Mamai might have committed a larger force to crush the Lithuanians, but he had more urgent battles to fight in the lower Volga. Besides, Mamai regarded the Lithuanians as a useful balancing agent against Moscow. Again, as long as the Lithuanians kept sending the tribute, the Jochids would tolerate them. We do not know if Mamai officially confirmed Algirdas’s authority over Podolia, but sources show that the Lithuanians continued to send Podolia’s Tributum Thartharorum, the “Tartar tribute,” to the Jochid khans until the fifteenth century.47
As for the Russians in the northern principalities, they had their own internal issues, which colored relations with the Jochids. In particular, Tver remained on cold terms with Moscow. Initially Dmitrii Ivanovich, the kniaz of Moscow, benefited from Mamai’s support; around 1363, Mamai confirmed Dmitrii as grand prince. But by 1370 Mamai had grown frustrated with Dmitrii’s poor performance in delivering the tribute, so Mamai stripped the throne from Dmitrii and gave it to Mikhail Alexandrovich, the kniaz of Tver. Dmitrii, however, did not intend to let Mikhail rule in his place. Dmitrii gathered his army and forbade the prince of Tver from entering the city of Vladimir and occupying the seat of the grand prince. Dmitrii also regained Mamai’s patronage, sending the beg gifts, visiting him at his horde, and ultimately retaining the throne of Vladimir. But while Dmitrii had won this round, he could not rest easy. It was clear that Mamai could be fickle and might again retract his support.
That is exactly what happened a few years later, around 1374–1375, after the leaders of a group of Russian cities refused to obey Mamai’s envoys and had them killed—the envoys had probably demanded tax payments and compensation for deferred tributes. Mamai retaliated, but his warriors were repulsed. According to the Russian chronicles, the Jochid forces were considerably weakened by the plague, which was roaring in the steppe at the time and was cutting down Mamai’s troops. Capitalizing on the Horde’s plague-stricken position, the Russians doubled down on their rebellion, claiming that Mamai was demanding unconscionable tributes. Mamai held Grand Prince Dmitrii responsible for the uprising. Fearing that, this time, diplomacy would not be enough, Dmitrii decided to face Mamai and strike first.48 In 1378, while Mamai was busy gathering his warriors for a campaign against Moscow, Dmitrii led his army directly to Mamai’s camp. When the two armies met on the Vozha River, the grand prince defeated Mamai, marking the first time since the conquest in the late 1230s that the Russians defeated the Mongols in a large-scale battle. In August 1380, Mamai and the Russians met again, this time at Kulikovo, a field along the Don located deep in Mamai’s lands. The Jochid army was crushed again, solidifying Dmitrii’s place in Russian history as Dmitrii Donskoi—Dmitrii of the Don. To this day, Dmitrii Donskoi is venerated as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church.49
Yet, while Dmitrii’s victories over Mamai were clear, they were hardly decisive in ending the “Tatar yoke.” In fact the Russian advantage was short-lived, and by the middle of the 1380s, the Russians would again be paying tribute to Mongol rulers. Dmitrii’s heroic stature in modern Russia reflects less the importance of his contributions—his triumphs came at a low ebb of Jochid power, and even then he was unable to bring about independence from the Mongols—than the political project of Russian nationalist historiography, based on the sixteenth-century elaboration of the Tatar yoke idea by the Muscovite Church. Dmitrii’s defiance has made him a symbol of Russian self-determination and enlightened Christian nationhood, against the depredations of Muslim, Pagan, and foreign influence. The irony is that the nation celebrated by Russian nationalists, the church, and citizens in general, is the nation associated with the house of Moscow, whose rise was enabled by Mongols. Following the Daniilovich dynasty, it was a family of Moscow boyars, the Romanovs, who became rich and powerful enough to consolidate and reign over the modern Russian nation-state beloved of the Russian nationalist imagination. Yet that nation, envisioned in opposition to the Tatar yoke, might never have existed had the Jochids not disrupted the Kievan system and favored the house of Moscow, elevating it to the heights of Russian power.50
Disintegration
The demise of the Ilkhanids was supposed to be the Horde’s crowning achievement—the realization of its moral right to vengeance and an opportunity to solidify the supremacy of the northern road. But leadership of the most important Eurasian trade corridor hardly mattered when the Black Death made large-scale trade unfeasible. And it turned out that the decline of the Ilkhanids cost the Jochids more than they gained from it. The fragmentation of the Ilkhanids meant that, instead of a strong challenger who played by the rules, the Jochids had to deal with a constellation of smaller, unreliable neighbors. Indeed, throughout the Mongol Empire, the dominated were rising up. The collapse of Ilkhanid regime, and its replacement by the former regime’s regional factions, showed that Mongol power was not permanent. Elites who had benefited from the Mongol system—whether the Ilkhanid emirs, the Qonggirad, or the Lithuanians—could assert themselves and take over. Even a popular uprising like the Red Turbans could displace Mongol rule.
