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- Sep 24, 2020
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Hello, I was a long-time lurker in SH.org and decided to get myself an account on SH.net.
This is my first post, I hope it is of the same quality this forum is used to have.
The official story
First the short official history of the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde was a division of the great Mongol empire founded by Batu Khan and became functionally separate with the decline of the Mongols. Ösbek Khan (1313-1341) adopted Islam and reached the largest extent of the empire from Eastern Europe and Crimea into Siberia. Look how the empire includes the later „Moscow Rus“ / „Moscovite Rus“ (pre-Tsarist Russia). The main population was „Rus tribes“, which as a topic is a rabbit hole itself. I plan to include a post whether the original Rus were Slavic, Caucasian (real Caucasian, not northern European) or Asian.
After that there came the division into White and the Blue horde. After it was temporarily reunited by Tokhtamysh, the empire was de facto destroyed by Timur (Timurid Empire) around 1396, after which it split into the Khanate of Sibir (Siberia), Uzbek Khanate (Usbekistan), Nogai Horde (Caspian Sea), Khanate of Kazan (Volga Bulgaria), Crimean Khanate, Qasim Khanate, Kazakh Khanate (Kazakhstan) and the Great Horde (Around the heartland of the the original Golden Horde).
What does Golden Horde mean?
Golden Horde isn't the true name of this empire. The true name is „Altin Ordu“ (or in modern Turkish „Altin Ordusu“), meaning Golden Army instead of Golden Horde. An alternative name is the Kipchak Khanate. The name ordu actually means headquarters or nomadic tribe/group (see Genghis Khan), but at the time around the 14th century the Ottomans build the first standing army in Europe and the meaning in Turkish changing from hq/tribe/horde to army. In this sense the designation orda/ordu (if the writer is of turkish/turkic descent) is given usually to a standing army (meaning a professional army, not a horde).
The word „altin“ (golden) refers, as far as I researched, to something big/marvellous/good in the contemporary Turkish language. For example you can say it as a compliment to a child (altin cocuk, golden child) or to a person (altin yürekli, golden heart/soul). Such compliments are usually used by older people.
Let's look at the more recent history of the Golden Horde.
The Reign of Akhmat (Ahmed) Khan (1465-1481)
The Original Version (till the end of the 20th century):
Ahmed Khan ousted his brother Mahmud bin Küchük out of power in 1465 and aligned himself with the Polish King Casimir IV against Ivan III of Moscovite Russia. In the year 1476 Iwan III stopped paying the yearly tribute to the Golden Horde. Ahmed Khan himself was fighting the Crimean Khanate at that time, so the reaction to Iwans actions came in 1480. The army of Ahmed Khan positioned themselves at the river of Ugra, but did not attack for weeks in a standoff with the pre-Tsarist forces and finally retreated. Russian historians identified the sheer power of Iwans army as the cause of the retreat and this event marks the end of „Mongol rule“ in Russia (and subsequently became a important part of Russian nationalist history). See wikipedia
Now let's come to the indiscrepancies in this story:
1. Catherine the Great
The Tsarina, who annexed the Crimean Khanate, rewrote Russia's medieval history, mostly to situate her own reign into a vastly glorified version of Russian history. This was, I think, already mentioned somewhere in the old forum.
