After Uzbeg (Öz-Beg) mounted the throne in 1313, he adopted islam as the state religion. He proscribed Buddhism and Shamanism among the Mongols in Russia, thus reversing the spread of the Yuan culture. By 1315, Uzbeg had successfully Islamicized the Horde, killing Jochid princes and Buddhist lamas who opposed his religious policy and succession of the throne.
Mohammed Uzbeg Khan continued the alliance with the Mamluks which Berke and his predecessors had begun. He kept a friendly relationship with the Mamluk Sultan and his shadow Caliph in Cairo. After a long delay and much discussion, he married a princess of the blood to Al-Nasir Muhammad, Sultan of Egypt.
The Mongol rulers' Rus' policy was one of constantly switching alliances in an attempt to keep Russia and Eastern Europe weak and divided. With the assistance of Sarai, the Grand duke Mikhail Yaroslavich won the battle against the party in Novgorod in 1316. While Michael was asserting his authority, his rival Yury of Moscow ingratiated himself into the favor of Uzbeg so that he appointed him chief of the Rus' princes, and gave him his sister, Konchak, in marriage. Having been three years at Uzbeg's court, Yury returned with an army of Mongols and Mordvins.
After he ravaged the villages of Tver, Yury was defeated by Mikhail in December 1318, and his new wife and the Mongol general, Kawgady, were captured. While she stayed in Tver, Konchak, who converted to Christianity and adopted the name Agatha, died. Mikhail's rivals suggested to Uzbeg Khan that he had poisoned the Khan's sister and revolted against his rule. Mikhail was summoned to Sarai and executed on November 22, 1318. In 1322, Mikhail's son, Dmitry, seeking revenge for his father's murder, went to Sarai and persuaded the Khan that Yury had appropriated a large portion of the tribute due to the Horde. Yury was summoned to the Horde for a trial but, before any formal investigation, was killed by Dmitry. Eight months later, Dmitry was also executed in the Horde for his crime.
At first Uzbeg did not want to empower Moscow. In 1327, Shevkal, the cousin of Uzbeg, arrived in Tver from the Horde, with a large retinue. They took up residence at Aleksander's palace. Rumors spread that Shevkal wanted to occupy the throne for himself and introduce islam to the city. When, on 15 August 1327, the Mongols tried to take a horse from a deacon named Dyudko, he cried for help and a mob of furious people fell on the Tatars and killed them all. Shevkal and his remaining guards were burnt alive. Thus Uzbeg Khan began backing Moscow as the leading Russian state. Ivan I Kalita was granted the title of grand prince and given the right to collect taxes from other Russian potentates. The Khan also sent Ivan at the head of an army of 50,000 soldiers to punish Tver. Aleksander was shown mercy in 1335, however, when Moscow requested that he and his son Feoder be quartered in Sarai by orders of the Khan on October 29, 1339.
Uzbeg, whose total army exceeded 300,000, repeatedly raided Thrace, partly in service of Bulgaria's war against both Byzantium and Serbia from 1319 on. The Byzantine Empire, beginning in the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos and continuing in that of Andronikos III Palaiologos, was raided by the Golden Horde between 1320 and 1341, until the Byzantine port of Vicina Macaria was occupied. Some sources report that Uzbeg also married Andronikos III's illegitimate daughter, who had taken the name Bayalun, and who later, after relations between the Horde and the Byzantines deteriorated, fled back to the Byzantine Empire, apparently fearing her forced conversion to islam. His armies pillaged Thrace for forty days in 1324 and for fifteen days in 1337,taking 300,000 captives. However, his attempt to reassert Mongol control over Serbia was unsuccessful in 1330. Backed by Uzbeg, Basarab I of Wallachia declared an independent state from the Hungarian crown in 1330.
Uzbeg allowed the Genoese to settle in Crimea after his accession. But the Mongols sacked Sudak under the Khan in 1322 when the Christians defied the muslims in the city. The Genoese merchants in the other towns were not molested. Pope John XXII requested Uzbeg to restore Roman Catholic churches destroyed in the region. Thus, the Khan signed a new trade treaty with the Genoese in 1339 and allowed them to rebuild the walls of Kaffa. In 1332 he had allowed the Venetians to establish a colony at Tanais on the Don. A decree, issued probably by Mengu-Timur, allowing the Franciscans to proselytize, was renewed by Uzbeg in 1314.
