The Mongol conquest of the Rus’ principalities  is dramatic and well-known. However, the end  

of Mongol rule over what is today the Russian  Federation cannot be reduced to a single event,  

but a centuries long process of political,  economic, military and even environmental shifts  

wherein the Golden Horde and its successors  gradually ceded control to the rising power  

of Moscow. In this video we will see how  this process took place across centuries.

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After Mongol rule was firmly established over the  western steppes and Rus’ principalities by the  

1240s, the successors of Batu were unassailable.  While sometimes presented as outside or even  

independent of the Golden Horde, the Rus’  principalities were the khan's total vassals,  

providing tax, tribute and  soldiers as the khan required,  

and each Rus’ prince had to receive confirmation  for his right to rule from the khan’s yarliq.  

Firmly supported by both the Rus’ princes and the  Orthodox Church, after the 1250s there was minimal  

resistance to Mongol authority in the Rus’ lands.  Yet the Rus’ were but one of the subjects of the  

Jochid khan, and not where his attention was most  directed, for they continued to live as nomads. 

Mongol rule reorganized the society in  the steppes. They brutally enforced a new  

organization, where all the peoples of the steppe  were divided into uluses, or patrimonial peoples.  

Grouped into units of 1,000 and further  subdivided, all of these uluses were allotted to  

the new Mongol elite; the altan urag, the princes  of the line of Chinggis Khan, and the noyad,  

the military leadership. Each ulus was given  its own grazing grounds and natural resources;  

transfer between units was forbidden, and they  were forbidden to use another ulus’ resources.  

The revenues from the uluses, in the form  of the products of their herds, went to the  

Jochid khans. In this way the Mongol rule over  the steppe was maintained and the Chinggisid  

elite spread amongst the Turkic population. It proved a remarkably effective system for  

maintaining stability and preventing native  rebellion. The Jochid khan in this way could  

keep track of his manpower and resources of the  khanate, and trade could travel easier without  

fear of being raided by a Qipchap chief. Another  byproduct was the steady growth in the population  

of the steppe and the Rus’ principalities. Under Jochid rule numerous settlements were  

established; over 100 are known archeological and  from written sources. While many of these must  

have been initially quite humble, and the capital  of Sarai at its inception perhaps just thousands  

of felt tents, gers, as the population grew,  nomadic encampments turned into permanent cities,  

with rectangular districts of suburbs and  craftsmen emanating from central squares.  

The archeological remains of the largest of these,  Sarai al-Jadid, stretches for 7 kilometers along  

the Akhtuba River, and at its height in the mid  14th century may have held some 75,000 people. 

The thirteenth century was a  climatic optimum in the steppe,  

of warm and wet temperatures. Political stability  allowed an expansion in agricultural production  

to supply these massive cities. In addition  to the millions of sheep, goats, cattle and  

horses the nomads supplied cities with, so too  were more lands cultivated. Various kinds of  

wheat and millet were extensively cultivated in  the Ukrainian steppes, and the Golden Horde was  

a primary regional exporter. Slaves and horses  were also important exports for the Jochid state;  

the excellence of the Jochid horses saw  many thousands sold yearly from the Rus’  

to India. The Golden Horde was further  enriched by the great overland trade.  

Wares from China and Egypt are found in the  remains of Horde cities, and industries within  

these cities developed around supporting and  providing for the merchants who led this caravan  

trade across the Mongol Khanates. Jochid Khans  encouraged trade through low customs duties,  

and transplanting Rus’ and Qipchaps to  rivers to permanently man ferry crossings. 

The Golden Horde’s golden age was reached in the  first half of the fourteenth century, during the  

thirty year reign of Khan Özbeg. In the final  years of his life the good fortune of the Jochid  

khanate began to ebb. Environmental data indicates  a steady decrease in precipitation in the steppe  

beginning in 1280 and dropping precipitously after  1320. In already dry steppe grasslands, this led  

to less productive pastures and desertification.  For an economy and population that still relied  

on their great herds of livestock, an upset to  the steppe biome pushed many into destitution,  

and sought shelter in the Horde’s great cities.  Further woes came as the Caspian Sea rose;  

the Italian geographer Marino Sanuto wrote in  1320 that it rose by hand’s breadth every year.  

Low lying farmland and communities  in the Volga Delta were destroyed,  

driving yet more people to the cities. The disintegration of the Ilkhanate and Chagatai  

Khanate in the 1330s unraveled the overland trade  which had helped enrich the Jochid’s cities.  

The greatest disaster came just after Özbeg’s  death, when the Black Death struck. Overpopulated  

and undersupplied cities were ravaged;  in Crimea, one source speaks of 85,000  

dying of plague there. It was there in 1343 that  Özbeg’s son Jani Beg, while besieging Caffa,  

infamously is alleged to have thrown plague bodies  into the city, which brought it to Europe. Rounds  

of plague would strike repeatedly for the  remainder of the Horde’s history. The nomadic  

population suffered less than the urban, while  the steppe itself could act as a barrier; the  

plague only came to the Rus’ lands in the 1350s,  from contacts with Europe rather than the Horde. 