In the PhD thesis of Erin McBurney „Art and Power in the Reign of Catherine the Great: The State Portraits“ states:
„Instead, she found herself at war on a number of fronts, both foreign and domestic—with Sweden, with the Ottomans, with Poland, with the Freemasons, and with authors such as Nikolai Novikov and Alexander Radishchev. In response, Catherine turned to Russia’s distant past as a means of understanding what was happening in Russia’s (and Europe’s) present, using her plays, operas and rewriting of Russia’s medieval history to situate her reign within a pantheon of historically significant figures and events. Lampi’s subtle reworking of the imperial image between 1792 and 1795 reveals how the Empress struggled to find a means to embody the myth of the state even in an age of regicide and revolution. In the final years of her reign, Catherine rededicated herself to the creation of a visual and textual legacy that would assure her—and Russia’s—eternal glory. Over the course of thirty-four years, Catherine constructed a representational scenario that transcended gender, asserted legitimacy and displayed her achievements.“ Source: Art and Power
2. Manfred Hildermeier
German historian Manfred Hildermeier, describe the Ugra event as untruthful and „hochstilisiert“ - meaning „over the top“ or „inflated“. Hildermeier comes to the conclusion that the retreat of „Golden Horde“ forces (described rather as „Tatar“) is more connected to the inter-khanate rivalries with the formally subordinate Crimean Khanate, which Ahmed Khan fought with pre-1480. Another historian (Nesin, Russian document is avaliable on Wikipedia) says it was at that time the largest army in the fifteenth century. That means it was bigger than the only standing professional army in Europe, the Ottoman army.
Source: History of Russia: from the Middle Ages to the October Revolution (could not find a english version)
3. Golden Army, Great Army
Depending on which book you read, sometimes Ahmed Khan is described as the „Han/Xan“ (in plain english Khan) of the Golden Horde and sometimes the Han of the Great Horde (after the supposed division of the original Golden Horde). In „Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History“ (by Charles Halperin) the separated state of the Great Horde gets described as less powerful than Muscovite Russia. Source: Russia and the Golden Horde (Charles Halperin)
4. Disapperance of the Golden Army/Tartaria
All of the information up to this point is coming from Russian sources (Tsarist Intelligentsia). The last record of the Golden Horde finds itself in the works of Russian publisher Nikolay Novikov „Ancient Russian Hydrography“ (1773), around 46 years after the death of Catherine the First. Source: Ancient Russian Hydrography
But is Tsarist literature the only surviving documents of the Golden Horde?
From Ottoman documents we have a betik (a written letter/document) from Ahmed Khan to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet, the conqueror of Constantinople, stating the Russian danger to the Golden Army and the willingness to submit to central Ottoman rule against Moscovite Rus. Moreover the Crimean Khanate had a great amount of diplomatic relations to Fatih Sultan Mehmet and finally accepted the Ottoman rule after Menli I Giray (the ruling han at that time) was imprisoned by the Ottomans.
The original betik from Ahmed Khan to Faith Sultan Mehmet
Short explanation of the text
Russian and Turki Transcription
If relations between the Golden Horde and the Ottoman sultanate exist and the Crimean Khanate was suppressed by the Ottomans around 1475, why took the army against Iwan lll around 5 years to finally arrive at Moscowite Rus? And why is the alleged interfighting of Ahmed Khan with the Crimean Khanate not included in Ottoman documents? If the Crimean Khanate was already under Constantinople rule at that time, why do Tsarist sources and by extension for example Hildemann say that rivalries with the Crimeans exist and point that out as the reason for failed attempt to fight Muscovite Russia?
Keep in mind that the surviving Ottoman sources are extremely detailed, the Ottomans even had the exact numbers of Yörüks (meaning nomadic Turks) for every province of the sultanate since the 16th century.
In addition to Ottoman sources we have other surviving non-Tsarist documents.
Famous berber traveller Ibn Battuta described the capital of the Golden army Sarai (meaning the palace in ancient Turkish, today written as „saray“) as „one of the most beautiful cities ... full of people, with the beautiful bazaars and wide streets“ and as having „13 congregational mosques“ (for Friday prayers). For example the Ottoman sultanate had less for Istanbul around the time of Fatih Sultan Mehmet. In addition to that, the majority of the inhabitants of the Golden Army was described as being a large number of „pagans“ (probably similiar to the remnants of Russian paganism today) as opposed to the muslim minority (which in Tsarist papers is described as Tatar). The written literature was written in „Tyurki-Language“. I assume that means „Turki“ (see Chagatai language). Source: Islam in Russia
Rebuild city of Sarai (for a film set):
Source: Rebuild (possible disinfo by the PTB)
All supposed pictures of Sarai online are a film set which was turned into an open air museum.
