Podcasts about Grand prince

“I swear I will not flee from this fight. I will triumph, or I will die!” In the 1066 game of thrones for the crown of England, the most extraordinary of the three contenders is arguably Harald Hardrada: viking warrior, daring explorer, emperor's bodyguard, serpent slayer, alleged lover to an empress, King of Norway, and legend of Norse mythology. How did this titan of a man come to cross the North Sea with his army, and take on Harold Godwinson, in the titanic showdown of Stamford Bridge? His story before this point is so colourful that it may be one the most exciting lives in all history. Fighting from the age of twelve, Harald was born to a petty regional king of Norway, in a Scandinavia of competing religions and kingships. As a teenager, he would then join his fearsome brother Olaf, the man who united Norway but later fell foul of King Cnut, and subsequently sailed the seas and mysterious waterways of Russia, in a mighty battle to take back Norway. Their defeat was terrible and absolute, leaving the young Harald wounded and on the run. A journey of horrors and hardship would then lead him at last to the awe inspiring city of Kyiv, where he would serve as mercenary for the Grand Prince. But still hungry for wealth and glory he then travelled on to the most remarkable city in the world: Constantinople, where his life would take an even more dramatic turn… Join Dominic and Tom as they describe the electrifying early life of Harald Hardrada. From Scandinavian prince, warrior, and would-be usurper, to Baltic mercenary, and member of the elite Varangian Guard, in the glittering Constantinople or Miklagard - Asgard on earth. The stage is set for the greatest adventure of his life so far. But will Harald ever seize his ultimate destiny and become a king? EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Head to investengine.com/history or use promo code HISTORY for a welcome bonus of up to £100 _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tous les dimanches à minuit, Daniel Riolo propose une heure de show en direct avec Moundir Zoughari pour les passionnés de poker. Conseils d'un joueur professionnel, actualité, tournois... Votre rendez-vous poker, sur RMC !

Send us a textWelcome to Celebrate Poe - this is episode 326 - Don't Fool with IvanFrom Poe's favorite melody to Russia's darkest czar - now In this episode, I want to continue an exploration of Gothic works and the psychological complexities that resonate with Poe's literary works - in other words, go back and explore the influences on Poe's works - especially the dark and Gothic.  Obviously, I won't be able to look at all dark literature and relevant historical events, but I ended up thinking an interesting place to start was a look at Ivan the Terrible - He was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 and became the first Tsar of Russia in 1547, reigning until his death. His life and reign were marked by significant territorial expansion, cultural contributions such as the introduction of the printing press to Russia, and a reign of terror characterized by paranoia, violence, and the establishment of a massive, and brutal secret police called the oprichnina. Ivan's legacy remains one of both remarkable achievements and infamous crueltyListen to this podcast episode for more details.Thank you for experiencing Celebrate Poe.

He was born in Tver in 1272 to Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavovich, who was the brother of St Alexander Nevsky (November 23). Michael was brought up in the faith by his mother, who later became a nun. Such was his fervor that from childhood he was certain that he must end his life either as a monk or a martyr. He succeeded his brother as Prince of Tver in 1285, and later became Grand Prince of Vladimir, the Russian capital during the Mongol conquest.   When Prince Michael lost the throne of Vladimir through the plotting of his kinsman Prince George, his advisers urged him to go to war against George; but he preferred to lose power rather than to subject his people to bloodshed. When George attacked Tver itself, Michael took up arms to defend it, and was victorious. One of his prisoners was Princess Agatha, George's wife and the sister of the Tatar Khan. When she died in captivity, the full wrath of both George and the Tatars was aroused against Michael. The Prince knew that the only way to avert catastrophe for his people was to go to the Golden Horde to be judged at the Khan's court. Michael's kinsmen and advisors knew that such a course would surely lead to his death, but none were able to dissuade him from going to save his people.   Michael was kept prisoner with a wooden yoke around his neck, and subjected to many humiliations by the Tatars. But as he awaited his sentence he remained calm, spending his days in chanting the Church services and the Psalms. On the night of 21-22 November he had a revelation of his impending death. He attended the Liturgy, took Communion, and embraced his family. Then, opening the Psalter, he read the words Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee: He will never permit the righteous to be moved (Ps 54). He then calmly greeted his kinsman George and his minions, who pounced on the Prince and ran him through with swords. Prince Michael's relics were returned to Moscow, then translated to Tver in 1320. When the city was besieged in 1549, St Michael appeared to the inhabitants in the form of a mounted knight, armed for battle.

He was born in Tver in 1272 to Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavovich, who was the brother of St Alexander Nevsky (November 23). Michael was brought up in the faith by his mother, who later became a nun. Such was his fervor that from childhood he was certain that he must end his life either as a monk or a martyr. He succeeded his brother as Prince of Tver in 1285, and later became Grand Prince of Vladimir, the Russian capital during the Mongol conquest.   When Prince Michael lost the throne of Vladimir through the plotting of his kinsman Prince George, his advisers urged him to go to war against George; but he preferred to lose power rather than to subject his people to bloodshed. When George attacked Tver itself, Michael took up arms to defend it, and was victorious. One of his prisoners was Princess Agatha, George's wife and the sister of the Tatar Khan. When she died in captivity, the full wrath of both George and the Tatars was aroused against Michael. The Prince knew that the only way to avert catastrophe for his people was to go to the Golden Horde to be judged at the Khan's court. Michael's kinsmen and advisors knew that such a course would surely lead to his death, but none were able to dissuade him from going to save his people.   Michael was kept prisoner with a wooden yoke around his neck, and subjected to many humiliations by the Tatars. But as he awaited his sentence he remained calm, spending his days in chanting the Church services and the Psalms. On the night of 21-22 November he had a revelation of his impending death. He attended the Liturgy, took Communion, and embraced his family. Then, opening the Psalter, he read the words Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee: He will never permit the righteous to be moved (Ps 54). He then calmly greeted his kinsman George and his minions, who pounced on the Prince and ran him through with swords. Prince Michael's relics were returned to Moscow, then translated to Tver in 1320. When the city was besieged in 1549, St Michael appeared to the inhabitants in the form of a mounted knight, armed for battle.

He was born in Tver in 1272 to Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavovich, who was the brother of St Alexander Nevsky (November 23). Michael was brought up in the faith by his mother, who later became a nun. Such was his fervor that from childhood he was certain that he must end his life either as a monk or a martyr. He succeeded his brother as Prince of Tver in 1285, and later became Grand Prince of Vladimir, the Russian capital during the Mongol conquest.   When Prince Michael lost the throne of Vladimir through the plotting of his kinsman Prince George, his advisers urged him to go to war against George; but he preferred to lose power rather than to subject his people to bloodshed. When George attacked Tver itself, Michael took up arms to defend it, and was victorious. One of his prisoners was Princess Agatha, George's wife and the sister of the Tatar Khan. When she died in captivity, the full wrath of both George and the Tatars was aroused against Michael. The Prince knew that the only way to avert catastrophe for his people was to go to the Golden Horde to be judged at the Khan's court. Michael's kinsmen and advisors knew that such a course would surely lead to his death, but none were able to dissuade him from going to save his people.   Michael was kept prisoner with a wooden yoke around his neck, and subjected to many humiliations by the Tatars. But as he awaited his sentence he remained calm, spending his days in chanting the Church services and the Psalms. On the night of 21-22 November he had a revelation of his impending death. He attended the Liturgy, took Communion, and embraced his family. Then, opening the Psalter, he read the words Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee: He will never permit the righteous to be moved (Ps 54). He then calmly greeted his kinsman George and his minions, who pounced on the Prince and ran him through with swords. Prince Michael's relics were returned to Moscow, then translated to Tver in 1320. When the city was besieged in 1549, St Michael appeared to the inhabitants in the form of a mounted knight, armed for battle.

Olga was the wive of Igor, the Grand Prince of the Kievan Rus', a federation of people whose capital was the city of Kyiv, now the capital of modern day Ukraine. When her husband was brutally murdered by a subsidiary tribe, Olga went on a legendary campaign of cunning and ruthless revenge. Once in control of her husband's kingdom, she was an efficient and effective leader. She converted to Christianity in order to get out of an unwanted marriage proposal. She is credited with introducing Christianity to the Rus people. After her death, Olga was canonized as a saint and is regarded as “Equal to the Apostles” within the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Jadwiga, Female King of Poland was crowned at the age of 10. She grew wise beyond her years and was forced to make a difficult decision about who to marry – a young man she liked or an old man who would Christianize his country for her. Though she reigned for only 15 years she did a great deal of good and is considered one of the greatest monarchs in Polish history. Join me every Tuesday when I'm Spilling the Tea on History! Check out my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/lindsayholiday Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091781568503 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyteatimelindsayholiday/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyteatime Please consider supporting me at https://www.patreon.com/LindsayHoliday and help me make more fascinating episodes! Intro Music: Baroque Coffee House by Doug Maxwell Music: Butterflies in Love by Sir Cubworth Angevin - Thatched Villagers by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) #womenshistory #HistoryTeaTime #LindsayHoliday Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise on this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 751, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Lakes And Rivers 1: 1 of the 3 state capitals that lie on the Missouri River. Bismarck, Pierre, or Jefferson City. 2: Famous for its monster, it forms part of the Caledonian Canal. Loch Ness. 3: It's still working on deepening the Grand Canyon. the Colorado River. 4: This lake in Manitoba, Ontario and Minnesota is a remnant of an extinct glacial lake. Lake of the Woods. 5: This river rises in the Black Forest and empties into the Black Sea. the Danube. Round 2. Category: Music In "Black" And "White" 1: Marty Robbins wore it with "a pink carnation". a white sport coat. 2: In a 1942 hit, this "has me in its spell". that old black magic. 3: In 1965, pianist Horst Jankowski took a walk up the charts with "A Walk In" this German location. the Black Forest. 4: Completes "The moon was all aglow and heaven was in your eyes, the night that you told me those...". little white lies. 5: 1966 order from the Rolling Stones to an artist. paint it black. Round 3. Category: Autumn Leaves 1: Autumn 1893:This composer's death in St. Petersburg leaves rumors of suicide. Tchaikovsky. 2: Though he died near Louisville in Autumn 1980, this honorary colonel still leaves a good taste in our mouths. Colonel Sanders. 3: October 1972:This ballplayer leaves the epitaph "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives". Jackie Robinson. 4: October 1964:His death at age 90 leaves Eisenhower and Truman as the only living ex-presidents. Herbert Hoover. 5: November 2001:This musician leaves a son, Dhani. George Harrison. Round 4. Category: '90s Oscar Winners 1: His 12 nominations for movies of the decade produced 1 win, Best Original Score for “Schindler's List”. John Williams. 2: He won his first Oscar for directing “Unforgiven”. Clint Eastwood. 3: She won for not saying much as Ada McGrath in “The Piano”. Holly Hunter. 4: Susan Sarandon won for “Dead Man Walking” and he won for “Leaving Las Vegas”, which could have had the same title. Nicolas Cage. 5: Some didn't applaud the honorary Oscar to this “Streetcar” director and HUAC witness. (Elia) Kazan. Round 5. Category: Dude, Where's My Czar? 1: Czar means "emperor", and is derived from this Latin word, the formal title of several Roman rulers. Caesar. 2: One of those who killed this "mad monk" was a cousin of Nicholas II, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. Rasputin. 3: The first Russian to hold the title Czar, he was proclaimed Grand Prince of Moscow in 1533. Ivan the Terrible. 4: Maximilian Schell starred in an Emmy-winning 1986 mini-series about this reformist czar. Peter the Great. 5: Michael was the czar who ruled Russia from 1613 to 1645 and founded this dynasty. the Romanov. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

The War for the Crown continues as our five Taldan nobles try to sway nobles rush to save a senator, avoid a duel, and complete their tasks before the arrival of the Grand Prince of Taldor! Support us on Patreon to access our actual play of the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path and other content: https://www.patreon.com/FindthePath [...] The post War for the Crown Episode 7: Stavian's Arrival appeared first on Find the Path Ventures.

The War for the Crown continues as our five Taldan nobles try to sway nobles rush to save a senator, avoid a duel, and complete their tasks before the arrival of the Grand Prince of Taldor! Support us on Patreon to access our actual play of the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path and other content: https://www.patreon.com/FindthePath Cast Rick Sandidge is our Gamemaster Heather Allen plays Viscountess Gwenhwyfar Kastner (LG female human Skald 1) Jessica Jenkins plays Baroness Verity Corcina (LN female human Samurai 1) Jordan Jenkins plays Baron Cornelius Merrosett (N male human Arcanist 1) Rachel Sandidge plays Countess Felyx Zespire (LG female human Cleric 1) Ross Scoggin plays Count Oliver Darahan (NG male human Magus 1) In game music provided by Syrinscape! Check them out at https://syrinscape.com/ War for the Crown theme provided by Ryan Mumford.

He was born in Tver in 1272 to Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavovich, who was the brother of St Alexander Nevsky (November 23). Michael was brought up in the faith by his mother, who later became a nun. Such was his fervor that from childhood he was certain that he must end his life either as a monk or a martyr. He succeeded his brother as Prince of Tver in 1285, and later became Grand Prince of Vladimir, the Russian capital during the Mongol conquest.   When Prince Michael lost the throne of Vladimir through the plotting of his kinsman Prince George, his advisers urged him to go to war against George; but he preferred to lose power rather than to subject his people to bloodshed. When George attacked Tver itself, Michael took up arms to defend it, and was victorious. One of his prisoners was Princess Agatha, George's wife and the sister of the Tatar Khan. When she died in captivity, the full wrath of both George and the Tatars was aroused against Michael. The Prince knew that the only way to avert catastrophe for his people was to go to the Golden Horde to be judged at the Khan's court. Michael's kinsmen and advisors knew that such a course would surely lead to his death, but none were able to dissuade him from going to save his people.   Michael was kept prisoner with a wooden yoke around his neck, and subjected to many humiliations by the Tatars. But as he awaited his sentence he remained calm, spending his days in chanting the Church services and the Psalms. On the night of 21-22 November he had a revelation of his impending death. He attended the Liturgy, took Communion, and embraced his family. Then, opening the Psalter, he read the words Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee: He will never permit the righteous to be moved (Ps 54). He then calmly greeted his kinsman George and his minions, who pounced on the Prince and ran him through with swords. Prince Michael's relics were returned to Moscow, then translated to Tver in 1320. When the city was besieged in 1549, St Michael appeared to the inhabitants in the form of a mounted knight, armed for battle.

He was born in Tver in 1272 to Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavovich, who was the brother of St Alexander Nevsky (November 23). Michael was brought up in the faith by his mother, who later became a nun. Such was his fervor that from childhood he was certain that he must end his life either as a monk or a martyr. He succeeded his brother as Prince of Tver in 1285, and later became Grand Prince of Vladimir, the Russian capital during the Mongol conquest.   When Prince Michael lost the throne of Vladimir through the plotting of his kinsman Prince George, his advisers urged him to go to war against George; but he preferred to lose power rather than to subject his people to bloodshed. When George attacked Tver itself, Michael took up arms to defend it, and was victorious. One of his prisoners was Princess Agatha, George's wife and the sister of the Tatar Khan. When she died in captivity, the full wrath of both George and the Tatars was aroused against Michael. The Prince knew that the only way to avert catastrophe for his people was to go to the Golden Horde to be judged at the Khan's court. Michael's kinsmen and advisors knew that such a course would surely lead to his death, but none were able to dissuade him from going to save his people.   Michael was kept prisoner with a wooden yoke around his neck, and subjected to many humiliations by the Tatars. But as he awaited his sentence he remained calm, spending his days in chanting the Church services and the Psalms. On the night of 21-22 November he had a revelation of his impending death. He attended the Liturgy, took Communion, and embraced his family. Then, opening the Psalter, he read the words Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee: He will never permit the righteous to be moved (Ps 54). He then calmly greeted his kinsman George and his minions, who pounced on the Prince and ran him through with swords. Prince Michael's relics were returned to Moscow, then translated to Tver in 1320. When the city was besieged in 1549, St Michael appeared to the inhabitants in the form of a mounted knight, armed for battle.

Volodymyr Monomakh was the prince of Smolensk, Chernihiv, Pereiaslav and finally the Grand Prince (aka King) of Kyivan-Rus from 1113 to 1125. How did this grandson of Yaroslav the Wise rise from the thousandth in line to rule the Empire? Find out in this episode along with how much the man loved to hunt (a lot, trust me, it was A LOT!), how he used diplomacy and warfare to solve his issues and how he is related to the English nobility! Facebook & Instagram: Wanderedgeukraine For more episodes, sources and extras, please visit: wanderingtheedge.net

There have been many impostors throughout history and in this 48th episode we deal with six of them, two related to English history and four related to Russian history. All at one time or another had many who believed in them (or at least tried to use them for advantage). All six went a long way to pulling off their ruse and we discuss many of the details in this episode.Episode Notes:Ivan IV (the Terrible) was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and Czar of Russia from 1547 to 1584.Books:The Earlier Tudors by J.D. MackieHenry VII and the Tudor Pretenders by Nathen AminA Short History of Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles of and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty by Chester S.L. DunningA History of Russia by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky A Romanov Fantasy:  Life at the Court of Anna Anderson by Frances WelchFilm:Ivan the Terrible (2014) DocumentaryAnastasia (1956) Starring Ingrid Bergman

Ivan IV the Terrible was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, then Tsar of All the Russias until his death in 1584... Uitgegeven door SAGA Egmont Spreker: Katie Haigh

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://hoinsergroup.com/2022/06/03/grand-prince-thiago-lamont-couto-de-chandos/

