The Golden Horde

PAX MONGOLICA : THE STEPPE EMPIRE OF THE MONGOLS HIST 1301 | History The Golden Horde The Rus' homelands and northwest Asia, under the Golden Horde's dominion, had less advanced economies. People were able to avoid breaking out into civil war until outside forces interfered more than a generation after the fall of the Il-Khanate because they lived in a more diverse society with less centralised authority than that imposed by the Il-Khans. The founding leaders of the Horde, Batu and Berke, built a city to house tribute, following in the footsteps of their grandfather. However, their primary mission was to march their army about, robbing neighbours or repelling enemy invasions. The population that the Golden Horde subjugated included seminomads like the Mongols, settled Slavic peasants in tiny cities, and Turkish peoples like the Kipchaks. Indirect Mongol sovereignty over the Turks gave local authorities the authority to impose the yassa, levy taxes, and enlist soldiers and labour. In addition to receiving and distributing tribute, Mongol authorities in the capital also handled appeals of regional rulings. The Mongol overseers who were appointed to each local ruler to ensure that taxes were paid and insurrection was suppressed gave the Rus and other Slavic peoples more direct power. Though Berke was the first khan of the Golden Horde and Mongol emperor to convert to Islam, not all of his successors shared same faith. Nonetheless, the Mongols of the Horde kept adopting Islam. The Golden Horde adopted Islam as its official religion in 1313, but Uzbeg left the yassa tax exemption for other faiths intact. Undoubtedly, Uzbeg's propagation of Islam bolstered the Islamic population across the territories of the Golden Horde. In the Slavic areas under its control, the Orthodox Christian church became stronger throughout the Horde's reign. As people flocked to Christianity as a means of subverting and separating themselves from the Mongols, the church came to symbolise the national identity of the Russian people. The yassa's tax and service exemptions for religious organisations and their administrators much outweighed what the church was granted by Russo-Nobles. Church-owned land increased under the Horde, either as a result of fraud that allowed elites to live free of Mongol taxes and obligations by donating their land and then becoming the church officials in charge of the donation, or as a result of donations to help the church provide ever-increasing amounts of spiritual solace and identity. The Russian Orthodox church had amassed almost one-third of the fertile land in the regions that the Rus lords had previously controlled by the time the Mongol Empire collapsed in the late fifteenth century. The Pax Mongolica's prosperity was both contributed to and enjoyed by the Golden Horde. They controlled commerce directly with Europe. Whether an import to the eastern Mongol world was made by the Rus or transported from the continent by Italian traders, it most likely arrived via the Golden Horde, as they were the first to have the chance to purchase it. After Mongol sovereignty had faded, the yam that made trade throughout the empire possible persisted for hundreds of years. Nestled among Mongol territory was the unstable Chagatai Khanate. It was inevitable that the Yuan dynasty under Kublai would clash with the other Mongol Khanates. The other Mongol nations occasionally aided usurpers in their opposition against the Chagatai Khans, either alone or in concert. The khanate was in disarray until it broke apart into smaller nations in the middle of the fourteenth century, even if the most of them were ultimately unsuccessful. Apart from battling against other Mongols, a few Chagatai Khans attempted to subjugate the Delhi Sultanate through raids and a few failed attempts. These ineffective attempts undermined the system and opened the door for further difficulties and instability. The Chagatai Khanate's primary long-term contribution was to the strengthening of Islam's influence in western central Asia. Considering that traders from many religions travelled through Central Asia, the region had historically been a religiously diverse environment. It had a significant role in the spread of Islam and Buddhism from India beyond the caliphate. In contrast to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions in Europe, Asian adaptations of Christianity flourished there as well. Tarmashirin, the final ruler of the united Chagatai Khanate, replaced the more liberal yassa with the more stringent sharia, or Islamic religious law, and implemented policies that encouraged the eradication of other faiths in favour of Islam. Islamic law persisted in the territories entrusted to the Chagatai even though this shift incited animosity among the non-Muslim populace. After the khanate broke up into tiny, unstable republics, Islamic law was still in effect there.