The Horde

by Marie Favereau

  9. Some historians believe the Mongols entered the Darial Pass, but this would have been a huge diversion and makes no sense given that they eventually attacked Derbent. See, for instance, David Nicolle and Viktor Shpakovs’kyi, Kalka River 1223: Ghengis Khan’s Mongols Invade Russia, illus. Viktor Korol’kov (Oxford: Osprey, 2001), 50–52.

  10. The Hundred Years’ Chronicle, 321–322.

  11. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 221–222.

  12. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 221–222; Kirakos Gandzakets‘i’s History of the Armenians, 167; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 110, 259–260; The Hundred Years’ Chronicle, 321–322. The sources provide a confused description of the Mongol crossing of the Greater Caucasus, which historians have attempted to reconstruct: Nicolle and Shpakovs’kyi, Kalka River 1223, 50–52; Carl Fredrik Sverdrup, The Mongol Conquests: The Military Operations of Genghis Khan and Sübe’etei (Solilhull, UK: Helion, 2017), 199–202; Thomas Allsen, “The Mongols and North Caucasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevii 7 (1991): 11–17.

  13. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 222. Richards uses “race” to translate the word jins. I have substituted “stock,” which I believe is a more accurate translation.

  14. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 223.

  15. The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016–1471, trans. Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes (London: Offices of the Society, 1914), 64–65. See also Nicolle and Shpakovs’kyi, Kalka River 1223, 22.

  16. Nicolle and Shpakovs’kyi, Kalka River 1223, 58, 60.

  17. The Chronicle of Novgorod, 65.

  18. The Mongol commander is called Gemya-Beg in the Chronicle of Novgorod, 65. Stephen Pow has convincingly identified Gemya-Beg as Jebe. According to Pow, “The silence and ambiguity surrounding Jebe’s fate in pro-Mongol sources of the thirteenth century can perhaps be explained by a taboo surrounding the disgraceful circumstances of his capture and execution.” Stephen Pow, “The Last Campaign and Death of Jebe Noyan,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 27, no. 1 (2017): 31–51, 31.

  19. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 223; The Chronicle of Novgorod, 65–66. Nicolle and Shpakovs’kyi, Kalka River 1223, 92; Iskander Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” in Istoriia Tatar s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3: Ulus Dzhuchi (Zolotaia Orda) XIII–seredina XV v., ed. Rafael Khakimov and Mirkasim Usmanov (Kazan: Institut Istorii im. Sh. Mardjani, 2009), 135–137.

  20. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 224; The Chronicle of Novgorod, 66–67.

  21. Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 224.

  22. The chronology in the sources is unclear. See Thomas Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns: Mongol Military Operations in the Volga-Ural Region, 1217–1237,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 3 (1983), 10–11.

  23. See Paul Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur (1176–1248),” in In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period (1200–1300), ed. Igor de Rachewiltz, Chan Hok-lam, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993), 19; Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 224; The Chronicle of Novgorod, 66–67.

  24. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 13. Pro-Toluid sources suggest that Jochi was not doing his duty—a possibly false accusation. See Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns”; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 360.

  25. Secret History, § 265–268; Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, trans. Thomas Nivison Haining (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 140–144; Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 61–62.

  26. Secret History, § 269–270.

  27. Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, 553. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 17, labels Bashman’s tactics “guerilla warfare.”

  28. Hei ta Shi-lu quoted and translated by Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 18; Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, 268–270. See also Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 324; Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 22–25.

  29. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 18–19; Paul Pelliot, “A propos des Coumans,” Journal Asiatique, ser. 11, vol. 15, no. 2 (1920): 125–185, 166.

  30. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 15–16; Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 137–141, 143–146. The Chronicle of Novgorod, 81, claims the Mongols slaughtered all the Bulgars they encountered during the campaign, but we know this is not true, as there are records of captives integrating into the Mongol Empire.

  31. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 21; Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 19–20; Donald Ostrowski, “The ‘tamma’ and the Dual-Administrative Structure of the Mongol Empire,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61, no. 2 (1998): 262–277; Timothy May, The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2007), 36–38; Christopher Atwood, “Tammachi,” in Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, 527.

  32. Dimitri Korobeinikov, “A Broken Mirror: The Kipçak World in the Thirteenth Century,” in The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans, ed. Florin Curta and Roman Kovalev, 379–412 (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

  33. Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 148, The Chronicle of Novgorod, 81. Friar Julian quotation from S. A. Anninsky, “Izvestiia vengerskikh missionerov XIII–XIV vv. o tatarakh v Vostochnoi Evrope,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 3 (1940), 86–87. Next to Friar Julian’s report, the main sources on the Mongol invasion of the Rus are the Chronicles of Novgorod and Galicia-Volhynia, which are more reliable and less biased than the other Russian chronicles. See also Alexander Majorov, “The Conquest of Russian Lands in 1237–1240,” in The Golden Horde in World History, ed. Rafael Khakimov, Vadim Trepavlov, and Marie Favereau (Kazan: Institut Istorii im. Sh. Mardjani, 2017), 86–110.