  With the devastating invasion of the Emir Temür, better known as Tamerlane, in 1395, the Golden Horde had suffered a grievous wound. Its armies were dealt crushing defeats; its Khan Toqtamish was sent fleeing for his life; and the major cities of the Horde had all been sacked by the Timurids. The Horde was now held together with a  wish and prayer, and in the hands of the powerful lord Edigü. Today in our final episode on the Golden Horde, we take you through its slow breakup in the century after Tamerlane's attack. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   We should note that the fall of the Golden Horde was not a single moment or event. 1380, 1395, 1480 or 1502 are not simply switches where the Golden Horde ceased to exist. Rather, it was a centuries long process, with edges of the empire breaking away or being reclaimed, while multiple claimants for power fought each other and sometimes succeeded in reunifying parts or all of the khanates. Rather than a sudden collapse, it was more like waves ebbing to and fro with the tide, and as they withdraw, they pull back a bit further each time, only to in time not return at all.   The Golden Horde of the fifteenth century was a very different beast from the one Öz Beg had ruled in the early fourteenth century. Steadily, though not immediately the cities of the steppe along rivers like the Volga diminished in size and were largely abandoned. Even Sarai, thoroughly sacked by Tamerlane, remained the nominal capital and continued to be fought over for generations. The overland international trade networks which had once so enriched the Jochid khans dried up as the route across Asia became too dangerous, and the merchants who still made the trek were redirected elsewhere. Rounds of bubonic plague still struck on occasion, and with the end of the medieval warm period, the steppe environment itself steadily became less accommodating with colder winters and less productive grasslands. It was not the end to animal husbandry or even agriculture in the steppe, but it was no longer the great, organized system enjoyed by the Jochids in their heyday. Political instability marked the region accordingly; whereas from Batu until the 1360s the Jochid Khans had maintained peace throughout the steppes, now rival claimants raided or invaded each other, at times annually. While Tamerlane did not end the Golden Horde, his attack aggravated and worsened these problems. The ten years of relative peace Toqtamish had overseen as khan had simply not been long enough to recover from the previous two decades of troubles, and now each problem reared its ugly head once more.   After Tamerlane's withdrawal in 1396, he left the state reeling in his wake. Toqtamish Khan had survived, but his armies were broken. Tamerlane had installed a new khan, Quyurchuq, a son of Urus Khan, but Quyurchuq had little authority without Tamerlane's presence. Edigü, a non-Chinggisid lord and leader of the Manghit peoples, quickly maneuvered Quyurchuq Khan out of the way, and installed his own puppet, a distant relation of Toqtamish named Temür Qutlugh. Edigü was a wily figure, a skilled politician and one of the wealthiest, most powerful lords within the Golden Horde. Long had he fought Toqtamish, first alongside Urus Khan, and then alongside Tamerlane. Once Tamerlane began to withdraw from the Horde for the final time, Edigü promptly betrayed him and began gathering his own forces to overthrow Tamerlane's puppet.    Edigü, as a non-Chinggisid, could not claim the title of khan himself. But by making the khans dependent on him for power and military support, Edigü could hold real authority over the realm. As beylerbeyi,  Edigü commanded immense influence among the qarachu families; that is, the non-Chinggisid military elite, those generally bore the title of beğ (pronounced as bey). Every khan that Edigü would enthrone had to confirm Edigü as beylerbeyi, the bey of beys; which Khan Temür Qutlugh promptly did. This gave  Edigü an institution position akin to vizier or commander-in-chief, “advising” the khan to do exactly what  Edigü wished. In turn the khan continued to function in a more ceremonial role and remained official head-of-state, and his name continued to be minted on coinage. No matter how powerful Edigü might be, in the steppes the prestige of Chinggisid rulership was too strong to be cast aside, and attempting to rule in his own right would have presumably resulted in open rebellion against him. Almost two hundred years since Chinggis Khan's death, his spectre still loomed large over Asia.   Edigü and Temür Qutlugh's confirmation took place not a moment too soon, for Toqtamish and his sons were in the midst of collecting forces to retake the khanate. Assisted by the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas the Great, Toqtamish and his Lithuanian allies invaded the Golden Horde in 1399, only to be defeated but Temür Qutlugh Khan and Edigü at the Vorskla  River in 1399. The battle solidified Edigü's dominance, with Vytautas' army annihilated, many Lithuanian princes killed and both Vytautas and Toqtamish sent fleeing for their lives. Though Toqtamish continued to seek the throne until his death in 1406, it was clear that Edigü was too strong to be ousted so quickly. And lest Temür Qutlugh Khan have grown too haughty after such a victory, he died in unclear circumstances soon after the battle. Edigü then enthroned Temür Qutlugh's brother, Shadi Beğ, as khan.   Under Edigü's stewardship, efforts were made to stabilize the Golden Horde. He retook Khwarezm after Tamerlane's death, often raided the Rus' principalities and laid siege to Moscow in 1408, sparing the city in exchange for a ransom of 3,000 rubles. Some economic recovery is indicated from the restarting of mints in some of the Horde's major cities. A considerable quantity of coinage entered the markets, some of it quite high quality, a sign of Edigü's effort to jump-start the economy. To help legitimize himself in light of his lack of Chinggisid credentials, Edigü made himself the standard bearer of Islamization of the remainder of the nomadic population, continuing the process begun by Özbeg. He went as far as to claim descent from the sufi shaykh  Baba Tükles, a mythical figure who in popular legend had converted Özbeg to Islam. As in turn Baba Tükles was supposed to be descended from the Caliphs, this gave Edigü an ancient, if almost entirely fictitious, pedigree. Still, descent from the successors of Muhammad was useful when portraying oneself as an almighty Muslim monarch and a champion of Islam.    But powerful as Edigü was, his might was not supreme. His puppet khan Shadi Beğ did not enjoy being a puppet and sought to remove Edigü from the scene. Learning of the plot, Edigü routed and chased Shadi Beğ from the Horde. He then enthroned Shadi Beğ's nephew, Bulad, a son of the late Temür Qutlugh. This relationship was likewise fraught; according to the Rus' Nikonian Chronicle, Edigü had to rush to lift his siege of Moscow when he learned that Bulad had grown irate at Edigü. When Bulad died in 1410, Edigü then enthroned Bulad's brother Temür. Khan Temür proved even less amenable to Edigü, for upon becoming khan Temür refused to confirm Edigü as beylerbeyi, the institution which gave Edigü his power. Edigü's supporters abandoned him as Temür sought to capture him, his armies pursuing Edigü to Khwarezm. Nearly was Edigü's life forfeit, until he was saved by an unlikely source; Jalal al-Din, known to the Rus' as the Zeleni Sultan, and a son of the late Toqtamish Khan. Jalal al-Din had aided Duke Vytautas of Lithuania against the Teutonic Order at the famous battle of Grünwald in 1410, and in turn for his support was provided troops to assist him in reclaiming the Horde. While Temür Khan's armies had Edigü under siege in Khwarezm, the khan himself was killed by Jalal al-Din bin Toqtamish. News of it reached Temür Khan's generals, who lost heart and dissipated while Jalal al-Din was enthroned as Khan in Sarai, inadvertently saving Edigü's life.   After years of dreaming for the position and restoring his family to honour, Jalal al-Din Khan had accomplished his greatest desire, and could begin the hunt for Edigü… until he was murdered by his brother, Qibaq, in October 1412.  Another brother, Kerim Berdi, took the throne, while Qibaq, backed by Vyautas of Lithuania, challenged him for it. The only thing which had held these brothers together had been their father and the quest for the throne; with the throne now theirs, they tore themselves apart for it.    The 1410s and 20s went on in this fashion, highly reminiscent of the tumultuous 1360s and 70s. Kerim Berdi killed Qibaq in battle, only for both Edigü and Vytautas to declare new khans. Vytautas had another of Toqtamish's sons, Jabbar Berdi, declared khan in Vilnius, while Edigü chose another Tuqa-Temürid, Chekre. Cherke seized Sarai, only for Jabbar Berdi to kill Kerim Berdi, take Sarai and chase out Edigü's candidate. And that situation lasted until one of Kerim Berdi's sons, Sayyid Ahmad I, was declared khan and threw out Jabbar Berdi. And the pattern continued, with Vytautas and Edigü both declaring new khans immediately upon learning the news. This went on until 1419, when one of the last of Toqtamish's sons, Kadir Berdi, and Edigü himself, were finally killed in battle.   The 1420s proved no better in the aftermath of Edigü's death. A man named Muhammad was enthroned as Khan, but his identity in uncertain, and could possibly be a number of notable Chinggisids who bore the name. In the 1420s the khan in Sarai became just one khan amongst several, and so passed a bewildering number of khans, the order and lengths of the reigns of which are a continuous subject of debate. While more ambitious khans dreamed of reinvigorating the Horde, the borders of the state broke away, with the Timurids, for instance, retaking Khwarezm. The situation stabilized slightly over the 1430s as three main powers emerged; east of the Ural river, Abu'l Khayr Khan, founder of the Uzbek Khanate; Küchük Muhammad Khan, a grandson of Temür Qutlugh, in the Volga steppe, and Sayyid Ahmed II Khan, another Tuqa-Temürid, west of the Don River. Küchük Muhammad's nearly twenty year reign, from 1435-1459, is when scholarship begins to call the state the Great Horde, to distinguish it from its neighbours, the newly emerging successor khanates.        While Küchük Muhammad is usually designated the most ‘legitimate' khan of the Golde Horde, at least in scholarship, each of the competing khans in these years saw themselves as the actual ruler of the Horde. Each tended to demand the Rus' princes pay tribute to them, a source of much confusion and fear for the Rus', who watched closely the political developments. The Rus' were not idle spectators or skillfully playing off the khans, for they spent much of these years locked in their own lengthy civil wars. The Grand Prince, Vasili II Vasilivich, still had to flee his capital due to Mongol attacks, and was even captured by troops of Ulugh Muhammad Khan. Regularly, the Rus' still paid annual tribute to the Khan of the Great Horde.   But even the relatively calm 1430s were no salve for the unity of the Horde, and the fragmentation continued, with both the emergence of more Chinggisid and non-Chinggisid polities. Kazan, in the lands of the Volga Bulghars, became an independent realm under the heirs of Ulugh Muhammad Khan, who had been khan of the Golden Horde until his ouster in 1438. Along the Ural River emerged the Nogai Horde under the sons of Edigü. As Edigü's sons belonged to the Manghit clan, the ruling strata of the Nogai Horde, you will sometimes see this Horde called the Manghit yurt or ulus. North of the Nogais emerged a proper Khanate of Sibir, or Siberian Khanate, ruled by a branch of the Shibanids. In 1459 on the death of Küchük Muhammad, Khan of the Great Horde, he sought to divide the khanate between his sons Mahmud and Ahmad. But Ahmad soon chased out Mahmud, who fled to Hajji Tarkhan, modern Astrakhan at the Volga Delta. Mahmud and his sons turned Astrakhan into their powerbase, and in turn its own independent khanate. In the far east, the newly emerged Uzbek Khanate fell into internal fighting after the death of Abu'l Khayr Khan, which led to a group of young princes breaking off and founding the rival Kazakh Khanate in the 1450s. In 1442, Crimea and the surrounding steppes came under the rule of Sayyid Ahmad II Khan's nephew, Hajji Giray, establishing the Crimean Khanate's long ruling Giray Dynasty. Hajji Giray, and his son Mengli Giray, dedicated their lives to the hatred of the heirs of Küchük Muhammad, whose line monopolized the position of Khans of the ever declining Great Horde. For over twenty years, Hajji Giray fought repeatedly with Küchük Muhammad's son, Ahmad Khan. Ahmad enjoyed few successes; his alliance with Poland against the Crimean Khan brought little help, while the Nogais and other khanates and Hordes bordering him raided his lands, splitting his attention in every direction. His situation was further hampered with the obstinence of the new Grand Prince of the Rus', Ivan III of Moscow.    Ivan III brought Moscow out of its lengthy period of civil war, and renewed the drive to dominate  the other principalities. Like his predecessors, Ivan III had recognized the overlordship of the Khan. But he also recognized the reality of the situation, for he maintained diplomacy with the other emerging khans, particularly the Crimean.  From the 1440s onwards there had been gaps in the deliverance of Rus' tribute to the Horde,  becoming ever more spotty upon Ivan's official ascension in 1462, culminating in 1471 when Ivan ceased the payment of tribute altogether. Ahmad Khan frequently sent messengers to Ivan demanding the resumption of the tribute, or for Ivan to come and reaffirm his submission in person. The ever more frustrated Ahmad Khan, surrounded and beleaguered by powerful rivals, needed this Rus' tribute. His first march on Moscow in 1472 was aborted, and ordered another attack on Ivan in 1480 in cooperation with his Polish ally, King Casimir IV. Ivan III did not back down, and sent his army to repel the khan. The two foes faced off across the Ugra River over the summer and into the autumn of 1480. Khan Ahmad waited in vain for Casimir, who never arrived. Arrows were shot, arquebuses were fired; Ivan worried the river would soon freeze and allow Ahmad free passage, but Ahmad retreated first, downtrodden his ally had failed to show. His son Murteza raided Moscow territory as they withdrew, and Ahmad was murdered the next year.       So ended the Great Stand on the Ugra River, a much overemphasized staring contest. Only centuries later did chronicles see it as an epoch in the independence of the Rus'. It did not directly affect either parties' standing, and to contemporaries was simply another scuffle amidst hundreds. Twenty years later after the Ugra stand, Ivan sent a message to Ahmad's son and successor, Shaykh Ahmad Khan, inquiring about resuming their earlier relationship in the midst of a fierce round of struggle with Lithuania. From 1474 to 1685, Moscow sent annual tributes, under the name of pominki, to the Crimean Khans. But raids and attacks by the khans were no longer as devastating as they had once been, with the expansion of better defensive networks by the Rus', including more stone fortifications and ever-improving firearms technology. Seemingly, the armies of the Khans no longer came with such overwhelming forces, and the chronicles which once spoke of Toqta's brother Duden handily destroying 14 cities across Rus', begin to describe the Rus' repelling or pursuing Tatar raiders. Assaults on cities, such as Ahmad's brother Mahmud Khan's failed siege of Ryazan' in 1460, were beaten back with heavy losses on the part of the attackers. In other cases, the Khans fell prey to other khans; Mahmud's 1465 attack on Rus' was intercepted by an army of the Crimean Khan Hajji Giray, who often allied with Moscow against the Great Horde. The khans of the Horde no longer enjoyed a monopoly on military power. Instead of masters of the steppe, they were now members within a political system, facing off with rivals of comparable power, while their own might had shrunk considerably. The khan could no longer unilaterally oppose his will.        After Ahmad Khan's death in 1481, his sons attempted to act as co-rulers but were soon at each other's throats, further weakening the Great Horde while their rivals grew in might. Shaykh Ahmad bin Ahmad Khan emerged the victor. While he had aspirations of reuniting the Horde, his efforts proved futile. Shaykh Ahmad Khan's reign proved to be one of disaster. His cousin in Astrakhan openly defied him; Ivan III of Moscow allied with Mengli Giray of Crimea against the Great Horde. In an effort to outflank Moscow and Crimea, Shaykh Ahmad sought to restore the military alliance with Lithuania, but no great support ever came of it. Rounds of plague and bad seasons further harmed the Horde's cities, pasture lands and crops; harsh winters and poor grazing resulted in the deaths of thousands of horses almost every year of the 1490s. Famine weakened his forces, destroyed his herds and caused thousands to flee to neighbouring khanates. By the start of the sixteenth century Shaykh Ahmad was desperate, and in winter 1501 he led his underfed and weakened army in one last gamble, seeking to push west of the Dnieper for greener pasture. But he was trapped in a vicious snowstorm, and cut off from the rest of his forces. His demoralized army suffered for months, and began to trickle off to the territory of the Crimean Khan, Mengli Giray. Shaykh Ahmad suffered his own personal losses; already depressed from the failure of the Lithuanians to arrive, Shaykh Ahmad watched the last of his brothers fall ill and die.  As Mengli Giray summoned the entirety of his forces to crush the khan, Shaykh Ahmad's will finally broke when his own wife abandoned him with much of his family and most of his remaining troops— to join Mengli Giray. When Mengli Giray met Ahmad near the Dnieper in June 1502, the Khan of the Great Horde, who in the time of Özbeg was allegedly capable of raising 300,000 men, was caught with a paltry 20,000. Chased from the field, his palace ordu looted, Shaykh Ahmad Khan spent the rest of his life on the run, and spent much of his last twenty years in Lithuania a political prisoner. So, according to traditional scholarship, did the humiliating career of the final Khan of the Great Horde end, and traditionally 1502 serves as the end date for the Golden Horde.       However, in recent decades this view has been challenged. Historians like Leslie Collins have demonstrated thoroughly how after 1502 Mengli Giray dramatically grew in strength and began to style himself as Great Khan of the Great Horde; a claim recognized in diplomacy by his Ottoman overlord, the Rus', the Poles and the Lithuanians. What is now argued is that, to contemporaries, the Great Horde did not end in 1502; the throne was simply taken by another branch of the dynasty, as it had so many times before. Absorbing the remnants of the Great Horde's lands, troops and wealth, the power of the Crimean Khans grew considerably as they expanded eastwards into the former heart of Shaykh Ahmad Khan's realm. By the 1520s under Mengli's son, Mehmed, their influence stretched past the Volga as they put candidates onto the thrones of Kazan and Astrakhan. In a sense, the Horde was briefly reestablished. However, Mehmed was killed by Nogais in 1523, who then raided as far as Crimea, precipitating years of internal fighting for the Crimean throne and leading to the Ottomans taking greater control over the Crimean succession. Meanwhile without a common enemy in the form of the Great Horde the Crimean alliance with Moscow quickly frayed. The Princes of Moscow, now masters of Rus', were eager to gain access to the Volga trade, and take advantage of the weakness of the Volga Khanates, particularly under Ivan IV and his crusade-minded advisers. In 1552 the first khanate, Kazan, fell to Ivan's armies; Astrakhan followed in 1554.  It is Ivan IV, by the way, who is popularly known as Ivan Grozny, or Ivan the Terrible, and who in 1547 took the imperial title of Tsar, a derivation of Latin Caesar. During the dominance of the Golden Horde, Tsar had been the title reserved for the Khans, whereas the Rus' princes were knyaz. What Ivan was signalling, in a way, was that the now the Prince of Moscow had replaced the Jochid khan as master of the Rus'.       The powerful Crimean Khan Devlet I Giray sought to halt Moscow's expansion, with yearly raids and in 1571, even succeeded in capturing and burning down Moscow. This brief victory was followed by a humiliating defeat at Molodni the next year. The Crimean Khans reluctantly ceded control of the former eastern lands of the Golden Horde to Moscow. This last campaign proved to be the final great success of steppe armies over the Rus'. In the following decades, the Russian Tsardom soon stretched deep into Siberia. The continuous warfare of the fourteen and fifteenth centuries, coupled with epidemics and environmental stresses, left for the Russians nothing but depopulated, weakened khanates to pick off one by one; only to the south, in the great steppe, did the Crimean Khans armies stop Russian expansion; an expansion halted, as much as anything, by logistical difficulties in crossing the steppe, and threat of Ottoman support for the Crimean Khanate, rather than any military capability on the part of the Crimeans. Though the Crimean Khanate launched continuous raids on the southern frontier of Muscovy, Lithuania, Poland and assisted the Ottomans in campaigns into Eastern and Central Europe, they were no longer unassailable. Raids sent on Moscow's order, or undertaken by the fiercely Cossack hosts who now roamed the steppes, now penetrated into the Crimean peninsula itself.   Still, they clung on. Over the 1700s the Russian Empire steadily encroached and isolated Crimea, while Ottoman support became ever more tepid. Only in 1783 was the Crimean Khanate finally annexed by Empress Catherine the Great, shortly after the Russians had essentially ended its political independence. The final Crimean Khan, Şahin Giray, was executed a few years later by the Ottomans. When the Kazakh Khanates were finally dissolved by the Russians in the following century, so with them went the last vestiges of the Golden Horde, and the Mongol Empire.        So ends our history of the Golden Horde, and in turn the Mongol Empire. Be sure to turn in next week as we wrap up our series on the Chinggisid empire, and leave you with considerations for the start of our next series, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one.

“The impure and proud Mamai, Lord of the Volga Horde, ruled over the entire Horde, and he slew many lords and khans and he set  up a khan according to his own will. He was, however, in great confusion, and everybody distrusted him because he killed many lords and nobles in his Horde. He even killed his own khan, and although he had a khan, this khan of the Horde was ruler in name only, for it was he, himself, who was ruler and master of all. When he learned that the Tatars loved their khan he became afraid that the khan would assume the power from him. Therefore he killed him and all who were faithful to him and those who loved him.”   So the Rus' Nikonian Chronicle describes the situation in the Golden Horde at the end of the 1370s. Thirty years after the death of Özbeg Khan, the Golden Horde underwent another, much more violent transformation. During the reign of Özbeg's son Jani Beg from 1342 to 1357, he had kept the Golden Horde sailing through rough waters as the overland Asian trade began to unravel and the Black Death ravaged his cities.  But with Jani Beg's death in 1357, possibly at the hands of his own son Berdi Beg, the good fortune of the Golden Horde came to a sudden and bloody end. Now the Horde was to enter two decades of anarchy; the bulghaq, the topic of today's episode. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   In 1357, Jani Beg had just returned from his successful conquest of what is now Azerbaijan, when he suddenly died. According to a contemporary writer, al-Ahari, his son Berdi Beg was, at the time of his father's death, still in the Azerbaijani lands. But sources such as the later Nikonian Chronicle have Berdi Beg convinced by a cunning emir to strangle his father himself after bringing numerous princes into an alliance with him. The widespread impression seems to have been that he organized his father's murder, even if the most contemporary sources do not place Berdi Beg there himself. After Berdi Beg left Azerbaijan, the region was lost, seized by the Jalayirids of Baghdad.    Berdi Beg in quick order, with the backing of his grandmother Taydula, was proclaimed Khan of the Golden Horde. But feeling he faced threats, real or imagined, the new khan's first actions were violence. Echoing his father and grandfather, Berdi Beg had his brothers murdered: 12 of them, by one count. For one infant brother, Berdi Beg is alleged to have done the deed with his own bare hands, despite the pleadings of grandmother Taydula Khatun. A number of other high ranking princes and officials too met their deaths on Berdi Beg's order.   Berdi Beg's actions did little to engender love to the new monarch, for whom Heaven seemed to show little favour. The Horde's trade had declined tremendously in these years. Cities starved and shrunk, as they lost access to international trade, were depopulated by the Black Death and local farmland suffered. The mid-fourteenth century saw the Little Ice Age strike  and undo the system built up by the Jochids over the last century. Decreased rainfall over much of the steppe, and likely over-grazing from ever larger herds needed to support cities, when combined resulted in the rapid aridisation across the region. Much of the grassland simply could not sustain the great herds any longer. Almost paradoxically, the Caspian Sea was rising and causing increased flooding along the lower reaches of the Volga, which inundated cities and farmland in the Horde's most densely populated region.    The great cities of the Horde saw their population drop rapidly, and the material wealth evaporated without the trade or population to sustain it. The Horde's elites who had enriched themselves off it were frightened, angered and uncertain. Berdi Beg's efforts did little to improve things; he is known, for instance, to have raised trade duties on imports to their highest level ever recorded in the Golden Horde: 5%. And an especially virulent wave of the plague in 1359 really topped things off.    His legitimacy already in doubt due to widespread rumours of having murdered his own father, the generally respected Jani Beg, it should not be a surprise that Berdi Beg's rule was on thin ice. After only two years on the throne, Berdi Beg, grandson of mighty Özbeg, was murdered. The exact circumstances are unclear; the Nikonian Chronicle puts the blame on the same beg  who had urged Berdi Beg to kill his father. The murder of Berdi Beg Khan in 1359 did not, however, improve things very much.    On Berdi Beg's death, the throne was taken by Qulpa, a fellow who is variously identified as a brother or cousin of Berdi Beg. Qulpa was not long to enjoy the throne. After six months, Qulpa and his two sons, curiously with the very Rus' Christian names of Ivan and Mikhail, were all in turn murdered, this time by Nawruz, a brother of Qulpa. Still, the Rus' princes came to pay homage to Nawruz, and momentarily things looked like they might settle. That is, until Khidr came. Khidr ruled an appanage east of the Ural River, and was no descendant of Batu, but of another son of Jochi, named Shiban. In some accounts, he was invited by Taydula Khatun. But he simply may have seen a chance to throw his hat in the ring. Only months after he took the throne, Nawruz and his son were killed by Khidr, who became the new khan of the Golden Horde. So ended the line of Batu Khan, having ruled the western steppes for a century. The purging of the Batuid lineage with every succession since Toqta and Nogai's coup in 1291 had reached its final outcome, with Nawruz and his sons the final known male descendants. With the exception of Berke, all the khans of the Golden Horde until that time had been a descendent of Batu. Now, Khidr Khan's actions had essentially opened the succession to any possible claimant. And boy, did it.   Within a year Khidr was dead, and over the next twenty years the Jochid throne effectively became the most violent game of musical chairs. Over this period, some 25 khans, possibly more, were declared in Sarai, of varying lineages. Some ruled for two or three years, while many ruled only months.  Most of these figures are known only by their names. Some are known only by coinage; in one year, 6 different khans minted coins in Sarai.   The consequences were legion. The economic woes worsened as cities were now sacked by opposing forces. For the first time, we see archaeological evidence for fortifications around the Horde's cities in the steppe. A number of cities were outright abandoned. In the west, the condominium with Lithuania was abandoned as the Lithuanian dukes immediately seized the western lands, and in short order the Lithuanian principality extended to the Black Sea coast line. In 1362 under Duke Ol'gerd the Lithuanians won a battle over a Mongol army at the Battle of Blue Waters. In the aftermath, everything between the Dnieper and Dniester came under Lithuanian control, although at least for Podolia, in south-western Ukraine, the Lithuanians continued to pay the tribute to the Mongols well into the fifteenth century. Moldova and other Balkan regions declared independence, while the local nomadic leaders seem to have also stopped heeding the word of Sarai.   East of the Ural River, the Blue Horde, ruled by the line of Batu's older brother Orda, too faced its own troubles. The lineage of Orda became extinct in the 1360s and saw its own succession troubles. The khans in the Blue Horde, by the end of the decade, stopped minting coins with the name of the Sarai khans, and started doing so in their own names. The Blue Horde was thus independent once again.     The princes of the Rus' stopped making the trips to the Horde to declare their allegiance, for it simply became too dangerous. Rus' princes were now being robbed and held captive by the rival Jochid powers when they made the trip through the steppe. And with the khans  being overturned every few months it was now far too dangerous a trip to make so regularly.  However the Rus' lands were not to be ignored, as certain Jochid princes and contenders for power, having lost access to the trade they had one relied upon, were now turning evermore to the Rus' as a source of income and loot.    The khan's authority decreased further, as many khans did not rule themselves, but were puppets for non-Chinggisid powerbrokers. And the chief of these was Mamai, a powerful military commander based in the steppes near Crimea. As he was no descendant of Chinggis, Mamai had no right to claim the title of khan himself, though he held prestige as beylerbeyi and  married a daughter of Berdi Beg. But that didn't mean he could not put someone amenable to his interests on the throne. The first of these fellows was Abdullah, who was alleged to be a son of either Özbeg Khan or his son Tini Beg. He simply may have come from another corollary branch of the lineage, who Mamai had found convenient to play up. That was hardly unusual, as supposed lost sons of Özbeg, Tini Beg and Jani Beg continued to pop up, such as another claimant, Kildi Beg, in 1361.    Abdullah Khan was enthroned in Sarai in 1361, and Mamai returned to his Crimean pastures soon after.  But Abdullah was quickly ousted by rivals in Sarai and fled back to Mamai. This was to be a regular pattern over the 1360s. Every few years Mamai would march with an army, enthrone Abdullah and return, only for Abdullah to be tossed out or flee when another claimant came a-knockin', or the nobles in Sarai declared someone else khan. The final attempt resulted in Abdullah's death in 1370, upon which Mamai empowered a princess in Sarai, named Tulun Bey. Her exact identity is uncertain. It is commonly assumed that she was the Chinggisid princess who Mamai had also married, a daughter of Berdi Beg Khan. If this is the case, then she was the last to rule from the line of Batu. But she was quickly switched out by Mamai, and replaced with another of Mamai's puppet. And so this pattern continued until 1380, with Mamai's candidates thrown out every few years, and then installed a year or two later. It's caused an endless amount of work for historians to try and determine the order and lengths of reigns of all these khans.    It was well known at large that the Khan was a figurehead for Mamai. As the Rus' Nikon Chronicle states,  “At that time in Mamai's Horde there was a khan, but he had no power by comparison with Mamai, and was khan in nothing but the title. Even this title, however, was meaningless because all glory and all action were Mamai's. There was much trouble in the Horde and many Tatar lords had killed each other, lost their heads and died at sword's points. Thus, little by little, the Horde's great power was wasted away.”   Mamai's intrigues did not merely extend to Sarai, but to the Rus' lands as well, as the Sarai Khans sought revenue from Rus' taxes, and Mamai intervened to earn them himself. In one of these conspiracies, Mamai granted the yarliq, or patent, to the Grand Principality of Vladimir, the chief of the Rus' princes, to the young Prince of Moscow Dmitri Ivanovich. Or as he's better known to posterity, Dmitri Donskoi.   Dmitri was a grandson of Ivan I Kalita, the grandson of Alexander Nevsky who had worked so well with Özbeg Khan and began Moscow's rise to prominence. Ivan Kalita had monopolized the position of Grand Prince, the chief tax collector of the Rus', until his death. Upon that, it went to his son Simeon, who died of plague, and then to Dmitri's father, Ivan II Ivanovich, who died in 1359 as the Horde's troubles began. Only 9 years old when his father died, Dmitri could not rely on the Khans' support as his fathers had.    We've discussed this matter over previous episodes, but it bears reiterating here. The top title in the Rus' lands was the Grand Prince of Vladimir. Whoever held this was the #1 prince in the Rus', and collected taxes for the khans— skimming off the top for himself, of course, but also giving him great influence among the Rus'. While initially the khans had just appointed whoever the Rus' princes elected as Grand Prince, during Özbeg's reign the khans assumed the right to rescind and appoint the Grand Prince at will.  And the Princes of Moscow, a lesser branch of the Riurikid lineage, quite desired it but held no right to the title without the khan's backing. And so a relationship was formed, wherein the Princes of Moscow became the most scrupulous  enactors of the khan's will, in order to retain the titles to both Moscow and the Grand Principality, as well as the khan's military support as protection. And correspondingly, from the 1320s onwards Moscow grew in wealth and power, to the displeasure of the other Rus' princes, who saw the Moscow line as upstarts with no right to the Grand title.    Flashing forward to 1360, Khan Nawruz took both the Moscow title and the Grand Principality away from young Dmitri, only for it to be returned in 1362 when the new Khan in Sarai granted both back to him. Mamai saw his opportunity here, and also granted Dmitri the patent for the Grand Principality. The rival in Sarai quickly rescinded his support for Dmitri.  Without support from either the Khan or other Rus' princes the young Prince of Moscow could only seek the assistance of Mamai.    Mamai gained himself an excellent source of revenue in the young Dmitri, who turned out to be a very capable hand, while for Dmitri Mamai's armies gave him security he would not have otherwise as a youth on the throne. With the loss of the overland trade, the income from the Rus' was more important than ever, and Mamai was happy to earn it, and Dmitri did his best to deliver on time. But Dmitri was not passive, and wanted to secure his own base lest the whims of Mamai shift. Through diplomacy, marriage alliances and military threats, Dmitri steadily built his support among the Rus' princes, and incorporated other smaller principalities under Moscow's rule. For the first time, the city of Moscow itself received stone walls on Dmitri's order, which proved their worth in repelling an attack by Lithuania and the rival city of Tver' in 1368.    Mamai had use for Dmitri only as long as he provided tribute, so when the Hanseatic League disrupted trade to Dmitri's territories in the late 1360s, thereby preventing Dmitri from collecting the silver for Mamai, Mamai rescinded the patent to the Grand Principality and gave it to Dmitri's rival Mikhail Aleksandrovich of Tver' in 1370. Yet Mikhail proved even worse at sending tribute, and when Dmitri personally presented himself to Mamai to pay homage, accompanied by a great many gifts, Mamai returned him the Grand Princely title.  The situation repeated in late 1374 when the Hanseatic League cut the silver export to Novgorod. Mamai once again gave the Grand Princely title to Mikhail of Tver', but due to plague and Mamai's failed attempt to control the Volga trade routes, he was unable to support Mikhail militarily. Dmitri in the meantime had built up Moscow's military and alliances, and in Mamai's absence forced Mikhail to surrender. Confident in his abilities, Dmitri then took his army to the Volga, asserting Moscow's authority as far as Bulghar in 1377.        Mamai was not pleased at this development, a threat to his income while an even greater threat loomed on the horizon. Far to the east in the Blue Horde lands, a powerful Chinggisid Prince named Toqtamish, backed by the Central Asian warlord Temür, was rapidly growing in power. The eye of Toqtamish was drifting to Sarai, and he dreamed of assuming leadership of the Golden Horde. Doing so was a threat of unification which would entail a collision with Mamai. Mamai thus needed to prepare for the inevitable battle, but to do this he needed the resources of the Rus' tribute. And to that, he needed Dmitri to play nice with him.  In August 1378 a force in Mamai's service was sent to collect the tribute. Dmitri set out, nervously, to meet it head on, intercepting it near the Vozha River. Dmitri's force held firm under their attack, and succeeded in flanking the Mongols. In an attempt to withdraw across the Vozha River, many of the Mongols were killed, and Dmitri looted their abandoned camp.    Such was the first real victory an army of the Rus' had ever had over a force of the Golden Horde in battle, though Dmitri gained little from this victory and neither force was large. But Mamai was furious. The next year he ordered a larger, retaliatory attack on the Ryazan' land, causing great destruction, burning several cities. Oleg, Prince of Ryazan' fled before him. The Rus' paid dearly for their effort.   In 1378, the same year as the defeat on the Vozha, more alarming news came from the east. Toqtamish had now taken Sarai, and proclaimed himself Khan. Confrontation was imminent, and Mamai could not face Toqtamish with Dmitri rebelling in his rear. If Toqtamish and Dmitri allied, then Mamai would be surrounded by foes. Mamai needed resources to face Toqtamish, and  he needed revenue to do that, and Dmitri, as chief tax collector of the Russian principalities and controlling much of the Volga trade, was directly undermining that. It was time for Mamai to confront Dmitri himself. Over the next year, Mamai organized an alliance with Grand Duke Jagailo of Lithuania and Prince Oleg of Ryazan. He called up troops from the Alans, the Circassians, and the Genoese as mercenaries. We are told in the Nikon Chronicle that Mamai furiously studied Batu's conquest of the Rus', trying to learn his tactics and strategy. It got to the point that allegedly, Mamai began to see himself as a second Batu, feeling superior to all others and his own men calling him “Great Khan.”   In 1380, Mamai was ready. He ordered Dmitri to deliver a higher amount of tribute than ever, even greater than what had been paid during the times of Özbeg and Jani Beg. The message was a stalling tactic, as Mamai made preparations to march on Moscow with Jagailo and Oleg, hoping to crush Dmitri of Moscow between the three of them.         In Moscow, Dmitri quickly organized all the military forces of the Principalities that he could. Surprisingly, most principalities, except Tver', Novgorod or those aiding Mamai, answered Dmitri's call for aid. Dmitri's efforts to build Moscow's influence now bore fruit, as for the first time in their history, the Rus' offered something of a united front against the Mongols. The ascendency of Moscow over the other cities had begun, but first they had to stand against Mamai.       In September 1380 in a field on the upper Don River called Kulikovo, Mamai and the Ryazan forces waited for the Lithuanians. In a sign of poor scouting, on the 9th of September Mamai's army was shocked to see the arrival of Dmitri and the Rus' host crossing the Don. Dmitri's goal was simple; defeat Mamai in the field, before the Lithuanians could arrive and overwhelm him. One of the most famous battles in Russian history was about to begin.    Numbers for the two armies are uncertain, with Dmitri leading perhaps as many as 30,000 Rus' troops from across the principalities, while Mamai likely had a slightly larger force, consisting of Mongol-Turkic, that is Tatar, cavalry, Circassians, Rus' from Ryazan and Genoese mercenaries. Battle began with a clash of champions; the Rus' monk Peresvet, and a Tatar named variously Chelübei or Temür Mirza. They charged one another on horseback, lances before them. At the collision both were run through and killed, though Perevet's body is supposed to have stayed in the saddle the longer.   Battle then commenced. It was across a wide front, extending the Rus' lines thin but ravines and streams hampered the full deployment of Mamai's cavalry. Fighting went on for hours, with Mamai's troops holding the upper hand. Skilled Tatar cavalry and arrows took their toll on the Rus' and both sides tired over the course of the day. Dmitri had given his standard to another to hold, and when that man fell, the Rus' wavered. Dmitri himself disappeared in the clash, supposedly wounded and knocked unconscious. Mamai appeared on the verge of victory and kept his forces engaged. Yet one final trick was left to be put in play. Dmitri's cousin, Vladimir of Serpukhov, was kept in reserve with the Rus' princely cavalry. As both sides were at exhaustion, the freshly deployed Rus' cavalry charged from their hiding place in the trees and into the flank of Mamai's army. Mamai could only watch as his overworked, exhausted army routed, and he too fled. Learning of Mamai's defeat, the Lithuanians rapidly withdrew before ever making contact. So ended the battle on the Kulikovo field.   Dmitri had led the Rus' to defeat a major Mongol army in the field, and for his victory he was given the epithet Donskoi, meaning “of the Don.” While today this battle stands tall in Russian popular memory as a struggle for independence, in reality it led to little immediate change for the Rus' or to Moscow's standing. Our main sources come decades after the event and reflect how the battle's stature had grown with retellings. While the more heroic and famous elements of the battle may have little basis in reality, such as the duel before the battle, the general course of events is probably accurate enough. Whether it was as great a defeat for Mamai as popularly imagined is unknown, nor can we know Mamai for certain was even present. Mamai's losses are likely greatly overstated, since the next year he was able to raise another army rapidly, suggesting a small clash may have been turned into a grand duel. Arguments that Kulikovo never actually happened due to a lack of archaeological evidence cannot be sustained, as it is rare indeed for archaeological evidence to survive of a medieval battle. Little of the valuable metal equipment was ever left on site, usually quickly scavenged, while bodies were taken away for respectful burials or disintegrated before they could be preserved in the earth. The slightly earlier battle of Bannockburn in Scotland, for instance, though tracked to a relatively small area, has left almost no presence archaeologically speaking.    The real victor at Kulikovo was not Dmitri, but Toqtamish. After Kulikovo Mamai had strength enough to raise another army, and fought Toqtamish on the Kalka River. There Mamai was defeated for the final time. He was soon captured and executed by Toqtamish or by Genoese in Crimea when he fled there. Either way, Dmitri had succeeded in weakening Toqtamish's main rival for rule of the Golden Horde, and the new Khan was ready to assert his authority. So ended the Tale of Mamai.        Our next episode takes you through the reign of Toqtamish, as we enter the final period of the Golden Horde, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

