The Horde

by Marie Favereau

  The nomads knew that politics and the pastoral economy had divergent schedules, and they manipulated both dynamics with the other in mind. In the case of the great khans, recent scholarship has shown that their mobility was largely driven by politics rather than herding and that we have to distinguish between pastoral mobility and “imperial itinerance.” Empire-building nomads moved to project power. The Jochids, too, focused less on herding efficiently than on asserting control over their society and extending power over their neighbors.29

  Illustration of a bronze mirror with Arabic inscription (Iran or Anatolia, twelfth or thirteenth century). Mirrors were paraphernalia of the steppe aristocracy well before the Mongol conquests, and the Jochids supported further production, using mirrors for divination or as talismans.

  If the Mongol economy was powerfully shaped by politics, it also interacted with their belief system, for both the belief system and the economy were deeply entwined with the natural world. The Mongols did not consider humanity superior to nature, and humans were not the masters of the environment. Mongols saw animals, plants, terrain, and insects as lifeforms to be feared and respected. They believed in the “land masters”—the intangible entities of the land, defined by the anthropologist Grégory Delaplace as “localised at a certain place, commanding such diverse phenomena as weather, luck for hunting, and environmental conditions in general.” And the Mongols handled the earth and wildlife with great caution, as these entities could be vengeful and hostile. Mongols worshipped nature and cared for it deeply.30

  The Source of Life

  The milking season, which arrived at roughly the same time in the eastern and western steppes, was a source of rejoicing throughout the empire. People celebrated with music, archery, and wrestling competitions, and by drinking kumis or airag—fermented mare’s milk. The kumis festival was the largest and most elaborate of the Mongol gatherings. It was also the time when herders came to the khan’s horde to pay tribute to the khan. “Baatu has thirty men within a day’s journey of his camp, each one of whom provides him every day with such milk from a hundred mares,” Rubruck recorded. “That is to say, the milk of three thousands mares every day, not counting the other white milk which other men bring. For, just as in Syria the peasants give a third part of their produce, these men have to bring to the orda of their lords the mare’s milk of every third day.”31

  Along with paying the milk tax, herders were required to lend out mares, as determined by the tümen system. Mongol chiefs would lend mares to their khan, which he would keep for a year or more. In turn, chiefs borrowed mares from herders of lower rank. The mare circulation reflected the Mongol’s socioeconomic order: they shared everything, but redistributed possessions and resources according to people’s status, with more going to higher-status individuals. Lending and borrowing animals was common at all levels of society. The shift men and wealthy herders dispersed their herds to avoid overgrazing in their locations, and poor men would raise some of these animals in other locations, supplementing their own much smaller herds. There was no question of ownership: animals belonging to the elite were branded with a tamga, a lineage mark, and stealing them was punishable by death. Poorer herders simply milked animals owned by others, and then delivered upward a portion of their production. In this way a poor herder could more easily feed himself and his family, and the society could take advantage of its animals without damaging the productive capacity of any particular location.32

  Much of the milk produced at every social level was turned into kumis. Preparing kumis required experience, skill, and patience, for it entailed stirring or churning raw mare’s milk for hours. It was also a symbolically loaded task that only men were allowed to perform. A fizzy drink, kumis typically had an ethyl alcohol content of between 1 and 2.5 percent, but the level could be raised if the milk fermented longer. Kara kumis, reserved for the khan and the elites, was a special mixture that remains unknown; it might have had a higher alcohol content than normal kumis. There was no kumis in the cold season, but in the summer, kumis replaced water, which could become lethally contaminated in the heat.33

  The season of the drinking festival brought visitors from across the hordes to the khan’s court, and the guests expected to have unlimited access to kumis and kara kumis for weeks on end. In June 1254, at Great Khan Möngke’s drinking festival, Rubruck counted five hundred carts and ninety horses laden with mare’s milk. Only five days later, the court took a similar delivery. The old sources can at times be more vivid than accurate, but these figures are realistic. In the course of one milking season, a mare produced up to 3,300 pounds of milk, of which about half was left to the foals and the rest used to make kumis. Given the size of Mongol herds, there would likely have been enough production to support the population’s thirst. And considering that an adult can digest up to 340 fluid ounces of kumis a day, a large supply would have been needed.34