More pictures of the fake Sarai city: in Russian
More pictures of the fake digging site (from the same film set):
Source: Title says "Forge for firing bricks"
The only artifact picture online is a old mosaic from a real excavation of the 1980s:
Source: wikimedia
If you forget the "rebuild city" and only look at the mosaics, you can see two main "themes". The mosaic piece at the bottom is similiar to other Tatar/Turk/Muslim mosaics in Central Asia (google Usbekistan mosaics).
The artifact at the top right displays flower/plant like motives, similiar motives can be found throughout Eastern Europe:
Picture
That leads me to Ibn Battuta's description of a city more developed than Constantinople and populated by pagan Rus and Turks. The fact that the mosaics were found at the same digging site would mean that the palace/building incorporated both motives and was probably build by Turks and Rus together. The rebuild city and ruins try to build a image of a small rural village, instead of complex mosaics.
The fields where Sarai was supposed to be:
Source: wikimapia
The language
Contemporary source Ibn Battuta calls the language (at least of the Tatar/Muslim part) as Tyurki, which can be identified as the now dead Turki (the root of Usbek and Uygur Turkish). The Uyghurs of today historically were never called Uyghurs, the name itself is a invention of the 20th century, they were called Turki. The Uyghurs of the past were called Huihu in Chinese documents, but this was related to the rulers of the Uyghur khanate, not the Turkic people of Xingjang.
Chagatai/Turki was the Lingua Franca in Central Asia, spoken well through into the 20th century. This language didn't die naturally, but after the Communist revolution under Lenin Central Asia was divided into the states we know today (SSRs). Lenin's plan for Central Asia was to build ethnostates (SSRs) and he started the division of Western Turkestan (today Turkmenistan and Usbekistan) through population exchange based on dialect, dialects which he later used to formalize Turki into different languages written in Kyrillic. It would make sense for written documents to be written in Turki/Chagatai during the time of Ibn Battuta, because the formalized (now estranged) dialects did not exist back then.
Source: Chagatai
The old forum had discussions about the official language of Tartaria and some members posted different Turkic scripts with arabo-persian letters. The differentiation of historic Turkic dialects is complicated therefore it is hard to pinpoint which dialect/style Ibn Battuta meant.
The language designation into for example Karluk branch, Oghuz branch, did not exist back then, this is a product of linguist studies into the 20th to 21th century. The words Karluk and Oghuz existed in their respective khanates and designed the tribe and the dialect rather than a different language or people. For example a Karluk tribe was part of the Oghuz khanate.
Conclusion:
I assume the history of – what we call Tartaria – was hidden inside the story of the Golden Army (some could say degraded into the Golden Horde) and it was more powerful than the Ottoman empire (which itself in the 14th / 15th century is described to have the most powerful army). The muslim Turks were written into Tsarist history books as Tatars, the pagans as Rus tribes under the leadership of the Khan. The decision to delete Golden Ordu of the Tatars (Tartaria) out of our history started with the destruction of Sarai (by the Tsarists) and ended with the killing of the Turki language 1921 and the disappearance of tons of Ottoman documents in the 1930s.
Ibn Battuta is probably the only not Tsarist / TPB tainted source which describes the Golden Army or Tartaria and is probably one of the only known historical figures who witnessed the empire and Sarai in its prime. The film set and the open air museum don't give the picture of a capital city, but look like a rural village.
In another future post in the future I will explore the origins of the Rus, especially the hypothesis that Kievian Rus were slavic and the pagans of the Golden Army were called Rus by Moscovite Rus, but were rather asian or caucasian in heritage (see Scythians). That would explain that more than half of current Russia's population is rather a mix between asian DNA (west/central) and caucasian DNA (Transcaucasia, similiar to Armenia/Georgia/Dagestan/Karachay) than slavic (eastern european), which would make Napoleon's comment (post-Tartaria) about every Russian being a Tartar true.