The death of Özbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde, in 1341 marked the end of an era for the Jochid Khanate. The thirty year reign of Özbeg had been one of relative internal stability; a stability his successors were not to enjoy. Bloody succession struggles, plague and economic woe were now to be the news of the day within the Horde. And it was Özbeg's sons Tini Beg and Jani Beg Khan who were to face the front of it. Today we take you through the reigns of Özbeg's sons, the eve of the great anarchy which would rip asunder at the very foundation of the Golden Horde. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Özbeg Khan, during his long life, seems to have initially desired his eldest son Temür to succeed him. Having violently purged the Jochid lineage upon his own accession in 1313, Özbeg had the luxury to decide on a successor. But Temür's death around 1330 left Özbeg bereaved, and forced him to make due with his other two sons, Tini Beg and Jani Beg. Born to his wife Taydula Khatun, Tini Beg and Jani Beg were well educated princes. Ibn Battuta noted numerous islamic advisors for both princes, and Jani Beg is specifically described as knowledgeable in Islamic laws. Their names both came from Turkic and Persian words for “spirit,” making them “lords of the spirit.” Tini Beg, as the elder, was preferred by Özbeg to succeed him. During his trip to the Golden Horde, Ibn Battuta describes Özbeg showering Tini Beg in preferences and honours for this purpose. Additionally, Ibn Battuta describes Tini Beg as one of the most handsome of men. There is slight indication that Özbeg and Tini Beg fell out towards the end of his life, when Jani Beg's name begins to appear alongside Özbeg's on coinage, suggesting perhaps the second son was being groomed to be heir.   On Özbeg's death in late 1341, Tini Beg still maneuvered his way onto the throne, likely to the displeasure of Jani Beg. We know little of his reign. There is some suggestion that he was not a Muslim, and had some close links with Franciscans, whom he sent as his envoys to the Pope. One of the earliest pieces of surviving Golden Horde literature dates to his reign, too; a Turkic language poem by the Horde poet Qutb, adapting the Persian language “Khosrow and Shirin” by Nizami. Dedicated to Tini Beg and his wife, it remains a fascinating, if brief, look at the courtly life and social structure of the Horde in the mid-fourteenth century.   We can tell you little else of Tini Beg's reign with any certainty. Jani Beg never took kindly to Tini Beg's ascension; we may suspect he felt that Tini Beg had stolen the throne from him. The order of events is conflicting in the sources; potentially their mother, Taydula, preferred Jani Beg and whispered into his ear while Jani Beg's Islamic advisers may have encouraged him, in reaction to the possibly non-Muslim Tini Beg's enthronement. In some versions, Jani Beg first kills one of their brothers, Khidr Beg, in very uncertain circumstances. In Tini Beg's anger, he raises an army to confront his brother Jani Beg, only to be defeated in battle, taken captive and executed. In other versions, Jani Beg only kills Khidr Beg after Tini Beg's death. The fact of the fratricide of two of his brothers though, is well attested.   So, Jani Beg became Khan in 1342. There can be little doubt of Jani Beg's islam. We are told he even set out orders for his troops to all don turbans and cloaks. Neither could there be any hesitation among the Rus' princes about recognizing Jani Beg's rule; one of Jani Beg's first orders was sending an army to install a new prince in Pereiaslavl'. The meaning was clear. Jani Beg was going to continue his father's policy of firm mastery over the Rus'. In quick order the Rus' princes all travelled to the Horde to recognize Jani Beg's overlordship; the Grand Prince, now Simeon Ivanovich, too made clear his subservience to Jani Beg Khan. Simeon was a close ally to the Khan, and over his reign made regular trips to the Horde, always returning with gifts, honours and Jani Beg's favour. A smart move, lest the Khan remove him from his post. In doing so, they continued the slow if steady consolidation of Moscow's influence regarding the other Rus' cities.        There is also indication that Jani Beg held loftier pretensions. By the start of Jani Beg's reign, he was essentially the last remaining Chinggisid khan with authority. The Blue Horde khans were his vassals, and the Chagatai Khanate and Ilkhanate were either divided or dissolved. In the Yuan Dynasty, with whom contact was infrequent, the Great Khan Töghön Temür was  a figurehead in comparison to his Chancellors. In reaction, it seems to an extent Jani Beg went about presenting himself not just as successors to Özbeg, but the rightful heir to Chinggis Khan. Not Jani Beg was not just the Jochid Khan, but the supreme Khan. Özbeg himself seems to have used in some instances the title of “khan of khans,” as did Jani Beg. In letters to the Ilkhanid successors in the Caucasus, Jani Beg calls himself the “khan of the three ulusus,” and references to “great Khan,” as a Jochid title continued among his successors for centuries. A subtle shift in ideology, but one indicating a recognition, perhaps, that the Mongol Empire was dead, and now the Jochid Khan was supreme monarch by the grace of Eternal Heaven.    Jani Beg did not quite share Özbeg's tolerance to other religions.  While he mellowed later in his reign, initially Jani Beg seemed rather set on reducing privileges enjoyed by Franciscans and the Orthodox Church in Rus', normally a strong supporter of Mongol rule. “Idol temples,” —that is, Buddhist or shamanist sites— were specified for destruction. And as we will see shortly, Jani Beg reacted with particular ire when Christians within his empire caused trouble. But even this animosity should not be too overstated; there is no recorded attempt by Jani Beg, or other Jochid khans, to try and convert the Rus' and other Christian populations to Islam. In the 1350s a Rus' Metropolitan, Alexii, healed the eyes of Jani Beg's mother, Taydula, for which he earned great reward. On Jani Beg's death in 1357 the Rus' Nikonian Chronicle describes the late Jani Beg as a friend to Christians, a  monarch who had given the Rus' many privileges. We might suspect that Jani Beg took the throne with a zealousness to prove his Islamic bona fides, and cooled in this fervour as the years passed.   Unfortunately for the Italian merchants in the Horde, in 1343 Jani Beg was still very much full of zeal.  That year, the second of Jani Beg's reign, news came to him of a murder of a Mongol notable in Tana. Tana was the Italian name for Azov, a trading community Özbeg had granted to the Venetians on the mouth of the Don River, nestled on the edge of the Azov Sea east of the Crimea. In September of 1343, an argument between an Italian and a Mongol, Hajji ‘Umar, resulted in the Italians murdering him in the street.  Jani Beg was white hot with rage directed at the Italians. His father Özbeg had generally handled the Italian traders relatively well, playing them off each other and making the Golden Horde a good deal of money. Initially, Jani Beg had reconfirmed the privileges of the Italians. However, Jani Beg took umbrage with the autonomy of the port cities, and felt they had too much control over the Jochid state's trade. The Italians' continued dealing in nomadic slaves may also have frustrated the Khan. After the poor relationship between Özbeg  and the Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, Jani Beg basically let the relationship with the Mamluks die. With the disintegration of the Ilkhanate, there was little need for such worthless allies, as far as Jani Beg was concerned. He only sent two embassies to the Mamluks; one alerting them of his enthronement, and one informing them of his conquest of Tabriz. There was no interest or desire to allow the Mamluks their continued access to Qipchap troops, and little patience for Italians selling perfectly good potential warriors to distant Egypt. Not surprisingly, it is about this time that Circassians were gaining prominence as the source of Mamluks in Egypt.    The murder of the Mongol in Tana was either the final straw, or simply a good pretence to rid himself of the Italians, and perhaps put his own men in charge of the trade. No more could the Italians enrich themselves at the expense of the Horde! In quick order Jani Beg had the westerners in the Black Sea trade cities of  Tana and Solkhat expelled or killed, and an army bearing down on Caffa in 1343. As the chief of the port cities, and the primary Geneose settlement, Caffa was the prize of the campaign. But it would be no easy nut to crack. Caffa's harbour allowed it to be resupplied by sea no matter how strong the land blockade. Caffa had also learned lessons from sieges suffered during the reign of Toqta Khan thirty years prior. The city walls were stout, its supplies well stocked. Khan Jani Beg found the city withstood his initial assaults over 1343 and 1344. On one occasion a night foray resulted in the Genoese burning down Jani Beg's siege machines. All Jani Beg could do was cut it off by land, for the Genoese could continue to bring in provisions.    A further issue had developed too. While the Venetian-Genoese rivalry was normally strong, in the midst of this emergency they had put aside their differences, the Venetians seeking shelter in Caffa and the city-states putting a trade embargo on the Golden Horde. Recall in our previous episodes, how we described the ways in which the economy of the Golden Horde relied on the overland Asian trade. Much of this funneled through the Golden Horde's Black Sea coastline, and booned with the relative stability of inner-Asian travel. But by the 1340s, this economic system was already reeling with the collapse of the Ilkhanate and Chagatai Khanate, and now with this embargo due to the war with Genoa and Venice, the Horde was effectively cut out of the international trade routes. As early as 1344, a Franciscan observer remarked in a letter that protests were breaking out in the Horde's city with the unintended economic strangulation. The consequences were felt across Europe, with the doubling of the prices of silk and spices. The Horde was a major grain exporter for much of the Black Sea region, and the war was now resulting in famine in Constantinople, as Jani Beg prevented Italian access to the grain harvests.   In an effort to bring about a resolution, Jani Beg needed a new ploy. He found just the ticket. In an unusual for any Mongol khan, with the exception of Khubilai, Jani Beg decided to build a navy. Harbouring it in the Sea of Azov, Jani Beg was going to attack Caffa land and sea, or at least choke it out. Unfortunately for Jani Beg, such an effort could not go unnoticed as sailors, labourers and materials were called into the region. Once the Genoese learned of it in 1345, a specialty raiding fleet was organized in Genoa, sailed across the Mediterranean and literally dashed Jani Beg's dreams to pieces; the Golden Horde's fledgling navy was nipped in the bud, burnt and sunk.    Jani Beg was denied his swift victory. In 1346 he maintained siege lines but undertook no assaults, and in 1347 concluded separate treaties with Genoa and Venice. Once more the Genoese were able to sail their cargo out of Caffa's harbour, and the Venetians returned to their colony at Tana. The entire campaign in the end was nought but an expensive failure, returning to status quo ante bellum. The situation remained tense, particularly when Genoese and Venetian rivalry reasserted itself, and not until the late 1350s do things appear to have normalized, and Caffa remained the preeminent trade center of the northern Black Sea coast. But by then, a much more significant crisis now faced the international market, in the form of that intolerable little bugaboo, Yersinia pestis. Or as you may know it by its more colloquial name, the Black Death.    Wherever its origins were, the Black Death had reached the Golden Horde's cities by 1346, travelling along the Central Asian trade lines.  It likely began ravaging Jani Beg's army outside of Caffa in 1346, and it is here that we get one of the most infamous cases of biological warfare ever recorded, wherein Jani Beg ordered his troops to catapult the plague bodies of their fallen men into Caffa, causing it to spread among the defenders. Fleeing Genoese thus took it back to Europe with them. The rest, as they say, is history.   Except maybe it's not. There's a number of issues with this popular story. Firstly, it's described in only a single, by Gabriele de Mussi, who was not an eyewitness. At the time of the siege, de Mussi was in northern Italy, and may have only learned of the information, at-best secondhand, but perhaps only after it passed through multiple informants. The manuscript itself is a matter of question: not only do no other medieval accounts reference Jani Beg launching corpses like this, but no other source mentions de Mussi's account in particular. In fact, it was unknown until it was discovered in the mid-19th century in what is now Poland! The document itself shows a poor understanding of the chronology, which is suspect for a supposedly educated lawyer like de Mussi. Caffa appears depopulated and abandoned by the end of the siege, though this was far from the case; it also portrays ships coming directly to Genoa from Caffa and spreading the plague thusly. But we know this to be false: the siege ended in 1346, but plague did not come to Genoa until early 1348, and from ships which had come from Sicily. As you probably know, not a lot of plague victims managed two years with it.    Further issues come from the logic presented in the text. The Mongols' deep reverence for their own dead, compounded by their conversion to Islam means that launching the bodies of their own fellows into Caffa seems an extraordinary taboo in their culture to break. In fact, there are effectively no historical anecdotes of an army tossing bodies of its own men into a city in order to spread plague; you'll find very few cultures in history in which soldiers would be willing to disrespect the bodies of their fallen comrades in such a manner. It's one thing to do it to bodies of the enemy, but the desecration of friends and allies is another matter entirely. The Mongols had a very well established reaction to disease outbreaks; leaving a site entirely, rather than stopping to continually handle the plague bodies. This makes a prolonged proximity to plague victims in order to load them into trebuchets even more unlikely. There have also been arguments that this would be a very ineffective means to actually spread plague!  We can even comment on the fact that, had Caffa been so decimated, why did the Mongols not simply overrun it?    Suffice to say, very few modern scholars accept de Mussi's version of events, if the manuscript is even authentic. At best, we might wonder if the Mongols had thrown bodies of prisoners, or even animals, into the city at some point during the siege, which through a game of telephone turned into lobbing thousands of Mongol cadavers into Caffa, as de Mussi suggests. An accidental conflation of timelines and events in the midst of monumental horror of the Black Death is an understandable mistake to make.    The more likely explanation is that the citizens of Caffa picked up the plague after the siege ended. Either looting the abandoned Mongol siege camp, or when the blockade was lifted and trade restarted with the Golden Horde. With the plague already running rampant in the Horde's cities, it was only a matter of time before it entered Caffa through  normal means. The port of Caffa began sending ships out for trade again in spring 1347; by the late summer, the plague was in Constantinople, and by early 1348 in Genoa.  Caffa may very well have been the launching point for the plague into the Mediterranean, but the launching point for plague into Caffa was probably not a Mongol siege weapon.       We have very little information on the effect the Black Death had on the Golden Horde. It seems to have had, just as it did everywhere, a devastating impact on urban centres. As we already established, there were a number of great cities in the steppes which had grown rich on the trans-continental trade. They had already been hurting in previous years with the fall of the other khanates and the Black Sea embargo; now the plague seemed a mortal blow.  The only references we have are vague mentions of thousands upon thousands of losses in these cities. The Rus' Nikonian Chronicle states that so many died in the Horde's cities, that there was noone left to bury them.    For the nomadic population, plague seems to have had a lesser impact. Steppe nomads essentially had a cultural system of quarantine for sick persons; gers would be marked off, and none allowed to enter which a sick person was inside. Those who had been in the presence of a person who died in a ger were forbidden from the khan's presence entirely. Areas where infected animals or persons were seen were strictly avoided. Such systems remain in place even in modern Mongolia, where Yersinis pestis occurs normally in some animal populations. There, the normally sparse population allows the disease to be avoided like the plague. And it seems it proved beneficial for the Mongols; while Jani Beg had around a dozen children alive by the time of his death, at the same time in the Rus' principalities numerous princes, notables and even the Grand Prince, Simeon, succumbed to the plague.        Yet most assuredly, the 1340s and 50s marked a downward path for the Horde. While occupied with the Crimean venture, Jani Beg's western bordering was further slipping from his grasp. In 1345 a Mongol army was defeated by the Hungarian King, Louis the Great. Lithuania continued its expansion into Galicia-Volhynia in competition with the Polish King Casimir III. Jani Beg was frustrated by them, and his mood proved fickle. Initially he granted consent for Casimir's campaigning in Galicia against the Lithaunains, but then in the early 1350s Mongol troops raided as far as Lublin.  In the end, Jani Beg ceded control of Galicia to Poland, and Volhynia to the Lithuanians, in exchange for the continuation of tribute for rights to both lands. While raids by Tatar troops would follow irregularly, Jani Beg's reign marks the surrendering of the western frontier of the Golden Horde.       Sinking the resources and men of his empire into Crimea, meant Jani Beg had been unable to take advantage of the disintegration of the Ilkhanate. Though we might wonder if this was in part a reluctance to press that frontier, given the troubles his father had faced attempting to do so. It was not until the end of the 1350s that Jani Beg finally threw his weight against the Ilkhanate's successors. For years, individuals had fled the Chobanid state to the Golden Horde, bringing news of the poor rulership of Malik Ashraf. For a bit more context, check out episode 58 of this podcast for these post-Ilkhanid states. But in short, the Chobanids were a non-Chinggisid dynasty based in what is now Azerbaijan. Their final ruler was Malik Ashraf, a cruel and violent man who alienated essentially everyone he could. Jani Beg must have felt that the greatly weakened Malik Ashraf would be a pushover. His intentions were clear in the letter he sent to Malik Ashraf in Tabriz:       “I am coming to take possession of the ulus of Hülagü. You are the son of Choban whose name was in the yarligh  of the four uluses. Today three uluses are under my command and I also wish to appoint you emir of the ulus; get up and come to meet me.” At best, as a non-Chinggisid, Malik Ashraf could rule as a governor on behalf of a khan. Malik Ashraf asserted in his response that this is what he was doing, ruling on behalf of Hülagü's line. The fact that Malik Ashraf by that point had no Ilkhanid puppet khan was glossed over. Additionally, Malik Ashraf sought to ease worries among his men by stating that as the ruler of the lands of Berke, Jani Beg had no right to the lands of Hülegü. Such an argument did little good as Jani Beg's host entered the Caucasus in 1357. After a single battle the Chobanid army disintegrated, and the fleeing Malik Ashraf was caught and executed. After almost a century of on and off warfare, Tabriz finally came under Jochid rule. Jani Beg was victorious as none of his ancestors had been. After years of reverses, difficulties and other trials, Jani Beg finally had his great victory. He appointed his son Berdi Beg as governor of the region, and returned triumphant to the Golden Horde… only to die two months later. The blame is usually attributed to Berdi Beg, who in various sources was convinced into the action by poison-tongued emirs. In one account, Berdi Beg strangles his father himself.  Berdi Beg quickly followed this up with murdering many of his brothers, including one who was only eight months old. He is alleged to have killed this one with his own hands. This, as we will see next week, was very far from being the end of the killing.        So ended the reign of Jani Beg Khan, and with it, the golden age of the Horde. Jani Beg appears as an almost pale imitation of Öz Beg, ambitious enough for the throne, but not the man to steer the ship in a time of crisis. He wasted men and resources on his effort to expel the Italians, and achieved nothing for the outburst, preventing him from sooner seizing opportunity in the Caucasus. The Black Death and unraveling of the overland trade was of course outside of his power, but Jani Beg's clumsy hand did nothing to assuage the situation. The fact that he did not face a real threat to his power until 1357 though, speaks to the strength of the Jochid political system that it could essentially coast through these years without major disaster. Such a thing could not be said of Berdi Beg's reign, or those who were soon to follow him, as the Golden Horde entered its period of bulqhaq: anarchy. Our next episodes will detail the steady collapse of the Golden Horde, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

