EntranceHow long did the Golden Horde last? Golden Horde
“BUSINESS Online” continues to publish chapters from Rafael Khakimov’s new book “What is it like to be a Tatar?” Part 16
It is completely natural to consider the Tatars Tatar-speaking. But it was not there. IN scientific literature There are very different opinions on this matter. Some experts consider the early Tatars to be Mongol-speaking, without any reason, says the director of the Institute of History. Marjani Rafael Khakimov.
“I ASKED TO BRING ME DOCUMENTS IN MONGOLIAN LANGUAGE. THEY WERE NOT AVAILABLE. ALL DOCUMENTS ARE WRITTEN IN TATAR"
The truth should be served like a coat, not thrown in your face like a wet towel.
Mark Twain
One of the historiographical stereotypes claims that the Golden Horde had two state languages: Mongolian and another... Here everyone stumbles, trying to choose the appropriate option and not call it Tatar. Moreover, with the first language there is no doubt: since the Mongolian Empire, that means the language is Mongolian. And with the second, amazing adventures begin, where the imagination of scientists works to its fullest.
I am a physicist by training, and the traditions of historiography do not greatly affect me, at least they do not determine approaches to the study of history. Therefore, I asked our specialists to bring me documents in Mongolian. There weren't any. All documents are written in Tatar. And how do you like it?
The question arises, because scientists are serious people, they had to rely on something in their conclusions about the Mongolian language. Indeed, in 1930, on the left bank of the Volga near the village of Ternovka, a manuscript on birch bark dating from the beginning of the 14th century was found. It is written in the Uyghur alphabet, mostly in Mongolian, and less in Uyghur. Some put an end to this, others still continue. The birch bark scroll contains lyrical poems. This single case serves as an argument for some in favor of the prevalence Mongolian language among the Tatars, including the Khan's administration. Agree, this is not a document, but poetry, and on birch bark. The khan's office contained both paper and parchment.
Photo: archive.gov.tatarstan.ru
It turned out that everyone refers to the same author - A.P. Grigorieva, which builds everything on a single quote from a message Plano Carpini: “...We presented the letter and asked to give us interpreters who could translate it. They were given to us... And together with them we carefully translated the letter into Russian and Saracen writings and into Tatar writings; this translation was presented to Batu, and he read and noted it carefully.” This quote is followed by the statement: “So, during the time of the first Golden Horde Khan Batu (1227–1255), the Golden Horde office conducted office work in the Mongolian language.” This conclusion was made from the arbitrary identification of the Tatars with the Mongols, although nothing prevents us from assuming that Batu read in Tatar, since Carpini directly states that the text was translated into Tatar. It never occurred to any of the historians to suggest that Batu could read the Tatar language. Since Batu allegedly read Mongolian, it means that the language of the Horde was Mongolian. This statement has become generally accepted; scientists simply refer to Grigoriev as an authoritative researcher of Golden Horde documents. This is how a false story is made.
Of the entire cohort of authoritative scientists, the exception wasMirkasym Usmanov, who saw no reason to consider the early acts of the Juchids as Mongol-language, especially since their language cannot be judged from Russian translations, as Grigoriev does. How can you guess in a Russian document that it was translated from Mongolian? According to supposedly “Mongolian” terminology? But the Mongolian language was under the strong influence of the Tatar language. It was not the Tatars who borrowed terminology from the Mongols, but, on the contrary, it migrated from Tatar to the Mongolian language, which has been proven by linguists.
No less interesting is the situation with Tatar language in the Golden Horde. It would seem completely natural to consider the Tatars Tatar-speaking, but that was not the case. In the scientific literature there are very different opinions on this matter. Some experts consider the early Tatars to be Mongol-speaking, without any reason to do so.
Prev The position about the Mongol-speaking Tatars is based on the opinion that the Mongols, of course, spoke only Mongolian, but the Tatars, they say, need to be dealt with. Why not assume the opposite? It cannot be ruled out that the medieval Mongols knew the Tatar language. Thus, from the text of the “Secret Legend” it is clear that Genghis Khan communicates freely with representatives of the clearly Turkic-speaking Onguts (“White Tatars”), Karluks, and Uyghurs. This does not mean that everyone around spoke Mongolian; it is logical to assume that Genghis Khan, being from the “Black Tatars,” knew his native language.
Some researchers claim the existence of a mixed Tatar-Mongol pidgin in the Middle Ages, although there is no information about this.
An extensive literature has emerged around the language of the Golden Horde, trying to find the influence on the Tatars of not only Mongolian, but also Uyghur, Kipchak, Karakhanid, Karluk, Chagatai dialects, called official language Oguz-Kypchak, Khorezm-Volga, Volga-Golden Horde, Turkic or Turkic.
In books, writers and artists always depict Tatars as slanted, and in films for some reason they speak Kazakh, but the Tatars and Mongols of the Golden Horde are not at all similar to modern Mongols.Lev Gumilevwrites: “The ancient Mongols were, according to the testimony of chroniclers and the finds of frescoes in Manchuria, a tall, bearded, fair-haired and blue-eyed people... Temujin was tall and majestic in stature, with a broad forehead and a long beard. The personality is militant and strong. This makes him different from others." Despite the evidence of chroniclers, in all portraits Genghis Khan is depicted as a typical Mongoloid, with rare exceptions. In a Chinese drawing of the 13th - 14th centuries, which depicts Genghis Khan during a falconry, it is clearly not canonical.