On Jani Beg Khan’s death in 1357, the dynasty’s  luck ran out. In quick succession his sons killed  

each other and by the start of the 1360s the line  of Batu was extinguished. The door was opened  

to any claimant descended from Jochi. During the  next twenty years, over 25 men claimed the throne;  

some are only known from coinage minted in their  name. Some ruled little more than weeks, until  

pushed out by another contender or power broker;  of these, the most famous was the general Mamai,  

who from his base in Crimea became the  most powerful individual kingmaker. 

While the Jochid wasted their energies in two  decades of anarchy, its hold over the border  

regions weakened. Lithuania seized the far west,  taking Kiev and pushing to the Black Sea coast;  

the eastern wing of the ulus became independent.  In the Rus’ lands, princes stopped making the  

treks to the Horde for confirmation. The Rus’  princes grew bolder, and the Prince of Moscow,  

previously the Khan’s favourite tax-collector,  grew in might, culminating in Prince Dmitri’s  

victory over Mamai at Kulikovo in 1380,  when Mamai came to chastise Dmitri for  

his failures to provide tribute. Shortly after,  Toqtamish, a descendant of Jochi’s son Tuqa-Temür,  

succeeded in overcoming Mamai and the other  khanmakers, and re-established central authority.  

Angered at the Rus’ princes’ tardiness  with in-person submissions and tribute,  

Toqtamish took his army into the Rus’  lands, sacking Moscow in 1382 and sending  

Dmitri Donskoi fleeing. The battle of Kulikovo,  despite its standing in Russian popular memory,  

did not alter the dynamic between the Rus’ and  the Horde. Yet Dmitri’s policies over his reign  

solidified Moscow as one of the most preeminent  cities of the Rus’. On his death in 1389 his son  

was accepted as Grand Prince with little issue,  though the Rus’ were still vassals of the khan. 

Toqtamish enacted reforms to strengthen his power,  combat inflation and reset the Horde’s diplomacy.  

To the Mamluks, Ottomans,  Jalayirids and Moghulistan  

he renewed friendly relations while in the west  made Lithuania and Moldova vassals of the Horde.  

His vision was a renewal of the preeminence  of the Golden Horde; not only did he seek  

to revive the overland trade routes, which had  further been undone by fall of the Yuan, but he  

also presented himself as the heir to Chinggis  Khan. His pretensions put him on a collision  

course with the master of Central Asia and his  former ally, the great conqueror Aksak Temür;  

Tamerlane. Toqtamish wanted Khwarezm and the  Caucasus back under Jochid suzerainty; Tamerlane  

desired both. The two great generals went to war  in 1391 and 1395, and narrowly was Tamerlane the  

victor. Over 1395 Tamerlane systematically sacked  the major cities of the Horde. The destruction  

ensured the near total dismantling of the urban  economy and overland trade through the steppe. 

After Tamerlane’s withdrawal, Toqtamish and his  sons could not overcome the Horde’s new master,  

Edigü. As he was not a descendant of Chinggis  Khan, Edigü could not become khan, but as  

beylerbeyi empowered by Tamerlane he controlled  the succession. For the next two decades Edigü  

reduced the khans to puppets, removing those  who challenged him and had some success  

in strengthening the Horde, even retaking Khwarezm  after Tamerlane’s death and besieging Moscow  

in 1408. Some economic recovery is indicated  from the restarting of mints in major cities.  

To help legitimize himself he also furthered  conversion to Islam of the Horde’s nomadic  

population, continuing the process begun by  Özbeg. But Edigü’s power was never secure;  

rival factions put up their own khans, and the  sons of the late Toqtamish continued to fight him.  

In 1419 Edigü was finally killed by one  who had been declared khan, and with him  

died the final figure who had the capability of  holding together the Horde’s constituent parts. 

The 1420s saw another decade of khans who ruled  only briefly, and often at the same time. The  

situation stabilized slightly over the 1430s  and 40s into three main powers; Abu’l Khayr  

Khan in the east, Küchük Muhammad in the Volga  steppe, and Sayyid Ahmed west of the Don River.  

Küchük Muhammad’s nearly twenty year reign  is when scholarship and the Rus’ sources call  

the state the Great Horde. The Rus’, who spent  most of these years locked in their civil wars,  

still paid tribute to the Khan of the Great Horde. Each khan saw himself as the legitimate ruler, and  

new claimants continued to arise. One Khan, Ulugh  Muhammad, made himself independent at Kazan after  

being ousted from Sarai; on the Ural River emerged  the Nogai Horde under the descendants of Edigü;  

when Küchük Muhammad’s son Mahmud was ousted by  his brother, Mahmud’s heirs took over Astrakhan;  

and in 1442, Crimea and the surrounding steppes  came under the rule of Sayyid Ahmad’s nephew,  

Hajji Giray, establishing Crimea’s long ruling  Giray Dynasty. Hajji Giray, and his son Mengli  

Giray, dedicated their lives to fighting the  heirs of Küchük Muhammad, the khans of the ever  

successes, overrelying on useless Polish allies  and denied tribute by the Russian Grand Princes.  