This is my first post, I hope it is of the same quality this forum is used to have.
The official story
First the short official history of the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde was a division of the great Mongol empire founded by Batu Khan and became functionally separate with the decline of the Mongols. Ösbek Khan (1313-1341) adopted Islam and reached the largest extent of the empire from Eastern Europe and Crimea into Siberia. Look how the empire includes the later „Moscow Rus“ / „Moscovite Rus“ (pre-Tsarist Russia). The main population was „Rus tribes“, which as a topic is a rabbit hole itself. I plan to include a post whether the original Rus were Slavic, Caucasian (real Caucasian, not northern European) or Asian.
After that there came the division into White and the Blue horde. After it was temporarily reunited by Tokhtamysh, the empire was de facto destroyed by Timur (Timurid Empire) around 1396, after which it split into the Khanate of Sibir (Siberia), Uzbek Khanate (Usbekistan), Nogai Horde (Caspian Sea), Khanate of Kazan (Volga Bulgaria), Crimean Khanate, Qasim Khanate, Kazakh Khanate (Kazakhstan) and the Great Horde (Around the heartland of the the original Golden Horde).
What does Golden Horde mean?
Golden Horde isn't the true name of this empire. The true name is „Altin Ordu“ (or in modern Turkish „Altin Ordusu“), meaning Golden Army instead of Golden Horde. An alternative name is the Kipchak Khanate. The name ordu actually means headquarters or nomadic tribe/group (see Genghis Khan), but at the time around the 14th century the Ottomans build the first standing army in Europe and the meaning in Turkish changing from hq/tribe/horde to army. In this sense the designation orda/ordu (if the writer is of turkish/turkic descent) is given usually to a standing army (meaning a professional army, not a horde).
The word „altin“ (golden) refers, as far as I researched, to something big/marvellous/good in the contemporary Turkish language. For example you can say it as a compliment to a child (altin cocuk, golden child) or to a person (altin yürekli, golden heart/soul). Such compliments are usually used by older people.
Let's look at the more recent history of the Golden Horde.
The Reign of Akhmat (Ahmed) Khan (1465-1481)
The Original Version (till the end of the 20th century):
Ahmed Khan ousted his brother Mahmud bin Küchük out of power in 1465 and aligned himself with the Polish King Casimir IV against Ivan III of Moscovite Russia. In the year 1476 Iwan III stopped paying the yearly tribute to the Golden Horde. Ahmed Khan himself was fighting the Crimean Khanate at that time, so the reaction to Iwans actions came in 1480. The army of Ahmed Khan positioned themselves at the river of Ugra, but did not attack for weeks in a standoff with the pre-Tsarist forces and finally retreated. Russian historians identified the sheer power of Iwans army as the cause of the retreat and this event marks the end of „Mongol rule“ in Russia (and subsequently became a important part of Russian nationalist history). See wikipedia
Now let's come to the indiscrepancies in this story:
1. Catherine the Great
The Tsarina, who annexed the Crimean Khanate, rewrote Russia's medieval history, mostly to situate her own reign into a vastly glorified version of Russian history. This was, I think, already mentioned somewhere in the old forum.