  34. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 325, 327.

  35. Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 152–153; Majorov, “The Conquest of Russian Lands in 1237–1240,” 87.

  36. The Chronicle of Novgorod, 81–84; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 53, 148, 280–281, 327; Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 149–152; Majorov, “The Conquest of Russian Lands in 1237–1240,” 88–91.

  37. Galitsko-Volynskaia letopis’ (The Chronicle of Galycia-Volhynia) (St. Petersburg: Aleteyia, 2005), 108–109; Letopis’ po ipatskomu spisku (Hypathian Chronicle) (St. Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, 1871), 522–523; Majorov, “The Conquest of Russian Lands in 1237–1240,” 93–98, 100–104. See also Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 158–160.

  38. Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 141–143.

  39. The Mongols applied the same strategy in Hungary in 1241–1242. Master Roger in Anonymous and Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula miserabile carmen super destruction Regni Hungariae par tartaror facta. Epistle to the Sorrowful Lament upon the Destruction of the Kingdom of Hungary by the Tatars, ed. János M. Bak and Martyn Rady (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 210–213.

  40. Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 144, 148.

  41. Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 153–154.

  42. Majorov, “The Conquest of Russian Lands in 1237–1240,” 91–92; Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 149. On Xili Gambu, see Ruth Dunnell, “Xili Gambu and the Myth of Shatuo Descent: Genealogical Anxiety and Family History in Yuan China,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 21 (2014–2015), 83–102.

  43. Buell, “Sübötei Ba’atur,” 23. Ismaylov rejects the claim that weather conditions severely affected the Mongol invasion, at least with respect to Novgorod: Izmaylov, “Pokhodi v vostochnuiu Evropu,” 153–154.

  44. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 160–161; Ulf Büntgen and Nicola Di Cosmo, “Climatic and Environmental Aspects of the Mongol Withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 CE,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016), article no. 25606. The richest contemporary sources on the Mongol invasion of Hungary are Master Roger’s and Archdeacon Thomas of S
plit, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum. History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, ed. Damir Karbic, Mirjana Matijevic Sokol, and James Ross Sweeney (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006). For additional primary sources, see Gian Andri Bezzola, Die Mongolen in abendländischer Sicht, 1220–1270: ein Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen (Bern: Francke, 1974), 66–109.

  45. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 136–141.

  46. Hansgerd Göckenjan, “Pokhod na zapad i zavoevanie Vostochnoi Evropy,” in Istoriia Tatar s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 3: Ulus Dzhuchi (Zolotaya Orda) XIII–seredina XV v., ed. Rafael Khakimov and Mirkasim Usmanov (Kazan: Institut Istorii im. Sh. Mardjani, 2009), 163.

  47. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 156–159, 160n1; Thomas of Split, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, 254–259.

  48. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 168–169.

  49. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 170–175.

  50. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, xlv–xlvii, 136–141, 146–149, 172–177; István Vásáry, “The Jochid Realm, the Western Steppes, and Eastern Europe,” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen Frank, and Peter Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 70–72.

  51. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 180–185; Thomas of Split, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum, 260–271. Thomas’s account notes that, although the Mongols were able to bypass the bridge, they used seven war engines to destroy the Hungarian guards and take the bridge anyway.

  52. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 184–185; Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 64.

  53. Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 190–193, 206–209, 214–219.

  54. Denis Sinor, “John of Plano Carpini’s Return from the Mongols,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 89, no. 3–4 (1957): 193–206. For the Latin text, see Storia dei Mongoli, ed. P. Daffinà, C. Leonardi, M. C. Lungarotti, E. Menestò, and L. Petech (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1989), 117. Carpini’s source was Russian; see The Nikonian Chronicle, ed. and trans. Serge A. Zenkovsky and Betty J. Zenkovsky, 5 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1984–1989), vol. 2, 321: “But he [Batu] retreated when he learned of the death of the Great Khan.” In contrast, Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 328, 330, notes that other leaders (Güyük and Möngke) were recalled to Mongolia in the fall of 1240, a year before Ögödei’s death, which suggests that there may have been other reasons for Batu and Sübötei’s precipitous withdrawal.

  55. Büntgen and Di Cosmo, “Climatic and Environmental Aspects,” 4; Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 210–211.

  56. Göckenjan, “Pokhod na zapad,” 164; Master Roger, Magistri Rogerii epistula, 218–221. Sübötei’s biographers also erased Jochi’s role as a leader in the Merkit campaign. On the Toluid attempts to undercut the legitimacy and accomplishments of the Jochids, see Atwood, “Jochi and the Early Western Campaigns.”

