The second chapter opens with Chinggis’s apportioning of the Mongol Empire among his sons. The inheritance structure on which Chinggis relied was in part his own invention and in part an adaptation of steppe redistribution systems that long predated him. This is a key theme of the book: Mongol rulers drew on deep traditions of social and political organization but modified these traditions as befit their circumstances. The Jochids were especially innovative, as reflected in their efforts to assert Mongol-style governance over Eastern Europe, where political life was nothing like that of the steppe. Chapter 2 shows how consequential Chinggis’s modification of traditional practice was for the future development of the Horde.
The second chapter ends with the Jochid conquest of Hungary in the western margins of the Qipchaq steppe, which would become the new homeland of the Horde’s leaders. By the time the Horde established its dominance in the Qipchaq steppe, Chinggis Khan had died. So had Jochi; his successors took on the key tasks of consolidating the Jochid regime. Apparently, before Jochi’s death, he profoundly disappointed his father, resulting in Chinggis’s rescinding Jochi’s place as heir to the position of great khan—the Mongol throne. But the empire survived the tumult and remained expansive, integrating China, Iran, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
The middle part of the book examines the Horde as a new kind of empire. Chapter 3 explores how ulus Jochi organized itself politically and adapted to its natural and human environment. I explain how the ulus handled its first succession controversy, after Jochi’s death. The result was a foundational agreement between two of Jochi’s sons, Orda and Batu, and the creation of the two wings of ulus Jochi under their leadership: the White Horde (ak orda), under Batu’s leadership, and the Blue Horde (kök orda) under Orda’s. The Horde as a whole would be ruled by Batu, whose lineage retained the throne for more than a century. This is another example of tradition and innovation operating in concert. On the one hand, the Jochid lineage remained supreme: no one outside the lineage was considered a legitimate candidate for the office of khan. On the other hand, the traditional priority given to elders over juniors was upset, as Orda was Batu’s senior. Much as Jochi, the eldest of Chinggis’s sons, was demoted from his position of seniority, so too was Orda. The balance between seniors and juniors was always critical in Mongol societies; it contoured relations in the family and in the court of administration. It was also subject to revision as needed. By relinquishing his claim rather than fighting for the throne, Orda helped to inaugurate a time of peace within the Horde. This is another theme we will see repeatedly across the book: in the Mongol world, separation was a prophylactic against civil war. The steppe was vast, allowing plenty of space for rivals to part amicably and pursue their own ends with relative autonomy. Thus while the White Horde, under Batu, was the center of Jochid governance, Orda’s Blue Horde could function largely on its own while cooperating with the White Horde for the good of the larger ulus Jochi.
Both wings of the Horde thrived in the mid-thirteenth century. The Horde harnessed new lands and sedentary subjects and fostered a dynamic market on the steppes. Contemporary travelers described an impressively organized nomadic society involving large numbers of people and massive encampments with city-like facilities. Observers marveled at the swiftness with which the members of the Horde packed and unpacked during their seasonal migration. These observers noted the nomads’ facility in driving animals and fording rivers, their massive carts overflowing with goods, and the security of their communities. Although the Horde was dominated by nomads, Batu encouraged the development of settlements and cities to support sedentary subjects. His regime reflected the imperatives that had driven centuries of nomadic leaders: to enable movement of the herds and accrual of wealth so that riches could be redistributed in accordance with the social hierarchy of the community. Batu and other Jochid leaders pursued these goals using new means, as befit the ecology of their westerly empire and the needs and aptitudes of dominated peoples—another exercise in the flexibility of Mongol governance. Most important among these dominated peoples were the Russians, whose close relationship with the Horde began under Batu. Batu also asserted a great deal of political autonomy from the wider Mongol Empire, yet the Horde remained economically embroiled in the empire, receiving tax money collected by the other uluses while contributing portions of its own receipts in turn. Redistribution and circulation were foundational at every level of the Mongol community.
