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Daniel C. Waugh, “The and ,” in Genghis and the Mongol , ed. William Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi and William Honeychurch, [Media, Pa.:] Dino : Mongolian Preservation Foundation; Washington, D.C.: Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution; [Seattle]: University of Washington Press, 2009: pp. 172-179. 24. The Golden Horde and Russia

Da n i e l C. Wa u g h

enghis Khan had assigned the western portion of the to his oldest son, , (fig. 1), but when Jochi predeceased his father (fig. 2), his share fell to his son Batu. The extent of his domains was yet to be defined, as major portions of the territory given to Jochi (Ulus GJochi) in Russia and had not yet been conquered by the . Batu’s armies eventually reached the Adriatic and the valleys of Austria before they re- treated in 1241. He began to rule his state—better known as the “Golden Horde,” a name given it much later by non-Mongols—from , a city he founded not far from the mouth of the River. The power and prosperity of the Golden Horde peaked during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, but were shattered by Tamerlane’s invasion in 1395. Successor states in its territory—the and Khiva—were ruled by Ghengissid dynasties far longer than were any other parts of the empire, the first remaining independent until the late eighteenth century, and the second lasting until the twentieth century.

The example of the Golden Horde highlights When Mongol armies first appeared important aspects of society, the economy, in eastern in 1223, the steppe and imperial politics in a large region of the nomads who lived there, the Polovtsy empire. Since the relationship between the (), turned to the east Slavic princes Mongols and urban centers is often misun- for aid (fig. 3). The Mongols’ shattering derstood, it is of particular interest to learn victory over this combined force on the about the cities of the Golden Horde. The River Kalka near the Sea of fore- relations between the Mongol rulers of Ulus shadowed their conquest in the 1230s. Jochi and their Russian subjects evolved Genghis’s son Ögödei sought to follow from policies of direct political control to up on his father’s conquests, and, in particu- those of . There is considerable lar, to extend his empire westward. After controversy over the impact of Mongol rule defeating the and seizing North in Russia and Ukraine, since the national China, Ögödei launched an invasion west, myths of the conquered paint a picture of un- with his nephew Batu and other grandsons of relieved oppression, the effects of which were Genghis joining in the campaign. Although still being felt into modern times. Such one- the cousins were often at odds, the cam- sided assessments of the Golden Horde need paign proved remarkably successful, in part to be reconsidered. because they did not face a united Russian

172 W A U G H G O L D E N H O R D E 173 influence the choice of the next Great Khan. harbor with about two hundred vessels in it, visited is uncertain. One Arab Rather than resume the campaign to West- both ships of war and trading vessels, small source estimates 75,0005; archaeology ern Europe, he chose to consolidate his rule and large, for it is one of the world’s cel- confirms that the city was a flourishing over the Ulus Jochi from the lower Volga. ebrated ports.”2 Indeed, an Italian presence– multiethnic center of commerce and craft Once the Mongols had pacified Rus- –earlier, it was the Venetians––in the ports production (fig. 9 or 10). The outward ap- sia and Ukraine, they took over the tradi- of the Crimea well antedated the arrival of pearance of urban development and pros- tional nomad routes used by the Polovtsy the Mongols (fig. 6, 7), and the Genoese had perity did not reflect an ideal social and up and down the main rivers (fig. 4). Batu been granted trading privileges by the rulers political order. Building and populating the would spend summers near Bulgar on the of the Golden Horde through an important new cities involved forced labor and con- middle Volga and winters at his new capi- international treaty concluded in 1267. Later scription. Much of the initial labor was per- tal, Sarai. The Franciscan John of Plano in his travels Ibn Battuta would describe formed by the previous steppe inhabitants, Carpini, who traveled as a papal emissary, / as “the largest, great- the Polovtsy, who had been enslaved when visited Batu in 1245 en route to est, most beautiful and most important city” they