In just two years or so on the throne, Birdibek did more damage to Jochid politics than the plague had. Birdibek eliminated everyone in his generation with a strong right to the throne and ensured that no such person existed in the next. He horrified his own people, and the court genealogists held him responsible for the political turmoil that started under his rule. They considered Birdibek the last Batuid khan, for those who took the throne after him mostly came from secondary Jochid lines.31
After Birdibek’s death, new khans came and went, but Taidula was the most important figure in the court. Her authority had grown since she became Özbek’s wife, and after twenty years at the center of government, she knew how to play Jochid politics. She demonstrated her acumen when she helped put Janibek and then Birdibek on the throne. Taidula had one of the largest incomes in the Horde, and her network of trade partners extended into the cities of Crimea, the Volga, and the Don. While most Jochid leaders adopted Islam, Taidula publicly embraced Christianity and used her position to cultivate ties with the Orthodox clergy, the Venetians, and the pope.32 But she would be the last representative of the house of Özbek, the most glorious family of the golden lineage since the time of Batu. In 1360 Taidula, too, was murdered. The sources do not indicate by whom or under what circumstances, but her assassination must have been connected to her involvement in the political struggles of the period. Soon after Taidula’s death, no fewer than six khans claimed to rule, all at once. Each minted coins mentioning New Sarai. None of the would-be khans had popular support, and none of them would last.33
The extinction of the Batuid line led to the unravelling of Jochid society. For a hundred and fifty years, the Horde’s hierarchical organization had been based on the bonds of each Jochid lineage with the main branch of the Batuids. With the Batuids gone, the hierarchy was decapitated. Nor were the Ordaids prepared to fill the void the Batuids left behind. The Ordaids relied on the Batuids to keep their own throne, and after Taidula’s death, their dominant position in the Horde’s eastern wing was undermined by princes from secondary lines, who took over in 1361. The sudden collapse of both the Batuids and the Ordaids created an unprecedented power vacuum and a rush to fill it. Frictions between self-proclaimed khans turned into a blood feud that lasted almost two decades, a period that contemporaries recorded as bulqaq: anarchy.34
The Jochids were paying the price for more than half a century of increasingly authoritarian control. Since Toqto’a’s enthronement, each transfer of power had led to a political purge. Not only that, but the Horde’s deliberative political institutions had been sidelined. Perhaps most importantly, in 1342 Janibek had turned the quriltai into a mere rubber stamp. Janibek was not the consensual candidate, but he was the only person eligible, because he, too, had his brothers killed before he was elected. He also packed the ceremonies with his supporters, further ensuring that there would be no debate.35 With no one to oppose Janibek, the assembly had no need to dramatize the tension among competitors and perform the old rituals of agreement. The deritualization of Jochid politics was both a feature of authoritarianism and a sign that it had metastasized.
Some of the consequences were arguably beneficial. Succession no longer involved extended interregnums, which bred uncertainty among the peoples of the Horde and the merchants who traded with them. But the harms of the might-makes-right approach were far greater than were the advantages. As soon as the Jochids began resolving political disagreement through killing rather than negotiation, there was no end to the violence. Having murdered his opponents, a new khan might hold onto power, but that only meant that internecine warfare was in abeyance. The last bout of killing lingered in the collective consciousness until the next succession came, at which point repressed anger rose to the surface. Every political assassination provoked retaliation; there was no other way, because in the steppe world, revenge was a moral duty transmitted from one generation to the next. In the fourteenth century, moral necessity became collective self-destruction.
The great irony is that authoritarianism did not yield authority. In the Mongol world, fratricide could not go on producing effective politics, which was based on consensus rather than coercion. A khan who had to coerce his ulus could never muster the unity necessary to collect his far-flung commanders and lead them in conquest, nor could he rely on the loyalty of distant and independent-minded officials. Such a khan could neither expand his tax base nor obtain revenues from the people he nominally ruled, because he could not count on the backing of tax collectors and other administrators. And without revenues, the khan could not uphold the imperatives of sharing and circulation—his sacred obligation and the foundation of the political order.