Chapter 4 begins with struggles for succession to the office of the great khan in the 1260s. The conflict led to a war among Chinggis Khan’s descendants. Jochi’s ulus broke off from the empire definitively and lost substantial financial resources as a result. Under the leadership of Berke Khan, the Horde had to find new means of economic security and political authority, forging a self-governing entity independent of the great khan and fending off pressure from other Mongols. In particular, the Horde was threatened by the ulus of Hülegü, Tolui’s son. Hülegü sought to take over Middle Eastern lands that Chinggis had pledged to the Jochids, and Hülegü nearly strangled the Horde economically through a trade embargo. But the Horde persevered thanks to a complex new trade alliance involving Genoa, Mamluk Egypt, and Byzantium. Berke’s public conversion to Islam helped bring the Mamluks into the Jochid fold, while asserting the Horde’s independence from the Mongol center. The Jochids lost the war with Hülegü, who was able to consolidate a new Toluid-aligned ulus on the Horde’s doorstep. The people of this ulus were known as the Ilkhanids, and at their height they ruled a vast but fractious empire from Syria to Pakistan. But, in a sense, the Jochids won their regime. They would have to tolerate adversaries on their southern border, yet the clash with Hülegü solidified the Jochids’ autonomy from the larger empire. The Horde no longer paid allegiance to the great khan, and by the end of the 1260s, the Jochids had definitively recovered from the war. Through military force, taxation, and colonization, the Horde came to dominate the most lucrative trades of the Volga region: the fur, slave, and salt trades. And the Jochids’ alliances marked the beginning of the Mongol exchange.
Chapter 5 explores the foundations and effects of the Mongol exchange. Under Möngke-Temür, Berke’s successor, the Horde managed a tremendously lucrative network that assured the regime’s power and stability and had transformative impact on European politics. Möngke-Temür’s reign was a period of peace for the Horde, thanks in part to his shrewd power-balancing instincts. Although the Jochids had secured their independence, Möngke-Temür saw advantages in exerting his influence within the wider Mongol system. Möngke-Temür used his prestige and political acumen to mediate conflicts among the other Mongol uluses and capture the benefits of long-distance trade. In the late thirteenth century, the Jochids also asserted leadership over their western frontier, dominating portions of Moldavia and deepening their relations with Christian powers. The key figure in the far west was Nogay, an acolyte of Berke whose power continued to mount under Möngke-Temür. After Möngke-Temür died, Nogay attempted to assert himself as khan, but he lacked the pedigree to take office. The result was a painful and transformative civil war within the Horde. Most importantly, the succession crisis following Möngke-Temür’s death incubated a new kind of power within the Horde: that of the begs, the nomadic chieftains. It would take several more decades, but eventually the begs would become, for all intents and purposes, the Jochid government.
The Jochids managed to restore order in their ruling houses after the civil war, and the early fourteenth century witnessed the pinnacle of the Mongol exchange. In chapter 6 I consider some of the key effects of Mongol-led globalization. Close to home, these effects included the flourishing of settlements and cities, as diverse peoples flocked to the Horde to trade there, labor in local workshops, and proselytize among the nomads. This process of “steppe urbanization” was encouraged by the Horde’s leaders and by other nomadic elites, who financed the construction of stone churches and mosques, palaces, and sizable farms. The nomads also built complex irrigation an
d drainage systems for their cities, which flooded at times because of their proximity to rivers and inland seas. None of these settlements featured fortifications, towers, or outer walls. The nomads wanted their cities open because, as they said, “He who is afraid, let him build towers.”17
In imperial and foreign affairs, Özbek Khan followed the example of Möngke-Temür by working closely with the Genoese, Venetians, Mamluks, and Byzantines. Özbek was fiercely competitive—his was no Mongol Peace. The Eurasian economic development that proceeded under his supervision was the consequence of high-stakes struggle among the Horde, the Ilkhanids, Byzantines, Italians, Germans, and Russians. Under Özbek the Horde took a more muscular and interventionist approach to Russian political affairs, placing the Muscovite princes on the throne of Vladimir, even though other Russian leaders had stronger claims to the office. Özbek also played a delicate game with the Ilkhanids, allying with or attacking them when either option suited him. In the late 1330s, the Ilkhanids suddenly fragmented, which furthered Jochid dominance of the Mongol exchange. Trade through the southern, Ilkhanid-dominated route withered and was diverted to northern routes through the Horde. But the eventual collapse of the Ilkhanids in the late 1350s was not entirely a good thing for the Jochids. The resulting power vacuum in the Ilkhanid territories would become a significant hazard to the Horde.