“THE DESIRE TO CALL THE LANGUAGE OF THE HORDE CHAGATAI, TURKIC CAN BE EXPLAINED BY ONLY ONE REASON...”
The transformation of Tatars into Mongols has become a historiographical tradition. At the same time, all sources unanimously speak about the Tatar language, in which they wrote in the Golden Horde. In the “Letter on the Way of Life of the Tatars” by the Dominican missionary Juliana(1238) there is the following evidence of the message of the Khan of the Golden Horde to the King of Hungary: “The message was written in pagan script, but in the Tatar language.” We are talking about runic writing, which was used in the Golden Horde.
Each language has its own speaker - a specific people. The spoken Tatar language of the Middle Ages differed from the clerical and literary language, and the spoken language in its details could also differ from territory to territory. Nevertheless, the language is tied to the people and their state, unless, of course, it is dead language like Latin. The desire to call the language of the Horde Chagatai, Turkic, etc. can be explained by only one reason - the desire not to call it Tatar. There are proposals to call the official language of the Golden Horde Old Tatar or, as a compromise, Turkic-Tatar. There is no need for this, because it can unmistakably be called the Tatar language of office work!
He who has a country has a language.
Tatar proverb
"GARVARD UNIVERSITY OFFERED US TO HOLD A FORUM WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF MINTIMER SHAIMIEV"
It is wonderful that America was discovered, but it would have been much more wonderful if Columbus had sailed by.
Mark Twain
In 1994, after the signing of the famous Treaty between Moscow and Kazan, the reputation of Tatarstan began to grow, although some newspapers like The Washington Post called us the island of “communism”. Then Harvard University invited us to hold a forum with the participationMintimera Shaimieva. Presidents of many countries and famous politicians spoke at this forum. Quite a prestigious event, where university professors and numerous journalists can ask any questions, and there is a live broadcast on cable television. Of course, in our presidential office there were those who dissuaded Shaimiev from the trip, saying that he was not at your level, but in the end Mintimer Sharipovich made up his mind and we flew to Boston.
I have already written about the political side of this event. I’ll tell you about the historical part: the forum was opened by a famous American SlavistEdward Kinnan. He is a notorious historian, hated by many Russian scientists, because for many years he wrote that “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is an 18th-century forgery, falsified by a Czech linguistYosef Dobrovsky. I remember that his thick and good book, which was still in print, received critical articles in Russia even before its publication.
Kinnan wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Kazan Khanate and the relationship between Kazan and Moscow. Opening the forum, he said that he was faced with a difficult task - to talk about the 500-year history of the Tatars in five minutes. That's where we met. Later, while in Washington, I visited him at the old Dumbarton Oaks mansion in the suburb of the American capital, Georgetown. It is known as the largest center of Byzantine studies. There is a park adjacent to it. The estate along with the park and museum Byzantine art and Pre-Columbian Civilization is administered by a trustee of Harvard University. Kinnan, as a trustee, sat in the historical office where the charter of the League of Nations (UN) was once developed and adopted.
I needed to talk about his doctoral dissertation for publication in Kazan and about the concept of volume IV of “History of the Tatars from Ancient Times.” We walked around the park and talked about different topics. By the way, he was aware of all the affairs in Tatarstan and reported the latest news from the Internet. His Russian was simply brilliant, without the slightest accent.
He did not dare to publish his doctoral dissertation in Russian, explaining that at one time he lacked many materials that are now in circulation: “You can publish it in English, there are not many specialists here, and you are better prepared to publish your dissertation in English without reworking it.” Russian language is not allowed." Nevertheless, his idea of the clan structure of the Tatar khanates became a generally accepted theme. He once noted in an interview that the clan system has not yet been eliminated in Russia.
I was most concerned with “The History of the Tatars...”, especially volume IV, dedicated to the Tatar khanates. There was no clarity about the boundaries of this period. He asked:
What year do you want to complete the fourth volume?
I answered:
Naturally, 1552.
Will not work.
Why?
The Tatar factor disappears from the world stage only with the fall of the Crimean Khanate.
But that when we get into Russian history.
Where will you go...
So he summed up our conversation and explained that the post-Golden Horde period was a time of fragile alliances between Moscow, Kazan and Crimea. All three players fought for the Horde heritage.
All Russian historiography trying to prove that the Russians fought the Golden Horde is a lie: the Russians were loyal to the existing government and did not think about secession, but they dreamed of moving the capital from Saray to Moscow. And in this the Russians were helped by part of the Tatars who settled in Moscow during the time of Daniel. Moscow was originally semi-Tatar. It was constantly replenished with Tatars looking for a better life, career growth, or simply adventurers.
There was absolutely no need for us to involve the Tatars in Russian history (and even with criticism); this would inevitably create an unhealthy political situation. But, fortunately for us, there were enough Moscow objective authors. They wrote the most difficult pages in Russian-Tatar relations. In addition, Russian historians had problems within their ranks; concepts appeared on the historical field that were not up to the Tatars.
We did the same with the Khazar Kaganate. Moscow specialists wrote about the Khazars. After the release of the first volume, where a lot was said about the Khazars, a representative of the Jewish community of Kazan approached me and expressed his opinion:
We read the first volume. Yes. Everything is written correctly about the Khazars.
That's what yours wrote...
Thank you.
Listen to other people's advice, but live by your own mind.