From 1313 to 1341, Özbeg Khan oversaw what is normally  described as the Golden Horde's Golden age. As our last episode on Özbeg discussed, things were not going quite so golden for old Özbeg. The appellation of golden age belies the troubles which were growing ready to rock the Golden Horde. As our last episode looked at Özbeg and the Golden Horde's relations south and east, with the other Mongol khanates and the Mamluk Sultanate, today we take you west and north, to see how Özbeg interacted with the powers of Eastern Europe and the Rus' principalities. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   What appears almost shocking at a cursory glance, is that despite so many authors claiming Özbeg's glory, he also oversaw its first loss of Golden Horde territory. We'll begin in the Balkans, and work our way north. On his accession, Özbeg had continued the policy of the late Toqta Khan, by keeping the Bulgarian lands a part of the Horde, backed up by Mongol military presence. Özbeg's support was important for the Bulgarian tsars in this period: the Tsar from 1323 to 1330, Georgi Terter's son Michael Shishman, relied heavily on Mongol military support and kept one of his sons at Özbeg's court as a royal hostage. At the battle of Velbuzjd in 1330, a Bulgarian and Mongol army was defeated by the Serbians, in which Tsar Micheal Shishman was killed. The threat of a military response from Özbeg is probably what kept the Serbians from pressing their advantage. The journey of a Bulgarian embassy to Cairo in 1331 resulted in the Mamluk chronicler al-Umarī to report that despite fighting between the Bulgarians and Serbs, both respected Özbeg due to his great power over them. Though it was not comparable to the influence Nogai had once wielded over the region, the presentation of contemporary chronicles is that the Bulgarian lands remained dependent on the Golden Horde; Bulgaria, for example, was the base from which the Mongols launched attacks on Byzantium, rather than seen as a country they passed through. It was the eventual loss of this Mongol backing that would result in Bulgaria's vulnerability to Ottoman expansion at the end of the century.    Like Toqta, Özbeg too married an illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, this time of Andronikos III in 1331. This wife was called by the Mongols Bayalun Khatun, and Ibn Battuta accompanied her when she returned to Constantinople to give birth. The impetus was to dissuade further attacks by Özbeg, for Özbeg had resumed raiding the Byzantine Empire. Annual attacks from 1321 to 1323, the largest coming in 1323 and causing a great deal of damage. Raids at first ceased with the marriage of 1331, but when Bayalun refused to come back to the Horde after returning to Constantinople to give birth, attacks resumed. The last recorded assault came in 1337, advancing as far as the Hellespont. Supposedly in response to the failure of Constantinople to supply its annual tribute, the Horde army spent 50 days plundering Thrace, and in the process defeated a Turkish force sent across the straits by a growing beylik in northwestern Anatolia, the Osmanoğlu. Though you may know them better as the Ottomans. So ended the last recorded attack by the Golden Horde on the Byzantine Empire. Sometimes this is compared as a symbolic act, the passing of the torch from Mongol to Ottoman, from old conqueror to new, when it came to the main threat to the region. In 1341 a Byzantine embassy was sent to the Horde to mollify Özbeg, but arrived after his death.   While in truth Özbeg's attacks on the Byzantine Empire were raids rather than efforts at conquest, he apparently played them up somewhat in his own court as great victories over Christian powers. Ibn Battuta, during his visit to Özbeg, presents the Khan as a great victor over the enemies of God who undertook jihad against Constantinople. Özbeg, it must be clarified, never showed any attempt at conquering that famous city, and his military actions against Europe all seem considerably minor efforts compared to his wars against the Ilkhanate.   Along the borders of the Hungarian Kingdom, troops of the Horde —perhaps not always with Özbeg's permission— raided regularly, especially in Transylvania. However these assaults could now be repulsed, as Hungary was rejuvenated under the skillful leadership of a new dynasty, headed by Charles I of Hungary. On occasion Charles led attacks onto dependencies of the Horde or of Bulgaria.  It is remarkable that most of these raids are known only indirectly; often only from charters, where an individual was rewarded for fighting against the Mongols, rather than through any chronicle mention. Özbeg may have preferred indirect pressure, by supporting the former Hungarian vassal, the voivode of Wallachia, a fellow named Basarab. There is no shortage of debate around Basarab and early Wallachia, and we'll avoid it here; the exact origins and timeline of the emergence of this principality is very far from agreed upon. Established on the border regions of modern Romania and Moldova, these were lands otherwise under control of the Golden Horde. Basarab himself is a target of many arguments; his name suggests a Turkic, likely Cuman origin, however contemporary sources consistently describe him as a Vlakh, a member of the Romance-language-speaking community which today mainly refers to the Romanians. Depending on how his father's name is reconstructed, it appears either recognizably Mongol, or even Hungarian. While initially a subject of the Hungarian King, by the end of the 1320s Basarab was at war with the Hungarians, and decisively defeated them at the battle of Posada in 1330. There is indirect indication that Basarab had some military support from the Golden Horde.   The independence of Wallachia appears a part of the gradual secession of authority of the Golden Horde over its westernmost border. Most dramatically was this apparent through today's Ukraine and Belarus, where the influence of Lithuania grew at the expense of the Golden Horde. Early Lithuanian-Mongol contacts over the thirteenth century seem to have consisted of raids in both directions. Several times did Nogai provide armies for Rus' princes to attack the Lithuanians, while the Lithuanians took advantage of the initial Mongol invasion in the 1240s to raid deep into the Rus' lands. The transition from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century is one of poor coverage for Lithuanian history; scattered Lithuanians princes of the 1200s appear in the 1300s unified and consolidated under the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, particularly from Duke Gediminas onwards. By the 1320s, Gediminas was in position to influence the succession over Galicia-Volhynia, in today's western Ukraine and Belarus and at the time subject to the Golden Horde. Between 1321 and 1323, the young princes of Ruthenia died without heir. The King of Poland Władysław I, the Lithuanian Duke Gedminas, and Khan  Özbeg were all very interested in the succession. While  Özbeg may have been caught up in his conflicts with the Ilkhanate, at this time the Polish King wrote to the Pope fearing a Mongol attack, and in 1324 Mongol ambassadors were in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Threats and diplomacy, rather than open war, was the means by which the three powers came to a conclusion. An acceptable candidate to replace the deceased princes was selected in the form of Yurii II Boleslaw, a fellow of Polish, Ruthenian and Lithaunian background, a Catholic who converted to Orthodox Christianity, and who married a daughter of Duke Gediminas. And what did  Özbeg get out of it? The continuation of tribute from Galicia-Volhynia.    This willingness for diplomacy with these western neighbours seems surprising, but the sources indicate it was very much  Özbeg's preferred order of operations in this theater. In 1331, a brother of Lithuania's Duke Gediminas was installed in Kyiv, alongside a Mongol basqaq, or tax collector. In what has been termed a Lithuanain-Mongol condominium, it seems the arrangement was that these westernmost Rus' lands paid tribute and military service both to Lithuania, and the Golden Horde. As noted by historian Darius Baronas, news of this arrangement made it as far as France, where a French poet in the 1330s described Lithuania as paying tribute to the Golden Horde. It seems that  Özbeg's calculation was simple;  Özbeg wanted the income from these western Rus' principalities, but didn't desire war over them, intent as he was on focusing his forces on the Ilkhanate. The frontier with Lithuania and Poland was long, the region as a whole rather peripheral. It was cheaper and more convenient to give the administration over to the Lithuanians while still retaining the income. When necessary the threat of the Horde's horsemen could be levied; in 1333 there was a raid on Briansk, then under Lithuanian control. Meanwhile the Lithuanians could avoid open conflict with the Mongols, allowing them to deal more fully with those troublesome Teutontic Knights. It would not be until the end of  Özbeg's life that this arrangement was challenged, but until that point it proved remarkably flexible and workable to all involved, except for those at the bottom of the ladder now  being taxed twice. But  Özbeg, however clever he thought he was, had given a foothold for Lithuanian expansion which would soon push right to the Black Sea coastline.  In 1340 when Yuri Boleslaw of Galicia-Volhynia died, the King of Poland Casimir III invaded, but quickly withdrew as the threat of Mongol retaliation mounted. While border clashes with Poland, and soon Hungary, commenced,  Özbeg actually engaged in diplomacy even with Pope Benedict XII, notifying his holiness of  Özbeg's displeasure. Papa Benedict even offered to make the Kings of Poland and Hungary pay for damages Özbeg incurred because of them. A far cry from the days of the khans demanding the submission of the Popes, but the matter was not resolved before Özbeg's death in 1341.   And what of the Rus'? Here  Özbeg intervened most forcefully, particularly compared to his predecessors. On  Özbeg's enthronement in 1313, the lead prince of the Rus', Grand Prince Mikhail of Tver', spent two years cozying up to  Özbeg in his court, eager to secure his support. In his absence from the Rus' Principalities, Mikhail's rivals got to work. His main foe was his cousin, Yurii Daniilovich, the Prince of Moscow. A grandson of the famous Alexander Nevskii, Yurii was a man overflowing with ambition. While Mikhail of Tver' was with  Özbeg in his ordu, Yurii of Moscow stormed Novgorod and took it for himself. Mikhail convinced  Özbeg to give him an army, and in 1315 they retook Novgorod. Yurii of Moscow was summoned to  Özbeg, ostensibly for punishment. But the silver tongued Yurii managed to work his way into  Özbeg's favour, with this one simple trick: convincing  Özbeg that he would be able to collect more tax revenues than Mikhail. For this, he received a yarliq installing him as Grand Prince of Vladimir, the chief Prince of the Rus', as well as receiving a sister of  Özbeg in marriage. Konchaka was her name, and she was baptized a Christian, taking the name of Agatha.   Full of confidence and the Khan's blessing, Yurii then attacked Mikhail of Tver', and was promptly defeated. Yurii fled the field, while his newly betrothed Konchaka was taken captive by Mikhail. The Prince of Tver' tried to tread carefully; in the Nikonian Chronicle,  Mikhail treats the captured Mongol generals and troops respectfully, showering them with honours, gifts and releases many of them. His intention was to re-earn Özbeg's favour, and be reinstalled as the Grand Prince. Unfortunately for him,  Özbeg's sister Konchaka then died in Tver's captivity, in mysterious circumstances. As you might guess, this was not exactly beneficial to any reelection campaign. Mikhail of Tver' was put on trial on Özbeg's court, and after several months of deliberation, Mikhail was condemned and executed in 1318. Yurii of Moscow was thus confirmed as Grand Prince by  Özbeg.   The significance of this is twofold. Firstly, the khans had previously confirmed as Grand Prince whoever was presented to them, and thus followed Riurikid tradition. That is, succession as Grand Prince normally went brother-to-brother, before passing onto the next generation.  Özbeg upended this by choosing the new candidate out-of-order, generationally speaking. Yurii of Moscow, as the son of Nevskii's third son Daniil of Moscow, was very much out of place in this rota system while the previous generation was still alive. Furthermore, this was the first time that the Princes of Moscow received the title of Grand Prince. Moscow had been a minor settlement before the Mongol invasion. Because of  Özbeg's confirmation of the title onto Yurii, Moscow was put onto the steady course to, in time, ‘gather the lands of the Rus', and eventually swallow up the remnants of the Golden Horde. But that was still some centuries ahead.   Yurii was not to enjoy his position as Grand Prince for long. After being confirmed by  Özbeg he returned to Rus' where he was met with angry princes and an angry population. The late Mikhail of Tver's sons swore bloody vengeance. Unable was Yurii to provide the promised volumes of tax. In 1322  Özbeg removed Yurii from his post, and by 1325 Yurii was murdered by Dmitri the Terrible-Eyes, a son of Mikhail of Tver'. Dmitri was executed by  Özbeg the next year, but the Grand Princely title was given to Dmitri's brother, Alexander of Tver'. Nearly did it seem that Tver' would monopolize the position; Tver's wealth was then greater than Moscow's, their right to rule better recognized internally in Rus'. So it would have stayed, until 1327, when there was an uprising in Tver' which resulted in the killing of several of Özbeg's officials. Tver' was then sacked as punishment and Grand Prince Alexander Mikhailovich fled for his life. And who stepped into the vacant spot of Grand Prince? Well, the brother of Yurii of Moscow, Ivan Daniilovich. Or as he is better known to posterity, Ivan I Kalita; Ivan “the purse,” or more usually translated as money-bags.   Ivan, as you may guess by his sobriquet, proved quite adept at providing Özbeg the much desired tax revenue. Enjoying the position of Grand Prince of Vladimir until his death in the 1340s,  Ivan Kalita's lengthy time in the position solidified Moscow's monopoly over the Grand Princely title, and began in earnest its ascendency. For Kalita greatly enriched the city itself, bringing other holdings to its authority and thereby turned the once minor city into one of the most eminent of the Rus' principalities. The Metropolitan of the Rus' Orthodox Church moved to Moscow in the 1320s, which also cemented it as the centre of Rus' Christianity, politically. On his death he was succeeded by his son Simeon —confirmed of course by  Özbeg Khan— as Prince of Moscow and Grand Prince of Vladimir, and so the title remained among their line. Ivan Kalita's descendents would transform Moscow and the Rus' principalities into the Tsardom of Russia, and ruled until the sixteenth century, when the extinct Rurikids gave way to the Romanovs.   But such dreams of conquest were far off in the mid-fourteenth century. Rus' history should not be read backwards. The fourteenth century Daniilovichi, the Moscow princely line, were not in a contest for independence against the khan. Far from it. As they had in effect, usurped the succession to the Grand Principality, and had numerous rivals due to it, the Princes of Moscow relied greatly on the khans for their legitimacy. The Grand Prince was the most important tax collector for the khan, and the basis had now been established for the khan to remove him if desired. And  Özbeg was not above reminding the Rus' of his might; some ten Rus' princes were executed on  Özbeg's order, more than any of his predecessors had done combined. As long as the Princes of Moscow kept bringing in the revenue that the khan wanted, then Özbeg kept the Daniilovichi propped up against any threat. Without the Golden Horde, there was therefore, no rise of Moscow.   When it came to the succession to the Golden Horde itself, as noted in our previous episode Özbeg had violently trimmed the Jochid lineage, hoping to ensure only his sons could succeed him. His favoured heir, Temür, predeceased him, leaving Özbeg with two troublesome boys; Tini Beg, and Jani Beg. Tini Beg seems to have been the favourite to succeed Özbeg, and after the death of Qutlugh-Temür, Tini Beg became the governor of Khwarezm on behalf of his father. A possible indication of falling out between though, comes from coinage minted near the end of Özbeg's life. Then, coins begin to be minted bearing the names of Özbeg and Jani Beg, and letters from foreign rulers were addressed to Özbeg and Jani Beg, perhaps suggesting Jani Beg had taken the #2 role in the khanate. Sadly our information on the internal situation on the Jochid court is scant, preventing us from making any proper conclusions or charting its history in this time, particularly as the history of Özbeg's final years is considerably less detailed.   Possible troubles between his sons were not the only issues he faced. In 1339 a coup attempt briefly had Özbeg besieged in his palace in New Sarai before the guards broke it up, captured and killed most of the conspirators. Evidently there had been Christians involved; a letter from Pope Benedict XIII thanked Özbeg for only executing three of the Christian conspirators. As this coincides with the appearance of Jani Beg's name on the coinage in place of Tini Beg, and Tini Beg apparently showed greater favour to Christians than Jani Beg ever did, we might wonder if Tini Beg had a hand in the coup attempt. How else would conspirators be so brazen as to attack the khan in his own palace? But this is mere speculation, and the origins of the coup are unfortunately lost to history.    For a man of such a lengthy reign, and relatively well covered in the primary sources, Özbeg's final days are surprisingly unclear. One Mamluk source, aš-Šuğā'īs, has Özbeg die while leading an attack on the Chagatai Khanate in 1342, an attempt by Özbeg to take advantage of that khanate's ongoing political struggles. Another Mamluk writer, al-Asadī, mentions Özbeg dying in New Sarai in 1341. Most sources simply note the fact of his death in late 1341 or 1342, with no additional details. Regardless, Özbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde, died likely late in 1341, after 28 years on the throne. He was likely in his late 50s or 60s, making him one of the longest reigning, and longest living, Mongol khans. Only Khubilai Khaan's 34 years on the throne was longer, while Chinggis Khan himself had only 21 years as Khan of the Mongol ulus. Wealth and prosperity within the khanate, and the violent removal of rival princes, ensured Özbeg enjoyed the longest reign of any khan in the 1300s, a century when most khans hardly ruled as long as 5 years and generally died in their mid-thirties.    What do we make of Özbeg's life then? In some respects it certainly was a Golden Age, in terms of the arts, crafts and city-building in the steppe. It's a period of staggering prosperity in comparison to the anarchy which would soon follow. The internal stability of the Horde in this period alone makes it appear an oasis compared to the years on either side of his life. But Özbeg's claim to fame, his efforts at islamization, were hollow and never complete, and likely they were never intended to be. In foreign policy Özbeg largely experienced defeats, or inadvertently laid the groundwork for the rapid loss in Mongol authority in certain regions. The Golden Horde likely enjoyed its greatest period of wealth and in some respects, international prestige under Özbeg. But the precedent he had set with horrific princely slaughters would soon reign ruin upon the Jochids, as would an event far outside of any monarch's control: the Black Death.   A final remark can be made regarding the modern Uzbeks. The name is sometimes attributed, even by medieval authors, as coming from Özbeg's name.  That is, that in some sense the Uzbeks saw themselves as followers of Özbeg Khan, and thereby named themselves for him. The argument though is rather weak; the Uzbek confederation would not emerge until well after Özbeg Khan's death, and Özbeg as a name is hardly unique to the Jochid khan, for it dates back to the twelfth century, if not earlier. Much like the attribution of the Nogai Horde to the thirteenth century prince Nogai, it's an effort to attach a nomadic union to an earlier prominent figure which rests on little or no direct evidence.   With Özbeg's death, it was time for his son Tini Beg to take the throne. But things would not go well for Tini Beg, as the Jochid state was soon to experience a period of anarchy it would never recover from. So be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