In the 1360s, the main lineage of Jochid khans stemming from Batu ended. Chapter 7 digs into the extinction of Batuid rule, which led to the bulqaq—anarchy. There were several sources of crisis at the time. One was the Black Death, a pandemic that became an economic catastrophe, shutting down trade and shriveling the Jochid cities. The abandonment of the cities was less a reflection of panic than strategic withdrawal, another longstanding Mongol tradition, practiced at the levels of empires, battles, and ordinary life. A second source of crisis was the faltering of the Yuan, the Mongol dynasty in China. The Yuan, too, practiced a strategic withdrawal in the face of a Han Chinese rebellion, with significant consequences for the Horde. But the bulqaq was above all a succession struggle, the causes of which are plain as day: Özbek and other late Batuid khans made a habit of purging their competitors, hollowing out their lineage. The fall of the Batuids created an opening for the begs. One in particular, Mamai, became beglerbeg—head of the begs—and ruled for almost twenty years in the late fourteenth century in association with multiple puppet khans from Jochi’s lineage. All the while, assorted pretenders fought over the throne, and in time Mamai’s power waned. In the 1380s his forces suffered important losses to the house of Moscow, signaling the weakening of the Jochid regime.
The final chapter covers the aftermath of the bulqaq and later history of the Horde. The solution to the Batuid collapse proved to be yet another innovation within the confines of Mongol-style governance. With the Batuids out of power and the Ordaids—the natural successors of the Batuids—unable to assert themselves, the time came for other Jochid lineages, descended from Jochi’s other sons, to take over. The khan who revived the Jochids was Toqtamish, who descended from Jochi’s son Toqa Temür. Toqtamish won the support of many of the wealthiest begs, deposed Mamai, and put the Horde on the road to renewed economic and political fortunes. Toqtamish possessed ambition; in Islamic sources, he is portrayed as a unifier who brought together the Blue and White hordes. In fact, the hordes had been unified in the past, but Toqtamish came to power after a period of deep distress and was celebrated accordingly. Toqtamish demonstrated the resilience of Chinggisid traditions in a world where they were slipping away, thanks to the fall of the Yuan and the Ilkhanids.
Toqtamish engaged in a widely misunderstood relationship with Temür, better known in the modern West as Tamerlane. Tamerlane was a powerful beg who rose to rule the ulus of Chagatay. Tamerlane is frequently depicted as lording over Toqtamish, but in fact the two were sometimes allies and sometimes rivals, and they were well-matched militarily. Tamerlane intended to take advantage of the power vacuum in the former Ilkhanid territories and rule them as well, a position from which he could threaten the Horde’s trade networks as Hülegü had. Tamerlane helped Toqtamish take the Jochid throne, but then the two leaders turned against each other. They fought to a standstill, until another powerful beg came to Tamerlane’s aid. That beg, Edigü, commanded a large army in the eastern regions of the Horde and resented Toqtamish for favoring the western begs over himself and his people, the Manghit. Edigü helped Tamerlane secure victories over Toqtamish, and eventually Edigü’s forces ejected Toqtamish from power, a moment that has provoked further misunderstanding.