(The boss has arrived)
Moscow network community in last days was excited by the discovery of the book by the Khakass scholar Tyundeshev, “The Great Khan Batu - the Founder of Russian Statehood.” But the title of the book correctly reflects the essence - the governance of Russia is still carried out according to the System laid down in the Golden Horde (from Confucian legality to the veneration of the Chief).
What are the remains Kievan Rus and the Golden Horde existed in a kind of symbiosis; this is the basis not only of the Eurasian theory (which emerged in the first third of the twentieth century), but also the worldview system of many Russian historians. Therefore, Gennady Aleksandrovich Tyundeshev (Haramoos), Associate Professor at the Institute of History and Law of Khakassia state university them. N.F. Katanova, candidate legal sciences, in his book only systematized these theories.
The state created by Batu Khan still exists, although the state language is now Russian (a mixture of Slavic and Turkic), about the language of the founder Russian Empire are reminiscent of terms in the names of institutes state power and rights such as: treasury, customs, law, money, Boyar Duma, pit service, punishment, guard, etc. Thanks to Khan Batu, warriors and shepherds of the steppes became residents of cities - officials, merchants, industrialists, artisans, land owners and farmers, builders of roads, caravanserais, hospitals and schools. In Russian they remind us of this the following words: book, pencil, teacher, scientist, hour, etc.
The Russian (Muscovite) proto-state was as much a part of the Horde as the Crimean, Kazan, Astrakhan khanates, the Uzbek ulus, on the ruins of which the Nogai Horde, the Kazakh and Siberian khanates on Tobol, and the Khiva khanates arose. De jure, Russia finally left the control of the Horde only at the beginning of the 18th century, when Peter I stopped paying tribute to the Crimean Khanate (the strongest fragment of the Horde until that time). Those. from this moment on, Russia becomes the sole legal successor of the Horde.
Rus' began to pay tribute to the Sarai khans, for which it had a merchant fleet on the Volga, a religious residence in Sarai, and the exemption of the Russian Orthodox Church from all types of taxes. For its part, Rus' had, in the person of the metropolis, which for it was the Golden Horde, spiritual and military support in numerous wars with its northwestern neighbors, such as the Kingdom of Sweden and the German Teutonic Order, Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Hungary. Galician Rus', Volyn, Chernigov and other principalities that were outside the protection of the Golden Horde. Thus, the choice of Prince Alexander Nevsky, the conqueror of the Swedes and Teutons, the adopted son and favorite of Batu Khan, was apparently made based on the theory of the least evil, in favor of symbiosis with the Golden Horde. And this choice was approved by the people and consecrated by the Russian Orthodox Church, and the canonization of Alexander Nevsky as an Orthodox saint is a clear confirmation of this.
This choice was also followed by other prominent figures of Rus' of the Golden Horde era of subsequent generations, for example, the Moscow prince Ivan Kalita, which was duly appreciated by the Horde authorities, when, after the suppression of the anti-Horde uprising in Tver, for active participation in this act, Kalita became the Grand Duke of All Rus' by the will of the Golden Horde khan.
Today's Russia was not formed on the soil of Kievan Rus, which split into eight sovereign states back in the 12th century, a century before the appearance of the “Mongols”, not in competition with the Horde, with whom the Russians had no friction on religious or cultural grounds and at the same time there was mutual interest in connection with the need to protect the western borders. Russia arose on completely new Moscow soil, which was organic part Golden Horde statehood; it grew out of Muscovy’s rivalry with the khanates that were previously part of the Golden Horde for the right to inherit the disintegrating great state.
The traditions of the Golden Horde have long been rooted in the life of Russia. Many laws and elements of the culture of the Golden Horde were so strong that they existed not only in the era of the German Tsars of Russia, but have also survived to this day.
Here is what historian M.G. Khudyakov writes about this: “ State system, introduced by the conquerors in the conquered country, represented the height of deliberation and discipline in comparison with the patriarchal way of life that existed in Rus' before the Tatars. "Asian" heritage was a matter of pride, not condemnation. It was an organic element of Russian life: the Russian language and culture are simply saturated with Turkic borrowings.
Moscow as the center of formation of Russian statehood, unlike Suzdal, Vladimir or Novgorod, emerged directly from the Golden Horde environment. And not so much due to the collection of taxes, but because she adopted many “Tatar” laws and political traditions.
The language of the Moscow bureaucracy was a kind of meta-Turkic language - a transliterated tracing paper of Turkic-Tatar formulas and forms. Apparently, Moscow bureaucratic papers followed a certain Horde format, right down to their artistic design.
The clerical language of the Golden Horde was Turkic, written first in Uyghur script and then in Arabic script. Almost instantly it became the language of interethnic communication throughout the entire Ulus of Jochi. Russian scribes knew both the Turkic language and Arabic script. This is confirmed by numerous finds of Arabic script on documents and objects of Russian everyday life of those years, made by Russian craftsmen, and even by a completely natural transition from Russian to Turkic in “Walking across Three Seas” by the Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin.”
There was also a collegial body of popular representation in the Golden Horde - the so-called kurultai. The sons of the khan took part in it, his immediate family(princes), widows of khans, emirs, noyons, temniks, etc. The will of the khan, his decision at the kurultai was final and indisputable. Today, its almost complete analogue is the State Duma.
