After the death of Chinggis Khan, Mongolian expansion continued across Asia. In the 1230s,
as the conquests of northern China and Iran were largely completed, his son Ögedai Khaan
sent a great host to overrun the west. Commanded by Batu, a grandson of Chinggis, and the mighty
general Sübe’etei, they subjugated all in their path, culminating in 1241 when they
struck into the kingdoms of Hungary and Poland. Though their withdrawal in 1242 is popularly
presented as permanent, this was hardly the end of Mongol interaction with Europe. For
most of the late thirteenth century, Mongol attacks on Eastern Europe were led by one
man: Nogai, a great-great-grandson of Chinggis Khan, and famed as an almighty kingmaker within
the Golden Horde. The following series will focus on the life of Nogai, offering a reevaluation
of his long career. Before we focus on Nogai though, we must establish the world he lived
in, and the historiography I’m dropping you into.
Following Batu’s leisurely withdrawal from Hungary in the spring of 1242, he set up his
camp in the Volga steppes. Though Batu began to oversee the vast new territories, he was
no independent monarch; he was merely the head of the line of Jochi, Chinggis Khan’s
eldest son. Batu was still a servant of the Great Khan— up until December 1241, that
had been Ögedai, Chinggis Khan’s third son. But Ögedai was a devil for the drink.
Following his death, there was no favourite among his sons and grandsons to succeed him.
While his widow Törögene sought to place their son Güyük on the throne, Batu’s
autonomy grew ever greater. When Güyük was declared Khan of Khans in 1246, Batu remained
obstinate. He had housed ministers like Mas’ud Beg, who Güyük’s mother Törögene had
threatened. He and Güyük had a poor relationship since the Great Western campaign, where Güyük
had critiqued and insulted Batu’s command. Batu, despite having traveled as far east
as Lake Balkhash, refused to attend Güyük in person, citing his severe gout. Güyük’s
frustration grew ever greater. On a pretense of preparations to renew the attack on the
west, in early 1248 Güyük moved suddenly in Batu’s direction with an army. Whether
he intended to actually attack Batu or simply assert his authority is unknown. Regardless,
war was averted when Güyük suddenly, and conveniently, dropped dead only weeks into
his march. Some sources, such as the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck, who visited Mongolia
only a few years later, were under the impression that Batu had Güyük assassinated.
Regardless of his involvement, Batu acted quickly following Güyük’s demise. In contact
with Sorqaqtani Beki, the widow of Chinggis Khan’s fourth son Tolui, they moved to fill
the vacuum. While Güyük’s widow Oghul Qaimish and some of Güyük’s sons fought
over who should succeed him, at a quriltai in 1250 on Batu’s territory, Batu and Sorqaqtani
had her son Möngke elected Khan of Khans, reconfirmed the next year in Mongolia. Güyük’s
family was outmaneuvered, and in the following months Güyük’s widow and many members
of the lines of Ogedai and Chagatai were killed on Möngke’s order.
With his ally on the throne, Batu acted as Möngke’s viceroy of the west. Travellers
through the Mongol Empire at this time describe Batu and Möngke as two masters of Asia who
divided the continent between them. Batu comfortably built his capital at Sarai, oversaw the rebuilding
of overland trade routes and cities, established administrative ties over the Rus’ and sought
to enforce Jochid hegemony over the Caucasus, Anatolia, Mazandaran, Khurasan and Khwarezm,
in addition to his already vast holdings. Batu’s might was uncontested. So great was
he that his successors remembered him as the Sain Khan, the good Khan. Upon his death around
1255, he was succeeded by his son, Sartaq, a Christian. But Sartaq was not to enjoy the
throne. In unclear circumstances, Sartaq suddenly died. Armenian sources accuse Batu’s younger
brothers, Berke and Berkechir, of poisoning him. Sartaq’s successor, the young Ulagchi
(his son or brother), likewise found his life mysteriously cut short. Batu’s widow, Boraqchin
Khatun, assumed the regency only for Berke to accuse her of treason. She was soon executed,
and Berke stepped into the throne sometime between 1257 and 1260, perhaps once he had
learned of Möngke Khan’s death in China in August 1259.
Berke’s reign will be dealt with in more detail in our following episode. Famous as
the first Muslim Khan of the House of Chinggis, he fought a fierce war against his cousin
Hulegu over the Caucasus. It is here that Nogai first appears, as Berke’s commander-in-chief
and likely already a fellow Muslim, avenging his father who had been executed by Hulegu.