In the PhD thesis of Erin McBurney „Art and Power in the Reign of Catherine the Great: The State Portraits“ states:
„Instead, she found herself at war on a number of fronts, both foreign and domestic—with Sweden, with the Ottomans, with Poland, with the Freemasons, and with authors such as Nikolai Novikov and Alexander Radishchev. In response, Catherine turned to Russia’s distant past as a means of understanding what was happening in Russia’s (and Europe’s) present, using her plays, operas and rewriting of Russia’s medieval history to situate her reign within a pantheon of historically significant figures and events. Lampi’s subtle reworking of the imperial image between 1792 and 1795 reveals how the Empress struggled to find a means to embody the myth of the state even in an age of regicide and revolution. In the final years of her reign, Catherine rededicated herself to the creation of a visual and textual legacy that would assure her—and Russia’s—eternal glory. Over the course of thirty-four years, Catherine constructed a representational scenario that transcended gender, asserted legitimacy and displayed her achievements.“ Source: Art and Power
2. Manfred Hildermeier
German historian Manfred Hildermeier, describe the Ugra event as untruthful and „hochstilisiert“ - meaning „over the top“ or „inflated“. Hildermeier comes to the conclusion that the retreat of „Golden Horde“ forces (described rather as „Tatar“) is more connected to the inter-khanate rivalries with the formally subordinate Crimean Khanate, which Ahmed Khan fought with pre-1480. Another historian (Nesin, Russian document is avaliable on Wikipedia) says it was at that time the largest army in the fifteenth century. That means it was bigger than the only standing professional army in Europe, the Ottoman army.
Source: History of Russia: from the Middle Ages to the October Revolution (could not find a english version)
3. Golden Army, Great Army
Depending on which book you read, sometimes Ahmed Khan is described as the „Han/Xan“ (in plain english Khan) of the Golden Horde and sometimes the Han of the Great Horde (after the supposed division of the original Golden Horde). In „Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History“ (by Charles Halperin) the separated state of the Great Horde gets described as less powerful than Muscovite Russia. Source: Russia and the Golden Horde (Charles Halperin)
4. Disapperance of the Golden Army/Tartaria
All of the information up to this point is coming from Russian sources (Tsarist Intelligentsia). The last record of the Golden Horde finds itself in the works of Russian publisher Nikolay Novikov „Ancient Russian Hydrography“ (1773), around 46 years after the death of Catherine the First. Source: Ancient Russian Hydrography
But is Tsarist literature the only surviving documents of the Golden Horde?
From Ottoman documents we have a betik (a written letter/document) from Ahmed Khan to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet, the conqueror of Constantinople, stating the Russian danger to the Golden Army and the willingness to submit to central Ottoman rule against Moscovite Rus. Moreover the Crimean Khanate had a great amount of diplomatic relations to Fatih Sultan Mehmet and finally accepted the Ottoman rule after Menli I Giray (the ruling han at that time) was imprisoned by the Ottomans.
The original betik from Ahmed Khan to Faith Sultan Mehmet
Short explanation of the text
Russian and Turki Transcription
If relations between the Golden Horde and the Ottoman sultanate exist and the Crimean Khanate was suppressed by the Ottomans around 1475, why took the army against Iwan lll around 5 years to finally arrive at Moscowite Rus? And why is the alleged interfighting of Ahmed Khan with the Crimean Khanate not included in Ottoman documents? If the Crimean Khanate was already under Constantinople rule at that time, why do Tsarist sources and by extension for example Hildemann say that rivalries with the Crimeans exist and point that out as the reason for failed attempt to fight Muscovite Russia?
Keep in mind that the surviving Ottoman sources are extremely detailed, the Ottomans even had the exact numbers of Yörüks (meaning nomadic Turks) for every province of the sultanate since the 16th century.
In addition to Ottoman sources we have other surviving non-Tsarist documents.
Famous berber traveller Ibn Battuta described the capital of the Golden army Sarai (meaning the palace in ancient Turkish, today written as „saray“) as „one of the most beautiful cities ... full of people, with the beautiful bazaars and wide streets“ and as having „13 congregational mosques“ (for Friday prayers). For example the Ottoman sultanate had less for Istanbul around the time of Fatih Sultan Mehmet. In addition to that, the majority of the inhabitants of the Golden Army was described as being a large number of „pagans“ (probably similiar to the remnants of Russian paganism today) as opposed to the muslim minority (which in Tsarist papers is described as Tatar). The written literature was written in „Tyurki-Language“. I assume that means „Turki“ (see Chagatai language). Source: Islam in Russia
Rebuild city of Sarai (for a film set):
Source: Rebuild (possible disinfo by the PTB)
All supposed pictures of Sarai online are a film set which was turned into an open air museum.
