The Horde

by Marie Favereau

  3. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 361; Juvaynī, The History of the World Conqueror, trans. John Andrew Boyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), 268; Rubruck in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 124; Utemish Khadzhi (Ötemish Hājjī), Chingiz-name, trans. and ed. V. P. Iudin, Iu. G. Baranova, and M. Kh. Abuseitova (Almaty: Gilim, 1992), 96.

  4. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 283; Reuven Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Īlkhānid War 1260–1281 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 11–12, 15.

  5. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 11–12, 15–16.

  6. See Peter Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal 22, no. 3–4 (1978): 186–244, 221.

  7. According to Peter Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 209, Chinggis Khan himself granted Azerbaijan and the Caucasus territory of Arran and to the Jochids. But Thomas Allsen, drawing on the Yuan Shi, demonstrates that it was in fact Möngke who granted these lands to Berke. Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251–1259 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 58. See also al-Qāshānī, Tārīkh-i Uljāītū Sultān, ed. Mahīn Hambalī (Tehran, 1969), 146.

  8. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 361; Allsen, Mongol Imperialism, 61–63, 104; Thomas Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand: The Ulus of Orda in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 5 (1985–1987), 16–17.

  9. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 21–22, 26–35.

  10. Denise Aigle, The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 199–218; Bernard Lewis, Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vols. (1974; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), vol. 1, 84–85.

  11. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 34–45.

  12. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism, 218–219; Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 17–18; Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 227–230.

  13. Allsen, “Prelude to the Western Campaigns: Mongol Military Operations in the Volga-Ural Region, 1217–1237,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 3 (1983), 16; Jean Aubin, “L’ethnogenèse des Qaraunas,” Turcica 1 (1969): 65–94; Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 239–244; al-Harawī, Tārīkh Nāma-i Harāt, ed. Gulām Ridā Tabātabāʾī Majd (Tehran, 2004), 260–276. On Berke’s coinage, see Dzmitry Huletski and James Farr, Coins of the Golden Horde: Period of the Great Mongols (1224–1266) (self pub., 2016).

  14. Mu‘izz al-ansāb, 43. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 362; Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 222–223, 226–227, 232–233; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 141–144.

  15. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 111; Michael Hope, Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate of Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 96–97.

  16. Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 233–234; Allsen, Mongol Imperialism, 54–63, 203–207, 218–220; Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 78–80; Favereau, La Horde d’or et le sultanat mamelouk, 69–90; 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. 2, book 4, 494–495; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 362, 511–512; Virgil Ciocîltan, The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 47–49, 61–68; Judith Kolbas, The Mongols in Iran: Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu, 1220–1309 (London: Routledge, 2006), 151–170.

  17. Michal Biran, Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1997), 21–22. It is difficult to know when Hülegü stopped sending the Jochids their share. This might have been just before or after Berke launched his attack in the Caucasus. According to Kolbas, the payouts ended after the military conflict began (The Mongols in Iran, 164). Further complicating the timeline, Wassāf, a fourteenth-century administrator and historian of the Ilkhanids, saw the expulsion of the ortaqs as the main cause of the conflict between Berke and Hülegü: Vladimir Tizengauzen, trans., Sbornik materialov, otnosiashchikhsia k istorii Zolotoi Ordy, vol. 2: Izvlecheniia iz persidskikh sochinenii (Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR, 1941), 80–82. However, the expulsion of the ortaqs was more likely a consequence of the conflict, as various sources place it shortly after Berke’s first operations in the Caucasus.

  18. Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 2, book 4, 495–496; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 511–512. According to Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 234, Hülegu responded, attacking Berke in Jumādā II 661 / April–May 1263. But Rashīd al-Dīn recorded that on 11 Jumādā II 661, Hülegü was in Tabriz and Berke in the lower Volga, so no such altercation is possible.

  19. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zāhir, al-Rawd, 171; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, ed. Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hādī Shu‘ayrī, vol. 30 (Cairo, 1990), 87; David Ayalon, “The Great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān: A Re-examination (Part B),” Studia islamica 34 (1971), 172.

  20. Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” 216–219; Peter Jackson, “World-Conquest and Local Accommodation: Threat and Blandishment in Mongol Diplomacy,” in History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honour of John E. Woods, ed. J. Pfeiffer and Sh. A. Quinn (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 17; Peter Jackson, “The Testimony of the Russian ‘Archbishop’ Peter Concerning the Mongols (1244 / 5): Precious Intelligence or Timely Disinformation?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26, no. 1–2 (2016), 65–77, 76; Allsen, Mongol Imperialism, 49, 74, 177; Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 157–159. See also Charles Melville, “Anatolia under the Mongols,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 1: Byzantium to Turkey 1071–1453, ed. Kate Fleet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 53–57.