At the end of the fourteenth century, the Horde was more intact than the other Mongol states, yet the shift in the relative power of the khan and begs was in many ways similar to developments among the Ilkhanids and ulus Chagatay. Even if the tradition of Chinggis Khan remained prestigious across Eurasia, Eurasia was out of Chinggisid control. The leaders of this new world embraced Chinggis’s prestige and the methods, but they did not descend from the golden lineage. This was true of Mamai and the Sufi-Qonggirad, and it would be true of one of the great historical figures to emerge from the Mongol disintegration: Temür, alias Tamerlane. As we will see in the next chapter, Temür’s rise to power would soon illustrate the opportunities the post-crisis world offered to non-Chinggisid elites claiming the mantle of Mongol-style rule.51
That the Mongol style survived the Mongol Empire is a fact of history that deserves to be taken seriously. No one knew what shape the Mongol-centered world would take after the empire’s disintegration, yet that shape would turn out to be strongly influenced by the flexible systems that Chinggis Khan invented and his heirs adapted. This was all in keeping with the nomadic conception of power. The Mongol regime was built to withstand change, for change was both inevitable and beyond the control of mere human beings. After all, sülde, the vital force that created empires, was Tengri’s to bestow. Tengri had blessed the golden lineage, but others could be blessed as well. Perhaps the truest marker of the genius of Mongol rule, then, was that when Tengri gave sülde to others, they still turned to Chinggis’s ideas and his legacy for strength.
8
Younger Brothers
The combined crises of the bulqaq, the Black Death, and the dissolution of the Yuan and Ilkhanids tested the Horde mightily. But the ulus of Jochi survived, thanks to its flexibility. When the security and prosperity of the people could be maintained only by devolving power from the khan to the begs, then devolution is what happened. The rise of leading qarachu begs, like Mamai, was a revision in service of continuity. The inhabitants of positions of power were changing, but the overall structure of nomadic rule remained.
The end of the fourteenth century and beginning of the fifteenth would see a related dynamic. A new khan, Toqtamish, would rise and reunify the Horde. But he kept control only as long as the begs allowed. Toqtamish was a new kind of Jochid leader in that he was of neither the Batuid nor the Ordaid lineage. But Toqtamish was very much a leader in the style of his Jochid predecessors in that he was committed to conquest, advancing trade through financial reform, and maximizing the Horde’s diplomatic gains. Toqtamish would make and break alliances as necessary, which is how he managed to partner with Tamerlane, then fight a protracted war with him, then ally once more.
In the wake of Toqtamish, however, the Horde definitively splintered into several regimes. Yet each of these looked back to Toqtamish and the Jochid khans as their founders. In one sense, the fifteenth century was the end of the Horde, for the Jochid central authority
collapsed, never to be restored. But in another sense, the era brought about merely a reorganization of the authority formerly invested in the khan and his keshig. For decades after Birdibek, power in the Horde had been slowly flowing outward from the lower Volga. This trend continued in the fifteenth century, as the people of the Horde found creative ways to serve their needs while the world changed around them. The breakup of the Horde was, it turned out, the best way to preserve the Horde—if not the specific regime, then the kind of regime it had been. The Horde’s successor states imagined themselves as continuous with the traditions of Chinggis and Jochi. These states would carry Mongol traditions forward for hundreds of years, dominating the western steppe and Central Asia into the nineteenth century.