  57. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns,” 22.

  58. Büntgen and Di Cosmo, “Climatic and Environmental Aspects,” 5.

  59. Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions, vol. 2, 1291; Ibn al-Athīr, The Chronicle, 216; John of Plano Carpini in The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Christopher Dawson (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 13–14.

  3 • NEW HORDES

  1. Utemish Khadzhi (Ötemish Hājjī), Chingiz-name, trans. and ed. V. P. Iudin, Iu. G. Baranova, and M. Kh. Abuseitova (Almaty: Gilim, 1992), 92–93, 121–122; Thomas Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand: The Ulus of Orda in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 5 (1985–1987), 12n25.

  2. Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, trans. John Andrew Boyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), 266–267; Rashīd al-Dīn, Rashiduddin Fazlullah’s-Jamiʿu’t-tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles: A History of the Mongols, trans. Wheeler Thackston (Cambridge, MA: Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1998–1999), 347–348; Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 8–9; Muʿizz al-ansāb. Proslavliaiushchee genealogii, ed. A. K. Muminov, trans. Sh. Kh. Vokhidov (Almaty, 2006), 39; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 348–351; Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 10.

  3. Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 42.

  4. Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 15n39; C. de Bridia, The Tartar Relation (1237), §23, 27, in Thomas Tanase, ed., Dans l’empire mongol (Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2014), 179–181; George D. Painter, “The Tartar Relation,” in The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, ed. R. A. Skelton, T. E. Marston, and G. D. Painter, new ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 32, 36, 76–77, 80–81.

  5. Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 249, 255; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 348, 391–392, Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 14.

  6. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 312, 393.

  7. Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, 248–255; John of Plano Carpini in The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Christopher Dawson (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 62; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 393; Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 14; Christopher Atwood, “Ulus Emirs, Keshig Elders, Signatures, and Marriage Partners: The Evolution of a Classic Mongol Institution,” in Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth–Twentieth Centuries, ed. David Sneath (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2007), 160. For the anthropology of consensus rituals, a common practice across societies, see, e.g., John Rich, “Consensus Rituals and the Origins of the Principate,” in Il princeps romano: autocrate o magistrato? ed. J-L. Ferrary and J. Scheid, 101–138 (Pavia: IUSS Press, 2015).

  8. See Juvaynī, Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror, 40.

  9. Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 160–161.

  10. Jennifer Holmgren, “Observations on Marriage and Inheritance Practices in Early Mongol and Yuan Society, with Particular Reference to the Levirate,” Journal of Asian History 20, no. 2 (1986): 127–192, 138, quoting the Yuan shi. See also Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 161.

  11. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 348.

  12. On the old Turkic term keshig, see Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 143n1.

  13. Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 143–147; Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian: Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, trans. and ed. Sir Henry Yule (London: J. Murray, 1921), vol. 1, book 2, 379; Louis Bazin, Les systèmes chronologiques dans le monde turc ancien (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1991), 385–412; Veronika Kapišovská, “Expressing Time in Mongolian from Nomadic Tradition to Urban Life,” Mongolica Pragensia: Ethnolinguistics and Sociolinguistics in Synchrony and Diachrony (2004): 63–89; and Brian Baumann, Divine Knowledge: Buddhist Mathematics According to the Anonymous Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 60–97.

  14. Peter Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions: The Nomadic Tradition and Its Interaction with Princely Tentage, 2 vols. (London: Melisende, 1999), vol. 1, 275–287, 292–294, 324–327, 395–396; William of Rubruck in The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Christopher Dawson (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 129. For an overview of the sources, see Christopher Atwood, “Imperial Itinerance and Mobile Pastoralism: The State and Mobility in Medieval Inner Asia,” Inner Asia 17, no. 2 (2015): 293–349, 295.

  15. Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 151–152; Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions, vol. 1, 520, quoting Plano Carpini in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 60.

  16. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 279; Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 147–150.

  17. Atwood, “Ulus Emirs
,” 160–161.

  18. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 117; Tatiana Skrynnikova, “Relations of Domination and Submission: Political Practice in the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan,” in Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-twentieth Centuries, ed. David Sneath (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2007), 105–115.

  19. The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Igor de Rachewiltz (Leiden: Brill, 2004), § 224; Atwood, “Ulus Emirs,” 151.

  20. Plano Carpini in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 39–40.

  21. Christopher Atwood, “Quriltai,” in Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts On File, 2004), 462; Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 1, book 2, 376–380; Bazin, Les systèmes chronologiques, 395; Baumann, Divine Knowledge, 84–85.

  22. Plano Carpini in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 60–66; Atwood, “Quriltai,” 462.