With the death of Nogai by 1300, one man was now master of the Golden Horde; Toqta, son of Möngke-Temür Khan, great-grandson of Batu, great-great-grandson of Jochi, and great-great-great-grandson of Chinggis Khan. After the troubles of the 1290s, Toqta ushered in a new age of stability as rivals to power were snuffed out over his twenty year reign. Today we take you through the reign of Toqta Khan. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Toqta, known also as Toqtogha, was one of Möngke-Temür Khan's ten sons. While most of Möngke-Temür's children had joined Tele-Buqa Khan's alliance from 1287 to 1291, Toqta and three other brothers— Tudan, Sarai-Buqa and Bürlük—seem to have been excluded for unclear reasons. We have only reference to Toqta being seen as a strong figure of certain manly qualities, supposedly embodying Mongol ideals of rulership. Perhaps a skilled archer and rider, a fearsome wrestler and warrior, Toqta appeared an ideal rival to the always militarily-doomed Tele-Buqa.   Regardless of why, Toqta first appears in the sources being singled out as a rival by Tele-Buqa and his allies. The story, as you heard in our previous episodes, resulted in Toqta allying with Nogai and killing most of his brothers. In 1291 Toqta was enthroned as khan, perhaps also in another four way power division with his surviving brothers, according to the Mamluk chroniclers. Nogai then returned to his territory along the Danube. Popularly it is claimed that Toqta spent his first years as Khan under Nogai's thumb, but there is relatively little information to support that. Both Toqta and Nogai demanded the other kill surviving supporters of Tele-Buqa Khan, but Nogai is given no involvement in the sources in the  major actions Toqta undertook. In 1293, on the request of the Rus' prince Andrei, son of the famed Alexander Nevskii, Toqta sent his brother Tudan on a devastating attack on the Rus', aimed on ousting Andrei's rival brother, Dmitri. 14 Rus' cities, including Moscow, were sacked, and Novgorod only narrowly avoided destruction due to a timely, and very expensive, pile of gifts. Dmitri died the next year, leaving Andrei as Grand Prince of the Rus' undisputed. In 1294 Toqta also organized  a peace treaty with the Il-Khan Geikhatu, ending hostilities with the Ilkhanate.    As we covered in the last episode, most of Toqta's reign in the second half of the 1290s was caught up dealing with Nogai, as growing tensions were fanned into open war between them. After initial defeats, Toqta succeeded in overcoming Nogai, and the old dog was dead by 1300.  So ended the first decade of Toqta's reign, and he could begin to restore the Jochid Khanate's wider influence. On Nogai's defeat the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II sent a daughter to marry Toqta, while the Rus' princes reaffirmed their vassalage. At a gathering of the princes in 1304 Toqta's influence over them was confirmed with a reallotment of certain cities.     Like his father Möngke-Temür Khan, Toqta sought to extend the Jochids' influence over their borders, though faced difficulties in doing so. He placed his brothers Bürlük, Sarai-Buqa and his own sons Ilbasar and Tükel-Buqa into prominent governorships. Sarai-Buqa was made the master of the late Nogai's former territory. On Toqta's permission, the new Bulgarian tsar Theodore Svetoslav killed Nogai's son Chaka in 1301, and on Chaka's death Sarai-Buqa moved into the Nogayid lands, and Toqta's son Tükel-Buqa took Nogai's former administrative centre at Saqchi, thus reasserting the Horde's mastery over the region. Bulgaria, counter to some suggestions, remained a part of the Golden Horde as a vassal. Toqta might have thought the matter finished, had Nogai's sole surviving son, Turai, not come out of hiding.  Turai, through some silver tongue-work, was welcomed into the local court of Toqta's brother Sarai-Buqa. In short order, Turai convinced Sarai-Buqa that he should be khan, and thereby had Sarai-Buqa march against Toqta. Sarai-Buqa sought to get another brother, Bürlük, in on the plot. Bürlük made a show of agreeing, while contacting Toqta in secret. With his brother's permission, Bürlük turned on Turai and Sarai-Buqa, capturing and killing them. Toqta's son Ilbasar was then made overseer of Nogai's former lands.    Meanwhile, on his far eastern border, Toqta had another opportunity arise. There lay the Blue Horde, the khanate under the rule of the line of Orda, the older brother of Batu. Whether the Blue Horde was ever really under the authority of Batu's line, or was in fact its own independent khanate from its inception, is a matter of hot debate in the scholarship. Regardless of the original intention, during the reign of Orda's grandson Qonichi from the 1270s until 1300, the Blue Horde was, for all intents and purposes, its own power outside of the influence of the Batuid lineage. Independent contemporaries like Marco Polo and Rashīd al-Dīn attest to the fact. Qonichi, according to Rashīd al-Dīn, was so monstrously overweight that no horse could bear him, and he needed to be carried around in a cart. His guards had to watch over him at night just to make sure his neck fat did not crush his throat, and allegedly, a failure to do so one night resulted in Qonichi's death. Whether we can give any credence to this story, or it was simply a yarn which made its way across the Mongol Empire we cannot know, but one thing that is apparent is that Qonichi had a keen political mind. While Qaidu Khan fought for mastery over the Chagatais and warred with the Yuan Khans, Qonichi's realm appeared a beacon of stability. With every other Mongol khanate, Qonichi succeeded in maintaining a friendly or neutral diplomatic status, which secured his realm from the conflicts that marked the second half of the thirteenth century.    On Qonich's death in the late 1290s, his son Bayan succeeded him. However, here he was challenged by a younger brother, Mumkqiya, while the Chagatayid Khan Du'a and his Ögedeid ally Qaidu backed one of Bayan's cousins, Küilük, evidently seen as a man more complimentary to the needs of the Central Asian Mongols. Bayan went to Toqta Khan for aid, but Toqta was at that point in the midst of war with Nogai, and could lend no support beyond sending envoys to Du'a and Qaidu asking them to kindly leave Bayan alone. Somehow, that did not convince Du'a and Qaidu, and we are told that they did not even bother to respond to Toqta's messages. Qaidu's death in 1301 didn't halt the conflict, and by 1303 Bayan was sending out envoys to the Great Khan, Khubilai's grandson Temür Öljeitü, and the Il-Khan Ghazan, seeking alliance against Du'a Khan. Du'a, undesiring getting caught between a rock and a hard place —that is, the Il-Khan and the Great Khan— proved amenable to the idea of a general Mongol peace. So came about over 1304 and 1305 the Great Mongol peace as Du'a Khan of the Chagatai Khanate, Qaidu's sons in the Ögedeid khanate, Bayan Khan in the Blue Horde and Ghazan's successor, Öljeitü Il-Khan, all recognized the supremacy of the Great Khan. When Toqta was alerted of it, he too jumped on board. For the first time since Berke became khan in the 1250s, the Jochid ruler now recognized the overlordship of the Great Khan. For the remainder of Yuan rule in China, the Golden Horde officially regarded Khubilai's heirs as the rightful ruler of the world— albeit, nominally, and the Great Khan held no real authority within any of the western khanates. From this point onwards Toqta and his successors were provided revenues from prefectures in China.   In terms of actual peace between the khanates, 1304's success was rather more ephemeral. Bayan of the Blue Horde continued to face struggles from rivals to power. When his cousin Küilük died, his son continued to challenge Bayan. Only around 1310, when Toqta was able to intervene militarily, was the situation calmed in the Blue Horde. On Bayan's death by 1312 he was succeeded, apparently without issue, by his son Sasi-Buqa. However, the Blue Horde's independence was now on a leash, and would be restricted further by Toqta's successor Özbeg.   On his border with the Ilkhanate, Toqta was never too subtle. In the 1290s Toqta made peace with Il-Khan Geikhatu and then with Ghazan, but following Nogai's death Toqta's policy pivoted. In the first years of the fourteenth century Toqta sent messages to Ghazan demanding he relinquish control over the Caucasus. Like a good Jochid khan, Toqta knew not only the economic value, but the political acumen he would enjoy, if he brought these lands back under control of the Jochid lineage. Evidently he had taken note of the failures of previous efforts, and had convinced himself that diplomacy would instead convince the Ilkhanids to abandon these valuable lands. Ghazan would have none of that though, and responded succinctly with “I conquered these lands by the sword and I will defend them by the word!” If Toqta wanted them, then he'd have to come and take them by force.    So well known were Toqta's demands, that they even appeared in the work of the contemporary Byzantine author Pachymeres, where Toqta is portrayed as a deceitful figure trying to steal the kingdom from Ghazan while the latter was on his deathbed. And it's not altogether inaccurate. When Ghazan died in 1304 he was succeeded by his brother Öljeitü, with whom Toqta at first made peace with, and likewise recognized the Great Mongol Peace. But almost immediately afterwards Toqta sent his first envoys to the Mamluks, where he urged them to join him in an attack on the Ilkhanate. He sent several rounds of these messages to the Mamluks, but found an unwilling ear there. The sultan, the young al-Nasir Muhammad, had signed a truce with Öljeitü, but only a few years before had suffered a crushing defeat at Wadi al-Khaznadar at the hands of the late Ghazan. There was no mood in Cairo for any large expedition against the Ilkhan. Toqta's hopes for any great conquest of the Caucasus would be dashed. It shows also the almost immediate failure of the Great Mongol Peace; Toqta saw it as an opportunity to settle the disputed claim with the Ilkhanate, and perhaps appealed to the Great Khan to mediate it as would have been done in times past. But no sense of Mongol unity was imposed, or past grievances really settled, by the effort.   The Mamluk Sultanate's failure to reply positively to Toqta's demands brought perhaps the lowest point in Mamluk-Jochid relations. The fact that Toqta was a shamanist or Buddhist meant there was not even a religious common ground for them to work with. It's perhaps not coincidental that Toqta began to put great pressure on the Italian merchants in the Golden Horde who supplied the Mamluks with captive Qipchaps for their armies.  Over the second half of the thirteenth century, a growing colony of Genoese traders had formed along the Golden Horde's Black Sea coastline. The most important of these sites was at Caffa in the Crimean Peninsula. The Italians made considerable income by selling the most important of the Horde's overseas exports; grains, which were particularly important for feeding Constantinople, and slaves. With the defeat of Nogai, many of his defeated men and their entire families were sold abroad, but slaves were also procured in raids and even from desperate parents unable to feed their children, and thereby forced to sell them into servitude. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt purchased a great many of these slaves, particularly children, who would then be raised in the skills of war to form the actual Mamluk core of the Sultanate's armies. In theory the Genoese paid tax for this privilege, but in recent years had failed to pay the primary tax on this transaction. Their arrogance did them no favours in Toqta's eyes.   It seems probable that Toqta aimed to put pressure onto this trade, and by extension hurt the Mamluks. The official reason given was that Toqta wanted to put an end to the sale of Mongol children abroad. While Toqta perhaps did have a personal dislike to the selling of Mongol and Qipchap children, Toqta may also have wanted to put a stop to the sale of valuable future warriors. After the destructive war against Nogai and arid years of the 1280s and 90s, it may have been necessary to recoup some of these demographic losses. That it could also force the Mamluks to play nice was a handy consequence, as far as Toqta was concerned.   In October 1307 Toqta gave the order for the expulsion of the Genoese in the Golden Horde. First in the capital of Sarai, the local Genoese were arrested, their goods confiscated. Then he sent his son Ilbasar with an army into Crimea, who laid siege to Caffa at the close of 1307. Here Caffa's stout stone walls stood defiant. Raids at sea from Venetian rivals, and Nogai's own vicious attack on Crimea in 1299, had led to the denizens of Caffa strengthening their fortifications. The siege wore on for 8 months, but by May 1308 the defenders knew the situation was hopeless. Thus they abandoned their posts, taking to their ships and setting flame to the city. Ilbasar sacked whatever was left. In the end, the campaign was a success, as the Genoese had been expelled,but if it was indeed intended to make the Mamluks play nice, it did not have this effect. The Mamluks remained stubbornly opposed to any attack on the Ilkhanate. By 1311 Toqta sent an embassy with considerable gifts of slaves and luxurious furs to soften matters. But Mamluk-Jochid relations remained poor until the reign of Toqta's successor Özbeg, who would also allow the return of the Genoese.       Toqta also played his hand at monetary reform, perhaps inspired by increased contact with the Yuan Dynasty, and Ghazan's reforms in the Ilkhanate. His efforts seem more focused on coin weights, and which sites were allowed to mint, while retaining regional variety. Thus in islamic parts of the khanate, the shamanist-buddhist Toqta is given the very Islamic title of sultan.       Much of the remainder of Toqta's actions within the Golden Horde are unknown. He was struck by personal tragedies, as it seems between 1308 and 1312 his sons predeceased him. The general image we have is of relative, much needed stability, within the Golden Horde, a period of respite after the war against Nogai and its other neighbours. In the spring of 1312, Toqta apparently decided on a visit to the Rus' lands himself, making him the first reigning Jochid monarch to do so. Or at least, he would have been the first. Toqta made the unusual decision to travel by ship up the Volga river; the details remain vague, but in an ensuing shipwreck, or from illness aboard the vessel, Toqta died in August 1312. Suspicion, even by contemporaries, was that his nephew, Özbeg, had a role in it. Özbeg was a son of Toqta's brother, To'rilcha, who had been one of the top allies of Tele-Buqa Khan. Toqta had killed To'rilcha in the coup of 1291, then married To'rilcha's chief wife, Bayalun Khatun, Özbeg's stepmother.  The young Özbeg was exiled from court, and is commonly assumed to have spent his time in the Jochid lands in Khwarezm near the Aral Sea. Determined and ambitious, Özbeg stood to gain greatly from the death of the childless Toqta.       What followed next is foggy, to say the least, as the sources offer various, competing narratives. Here we feel the loss of Rashīd al-Dīn, who around the time of Toqta's death was in the midst of copying the Jami' al-Tawarikh, and no longer adding information to it. His clear eyed sourcing and reporting of information goes much amiss, as Qashani, Rashīd al-Dīn's successor when it came to recording events after 1305, provides an account of Toqta's succession sourced apparently directly from Jochid envoys in 1313. However, Qashani's account confuses names and chronologies and is totally contradictory with the Mamluk accounts; Toqta's sons, for instance, are alive in Qashani's writing, whereas the Mamluks have them all die before their father. Qashani also makes the emir, Qutlugh-Temür, a rival of Özbeg, while the Mamluks and other accounts had Qutlugh-Temür as Özbeg's chief ally from the start.   To save your ears, our dear listeners, we'll simplify this as best we can, based on recent research.  First we can mention an interesting hypothesis from  historian Thomas Tanase.  A long running problem was that contemporary Fransican accounts of the 1320s spoke of a certain Coktoganus being a khan of the Golden Horde who converted to Catholicism, and died before Özbeg. The identity of Coktoganus has been a troublesome thing, with suggestions ranging from this referring toToqta himself, to simple wishful thinking on the part of the Fransciscans in the Golden Horde. However, neither explanation is sufficient. The sources are fairly consistent of Toqta's position as a shamanist or Buddhist. Further, Fransciscans were generally careful with their gathering of information, and learnt local languages; the idea being that an individual had to be rather knowledgeable of local affairs and language to better convert them. These Franciscans were also stationed within the Golden Horde, from Crimea to Sarai, and likely learned these facts first hand.   Tanase offers a likely explanation; that Coktoganus was not Toqta, but one of his brothers, Kutukan. If we drop the latin ending -us, Coktogan is a fairly decent rendering of Kutukan, and indeed the Fransicans also noted Coktoganus was a brother of the “Tartar emperor.” The most convincing evidence is that one of these Franciscan accounts lists three of Coktoganus' sons, whose names match exactly with the sons of Kutukan listed by Rashīd al-Dīn. Mamluk accounts had Kutukan among the brothers killed by Toqta in the 1291 coup, but we might wonder if this was not an accidental or anachronistic addition by the Mamluks, who saw a son of Möngke-Temür missing and added him to the list of dead princes. Based on Tanase's suggestion, we can propose the following timeline. Toqta died on the Volga in the summer of 1312, with no surviving children. Per Tanase's idea, the Christian convert Kutukan declared himself khan to succeed his brother, but died within a few weeks or months. A very brief reign would explain how the Mamluks did not record him, particularly if he was never officially enthroned as khan, while also aligning with the Franciscan reports of a natural death for Coktoganus, while also aligning with Qashani's and al-Aharai's reports of a member of Toqta's family being a contender against Özbeg. In these accounts, as well as later Turkic ones, Toqta's son Tükel-Buqa is alive and battles Özbeg for the throne. Perhaps they confused Kutukan with Tükel-Buqa, or perhaps the Mamluks falsely reported Tükel-Buqa's death.       Regardless of whether Tükel-Buqa or Kutukan tried to take the throne in 1312, neither claimant could overcome Özbeg. Even if he was uninvolved in Toqta's death, Özbeg moved quickly to take the throne himself, backed by the powerful Qutlugh-Temür, the governor of Jochid Khwarezm, and perhaps the most powerful Islamic figure within the Golden Horde.  Either on Qutlugh-Temür's urging, or to gain Qutlugh-Temür's backing, Özbeg made a simple promise. “Back me as khan, and I will convert to islam.” What Özbeg's campaign showed was the growing body of Muslims within the Golden Horde, particularly among the beys, or the noyad. A sizeable body of the Jochid elite were, by 1312, converts to Islam. Particularly if a Christian Kutukan had briefly tried to claim the throne, Özbeg may have had great success in rallying support. Among those who backed him included Bayalun Khatun, the widow of both his father To'rilcha, and of Toqta. This influential lady, skilled in Jochid politics, brought important support for Özbeg's claim.    A rallying of Islamic beys, and a conversion upon taking the throne, appears to varying degrees in later Turkic accounts like Ötemish Hajji, and Özbeg's own letter to the Mamluks upon his enthronement, where Özbeg announced proudly his recent conversion to Islam. Qashani is again the odd man out, where Özbeg appears as a Muslim for several years before he takes the throne. In general, the sources agree that Özbeg led an Islamic faction against the entrenched shamanist-Buddhist faction, represented by some member of Toqta's family. A recurring scene, appearing first in Qashani, and two hundred years later in Ötemish's Hajji's version, is that at a feast, rivals for the throne from the opposing faction sought to ambush Özbeg at a feast. Özbeg learns of their treachery, and with his allies storms out of the tent to kill his opponents.   As you should have gotten a sense after all that, the transition between Toqta and Özbeg is a murky period. Regardless of the specifics, Özbeg was enthroned as Khan of the Golden Horde in January 1313. And the experience left a sour taste in his mouth. Officially, Özbeg set out a mandate; whichever prince failed to convert to islam would be killed. Very conveniently, many of those killed also happened to be descendants of his grandfather, Möngke-Temür Khan; that is, potential rivals to the throne.  And what a great many were killed. Some of it was obviously religiously motivated; shamans and Buddhist lamas were killed en masse, and Christian privileges were reduced though they did not suffer any great executions, likely due to their limited presence among the nomadic population. The main element of the slain though, were Jochid princes. Any surviving family members and supporters of Kutukan or Tükel-Buqa, had they indeed challenged Özbeg, were hunted down and killed. Özbeg's aim was very simple, and based on the lessons of the previous decades, perhaps as passed down by the experienced Qutlugh-Temür. At the start of the 1280s, Möngke-Temür's successor Töde-Möngke had exiled the sons of Möngke-Temür, but not killed them. Thus they came back to seek revenge. In 1287 Tele-Buqa seized the throne with a group of allies, but had left so many rivals in place that those displeased with his reign had found a figurehead to rally around in the form of Toqta. And while Toqta had killed  a great many of the supporters of Tele-Buqa, he had not ripped them up root and bud, leaving Özbeg to nurse his vengeance for twenty years. Özbeg made no such mistake. Of all the purges carried out by the various Chinggisids, perhaps none were as total as that carried out by Özbeg. By the time he was done, the only members of the line of Batu still left, was that of Özbeg and his own sons. The results in  a way speak for themselves, for Özbeg would enjoy the longest reign of any descendant of Jochi.    Our next episode picks up with the reign of Özbeg Khan, from 1313 to 1341, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, then consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was written and researched by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one.    