The prince and historian N.S. Trubetskoy wrote in his works that “the Russian Tsar was the heir of the Mongol Khan. "Overthrow Tatar yoke“came down to replacing the Tatar khan with an Orthodox king and moving the khan’s headquarters to Moscow.” The conclusion is unexpected from the point of view of our usual textbooks, but the events of subsequent Russian history directly indicate its validity.
We present an excerpt from Tyundeshev’s book “Great Khan Batu - Founder of Russian Statehood,” in which he describes the elements of the Horde statehood, which not only survived to Putin’s “vertical of power” and “sovereign statehood,” but also became their basis.
“With the reign of Khan Udegei, Chinese influence on the system of government began, the replacement of law with Confucianism.
In the Turkic-Mongolian state, “the type of society that existed in China and was supported in every possible way for centuries, and corresponds to what Confucianism proposed, began to dominate. The social unit is a family with a hierarchical organization and almost absolute power head of the family. The community and the state itself must conform to this model of the family and avoid any significant interference in the wide range of affairs assigned to it. A resident of the community was supposed to strictly follow the rituals corresponding to the status that the resident has in the community. Compliance with rituals prescribed by custom replaced law-abiding behavior in China.
In this static concept of society, the main principles were: filial love, subordination to those higher in the hierarchy, the prohibition of any excesses and disturbances.” In the Chinese concept, law plays a secondary role, mainly repressive. “In the 7th century, Emperor Kang Shi openly stated: “The number of lawsuits will increase unprecedentedly if people are not afraid to go to court, hoping to easily find justice there... Half of our subjects will not be enough to resolve the disputes of the other half. Therefore, I demand that those who approach the courts be treated mercilessly, so that they feel disgusted with the law and tremble with fear at the very thought of appearing before a judge.”
Therefore, these historical factors exacerbated hostility towards the law. In addition, there are other factors, “among them, in the foreground, is the poor (deliberately poor) organization of justice, which does not bother the authorities at all.
The official entrusted with administering justice is very far from the litigants because, according to general rule, he is invited to this post from another province and therefore does not know local dialects and customs well. Its employees, with whom the litigants deal directly, are corrupt. They deliberately delay the process, because they feed from it. The treatment of the litigants is humiliating, and the outcome of the trial is always doubtful. “A case won is money lost,” says a popular saying.
All this encourages the Chinese to bypass the courts and resolve disputes through out-of-court procedures.” In other words, for Chinese society, laws are not a normal means of resolving conflicts between people. “Laws, from the perspective of Confucianism, have no significance for the improvement of society, the fewer there are, the better, appeal to justice is immoral, and all these postulates are firmly entrenched in the public consciousness,” from the Golden Horde (Russia) to the modern Russian Federation .
“We highly value, for example, the Russian revolutionary democrats of the 19th century (Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, etc.), their critical judgments about the legal institutions of law in Tsarist Russia are fair. However, in their system of views, law is not assigned any positive role; they do not see it important factor social transformations, formation of democratic institutions. Accordingly, the influence that these authors had on public consciousness (and this influence was significant) did not contribute to the understanding of the value of law, its prestige, or the development of legal consciousness.”
This is where the fundamental difference between Russia and the West comes from, the most important of which is that the West tends to strive to build life on a legal basis, while Russia prefers to them an order based on moral principles, i.e. on Confucianism. Hence, to this day, Russians have a negative attitude towards the law, expressed in the proverb: “the law, wherever you blow it, comes out” and a lack of faith in justice, dubbed “Basman justice.”
The roots of this attitude to law lead to the Golden Horde (Russia). After the death of Genghis Khan, there was a departure from what he proposed - “a society built on the law” (Great Yasa). Instead, legality was replaced by Confucianism, and in Russia it has taken root and is still alive. The vitality of Confucianism, embedded in the Golden Horde (Russia) and its adaptability in different historical periods, was and is.
Here, as an example, we point out Slavophilism, which developed in the middle of the last century. Thus, “one of the active Slavophiles I. Aksakov Jr. wrote: “Look at the West. The peoples were carried away by vainglorious motives, believed in the possibility of governmental perfection, created republics, set up constitutions - and became impoverished in soul, ready to collapse every minute.” All this does not suit Russia.
The poet of the last century had every reason to depict the position of the Slavophiles with the following lines: “Russians are broad in nature. Our ideal of truth. Doesn’t fit into narrow legal forms.” It so happened historically that Russian society and the state have long been characterized by a lack of law and legal consciousness. The ideology of Slavophilism is both a reflection and justification of this. The approaches characteristic of it are quite tenacious, and in one form or another they were encountered more than once later.
Another example is the views of L.N. Tolstoy. His contrasting formula “you need to live not according to the law, but according to your conscience” is not accidental. The hostility to law that distinguished Tolstoy the writer became even deeper in the late Tolstoy, the moralist, who called law “a disgusting deception” and jurisprudence “chatter about law.”
If in L. Tolstoy the opposition of spiritual principles and conscience to right and law is accompanied by an outright “annihilation” of these latter, then among Russian philosophers of the early twentieth century (N. Berdyaev, P. Struve and others) there is no such open criticism, but the logic of reasoning leads to very conclusions that are unattractive to the law.
Let us emphasize once again that this attitude towards law still exists in Russia. This is one of the proofs that Batu Khan is the founder Russian state. From the very first days of his rule over the Golden Horde (Russia), Batu Khan began strengthening the state from within. New postal and caravan roads were opened and old ones were restored. Cities destroyed during the war were rebuilt. The administrative apparatus and its structure, with financial and tax systems, were formed quite quickly for such a vast state.”