  Drinking kumis was more than a shared tradition. It was also a vital part of the Mongol diet. Shamans knew kumis was an unparalleled energy booster and used it in various rituals. Recent studies confirm the drink’s health benefits. In particular, researchers have shown that kumis from animals milked around June—exactly when the drinking festival was in full flow—yields especially high levels of vitamin E, niacin, and dehydroascorbic acid, a form of vitamin C. Drinkers would have been able to partake of the kumis when it was maximally nutritious, as the producing camps were never far from the court, ensuring that the supply was fresh.35 Fresh kumis strengthens the immune system and treats and prevents typhoid, dysentery, and other diseases that were common at the time of the Mongol expansion. Kumis also has antibiotic properties and is still used against bacterial infections. The Mongols recognized that kumis was useful in treating kidney stones, which was likely a prevalent ailment. As avid meat-eaters, the Mongols probably had elevated levels of uric acid, which leads to painful afflictions such as kidney stones and gout. Reportedly, both Batu and his brother Berke suffered from gout.36

  Illustration of a golden bowl with a dragon protome on the handle, intended to dangle from a belt (Horde, mid-to-late thirteenth century). Dragon protomes show non-Mongol influence—possibly Khitan, Jin, or Song—but the workmanship is Jochid.

  Kumis was vital to the flourishing of Chinggis Khan’s descendants in the mid-thirteenth century. They multiplied their herds, increased the production of milk, and drank huge amounts of the stuff. The population rose, and their children grew stronger.

  Let Them Receive Their Share of the Empire

  “His bounty was beyond calculation and his liberality immeasurable,” the Persian historian Juvaynī wrote of Batu. “Merchants from every side brought him all manners of ware, and he took everything and doubled the price of it several times over.” Like other outsiders—and even some Mongols—who witnessed the khans’ generosity, Juvaynī was at once impressed and bewildered: Batu was paying the merchants twice what they asked for.37

  But Batu’s generosity should not be confused with magnanimity. He was generous because generosity made him powerful. Batu needed to draw in traders in order to make his economy and political system function, especially when conquest was not supplying spoils to distribute. Hoping to win merchants’ favor, he emulated Great Khan Ögödei, who had ordered that “merchants be paid a premium of ten percent over the total of their sold merchandise.” According to Rashīd al-Dīn, Ögödei’s bitigchis (secretaries) warned him that he was already buying their goods for more than their value. “Merchants deal with the treasury in hopes of a profit,” Ögödei replied, “and they have an expense to pay off you bitigchis. It’s the debt they owe you I’m discharging lest they come away having taken a loss in dealing with us.” In another instance, “Someone brought [Ögödei] two hundred bone arrow heads. He gave him a like number of bars (of silver).” This was more than a matter of prestige. Mongol leaders were cautious not to slow down the circulation of goods and, knowing that merchants could not be coerced or controlled, instead seduced them. Mo
ngol officials imposed light taxes on commercial transactions and promised safety for merchants and protection for their goods. The khans and their officials also allowed traders to access the yam—the Mongol’s impressive supply and communication network, which I detail below.38 Mongol leaders also competed with one another to attract traders and merchandise, offering privileges such as tax exemptions for traders and entrepreneurs. For Batu, as we will later see, this policy had already begun to bear fruit in the 1250s.

  As contemporaries noticed, the purpose of the Mongol khans was not to accumulate wealth but to dispense it. Rashīd al-Dīn reported of Ögödei, “One day, when he had laid the foundations of Qaraqorum, he went into the treasury and saw nearly a hundred thousand bars [of silver]. ‘What benefit do we derive from all these stores?’ he asked. ‘They have to be constantly guarded. Have it announced that everybody who wants a bar should come and take one.’” According to several other anecdotes, Ögödei gave silver and gold bars to his people in order to bankroll their business and trading efforts. Ögödei was confident that what he gave to his subjects would come back to him sooner or later. In the Mongol economy, circulation brought more resources than retention.39

  The khans did accumulate wealth—through the products of their personal domains, servants, herds, gifts, taxes, and war. But trade served a different function. It was not meant to enrich the khan, who did not actually engage in trade or seek profit, as he was above the human world. Khans could only give or receive; they did not buy but instead granted, which also is reflected in their demonstrative generosity. No, trade was not intended to benefit the khan personally but rather to provide health for the empire and welfare for the people—health that was measured as much financially as spiritually, for circulation was intimately tied to the Mongol belief system.