were driven off their grazing lands. and recorded how other members of the of the Mongols.3 Of course, he was describ- In many areas of the empire the khans Mongol elite set up nomad camps along ing the Golden Horde at its peak during the conscripted artisans at will, a practice that the , Don, and (Yaik) Rivers1 reign of Özbeg Khan; approximately a cen- has been well documented. A Russian gold- The chaos and destruction of invasion tury had passed since Mongol invasions had smith had made the khan’s seal at his court had disrupted flourishing commercial and devastated the lands of the Khwarazm-shah in Mongolia; the famous fountain in the craft emporia that were central to the Mon- and destroyed Bulgar on the Volga (fig. 8): courtyard of the palace in Khara Khorum gol empire’s sustainability. In the consolida- The Khan’s court and Sarai im- was the work of a captured Parisian master; tion and reconstruction of the following era, pressed the Moroccan visitor as weavers from the Middle East were resettled the Mongols, unlike earlier nomadic poli- one of the finest of cities, of boundless size in northern China. In Sarai, ceramic crafts ties, incorporated into their domain long- . . . choked with the throng of its inhabit- reflected the techniques and designs of such established cities on the edge of the steppe ants, and possessing good bazaars and broad centers as Bulgar and Khwarazm and, at world. Thus, Bulgar, at the border between streets. We rode out one day . . . intend- least initially, were probably the work of the forest and steppe; Kaffa, a port in the ing to make a circuit of the city and find craftsmen conscripted from those cities. Crimea; and Urgench, in the lower reaches out its extent. Our lodging place was at one While such conscription must have inflicted of the Amu-Darya River in Khwarazm end of it and we set out from it in the early serious damage on the older craft centers, south of the Aral Sea, were important cit- morning, and it was after midday when we many of them revived and flourished. The ies of the Golden Horde. The khans also reached the other end. We then prayed the initial minting of coins by the rulers of the founded new cities where previously there noon prayer and ate some food, and we did Golden Horde seems to have been in Bul- not get back to our lodging until the hour had been none. Prime examples are Batu’s gar, only a generation after the invasion. of the sunset prayer. One day we went on Sarai (the Selitrennoe Fort site) and the city Minting at Sarai, the capital, began later. By foot across the breadth of the town, go- founded under Khan Özbeg in the 1330s the time Özbeg became khan (r. 1313–41), ing and returning, in half a day, this too state. Thus, they could focus on one group some 200 km further north on the Volga the Muslim architecture of Volga through a continuous line of houses, among or territory at a time. In short order in the at the Tsarevo Fort site, a strategic loca- already surpassed what it had been in the which there were no ruins and no gardens. late 1230s, they defeated the , who tion where that river comes closest to the century of the Mongol invasion (fig. 20). occupied the middle Volga region, and the The city has thirteen mosques for the hold- river Don (fig.5 ). The fate of these cities is ing of Friday prayers, one of them being for The specialization of the numerous Polovtsy, who controlled the steppes north a barometer of the political and economic workshops in Golden Horde cities is im- of the Sea of Azov and the . Batu the Shafi’ites; as for the other mosques, they strength of the Horde. Their decline co- are exceedingly numerous. . . . [I]ts inhabit- pressive and probably reflects a substantial then moved on the Russian principalities, incided with the onset of civil war in the market for metalwork, jewelry, and glass. destroying Riazan in late 1237, and in the ants . . . include the Mughals, who are the second half of the fourteenth century, and dwellers in this country and its sultans, and Ceramics production met demands for following year conquering the important their destruction in 1395 marked the end some of whom are Muslims, then the As, building materials such as bricks, decora- center of Vladimir- and the as-yet of the Golden Horde’s real political power. who are Muslims, the Qifjaq, the Jarkas, the tive tiles, and drain pipes, as well as a broad insignificant . The Mongols then Our knowledge of Golden Horde cit- Rus, and the Rum [Greeks]––[all of] these range of dishes. While imported ceramics swept through