Golden Horde - Mongol Origins (1225–1241)

Mongol Origins (1225–1241)

At his death, Genghis Khan divided the Mongol Empire amongst his four sons as appanages but the Empire remained united under the supreme khan. Jochi was the eldest, but he died six months before Genghis. The westernmost lands occupied by the Mongols, which included what is today southern Russia and Kazakhstan, were given to Jochi's eldest sons: Batu, who eventually became the ruler of the Blue Horde; and Orda, who became the leader of the White Horde. In 1235, Batu with the great general Subedei began an invasion westwards, first conquering the Bashkirs and then moving on to Volga Bulgaria in 1236. From here, in 1237, he conquered some of the southern steppes of the Ukraine, forcing the local Cumans to retreat westward. The military campaign against Kypchaks and Cumans started under Jochi and Subedei in 1216–8 when the Merkits took shelter among them. By 1239 most of the Cumans were driven out of the peninsula and Crimea became one of the appanages of the Mongol Empire. The remnants of the Crimean Cumans survived in the Crimean mountains while most of the peninsula was resettled by the invading Mongols. Moving north, Batu began the Mongol invasion of Rus' and for three years subjugated the principalities of former Kievan Rus', whilst his cousins Möngke, Kadan and Güyük moved southwards into Alania.

Using the migration of the Cumans as his casus belli, the Mongols continued west, raiding Poland and Hungary and culminating in the battles of Legnica and Muhi. In 1241, however, the Ögedei Khan died in Mongolia homeland. Batu turned back from his siege of Vienna to take part in disputing the succession. The Mongol armies would never again travel so far west. In 1242, after retreating through Hungary (destroying Pest in the process), and subjugating Bulgaria, Batu established his capital at Sarai, commanding the lower stretch of the Volga River, on the site of the Khazarian capital of Atil. Shortly before that, Batu and Orda's younger brother Shiban was given his own enormous ulus east of the Ural Mountains along the Ob and Irtysh Rivers.

While there can be no doubt that in the mid-13th century at the court of Batu the Mongolian language was in general use, few Mongol texts written in the territory of the Golden Horde have survived, perhaps because of the prevalent general illiteracy. According to Grigor'ev, yarliq or decrees of the Khans were written in Mongol, then translated into the Cuman language. The existence of Arabic-Mongol and Persian-Mongol dictionaries dating from the middle of the 14th century and prepared for the use of the Mamluks in Egypt suggests that there was a practical need for such works in the chancelleries handling correspondence with the Golden Horde. It is thus reasonable to conclude that letters received by the Mamluks – if not also written by them – must have been in Mongol.

Indeed, the linguistic and even socio-linguistic impacts were great, as the Russians borrowed thousands of words, phrases and other significant linguistic features from the Mongol and the Turkic languages that were united under the Mongol Empire.