  The Mongols saw commodities as receptacles or mediums of something immaterial, and circulation of this immaterial something was essential to the cosmic balance of the world. Specifically, the qubi, the redistribution system, supported not only the living but also the dead, whose spirits needed to be continuously appeased in order to protect the living from negative interference by the “ill dead.” Circulation was said to appease these spirits. What is more, the Mongols believed in the rebirth of their souls, and redistribution increased one’s chances of an optimal rebirth. Thus, when a host shared his earthly goods with a large number of guests, he would bring happiness and prosperity to the living, the dead, and to himself in his afterlife. Through this complex interplay of the imminent, the transcendent, and the reborn in this world, the Mongols conceived of the things they shared, apportioned, and circulated among themselves as having a direct impact on the wellbeing of the society. Circulation of the commodities obtained through trade, taxation, and war was therefore key to maintaining social order and to repairing social disorder. It is hard to reconstruct how the medieval Mongols defined collective happiness, but they certainly believed that the circular movement of things was crucial in producing it. And that meant that the khan could hardly have a more important task than ensuring the fluidity of the redistribution system.40

  None of this is to say that accumulation of wealth did not happen. Far from it; accumulation was widely accepted. Yet wealth only made sense in terms of its redistribution, which was carried out according to the qubi, a system of shares itself based on the tümen. The khan gave gifts—many obtained via trade and diplomacy—to the commanders of tens of thousands, who in turn gave gifts to the heads of thousands, and so on down the line. This was the Mongol circulation system at work. The khans did not need luxury goods for their subsistence economy—they needed them for their political economy. They used the goods to reward elites and bind them to the court, and the elites used the same goods to retain the loyalty of the common people. Silver ingots, gold, precious textiles, furs, pearls—all these were constantly reassigned. The khan’s redistribution took place during quriltais, in plain view. The shift men supervised, registering the goods and counting them behind the scenes. It was all an elaborate project on behalf of maintaining a cohesive political body and a benevolent cosmic order.

  The Jochids did not intend to let the great khan govern them. To maintain their independence, they had to compete. That is what Batu did; he competed with the great khan in every area—the market, politics, patronage. Batu quickly recognized the huge potential of the lower Volga, and in a few years, turned the region into a dynamic trade hub by attracting merchants from Kiev, Sudak, Novgorod, and farther north. His cousin Büri, from the rival line of Chagatay, protested publicly that Batu’s territory should be shared. Batu had him executed. The Jochid khans would never allow other members of the golden lineage to claim the Qipchaq steppe.41

  Mongolizing Space

  The Mongols believed that mountains, lakes, and valleys possessed cosmological power. On those sites they built their palaces and qoruq—burial grounds. As we saw, the great khans harnessed Qaraqorum’s spiritual nexus, the Orkhon Valley. They also made a memorial for Chinggis Khan in Burqan Qaldun, an old spiritual site in eastern Mongolia’s Khentii Mountains, where the locals had celebrated the cult of the ancestors before the Mongols came. Most likely, Chinggis’s body was moved from the Tangut territory to Burqan Qaldun. The mountain captured their leader’s sülde, his charisma and vital energy. At Burqan Qaldun, the Onon, Kherlen, and Tuul rivers had their source, and the riverbeds were seen as mystically connected to the birth of the Mongols. This was also the native region of Temüjin, and the place where he held the quriltai of 1206. The addition of his burial ground turned Burqan Qaldun into the most sacred area of the empire.42