In the late 1350s, rather than continue to struggle against an authoritarian khan, two powerful clusters of hordes broke away. The western cluster was known as the right wing. It was led by a beg named Mamai, with his headquarters in Crimea. The eastern begs and hordes, the left wing, gathered under Tengiz-Buqa, a beg from the lower Syr-Daria. The Jochid khan—whomever he was at any given moment—ruled only the center, around Sarai and New Sarai. Both cities were depleted by the bulqaq, the plague, and ecological disaster, including repeated droughts. Along with cities such as Bulgar and Azaq, Sarai and New Sarai were drained of workers, craftsmen, and merchants. New Sarai was one of the first Jochid settlements to show signs of decline, and by the 1370s cemeteries had replaced Sarai’s populated districts, turning the place into a necropolis.36 The decline and de-urbanization of the main lower valleys was in many respects a consequence of political decentralization during the bulqaq: as the court lost control, and wealth and military power moved outward to the left and right wings, the khan’s shift men, postmen, and steppe patrols, who for generations had supervised the movement of people and goods, loosened their grip. In doing so, they allowed more settlers and herders to leave the lower valleys. Some of the migrants went west, to the northern shores of the Azov, in Mamai’s wing. Others went east and formed a new horde that stretched along the lower Syr-Daria toward Sighnaq, the political center of Tengiz-Buqa’s wing.37 In winter groups of herders continued to come to the lower Volga, but in summer they avoided the area of the declining cities and preferred grazing along the Don.
The abandonment of steppe settlements, like the retreat of the Yuan, might be seen as a strategic withdrawal. When the settlements became too hazardous, herders and sedentary people alike moved on, knowing that, in times of crisis, it made sense to rid themselves of that which was not essential. And that is what the cities had become. The plague made density dangerous, and the reduction in trade negated the economic attractions of settled cities. Cities therefore ceased to be useful tools of domination. On top of this, the many would-be khans of the bulqaq turned Sarai and New Sarai into war zones—despite their decreasing strategic and economic importance, both cities remained important to the Horde’s pretenders, as Sarai and New Sarai were closely connected to the legacies of Batu and Özbek. A final inducement to leave the cities was climate change, which marred the herding grounds around the steppe cities. At the end of the thirteenth century, a global cooling trend known as the Little Ice Age began. Effects across the Northern Hemisphere were varied, but in the Horde, the Little Ice Age resulted in more frequent periods of dzud—sudden changes in weather that caused famines and significant losses of livestock. Generations of herders tolerated the changing conditions, but amid the plague and the bulqaq, the reasons to stay were few.38
Responding to all these pressures, nomadic elites adapted their seasonal rounds and looked elsewhere for prosperity. This was not chaos; it was the Mongol way: decentralize, split, and scatter. Much as the hordes of Orda and Batu thrived separately, much as Chinggis sought to control rivalry by granting his sons separate territories, and much as eldest sons were sent off to raise their families far from their fathers, the people of the Horde moved on from the regime’s geographic and political center when staying was no longer wise. Withdrawal had always been an effective way to avoid th
e civil wars that could result from political struggle, and this time withdrawal would help to limit the spread of plague as well.
Thus the cities that the competing khans fought over were in large part ghost towns. No matter; the khans could not hold them. In the 1360s some khans occupied Sarai’s throne for only a few weeks. These self-proclaimed khans lacked the authority to mobilize the tümens and so could rely on few horsemen. It would fall to other leaders to find a new modus vivendi for the Horde—a functional politics that would keep the people working toward the collective good that the ulus of Jochi had once known. With the golden lineage in disarray, these leaders were the qarachu begs.
The Begs Take Over
In the 1360s and 1370s, most of the qarachu begs still trusted the Mongol world order. They believed the Horde needed a strong khan and centralized power. The powerful begs who operated in all three of the Horde’s domains fought over the leadership—not to install themselves, for they were not Jochids and therefore lacked rightful claims. Rather, they supported various claimants who could call on the prestige of the golden lineage. But none of these coalitions of Jochids and begs was able to rally all three of the major hordes, or, apparently, the minor ones scattered around the Horde. The khans supported by the begs of the western and eastern territories lacked control of the ancestral center and the prestige that came with it, while the khans supported by the begs of the lower Volga could not gather enough warriors to assert their domination. In addition, the khans of the lower Volga lacked capable administrators. The last khan who governed with a full keshig was Janibek. Under Birdibek, the hereditary keshig fragmented, and most of the shift men left the lower Volga to escape the political purges and support other throne contenders. As the bulqaq went on, the Jochids needed the qarachu begs more than ever, because only they could compensate for the disintegration of the keshig.