“In [this year] Nogai sent his wife [Yaylaq] Khātūn to the king Țuqṭā with a missive she would carry to him, and advice she would give to him. When she arrived at the [Golden] Horde he greeted her with honor, and celebrated hospitality and gifts with her, and she stayed in the hospitality for days. Then he asked her as to the reason for her coming, she said to him, “[Nogai] says to you that there are some thorns left on your path, so clean them up!” [Toqta] said, “What are the thorns?” so she named off the emirs who Nogai had mentioned to her, who were [23 in numer]. These were those who had conspired with Töle Buqa against Nogai.  When this missive was conveyed to him, and she told him this story, [Toqta] sought after those emirs, one after another, and killed all of them. So [Yaylaq] Khātūn returned to Nogai, informing him of their killing, so his worry subsided, and his fear gone.”       So the Mamluk chronicler Baybars al-Mansūrī records an interaction between Nogai, the Mongol master of the lower Danube and southeastern Europe, and Toqta, Khan of the Golden Horde. In 1291 Nogai had assisted Toqta Khan to the Jochid throne, overthrowing the previous Khan, Tele-Buqa. Now both expected favours of the other, which would have deadly consequences.  Our last episode looked at Nogai's role in Europe; today, we look at his interactions with the Khans of the Golden Horde, culminating in the destructive civil war between Toqta and Nogai at the end of the 1290s. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.       As noted before, much of this is based off the research of our series historian, Jack Wilson, who offered a reinvestigation of Nogai in the process of his Masters thesis. If you're curious about more on this matter of his reinterpretation of Nogai, you can speak with directly through his Youtube channel The Jackmeister: Mongol History, where he is in the midst of sharing this reinterpretation in a video form.        While Nogai was the governor of the Golden Horde's territory in southeastern Europe, he was hardly removed from wider Jochid affairs. After the death of Möngke-Temür Khan in 1280 or 1282, Nogai was the aqa of the Jochid lineage, as a few sources state, including an interesting letter from the Il-Khan Tegüder Ahmad to the Mamluks. As aqa,  he was one of the senior-most members of the family, respected and consulted on all sorts of familial and government matters. And indeed, this is the role he often appears in; when Töde-Möngke Khan considered releasing a captive son of Khubilai Khaan, he is recorded consulting with Nogai as well as other prominent members of the Jochids. Most of Nogai's interactions from the Jochid khans Töde-Möngke, Tele-Buqa and Toqta all seem based on this aqa relationship. While scholarship has often accused Nogai of putting these various khans on the throne, and reducing the khans Töde-Möngke and Tele-Buqa to puppets, this is unsupported by the sources. In the royal succession, Nogai is unmentioned in the transition except in the overthrow of Tele-Buqa, as we covered in a previous episode. Over these years Nogai appears focused on the territory he was assigned to in southeastern Europe. On occasion he sent troops to assist Rus' princes in raids in Poland and Lithuania, but Nogai only did so when requested by these princes, as described in the Rus' chronicles. Likewise, when he led armies into Hungary and Poland himself, as we discussed in our previous episodes, Nogai only did so when demanded by Tele-Buqa.    If not presented as overthrowing khans, or reducing them to figureheads, literature often presents Nogai actively undermining the khans, or undertaking his own diplomatic efforts. But the evidence for this is likewise weak.  An interesting case of Nogai possibly undermining Tele-Buqa Khan comes in 1288, when he sent an embassy to the Il-Khan, Arghun, which gave him Buddhist relics. A few weeks after this meeting, Tele-Buqa unleashed his first invasion of the Ilkhanate. It's tempting to see this as Nogai having his own Ilkhanid diplomacy or alerting Arghun of Tele-Buqa's attack, but this is the only record of such an embassy, and Arghun was caught unawares by the invasion, as he was in the midst of leaving the Caucasus when the attack occurred. We might wonder if Nogai had actually been instructed to placate Arghun, sending him gifts in order to not suspect any Jochid attacks; Arghun may have seen little reason to believe the truce with the Ilkhanate was in any danger. Neither did Nogai carry out a marriage alliance with the Il-Khan, as if sometimes stated; references to him marrying one of his sons to a daughter of Abaqa Il-Khan have confused Nogai of the Golden Horde with another Nogai, a non-Chinggisid general who lived in the Ilkhanate, and the father of Abaqa's son-in-law, in this instance.        Nogai did gave shelter to at least one Rus' prince, who was out of favour with the reigning khan. Dmitri Alexandrovich, a son of the famous Alexander Nevskii, had a decades long feud with his brother Andrei for the title of Grand Prince. Most usually, you'll see this presented as a sort of proxy war between Nogai and the khans, with Nogai pushing forward Dmitri as his candidate, and the khans supporting Andrei. While the khans did give Andrei armies and a yarliq to support his candidacy, there isn't evidence for those who claim that Nogai did the same for Dmitri. In the early 1280s, Andrei Alexandrovich went to the khan, likely Töde-Möngke, and received military support for his claim to Grand Prince of Vladimir, the chief of the Rus' princely titles. Dmitri fled before Andrei, and after a lengthy flight made his way to Nogai for shelter. As the Nikonian Chronicle records;       “Grand Prince Dmitrii Aleksandrovich with his druzhina, princes, children and entire court fled to the horde of Khan Nagai, to whom he told everything in order, relating it with tears, and gave him and his nobles many gifts. Khan Nagai listened to him and kept him in honour.”       What exactly being kept in “in honour” means in this context is unclear. Dmitri arrived with a great many gifts for Nogai to earn Nogai's favour, a wise move. Nogai only the year before had taken fugitives like Ivaylo and Ivan Asen III to his court; as we noted in the last episode, Nogai, on the urging of his Byzantine father-in-law Michael VIII, had killed Ivaylo and almost executed Ivan too. Dmitri was wise to bribe Nogai for his favour, but should not have expected Nogai's hospitality to go far if the request from the khan came for his head. But none came. By the next year Dmitri returned from Nogai and made peace with his brother Andrei. This is notable to emphasis; Nogai did not send Dmitri back with an army, or a yarliq. And later that year, Dmitri restarted the war with Andrei himself when he assassinated one of Andrei's boyars. Only at this juncture, do ‘Tatars' appear in Dmitri's service. Their origin is uncertain, but they cannot be directly linked to Nogai, as the Rus' chronicles themselves do not do so. The presence of Tatar troops of unspecified origin should not be too surprising. Similarly, at the famed Battle on the Ice against the Teutonic Order in 1242, Dmitri's father Alexander Nevskii had nomadic horse archers fighting alongside him, but their identity, or origin, goes unmentioned. Since this is the closest the sources come to showing Nogai directly challenging the Khan in influence over the Rus', we shouldn't rely too much either on this image.       Our last episode discussed the fall of Tele-Buqa Khan and the enthronement of Toqta in 1291. This, in all of the primary sources, is the only actual removal and enthronement of a khan that Nogai took part in. Toqta had come to Nogai for aid, and promised to carry out Nogai's will once he became khan. Nogai, as a pragmatic fellow, agreed, for who wouldn't want the Khan to owe you a favour? Particularly since Nogai had already learned Tele-Buqa was plotting against him. Faking a severe illness, Nogai convinced Tele-Buqa and his allies that he was dying, and wanted to make final amends. With their guard let down, Toqta arrived with an army and executed Tele-Buqa Khan.  After Toqta was enthroned, Nogai returned to the Danube, where he carried out a rush of activity, bringing the submission of many of the banates and Serbia that we mentioned last week. New raids are recorded on Poland in the early 1290s, and Mongol emissaries reached even the King of Bohemia. Though unmentioned, it seems likely they originated from Nogai, who devoted most of his attention before 1295 on Europe.   A young man, Toqta was likely overawed at first by the experienced aqa. Nogai recognized that Toqta's reign faced threats from loyalists to Tele-Buqa who still lived, and therefore sent word to Toqta; these princes needed to be killed in order to secure the throen. In 1293 a list of 23 noyans was provided, and Toqta duly carried out Nogai's suggestions. More deaths of such Tele-Buqa loyalists, and presumably enemies Nogai had made over his career, followed the next year. This was much to Nogai's relief, we are told, as he had been quite concerned over the matter. But Toqta was hardly the pushover he's often presented as. In 1294 Toqta sent a message to Nogai, demanding the death of Jijek-Khatun and some of her followers. Jijek-Khatun was a widow of Berke and Möngke-Temür Khan, and had briefly served as regent in the final years of  Möngke-Temür and Töde-Möngke's reigns. Nogai carried this out swiftly.    These reprisals, in which both Nogai and Toqta made demands of the other, seem to have been the extent of effective cooperation between them. Toqta in the early 1290s undertook his own actions which Nogai is not recorded affecting; in response to a request from Andrei Alexandrovich, Toqta ordered a devastating attack on the Rus' principalities in 1293. This campaign permanently broke the power of Dmitri Alexandrovich, who had once sought shelter with Nogai. In 1294, Toqta also reached a peace agreement with the current Il-Khan, Geikhatu. Once more, it seems Nogai's influence on Toqta was limited to that of the aqa, rather than a puppet master.       It appears that the actual fallout between Nogai and Toqta was not out of desire for one to depose the other, but more familial. Nogai had a number of wives and children, and despite his proclamation of Islam in his letter to Baybars in the early 1270s, seems to have not forced it onto any of his family. As noted he married the Greek Orthodox Christian Byzantine Princess Euphrosyne; no indication is provided of her ever abandoning her faith. Another wife, Yaylaq-Khatun, was baptized into the Catholic faith by Franciscan missionaries in Crimea around 1287. One of Nogai's daughters, Qiyan, married a son of Salji'udai Güregen, who was Toqta's grandfather and father-in-law. It was obviously a prominent alliance  related to Toqta's ascension, as Salji'udai was close to Toqta and held great influence over his grandson. Salji'udai's wife was Kelmish Aqa, a lady not only powerful in the Golden Horde, but respected in the Ilkhanate. Marrying into the family cemented Nogai's relevance to the central court. After the marriage though, Nogai's daughter Qiyan converted to Islam, to the great displeasure of her Buddhist husband. The husband began to abuse her, and Qiyan alerted her father. Nogai was furious at his daughter's treatment, and demanded justice from Toqta; hand over Salji'udai and his son, or dismiss them. Toqta of course, was hardly about to hand over his grandfather.       It should be said that the abuse of Nogai's daughter was unlikely to have been the sole cause of the conflict, but perhaps rather the spark that set off a growing pile of kindling. Rashīd al-Dīn records that Nogai was greatly frustrated already by Salji'udai's influence over Toqta compared to his own. As Rashīd says, allegedly quoting Nogai's response to one of Toqta's embassies:   “It is known to all the world what toil and hardship I have endured and how I have exposed myself to the charge of perfidy and bad faith in order to win for [Toqta] the throne […]. And now Saljidai Küregen has authority over that throne. If my son Toqta wishes the basis of our relationship to be strengthened between us, let him send Saljidai Küregen back to his yurt, which is near Khwārazm.”       Nogai knew he had undertaken an extreme action by taking a lead role in the death of Tele-Buqa, and had expected greater reward for his actions. Rather than Toqta being a figurehead in Nogai's shadow, as scholarship so often presents, Toqta had failed to give Nogai the respect and influence he felt he was owed. That is, Toqta was always rather independent and powerful, and Nogai lacked authority over him, yet still had hoped for it. Even before the marriage, Nogai may have been frustrated at his lack of influence over Toqta compared to Salji'udai, and perhaps the marriage had been an effort to address this. But the beating of his daughter was pushing things too far for this. And Toqta's refusal to give justice for Nogai, even after multiple embassies only worsened things.       Numerous sources,  such as Rashīd al-Dīn and Marco Polo, record that at various points, both Nogai and Toqta began ignoring the embassies of the other, which may have occurred at any step of the process but only deepend antagonism between them. Feeling denied options, Nogai decided to force Toqta's hands. He sent a wife, Chübei, and three sons, Chaka, Teke and Büri, to push a number of princes and generals in the western steppe into running amuck and causing damage, perhaps harassing officers of the khan. After essentially starting a revolt, many of these princes fled to Nogai's court, where one married another of Nogai's daughters. Messengers came from Toqta, demanding that Nogai hand over the rebellious princes. Nogai refused, unless Toqta would hand over Salji'udai and his son. That was the price, and it was not one Toqta was willing to pay. More rounds of envoys came, and finally, according to the Mamluk chronicler Baybars al-Mansūrī, Toqta sent a message bearing a plow, an arrow, and a pile of dirt as a riddle. The advisers of Nogai pondered it, but Nogai swiftly deduced what it was, declaring:        “For the plow, with it Toqta wants to say: if you went into the very depths of the earth, all the same I will pull you out from there with this plow; as for the arrow, with it Toqta wants to say: if you climbed to the very skies, then with this arrow I will force your descent;  as for the land, he says: choose for yourself the land on which our meeting will take place."       It was Toqta Khan's declaration of war on Nogai. Nogai spoke simply to Toqta's envoy, “tell Toqta that our horses our thirsty, and wish to drink from the Don.” The Don River was deep in the steppes, northeast of the Black Sea. Nogai was going to march against Toqta Khan.       War thus broke out around 1297. The initial advance in winter failed, as the rivers did not freeze, preventing either from crossing. A rest followed over the spring and summer of 1298, Toqta rested his troops near the Don river. Nogai advanced tentatively with a small force, including his wives and sons. Realizing that Toqta's forces were dispersed until the fall, Nogai sent a messenger, telling the khan that Nogai was coming for a quriltai to make peace. In reality, he was hoping to capture Toqta with his small force before Toqta's tümens could be recalled. Toqta saw through the ruse too late, and had only a small force with him when Nogai fell upon him near the Don.     Nogai had the better of this first engagement, and forced Toqta's retreat. It is this victory which actually forms the final event in most versions of Marco Polo's manuscripts. While Toqta fled back to Sarai, Nogai did not pursue; this was not a battle for mastery of the Golden Horde, and Nogai did not have the forces to advance so deep into Toqta's territory, particularly once a number of his noyans defected, for unclear reasons. We might wonder if this was not unease among them, for going to war with the Khan of the Horde; another indication that Nogai had not spent the last thirty years in open revolt. Nogai fell back to his own territory, lest he become overextended. His cast his eye on the Crimean peninsula though, the valuable trade center the Golden Horde Khan collected a great many revenues from. Many Crimean cities offered their submission, and Nogai left it to his grandson Aqtaji to take further tribute. While invited to dine in Solkhat, called by Mongols and Turks as Eski Qirim, Aqtaji was wined, dined, and violently murdered by the inhabitants. Needless to say, Nogai was enraged, and swiftly ordered his army into Crimea. In December 1298 a number of Crimean cities were sacked, and refugees fled as far as Mamluk Sultanate bringing word.       Interestingly, when the survivors begged Nogai for the release of prisoners, he allowed it. Rather than a peaceful nature on Nogai's part, we should assume this was Nogai attempting to build a base to renew trade ties with Crimea after the war, and remind them of his clemency. For Nogai's generals and troops though, it did not have the desired effect, for they now lost out on their slaves. His forces already overstretched, and many generals having only recently allied with him, Nogai suddenly had to deal with a massive revolt as many of these discontented commanders declared for Toqta. One of his sons, Teke, seems to have sought to ally with the rebels before being captured, and Nogai's oldest and most capable son, Chaka, with great slaughter and destruction put down the rebellion and rescued Teke. But many rebels had fled to Toqta with news of the discord; Toqta had used the intervening time to rebuild his forces, pulling troops from the borders. Truce was reconfirmed with the Il-Khan Ghazan, and the border garrisons now reinforced Toqta's host.        With some sixty tümens, according to Rashīd al-Dīn, Toqta led the army himself against Nogai, who was still reeling from the revolt. Along the Dnieper River in the last days of 1299, Toqta faced off against Nogai's much smaller army. The old dog had one last trick to play. Nogai stalled for time, claiming he was deathly ill, sending messengers to Toqta begging forgiveness. Nogai's message laid the blame for the war all on his sons; while at the same time, the eldest of those sons, Chaka, was leading a force upstream in an effort to flank Toqta. Toqta, having taken part in Nogai's ploy against Tele-Buqa almost a decade prior, saw right through it and spotted Chaka's army. The gig was up. Toqta's full weight fell against Nogai's army, which disintegrated before it. Nogai tried to flee with a small group of horsemen, only to be caught by a detachment of Rus' cavalry. Nogai was injured in the attack, and told the Rus', “Do not not kill me! Take me to Toqta, for he is the khan, and I must speak with him.” The unit returned to Toqta, but Nogai died en route, either of injuries, or as one of the Rus' decapitated him. In the account of Baybars al-Mansūrī, Toqta had the man who killed Nogai executed; no matter if Nogai was a rebel, he was still a Chinggisid, and this lowly Rus' druzhina had no right to harm him. So ended the reign of Nogai.           Nogai's armies and sons were dispersed. Chaka briefly rallied them from his base in Bulgaria, but when his younger half-brother Teke, and Teke's mother suggested surrendering to Toqta, Chaka had them executed. The resistance of Chaka was cut short in 1301 when he was betrayed, imprisoned and soon strangled by the new Bulgarian Tsar, his brother-in-law Theodore Svetoslav, the son of Tsar Giorgi Terter. Svetoslav's murder of Chaka was done only after getting the permission of Toqta Khan, who reconfirmed the vassalage of Bulgaria. The region was then reincorporated into the Golden Horde, and put under the jurisdiction of Toqta's family, though he constantly had trouble with whoever was in the position. The remainder of Nogai's family and forces submitted to Toqta, fled to the Byzantine Empire or even the Ilkhanate. All now recognized the authority of Toqta Khan, who quickly set about reasserting the authority of the Jochid khan.       Nogai's influence and life ended suddenly at the start of the fourteenth century. Often presented as an all powerful, crafty mayor-of-the-palace type figure, Nogai's actually handling of the khans seems somewhat clumsy. While true he knew how to play a trick, and could be a devious fellow, he grew rather over confident as soon as he had leverage over the khan— and even quicker, frustrated when he realized how little influence he actually had over Toqta. His actual power over the Golden Horde itself was minimal. Unlike real kingmakers in the Golden Horde in the late fourteenth century, named Mamai and Edigü, Nogai was totally forgotten about after his death. Turkic histories written in the fifteenth centuries onwards which collected some folk tales from the former Horde lands, such as those written by Ötemish Hajji and Abu'l Ghazi Khan, make no mention of Nogai, despite retaining stories of the reigns of Möngke-Temür, Töde-Möngke and Toqta. Some of you might make reference to the Nogai Horde, the Golden Horde successor state which emerged in the fifteenth century. But despite its name, the Nogai Horde bears no connection to Nogai of the thirteenth century; the Nogai Horde emerged in the lands northwest of the Caspian Sea, where Nogai's influence never extended, and indeed, he was never known for certain to have even traveled east of the Volga. More importantly though, the Nogai Horde traced its rulers not to Nogai, but to the sons of Edigü, the later Golden Horde kingmaker until his death in 1419. Edigü remains a prominent folk hero among many Tatars, but no historical source connects him in any capacity to prince Nogai. A regional commander who once overthrew a khan, and once went to war with another, posthumously Nogai was turned into the most powerful figure of the Golden Horde by modern writers. While we can imagine he might have been flattered by the picture, it's probably not one he would have recognized. Such was the reign of Nogai Khan.        Nogai's life remains one of the most interesting, yet misunderstood parts of the thirteenth century Golden Horde. If you're interested in learning more about that, you can check out the work of our series historian, Jack Wilson, who is sharing his ongoing research on Nogai through his Youtube Channel, the Jackmeister: Mongol History, and it forthcoming articles in Golden Horde Review, and Acta Orientalia Hungarica. For now, our series will continue with the reign of Toqta Khan in our next episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one!

“In [this year] Nogai sent his wife [Yaylaq] Khātūn to the king Țuqṭā with a missive she would carry to him, and advice she would give to him. When she arrived at the [Golden] Horde he greeted her with honor, and celebrated hospitality and gifts with her, and she stayed in the hospitality for days. Then he asked her as to the reason for her coming, she said to him, “[Nogai] says to you that there are some thorns left on your path, so clean them up!” [Toqta] said, “What are the thorns?” so she named off the emirs who Nogai had mentioned to her, who were [23 in numer]. These were those who had conspired with Töle Buqa against Nogai.  When this missive was conveyed to him, and she told him this story, [Toqta] sought after those emirs, one after another, and killed all of them. So [Yaylaq] Khātūn returned to Nogai, informing him of their killing, so his worry subsided, and his fear gone.”       So the Mamluk chronicler Baybars al-Mansūrī records an interaction between Nogai, the Mongol master of the lower Danube and southeastern Europe, and Toqta, Khan of the Golden Horde. In 1291 Nogai had assisted Toqta Khan to the Jochid throne, overthrowing the previous Khan, Tele-Buqa. Now both expected favours of the other, which would have deadly consequences.  Our last episode looked at Nogai's role in Europe; today, we look at his interactions with the Khans of the Golden Horde, culminating in the destructive civil war between Toqta and Nogai at the end of the 1290s. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.       As noted before, much of this is based off the research of our series historian, Jack Wilson, who offered a reinvestigation of Nogai in the process of his Masters thesis. If you're curious about more on this matter of his reinterpretation of Nogai, you can speak with directly through his Youtube channel The Jackmeister: Mongol History, where he is in the midst of sharing this reinterpretation in a video form.        While Nogai was the governor of the Golden Horde's territory in southeastern Europe, he was hardly removed from wider Jochid affairs. After the death of Möngke-Temür Khan in 1280 or 1282, Nogai was the aqa of the Jochid lineage, as a few sources state, including an interesting letter from the Il-Khan Tegüder Ahmad to the Mamluks. As aqa,  he was one of the senior-most members of the family, respected and consulted on all sorts of familial and government matters. And indeed, this is the role he often appears in; when Töde-Möngke Khan considered releasing a captive son of Khubilai Khaan, he is recorded consulting with Nogai as well as other prominent members of the Jochids. Most of Nogai's interactions from the Jochid khans Töde-Möngke, Tele-Buqa and Toqta all seem based on this aqa relationship. While scholarship has often accused Nogai of putting these various khans on the throne, and reducing the khans Töde-Möngke and Tele-Buqa to puppets, this is unsupported by the sources. In the royal succession, Nogai is unmentioned in the transition except in the overthrow of Tele-Buqa, as we covered in a previous episode. Over these years Nogai appears focused on the territory he was assigned to in southeastern Europe. On occasion he sent troops to assist Rus' princes in raids in Poland and Lithuania, but Nogai only did so when requested by these princes, as described in the Rus' chronicles. Likewise, when he led armies into Hungary and Poland himself, as we discussed in our previous episodes, Nogai only did so when demanded by Tele-Buqa.    If not presented as overthrowing khans, or reducing them to figureheads, literature often presents Nogai actively undermining the khans, or undertaking his own diplomatic efforts. But the evidence for this is likewise weak.  An interesting case of Nogai possibly undermining Tele-Buqa Khan comes in 1288, when he sent an embassy to the Il-Khan, Arghun, which gave him Buddhist relics. A few weeks after this meeting, Tele-Buqa unleashed his first invasion of the Ilkhanate. It's tempting to see this as Nogai having his own Ilkhanid diplomacy or alerting Arghun of Tele-Buqa's attack, but this is the only record of such an embassy, and Arghun was caught unawares by the invasion, as he was in the midst of leaving the Caucasus when the attack occurred. We might wonder if Nogai had actually been instructed to placate Arghun, sending him gifts in order to not suspect any Jochid attacks; Arghun may have seen little reason to believe the truce with the Ilkhanate was in any danger. Neither did Nogai carry out a marriage alliance with the Il-Khan, as if sometimes stated; references to him marrying one of his sons to a daughter of Abaqa Il-Khan have confused Nogai of the Golden Horde with another Nogai, a non-Chinggisid general who lived in the Ilkhanate, and the father of Abaqa's son-in-law, in this instance.        Nogai did gave shelter to at least one Rus' prince, who was out of favour with the reigning khan. Dmitri Alexandrovich, a son of the famous Alexander Nevskii, had a decades long feud with his brother Andrei for the title of Grand Prince. Most usually, you'll see this presented as a sort of proxy war between Nogai and the khans, with Nogai pushing forward Dmitri as his candidate, and the khans supporting Andrei. While the khans did give Andrei armies and a yarliq to support his candidacy, there isn't evidence for those who claim that Nogai did the same for Dmitri. In the early 1280s, Andrei Alexandrovich went to the khan, likely Töde-Möngke, and received military support for his claim to Grand Prince of Vladimir, the chief of the Rus' princely titles. Dmitri fled before Andrei, and after a lengthy flight made his way to Nogai for shelter. As the Nikonian Chronicle records;       “Grand Prince Dmitrii Aleksandrovich with his druzhina, princes, children and entire court fled to the horde of Khan Nagai, to whom he told everything in order, relating it with tears, and gave him and his nobles many gifts. Khan Nagai listened to him and kept him in honour.”       What exactly being kept in “in honour” means in this context is unclear. Dmitri arrived with a great many gifts for Nogai to earn Nogai's favour, a wise move. Nogai only the year before had taken fugitives like Ivaylo and Ivan Asen III to his court; as we noted in the last episode, Nogai, on the urging of his Byzantine father-in-law Michael VIII, had killed Ivaylo and almost executed Ivan too. Dmitri was wise to bribe Nogai for his favour, but should not have expected Nogai's hospitality to go far if the request from the khan came for his head. But none came. By the next year Dmitri returned from Nogai and made peace with his brother Andrei. This is notable to emphasis; Nogai did not send Dmitri back with an army, or a yarliq. And later that year, Dmitri restarted the war with Andrei himself when he assassinated one of Andrei's boyars. Only at this juncture, do ‘Tatars' appear in Dmitri's service. Their origin is uncertain, but they cannot be directly linked to Nogai, as the Rus' chronicles themselves do not do so. The presence of Tatar troops of unspecified origin should not be too surprising. Similarly, at the famed Battle on the Ice against the Teutonic Order in 1242, Dmitri's father Alexander Nevskii had nomadic horse archers fighting alongside him, but their identity, or origin, goes unmentioned. Since this is the closest the sources come to showing Nogai directly challenging the Khan in influence over the Rus', we shouldn't rely too much either on this image.       Our last episode discussed the fall of Tele-Buqa Khan and the enthronement of Toqta in 1291. This, in all of the primary sources, is the only actual removal and enthronement of a khan that Nogai took part in. Toqta had come to Nogai for aid, and promised to carry out Nogai's will once he became khan. Nogai, as a pragmatic fellow, agreed, for who wouldn't want the Khan to owe you a favour? Particularly since Nogai had already learned Tele-Buqa was plotting against him. Faking a severe illness, Nogai convinced Tele-Buqa and his allies that he was dying, and wanted to make final amends. With their guard let down, Toqta arrived with an army and executed Tele-Buqa Khan.  After Toqta was enthroned, Nogai returned to the Danube, where he carried out a rush of activity, bringing the submission of many of the banates and Serbia that we mentioned last week. New raids are recorded on Poland in the early 1290s, and Mongol emissaries reached even the King of Bohemia. Though unmentioned, it seems likely they originated from Nogai, who devoted most of his attention before 1295 on Europe.   A young man, Toqta was likely overawed at first by the experienced aqa. Nogai recognized that Toqta's reign faced threats from loyalists to Tele-Buqa who still lived, and therefore sent word to Toqta; these princes needed to be killed in order to secure the throen. In 1293 a list of 23 noyans was provided, and Toqta duly carried out Nogai's suggestions. More deaths of such Tele-Buqa loyalists, and presumably enemies Nogai had made over his career, followed the next year. This was much to Nogai's relief, we are told, as he had been quite concerned over the matter. But Toqta was hardly the pushover he's often presented as. In 1294 Toqta sent a message to Nogai, demanding the death of Jijek-Khatun and some of her followers. Jijek-Khatun was a widow of Berke and Möngke-Temür Khan, and had briefly served as regent in the final years of  Möngke-Temür and Töde-Möngke's reigns. Nogai carried this out swiftly.    These reprisals, in which both Nogai and Toqta made demands of the other, seem to have been the extent of effective cooperation between them. Toqta in the early 1290s undertook his own actions which Nogai is not recorded affecting; in response to a request from Andrei Alexandrovich, Toqta ordered a devastating attack on the Rus' principalities in 1293. This campaign permanently broke the power of Dmitri Alexandrovich, who had once sought shelter with Nogai. In 1294, Toqta also reached a peace agreement with the current Il-Khan, Geikhatu. Once more, it seems Nogai's influence on Toqta was limited to that of the aqa, rather than a puppet master.       It appears that the actual fallout between Nogai and Toqta was not out of desire for one to depose the other, but more familial. Nogai had a number of wives and children, and despite his proclamation of Islam in his letter to Baybars in the early 1270s, seems to have not forced it onto any of his family. As noted he married the Greek Orthodox Christian Byzantine Princess Euphrosyne; no indication is provided of her ever abandoning her faith. Another wife, Yaylaq-Khatun, was baptized into the Catholic faith by Franciscan missionaries in Crimea around 1287. One of Nogai's daughters, Qiyan, married a son of Salji'udai Güregen, who was Toqta's grandfather and father-in-law. It was obviously a prominent alliance  related to Toqta's ascension, as Salji'udai was close to Toqta and held great influence over his grandson. Salji'udai's wife was Kelmish Aqa, a lady not only powerful in the Golden Horde, but respected in the Ilkhanate. Marrying into the family cemented Nogai's relevance to the central court. After the marriage though, Nogai's daughter Qiyan converted to Islam, to the great displeasure of her Buddhist husband. The husband began to abuse her, and Qiyan alerted her father. Nogai was furious at his daughter's treatment, and demanded justice from Toqta; hand over Salji'udai and his son, or dismiss them. Toqta of course, was hardly about to hand over his grandfather.       It should be said that the abuse of Nogai's daughter was unlikely to have been the sole cause of the conflict, but perhaps rather the spark that set off a growing pile of kindling. Rashīd al-Dīn records that Nogai was greatly frustrated already by Salji'udai's influence over Toqta compared to his own. As Rashīd says, allegedly quoting Nogai's response to one of Toqta's embassies:   “It is known to all the world what toil and hardship I have endured and how I have exposed myself to the charge of perfidy and bad faith in order to win for [Toqta] the throne […]. And now Saljidai Küregen has authority over that throne. If my son Toqta wishes the basis of our relationship to be strengthened between us, let him send Saljidai Küregen back to his yurt, which is near Khwārazm.”       Nogai knew he had undertaken an extreme action by taking a lead role in the death of Tele-Buqa, and had expected greater reward for his actions. Rather than Toqta being a figurehead in Nogai's shadow, as scholarship so often presents, Toqta had failed to give Nogai the respect and influence he felt he was owed. That is, Toqta was always rather independent and powerful, and Nogai lacked authority over him, yet still had hoped for it. Even before the marriage, Nogai may have been frustrated at his lack of influence over Toqta compared to Salji'udai, and perhaps the marriage had been an effort to address this. But the beating of his daughter was pushing things too far for this. And Toqta's refusal to give justice for Nogai, even after multiple embassies only worsened things.       Numerous sources,  such as Rashīd al-Dīn and Marco Polo, record that at various points, both Nogai and Toqta began ignoring the embassies of the other, which may have occurred at any step of the process but only deepend antagonism between them. Feeling denied options, Nogai decided to force Toqta's hands. He sent a wife, Chübei, and three sons, Chaka, Teke and Büri, to push a number of princes and generals in the western steppe into running amuck and causing damage, perhaps harassing officers of the khan. After essentially starting a revolt, many of these princes fled to Nogai's court, where one married another of Nogai's daughters. Messengers came from Toqta, demanding that Nogai hand over the rebellious princes. Nogai refused, unless Toqta would hand over Salji'udai and his son. That was the price, and it was not one Toqta was willing to pay. More rounds of envoys came, and finally, according to the Mamluk chronicler Baybars al-Mansūrī, Toqta sent a message bearing a plow, an arrow, and a pile of dirt as a riddle. The advisers of Nogai pondered it, but Nogai swiftly deduced what it was, declaring:        “For the plow, with it Toqta wants to say: if you went into the very depths of the earth, all the same I will pull you out from there with this plow; as for the arrow, with it Toqta wants to say: if you climbed to the very skies, then with this arrow I will force your descent;  as for the land, he says: choose for yourself the land on which our meeting will take place."       It was Toqta Khan's declaration of war on Nogai. Nogai spoke simply to Toqta's envoy, “tell Toqta that our horses our thirsty, and wish to drink from the Don.” The Don River was deep in the steppes, northeast of the Black Sea. Nogai was going to march against Toqta Khan.       War thus broke out around 1297. The initial advance in winter failed, as the rivers did not freeze, preventing either from crossing. A rest followed over the spring and summer of 1298, Toqta rested his troops near the Don river. Nogai advanced tentatively with a small force, including his wives and sons. Realizing that Toqta's forces were dispersed until the fall, Nogai sent a messenger, telling the khan that Nogai was coming for a quriltai to make peace. In reality, he was hoping to capture Toqta with his small force before Toqta's tümens could be recalled. Toqta saw through the ruse too late, and had only a small force with him when Nogai fell upon him near the Don.     Nogai had the better of this first engagement, and forced Toqta's retreat. It is this victory which actually forms the final event in most versions of Marco Polo's manuscripts. While Toqta fled back to Sarai, Nogai did not pursue; this was not a battle for mastery of the Golden Horde, and Nogai did not have the forces to advance so deep into Toqta's territory, particularly once a number of his noyans defected, for unclear reasons. We might wonder if this was not unease among them, for going to war with the Khan of the Horde; another indication that Nogai had not spent the last thirty years in open revolt. Nogai fell back to his own territory, lest he become overextended. His cast his eye on the Crimean peninsula though, the valuable trade center the Golden Horde Khan collected a great many revenues from. Many Crimean cities offered their submission, and Nogai left it to his grandson Aqtaji to take further tribute. While invited to dine in Solkhat, called by Mongols and Turks as Eski Qirim, Aqtaji was wined, dined, and violently murdered by the inhabitants. Needless to say, Nogai was enraged, and swiftly ordered his army into Crimea. In December 1298 a number of Crimean cities were sacked, and refugees fled as far as Mamluk Sultanate bringing word.       Interestingly, when the survivors begged Nogai for the release of prisoners, he allowed it. Rather than a peaceful nature on Nogai's part, we should assume this was Nogai attempting to build a base to renew trade ties with Crimea after the war, and remind them of his clemency. For Nogai's generals and troops though, it did not have the desired effect, for they now lost out on their slaves. His forces already overstretched, and many generals having only recently allied with him, Nogai suddenly had to deal with a massive revolt as many of these discontented commanders declared for Toqta. One of his sons, Teke, seems to have sought to ally with the rebels before being captured, and Nogai's oldest and most capable son, Chaka, with great slaughter and destruction put down the rebellion and rescued Teke. But many rebels had fled to Toqta with news of the discord; Toqta had used the intervening time to rebuild his forces, pulling troops from the borders. Truce was reconfirmed with the Il-Khan Ghazan, and the border garrisons now reinforced Toqta's host.        With some sixty tümens, according to Rashīd al-Dīn, Toqta led the army himself against Nogai, who was still reeling from the revolt. Along the Dnieper River in the last days of 1299, Toqta faced off against Nogai's much smaller army. The old dog had one last trick to play. Nogai stalled for time, claiming he was deathly ill, sending messengers to Toqta begging forgiveness. Nogai's message laid the blame for the war all on his sons; while at the same time, the eldest of those sons, Chaka, was leading a force upstream in an effort to flank Toqta. Toqta, having taken part in Nogai's ploy against Tele-Buqa almost a decade prior, saw right through it and spotted Chaka's army. The gig was up. Toqta's full weight fell against Nogai's army, which disintegrated before it. Nogai tried to flee with a small group of horsemen, only to be caught by a detachment of Rus' cavalry. Nogai was injured in the attack, and told the Rus', “Do not not kill me! Take me to Toqta, for he is the khan, and I must speak with him.” The unit returned to Toqta, but Nogai died en route, either of injuries, or as one of the Rus' decapitated him. In the account of Baybars al-Mansūrī, Toqta had the man who killed Nogai executed; no matter if Nogai was a rebel, he was still a Chinggisid, and this lowly Rus' druzhina had no right to harm him. So ended the reign of Nogai.           Nogai's armies and sons were dispersed. Chaka briefly rallied them from his base in Bulgaria, but when his younger half-brother Teke, and Teke's mother suggested surrendering to Toqta, Chaka had them executed. The resistance of Chaka was cut short in 1301 when he was betrayed, imprisoned and soon strangled by the new Bulgarian Tsar, his brother-in-law Theodore Svetoslav, the son of Tsar Giorgi Terter. Svetoslav's murder of Chaka was done only after getting the permission of Toqta Khan, who reconfirmed the vassalage of Bulgaria. The region was then reincorporated into the Golden Horde, and put under the jurisdiction of Toqta's family, though he constantly had trouble with whoever was in the position. The remainder of Nogai's family and forces submitted to Toqta, fled to the Byzantine Empire or even the Ilkhanate. All now recognized the authority of Toqta Khan, who quickly set about reasserting the authority of the Jochid khan.       Nogai's influence and life ended suddenly at the start of the fourteenth century. Often presented as an all powerful, crafty mayor-of-the-palace type figure, Nogai's actually handling of the khans seems somewhat clumsy. While true he knew how to play a trick, and could be a devious fellow, he grew rather over confident as soon as he had leverage over the khan— and even quicker, frustrated when he realized how little influence he actually had over Toqta. His actual power over the Golden Horde itself was minimal. Unlike real kingmakers in the Golden Horde in the late fourteenth century, named Mamai and Edigü, Nogai was totally forgotten about after his death. Turkic histories written in the fifteenth centuries onwards which collected some folk tales from the former Horde lands, such as those written by Ötemish Hajji and Abu'l Ghazi Khan, make no mention of Nogai, despite retaining stories of the reigns of Möngke-Temür, Töde-Möngke and Toqta. Some of you might make reference to the Nogai Horde, the Golden Horde successor state which emerged in the fifteenth century. But despite its name, the Nogai Horde bears no connection to Nogai of the thirteenth century; the Nogai Horde emerged in the lands northwest of the Caspian Sea, where Nogai's influence never extended, and indeed, he was never known for certain to have even traveled east of the Volga. More importantly though, the Nogai Horde traced its rulers not to Nogai, but to the sons of Edigü, the later Golden Horde kingmaker until his death in 1419. Edigü remains a prominent folk hero among many Tatars, but no historical source connects him in any capacity to prince Nogai. A regional commander who once overthrew a khan, and once went to war with another, posthumously Nogai was turned into the most powerful figure of the Golden Horde by modern writers. While we can imagine he might have been flattered by the picture, it's probably not one he would have recognized. Such was the reign of Nogai Khan.        Nogai's life remains one of the most interesting, yet misunderstood parts of the thirteenth century Golden Horde. If you're interested in learning more about that, you can check out the work of our series historian, Jack Wilson, who is sharing his ongoing research on Nogai through his Youtube Channel, the Jackmeister: Mongol History, and it forthcoming articles in Golden Horde Review, and Acta Orientalia Hungarica. For now, our series will continue with the reign of Toqta Khan in our next episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one!  

