother and successor, was in open rebellion against his Toluid cousins in the south. In an unprecedented move, Berke had allied himself against a fellow Chinggisid with a non-Chinggisid outsider. Berke, with the apparent zealotry of the newly converted, claimed his alliance with the Mamluks was based on their common bond in Islam. Not only were the Mamluks of Egypt not Chinggisids but they were led by commoners and men who were devoid of any recognised lineage. The Mamluks were the sons of slaves and hardly worthy of an alliance with royalty. The alliance can be dated to the early 1260s when a Mamluk embassy met Berke’s representatives in Constantinople. Berke’s envoy reached Cairo in May 1263, where Jochid troops had already found sanctuary after fleeing Iran in 1262.

However, the division between the two Chinggisid neighbours was deep and continued to deepen. Whereas the Toluid regimes, the Yuan of China and the Ilkhanate of Iran, had created an accommodation with their settled subjects, the gulf between the nomadic rulers and their Rus subjects yawned ever wider. The alliance with the Mamluks was one of convenience and their shared religion, Islam, served a purpose rather than initiated the attraction.

The animosity between Hulegu and Berke was intense and personal. Berke’s ruthlessness and determination to succeed his brother, a move unsupported by any other member of the family, resulted in the murder of Batu’s son, Sartaq. And then, when the young prince, Sartaq’s ten-year-old son Ulaghchi, was duly crowned under the regency of Borakchin Khatun, he too was slaughtered, finally leaving Berke’s claim unopposed. Juzjani is explicit in his claims of bad feelings between Sartaq and Berke, and he credits Berke with praying for days for death to overtake his rival though he credits Mongke with ordering the administration of poison to hasten Sartaq’s departure to hell. Juzjani makes it clear that Berke benefits greatly from Sartaq’s death and inherits the lands and possessions of all ‘fifteen sons and grandsons of the generation of Tushi Khan, all of whom departed to Hell’.¹⁴ In contrast to the bad press that Berke often receives from the Persians, the Polo family found him delightful and very generous when they presented themselves at his court and they spoke of his wide reputation for courtesy and liberality.¹⁵

The conviction of Berke’s conversion to Islam is not as contentious as that of Ghazan Khan, but it is doubtful that all his subsequent actions and decisions were ideologically driven rather than politically motivated. For example, his opposition to the assault on Baghdad does not seem to have arisen until after the fall of the city, and he does not seem to have attempted to prevent his men from taking part in the siege. His conversion was not followed by any widespread conversion to Islam among his troops, and on his death the Jochid court did not continue with his zealotry. He is said to have adopted Islam in Bokhara in 1257 after seeing the Sufi shaykh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi (d.1261), a disciple of renowned shaykh Najm al-Din Kubra in a vision but he had initially kept his conversion secret.

The excuses for the escalation in violence were not difficult to uncover and, with the zeal of the recent convert firing his every move, Berke provided generations of Muslims with a very useful scapegoat, his cousin Hulegu, the Butcher of Baghdad, for the ills of the Islamic world and a figure to represent their oppression and humiliation. Berke even launched a new and savage attack on Poland despite Hulegu’s amicable advances to the Vatican. In 1259 Boroldai Noyan devastated Kracow and Sandomir before withdrawing along with large numbers of captives for the slave market. The same forces or those allied with them also attacked Lithuania and Prussia in 1259–60 inflicting heavy losses on the Teutonic knights stationed there, and in the wake of these offenses Berke sent an embassy to Paris to demand the submission of Louis IX. Berke’s envoys coincided with the dispatch of Hulegu’s own embassy seeking a joint campaign with the French king against the Mamluks. Louis IX forwarded on Berke’s threats to the Pope, which must have confused him somewhat, especially if word reached him from Bela IV of Hungary complaining of the pressure he was under from the Mongols to enter a marriage alliance with Berke and to join a military campaign against his Latin neighbours. In light of Berke’s assaults on northern Europe, these threats must have appeared very real even though with the beginning of hostilities with the Ilkhanate in the Caucasus Berke was rendered impotent.

