State (during the reign of khans Batu1242-1255; Berke 1255-1266).
2. 1266-1312 – the first political crisis in the Golden Horde
3. 1312-1359 – the period of rise of the Golden Horde
4. 1359-1379 – a great sedition in the Golden Horde
5. 1380-1395 – an attempt to restore the unity of the Golden Horde.
6. The first half of the XV century. – The process of disintegration of the Golden Horde.
The Golden Horde was a one of the greaControl states of the middle Ages. Thus, the descendants of Juji ruled a vast territory, covering nearly half of Asia and Europe – from the Irtysh River to the Danube River from the shores of the Black and Caspian Sea to China. The population of the Golden Horde was varied. But the bulk of the population of Golden Horde was Kipchaks living in the steppes till the arrival of the Mongols. Already in XIV century Mongols began to dissolve in Kipchak environment, forgetting their own culture, language, and writing. This was facilitated and occurred at the beginning of XIV century changing religion.
Before considering the formation of the Golden Horde let's clarify the following points:
1. How the Mongols called their state?
2. How did thier neighbors call the State?
According to Mongolian tradition, the head of each of the Mongol states considered the allocation of his or conquered territory as a generic domain, each entering the throne Saray Khans called his state simply "heartland", ie people, given an inheritance to possess it. As for the name the Jujids' state from European and Asian powers, there prevailed a complete lack of coordination. In the Arabic chronicles, it most often named after the Khan ruling at a certain moment, with their respective ethnic clarification: "Berke, the great king of the Tatar", "Tokhto, the king of the Tatar", "Uzbek, the owner of the Nordic countries", "king of Tokhto, the owner of the barn and land Kipchak, "King Desht-i-KipchakTokhto. Sometimes Arabic and Persian authors called the Golden Horde ulus Juchi ulus Batu ulus Berke ulus Uzbeks. European travelers P. Carpini and B. Rubruk use the old term "country of addicts", "ASEA", "The Power of the Tatars. In a letter to Pope Benedict XII Juji's State was called Northern Tartary. In Russian chronicles first identified these State by an ethnic term. Princes riding in the "Tatars of Batu" and return"Tatars. Only in the last decade in the XIII, appeared and firmly adopted a new and unique name "Horde", which lasted until the collapse of the Juji's State.
And among the most striking aspects of the Russian treatment of Juji's ulus has been the designation of its inhabitants as "Tatars." Were the Mongols to be Tatars? What lies behind this term?
First it is necessary to clarify the origins of the name "Mongol," about which opinions differ. According to Chinese annals, this was the name of Genghis Khan's tribe. But Isaac J. Schmidt, a nineteenth-century Moravian missionary, who learned the Mongol language, argued that as Genghis Khan brought together different tribes, he had adopted the term Mongol to impart a sense of unity. Schmidt added that the etymology of Mongol signified "brave, fearless, excellent," a prideful appellation.
A subsequent researcher, accepting Schmidt's supposition, has slightly modified his reading of "Mongol" to mean the "secure backbone" of Genghis Khan's power (i.e. his soldiers or people). Such a reading, which seems plausible, betrays nineteenth- and twentieth-century notions of how "states" are held together – i.e., as a "nation." The "Mongols" were everywhere far outnumbered by their subjects (one researcher estimated the thirteenth-century "Mongol" population at 700,000 – at a time when Mongol controlled China had at least 75 million people
Rather than a nation the Mongols were a ruling caste in the broader ulus. The Genghisid principle was the "unifier," not nationhood. Flowing out from the Genghisid principle was the military organization of society, or, to put it another way, the convertibility of civilian into military existence. That in its turn was founded on a way of life, nomadism.
The category of "Mongol" is further troubled by the evident assimilation of Mongol speakers. According to one scholar, Batu commanded 370,000 people, of who maybe one-third were "Mongols." Another scholar acknowledges, however, that the number of Mongols proper remains a mystery. Indeed, the Great Russian orientalist Vasilii Bartol'd emphasized that the majority of Mongol speakers probably returned to the traditional lands of Mongolia (for example, once Batu's European campaign was halted in the 1240th). In addition, Bartol'd concluded, "those Mongols who stayed behind in the conquered countries quickly lost their nationality," as the language of the "empire" underwent Turkification in the steppes and Central Asia. Logically, such assimilated Mongols might then merit the designation "Tatar," which would seem to signify Turkified Mongols as well as other long-ago turkified peoples the Genghisid-led troops incorporated. The Tatars proper were not Turks, however, but a tribe or a group of Tungusic tribes who lived in northeastern Mongolia and fought incessantly with the Mongols (Genghis Khan's father appears to have been ambushed and killed by a Tatar). The Mongols never called themselves Tatars. It was the Chinese, who used the name "Tatar" to refer to all their northern neighbors, and it seems that the European travelers to Mongol-ruled China, as well as Arabic and Persian visitors adopted and spread the generic Chinese designation. Note that the term Tatar was rooted in an opposition – the barbarians north of China; the non-sedentary, nomadic peoples. It was in this oppositional sense that the west Europeans and Russians adopted "Tatar." The term Tatar, no less than "Mongol" or "Turk," expresses political relations.
An imposition that expressed fear and condescension, "Tatar" as a name implied a sense of unity and cohesion within the Mongol realm. Juji's ulus was never a unified or integrated entity, however. Rather, it was made up of various semi-independent ulus led by Batu's brothers and other relatives. At no point did all the parts unequivocally recognize the superordinate authority of Saray, even if they sometimes stopped short of going to war. By the second half of the XIIIth century, internal wars became endemic. Tamerlane applied the coup de grace. Sometime thereafter, the ulus "fragmented," meaning that even nominal allegiance to a single khan ceased. This produced, in the east, various components independent of Saray (and the object of contention among Kirghiz and Uzbeks), and in the west, several so-called "khanates" (Kazan, Astrakhan, and Crimea), as well as other offshoots, among which was the Siberian "khanate." The "fragments" had always been fragments; what changed was the appearance, and to an extent the practice, of allegiance to a single authority.
Scholars have not been able to fix the "borders" of the Golden Horde, or have done so only very vaguely using geographical information supplied by Arabic sources in the XIVth and XVth centuries (there is also a Chinese map from the XIVth century). On European maps of Asia, various political entities are duly noted, but there is no effort to indicate the "borders" separating them. Nonetheless, one historical geographer has pressed forward, noting that the Mongols signed agreements with Riazan recognizing Episcopal spheres and the right to collect church duties (divided among the Saray and Riazan metropolitans), and that they seem to have maintained guards at some kind of "border" with the Rus principalities. At the same time, however, this scholar admits that many steppe peoples migrated, seeking to create "neutral zones" between themselves and the Mongols, a process the Mongols welcomed. All of this suggests that the effort to establish the Golden Horde's borders is anachronistic because they had no such concept. As Howorth wrote, "among nomadic races, territorial provinces are not so well recognized as tribal ones. A potentate distributes his clans, not his acres, among his children. Each of them has of course its camping ground, but the exact limits are not to be definitely measured."
Juji's ulus, notwithstanding its Islamicization, was less a state with borders than a perpetual standing army, an agglomeration of peoples for whom military and civilian life was not clearly distinguished. There were notions of extremities and of lands that were located beyond those that were conducive to pastoralism, but no fixed state boundaries. The ulus was "nonbounded." Its rule, although nominally exclusive, did not preclude multiple sovereignty (some peoples levied by the Horde