It is commonly said that the end of Toqtamish’s rule was the end of the Horde. I argue differently: the end of Toqtamish’s rule was a further evolution. Importantly, Toqtamish was still alive when he left the throne. His departure from power, then, dissociated the person of the khan from the office. This would be the final turn toward the begs. The khan previously had life tenure, for he ruled with the mandate of the deity Tengri, the Sky or the Heavens. Now rule was understood in more worldly terms. It belonged to whoever could earn the support of the begs, and when that support was lost, a new ruler took charge. After Toqtamish, the Horde split into regional powers. Yet these regimes continued to pay fealty to the Mongol ancestors—Chinggis, Jochi, Batu, Berke, Özbek, and others. The post-Toqtamish hordes maintained their strength well into the fifteenth century.
Nomadic regimes like the Horde had a great ability to reshape themselves. Their empires followed complex trajectories, not linear patterns of rise and fall. It is often said the Mongol Empire collapsed in the 1260s, during the first major crisis of succession to Chinggis’s throne, a claim that seems quite ridiculous when historians account for the intricate relationships across the hordes that lasted for two centuries thereafter. When an empire breaks up into component parts, our instinct is to say that it is no more. When Mongol regimes broke apart, they showed their resilience. The new powers were born not of the destruction of Mongol politics but of the mobility and flexibility built into Mongol politics. The history of the Horde makes clear that Mongols knew well the power of a careful retreat. It was not necessary to struggle endlessly on behalf of a khan, a lineage, or some notion of an integrated territory. Mongol ways of life and rule were more expansive and more durable than any one regime.
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Traditionally historians writing about the Horde have relied on written sources produced by subjugated sedentary populations. To understand the Horde more accurately and from within, this book draws on a wider variety of sources. Some come directly from the Mongols. These include imperial orders, diplomatic letters, and coins. As a commercial power focused on long-distance trade, the Horde invested much political capital in its coins, the designs of which offer deep insights into the motivations underlying official actions. Much can also be learned from commercial documents, trade manuals, merchants’ narratives, and multilingual glossaries produced for medieval travelers. Alongside coins, these sources paint a vivid picture of a mercantile milieu in which tradesmen mixed with translators, clergy, foreign travelers, official weighers, and educated slaves.
Other valuable sources include the qari söz, “the old word”—steppe epics recorded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which incorporate histories of the Horde from its zenith.18 I also look to a range of rich archaeological material excavated throughout Horde territories. The material remnants include dishes, tools, household items, garments, and objects used for official and ritual purposes, such as metal belts and mirrors. Mongol construction could be ephemeral—it often had to be, so that hordes could move seasonally—but archaeologists have uncovered burial sites, settlements, craft workshops, and places of spiritual importance showing that the Mongols also invested in permanent structures. Archaeological research has advanced considerably in just the last fifteen years, providing new resources for historians to draw on. Textual sources written in Arabic, Turkic, Russian, Old Italian, Latin, Persian, and other languages round out the archive, helping us understa
nd what occurred during the three centuries when the Horde rose, expanded, and finally dissolved into the post-Jochid polities of West and Central Asia.
There is a persistent myth that a nomadic culture must be dominantly oral. This book belies the myth, drawing on the written products of an administratively complex empire, which synthesized practices drawn from the Uighurs, Chinese, and diverse Turkic groups in the Volga and Caspian regions, as well as old Mongol practices from the East Asian steppe. I make use of yarliks, variously translated as diplomas or imperial orders, produced by the Horde’s chancellery. These were written statements of law, policy, or status. For instance, a yarlik might announce a person’s position or confirm their ownership of land. Khans and begs also engaged in significant diplomatic correspondence by means of letters. A substantial number of yarliks and letters are preserved in Russian archives, and more can be found preserved in Venice, Genoa, Rome, Vienna, Simferopol, Warsaw, and Istanbul.
The records of relations between the Horde and the Mamluk Sultanate are especially revealing. The two powers had a high volume of exchanges; we can identify more than eighty diplomatic missions over the course of two centuries. The contents of the letters among khans, sultans, and their ambassadors are available through the Arabic sources, providing concrete information about political and military issues. A careful reading allows us to penetrate the formal conventions of the time and understand the practicalities of the alliance between the Horde and the sultanate.
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