Kiev, the once great eco- ies derives in part from records such as the are . Each group lives in a separate formed only a small percentage of what was nomic and cultural center of the Russian eyewitness account by the Moroccan trav- quarter with its own bazaars. Merchants in common use, local designs responded in lands. By 1241 their forces had reached eler extraordinaire, Ibn Battuta (see Dunn, and strangers from the two Iraqs, , creative ways to examples such as Chinese Budapest in the south and Liegnitz in Po- this volume). When he arrived in the Golden and elsewhere, live in a quarter which porcelain with its cobalt blue patterns. In land in the north. Mongol detachments were Horde in the early 1330s, he reported that is surrounded by a wall for the protection of some parts of the Mongol dominions (for already scouting the routes further west Kaffa, a city controlled by the Genoese un- the properties of the merchants.4 example, northwest ) an effort was when Batu learned of Ögödei’s death and der Mongol suzerainty, was “a wonderful Sarai’s population at the time when made to replicate the Chinese blue-and- abruptly withdrew to the east, hoping to

174 W A U G H G O L D E N H O R D E 175 the cities’ decline. As early as the 1370s, River Neva in 1240, managed to survive many of the mansions fell into disrepair and his own visit to Mongolia and went on to their compounds were being converted into become a dutiful servant of the khans in cemeteries, well before the wars of the next helping to put down Russian resistance to decades destroyed the cities of the lower their rule. His descendants ruled Moscow. Volga and Crimea. The study of the elite By the fourteenth century, the locus of residential complexes sheds light on other political and fiscal control over Russia had aspects of social and economic change. shifted to Sarai, although some tax revenues Modest structures that probably were living continued to be sent to the Great Khan. or working space for servants and crafts- Russian princes still were expected to ap- men evolved over time from semi-dugout pear when summoned to the khan’s court, huts with no heating system into more so- either in Sarai or at his summer camp in the phisticated houses with stoves. Whether Caucasus foothills. The khans bestowed the this means slave families were now gain- patents for rule and approved the princes’ white ware. The Golden Horde workshops ing their freedom and moving up in social wills, but largely did not interfere in the tended to incorporate some of the motifs, and economic terms is difficult to prove. established patterns of princely succession. but often with different color combinations. Ibn Battuta had noted only in passing Intermarriage often strengthened the ties The steppe cities of the Horde included that the residents of Sarai included Rus- between Russian princes and their over- elite “estates,” often on the outskirts of sians. He had no interest in the fact that lords. The relationship was one that could town, with multiroom mansions built of there was a Russian Orthodox bishop there be manipulated successfully on both sides substantial masonry and their own craft whose main function was probably to fa- for political advantage especially as the shops and servants’ quarters (fig. 28). Some cilitate relations between the khans, on the Horde itself weakened. The emergence of of these compounds have the remains of one hand, and the Russian principalities Moscow as the preeminent Russian princi- ger platforms, a reminder that the Mongol and the , on the other. Of Other cities that resisted met the same fate, pality may be explained by its princes’ suc- elite did not completely adopt sedentary life. greater interest to the Moroccan was the although the impact was uneven. The impor- cess in cultivating their relations with Sarai. Although Ibn Battuta was impressed by the fact that one of the khan’s wives was the tant city of Novgorod in the north escaped There is little evidence to show, as some urban culture in Sarai, he was taken aback daughter of the Byzantine emperor. Indeed, destruction, ostensibly because the spring scholars would have us believe, that the by the open observance of nomadic social Byzantium, by virtue of its strategic control thaw melted the ice on the rivers, which the khans were continually plotting ways to customs that violated Islamic norms. The over communications with the Mediter- Mongol horsemen had been using to travel keep the Russian princes weak. Nor is it elite residences seem to have flourished into ranean, must