The war between the Jochids and the Ilkhans quickly escalated and soon involved the Mamluk regime of Egypt who had seized power from the Ayyubids. The Mamluk sultan Baybars (1223–77) had accepted asylum-seeking Jochid troops who had fled from Hulegu’s court following the killing of the Jochid princes. In fact many of his troops were ethnic Mongols, known as the Wafidiya, and they soon proved a match for the warriors of the nation of archers. In 1260, while Hulegu led the bulk of his forces east to attend the quriltai marking the death of Mongke, Baybars confronted a rump army led by Hulegu’s top general, Noyan Ket Buqa, and defeated the Chinggisid troops at the Battle of Ayn Jalut. Though militarily the battle was of little significance, politically it was of the uttermost importance and it assumed great symbolic significance as the first major military defeat suffered by the Chinggisids anywhere in the world. It proved that the forces and armies of Chinggis Khan were not invincible and that the irresistible global tide of Chinggisid triumph was reversible and stoppable. In fact an army led by Uriyangqadai, the son of legendary general Subodai, had been defeated a few years previously in Dai Viet, though on a return trip in 1259 the king of Dai Viet was subdued and became a reluctant ally and Uriyangqadai Noyan successfully pushed on into Song China to meet up with Qubilai Khan.¹⁶

Berke established contacts with Baybars as a united Islamic front against the infidel armies of Hulegu, and the propaganda wars hence commenced. On the ground Rum became a battleground and while at once rejecting Chinggisid traditions as the laws of infidels, Berke made claims on the Caucasus and Rum citing Chinggis Khan’s own proclamations. In particular the Jochids recalled that Chinggis Khan had awarded all the lands in the west that ‘Tatar hoof had trod’ to the House of Jochi.¹⁷ This claim in particular was periodically raised to challenge Ilkhanid legitimacy, not surprisingly since there is considerable evidence that Batu was the de facto authority in the region before Hulegu’s appearance and that according to Iranian merchants who were the Mamluk encyclopedist, al-ʿUmari’s (d.1349) source, the Great Khan had awarded his eldest son, Jochi, authority over the Pontic steppe, Arran, Tabriz, Hamadan and Maragha. However, being a Mamluk and hardly sympathetic to the Persian Ilkhans, al-ʿUmari would say that, wouldn’t he?

The military tide retreated with Berke and he suffered defeat at the hands of Hulegu’s son and successor, Abaqa, but his own death saved him from further humiliation and in addition allowed for a truce to be declared between the two rival khanates. Since there was no real cessation of hostilities after Berke’s death, suggesting that it was more than a religious dispute triggered by Hulegu’s murder of the Caliph, the real source of enmity was twofold. There were the rival claims over land, most importantly the rich pasturelands of the southern Caucasus, but also the wider ideological conflict with the Toluids, who were often viewed as having abandoned the rulings of the yasa and the heritage of the steppe in favour of the alien culture of the urbanites of Persia and China. The foreign policy of the Golden Horde considered the north and the lands of the Rus and Europe as peripheral to their needs. Their focus was almost exclusively on the south and the caravan routes through the rich pastures of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan. They sought the return and domination of this region as central to their future and their economic prosperity. Hostilities centred on the Caucasus, even though both Turkestan and the lands of Bithynia and Thrace were also flashpoints in the conflict between the Jochids and the Ilkhanate.

Fig. 5: Marco Polo caravan

Mongke-Temur (r.1266–80)

Mongke-Temur, the grandson of Batu and son of Toqoqwan and his Oirat wife Buka Ujin, was a figure of paradoxes. Though initially nominated by Qubilai Khan, he lent his support to Qaidu (1236–1301) in the rebel Ogodaid’s struggle in Turkestan, and though he never embraced his predecessor’s Islamic beliefs remaining a Shamanist throughout his life, he continued the alliance with the Mamluk regime in Egypt and did not abandon hostilities against the Ilkhanate or his claims on the southern Caucasus and Azerbaijan. However, he concentrated his military concerns in the west throughout his reign, attacking the Byzantines 1269–71, Lithuania in 1275 and the Alans in the Caucasus in 1271, and cultivated the common interests he shared with his Rus subjects and European traders. The Rus princes were happy to fight alongside the armies of Mongke-Temur, and they did not resent the taxes levied on them since trade was encouraged and they enjoyed increasing wealth. An early yarliq exists awarding the Russian Orthodox Church exemption from taxes. Even though German mercenaries were being killed on the front, German merchants enjoyed free travel throughout Mongke-Temur’s domains. An edict issued in 1270 by Prince Yaroslav with Mongke-Temur’s encouragement assured protection and freedom of passage for German merchants.¹⁸

With other Italian traders happily paying him taxes, Mongke-Temur allowed the Genoese to establish trading bases in Caffa, where they built bazaars and shops and protected their settlement with a rampard and ditch. While the Venetians were limited to the small settlement of Tana, the Genoese soon secured a monopoly in trading corn, caviar, stock and fish. Architectural remains and inscriptions remain as testaments to their influence.