Piecing the Horde Back Together
Since its earliest days, the Horde maintained two principal factions, which largely worked in harmony: the White Horde of Batu and the Blue Horde of Orda. The dominance of these hordes ended in 1359–1360, with the deaths of the Batuid khan Birdibek and the Ordaid khan. Birdibek was followed by a series of squabbling pretenders, none of whom was able to establish a solid claim to the throne. The Blue Horde, by contrast, quickly established new leadership in the person of Qara-Nogay. Qara-Nogay’s election was announced in front of the people in the Ordaid capital of Sighnaq, and the news spread from there to the cities of the Syr-Daria River, along the Aral Sea, and on to the nomadic camps. The new khan must have been something of a shock: for the first time, the left-hand wing was not ruled by a descendant of Orda. Qara-Nogay’s lineage traced instead to one of Orda’s brothers—Toqa Temür, Jochi’s youngest son.
Qara-Nogay’s rule did not last long but, importantly, he was succeeded on the throne by members of his family, crystallizing their lineage as the Blue Horde’s ruling family. Perhaps the most powerful of this new line of leaders was Qara-Nogay’s cousin Urus, who became khan of the Blue Horde around 1368. Urus was a khan in the mold of Özbek: Urus coupled expansionist intentions—he sought to extend his control to Sarai—with authoritarian instincts. He demanded unconditional support from the descendants of Toqa Temür and their followers, and any defiance could be met with harsh punishment.1 Urus’s violent ways earned himself consequential enemies. In particular, Urus’s murder of Toy Khoja, a fellow Toqa Temürid chieftain and rival for the khanship, resulted in a blood feud that eventually brought an end to Urus’s reign.
The Horde, c. 1380–1390, showing the major campaigns of Toqtamish and Tamerlane, as well as the new territory of Poland-Lithuania, taken from the Horde in the west.
The agent of revenge was Toqtamish, Toy Khoja’s son. Not only had Urus murdered Toqtamish’s father, but the khan had also vitiated Toqtamish’s family’s rights by forcing their els, their hereditary peoples, to join Urus’s horde. Els were subjugated peoples gifted to various chieftains as a result of conquests; to strip a family of its els was an extremely harsh punishment, the imposition of a kind of social death and a means of disempowering a whole princely lineage. But even though Toqtamish was deprived of his natural base of support, he found ways to enhance his strength and popularity. He was a descendent of Jochi through his father and was a Qonggirad through his mother; Toqtamish was thus well positioned to call on the assistance of wealthy and influential people. The Qonggirad of northern Khwarezm had many warriors to place at his disposal.2
Toqtamish had no keshig to inherit, so instead he built his own. He spent the early 1370s wandering the steppe gathering young horsemen without ties. As long as they were willing to fight, Toqtamish welcomed them into his warband. The warriors set out to plunder Urus’s camps, herders, and villages, and as they gained booty they attracted more followers.3 But while Toqtamish’s independence and guerilla tactics unnerved Urus, his warriors could not by themselves threaten the khan. Urus’s army was known to be one of the best of the times. It had conducted successful military operations in the lower Volga and taken Sarai. Urus even held Sarai long enough to mint coins there. Toqtamish would need further backing to contend with the khan, so he turned to a powerful neighbor. Around 1375 Toqtamish allied with an emir who was known to his contemporaries as Temür al-Lank, Temür the Lame. In the West he is usually called Tamerlane.