This best-loved Saint of the Serbian people was born in 1169, the son of Stephen Nemanja, Grand Prince of Serbia. He was named Rastko by his parents. At the age of fifteen he was appointed governor of the province of Herzegovina, but worldly power was of no interest to him, and he began to wish to give himself more fully to God. He secretly left home and traveled to Mount Athos, where he became a novice at the Monastery of St Panteleimon. His father learned where he had gone and sent soldiers to bring him back, but before the soldiers could claim him, he was tonsured a monk with the name of Sabbas (Sava), after St Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5).   In time, under the influence of his son, Stephen Nemanja abdicated his kingship, and in 1196 he became a monk under the name of Symeon, traveling to the Holy Mountain to join his son. Symeon was quite old, and unable to endure all the ascetic labors of long-time monks, so his son redoubled his own ascetical struggle, telling his father, "I am your ascesis." The two monks together founded the Chilander Monastery, which became the center of Serbian piety and culture. Saint Symeon reposed in 1200, and his body soon began to exude a miracle-working myrrh; thus he is commemorated as St Symeon the Myrrh-streaming (February 13).   Saint Sava retired to a hermit's life in a cell on the Holy Mountain, but was compelled to return to the world: his two brothers were at war with one another, causing much bloodshed in Serbia. The Saint returned home with his father's holy relics, mediated between his brothers, and persuaded them to make peace with one another over their father's tomb, restoring peace the Serbian land. At the pleas of the people, St Sava remained in Serbia thereafter. He persuaded the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Church in Serbia. Against his will, he was ordained first Archbishop of his land in 1219. He labored tirelessly to establish the Orthodox Faith, for, though his father had been a Christian, many of the people were still pagan. In old age he resigned the episcopal throne and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in peace in 1236.

This best-loved Saint of the Serbian people was born in 1169, the son of Stephen Nemanja, Grand Prince of Serbia. He was named Rastko by his parents. At the age of fifteen he was appointed governor of the province of Herzegovina, but worldly power was of no interest to him, and he began to wish to give himself more fully to God. He secretly left home and traveled to Mount Athos, where he became a novice at the Monastery of St Panteleimon. His father learned where he had gone and sent soldiers to bring him back, but before the soldiers could claim him, he was tonsured a monk with the name of Sabbas (Sava), after St Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5).   In time, under the influence of his son, Stephen Nemanja abdicated his kingship, and in 1196 he became a monk under the name of Symeon, traveling to the Holy Mountain to join his son. Symeon was quite old, and unable to endure all the ascetic labors of long-time monks, so his son redoubled his own ascetical struggle, telling his father, "I am your ascesis." The two monks together founded the Chilander Monastery, which became the center of Serbian piety and culture. Saint Symeon reposed in 1200, and his body soon began to exude a miracle-working myrrh; thus he is commemorated as St Symeon the Myrrh-streaming (February 13).   Saint Sava retired to a hermit's life in a cell on the Holy Mountain, but was compelled to return to the world: his two brothers were at war with one another, causing much bloodshed in Serbia. The Saint returned home with his father's holy relics, mediated between his brothers, and persuaded them to make peace with one another over their father's tomb, restoring peace the Serbian land. At the pleas of the people, St Sava remained in Serbia thereafter. He persuaded the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Church in Serbia. Against his will, he was ordained first Archbishop of his land in 1219. He labored tirelessly to establish the Orthodox Faith, for, though his father had been a Christian, many of the people were still pagan. In old age he resigned the episcopal throne and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in peace in 1236.

    Perhaps no Khan of the Golden Horde in the thirteenth century has had his reputation so maligned as Töde-Möngke. This younger brother of Möngke-Temür ruled the Jochid ulus from around 1282 until he gave up the throne in 1287. His reign is, at the most charitably, usually described as Töde-Möngke being dedicated to religious pursuits, leaving real power in the hands of the rising prince, Nogai. At worst, as in the sixteenth century Qara-Tawarikh of Öttemish Hajji, Töde-Möngke suffered from a debilitating mental condition that left him hopelessly unable to deal with the strains of governance, or indeed even the world around him. Here, based on the research of our series historian conducted during the process of his Masters thesis, we'll offer a somewhat more nuanced portrayal of Töde-Möngke, who appears to have acted with a little more energy than he has generally been credited with. Along the way, we'll also deal with the Second Mongol Invasion of Hungary, which occurred during his reign.  I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.       Töde-Möngke, or Tuda-Mengu as he's known to Turkic speakers, was a younger brother of the previous Khan of the Golden Horde, Möngke-Temür and therefore a grandson of Batu Khan. Like his brother, his life before he became Khan is entirely unknown to us. His older brother died as early as 1280, or as late as 1282, depending on the source. Literature has often placed Töde-Möngke's rise to power as being through the efforts of prince Nogai maneuvering him to the throne, and entering into a power sharing agreement. However, the primary sources do not portray such a manner of succession.       Möngke-Temür died of complications following an operation on an abcess in his throat. There is no indication of a preferred successor. He instead left behind nine sons, who in the works of the Mamluk historians Baybars al-Mansuri and al-Nuwayri, immediately squabbled for the throne. His brother Töde-Möngke though, as apparently the oldest surviving descendant of Batu, is described by these sources as essentially fighting off his nephews to take the throne himself. Whether it was open fighting is not particularly clear: the process was probably a mix of threats, bribery and promises over several months, far from unusual in a Chinggisid succession. We might assume that Möngke-Temür died around 1280-1281, and it took until early 1282 for the ascension of Töde-Möngke to be finalized. For anyone claiming Nogai controlled this process, there is simply no mention of his involvement in any of the contemporary sources, nor is there evidence for Professor Vernadsky's claim that, at the time of Töde-Möngke's enthronement, that Nogai was also enthroned as a “Khan of the Manghit tribe.” As far as we can tell, there is no reason to assume Nogai was not among the princes and commanders who simply backed Töde-Möngke at the quriltai.       The first years of Töde-Möngke's reign are somewhat hazy, but a few details can be made out by comparing the various sources he's mentioned in. It appears his most notable efforts were related to diplomacy. Though modern writers often by this point give Nogai most control over the Golden Horde's foreign policy, there is little direct evidence for this. In fact, Töde-Möngke seems to have acted with a bit of vigour in this area. A Mamluk embassy sent with gifts to Möngke-Temür in 1282 arrived too late, and found Töde-Möngke on the throne. The gifts were instead given to Töde-Möngke, and friendly relations commenced. There is nothing particularly distinct in the embassy's first description of Töde-Möngke, in comparison to his late brother. This first embassy, as recorded by the Mamluk chroniclers, does not describe Töde-Möngke as a Muslim; this is interesting, as not only is Töde-Möngke's status as the second Muslim khan of the Golden Horde is one of the most notable things of his reign to modern authors, but we would think that the Mamluks would also have been quite interested by such a prospect following Möngke-Temür, who is generally agreed to have been a shamanist-animist. But Töde-Möngke's 1283 letter to the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun was markedly different. In this second letter, Töde-Möngke espouses at length about his conversion to Islam, how he had established sharia law in the Golden Horde, and asked for an Islamic name as well as banners from the Mamluk Sultan and his puppet ‘Abbasid Caliph. If Töde-Möngke was such an intensely devout Muslim, how did the previous embassy fail to note it?       Well, Professor Peter Jackson offers an intriguing explanation. First we must look to the year prior to Töde-Möngke's letter. In June of 1282, a new Il-Khan had taken the throne following the death of Abaqa. This was Tegüder Ahmad, the first Muslim Il-Khan, who we have covered in a previous episode. Soon after taking the throne, Tegüder sent envoys to both the Golden Horde and to the Mamluk Sultanate, informing them of his enthronement and conversion to islam. The letter he sent to the Golden Horde does not survive, but his letters to Cairo do. Here these letters serve as a warning; telling the Mamluks that the Mongols were at peace, and that as a Muslim it would be easier for the Mamluks to submit to Tegüder.        What Professor Jackson suggests is that Töde-Möngke, upon learning of a Muslim on the throne of Hülegü, worried of rapproachment between the Ilkhanate and the Mamluk Sultanate. While Töde-Möngke maintained the peace with the Il-Khans, there was no advantage to him if Sultan Qalawun submitted to, or made peace with, Tegüder.  Recall how the Jochids may have seen the Mamluks as their vassals; this was not to the Jochids' liking to have their vassals submit to another power. But more immediately, there would be economic and potentially military consequences. The Golden Horde's trade ties, especially the sale of slaves, to Cairo would presumably lessen, if not dry up, if there was no Egyptian need for these slaves who made up the heart of the Mamluk army. And if the Ilkhanate no longer needed to worry about its border with the Mamluks, then they may be less willing to maintain peace with the Jochids, and could potentially bring its full might to bear on its shared frontiers with the Golden Horde. For Töde-Möngke, it was much better for war to continue between the Ilkhanate and Mamluks. Hence, his letter in 1283 to Qalawun, loudly proclaiming his conversion to Islam; essentially, a means to “out-Muslim” Tegüder's claim, and discourage Qalawun from feeling he needed to respond too kindly to the Il-Khan's letter. In the end, Töde-Möngke needn't have worried much; Tegüder was overthrown and executed by Arghun in 1284.       But Jackson's theory raises the question: did Töde-Möngke convert to Islam just for the sake of diplomatically outmaneuvering Tegüder Il-Khan? Possibly, though doubtful. The fact that non-Mamluk sources, including Rashid al-Din, make no mention of Töde-Möngke's Islam may be telling, though he also casts doubt on Tegüder's Islam too, in an effort to delegitimize pre-Ghazan Khans who were Muslims. It could be that Töde-Möngke happened to convert in a similar time to Tegüder's ascension, or was simply quiet about it during the initial Mamluk embassy. Whatever the case, he may have been initially ambivalent of the Mamluk alliance, but upon learning of Tegüder's conversion via his letter, found it more useful to fully embrace Islam, or at least loudly alert the Mamluks of it. Regardless, by 1283 Töde-Möngke claimed to the Mamluks that he was a Muslim.       Generally speaking, Töde-Möngke sought peace on his frontiers with other Mongol Khanates. We've already noted how Tegüder's letter spoke of peace between him and Töde-Möngke. There is no record of fighting between the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate during Töde-Möngke's reign, and it seems likely that Töde-Möngke maintained the treaty established by Möngke-Temür and Abaqa. The front between the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate and the Ögedeids seems to have likewise remained quiet. Given that Qaidu in 1282 was able to fully assert his authority and place Du'a on the Chagatayid throne, then divert resources to continual attacks on Khubilai's northwestern frontier, it seems that a truce, perhaps uneasily, was kept in Central Asia. Here, this may have been in large part to the efforts of Qonichi, the head of the line of Orda and ruler of the Blue Horde. Qonichi seems to have acted largely as an independent monarch: both Rashid al-Din and Marco Polo portray Qonichi as answering to no one. Modern scholars have often presumed that Qonichi's independence was a result of Nogai weakening the Golden Horde Khan. Yet it is not at all apparent that Töde-Möngke held lesser or greater influence over the Blue Horde khans than either his predecessor or successors. Instead, it may well be that the relationship between Töde-Möngke and Qonichi was much the same as it had been under their predecessors: the occasional consultation, perhaps tribute or troop demands, but no real oversight or interference. Qonichi and his son and successor, Bayan, are known to have sent friendly messages to the Il-Khans, and given their apparent interest in neutrality, and position on the east wing of the Golden Horde bordering Qaidu's dominions, that Qonichi must have sought neutrality with these khans as well.        In this region Töde-Möngke carried out one significant diplomatic maneuver: in 1283, after consultation with Nogai, Qonichi, and after years of lobbying by the high ranking lady Kelmish Aqa, Töde-Möngke released Khubilai Khaan's captive sons Nomukhan and Kököchü. After nearly ten years in captivity, the boys were finally allowed to return to the Yuan Dynasty. The effort, clearly enough, was intended on warming relations with the Great Khan. Perhaps Töde-Möngke was a believer in unity between the Mongol Khanates, and did not seek to bring further turmoil between them. Whatever the case, he maintained a non-hostile diplomacy with his cousins, but did not succeed in achieving any empire-wide peace, if that was his intention. The increasingly withdrawn Khubilai hardly showed great interest in the return of Nomukhan, let alone in turning any energy to whatever overtures Töde-Möngke hoped to convey with such an effort. It would take another twenty year for any real strides at peace to be made across the Empire.        Non-aggressive diplomacy to other Mongols does not mean Töde-Möngke engaged in peaceful relations with all his neighbours. He may simply have been an adherent to the belief, as espoused by the thirteenth century writer ibn Wasil, that if the Mongols stopped killing each other then they could conquer the world. Regarding the Rus' principalities, Töde-Möngke's policies much resembled Möngke-Temür's, and he continued to assign or rescind yarliqs, or patents, granting a given Rus' prince right to his title. Töde-Möngke did not interfere in the succession of the princes; he respected the Riurikid tradition, and confirmed who was presented to him.    In the first years of his reign, Töde-Möngke regularly provided armies to Alexander Nevskii's son Andrei, who was in a protracted dispute with his brother Dmitri for the title of Grand Prince of Vladimir.  According to the Nikon Chronicle, Töde-Möngke even sent one of his own sons at the head of an army to assist Andrei.  While at point Dmitri Alexandrovich did flee to Nogai, careful readings of the Rus' chroniclers do not make it apparent that Nogai provided either army or yarliq to support Dmitri in opposition to Andrei as Töde-Möngke's candidate. For these campaigns between princes, the troops Töde-Möngke sent always used the opportunity to raid and pillage extensively. As the Chronicle of Novgorod records, “in the winter of [1284], Knyaz Dmitri came to Novgorod with his brother Andrei with an armed force, and with Tartars and with the whole of the Low Country, and they did much harm and burned the districts.”       Most of the activity we can unambiguously write of Töde-Möngke taking part in, even as a participant, can be dated from the first years of reign; roughly, 1282-1284. By the middle of the 1280s, though, Töde-Möngke's presence nearly disappears. This is best exemplified in 1285, when Nogai and another prince, Töde-Möngke's nephew Tele-Buqa, attacked the Hungarian Kingdom. The sources make no mention of Töde-Möngke's involvement, in either ordering or organizing the attack in any fashion.  What seems to have occurred is that Töde-Möngke, depending on the source, either went insane or began to devout himself entirely to Islam, growing weary or disinterested in governance in favour of his religious pursuits. Rashid al-Din, the Mamluk Chroniclers and Öttemish Hajji's sixteenth century history all portray Töde-Möngke effectively abandoning the duties of the Khan. In Mamluk Egypt, Baybars al-Mansuri described Möngke-Temür's widow, Jijek-Khatun, acting as a regent during part of Töde-Möngke's reign; it could be that, as Töde-Möngke withdrew from the running of the state around late 1284, Jijek-Khatun became the effective leader of the Golden Horde, as she may have done in the final days of her husband's illness.       The inception of the 1285 attack on Hungary is difficult to pinpoint. Someone in the Golden Horde certainly picked a good time to take advantage of matters in Hungary. Following the devastating invasion of the 1240s, the Hungarian King Béla IV had invited the Cumans to return to the kingdom, marrying his son István to a Cuman princess to ensure their place as the first line of defense should the Mongols return. In 1272 after the sudden death of István two years into his reign, his son Laszló, or Ladislaus, the product of the union with the Cuman princess, ascended the Árpádian throne. Only a young boy, his first years were spent tossed between powerful barons who jockeyed for power, while his mother was regent-in-name only. Perhaps because of this, Laszló preferred his mother's people, the Cumans, and as he grew older lived among them, wore their clothes and took Cuman mistresses— to the horror of his lawfully wedded Christian wife. Hence, Laszló's epithet, Laszló the Cuman. Laszló's favouring of the Cumans led to Papal and baronal efforts to clamp down on their privileges and assimilate them, the catalyst for a large Cuman revolt in 1280. Laszló was forced to lead the Hungarian army to defeat the Cumans, culminating at Lake Hód in 1282. Many fled to the Golden Horde, pursued by Laszló right into Horde territory,  and brought word of upheaval in the Hungarian kingdom. Certainly, this was as good a time as any for a Jochid army to ravage Hungary. Any one in the Horde could see that.       But then from whom did the idea for the attack arise? Nogai, whose expanding ordu along the Lower Danube bordered Hungary, is often attributed as the mastermind behind the attack. It would not be out of line given how he had spent his time in the Balkans since 1270, which was a series of raids and threats across southeastern Europe. However, medieval sources which discuss this aspect tend to suggest Tele-Buqa was the impetus. And it seems logical: if Töde-Möngke had delved into his religious fervour, and the Golden Horde was effectively without a head, then all of the princes may have been eyeing the succession. Tele-Buqa, the oldest son of Tartu, the older brother of Möngke-Temür and Töde-Möngke, was perhaps the most promising candidate. Likely the oldest of Batu's great-grandchildren, Tele-Buqa was a combative, ambitious individual, and probably closely affiliated with the court in Sarai. Seeing perhaps first hand his uncle Töde-Möngke's dereliction of duties, the dream of the right to rule inherent to every Chinggisid must have stirred within him.  But Tele-Buqa had a problem: perhaps no more than 20 years old in the mid-1280s, there had been no real wars in his lifetime, in which Tele-Buqa could have gained glory for his name, and thus make himself a real candidate at the quriltai.       This idea then, is that Tele-Buqa himself organized the Hungarian campaign, as means to build his reputation in order to seize power from his uncle Töde-Möngke. Considering that Baybars al-Mansuri records Tele-Buqa ordering Nogai to take part, this seems quite probable. But it can't be totally ruled out that Töde-Möngke himself had originally taken part in the planning. If we assume his foreign policy had been to seek peace with the other khanates, and resume conflict with non-subjugated peoples, then it would be hardly out of line. Tele-Buqa may have been officially delegated responsibility to lead the attack by Töde-Möngke, prior to any incapacitating attack the latter suffered.       Launched in the February of 1285, the so-called Second Mongol Invasion of Hungary led by Tele-Buqa and Nogai, is nowhere near as well understood as the first. It was certainly not on the scale of the former, and likely had no intention of conquering the kingdom but a raid aiming to take advantage of instability. It has no comparable overview to the first invasion's eyewitness accounts of Master Roger or Thomas of Split, but it does appear in a wide range of sources: Rus', Polish, and even Mamluk chronicles; Hungarian and other European letters and charters, and even some archaeologically. Though generally overlooked in favour of its more famous predecessor, when it does appear in popular discussion usually the second invasion is portrayed as a dismal failure, where newly constructed stone castles and well-armoured Hungarian knights, learning the lessons of 1241, overcame the Mongol armies.   The most recent reconstructions, building on the works of Tibor Szőcs, Peter Jackson, Michal Holeščák and our own series researcher, Jack Wilson, generally paint a more nuanced picture. In short: the surviving sources describe a series of small engagements with no great clash between Mongol and Hungarian armies. If King Laszló had defeated Nogia and Tele-Buqa in open battle, then that would have been described and glorified somewhere. It's difficult to imagine a King as battered by the nobility and papacy missing the propaganda coup of defeating the Mongols in the field, yet no such battle is recorded.    Instead, after entering the Kingdom through what is now Slovakia, Nogai and Tele-Buqa's armies broke into smaller parties and sought to ravage as much of the kingdom as possible. In some regions, particularly the  Sáros and Szepés counties, local resistance was stiff. One defender, Master George of the Soós noble house in Sáros county, enjoyed particular success, and a number of Hungarian charters attest to his victories over Mongol parties — and his habit of sending the heads of defeated Mongols to King Laszló. Speaking of Laszló, based on the charters he issued, which record the location of their issue, it seems he stayed as far away from the Mongols as possible, remaining in Buda and Pest until after the Mongol withdrawal, upon which he made a survey of the damaged territory. There is no medieval source describing the King facing the Mongols in any battle.   But despite charters playing up victories over Mongol arbans, it seems that Nogai and Tele-Buqa's campaign was rather successful, though specific movements are hard to trace. They pushed as far west as Pest, where two Mongol forces were memorably described converging below the city walls. It does not seem that major cities were assaulted, and given the fact the attack lasted only a few weeks, such hard points were certainly bypassed in favour of speed, overrunning and destroying unfortified towns and villages. When the Mongols began to withdraw around April 1285, they do not seem to have been in retreat, but returning triumphant; described as ladden with a great number of prisoners, it seems they had felt their raid was a success, acquired the booty they could carry and decided to return to the Golden Horde, appearing victorious, and Tele-Buqa doubtless ready to play up the raid as a great victory.   Their withdrawal through the Carpathians though, was to permanently stain the memory of the campaign. When Nogai turned south through Transylvania to return to his Danube territory, he faced stiff resistance from local Vlachs, Saxons and Szekély, who freed a number of prisoners. Their success over Nogai has likely been greatly overstated though, given that he had strength enough to campaign in Bulgaria and Thrace later that same year. But it was Tele-Buqa who was to feel the brunt of the misfortune. In the best recorded episode of the campaign, noted in Rus', Polish and Mamluk chronicles, while attempting to cross the Carpathian mountains to return to the Horde a vicious snowstorm caught his army. Losing the trail, pounded by the elements and likely assaulted by local defenders, all in addition to some sort of epidemic, his men starved or died of exposure.  Losses were massive, his loot abandoned in the mountains. The Galician-Volhynian Chronicle has Tele-Buqa make his way out of the mountains, on foot, with only a wife and a single mare.    While Nogai may have been rather happy with his bounty, Tele-Buqa had suffered a humiliating defeat. His chances of earning his election over Töde-Möngke must now have seemed slim. Envious of Nogai's good fortune while desiring the Jochid throne, it seems a little something in Tele-Buqa snapped that day.  Over the next year he made his plan. He enlisted his brother, Könchak, and two sons of Möngke-Temür, Alghui and To'rilcha, and together they schemed and schemed.    The conspirators launched their plot in 1287. In the accounts of the Mamluks, Töde-Möngke willingly abdicates, giving the throne to Tele-Buqa in order to spend the rest of his days in religious devotion. This was, presumably, the official version of events sent to the Mamluks, in order to not sour relations between the new Khan and the Sultan. Within the Horde, as recorded by the less favourable Rashid al-Din and the latter Öttemish Hajji, it seems the justification spread by Tele-Buqa and his allies was that Töde-Möngke was insane and totally unfit to rule. Thus, sometime in 1287 Töde-Möngke was pushed from the throne, and Tele-Buqa enthroned as the new Khan of the Golden Horde, splitting power between himself and his allies. The final fate of Töde-Möngke is unknown, but presumably Tele-Buqa did not long allow a potential rival claimant to enjoy his retirement.    Töde-Möngke, after his removal, seems to have become a favourite for folk tales in the Golden Horde, predominantly humorous ones reflecting stories of his insanity— and likely reflecting the insanity being the official excuse spread by Tele-Buqa within the Golden Horde. Öttemish Hajji, in the sixteenth century, records a few of these stories, though noted that many more vulgar versions existed that he dared not repeat.   The first amusing tale goes as follows.  An ambassador came for an audience with  Töde-Möngke, but the nobles worried that he would say meaningless things before them. However, knowing that Töde-Möngke would say whatever they told him to, (and indeed, that was what kept him on the throne), they came up with a plan. The nobles tied a rope around Töde-Möngke's hands, and would pull on it to stop him from speaking if necessary. The next morning, the ambassador came before the Khan. After initial pleasantries, Töde-Möngke asked if there were many mice in his country. The ambassador, presumably after a moment of confusion, responded with “a lot.” Next, Töde-Möngke asked if it often rained in his country; once again the ambassador answered in the affirmative. When Töde-Möngke began to ask his next question, the nobles began to pull on the rope, to which Töde-Möngke told the ambassador, “I would ask you more, but they are pulling the rope!” Hurriedly the nobles ushered the ambassador out of the room, giving him a fine fur coat and a horse to distract him.        Returning to his country, the ambassador was asked by his sovereign what kind of person Töde-Möngke was. The ambassador said, “I saw the Khan only once, and could not see him again, but he asked me these questions.” The ruler and his advisers pondered over the questions, and came to these conclusions: “It is good that he asked how much rain we receive, for all peoples benefit from rain. And it is good that he asked  about the mice, as they harm everything.” But no matter how much they discussed it, they could not comprehend his words, “They are pulling on the rope!”   Funny stuff, right? Maybe your sense of humour is a bit different from the sixteenth century Volga steppe. We'll share one more. On another occasion, Töde-Möngke led a campaign, and on his return suffered an attack of insanity. Whenever these fits occurred, he was totally unresponsive, and on this occasion remained so for 15 days. The army, unable to move during this time, faced starvation. With the situation drastic, it was decided to dress up a young man as a woman, and parade him before Töde-Möngke, hopefully causing him to remember his wife and desire to return home. Upon showing him to Töde-Möngke, the Khan immediately jumped up, got on a horse and rode off.  When Öttemish Hajji reports at this interval that more obscene versions of the story exist that are unfit to be shared, we'll let you fill in your mind what happened before he got on horseback.          Töde-Möngke then, in the company of a few courtiers, rode off like a madman to see his wife, only to suddenly grow angry that a mountain on the horizon wasn't moving. He then promptly got off his horse, laid down on the ground and refused to move until the mountain did. They lay there for hours, until one of the courtiers had a clever idea, telling the Khan that they could outsmart the mountain by moving under the cover of night.    We shouldn't rely too much on Öttemish Hajji's humorous anecdotes as genuine reflections of the thirteenth century. But even here, where Töde-Möngke is at his most incompent, he is still portrayed as capable of going on campaign, and suffering not constant illness, but periodic fits. Perhaps he suffered a condition that resulted in him being immobilized temporarily, physically or mentally, which worsened over his reign, causing him to try and seek assistance through religion and prayer, having run out of alternative means to save his body and throne. The process of which forced him to leave the daily running of governance to Jijek-Khatun. Tele-Buqa, unsympathetic to his uncle's plight, chose to portray it entirely as insanity in order to justify his coup. Thus, was Töde-Möngke, Khan of the Golden Horde, grandson of Batu, great-great-grandson of Chinggis Khan, remembered in history. Our next episode deals with the reign of Tele-Buqa Khan and his princely junta, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, then consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals, or liking, sharing and leaving a review of this podcast. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