THE TALAS QURILTAI

In 1269 the Talas quriltai saw an agreement sealed between the Chaghadaid khan, Baraq, the Ogodaid rebel Qaidu and the Qipchaq Khanate’s Mongke-Temur. This awarded two-thirds of the revenue of Transoxiana to Baraq and one third each to the other parties, while the territories themselves remained undivided under the administration of Masʿud Beg, son of the veteran administrator Mahmud Yalavach. It was a step in Qaidu’s strategy to seize power, but it signalled the Golden Horde’s continuing sympathy towards Qaidu. Berke (r.1257–66) of the Golden Horde, had originally formed an alliance with Qaidu, providing him with military aid against their common enemy, the Chaghadaid khan, Alghu (r.1260–5/6).

Tode-Mongke (r.1280–7)

Mongke-Temur died from a throat tumour in 1280 and was succeeded by his brother Tode-Mongke, not long before the arrival of an embassy from Cairo laden with sumptuous gifts as a reflection of the regard in which they held the Mongol kings of the Golden Horde. Sultan Kalavun sent 16 sets of costly robes for both Mongke-Temur and his army commander, Nogai Khan, though others at court were not forgotten including the exiled sultan of Rum, Ghiyath al-Din. In addition, the envoys came weighed down with magnificent and costly presents, precious jewels, bows, swords, cuirasses, helmets, embroidered quilts, Persian nasij and brocade for distribution among the courtiers which instead went to Tode-Mongke’s retainers. The Mamluk embassy enjoyed a lavish welcome from the new king, cementing further the ties between the two states.

In return Tode-Mongke, in 1283, sent envoys to Cairo with the request that they be permitted to perform the Haj, acting vicariously for their devout king. He also requested that his two envoys be furnished with the standard of the caliph so that in battle he might lead his troops with this powerful regalia to inspire his men and dishearten his enemies. He also pursued peace rather than war, and he is credited with establishing rapprochement with Qubilai, who in 1283 he recognised as supreme leader. Tode-Mongke’s obsession with religious practices caused him to neglect his political and military duties and he was prevailed upon to abdicate his throne, which he did in 1287 in favour of his nephew, Tole Buqa, whose short reign of barely three years is overlooked altogether by some genealogists. Tode-Mongke oversaw more Turkicisation of the Golden Horde with Turkic replacing Mongolian on coins.

Tole Buqa (r.1287–91)

Tole Buqa had been close to Nogai Khan, and the two had campaigned together successfully against Lithuania and Poland. This resurgence of military adventures in the 1280s could well have been taking advantage of the short-lived peace among the khanates. It is said that in a campaign in Galicia the two generals had employed germ warfare by cultivating the plague taken from putrid dead bodies and infecting the water supply.¹⁹ However, on a later campaign in the Caucasus, the two fell out, Tole Buqa blaming the one-eyed Nogai for a calamitous defeat that he had suffered and as a result he determined to murder his former friend. Nogai, however, was clever and very cunning and he pre-empted his former ally whom he ambushed and respectfully strangled with a bowstring. In his place, Nogai supported the installation of the young Toqta Khan, the son of Mongke-Temur, who he believed he could comfortably manipulate for his own means.

Nogai Khan (d.1299)

Around the year 1295 Jochid forces were massing on the northern side of the Caucasus, and both Nogai and Toqta Khan were present ready to confront Ghazan Khan. However, Nogai, who had converted to Islam according to a letter sent by Berke Khan to the Mamluks back in 1263, was regarded as ambitious and a threat by Toqta Khan. Nogai had indeed supported Toqta Khan’s bid for power but only because he viewed the young ruler as easily controllable and he saw himself as the puppet master of this northern empire. Toqta had other lines of support, most intriguingly with the Toluids through his wife, Bethlemish, granddaughter of Tolui. His father-in-law, Saljiday, was one of the Onggirat whose claim to fame was their role as royal consorts.²⁰ Women held power in the Chinggisid courts even though that power was often wielded behind the throne. They forced the rulers of the Golden Horde to make peace with Qubilai in the 1280s, and in 1304 Bethlemish convinced Toqta Khan to accept the supremacy of the Great Khan.