The Golden Horde invaded the Ilkhanate under Abu Sa'id in 1318, 1324 and 1335, during his reign. His ally Al-Nasir refused to attack Abu Sa'id because the Ilkhan and the Mamluk Sultan signed a peace treaty in 1323. In 1326 Uzbeg reopened friendly relations with the Empire of the Great Khan and began to send tributes thereafter. From 1339 he received annually 24,000 ding in Yuan paper currency from the Jochid appanages in China. When the Ilkhanate collapsed after Abu Sa'id's death, its senior-beys approached Uzbeg in their desperation to find a leader, but the latter declined after consulting with his senior emir, Qutluq Timür.
When in 1323 Gediminas also gained control of Kiev and installed there as prince his brother Fedor, there was no question of discontinuing the principality's tribute to the Khan. The Lithuanians under Fedor on a campaign a few years later included the Khan's basqaq in their entourage.
Under Uzbeg and his successor Janibeg (1342–1357), islam, which among some of the Turks in Eurasia had deep roots going back into pre-Mongol times, gained general acceptance, though its adherents remained tolerant of other beliefs. In order to successfully expand islam, he built a mosque and other "elaborate places;" requiring baths—an important element of muslim culture. Sarai attracted merchants from other countries. The slave trade flourished due to strengthening ties with the Mamluk Sultanate. Growth of wealth and increasing need of products always produce population growth, and so it was with Sarai. Housing in the region increased. This transformed the capital into the center of a large muslim Sultanate.
Janibek sponsored the joint Mongol-Rus military expeditions against Lithuania and Poland. In 1344 his army marched once more against Poland with auxiliaries from Galicia–Volhynia, as Volhynia was part of Lithuania. However, in 1349, after the occupation of Galicia–Volhynia by the Polish-Hungarian force, the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia was finally conquered and incorporated in Poland. This act put an end to the relationship of vassalage between Galicia–Volhynia Rus' and the Golden Horde. All khanates of the Mongol Empire faced a serious disaster at that time like the rest of the old world.
The Black Death of the 1340s was a major factor contributing to the Golden Horde's economic downfall. Janibeg abandoned his father's Balkan ambitions, and backed Moscow against Lithuania and Poland. He also asserted Jochid dominance over the Chagatai Khanate, and conquered Tabriz, ending the Chobanid rule there in 1356. After accepting the surrender of the jalayirids, Janibeg boasted that three uluses of the Mongol Empire were under his control. The Polish King, Casimir III the Great, submitted to the Horde and undertook to pay tribute in order to avoid more conflicts. The seven Mongol princes were sent by Janibeg to assist Poland. Following his subsequent assassination, the Golden Horde quickly lost Azerbaijan to the Jalayir king Shaikh Uvais in 1357.
Following the assassination of Berdibek by his brother in 1359, the Khanate sank into prolonged internecine war, in which sometimes as many as four Khans vied for recognition by the emirs and for possession of major cities like Sarai, Qirim, and Azaq. After the overthrow of their nominal suzerain Yuan Emperor Toghan Temur, the Golden Horde lost touch with Mongolia and China. White Horde descendants of Orda and Tuqa-Timur carried on generally free from trouble until the late 1370s. Urus Khan of the White Horde took Sarai and reunited most of the Horde from Khorazm to Desht-i-Kipchak in 1375.
By the 1380s, shaybanids, Muscovites, and Qashan attempted to break free of the Khan's power. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania profited from this situation and pushed deeper into the Golden Horde territory than any previous expedition and the Grand Duke Algirdas defeated forces of Murad Khan at the battle of Blue Waters c.1362.
In western Pontic steppe, Mamai, a Tatar general who was a king-maker, attempted to reassert Tatar authority over Russia. His army was defeated by the Grand prince Dmitri Donskoi at the battle of Kulikovo in his second consecutive victory over the Tatars in 1380. While preparing another invasion of Moscow, Mamai faced a greater challenge from the east. In 1379, Tokhtamysh, a kinsman of Urus Khan, won leadership of the White Horde with the assistance of Tamerlane. After that he defeated Mamai, and annexed the territory of the Blue Horde, briefly reestablishing the Golden Horde as a dominant regional power in 1381.
After Mamai's defeat, Tokhtamysh restored the dominance of the Golden Horde over Russia by attacking Russian lands in 1382. He besieged Moscow on August 23, but Muscovites beat off his attack, using firearms for the first time in Russian history. On August 26, two sons of Tokhtamysh's supporter Dmitry of Suzdal, dukes of Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod Vasily and Semyon, who were present in Tokhtamysh's forces, persuaded the Muscovites to open the city gates, promising that their forces would not harm the city. This allowed Tokhtamysh's troops to burst in and destroy Moscow, killing 24,000 people. He also crushed the army of the Lithuanians at Poltava in the next year. Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, accepted his supremacy and agreed to pay tribute in turn for a grant of Rus' territory. For another century, Russia was forced back under the Tatar yoke.
