Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, was to inherit the northwestern portion of his father’s Mongol Empire when he died in February 1227. His sons Batu and Ordu thus inherited the realm when Genghis died a few months later. This territory is thus sometimes known as the Ulus of Jochi.
However, the territory’s best-known name is the Golden Horde, derived from the golden color of its leaders’ tents. It is also sometimes known as the Kipchak Khanate after the Kipchak Turks, who comprised the bulk of the population. At the time, however, the khanate merely referred to itself as the Great State.
The Golden Horde expanded into the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, subjugating the Slavic Rusʹ principalities. These conquests resulted in great ethnic and religious diversity. In 1262, the Muslim Berke Khan clashed with the Buddhist Hulagu, who ruled the Ilkhanate of Iran, over his destruction of Baghdad.
Conflicts such as this Berke–Hulagu war led to the gradual unraveling of the Mongol Empire. The Golden Horde later participated in the Kaidu–Kublai war, first opposing before supporting Kublai, the overall Great Khan. The Golden Horde was effectively independent by the war’s end in the early 1300s.
The empire had also converted to Sunni Islam by this time. As the Kipchak Turks, who had ruled Cumania before its conquest by the Mongols, became Muslim, they gave rise to a new Tatar identity. The Golden Horde prospered up to the early 14th century, trading with and collecting tribute from its neighbors.
However, the Golden Horde faced a crisis in the mid-14th century. The left (eastern) wing of the empire, hitherto subordinate to the right wing, grew more independent, and relations became hostile. In 1380, Tokhtamysh of the eastern horde took control of the west with the aid of the warlord Timur.
Tokhtamysh then betrayed his patron, leading to his defeat in the devastating Tokhtamysh–Timur war. Timur installed a new ruler in 1395, who was soon ousted by the warlord Edigu and his ally Tīmūr Qutluq. Edigu himself was later ousted, and went on to establish the independent Nogai Horde.
Just like the Mongol Empire before it, the Golden Horde began to disintegrate. In 1428, the Shaybanid dynasty, descended from Jochi’s fifth son Shiban, founded its own Uzbek Khanate in the east. Ten years later, Tatar and Chuvash elites established the Khanate of Kazan in the former Volga Bulgaria.
Finally, the Crimean Tatars formed the Crimean Khanate in Ukraine in 1441, and the Astrakhan Khanate emerged along the lower Volga in 1466. Historians refer to the remainder of the original Golden Horde as the Great Horde. Later, the Kazakh and Sibir Khanates drove the Uzbeks down south.
Crimea, which benefited greatly from the Black Sea slave trade, was subjugated by the Ottoman Empire in 1475. Five years later, Moscow defeated the Great Horde for good at the Great Stand on the Urga River. The weakened Great Horde was absorbed by Crimea and Astrakhan in 1502.
Moreover, the Golden Horde’s various successors threatened each other as well. The Kazakhs and Nogais frequently fought over the latter’s capital, Saray-Jük, an important commercial center on the Ural River. Astrakhan was harassed by both the Nogais, pushed west by the Kazakhs, and Crimea.
The mid-16th century saw the Grand Duchy of Moscow, having already integrated all of its Rus' neighbors, become the Tsardom of Russia and further consolidate control over its corner of Eastern Europe. This involved annexing Kazan, previously under the Ottoman sphere of influence, and Astrakhan.
Russia then turned its attention east: starting in 1580, Russia began to expand into Siberia, an effort spearheaded by its Slavic Cossack warriors. As Russia conquered indigenous peoples and took control of the fur trade, the Kazakhs fought the Uzbek Khanate of Bukhara over key cities like Tashkent.
The Khanate of Sibir was destroyed by Russia in 1598. The residents of Sibir, which likely lent its name to “Siberia,” became the Siberian Tatars. Meanwhile, those who lived in Kazan, the Russian puppet khanate of Qasim, and surrounding areas came to be known as the Volga Tatars.
Meanwhile, the Nogais and Kazakhs faced a new threat starting in the 17th century: the Oirats, a Mongolic people to their east. In 1630, a group of Oirats migrated westward and devastated the Nogai Horde, establishing the Kalmyk Khanate. The remaining Nogais were absorbed by Russia.
Other Oirats who remained in their homeland founded the Dzungar Khanate, which fought the Kazakhs over control of the region of Zhetysu. The Kazakh–Dzungar Wars would break out many times starting in 1643, ending only when the Dzungars were defeated by China’s Qing dynasty in 1755.
In the early 18th century, the Kazakh Khanate split into three zhuz, or major tribal unions. Each zhuz now had its own khan, though sometimes one khan would take control of multiple. Meanwhile, Russia triumphed over Sweden in the Great Northern War in 1721, and proclaimed the Russian Empire.
Russia established settlements such as Semey (Semipalatinsk) and Oskemen (Ust-Kamennaya) in Kazakh lands. Kazakhs often raided these settlements and sold Russian captives into slavery. In 1731 and 1740, however, the Junior and Middle zhuz submitted to Russia for protection against the Dzungars.
With Russia’s defeat of the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, the Crimean Khanate was made nominally neutral but part of the Russian sphere of influence. In 1783, ending centuries of Ottoman dominance, the Crimean Khanate was annexed by the Russian Empire.
Thus, only the Kazakhs remained independent out of the Golden Horde’s successors; though Bukhara was ruled by relatives of Jochi, its population was primarily descended from the Chagatai Khanate. Russia allowed some Kazakhs to settle in the Bukey Horde in former Kalmyk lands between 1801 and 1845.
Russia annexed the Senior zhuz in 1847 following the death of its Kenesary Khan at the hands of a pro-Russian Kyrgyz leader. While many of the Golden Horde’s descendants would continue to live within Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, Kazakhstan would regain its independence in 1991.