Great things had been predicted for Nogai, a great-nephew of Berke. He was ambitious and talented and he had already created a secure powerbase in Bulgaria and the south-western marches from which to operate. He had built alliances and established a support network and was virtually autonomous in some of his dealings in eastern Europe and with the Byzantines. With so much riding on Nogai, or the ‘Fat Tsar’ as he was known in the Russian chronicles, his motives were constantly questioned, and overreaching himself he was beheaded during the confusion of conflict and the mists of war. His head was presented to the able Toqta Khan, who had had no intention of becoming Nogai’s puppet.

What happened next is controversial, but there is evidence to suggest that the remnants of Nogai’s ordu fled the scene of their devastation and set sail across the Black Sea, eventually landing and settling in north-western Anatolia. The sixteenth-century Safavid historian Khwandamir has a report of 10,000 tents crossing the Black Sea from the Crimea at this period, and it is in this confused decade around the opening of the fourteenth century that there appear a number of small emirates such as the emirate of Karasi in the Troad, a non-Muslim state of Mongol origin. They were certainly not ghazi and were of questionable Muslim background. The Ottoman state was one of these, and there are indications that it was the re-formulated Nogai Khanate, which Byzantine sources suggest was initially not a militant ghazi state and probably never was one. In fact the identification of the early Ottomans as a ghazi state occurred far later, and there is evidence that this was a re-working of history with little basis in reality. The early Ottoman state might not even have been Muslim, with their conversion occurring later. Colin Heywood explored the nature of the emerging Ottoman state, though he had to abandon his research when the elusive smoking gun staunchly refused to materialise.²¹

Toqta Khan (r.1291–1312)

Fired up with his successful destruction of Nogai and the threat to his authority, Toqta Khan reversed the peaceful overtures he had made to the Ilkhans in 1294 with an embassy sent to Ilkhan Gaykhatu, which later represented him at the founding of a town, Qutlugh Baliq, on the River Kur. In 1302 Toqta dispatched an envoy to Ghazan Khan to demand the surrender of Arran and Azerbaijan. The embassy had required 325 post horses at each yam station for the 370 envoys, earning Ghazan’s contemptuous dismissal – if they were an invasion force then they were too few in number and if an embassy such a suite was pure extravagance. The envoys presented Ghazan with an official gift of a bag of millet, perhaps to represent the countless number of troops at his command, but unimpressed the Ilkhan set his hen on the millet and it was consumed in no time. However, fearing Ghazan’s reaction to this envoy, Toqta’s son, Tempta, had sent along the courtier and diplomat Issa Gurkhan with a collection of unofficial offerings including Kirghiz gyrfalcons. Issa had been able to secure invitations for the Jochid envoys to a grand celebration to which many notables and guests were present and where they were offered costly robes and pearls and a message for Toqta.²² Rashid al-Din mentions but does not dwell on this embassy.²³ Mustawfi records some peace accords which he claims Ghazan hosted, but he fails to mention the presence of Toqta’s embassy. An envoy from the king of the Franks, and messengers from the king of Hindustan and Sultan ʿAla al-Din of Sind, are mentioned and it is known that a letter from Edward I arrived at about this time. Mustawfi dwells on the sumptuous gifts received from the Qa’an, Temur of Yuan China (r.1294–1307) and an unnamed prince of Khitai but ignores the presence of the Jochids. This event recorded by Mustawfi as occurring shortly before Ghazan’s death might in fact be referring to the Ilkhan Uljaytu’s celebrated reception in which he hosted the Chaghadaid khan, Du’a, and Qaidu’s Ogodaid successor, Chapar, as well as envoys from Temur Qa’an.²⁴ In fact three months after Uljaytu’s celebrated reception for the envoys from the Ogodaids and Chaghadaids, along with the gift-laden embassy from Temur Qa’an, Uljaytu entertained a party from the Qipchaq Khanate, pacifying the volatile border region of the Caucasus.

With Ghazan inadvertently pacified, Toqta also cemented his ties with the Byzantines through marriage alliances with a contingent of troops as the price for the hand of Andronikos II Palaiologos’s (1282–1328) daughter, Maria. Such marriages of convenience were frequent during this time. Religion hardly seemed to play a part in the negotiations since Toqta at one time professed sympathies with Islam though he returned to the Shaman fold before his end in 1313. Toqta was probably exercising the common Chinggisid practice of encouraging all faiths to believe that they were held in special favour, which as William of Rubruck observed they often were.