Nogai fought valiantly alongside Berke, but ultimately the war did not go well. Losing
several battles, Nogai also lost an eye to a spear or arrow, and finally Berke himself
died of illness in 1266 while moving into Georgia. Nogai and the army withdrew back
to Sarai, where a successor to the childless Berke was chosen: a grandson of Batu named
Möngke-Temür.
We can consider Möngke-Temür the first Khan of the truly independent Golden Horde. While
Berke spent his reign battling relatives and Hulegu, Möngke-Temür built on the foundation
established by Batu to advance the Golden Horde to total separation from the Great Khan.
The first of the Jochid Khans to issue coins in his own name, he strengthened their hold
over the Rus’ Principalities, provided tax exemptions to the Rus’ church, encouraged
trade and commercial activities, and came to a ceasefire with Hulegu’s successor,
Abaqa Il-Khan. He continued to foster the alliance with the Mamluks and reasserted the
Horde’s control in border regions, and on his order raids into Eastern Europe restarted.
It was a part of Möngke-Temür’s shoring up of his borders that he sent his cousin
Nogai to what is now eastern Romania.
Nogai spent the rest of the thirteenth century based in this region, where I believe he acted
as a tamma commander, essentially a garrison to both defend and expand the Empire’s borders
by raids, threatening and generally disrupting nearby states. And this is just what Nogai
did. From here he married a Byzantine Princess, placed tsars on the Bulgarian throne and led
invasions into Hungary and Poland. From this perch Nogai had his interactions, and conflicts,
with the Khans of the Golden Horde. According to most of the scholarship on Nogai, following
the death of Möngke-Temür Khan in 1280 or so, Nogai became the primary powerbroker of
the Golden Horde, appointing and deposing Khans as it suited him. The depiction will
go as follows. First Nogai appoints Möngke-Temür’s weaker brother, Töde-Möngke, then orders
Töde-Möngke’s replacement with the combative Tele-Buqa. Once the relationship between Nogai
and Tele-Buqa grew sour due to losses incurred in Hungary and Poland, Nogai has Tele-Buqa
overthrown in 1291 by his final protege, a son of Möngke-Temür named Toqta. It was
in the reign of Toqta that Nogai developed his greatest pretensions, overpowering and
pushing around the young Khan for his first years until the frustrated Toqta pushed back.
Aghast that this upstart would dare stand up to him, Nogai declared his independence,
making himself a Khan. The short war with Toqta culminated in Nogai’s defeat and death
by 1300.
The problem is, this is not what is in the primary sources. This image is popular, consistently
portrayed and almost totally removed from Nogai’s actual role in the surviving primary
sources. I too, was under the impression that Nogai was the almighty kingmaker, or rather
khanmaker, until I began to notice this discrepancy in winter 2019. While researching this video
[Invasions of Hungary and Poland] for Kings and Generals, I was reviewing events from
Nogai’s life in one of the most important sources on the Mongol Empire, the Jāmi’
al-tāwarīkh of Rashīd al-Dīn. There, expecting to find Nogai replacing Töde-Möngke, I was
shocked to find Nogai uninvolved with the conspiracy, which was actually led by Töde-Möngke’s
nephew, Tele-Buqa and a group of his own allies. Rather than a puppet of Nogai, in Rashīd’s
account Tele-Buqa rules the Golden Horde through a four way princely junta, and appears, throughout
his reign, quite antagonistic to Nogai. When Tele-Buqa was deposed in 1291, Nogai did so
in alliance with the prince Toqta.
The discrepancy immediately caught my attention, and I investigated further. It became the
topic for my Master’s Thesis, entitled the Role of Nogai in Eastern Europe and the Late
Thirteenth Century Golden Horde: a Reassessment. There, I ignored the popular depiction in
the secondary scholarship, and the expectation of Nogai acting as a khanmaker, to focus exclusively
on the primary sources and what they said of Nogai, in addition offering an explanation
to the origins of the khanmaker image, and then reassessing Nogai’s life and career.
I found that, contrary to the common depiction, all the primary sources agree that Nogai was
involved only in a single overthrow of a Khan: in cooperation with Toqta, overthrowing Tele-Buqa
Khan in 1291. The primary sources simply do not have Nogai involved in the accession,
or removal, of any other khan.
