The state of Golden Horde (political history, economy, social organization).

When Shynghys khan’s empire was distributed among his heirs, the territory of present-day Kazakhstan was divided between his sons, Jochi and Chagatai. Jochi predeceased his father, and so his inheritance (the lands west of the Irtysh River) passed to his son, Batu, who expanded his territory westward and founded the Golden Horde. Chagatai controlled the Semirech’e region as well as western Jungaria and Mawarannahr.

During the first half of the thirteenth century Batu’s territories continued to expand westward, but his headquarters remained at Sarai (in the heart of Dashti-Qipchak), 65 miles north of Astrakhan. The vastness of his holdings made it easy for loyal but independent khanates to emerge within the territory of the Golden Horde. Over the first quarter of the fourteenth century, a semiautonomous Mongol khanate gradually emerged, known as the White Horde and encompassing the Syr Darya region. The khan of the White Horde, who wintered around Sygnak, controlled the steppe northwest of the Aral Sea as far as the Ishim and Sarysu rivers. The first khan of the White Horde paid tribute to the khans of the Golden Horde. Eight successive khans tried unsuccessfully to gain complete autonomy for the White Horde, but it was not until 1364 that independence from the Goldern Horde was achieved. Even this was short-lived, as Tokhtamysh (reigned 1381-1395), khan of the Golden Horde, succeeded in reuniting the Golden and White Hordes. This period saw the redevelopment of agriculture, the founding or reconstruction of trading centres in Southern Kazakhstan, and the re-establishment of a unified and viable economic region, all necessary preconditions for the emergence of a united Kazakh people one hundred years later. Efforts by the Ilkhans to interdict this trade, or even to prevent direct trade between Iran and Egypt, failed.23 Kipchaks dominated the Egyptian Mamluk corps during the Bahri period (1250-1382), and did not relinquish that pre-eminence to the Circassians. Until after the disintegration of the Ilkhanate. Berke, Muslim khan of the Golden Horde, permitted his fellow Muslim, Baybars, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and ally against the Ilkhanids, to purchase slaves in Juchid territory: 200 in 1262, 1,300 in 1263, and more in 1264.24 Kipchak Turkic became the spoken and literary language of the Mamluk military-political elite, all of whose members, even if not of Kipchak or even Turkic origin, took Turkish names to distinguish them from their Arabic-named subjects and children. Kipchaks were not 'recruited' as eunuchs in Egypt. When a Mamluk Sultan wanted to praise his Turkman auxiliaries, he called them 'pure Kipchaks'.25

Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1244