Toqta Khan oversaw the beginnings of a comparative golden age for the Golden Horde. With Nogai no longer a factor, Toqta could concentrate more on nation building, the strengthening of central government and appeasing his Russian subjects. Urban culture and trade received his attention and encouragement. Genoese and Venetian merchants had been active from their bases in the Crimea for half a century. In c.1266 the Genoese had constructed a consulate and some warehouses, no doubt taking advantage of the decisions taken at the Treaty of Nymphaeus (1261), which had given the Genoese commercial monopoly east of the Bosphorus. Regardless of the treaty, it was the Chinggisids who had allowed the Genoese to operate within their territory, and they granted commercial rights to those who advanced and benefitted their policies and needs. To achieve their aims, they encouraged competition among foreigners so that they could compare the effectiveness and efficiency, the prices and variety, and the practices and methods of all the various foreign traders that ventured through their domains.

The tax of 3 per cent of the value of the merchandise on all goods passing through the khan’s domains, even when later raised to 5 per cent, was hardly crippling, but it added comfortably to the treasury while in no way discouraging trade. A land tax was paid by the resident merchants, but this contributed to the social costs of providing security and amenities and a bureaucracy to oversee the Crimean community. A tribute was then paid by the governor of the providence to the Khan of the Golden Horde to ensure that he received his share of the cake. When taxes were imposed arbitrarily, a system for complaints existed to challenge such abuses.²⁵ Of course additional expenses were incurred by those who actually undertook the long and arduous journey across the vast Chinggisid territories as the manual of very practical advice for merchants drawn up by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, the Merchant’s Handbook, clearly illustrates. As well as bribes, local taxes, ‘gifts’ and official fees, there was the cost of hiring guides, bodyguards, soldiers, caravan overseers, interpreters and translators, which all added to the local economy and made trade a very lucrative business for the many diverse people involved.

Ozbeg Khan (r.1312–41)

Toqta’s nephew, Ozbeg, concerned himself primarily with internal affairs, though he interfered with the declining situation in Iran. The Russian principalities had regained much of their former power, though the Golden Horde remained the dominant power. They paid tribute under protest. Ozbeg responded with careful manipulation of these principalities making Yurii Danilovich of Moscow Grand Prince of Russia, sealed by a marriage alliance. He used military force against other would-be rebels, including the former Grand Prince, Michael Jaroslavitch of Tver, and by playing the princes off against each other he prevented them forming a united anti-Mongol front. When threatened, Ozbeg was ruthless in his response. Unintentionally Ozbeg created a power vacuum, which he filled by creating a powerful seat in Moscow secured by Ivan Danilovich after the death of his brother Yurii. Through clever political intrigue and the manipulation of both the Russian princes and Ozbeg’s representatives, Ivan acquired wealth and influence and the ear of Ozbeg himself. He died in 1340 and his vast wealth ensured that his title should go to one of his sons despite the competition from other princely families. His son, Simeon, ensured that his largess and humility towards the Jochid rulers brought him the title of Grand Prince and his ‘rigorous’ demeanour towards his fellow Russian princes the title ‘Proud’.

Ozbeg’s rule also saw the rise of Lithuania and Poland as powerful states; and in Anatolia and Thrace, the appearance of the Ottoman state, which quickly grew to dominate the region, threatened to eclipse the Golden Horde’s client Byzantine state and the links to the Mamluks of Egypt. However, the Golden Horde remained strong enough under Ozbeg to continue to collect its dues from its Russian principalities and eastern European client states despite now being almost completely Muslim and wholly Turkish in culture.

Ozbeg Khan continued his uncle Toqta’s policies, and trading thrived including the slave trade despite Toqta’s disapproval of some aspects of the trade which consumed the highly prized young men of the region to feed the markets of Cairo. The capital Serai on the lower River Volga was also once again home to Italian fur and slave merchants, who had been expelled by Toqta for the kidnapping of Mongol children for sale in the slave markets, their homes in Caffa having been attacked and burnt c.1307–8. By 1316 this Genoese colony was once again thriving, and then in 1332 Ozbeg permitted the construction of a city and the founding of a Venetian colony at Tana on the mouth of the River Don.