have been more important through this unpromising land of swampy, the case that the seized every op- the second half of the fourteenth century, to the Horde economically and politi- roadless forests. In a territory where the pop- portunity to rebel in order to throw off the 8 at which time growing political instability cally than were the Russian principalities. ulation still lived largely in isolated villages, “Mongol yoke.” In the national mythol- led their owners to build defensive walls in But even Byzantium was incidental to the the destruction of what was only a handful ogy, the high point of this struggle was the the same way that previously unfortified main political concern of Sarai: its hostility of towns could not be expected to have a battle of Kulikovo in 1380, where Moscow cities were then being walled. The bubonic with Ilkhanid Iran, where the prize, never permanent impact on social and economic prince Dmitrii Ivanovich “Donskoi” (“of the undoubtedly played a major role in achieved, was domination of western Asia. development. Neither could this inhospitable Don River”) is portrayed in hagiographic The Russian example illustrates well region of modest resources have contrib- terms. Yet the battle was not simply a victory Mongol relations with subject peoples. uted much to the prosperity of the Horde. of good, Christian Russians over “pagan” However, establishing the exact of Initially, the Mongols ruled their ter- Mongols, but a complex affair involving con- those relations and their long-term conse- ritories in Russia directly from the center flicting allegiances on both sides in a period quences is difficult: the medieval sources of the empire that was being built at Khara when the Golden Horde had already been often are silent about important topics, Khorum, with only a limited local presence substantially weakened by internal strife.9 and when they do speak, they have a pro- of Mongol administrators, census takers, Beginning around 1330, the Moscow nounced anti-Mongol bias. Trying to discern and military contingents. Russian princes princes became tax collectors for the khans the truth is further hindered by the anti- had to travel to Mongolia to receive their and took advantage of administrative mech- Mongol bias of too many modern assess- patents of office (jarlyks) from the Great anisms that would later help them con- ments.6 Long after the Mongol invasion of Khan. John of Plano Carpini reported on solidate increasingly independent political the Russian principalities in the years 1237– the poisoning there in 1246 of Prince Iaro- power. Evidence that they adopted Mongol 40, a monk described how “there is noth- slav of Vladimir, the senior principality of bureaucratic procedures does not necessar- ing to be seen in [Riazan] excepting smoke, northeastern Russia. His son, Alexander ily mean, as some have claimed, that they ashes, and barren earth . . . instead of joy, Nevsky (1220–1263), a Russian hero for also borrowed larger political structures or there are only uninterrupted lamentations.”7 his defeat of the Swedish knights on the political theory.10 By the time the Russian

176 W A U G H G O L D E N H O R D E 177 century. Russian economic woes of later khans of the Golden Horde. Of the many centuries have little to do with the Mongols. royal crowns in the treasury of the Kremlin, Nor is there justification to support the the most important is the so-called “Cap of myth that the Mongols “cut Russia off from Monomakh,” which some have argued is the West,” thus condemning the Russians to a prime example of the filigree gold work miss out on the Renaissance and the scien- that was popular among the Mongol elite tific revolution. This idea is encapsulated in (Figure 31). Whether it was once part of an oft-quoted observation by Russia’s na- the khan’s regalia before being acquired by tional poet Alexander Pushkin that, unlike Ivan’s Muscovite ancestors in the fourteenth the cultured Muslim rulers in Spain, who or fifteenth centuries is still debated.14 Al- were intellectually ahead of the medieval though the crown probably dates from the Christian West, “the Mongols gave Russia thirteenth century, Russian legends associate neither Aristotle nor algebra.”12 Yet, , it with the eleventh-century Byzantine Em- by the fourteenth century, had become the peror Constantine IX Monomachos rather official religion of the Horde, mosques were than admit to any Mongol connection. being built, and Islamic learning promoted: When Ivan IV (r. 1533–84) Ibn Battuta records at length