Ivan III continued the domination of Moscow over  the other principalities and like his predecessors  

recognized the overlordship of the Khan, though  maintained diplomacy with the other emerging  

khans. From the 1440s onwards Rus’ tribute to the  Horde lagged, and in 1471 Ivan ceased it algother.  

Ahmad Khan frequently sent messengers demanding  its resumption, or for Ivan to come and reaffirm  

his submission in person. The ever more frustrated  Ahmad Khan, who had aborted a march on Moscow  

in 1472, ordered another attack in 1480 in  cooperation with his Polish ally Casimir IV.  

Ivan marched against him, and the armies  faced off across the Ugra River over the  

summer and into the autumn. Ahmad waited in vain  for Casimir, who never arrived. Arrows were shot,  

arquebuses were fired; Ivan worried the river  would freeze and allow Ahmad free passage.  

Ahmad retreated first, downtrodden his ally had  failed to show, and was murdered the next year. 

So ended the Great Stand on the Ugra River,  a glorified staring contest. Only centuries  

later did Rus’ chronicles see it as  marking the independence of the Rus’.  

It did not directly affect either  parties’ standing. Twenty years later,  

Ivan sent a message to Ahmad’s son and successor,  Shaykh Ahmad Khan, inquiring about resuming their  

earlier relationship in the midst of a  fierce round of struggle with Lithuania,  

while tribute, under different names,  would continue to the Crimean Khans. 

After Ahmad Khan’s death, his sons attempted to  act as co-rulers but were soon at each other’s  

throats. Shaykh Ahmad emerged the victor, with  futile dreams of reuniting the Horde. His cousin  

in Astrakhan defied him; Ivan III of Moscow  allied with Mengli Giray of Crimea against him;  

efforts to bring Lithuania into a military  alliance failed. Rounds of plague and bad seasons  

brought further misery; harsh winters and poor  grazing killed thousands of livestock every  

year of the 1490s. Famine weakened his forces,  destroyed his herds and caused thousands to flee  

to neighbouring khanates. Shaykh Ahmad led his  underfed and weakened army in one last gamble,  

seeking to push west of the Dnieper  for greener pasture in winter 1501.  

Trapped by a vicious snowstorm, his demoralized  army suffered for months, and many deserted to  

Mengli Giray. Already depressed from the  failure of the Lithuanians to arrive,  

Shaykh Ahmad watched the last of his brothers fall  ill and die. As Mengli Giray summoned the entirety  

of his forces, the last of Shaykh Ahmad’s will  broke when his own wife abandoned him with much of  

his family and remaining troops. When Mengli Giray  met Shaykh Ahmad near the Dnieper in June 1502,  

the Khan of the Great Horde was caught with a  paltry 20,000 men. Chased from the field, his ordu  

looted, Shaykh Ahmad Khan spent most of the next  twenty years in Lithuania a political prisoner.  

So, according to traditional  scholarship, did the humiliating  

career of the final Khan of the Golden Horde end. Historians like Leslie Collins have demonstrated,  

though, how Mengli Giray began to style  himself as Great Khan of the Great Horde;  

a claim recognized in diplomacy by his  Ottoman overlord, the Rus’, the Poles and  

Lithuanians. It seems to contemporaries,  the Great Horde did not end in 1502;  

the throne was simply taken by another branch  of the dynasty, as it had been dozens of times  

before, only now based in Crimea. The power of  the Giray Khans grew considerably, and by 1520s  

Mengli’s son, Mehmed, raised candidates  onto the thrones of Kazan and Astrakhan.  

The brief rise was cut short by Mehmed’s death  by Nogais, launching a succession struggle that  

led to the Ottomans taking greater  control over the Crimean succession.  

Meanwhile the alliance with Moscow frayed, and the  Princes of Moscow, particularly Ivan IV and his  

crusade-minded advisers, were now masters of the  Rus’ and were eager to gain access to the Volga  

trade, taking advantage of the weakness of the  Volga Khanates. In 1552 the first khanate, Kazan,  

fell to Ivan’s armies; Astrakhan followed in 1554. The powerful Crimean Khan Devlet I Giray  

sought to halt Moscow’s expansion, with yearly  raids and in 1571, even succeeded in capturing and  

burning down Moscow, but this was followed  by a humiliating defeat the next year.  

The Crimean Khans reluctantly ceded control of  the former Golden Horde to Moscow, which soon  

stretched deep into Siberia. Over a century  of continuous warfare had left the Russians  

nothing but depopulated, weakened khanates to  pick off one by one; only to the south did the  

Crimean Khan’s armies stop Russian expansion.  Not until 1783 was the Khanate finally annexed,  

thus ending the last vestige of the Golden  Horde, and the Mongol Empire. More videos  

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