An exception to begs’ support for restoration of the Jochid khan came from northern Khwarezm, where the end of the Batuids led not to a scramble to support the next khan but rather to secession, as the Qonggirad seized Urgench and claimed autonomy. The Qonggirad had long been in charge of the region, but on behalf of the khan. That had been the situation under Özbek, who had made the transformative decision to grant his in-law Qutluq-Temür administrative authority in the Horde’s Khwarezmian territory. The same structure held when Qutluq-Temür was succeeded in the 1340s by Amīr Nanguday, another Jochid in-law. Like Qutluq-Temür, Nanguday was far more powerful than earlier qarachu begs, but he was still allied with the khan.39
Nanguday was killed during the political purges of 1361–1362, at the beginning of the bulqaq. His daughter and sons took over and formed what became known as the Sufi-Qonggirad, a new dynasty that claimed independence from the Horde. Their authority stemmed in part from their connections with the golden lineage; in part from their military power, as they controlled the nomadic warriors of northern Khwarezm; and finally from their status as pious Muslims and patrons of Islamic institutions. In particular, Nanguday’s family was closely aligned with Sufism; late sources suggest that Nanguday was a disciple of Sayyid Atā, an influential Sufi shaykh. Sufism was a bridge to urban and nomadic Khwarezmians alike. Sufis were active among the nomads, and local nomadic elites had family ties with Sufi leaders. Urban Khwarezmians, meanwhile, were predominantly Muslim and held the Sufi saints and their followers in high esteem.40
Assertions of independence are, of course, not the same as independence in reality. To become truly independent, the Sufi-Qonggirad needed to establish commercial ties of their own with key trading partners in Central Asia, Iran, and India. Urgench, long a major trade hub, offered advantages in this respect. The Sufi-Qonggirad needed only to keep business flowing there and, instead of sending tax collections to the Jochids, save the returns for themselves. To this end, in 1362–1363, they ordered new silver coins minted without the mention of the khan’s name and, soon after, started to mint gold coins as well.41 In 1366–1367, they expanded their reach, collecting taxes from Khiva and Kath, the capitals of Chagatayid southern Khwarezm. In Mongol eyes, the qarachu Sufi-Qonggirad had no rights to claim imperial taxes, but the Chagatayids were too weak to maintain control over their ancestral territory.42
While the Sufi-Qonggirad took no part in the scramble for the Jochid throne, and while their actions earned Mongol scorn, it is notable that even they in many ways sought to replicate strategies of Mongol rule. Their template for governance was the Mongol one, prioritizing customs receipts, a centralized currency regime, and vassalage. Though the Sufi-Qonggirad regime was dominated by Muslims, it did not adopt a model akin to that of the Mamluks or other Middle Eastern sultanates. And the Sufi-Qonggirad did not forswear Mongol styles of political legitimation. Islamic leadership and the golden lineage were both critical to their ruling mandate, just as they were for Berke and his successors.
Likewise, the leaders of the left and right wings were committed to Mongol patterns of rule, but, unlike the Sufi-Qonggirad, these begs were partisans of the status quo ante: they wanted to reunite the Horde under a single khan. Perhaps the most influential of these begs was Mamai, a military commander of Kiyad descent who had married Birdibek’s daughter Tulunbek. Like the Qonggirad, the Kiyad were among the Mongol families that provided Jochid in-laws and the Horde’s ruling begs. Deeply involved in the Horde’s internal politics and its foreign policy, Mamai became Birdibek’s beglerbeg. Mamai led the western begs—the right wing. At least nine hordes answered to him. His huge territory including the northern Black Sea, Crimea, and the northern Caucasus. Crimea, in particular, produced substantial income for Mamai, remaining one of the richest regions in the Horde despite ongoing tensions between the Genoese and the Horde’s chiefs.43
After Birdibek’s death, Mamai associated himself with several would-be khans, but none was able to hold onto power. This was not a problem for Mamai, who was, at least in the west, the power behind the throne, regardless of who occupied it. For instance, ‘Abdallāh, who was said to be Özbek’s son, served as Mamai’s puppet khan.44 Tulunbek was a critical partner of Mamai. After ‘Abdallāh died in 1370, Tulunbek took the throne for a few years, ensuring that Mamai would retain de facto authority. Only when Tulunbek and Mamai agreed that there was a sufficiently pliable Jochid candidate for the throne did she step aside.45 This was another new direction in the political culture of the Horde: now a qarachu beg and Jochid princess could rule together and promote their own khan.