his interac- became the first Russian ruler to be crowned tions with learned Muslim clerics. There in 1547, the title, which derives from was no policy of cutting off non-Muslims “Caesar,” asserted the prestige associated either from their religious or, if they had with imperial Rome, not the tradition by any, their intellectual traditions. Indeed, which Russians had termed the khan “tsar.” Greek and southern Slavic clerics and artists Having incorporated the successor states of continued to contribute to Russian culture, the Golden Horde–– (1552), Astra- and there was active involvement with the khan (1556), and (ca. 1581)––Ivan princes emerged as autocrats in the sev- Hansa in Novgorod and Italian merchants IV then added the titles Tsar of Kazan, and enteenth century, the Golden Horde had in the south. The khans even granted the so on, as explicit recognition that he had long ceased to be a viable political model. Russian Church immunities from taxa- replaced the Genghissid khans. Where it Many myths about the Mongol impact tion and judicial interference by the secular served their purposes, the Muscovite rul- in Russia have been invoked to explain authorities. Whatever were the intellectual ers respected the imperial charisma of the uncomfortable facts about the country’s accomplishments of the learned Muslims of Genghissid line, even if they did not shape subsequent history. Although the impact Sarai, for perfectly good religious reasons their policies after those of khans whose rule of the Mongol invasion and ongoing pay- that learning was off limits to the Russian in Russia had long ago ended. The charac- ment of tribute unquestionably was severe, Orthodox. The real barrier to the emerging teristic institutions Muscovy bequeathed the Mongols have been blamed for Russian culture of the Renaissance was that Rus- to the —notably, autocracy “economic backwardness” right down to sian Orthodoxy likewise blocked any intel- and serfdom—developed later and gradually the twentieth century. The one quantifiable, lectual borrowing from the Catholic West. as responses to internal needs of the evolv- if imperfect, measure of economic prosperity The fall of the Byzantine Empire to the ing state, not as a result of Mongol rule. in Russia—the building of masonry church- Muslim Turks in 1453 reinforced the Rus- 1. Dawson 1955, 55. es in a country where most construction sians’ belief in the purity of their faith. Ivan had every reason to think that his en- 2. Ibn Battuta 1958–2000, vol. 2, 471. was of wood—bottoms out in the 1230s but Now, more than ever, Moscow felt com- deavors enjoyed divine sanction and that shows a dramatic recovery within two or pelled to defend its traditional religion and 3. Ibn Battuta 1958–2000, vol. 3, 541. he was the real heir to the khans in Sarai. 4. Ibn Battuta 1958–2000, vol. 2, 515–16. 11 three generations of the invasion (fig.29 ). culture. The Muscovite state had barely Whether Ivan or his Muscovite heirs 5. Fedorov-Davydov 1984, 22. Russian trade through Novgorod to the survived a civil war in the first half of the consciously articulated claims to that suc- 6. Grekov in Grekov and Iakubovskii 1950; Vernadsky 1953; Halperin 1985. Baltic and through the Crimea to Byzantium fifteenth century, thanks to some timely cession is uncertain.13 The term, “White continued and, at least in the south, was in help from remnants of the Golden Horde. 7. Zenkovsky 1974, 205. Tsar,” with which rulers in the steppe, the 8. Nasonov 1940; Cherepnin in Tikh- the interests of the khans to promote. The Grand Prince Ivan III (r. 1462–1505) con- Ottomans, and even princes as far away as vinskii 1970, 191–200. Russian church was among the beneficiaries solidated his power, absorbed most of Italy at times addressed the Russian ruler, 9. Petrov 2005. of this trade; the Italian merchant network, the remaining independent Russian prin- might be taken in the Mongol color- and 10. Ostrowski 1990; Rakhimzianov 2005. 11. Miller 1989. based in the Crimea, reached all the way to cipalities, established a degree of politi- directional-coded terminology to mean the Moscow. There is ample evidence of Russian cal control over the Genghissid successor 12. Grekov and Iakobovskii 1950, 177. “Khan of the West.” The Muscovite princes 13. Halperin 2003. economic recovery even before the demise state of Kazan, and waged a successful had an interest in regalia associated with the 14. Zhilina 2001. of the Golden Horde in the late fourteenth war against . Given his successes,

178 W A U G H G O L D E N H O R D E 179