A word should be given to these primary sources before we proceed. As essentially no sources
or chronicles survive from the Golden Horde, if they ever existed, we are reliant on foreign
authors for reconstructing the Horde’s political history. Luckily, we are well serviced. Our
most detailed accounts come from the early 14th century. The first is the already mentioned
chronicle of Rashīd al-Dīn, the great historian and vizier of the Ilkhanate. The other most
important source is the Zubdat al-fikra of Baybars al-Mansuri, one of the top figures
of the Mamluk Sultanate. Both Rashīd al-Dīn and Baybars al-Mansuri wrote at the same time
just after Nogai’s death, but from different states and independent of each other. The
fact that their two works, written from two states with very different opinions of the
Golden Horde, provide accounts largely in agreement is significant. Less information,
but still of importance, comes from the chronicles of the Rus’ Principalities and the Historia
of the Byzantine author Pachymeres. Supporting information can be gleaned from some European
letters, chronicles and other accounts, which include letters of Franciscan friars in Crimea
and even the great travel book of a certain Marco Polo. The final pages of Polo’s Description
of the World are dedicated to Nogai and the Golden Horde. Even Polo’s slightly garbled
account still has Nogai only assist another prince in removing Tele-Buqa. In this, all
of these sources agree: it is only in the removal of Tele-Buqa Khan in 1291 that the
primary sources unanimously give Nogai a role. The primary sources, be they from the Ilkhanate,
Mamluk Sultanate, Byzantine Empire, Rus’ Principalities or a prison cell holding two
Italians, simply do not have Nogai in the role so often ascribed to him by modern writers.
Neither are these the only sourceless claims that have built up around Nogai. We will address
more of these as our series goes along, relating to Nogai’s ancestry and power within and
without the Golden Horde, as well as the matter of his supposed independence. But if these
claims have no basis in 13th century sources, where do they come from? There appear to be
a few factors working together. For instance, tt is popular to place the Golden Horde’s
history into a series of Khanmakers punctuated by strong khans. In the late 14th and early
15th century, the Golden Horde found itself dominated by real khanmakers who, unlike Nogai,
succeeded in reducing the Khans to figure heads and removing them. These were Mamai,
from the 1360s until 1380, and Edigü, at the start of the 1400s. Unlike Nogai, both
Mamai and Edigü were not Chinggisids, and could never hold direct power in their own
right. Further confusion comes from the fact that Edigü’s sons were the founders of
the Nogai Horde, a Golden Horde successor state north of the Caspian Sea which, despite
its name, bears no connection to the 13th century Nogai.
Nogai is commonly seen as a forerunner to Mamai and Edigü, and the assumption becomes
that Nogai was like them a kingmaker. Because if he wasn’t, then surely he would have
claimed the title of Khan of the Golden Horde himself? Such is the view, more or less, of
Nikolaj Veselovskij, who wrote the first and most detailed biography of Nogai, posthumously
released in 1922. Veselovskij’s work argues that Nogai, due to uncertain heritage, could
not claim the title od khan, and therefore had to become a khanmaker, reducing the reigning
khans to puppets similar to Edigü and Temür. Though Veselovskij’s monograph is outdated
and, as I argue, misinterprets some of the relevant sources, it remains perhaps the single
most commonly cited source for Nogai’s life. Some of the most well known and recent works
on the Golden Horde have and still rely on Veselovskij’s depiction of Nogai.
In order to fit the khanmaker model with Mamai and Edigü, the fact that Nogai did take part
in overthrowing a khan in 1291 becomes overemphasized, and every other event of his life has been
forced into this mold and interpreted as a man always battling the khans. I suggest most
discussions of Nogai and this period of the Golden Horde have simply recited secondary
literature again and again without revisiting the primary sources. With each succeeding
generation of scholarship, Nogai’s role in the Golden Horde has become more and more
exaggerated. While 19th century historians portrayed him as highly influential, twentieth
and twenty-first century writers made him the dominant power of the Golden Horde, controlling
the khans, the military, its diplomacy and foreign policy. This is not a knock on any
of these scholars: many of those who have used the khanmaker image, such as István
Vásáry or Peter Jackson, are some of the finest scholars on the Mongols you can find.
It has been so often repeated that most have simply taken it for granted, or assume it
appears in another source that they haven’t read. But I’ve gone through the sources.
While a minority, such as Alexander Uzelac, have rightfully pointed out Nogai did not
replace khans, none have sought to revisit his entire career without the baggage of the
khanmaker image. But I have. And in the following episodes, I will demonstrate to you the new
version of Nogai’s life. As the Golden Horde’s history in the late thirteenth century has
been defined by the image of Nogai as the ultimate power, what you will see to is also
a reinterpretation of the late thirteenth century Golden Horde, and perhaps, a hint
for the roads for future research. You might not agree with what I present in this series;
that’s fine. You may tell me to check out a book where some historian makes a certain
argument about Nogai. That’s totally cool. But I’ve read through all of these. So you
better be ready for a thorough scholarly discussion, because that’s what you’re going to get.
Welcome, to the reign of Nogai.