Mamai joined the competition for the Volga Valley, helping to turn it into the anarchic frontier between the eastern and western begs. The two camps repeatedly captured and lost Sarai and New Sarai, so that neither Mamai nor the others were able fully to control the central territory and benefit from the prestige of holding the lands of Batu and Özbek. Still, the fact that a qarachu beg could even dream of ruling the old capitals was a testament to how much had changed. Mamai did not see it that way, though, or he did not say so if he did. He claimed to embody the continuity of the Horde and its institutions, his wife Tulunbek providing him a connection to the legacy he could not obtain by force.
While Mamai and assorted begs fought over who would occupy the seat of power, the Horde’s western neighbors and vassals took advantage of the disorder. The subjects of the sedentary fringe understood the opportunity the bulqaq offered: this was a chance to gain freedom of action and force the Mongols to make territorial and political concessions. With this in mind, Russians and Lithuanians began to test Mamai. Each power followed its own strategy in order to renegotiate its bonds with the Horde, a strategy contoured by their respective relationships with the Jochids.
For the Lithuanians, that relationship had begun in the 1320s, under Özbek. With the Horde throwing its support behind Moscow in the north of the Russian principalities, the southern principalities—including Kiev, Smolensk, Galicia, and Volynia—receded farther from the center of political attention, increasing their vulnerability to outsiders who hoped to win them away from the Jochids. For a
time, Nogay and his forces stood as an obstacle to ambitious foreigners, protecting the southern Russian princes against incursions. After Nogay’s death, however, the Jochids loosened their grip on the Horde’s southwestern border, allowing competitors to expand over the region.
Among the most capable of these competitors were the Lithuanians, who took Kiev in the early 1320s. In 1324 Özbek acknowledged the new political reality and signed a treaty with the Lithuanian ruler. The Lithuanians saw this as a step toward further conquest; Özbek, by contrast, saw a new vassal, one that could replace the Russians on the southwestern border. As long as the territory was administered by people loyal to the Horde, it did not matter if they were Russians or Lithuanians; they would be left in peace. So the Lithuanians accepted their position. They avoided conflicts with the Jochids, handled diplomatic contacts between the Horde and the Germans and Polish, followed the Horde’s commercial policies, and collected and paid the tribute. A pattern then emerged between the Lithuanians and Jochids. In 1340 the Lithuanians occupied Volynia and Galicia, becoming the Horde’s new vassals there, too.
Algirdas, the Lithuanian ruler after 1345, aimed to continue the trend, expanding his wealth and influence by extending his vassalage within the Horde. Doing so would entail both fighting the Horde and allying with it—that is, he would have to violently upset the status quo by displacing another vassal, and he would have to obtain Mamai’s blessing for having done so. Around 1362 Algirdas’s army set out to take control of areas under the relatively weak government in Moscow. The Lithuanians marched along the lower Dnieper, achieving the submission of the principalities of Chernigov and Pereslavl. In the fall the Lithuanians crossed the Dnieper and attacked the region of Podolia, a trade hub on the Dniester southwest of Kiev.46 The Podolian river ports would give the Lithuanians Black Sea access and an opportunity to oversee and tax traffic on the river. Not only that, but the area also had rich agricultural resources. But Podolia, a tribute-paying region of the Horde, was protected by Jochid warriors stationed near the Syniukha River. The Lithuanians would have to fight not Russians but Mongols. That is precisely what Algirdas’s forces did, and they emerged victorious. Although this was not quite the triumph the Lithuanians would later claim, the balance of power had clearly shifted in the region.
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