44 chapter two
Khan Ögödei’s death in 1241 was the signal for the end of hostilities, as all
Mongol combatants withdrew back to their own ulus.29
despite this hasty retreat, the principal goal of these two Mongol west-
ward campaigns had been reached: the whole of the cuman steppe had
been conquered and now merely awaited Jochid occupation. when the
tartars settled permanently into the vast territory conquered in the cam-
paign of 1236–1242, this marked the effective birth of the golden horde,
known in the east as the “ulus of Jochi.”
the founder of the horde, Batu, hastened to organise it in the estab-
lished pattern of nomad society, probably unchanged for thousands of
years. the first step that he took in applying these customs to the new
geographic conditions was to install the horde itself in the midst of his
ulus,30 on the lower reaches of the Volga at sarai, which would serve as
the capital for a time and where Batu’s memory would endure for longer
yet.31 the khan used the same time-honoured methods when he assigned
the endless steppe as pastureland to his subjects in orderly fashion: the
tartars “have divided among themselves all scythia, which extends from
the danube to where the sun rises, and every commander, according to
whether he has a greater or smaller number of men under him, is familiar
with the limits of his pasturelands and where he ought to graze in sum-
mer and winter, in spring and autumn. For in the winter they move down
southwards to the warmer regions, and in summer they move up north-
wards to the colder ones.”32
29 Barthold, Boyle, “Batu,” spuler, Horde, pp. 16–24, grousset, Empire, pp. 328–333 ff., gre-
kov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 207–217; for the invasion of the romanian lands, cf. sacerdoţeanu,
Invazie, gonţa, Românii, spinei, Moldova, pp. 157 ff., papacostea, Românii, pp. 84–135.
30 william of rubruck, a close observer of Mongol customs, remarks here that dicitur
curia orda lingua eorum, quod sonat medium, quia semper est in medio hominum suorum
(wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana, i, p. 213). the Franciscan’s etymology is correct, and he
offers a description of the “horde” or court of Batu as an example. this restricted sense
obtained throughout the period of the ulus of Jochi, but was also extended early on to
mean the entirety of a tartar state, as in the expression golden horde (cf. doerfer, Ele-
mente, i, pp. 32–39, on the turkish ordu, Mongol ordo or orda, “palace, military camp,
empire”); for a description of the ilkhanid horde, encamped on the meadows of ujan by
tabriz in azerbaijan, cf. ‛umarī/lech, p. 149 (commentary, p. 326 note 37).
31 sarai-Batu, or old sarai (now the village of selitrenoe near astrakhan), in contrast
to sarai-Berke, also known as new sarai (now tsarev) at the confluence of the Volga with
the akhtuba (grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 68–69). allsen, “saray,” pp. 41–44, considers
that sarai-Batu and sarai-Berke are one and the same place (old sarai/akhtuba), and that
“saray al-Jadīd (= new saray = tsarev) became the new capital in the early 1340s when
Janibek came to power” (p. 42).
32 rubruck/Jackson, p. 72. contradicting the long-held belief that golden horde
nomadism was an anarchic and haphazard affair, this eyewitness report attests to a