At what stage of education do schoolchildren usually become familiar with the concept of the “Golden Horde”? 6th grade, of course. A history teacher tells children how the Orthodox people suffered from foreign invaders. One gets the impression that in the thirteenth century Rus' experienced the same brutal occupation as in the forties of the last century. But is it worth it to so blindly draw parallels between the Third Reich and the medieval semi-nomadic state? And what did it mean for the Slavs Tatar-Mongol yoke? What was the Golden Horde for them? “History” (6th grade, textbook) is not the only source on this topic. There are other, more thorough works of researchers. Let's take an adult look at a fairly long period of time in the history of our native fatherland.
The beginning of the Golden Horde
Europe first became acquainted with the Mongolian nomadic tribes in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Genghis Khan's troops reached the Adriatic and could successfully advance further - to Italy and to Italy. But the dream of the great conqueror came true - the Mongols were able to scoop up water from the Western Sea with their helmet. Therefore, an army of thousands returned to their steppes. For another twenty years, the Mongol Empire and feudal Europe existed without colliding in any way, as if in parallel worlds. In 1224, Genghis Khan divided his kingdom between his sons. This is how the Ulus (province) of Jochi appeared - the westernmost in the empire. If we ask ourselves what the Golden Horde is, then the starting point of this state formation can be considered the year 1236. It was then that the ambitious Khan Batu (son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan) began his Western campaign.
What is the Golden Horde
This military operation, which lasted from 1236 to 1242, significantly expanded the territory of the Jochi ulus to the west. However, it was too early to talk about the Golden Horde then. Ulus is administrative unit in the great and it was dependent on the central government. However, Khan Batu (in Russian chronicles Batu) in 1254 moved his capital to the Lower Volga region. There he established the capital. Khan founded Big City Saray-Batu (now a place near the village of Selitrennoye in the Astrakhan region). In 1251, a kurultai was held, where Mongke was elected emperor. Batu came to the capital Karakorum and supported the heir to the throne. Other contenders were executed. Their lands were divided between Mongke and the Chingizids (including Batu). The term “Golden Horde” itself appeared much later - in 1566, in the book “Kazan History”, when this state itself had already ceased to exist. The self-name of this territorial entity was “Ulu Ulus”, which means “Grand Duchy” in Turkic.
Years of the Golden Horde
Showing loyalty to Mongke Khan served Batu well. His ulus received greater autonomy. But the state gained complete independence only after the death of Batu (1255), already during the reign of Khan Mengu-Timur, in 1266. But even then, nominal dependence on the Mongol Empire remained. This enormously expanded ulus included Volga Bulgaria, Northern Khorezm, Western Siberia, Desht-i-Kipchak (steppes from the Irtysh to the Danube itself), North Caucasus and Crimea. By area public education can be compared with the Roman Empire. Its southern outskirts were Derbent, and its northeastern limits were Isker and Tyumen in Siberia. In 1257, his brother ascended the throne of the ulus (ruled until 1266). He converted to Islam, but most likely for political reasons. Islam did not affect the broad masses of the Mongols, but it gave the khan the opportunity to attract Arab artisans and traders from Central Asia and the Volga Bulgars to his side.
The Golden Horde reached its greatest prosperity in the 14th century, when Uzbek Khan (1313-1342) ascended the throne. Under him, Islam became the state religion. After the death of Uzbek, the state began to experience an era feudal fragmentation. Tamerlane's campaign (1395) drove the last nail into the coffin of this great but short-lived power.
End of the Golden Horde
In the 15th century the state collapsed. Small independent principalities appeared: the Nogai Horde (the first years of the 15th century), Kazan, Crimean, Astrakhan, Uzbek. The central government remained and continued to be considered supreme. But the times of the Golden Horde are over. The power of the successor became increasingly nominal. This state was called the Great Horde. It was located in the Northern Black Sea region and extended to the Lower Volga region. The Great Horde ceased to exist only at the beginning of the sixteenth century, having been absorbed
Rus' and Ulus Jochi
The Slavic lands were not part of the Mongol Empire. What the Golden Horde is, the Russians could only judge from the westernmost ulus of Jochi. The rest of the empire and its metropolitan splendor remained out of sight of the Slavic princes. Their relations with the Jochi ulus at certain periods were of a different nature - from partnership to outright slavery. But in most cases it was a typically feudal relationship between feudal lord and vassal. Russian princes came to the capital of the Jochi ulus, the city of Sarai, and paid homage to the khan, receiving from him a “label” - the right to govern their state. He was the first to do this in 1243. Therefore, the most influential and first in subordination was the label for the Vladimir-Suzdal reign. Because of this, during the Tatar-Mongol yoke, the center of all Russian lands shifted. The city of Vladimir became it.
“Terrible” Tatar-Mongol yoke
The history textbook for the sixth grade depicts the misfortunes that the Russian people suffered under the occupiers. However, not everything was so sad. The princes first used Mongol troops in the fight against their enemies (or pretenders to the throne). Such military support had to be paid for. Then, in the days of the princes, they had to give part of their income from taxes to the khan of the Jochi ulus - their lord. This was called the “Horde exit.” If the payment was delayed, the bakauls arrived and collected taxes themselves. But at the same time, the Slavic princes ruled the people, and their life continued as before.