  21. Claude Cahen “Kaykā’ūs,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1978), vol. 4, 813–814.

  22. Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History, c. 1071–1330 (New York: Taplinger, 1968), 277–279, 283; Melville, “Anatolia under the Mongols,” 57–60; Jean Richard, “Byzance et les Mongols,” Byzantinische Forschungen 25 (1999): 83–100; Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 158–159; Georges Pachymérès, Relations historiques, ed. Albert Failler, trans. Laurent Vitalien, 5 vols. (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1984), vol. 1, 184–185, 188–189, 234–235.

  23. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zāhir, al-Rawd, 125. Depending on the sources, Berke was either the brother-in-law or son-in-law of the Seljuq sultan. See Favereau, La Horde d’or et le sultanat mamelouk, 79.

  24. Franz Dölger, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des oströmischen Reiches von 565–1453, vol. 3: years 1204–1282 (Munich: Beck, 1932), 40, nbs 1902–1903–1904; Reuven Amitai, “Diplomacy and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Re-examination of the Mamluk-Byzantine-Genoese Triangle in the Late Thirteenth Century in Light of the Existing Early Correspondence,” Oriente Moderno 88, no. 2 (2008), 363–364; Sergei Karpov, “Grecs et Latins à Trébizonde (xiiie–xve siècle): Collaboration économique, rapports politiques,” in État et colonisation au Moyen ge et à la Renaissance, ed. M. Balard, 413–424 (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1989); Richard, “Byzance et les Mongols,” 96n34.

  25. Pachymérès, Relations historiques, vol. 1, 234–239, 242–243. On the delayed embassy, see Ibn ʿAbd al-Zāhir, al-Rawd, 173–174, 202–203; Dölger, Regesten, 44–45 (nb. 1919), 46 (nb. 1930), 47 (nb. 1933), 49 (nbs. 1937–1938); Amitai, “Diplomacy and the Slave Trade,” 359–360.

  26. Pachymérès, Relations historiques, vol. 1, 300–313; Die Seltschukengeschichte des Ibn Bībī, trans. Herbert W. Duda (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1959), 285.

  27. Rubruck in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 93.

  28. Roman K. Kovalev, “The I
nfrastructure of the Northern Part of the ‘Fur Road’ between the Middle Volga and the East during the Middle Ages,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 11 (2000–2001), 35.

  29. Al-Mas‘ūdī, quoted in Kovalev, “The Infrastructure,” 27.

  30. For an overview of the fur trade before and after the Mongol conquests, see Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

  31. Ibn al-Athīr quoted in Janet Martin, “The Land of Darkness and the Golden Horde: The Fur Trade under the Mongols XIII–XIVth Centuries,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 19, no. 4 (1978): 404.

  32. Kovalev, “The Infrastructure,” 25–64; Martin, “The Land of Darkness,” 401–421.

  33. Rubruck in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 90.

  34. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 512. Historians disagree over Hülegü’s status and title at the end of his life. See Thomas T. Allsen, “Changing Forms of Legitimation in Mongol Iran,” in Rulers from the Steppe: State Formation on the Eurasian Periphery, ed. G. Seaman and D. Marks (Los Angeles: Ethnographics Press, University of Southern California, 1991), 226–227; Reuven Amitai-Preiss, “Evidence for the Early Use of the Title il-khan among the Mongols,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1, no. 3 (1991): 353–362; Reuven Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 13–15; Kolbas, The Mongols in Iran, 193–234.

  35. Rubruck in Dawson, The Mongol Mission to Asia, 124; Abū’l-Ghāzī, Histoire des Mongols, 181; Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1994), 83–87; István Vásáry, “‘History and Legend’ in Berke Khan’s Conversion to Islam,” in Aspects of Altaic Civilization III, ed. Denis Sinor, 230–252 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1990); Favereau, La Horde d’or et le sultanat mamelouk, 27–39.

  36. The text of Berke’s letter is summarized and recorded in Arabic sources, esp. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zāhir, al-Rawd, 171; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 30, 87. See also Ayalon, “The Great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān,” 167–169; Marie Favereau, “The first letter of Khan Berke to Sultan Baybars, according to the Mamluk sources (661 / 1263)” (in Russian), Zolotoordynskaia Tsivilizatsia 4 (2011): 101–113.

  37. Baybars al-Dawādār, Zubdat al-fikra, fī tārīkh al-hijra, ed. D. S. Richards (Berlin: Das arabische Buch, 1998), 82–83.

  38. Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks, 30–31; Aigle, The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality, 5–6, 73–74; Ibn ‘Abd al-Zāhir, al-Rawd, 215, 217; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, vol. 27, 358–359; DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 84.

  39. Mu’izz al-ansāb, 41; Ibn ‘Abd al-Zāhir, al-Rawd, 216; Ibn Abī al-Fadā’il, “al-Nahj,” 459–460. Some scholars, such as Joseph Fletcher, have argued that political fratricide was a Mongol practice. Joseph Fletcher, “Turco-Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3–4 (1979–1980): 236–251. But others have demonstrated that this view is incorrect; see Marie Favereau and Liesbeth Geevers, “The Golden Horde, the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy, and the Construction of Ruling Dynasties,” in Prince, Pen and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives, ed. Maaike van Berkel and Jeroen Duindam (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 458–470.