To win the crown Ozbeg had had to fight religious opposition from the traditionalists, and after he uncovered a plot to poison him, he massacred all the conspirators. In an unprecedented and controversial act to show his religious devotion, Ozbeg gave the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, al-Nasir, a Chinggisid princess in marriage and so sealed the ties between the Golden Horde and the Mamluk regime.²⁶ However, Ozbeg’s strong commitment to his faith did not translate into zealotry and he proved a shrewd political operator ensuring that the Russian Orthodox Church, Catholics and other minorities felt free from oppression while Mongke-Temur’s 1267 yarliq granting tax exemption for the Russian Orthodox Church and Serai’s bishop’s seat were confirmed. The Franciscan papal legate Giovanni of Marignolli was provided a magnificent mount for him to continue his journey to the Great Khan in Khanbaliq.

Ozbeg’s religious zeal did not soften his attitude to the Ilkhanate while he maintained a business-like relationship with the Great Khans of China, reminding them in an embassy sent in 1366 that he had not received monies for his interests and appanages in China. The money was needed, his envoys explained, to continue the financing of the yam stations, which they insisted were currently funded by Ozbeg Khan himself.

Ozbeg Khan coveted Iran in his heart and made known his desires, setting out with a vast army for that region’²⁷ Ozbeg revived Jochid claims on Arran and Azerbaijan, but confronted by the army of Chopan and Abu Saʿid, he was forced to retreat north and out of the region.²⁸ In 1335 after the death of Abu Saʿid and during the contentious reign of Arpa Ke’un, encouraged by correspondence with the poisoned Ilkhan’s jealous wife, Baghdad Khatun, Ozbeg Khan once again ‘shook the bell of greed’ and set out with his army for Iran. South of Darband he faced off against the Iranians under Arpa Ke’un’s command in a prolonged stalemate. The confrontation was finally ended when Ozbeg approached the bank of the River Kur and struck the water with his sword, declaring, ‘You are heroes.’ He then turned and left, leading his army back to the Qipchaq steppe.²⁹ Mustawfi claims that Ozbeg’s campaign was part of a three-pronged attack by Iran’s enemies working together, but there is no evidence that the attacks were coordinated and none were successful.

After the murder of Rashid al-Din, the days became full of terror, and a countless army assembled from all places. In the land of Khorasan, the activities of the Chaghadaid prince Yasaʿur caused the world to be terrified. From the plain of Hazar, Ozbeg turned his face towards the country. He had drawn up an army, which was not to be numbered, for the attack on Iran. From Egypt and Syria, at the same time, came a chosen army with the same intention, heading for Diyarbakr, at which the world became full of comment.³⁰

Mustawfi claims that Ozbeg received an invitation from ‘the Qipchaq leader and generals and great ones’ who promised that he would ‘have good fortune if you come to Iran and bring war to them’. However, when Chopan and the young Iranian shah brought their combined weight to bear on this threat, Ozbeg did not wait until he was beaten in battle but withdrew as soon as he had read the signs.

Much of what is known about Ozbeg comes through the chronicles of Ibn Battuta, who records the hospitality extended towards him when he visited Ozbeg’s court in the 1330s and witnessed ‘a vast city on the move with its inhabitants, with mosques and bazaars in it, the smoke of the kitchens rising in the air’.³¹ Ibn Battuta was a careful observer of detail and his travels provide a wealth of observations of the minutiae of court life and ceremony, and Ozbeg appears to have been particularly enamoured with the involved court etiquette and ceremony. Ibn Battuta provides details of the drinking ceremony, seating arrangements, the designs of the tents, inside and out, the health of some of the courtiers and even the nature of the chief wife’s vagina. He has a keen eye for everything and a lively and infectious curiosity. Though he complains that despite abundant food and ‘skins of qumiss’, ‘these Turks do not know the practice of giving hospitable lodging to the visitor or of supplying him with money’,³² Ibn Battuta also comments on the contrast between the well-maintained post roads in Mongol territory and the poorly kept roads under Greek authority. He considered the capital ‘one of the finest of cities, of boundless size […] choked with the throng of its inhabitants, and possessing good bazaars and broad streets’.³³

The prosperity Ibn Battuta had witnessed and the generosity that he was able to enjoy were due to Ozbeg’s encouragement of trade, not only with his neighbours to the east but in the west as well. Caffa and the Italian merchants of the Crimea had opened up trade across the Black Sea and the Grand Prince Ivan made Moscow the gateway to Europe. The first of the great Russian fairs became an annual occurence, with traders flocking to an event for which 70 inns were constructed and which netted in all 7,200 pounds of silver in taxes and fees for Ivan’s coffers.