Elated by his success, Tokhtamysh invaded Azerbaijan, Khorazm, and Transoxiana, parts of Tamerlane's empire. War was declared against him by the Timurids. A fatal blow to the Horde was dealt by Tamerlane, who annihilated Tokhtamysh's army, destroyed his capital, looted the Crimean trade centers, and deported the most skillful craftsmen to his own capital in Samarkand in 1395–6. When Tokhtamysh fled, Urus Khan's grandson, Temur Qutlugh, was chosen Khan in Sarai, and Koirijak was appointed sovereign of the White Horde by Timur.
Tokhtamysh escaped to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and asked Vytautas for assistance in retaking the Horde in exchange for surrendering his suzerainity over Rus' lands. The alliance of Tokhtamysh and Vytautas was defeated by the Khan Temur Qutlugh and his emir Edigu at the battle of the Vorskla River in 1399. The trade routes never recovered from Timur's destruction, and Toqtamish died in obscurity in 1405.
Edigu forced the Grand Prince of Moscow to accept the Khan's supremacy in 1408. Seeing Tatar commoners selling their children into slavery as damaging to both the manpower and the prestige of the Golden Horde's army, Edigu and his puppet Khan prohibited the slave trade at a kurultai. Despite some rebellions of Genghisid princes, he could keep the Horde united until 1410 when he was expelled to Central Asia. While he was absent, Jalal ad-Din khan briefly took the throne after he participated in the battle of Grunwald. Edigu returned to the Horde and set up his ordo in Crimea, challenging the sons of Tokhtamysh before his murder in 1419.
After 1419, Olug Moxammat became Khan of the Golden Horde. However, his authority was limited to the lower banks of the Volga where Tokhtamysh's other son Kepek reigned. Together with the Khan claimant Dawlat Berdi, they were beaten by Baraq of the Uzbeks in 1421. The latter was assassinated in 1427 and Olug Moxammat reenthroned. The Lithuanian monarch Svitrigaila supported Olugh Moxammat's rival Sayid Ahmad I, who in 1433 gained the Golden Horde throne. Vasili II of Russia also supported Sayid Ahmad in order to weaken Olugh Moxammat who established the Khanate of Kazan and made Moscow a tributary. Sayid supported Švitrigaila during the Lithuanian Civil War (1431–1435).
The Horde (Great Horde) broke up into separate Khanates:
Tyumen Khanate (1468, later Siberia Khanate)
Khanate of Kazan (1438) – Qasim Khanate (1452)
Khanate of Crimea (1441)
Nogai Horde (1440s)
Kazakh Khanate (1456)
Khanate of Astrakhan (1466)
In the summer of 1470 (other sources give 1469), the last prominent Khan, Ahmed, organized an attack against Moldavia, the Kingdom of Poland, and Lithuania. By August 20, the Moldavian forces under Stephen the Great defeated the Tatars at the battle of Lipnic.
In 1474 and 1476, Ahmed insisted that Ivan III should recognize Russia's vassal dependence on the Horde. However, the correlation of forces was not in the Horde's favor. In 1480, Ahmed organized another military campaign against Moscow, which would result in the Horde's failure. Russia finally freed itself from the Horde, thus ending over 250 years of Tatar-Mongol control. On 6 January 1481, the Khan was killed by Ibak Khan, the prince of Tyumen, and Nogays at the mouth of the Donets River.
The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which possessed much of the Ukraine at the time) were attacked in 1487–1491 by the remnant of the Golden Horde. They reached as far as Lublin in eastern Poland before being decisively beaten at Zaslavl.
The Crimean Khanate became a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire in 1475 and subjugated what remained of the Great Horde, sacking Sarai in 1502. After seeking refuge in Lithuania, Sheikh Ahmed, last Khan of the Horde, died in prison in Kaunas some time after 1504.
The Crimean Tatars wreaked havoc in southern Russia, Ukraine and even Poland in the course of the 16th and early 17th centuries, but they were not able to defeat Russia or take Moscow. Under Ottoman protection, the Khanate of Crimea continued its precarious existence until Catherine the Great annexed it on April 8, 1783. It was by far the longest-lived of the successor states to the Golden Horde.