Peoples of the Mongol Empire
If we ask ourselves the question of what the Golden Horde is from the point of view political system, then there is no clear answer. At first it was a semi-military and semi-nomadic alliance of Mongol tribes. Very quickly - within one or two generations - impact force the conquering troops assimilated among the conquered population. Already at the beginning of the 14th century, Russians called the Horde “Tatars.” The ethnographic composition of this empire was very heterogeneous. Alans, Uzbeks, Kipchaks and other nomadic or sedentary peoples permanently lived here. The khans encouraged the development of trade, crafts and the construction of cities in every possible way. There was no discrimination based on nationality or religion. In the capital of the ulus - Sarai - an Orthodox bishopric was even formed in 1261, so numerous was the Russian diaspora here.
About the history of the Golden Horde, its poetry and culture as reported by the Russian Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Mongol warriors, among them we see a detachment commander on a horse and a signalman on a camel.
Mongol warriors, among them we see a detachment commander on a horse and a signalman on a camel. From a Mongolian history site.
So, from a program about the history and poetry of the Golden Horde, published in December 2004 on the Russian Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The guest of the program was Ravil Bukharaev, a historian of the Golden Horde and translator of its poets, below is the program in the text in a partial transcript of the website, you can listen to it in full at audio file:
Ravil Bukharaev talks about the origin of the Horde:
“The invasion of neighboring countries was Mongolian. When the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, approached the Caspian Sea, they walked around it in six months. Then, after that, they encountered the Russians on the (river) Kalka (May 31, 1223. Approx. site), already exhausted by this campaign around the entire Caspian Sea, these were pure Mongols.
But later, when Genghis Khan no longer led the invasion of Rus' and Europe (a new, second invasion occurred 13 years later. Note... by that time he had already died, the Genghisid princes took over the leadership. Batu was ahead, but he was far from The main one among the Genghisid princes was Guyuk (grandson of Genghis Khan. Note..
The army that was formed at the time of the invasion of Rus' and Europe was an army with a different composition. The Mongols occupied central military positions there, but in fact this army was already Kipchak. And they should no longer be called Mongol-Tatars, but Mongol-Kypchaks. Because this was the population of the Great Steppe, and the Kipchaks are the former Cumans from Russian legends.
There were no Tatars as such (there). Modern Kazan Tatars with modern name a people, its ethnonym, is precisely a people that emerged as a result of ethnogenesis, in the process or something. There was Volga Bulgaria, which was part of the Golden Horde, and the population of Bulgaria mixed with the Kipchaks, naturally, and also mixed with the Slavs, who converted to Islam.
Why Islam? After all, Genghis Khan's army was not Muslim...
Genghis Khan's army was not even Buddhist. They were Tengrians - worshipers of the sky (i.e. shamanists. Note website), although among them there were Nestorian Christians ( - one of the sects of the Christian Church, formed in Byzantium. Note.
But when under Khan Berke (another grandson of Genghis Khan, ruled in 1257-1266, At the same time, the Mongolian state was divided into independent states, founded by the descendants of Genghis Khan in the territory from Beijing to Crimea. Note site) the Golden Horde was founded, and there was a problem of choosing a faith, then Berke became a Muslim in order to establish diplomatic ties with the most powerful state of that time, and this was, of course, Fatimid Egypt (which by that time had broken away from the Arab Caliphate, and the Caliphate itself in Baghdad, a century later, also fell under the rule of the Turkic tribes under the nominal rule of the caliph, who became only the spiritual ruler of the faithful.The end of the caliphate was put by the Mongols who took Baghdad in 1258. After that, the Turks, in particular the Ottomans, always stood at the head of the Muslim world. ).
Later, these two states - the Golden Horde and Fatimid Egypt - were friends for a century, and together they repelled the raids of... who? Mongol Ilkhans in Persia. The Mongol army, state and people by that time had already split into parts, including the (dynasty) in Persia, and the Golden Horde. They were, it would seem, because of one people, but they became terrible rivals around the Silk Road, as well as in the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. Under Khan Berke, the Horde begins to become a Muslim state, and already, somewhere under Khan Uzbek, it becomes a large Muslim civilization. The Oguz-Kypchak language was the language of the Golden Horde. It was, of course, Turkic. (Along with the Turkic language, the Mongols adopted the writing of the Uighur Turks as a script for the Mongolian language, which has always been preserved in historical Mongolia. Note site).
(The Mongol Empire was, contrary to popular belief, not only a nomadic, but also a huge sedentary power. It had a hundred cities ) ... Some of them are still standing. Most of the Volga region cities stand on the ruins of Golden Horde cities. This is preserved in their names. Saratov is Saratau (“Yellow Mountain”). Tsaritsyn was named very wittily from Sarysa, a Turkic name. Samara, Kamyshin, Kazan, Urgench, and, naturally, the cities of Crimea were also Horde cities.
In addition, what we are talking about, the legacy of the Golden Horde, remains in the names of many famous people(in Russia). For example, Rachmaninov. His surname comes from Rahman, translated as “Merciful”. Derzhavin comes from Bogrim-Murza, who directly left the Golden Horde. And Karamzin’s ancestors were called Kara-Murzins. Among Russian families, especially noble ones, there are countless families who at one time left the Golden Horde...