  In the far west, the descendants of Jochi had built their own landmarks. Under Batu, they started to construct sacrificial sites, palaces, religious edifices, and qoruq. The original location of the khans’ burial ground remains uncertain. A late tradition identified the area of Saraijuq, on the Ural River, with the Jochid khans’ qoruq. Indeed, the lower Ural was the original nuntug Chinggis Khan granted Batu, before Batu was put in charge of the Qipchaq campaign. According to this tradition, Batu founded the city of Saraijuq, which became a spiritual center. In fact, Saraijuq dated to the tenth century, but the story of Batu as founder speaks to Saraijuq’s emergence as a key Jochid spiritual site. Among the spaces the Jochids created was a royal cemetery. This cemetery has never been discovered, as Mongols did not want anyone to know where their khans were buried. Jūzjānī, a contemporary source, recorded that the place of Batu’s burial “is covered up, and horses are driven over it, in such a manner that not a trace of it remains.” What we do know is that there was a strong connection between the site where a khan was enthroned and his final place of rest. The majority of the Batuid khans were invested with their powers in Saraijuq area. Just like Chinggis Khan made the area of Burqan Qaldun his enthronement site and ancestors’ sanctuary, Batu turned the lower Ural into a sacred land where his descendants would perform the rites of the ancestral cult and be buried with their next-of-kin.43

  Guards watched over the qoruq of elites and commoners alike; Plano Carpini relates an episode in which he accidentally entered a commoners’ burial ground and was caught by the watchmen. Secret, protected, and forbidden to foreigners, burial sites mattered to the Mongols more than cities did. The decision on a burial site thus said a great deal about which places truly mattered within Mongol societies. Thousands of Mongols died during the Hungarian campaigns, and their bodies were repatriated from Europe to Mongolia. But at some point during Batu’s rule, the Jochid practice changed, and the dead were laid to rest in the lower valleys of the west. The Jochids no longer needed to move the bodies of their deceased, because their home was now the Qipchaq steppe.44

  The Sitting City

  Around 1250 Batu sponsored the construction of permanent structures at a location the Mongols recorded on their coins as Sarai, meaning palace or city. Local nomadic groups had occupied the place from time to time, but no major settlements existed there before Sarai. The khan’
s palace was probably an enormous reception hall designed after the golden tent or another ceremonial tent. The palace was surrounded by buildings of mud bricks, ceramic, and stone, and large stone statues were erected nearby on mobile platforms. The palace stood almost halfway between the northern and southern limits of the migration route followed by Batu’s horde. The city was unwalled.45

  Not much is known of Sarai’s original shape, organization, and size. Rubruck, who visited in October 1254, paid little attention to it. He mentioned in passing “a new city, that Batu has built on the Itil”—that is, the Volga—and noted that “Saraï and Batu’s palace are on the eastern bank of the river.” Plano Carpini did not mention the new city, which suggests that the khan’s palace was built after his visit in 1246.46

  Historians disagree over the exact function of Batu’s complex. It is a common mistake to compare Sarai to a classical imperial city, for the khan would neither live within four walls nor have his mausoleum constructed there. He also did not try to impress his people with buildings. Sarai probably served a function similar to that of Qaraqorum, “the sitting city” Ögödei had founded two decades earlier. Qaraqorum was an enclosed, brick-walled town with two districts, one for Muslim merchants and one for Chinese craftsmen. Next to the great khan’s palace, there were a number of palaces for the court secretaries, twelve Buddhist temples, two mosques, and a church. Like Qaraqorum, Sarai was a meeting point for outsiders, with mudbrick houses and well-organized districts. Sarai hosted traders, travelers, secretaries, artisans, and religious men, who found there the comforts of sedentary life. True, Mongol cities were completely different from what the westerners were used to; Rubuck noted how small Qaraqorum was—“not as large as the village of Saint Denis, and the monastery of Saint Denis is worth ten times than that palace”—and Sarai was smaller still. But Mongol cities were nonetheless welcoming. The khans went out of their way. Great Khan Güyük even had a palace built in his new city of Emil for the benefit of important foreign travelers—a palace in which he would not himself live.47