  5 • THE MONGOL EXCHANGE

  1. 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), 279, 348–351; Muʿizz al-ansāb. Proslavliaiushchee genealogii, ed. A. K. Muminov, trans. Sh. Kh. Vokhidov (Almaty, 2006), 39–40; Thomas Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand: The Ulus of Orda in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 5 (1985–1987), 10, 34–35.

  2. 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. 2, book 4, 479; 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), 12; Walther Heissig, The Religions of Mongolia, trans. Geoffrey Samuel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 101–110.

  3. Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 2, book 4, 479; Plano Carpini in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 59–60; Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 12–13, 27–28.

  4. Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 2, book 4, 479–481, 484–486.

  5. Plano Carpini in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 30; 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), 170–171. See also Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 13–14, 29, 33–34. Modern Samoyeds live in the Lower Ob area, whereas medieval Samoyeds dwelled in the Sayan Mountains.

  6. Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. 2, book 4, 479; Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 348. See also Allsen, “Princes of the Left Hand,” 19.

  7. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 435; Vladimir Belyaev and Sergey Sidorovich, “Juchid Coin with Chinese Legend,” Archivum Eurasiae Erasiae Medii Aevi 20 (2013): 5–22; Yihao Qiu, “Independent Ruler, Indefinable Role: Understanding the History of the Golden Horde from the Perspectives of the Yuan Dynasty,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 143 (2018), 41–42; Utemish Khadzhi, Chingiz-name, trans. and ed. V. P. Iudin, Iu. G. Baranova, and M. Kh. Abuseitova (Almaty, 1992), 101 [45 a]. Kölüg (meaning “best” and “strong pack horse”) had been a name or title of the Turkic Khaghan. I am grateful to Ilnur Mirgaleev for sharing this information.

  8. Nurettin Aǧat, Altınordu (Cuçi oǧulları) Paraları Kataloǧu 1250–1502. Ek olarak şecere ve tarih düzeltmeleri (Istanbul, 1976), 54–55; István Vásáry, “The Jochid Realm: The Western Steppe 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), 76–77; Pavel Petrov, “Jochid Money and Monetary Policy in the 13th–15th Centuries,” in The Golden Horde in World History, ed. Rafael Khakimov, Vadim Trepavlov, and Marie Favereau, 614–629 (Kazan: Sh. Marjani Institute of the History of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, 2017), 619–620.

  9. Petrov, “Jochid Money and Monetary Policy,” 620–621.

  10. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 520; Michal Biran, Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1997), 23–25.

  11. Transoxiana, literally “beyond the Oxus River,” was the historical name for the region stretching between the Amu-Daria (Oxus) and Syr-Daria rivers.

  12. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 521–522; Biran, Qaidu, 26–29; Hodong Kim, “The Unity of the Mongol Empire and Continental Exchange over Eurasia,” Journal of Central Eurasian Studies 1 (2009): 15–42, 26.

  13. Rashīd al-Dīn, Compendium of Chronicles, 535; Biran, Qaidu, 30–33.

  14. It is not entirely clear in the sources whether the rebellious princes sent Nomuqan first to Qaidu or directly to Möngke-Temür. On Qaidu’s politics, see Biran, Qaidu, 27–28, 37–67; Kim, “The Unity of the Mongol Empire,” 20–26; Yihao Qiu, “An Episode of the Conflict between Qaidu and Yuan in Mamluk Arabic Chronicles,” in Mongol Warfare between Steppe and Sown, ed. Francesca Fiaschetti and Konstantin Golev (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

  15. Biran, Qaidu, 63–65.

  16. Thomas Allsen, “Mongol Census Taking in Rus’, 1245–1275,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 5, no. 1 (1981): 32–53, 46–47.

  17. On the development of tarkhan status in the Horde, see Marie Favereau, “Tarkhan: A Nomad Institution in an Islamic Context,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 143 (2018): 181–205.

  18. Alexandr Zimin, “Iarl
yki tatarskikh khanov russkim mitropolitam,” in Pamiatniki russkovo prava, vol. 3: Pamiatniki prava perioda obrazovaniia russkovo tsentralizovannovo gosudarstva, XIV–XV vv., ed. Lev V. Cherepnin (Moscow, 1955), 467–468.

  19. On Mongol religious toleration, see Christopher Atwood, “Validation by Holiness or Sovereignty: Religious Toleration as Political Theology in the Mongol World Empire of the Thirteenth Century,” International History Review 26, no. 2 (2004): 237–256.

  20. V. L. Ianin, “Medieval Novgorod,” in The Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 196.

  21. At some point between 1266 and 1272, Möngke-Temür ordered the Novgorodians to allow German traders safe passage. The Russian version of Möngke-Temür’s order appears in Gramoty Velikovo Novgoroda i Pskova, ed. Sigizmund N. Valk (Moscow / Leningrad, 1949), 57; Ianin, “Medieval Novgorod,” 199.