The largest Horde cities were Sarai-Batu (not far from present-day Astrakhan) and Sarai-Berke (not far from present-day Volgograd, on the Akhtuba River). They stood on the rivers. These were cities that had mosques and Orthodox churches. There was an Orthodox Bishop of Sarai Peter. Were Catholic churches, and synagogues. Artisans, bureaucratic scribes, and poets lived in the Sarai cities. These were trade and craft cities. For the merchants there were incredible good conditions. The Golden Horde khans observed their own laws very strictly. Protecting roads and ensuring trade were one of the main priorities.
From there, “pits” appeared in Rus', that is, inns, and from there, coachmen. From there regular mail appeared (in Rus'). The merchant had to pay only three percent of the customs duty to travel across the entire territory of the Golden Horde, and this is from the Crimea, from Feodosia, to the Irtysh and the Aral Sea. After payment, they received a paiza tablet - silver or copper, and no one else dared to take any taxes from the merchant.
Horde cities were made of stone. When asked, where did these cities go? Until the 16th century, these cities were still dismantled and broken into bricks. Horde brick was the best, so-called. "Mamay brick" Many Volga cities were built from this brick. Rachmaninov’s music... is a longing for will, which is dissolved in the idea of this great state,” the program said.
During the program, Ravil Bukharaev read several of his translations from Turkic love lyrics Golden Horde poets. It is interesting that military themes were not popular in Golden Horde poetry, because The Mongol army usually, according to Ravil Bukharaev, was always either on campaign or in military camps, and was separated from the cities, not interested in poetry.
Golden Horde poetry included many ethnic Turkic poets who lived in the cities of the conquered Golden Horde Central Asia. Ravil Bukharaev cites one of the poems of the Central Asian Turkic Golden Horde poet about the need to learn devotion to God from Catholic Christians. (Interestingly, after the restoration in Constantinople in 1261 Byzantine Empire and, accordingly, the defeat by the Byzantines of the Latin Empire, founded by the crusaders in this city 57 years earlier, some Catholic knights remained to live in the region of Anatolia - the outskirts of Constantinople, the borderland of Byzantium, which was no longer controlled by it, among the Seljuk Turks paying tribute to the Mongols. Let us note that thanks to the Mongols, Anatolia freed itself from the influence of the Arab Caliphate, but the Mongols never conquered Byzantium, which existed in a reduced form. The knights were at first in no hurry to return to Europe, but they also never returned to Byzantium, where for another two centuries, until the Ottoman conquest, the Byzantine historical dynasty of the Palaiologos ruled - a dynasty that ruled from Thrace under the Latins - the border of modern Bulgaria and Greece ; region known during the period of the loss of Constantinople by the Palaiologans and as the Nicaean Empire).
Also on this topic:
The Golden Horde (in Turkish - Altyn Ordu), also known as the Kipchak Khanate or Ulus Yuchi, was Mongolian state, created in some parts modern Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan after the collapse of the Mongol Empire in the 1240s. It existed until 1440.
During its heyday, it was a strong commercial and trading state, ensuring stability in large areas of Rus'.
Origin of the name "Golden Horde"
The name “Golden Horde” is a relatively late toponym. It arose in imitation of the “Blue Horde” and “White Horde”, and these names, in turn, designated, depending on the situation, either independent states or Mongol armies.
It is believed that the name "Golden Horde" came from the steppe system of marking the main directions with colors: black = north, blue = east, red = south, white = west and yellow (or gold) = center.
According to another version, the name came from the magnificent golden tent that Batu Khan erected to mark the site of his future capital on the Volga. Although this theory was accepted as true in the nineteenth century, it is now considered apocryphal.
There are no surviving written monuments created before the 17th century (they were destroyed) that would mention such a state as the Golden Horde. The state of Ulus Dzhuchi (Dzhuchiev ulus) appears in earlier documents.
Some scholars prefer to use another name, the Kipchak Khanate, because various derivatives of the Kipchak people were also found in medieval documents describing this state.
Mongol origins of the Golden Horde
Before his death in 1227, Genghis Khan bequeathed it to be divided among his four sons, including the eldest Jochi, who died before Genghis Khan.
The part that Jochi received was the westernmost lands where the hooves of Mongolian horses could set foot, and then the south of Rus' was divided between the sons of Jochi - the ruler of the Blue Horde Batu (west) and Khan Horde, the ruler of the White Horde (east).
Subsequently, Batu established control over the territories subject to the Horde, and also subjugated the northern coastal zone Black Sea, including the indigenous Turkic peoples in its army.
In the late 1230s and early 1240s, he carried out brilliant campaigns against the Volga Bulgaria and against the successor states, multiplying military glory their ancestors.
Khan Batu's Blue Horde annexed lands in the west, raiding Poland and Hungary after the battles of Legnica and Mucha.
But in 1241, the Great Khan Udegey died in Mongolia, and Batu broke off the siege of Vienna to take part in a dispute over the succession. From then on, the Mongol armies never went west again.
In 1242, Batu created his capital in Sarai, in his possessions in the lower reaches of the Volga. Shortly before this, the Blue Horde split - Batu's younger brother Shiban left Batu's army to create his own Horde east of the Ural Mountains along the Ob and Irtysh rivers.
Having achieved stable independence and created the state that today we call the Golden Horde, the Mongols gradually lost their ethnic identity.