Strangely, the Russian proverb ‘Near to the king, near to death’ is said to have emerged during Ozbeg’s reign; with Ivan being the only Russian prince making visits to the Khan’s court fearlessly, in Europe Ozbeg had a far more approachable reputation. Pope Benedict XXII harboured great confidence in his eventual conversion to the true faith, and Ozbeg was happy to allow missionaries to operate in those regions bordering the Black Sea. The Ossetes were converted by the monk Jonas Valent. The Pope enjoyed a healthy correspondence with Ozbeg, his son and Christian wife, Bayalun, indicative of the Khan’s very pragmatic approach to politics, an approach which allowed his reign to be the most prosperous period in Qipchaq Khanate history.

Janibeg (r.1342–57)

Janibeg, Ozbeg’s son and successor, built his throne on blood and his reign on noise and clamour. He murdered his brothers, Tini Beg, the new khan, and Khidr Beg, his other rival, and then insisted that his coronation be attended by all his subjects.³⁴ Despite encouraging overtures to his subjects such as accepting a down payment of 600 roubles from the Russian clergy in lieu of tax, Janibeg launched punitive raids over his borders into Poland and overreacted to a relatively minor incident in the Crimea.

The Genoese in the Crimea had begun flexing their economic muscles, so when in 1343 an incident involving their fellow Italians escalated into a military clampdown in the Crimea by Janibeg’s forces, the Venetians joined forces with the Genoese to resist the Jochid army. All Italian presence in Tana, on the Sea of Azov, was ordered curtailed and military escalation ensued. Janibeg might have deliberately overreacted to seek an excuse to limit the growing autonomy of the Italian merchants in the Crimea and to curb what was perceived as their aggressive and overbearing behaviour. In 1344 the Genoese launched a full-scale assault on the Jochid forces besieging Tana, which resulted in the slaughter of 15,000 Jochid troops and the complete destruction of their siege missiles and catapults. In retaliation Janibeg ordered that the bodies of his dead troops, reportedly infected with bubonic plague, be thrown at the attackers and into the city of Tana thereby hastening the Black Death on its relentless march towards Europe. ‘They [Tatars] ordered corpses to be placed in their mangonels and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.’³⁵ Within months, hostilities were forgotten in the interests of trade and commerce, and the situation returned to pre-conflict conditions with a deal being struck for a tax increase from a very reasonable 3 per cent to a still reasonable 5 per cent.³⁶

Khwandamir judges Janibeg ‘a just, compassionate and religiously observant padishah’ who opened his capital, Serai, to religious and scholarly exiles³⁷ creating a centre of learning where he acted as patron to scholars such as Maulana Saʿd al-Din Taftazani,³⁸ who dedicated their works to his memory. Janibeg tried to depict his aggression in the west and Crimea and his invasions of both Iran and Central Asia as an attempt to unify the Chinggisid Khanates: ‘I am coming to take possession of the Ulus of Hulegu […] Today three ulus are under my command.’³⁹ In the case of Iran, his overthrow of the local tyrant, Malik Ashraf, grandson of the great Amir Chopan [d.1327], then ruling Azerbaijan, Arran and Persian Iraq, was considered by many as liberation of the country from oppression. Certainly Malik Ashraf was ‘a ruler known for kindling the fire of tyranny and injustice and stirring up the dust of sedition and corruption’.⁴⁰ Many had fled north to escape Malik Ashraf’s cruel oppression as well as into neighbouring provinces. Among the refugees was a renowned and eloquent ʿAlim, the Qadi Muhi al-Din Bardaʿi, who Janibeg had heard speak at Friday prayers in Serai where he had solemnly declaimed, ‘Since the servants of this thresh-hold have the ability to repel this tyrant, if they are negligent in this respect, they will be taken to task at doomsday.’ His words brought those present, including the king, to tears and a royal pledge to repulse this evil.⁴¹

In 1357 Janibeg led his armies south across the Caucasus into Azerbaijan and occupied Tabriz. It was in this capital that he presided over Malik Ashraf’s execution and had his head exposed on the Maraghian Mosque despite the deposed tyrant’s pleas that it was his disobedient underlings who were responsible for the mayhem which had swept the land during his tenure.⁴² ‘[My] officers carried out the destruction. They didn’t listen to my words.’⁴³ Malik Ashraf’s hidden jewels were found, the people of the province rejoiced and strict orders were given that no looting would be tolerated and that the tyrant’s wealth would be used to finance the campaign. His soldiers were under orders ‘to camp along the roads and in the river beds and were not to approach the door of the house of any Muslim’.⁴⁴