Genghis Khan assigned four Mongol mingghans: the Sanchi'ud (or Salji'ud), Keniges, Uushin, and Je'ured clans to Jochi. By the beginning of the 14-th century, noyans from the Sanchi'ud, Hongirat, Ongud (Arghun), Keniges, Jajirad, Besud, Oirat, and Je'ured clans held importants positions at the court or elsewehere. There existed four mingghans (4,000) of the Jalayir in the left wing of the Ulus of Jochi (Golden Horde).
The population of the Golden Horde were largely a mixture of Turks and Mongols who adopted islam later. Most of the Horde's population was Turkic: Kypchaks, Volga Tatars, Khwarezmians, and others. The Horde was gradually Turkified and lost its Mongol identity, while the descendants of Batu's original Mongol warriors constituted the upper class. They were commonly named the Tatars by the Russians and Europeans. Russians preserved this common name for this group down to the 20th century. Whereas most members of this group identified themselves by their ethnic or tribal names, some also considered themselves to be muslims. Most of the population, both agricultural and nomadic, adopted the Kypchak language, which developed into the regional languages of Kypchak groups after the Horde disintegrated.
The descendants of Batu ruled the Golden Horde from Sarai Batu and later Sarai Berke, controlling an area ranging from the Volga River and the Carpathian mountains to the mouth of the Danube River. The descendants of Orda ruled the area from the Ural River to Lake Balkhash. Censuses recorded Chinese living quarters in the Tatar parts of Novgorod, Tver and Moscow.
The Golden Horde's elites were descended from four Mongol clans, Qiyat, Manghut, Sicivut and Qonqirat. Their supreme ruler was the Khan, chosen by the kurultai among Batu Khan's descendants. The prime minister, also ethnically Mongol, was known as "prince of princes", or beklare-bek. The ministers were called viziers. Local governors, or basqaqs, were responsible for levying taxes and dealing with popular discontent. Civil and military administration, as a rule, were not separate.
The Horde developed as a sedentary rather than nomadic culture, with Sarai evolving into a large, prosperous metropolis. In the early 14th century, the capital was moved considerably upstream to Sarai Berqe, which became one of the largest cities of the medieval world, with 600,000 inhabitants.
Despite Russian efforts at proselytizing in Sarai, the Mongols clung to their traditional animist or shamanist beliefs until Uzbeg Khan (1312–41) adopted islam as a state religion. Several rulers of Kievan Rus – Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver among them – were reportedly assassinated in Sarai, but the Khans were generally tolerant and even released the Russian Orthodox Church from paying taxes.
The Horde exacted tax payments from its subject peoples – Rus' people, Armenians, Georgians, Circassians, Alans, Crimean Greeks, Crimean Goths, and others (Bulgarians, Vlachs and Serbs). The territories of Christian subjects were regarded as peripheral areas of little interest as long as they continued to pay taxes. These vassal states were never fully incorporated into the Horde, and Russian rulers early obtained the privilege of collecting the Tatar tax themselves. To maintain control over Rus and Eastern Europe, the Tatar warlords carried out regular punitive raids on their tributaries. At its height, the Golden Horde controlled the areas from Central Siberia and Khorazm to the Danube and Narva.
There is a point of view, much propagated by Lev Gumilev, that the Horde and Russian polities entered into a defensive alliance against the Teutonic knights and pagan Lithuanians. Proponents point to the fact that the Mongol court was frequented by Russian princes, notably Yaroslavl's Feodor the Black, who boasted his own ulus near Sarai, and Novgorod's Alexander Nevsky, the sworn brother (or anda) of Batu's successor Sartaq Khan. A Mongol contingent supported the Novgorodians in the Battle of the Ice and Novgorodians paid taxes to the Horde.
Sarai carried on a brisk trade with the Genoese trade emporiums on the coast of the Black Sea – Soldaia, Caffa, and Azak. Mamluk Egypt was the Khans' long-standing trade partner and ally in the Mediterranean. Berke, the Khan of Kipchak had drawn up an alliance with the Mamluk Sultan Baibars against the Ilkhanate in 1261.
The Mongols favored decimal organization which was inherited from Genghis Khan. It is said that there were a total of 10 political divisions within the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde majorly was divided into Blue Horde (Kok Horde) and White Horde (Ak Horde). Blue Horde consisted of Ulus Berke (Nogai), Ulus Batu, Bulgar, while White Horde encompassed Taibugin Yurt, Ulus Shiban, Ulus Tok-timur, Ulus Ezhen Horde.
Crimea (center at Qırım). After the Mongol conquest in 1238, the port cities in Crimea paid the Jochids custom duties and the revenues were divided among all Chingisid princes of the Mongol Empire accordance with the appanage system.,
the banks of Azov,
the country of Circassians,
Walachia,
Alania,
Russian lands.