While the descendants of Batu's Mongol warriors constituted the upper class of society, most of the Horde's population consisted of Kipchaks, Bulgar Tatars, Kirghiz, Khorezmians and other Turkic peoples.
The supreme ruler of the Horde was the khan, elected by the kurultai (the council of the Mongol nobility) among the descendants of Batu Khan. The position of prime minister was also occupied by an ethnic Mongol, known as the “prince of princes” or beklerbek (bek above the beks). The ministers were called viziers. Local governors or baskaks were responsible for collecting tribute and resolving popular discontent. The ranks, as a rule, were not divided into military and civilian.
The Horde developed as a sedentary rather than a nomadic culture, and Sarai eventually becomes a densely populated and prosperous city. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the capital moved to Saray-Berke, located much higher upstream, and became one of the largest cities medieval world with a population estimated by Encyclopædia Britannica at 600,000.
Despite Russian efforts to convert the population of Sarai, the Mongols adhered to their traditional pagan beliefs until Uzbek Khan (1312-1341) adopted Islam as the state religion. The Russian rulers - Mikhail Chernigovsky and Mikhail Tverskoy - were reportedly killed in Sarai for their refusal to worship pagan idols, but the khans were generally tolerant and even liberated the Russian Orthodox Church from taxes.
Vassals and allies of the Golden Horde
The Horde collected tribute from its subject peoples - Russians, Armenians, Georgians and Crimean Greeks. Christian territories were considered peripheral areas and were of no interest as long as they continued to pay tribute. These dependent states were never part of the Horde, and the Russian rulers soon even received the privilege of traveling around the principalities and collecting tribute for the khans. To maintain control over Russia, Tatar military leaders carried out regular punitive raids on Russian principalities (the most dangerous in 1252, 1293 and 1382).
There is a point of view, widely disseminated by Lev Gumilev, that the Horde and the Russians entered into an alliance for defense against the fanatical Teutonic knights and pagan Lithuanians. Researchers point out that Russian princes often appeared at the Mongolian court, in particular Fyodor Cherny, the Yaroslavl prince who boasted of his ulus near Sarai, and the Novgorod prince Alexander Nevsky, a sworn brother of Batu's predecessor, Sartak Khan. Although Novgorod never recognized the dominance of the Horde, the Mongols supported the Novgorodians in the Battle of the Ice.
Sarai conducted active trade with the trading centers of Genoa on the Black Sea coast - Surozh (Soldaya or Sudak), Kaffa and Tana (Azak or Azov). Also, the Mamluks of Egypt were long-time trading partners of the khan and allies in the Mediterranean.
After Batu's death in 1255, the prosperity of his empire continued for a century, until the assassination of Janibek in 1357. The White Horde and the Blue Horde were actually united into single state brother of Batu Berke. In the 1280s, power was usurped by Nogai, a khan who pursued a policy of Christian unions. The military influence of the Horde reached its peak during the reign of Uzbek Khan (1312-1341), whose army exceeded 300,000 warriors.
Their policy towards Rus' was to constantly renegotiate alliances to keep Rus' weak and divided. In the fourteenth century, the rise of Lithuania in northeastern Europe challenged Tatar control of Russia. Thus, Uzbek Khan began to support Moscow as the main Russian state. Ivan I Kalita was given the title of Grand Duke and given the right to collect taxes from other Russian powers.
The Black Death, the bubonic plague pandemic of the 1340s, was a major contributing factor to the eventual fall of the Golden Horde. After the assassination of Janibek, the empire was drawn into a long civil war that lasted throughout the next decade, with an average of one new khan per year coming to power. By the 1380s, Khorezm, Astrakhan and Muscovy attempted to break free from Horde rule, and the lower Dnieper was annexed by Lithuania and Poland.
Who was not formally on the throne, tried to restore Tatar power over Russia. His army was defeated by Dmitry Donskoy at the Battle of Kulikov in his second victory over the Tatars. Mamai soon lost power, and in 1378 Tokhtamysh, a descendant of Horde Khan and ruler of the White Horde, invaded and annexed the territory of the Blue Horde, briefly establishing the dominance of the Golden Horde in these lands. In 1382 he punished Moscow for disobedience.
The mortal blow to the horde was dealt by Tamerlane, who in 1391 destroyed the army of Tokhtamysh, destroyed the capital, plundered the Crimean shopping centers and took the most skilled craftsmen to his capital in Samarkand.
In the first decades of the fifteenth century, power belonged to Idegei, the vizier who defeated Vytautas from Lithuania in great battle at Vorskla and turned the Nogai Horde into his personal mission.
In the 1440s the Horde was destroyed again civil war. This time it broke up into eight separate khanates: the Siberian Khanate, the Qasim Khanate, the Kazakh Khanate, the Uzbek Khanate and the Crimean Khanate, dividing the last remnant of the Golden Horde.
None of these new khanates was stronger than Muscovy, which by 1480 was finally free of Tatar control. The Russians eventually captured all of these khanates, starting with Kazan and Astrakhan in the 1550s. By the end of the century it was also part of Russia, and the descendants of its ruling khans entered Russian service.
In 1475 the Crimean Khanate submitted, and by 1502 the same fate befell what remained of the Great Horde. Crimean Tatars wreaked havoc in the south of Rus' during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but were unable to defeat it or take Moscow. The Crimean Khanate remained under Ottoman protection until Catherine the Great annexed it on April 8, 1783. It lasted longer than all the successor states of the Golden Horde.