mongol expansion & eurasian commercial axes 43
of Mongol rulers among agricultural or even urban populations—as
happened in the course of the next few decades in china and iran25—
was certainly not part of his vision.26
Following the usual nomad custom whereby the eldest son was given
the pasturelands furthest out, Jochi’s share included the westernmost
grasslands of the chinggisid domains. the initial core of these lands, by the
headwaters of the irtysh, included only the territory of modern Kazakh-
stan and the lower basin of the syr darya. while his brothers and their
nomads held lands that could no longer be enlarged upon, Jochi had the
considerable advantage of having an open horizon at the borders of his
inheritance: the Mongol horsemen saw the conquest of this great expanse
of grassland, from the borders of turkestan to the foothills of the carpathi-
ans, as their destiny. the realisation of this vision would fall not to Jochi
(d. 1227) but to his son Batu, the true founder of the golden horde.27
the great Khan Ögödei, the first of chinggis Khan’s successors, tackled
the matter of securing the Jochid lands as one of his most urgent and most
pressing tasks: the qurultai of 1229 agreed upon a great campaign, in which
every ulus would contribute troops. this was a pan-Mongol undertaking,
where the whole flower of chinggisid chivalry would play their part, while
Batu was named the overall commander. the leadership of the military
operations as such was entrusted to sübödei, an experienced general.28
the groundwork for the great expedition was laid when the emir chor-
maghun occupied the important strategic bridgehead of azerbaijan and
arran in 1232, and by other painstaking logistical preparations; the expe-
dition itself only got underway in 1236, when the Mongol army entered
the cuman steppe. the first victim of the Mongol assault was Volga Bul-
garia, the ancient commercial centre on the middle of the Volga river,
and thereafter cuman armies themselves were annihilated. a string of
victories against the russian knyazates culminated in the occupation of
Kiev in 1240. crimea received similarly harsh treatment around the same
time, probably in 1238. the tartars continued to ride westward in 1241,
when they reached the romanian lands and the kingdoms of hungary and
poland, then the Bulgarian empire south of the danube in 1242. the great
25 cf. chapter 3.1.
26 ibid. and Vladimirtsov, Régime, p. 129.
27 Barthold, Boyle, “Batu,” spuler, Horde, pp. 14 ff., grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 57 ff.
28 cf. Barthold, Boyle, “Batu,” spuler, Horde, p. 15, grousset, Empire, pp. 328 ff., grekov,
Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 57 ff.