Golden Horde

The Mongol khanate of the western steppe, which ruled Russia for two and a half centuries without ever occupying it. Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, led the western campaign that destroyed Kiev in 1240 and went on to defeat Polish and Hungarian armies in 1241 before withdrawing on news of the great khan's death. The state he established on the lower Volga governed the Russian principalities indirectly: the princes kept their thrones, collected the tribute themselves and travelled to Sarai for a patent to rule. Historians call the arrangement the Tatar yoke, and it shaped Russian political culture by rewarding whichever prince was best at collecting other people's taxes - which is largely how Moscow, a minor town, became the dominant Russian principality. The horde converted to Islam under Ozbeg in the fourteenth century and its population became increasingly Turkic rather than Mongol. Sarai was a large trading city on the Volga route between the Baltic and the Caspian region. The Orthodox church was exempted from tribute and grew wealthy under the arrangement. Moscow defeated a horde army at Kulikovo in 1380, and although Moscow was burned two years later the spell was broken. Timur devastated the horde's cities in the 1390s. It fragmented into the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Crimea. Ivan III stopped paying tribute in 1480. Crimea survived under Ottoman protection until 1783. The khanate ruled the steppe from the Danube to Siberia. Sarai on the lower Volga was its capital. Russian tribute continued for around 240 years. The word Tatar came to cover Turkic Muslim populations across the region.

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