More pictures of the fake Sarai city: in Russian
More pictures of the fake digging site (from the same film set):
Source: Title says "Forge for firing bricks"
The only artifact picture online is a old mosaic from a real excavation of the 1980s:
Source: wikimedia
If you forget the "rebuild city" and only look at the mosaics, you can see two main "themes". The mosaic piece at the bottom is similiar to other Tatar/Turk/Muslim mosaics in Central Asia (google Usbekistan mosaics).
The artifact at the top right displays flower/plant like motives, similiar motives can be found throughout Eastern Europe:
Picture
That leads me to Ibn Battuta's description of a city more developed than Constantinople and populated by pagan Rus and Turks. The fact that the mosaics were found at the same digging site would mean that the palace/building incorporated both motives and was probably build by Turks and Rus together. The rebuild city and ruins try to build a image of a small rural village, instead of complex mosaics.
The fields where Sarai was supposed to be:
Source: wikimapia
The language
Contemporary source Ibn Battuta calls the language (at least of the Tatar/Muslim part) as Tyurki, which can be identified as the now dead Turki (the root of Usbek and Uygur Turkish). The Uyghurs of today historically were never called Uyghurs, the name itself is a invention of the 20th century, they were called Turki. The Uyghurs of the past were called Huihu in Chinese documents, but this was related to the rulers of the Uyghur khanate, not the Turkic people of Xingjang.
Chagatai/Turki was the Lingua Franca in Central Asia, spoken well through into the 20th century. This language didn't die naturally, but after the Communist revolution under Lenin Central Asia was divided into the states we know today (SSRs). Lenin's plan for Central Asia was to build ethnostates (SSRs) and he started the division of Western Turkestan (today Turkmenistan and Usbekistan) through population exchange based on dialect, dialects which he later used to formalize Turki into different languages written in Kyrillic. It would make sense for written documents to be written in Turki/Chagatai during the time of Ibn Battuta, because the formalized (now estranged) dialects did not exist back then.
Source: Chagatai
The old forum had discussions about the official language of Tartaria and some members posted different Turkic scripts with arabo-persian letters. The differentiation of historic Turkic dialects is complicated therefore it is hard to pinpoint which dialect/style Ibn Battuta meant.
The language designation into for example Karluk branch, Oghuz branch, did not exist back then, this is a product of linguist studies into the 20th to 21th century. The words Karluk and Oghuz existed in their respective khanates and designed the tribe and the dialect rather than a different language or people. For example a Karluk tribe was part of the Oghuz khanate.
Conclusion:
I assume the history of – what we call Tartaria – was hidden inside the story of the Golden Army (some could say degraded into the Golden Horde) and it was more powerful than the Ottoman empire (which itself in the 14th / 15th century is described to have the most powerful army). The muslim Turks were written into Tsarist history books as Tatars, the pagans as Rus tribes under the leadership of the Khan. The decision to delete Golden Ordu of the Tatars (Tartaria) out of our history started with the destruction of Sarai (by the Tsarists) and ended with the killing of the Turki language 1921 and the disappearance of tons of Ottoman documents in the 1930s.
Ibn Battuta is probably the only not Tsarist / TPB tainted source which describes the Golden Army or Tartaria and is probably one of the only known historical figures who witnessed the empire and Sarai in its prime. The film set and the open air museum don't give the picture of a capital city, but look like a rural village.
In another future post in the future I will explore the origins of the Rus, especially the hypothesis that Kievian Rus were slavic and the pagans of the Golden Army were called Rus by Moscovite Rus, but were rather asian or caucasian in heritage (see Scythians). That would explain that more than half of current Russia's population is rather a mix between asian DNA (west/central) and caucasian DNA (Transcaucasia, similiar to Armenia/Georgia/Dagestan/Karachay) than slavic (eastern european), which would make Napoleon's comment (post-Tartaria) about every Russian being a Tartar true.