Like Mamai, the powerful beg in the west, Tamerlane started his career as an officer in the Mongol Empire and married a Chinggisid princess. Also like Mamai, Tamerlane took advantage of the bulqaq to become a regional leader, gaining command of the western Chagatayids, who were centered on wealthy Transoxiana. When Toqtamish’s envoys reached Tamerlane, he was busy campaigning against the eastern Chagatayids, deep in their territory beyond the Syr-Daria River. Tamerlane’s war position made alliance with Toqtamish a good choice. Tamerlane’s forces were committed in the east, leaving his northern flank relatively open to the expansionist Urus. Sighnaq, Urus’s capital, was just over the old Chagatayid-Jochid border, heightening the potential threat. But with Toqtamish’s help, Tamerlane’s remaining uncommitted troops could stiffen the border. Recognizing that each had something to offer the other, Tamerlane and Toqtamish joined forces. Tamerlane provided men, horses, and weapons. More importantly, he agreed to let Toqtamish occupy territory around Otrar, a possession of Tamerlane’s. Sitting only a few miles south of Sighnaq, Otrar was strategically located for a defense against Urus. By the same token, Otrar was an ideal mustering point and location from which to launch attacks.4
Rulers of India’s Mughal Dynasty, with Tamerlane at center (India, c. 1707–1712). The Central Asian conqueror and other leaders of the late Mongol Empire were revered by succeeding dynasties, which sought legitimacy by emphasizing connections to Chinggis Khan and his descendants. (Pictures from History / Bridgeman Images)
As Toqtamish gained strength, he received more recruits from among the Shirin, Barin, Arghun, and Qipchaq peoples attached to Urus. These groups were the hereditary peoples of Toqtamish’s father—the els assigned to him by right, who had been coerced into joining Urus’s horde. Complaining of oppression by the khan and his sons, those remaining in Urus’s horde were prepared to break off and join Toqtamish, so he and his commanders worked out a plan to siphon the els away during Urus’s migration to the summer pastures. Urus’s guards would be preoccupied during the mass migration, allowing Toqtamish to lead his peoples away from Urus’s horde. The plan worked, but, unsurprisingly, it was not long before Urus realized that large numbers of his herders had disappeared. The khan gathered his fastest warriors and pursued the escapees. Urus and his men fell on Toqtamish’s camp in the middle of the night, but they were outnumbered and Toqtamish’s warriors were determined to defend themselves. Urus was killed during the fighting; locals later reported that Toqtamish’s twelve-year-old son Jalāl al-Dīn delivered the death blow. In the aftermath, Toqtamish eliminated Urus’s sons one after the other. Finally, around 1378, Toqtamish announced total victory. From Sighnaq, the center of the Blue Horde—not from the lower Volga, the center of the White Horde and the traditional seat of Jochid power—Toqtamish declared himself khan of ulus Jochi.5
Toqtamish never assembled the Jochids or organized a quriltai to confirm his office. Nonetheless, he won respect across the Horde and the steppe at large. Word spread that Toqtamish had farr, a Persian concept similar to sülde—the divine favor that made strong leaders and strong states. Toqtamish’s territory grew quickly, as Jochid begs fell in behind him. Tired of the Horde’s infighting, they pushed for union and gave their approval of a khan who seemed to have Tengri and Allah on his side. By the close of 1378, Toqtamish controlled most of the cities on the middle and lower Syr-Daria, an important region for camel, cattle, and horse breeding as well as trade, because the transcontinental road crossing the region was still partially active. In 1379 the Sufi-Qonggirad regime allied with and subordinated themselves to Toqtamish, and in the following year he mastered the entire southeastern frontier of the Horde.6
The new khan’s next move would be northward, into the Volga Valley and Sarai. Toqtamish convinced the Shibanids, descendan
ts of Jochi’s fifth son, to support his conquest of the lower Volga. The Shibanids were the powerful chiefs of Ibir-Sibir, a vast region in western Siberia, and allies of the Qonggirad. With Shibanid support, Toqtamish was able to capture Sarai in a matter of months. Thereafter, in late 1380, Toqtamish targeted the western hordes, under Mamai’s direct leadership. The Shibanids were happy to join this campaign as well. They did not trust Mamai, who had rejected their claim to the Batuid throne.7
To eliminate Mamai, Toqtamish followed a sophisticated plan based on parallel military and political operations. The military project was relatively simple, as Mamai’s forces had been decimated by the plague and by the prince of Moscow in September 1380. Taking advantage of the situation, Toqtamish sent warriors into Mamai’s camp in October. The attack took place on the banks of the Kalka River, where the Mongols had smashed the Russians and the Qipchaqs more than a century and a half earlier. Mamai’s camp was destroyed, but he managed to escape to his stronghold in Crimea.8
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