See how the donkey Ashraf does his fate unfold,

Securing death for self, for Jani his gold.⁴⁵

ENDGAME

After only 40 days, Janibeg ‘returned to the Dasht-i-Qifchaq, and the children and the mother of Malik Ashraf, the treasury set with jewels, and cattle, all that there was, he took with him’.⁴⁶ He left his son, Birdibeg Khan, as his representative in Tabriz with 15,000 horsemen, but within a very short time of leaving he died and his son hastened back to settle affairs in Serai. Meanwhile Malik Ashraf’s supporters quickly snatched power back in Tabriz under the rule of Akhi Juq.⁴⁷ Mustawfi claims that on the orders of Birdibeg’s vizier, Sarai Temur, Akhi Juq had descended on Marand in Azerbaijan on hearing reports that Malik Ashraf’s fortune had been unearthed. The tyrant had sown jewels into his undergarments and these were now in the hands of Akhi Juq, who proceeded to embezzle this considerable find, some of which he divided among his own followers. Birdibeg remained in the region only briefly. Word had arrived of his father’s serious illness and he had been urged ‘do not delay and set out as soon as possible’. He was followed shortly by his vizier Sarai Temur, leaving the unscrupulous Akhi Juq without restraint.⁴⁸ For the people of Tabriz their taste of freedom and inclusion in the Ulus of Jochi had been very short-lived.

According to Henry H. Howorth and reported also in Bakikhanov’s history of Shirwan and the Nikonian Chronicle, Birdibeg himself murdered his father Janibeg after he had named him as his successor upon falling ill on the return journey from Tabriz. The general Tughluqbeg had advised Birdibeg to act quickly lest his father recover and reverse his decision.⁴⁹ His death marked the close of the most flourishing and prosperous epoch in the Golden Horde’s history. Even the Russian annalists name him ‘Good Janibeg’, with the Nikonian Chronicle noting that Janibeg was ‘very kind towards Christians and he gave many privileges to the Russian land’.⁵⁰ He struck coins in the years from 1341 to 1357 and had them minted in Serai, Gulistan, New Serai, New Gulistan, the New Ordu, Khwarazm, Mokhshi, Barchin, and Tabriz. These coins were struck in Persian and Mongol script.

A decline set in almost immediately, with the Russian annalists claiming that Birdibeg had 12 of his brothers and potential claimants to the throne murdered and then proceeded to threaten the Russian princes. The Russian chronicles blame Good Janibeg’s murder on fate, retribution for the murder of his own brothers, and therefore see Birdibeg’s death at the hands of ‘his accursed favourite, Tovlubeg [Tughluqbeg], a dark and powerful prince’. The verdict from the Russians is unequivocal: ‘He drank from the same cup which he had given his father and his brothers.’ And Khan Kulpa, his successor, likewise, had a short reign of six months during which he achieved ‘much evil’.⁵¹

The Golden Horde went into steady decline during the later fourteenth century, while Moscow and Lithuania experienced a revival. Toqtamish (r.1376–95) oversaw a brief rise in the khanate’s fortunes, but any revival was extinguished by the arrival of Timur Khan / Timurlane (d.1405) from the east. His greatest success was uniting with the White Horde in the east, but ultimately this proved ephemeral. Officially the Golden Horde continued until its final demise in 1502, when it suffered destruction by Mengli Girai of the Crimea, though before this it had been split into two in 1438: the Khanate of Kazan and the Great Horde. Further division in 1441 saw the emergence of the khanates of the Crimea and Astrakhan, both of which fell to Ivan the Terrible in 1552 and 1554. The Crimea survived until it was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783 and the Tatars of the Crimea survived as a community until deportation by Stalin around 1944. In fact, these same Tatars of the Crimea have since returned and revived their original community, and so can perhaps be considered the last outpost of the Golden Horde or even of the Chinggis Empire.

HOUSE OF JOCHI

The Khans of the Golden Horde, 1237–1357

BATU, 1237–56

SARTAQ, 1256–7

ULAGHCHI, 1257

BERKE, 1257–66

MONGKE-TEMUR, 1267–80

TODE-MONGKE, 1280–7

TOLE BUQA, 1287–91

TOQTA, 1291–1312

OZBEG, 1312–41

TINIBEG, 1341–2

JANIBEG, 1342–57

BIRDIBEG, 1357–9