Wear a fake glued-on beard, die multiple times, and then save the country, because this week on the podcast, Evie is discussing the epic 2018 Korean drama sageuk GRAND PRINCE. This sweepingly romantic historical kdrama stars Yoon Si Yoon, as a fake-bearded tragic prince, Jin Se-yeon as a woman much stronger than she knows, and Joo Sang-wook as a man who covets everything he cannot have. Except for all the fake beards, Evie loved this kdrama! Visit Evie's Patreon to support the show and for extra episodes: https://www.patreon.com/EvieKoreanDramaPodcast

Ivan Vasilyevich the Fourth was crowned Grand Prince of Muscovy at 3 years old after his father died. After a traumatic childhood of chaos and coups, Ivan would crown himself the first Tsar of Russia and go on to create the Russian Empire. The first half of his reign would have made him a legend... if the second half did not turn into a waking nightmare that would earn him the name "Ivan the Terrible."

In 1412, the monks of the Monastery of Klops (near Novgorod) found an unknown man, dressed as a monk, in the church, reading from the Epistles by candle-light. After the service they found him writing in one of the cells. He would not identify himself, but only repeated the questions that they asked him. They were about to eject him from the monastery, but the abbot, who was gifted with spiritual discernment, ordered that he be given a cell and allowed to remain. From that day on he lived in strict obedience and ascesis — he would eat only bread and water on Sundays, keeping a complete fast the rest of the week — but would never reveal his name or background.   In 1419 Prince Constantine Dimitrievitch, brother of Basil I, Grand Prince of Moscow, visited the monastery. During the meal, the still-unknown monk was assigned to read from the Lives of the Saints, and Prince Constantine immediately recognized him as Michael, son of his cousin Maxim, who had disappeared without a trace many years earlier. Constantine revealed his identity to the abbot; this same Constantine later became a monk himself.   Monk Michael lived for many more years at the monastery. In later years he was granted gifts of prophecy: once, meeting a young boy in the street, he accurately predicted that the boy would become Archbishop Jonas; he foretold the deaths of princes and archbishops, and predicted, years before the fact, that Novgorod would lose its independence. He reposed in peace in 1456.

This best-loved Saint of the Serbian people was born in 1169, the son of Stephen Nemanja, Grand Prince of Serbia. He was named Rastko by his parents. At the age of fifteen he was appointed governor of the province of Herzegovina, but worldly power was of no interest to him, and he began to wish to give himself more fully to God. He secretly left home and traveled to Mount Athos, where he became a novice at the Monastery of St Panteleimon. His father learned where he had gone and sent soldiers to bring him back, but before the soldiers could claim him, he was tonsured a monk with the name of Sabbas (Sava), after St Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5).   In time, under the influence of his son, Stephen Nemanja abdicated his kingship, and in 1196 he became a monk under the name of Symeon, traveling to the Holy Mountain to join his son. Symeon was quite old, and unable to endure all the ascetic labors of long-time monks, so his son redoubled his own ascetical struggle, telling his father, "I am your ascesis." The two monks together founded the Chilander Monastery, which became the center of Serbian piety and culture. Saint Symeon reposed in 1200, and his body soon began to exude a miracle-working myrrh; thus he is commemorated as St Symeon the Myrrh-streaming (February 13).   Saint Sava retired to a hermit's life in a cell on the Holy Mountain, but was compelled to return to the world: his two brothers were at war with one another, causing much bloodshed in Serbia. The Saint returned home with his father's holy relics, mediated between his brothers, and persuaded them to make peace with one another over their father's tomb, restoring peace the Serbian land. At the pleas of the people, St Sava remained in Serbia thereafter. He persuaded the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Church in Serbia. Against his will, he was ordained first Archbishop of his land in 1219. He labored tirelessly to establish the Orthodox Faith, for, though his father had been a Christian, many of the people were still pagan. In old age he resigned the episcopal throne and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in peace in 1236.

This best-loved Saint of the Serbian people was born in 1169, the son of Stephen Nemanja, Grand Prince of Serbia. He was named Rastko by his parents. At the age of fifteen he was appointed governor of the province of Herzegovina, but worldly power were of no interest to him, and he began to wish to give himself more fully to God. He secretly left home and traveled to Mount Athos, where he became a novice at the Monastery of St Panteleimon. His father learned where he had gone and sent soldiers to bring him back, but before the soldiers could claim him, he was tonsured a monk with the name of Sabbas (Sava), after St Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5).   In time, under the influence of his son, Stephen Nemanja abdicated his kingship, and in 1196 he became a monk under the name of Symeon, traveling to the Holy Mountain to join his son. Symeon was quite old, and unable to endure all the ascetic labors of long-time monks, so his son redoubled his own ascetical struggle, telling his father, "I am your ascesis." The two monks together founded the Chilander Monastery, which became the center of Serbian piety and culture. Saint Symeon reposed in 1200, and his body soon began to exude a miracle-working myrrh; thus he is commemorated as St Symeon the Myrrh-streaming (February 13).   Saint Sava retired to a hermit's life in a cell on the Holy Mountain, but was compelled to return to the world: his two brothers were at war with one another, causing much bloodshed in Serbia. The Saint returned home with his father's holy relics, mediated between his brothers, and persuaded them to make peace with one another over their father's tomb, restoring peace the Serbian land. At the pleas of the people, St Sava remained in Serbia thereafter. He persuaded the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Church in Serbia. Against his will, he was ordained first Archbishop of his land in 1219. He labored tirelessly to establish the Orthodox Faith, for, though his father had been a Christian, many of the people were still pagan. In old age he resigned the episcopal throne and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in peace in 1236.

This best-loved Saint of the Serbian people was born in 1169, the son of Stephen Nemanja, Grand Prince of Serbia. He was named Rastko by his parents. At the age of fifteen he was appointed governor of the province of Herzegovina, but worldly power was of no interest to him, and he began to wish to give himself more fully to God. He secretly left home and traveled to Mount Athos, where he became a novice at the Monastery of St Panteleimon. His father learned where he had gone and sent soldiers to bring him back, but before the soldiers could claim him, he was tonsured a monk with the name of Sabbas (Sava), after St Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5).   In time, under the influence of his son, Stephen Nemanja abdicated his kingship, and in 1196 he became a monk under the name of Symeon, traveling to the Holy Mountain to join his son. Symeon was quite old, and unable to endure all the ascetic labors of long-time monks, so his son redoubled his own ascetical struggle, telling his father, "I am your ascesis." The two monks together founded the Chilander Monastery, which became the center of Serbian piety and culture. Saint Symeon reposed in 1200, and his body soon began to exude a miracle-working myrrh; thus he is commemorated as St Symeon the Myrrh-streaming (February 13).   Saint Sava retired to a hermit's life in a cell on the Holy Mountain, but was compelled to return to the world: his two brothers were at war with one another, causing much bloodshed in Serbia. The Saint returned home with his father's holy relics, mediated between his brothers, and persuaded them to make peace with one another over their father's tomb, restoring peace the Serbian land. At the pleas of the people, St Sava remained in Serbia thereafter. He persuaded the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Church in Serbia. Against his will, he was ordained first Archbishop of his land in 1219. He labored tirelessly to establish the Orthodox Faith, for, though his father had been a Christian, many of the people were still pagan. In old age he resigned the episcopal throne and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in peace in 1236.

In 1412, the monks of the Monastery of Klops (near Novgorod) found an unknown man, dressed as a monk, in the church, reading from the Epistles by candle-light. After the service they found him writing in one of the cells. He would not identify himself, but only repeated the questions that they asked him. They were about to eject him from the monastery, but the abbot, who was gifted with spiritual discernment, ordered that he be given a cell and allowed to remain. From that day on he lived in strict obedience and ascesis — he would eat only bread and water on Sundays, keeping a complete fast the rest of the week — but would never reveal his name or background.   In 1419 Prince Constantine Dimitrievitch, brother of Basil I, Grand Prince of Moscow, visited the monastery. During the meal, the still-unknown monk was assigned to read from the Lives of the Saints, and Prince Constantine immediately recognized him as Michael, son of his cousin Maxim, who had disappeared without a trace many years earlier. Constantine revealed his identity to the abbot; this same Constantine later became a monk himself.   Monk Michael lived for many more years at the monastery. In later years he was granted gifts of prophecy: once, meeting a young boy in the street, he accurately predicted that the boy would become Archbishop Jonas; he foretold the deaths of princes and archbishops, and predicted, years before the fact, that Novgorod would lose its independence. He reposed in peace in 1456.

Season 1, Episode 55

This best-loved Saint of the Serbian people was born in 1169, the son of Stephen Nemanja, Grand Prince of Serbia. He was named Rastko by his parents. At the age of fifteen he was appointed governor of the province of Herzegovina, but worldly power were of no interest to him, and he began to wish to give himself more fully to God. He secretly left home and traveled to Mount Athos, where he became a novice at the Monastery of St Panteleimon. His father learned where he had gone and sent soldiers to bring him back, but before the soldiers could claim him, he was tonsured a monk with the name of Sabbas (Sava), after St Sabbas the Sanctified (December 5).   In time, under the influence of his son, Stephen Nemanja abdicated his kingship, and in 1196 he became a monk under the name of Symeon, traveling to the Holy Mountain to join his son. Symeon was quite old, and unable to endure all the ascetic labors of long-time monks, so his son redoubled his own ascetical struggle, telling his father, "I am your ascesis." The two monks together founded the Chilander Monastery, which became the center of Serbian piety and culture. Saint Symeon reposed in 1200, and his body soon began to exude a miracle-working myrrh; thus he is commemorated as St Symeon the Myrrh-streaming (February 13).   Saint Sava retired to a hermit's life in a cell on the Holy Mountain, but was compelled to return to the world: his two brothers were at war with one another, causing much bloodshed in Serbia. The Saint returned home with his father's holy relics, mediated between his brothers, and persuaded them to make peace with one another over their father's tomb, restoring peace the Serbian land. At the pleas of the people, St Sava remained in Serbia thereafter. He persuaded the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Church in Serbia. Against his will, he was ordained first Archbishop of his land in 1219. He labored tirelessly to establish the Orthodox Faith, for, though his father had been a Christian, many of the people were still pagan. In old age he resigned the episcopal throne and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While returning from his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in peace in 1236.

Ivan IV, Grand Prince of Moscow declares himself the first Tsar of Russia. The powerful boyars challenge him, but the fierce Ivan always has the last word. www.tracknerds.com The post W029: Ivan the Terrible (1944) appeared first on .

Supper is served, the senate convenes, and the Exaltation Day gala comes to a close. Will the vote to repeal the current primogeniture pass? To close out the annual gathering, the standing Grand Prince himself always arrives to deliver an ending speech. Nobles, aristocrats and senators alike all gather around to get to hear the ruler of Taldor himself speak...   **DOWN ONE PLAYER THIS SESSION**   Check out the Discord server for a text write-up of #TheStorySoFar (that's the channel) to get a real quick catch-up to the current episode! Or, look into #WarForTheCrown for fully detailed text versions of the adventures! Also, just come hang out!   Royalty-free background music assortment by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com/music/

Russia in the 1400's. The Conquest of Novgorod by Ivan III the Great, Grand Prince of Moscow See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week brings Just Ivan, Grand Prince and Beauty and Brawn to discuss Metal Gear once more, Lindsay Lohan's stupidity and we react to the new Friday the 13th trailer that was released the morning of the recording. See it for yourself in this episode. **WARNING** It is extremely graphic, but other than that come on in, the weather is nice!Music Credit: Intro and interlude music created by Waterflame. You can check out his stuff at waterflame.negrounds.com. Our closing music was provided by TeknoAxe. He can be found over at teknoaxe.com and on youtube.com/teknoaxe. Thanks to the two of them for their talent and great work.Be sure to check like share subscribe and follow us here:https://www.instagram.com/playboxcast/https://www.facebook.com/PlayBoxCast/https://www.twitter.com/PlayBoxCast/https://www.twitch.tv/playboxcasthttp://www.playboxone.com

This week brings Just Ivan, Grand Prince and Beauty and Brawn to discuss Metal Gear once more, Lindsay Lohan's stupidity and we react to the new Friday the 13th trailer that was released the morning of the recording. See it for yourself in this episode. **WARNING** It is extremely graphic, but other than that come on in, the weather is nice!Music Credit: Intro and interlude music created by Waterflame. You can check out his stuff at waterflame.negrounds.com. Our closing music was provided by TeknoAxe. He can be found over at teknoaxe.com and on youtube.com/teknoaxe. Thanks to the two of them for their talent and great work.Be sure to check like share subscribe and follow us here:https://www.instagram.com/playboxcast/https://www.facebook.com/PlayBoxCast/https://www.twitter.com/PlayBoxCast/https://www.twitch.tv/playboxcasthttp://www.playboxone.com

In this packed and special mid-week episode, The Grand Prince, Just Ivan and The Quiet Storm discuss their impressions of the Microsoft and Sony E3 2016 press conferences. There's a lot to unpack so don't wast any time, jump right in and find out what they thought!Music Credit: Intro and interlude music created by Waterflame. You can check out his stuff at waterflame.negrounds.com. Our closing music was provided by TeknoAxe. He can be found over at teknoaxe.com and on youtube.com/teknoaxe. Thanks to the two of them for their talent and great work.

In this packed and special mid-week episode, The Grand Prince, Just Ivan and The Quiet Storm discuss their impressions of the Microsoft and Sony E3 2016 press conferences. There's a lot to unpack so don't wast any time, jump right in and find out what they thought!Music Credit: Intro and interlude music created by Waterflame. You can check out his stuff at waterflame.negrounds.com. Our closing music was provided by TeknoAxe. He can be found over at teknoaxe.com and on youtube.com/teknoaxe. Thanks to the two of them for their talent and great work.

Maximus Groves and Matthew Queen talk with dark comedy The Grand Prince of Moscow's series creator Edward Reid & actress Sarah Spencer chat on the podcast about about how to create your own TV show, getting new projects off the ground, making your own opportunities, life as a background artist, and weird stories from LA as we share our mutual admiration of Art Bell and Coast to Coast radio.

Edward Reid & RC Sayyah from Grand Prince of Moscow discuss the upcoming TV show, how they got started in their careers, and how they've managed to get so much attention around town and online!

In this episode, the Geekologists discuss "The Kingsroad", the second episode of Game Of Thrones. Geekologists on this episode: Darcy Burnard Holly Anderson Josh de Lioncourt Molly McClenahan Meka White Links for this episode: Josh's Blog The Book Pushers The Wikipedia page for The Kingsroad

The Headline on CNN reads: "U.S. condemns Russia's 'invasion and occupation". Headline news on The Guardian newspaper website today "Ukraine PM Warns of War as Russian Military Seizes Control on Crimea". Another article on The Guardian website by Orlando Figes notes: "The signs are ominous: Crimea's parliament has been stormed by pro-Russian gunmen; its airports seized by soldiers in Russian uniforms; and Russian military trucks and helicopters are on the move. It looks like we are heading for a new Crimean war." The area of the Crimean peninsular is strategically, culturally and historically tied to Russia. The Guardian article continues: "Crimea is vitally important to the Russians. According to medieval chronicles, it was in Khersonesos – the ancient Greek colonial city on the south-western coast of Crimea, just outside Sevastopol – that Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kiev, was baptised in 988, thereby bringing Christianity to Kievan Rus', the kingdom from which Russia derives its religious and national identity."

Adrian Jones discusses the retinue of the Grand Prince, the group that gradually evolved into an aristocracy. He questions some of the stereotypes about autocracy in Russia, emphasising oligarchical aspects of the Russian polity. Copyright 2014 Adrian Jones / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Adrian Jones discusses the retinue of the Grand Prince, the group that gradually evolved into an aristocracy. He questions some of the stereotypes about autocracy in Russia, emphasising oligarchical aspects of the Russian polity. Copyright 2014 Adrian Jones / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Adrian Jones discusses the retinue of the Grand Prince, the group that gradually evolved into an aristocracy. He questions some of the stereotypes about autocracy in Russia, emphasising oligarchical aspects of the Russian polity. Copyright 2014 Adrian Jones / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Vladimir I is often credited with bringing Christianity to Russia, though he actually embraced paganism first as Grand Prince of Kievan Rus. Wishing to unite Russia under one religion, Vladimir changed the spiritual path of his country forever. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Young Ivan IV, Grand Prince of Moscow, serves as a figurehead ruler with his mother as Regent.