TAR 



75 



TAR 



against Hulaim, the Mongol governor of Persia, who 

 aimed at independence, but was defeated on the 19th ol 

 January, 12G3, in a bloody battle on the banks of the 

 Terek, and had a considerable part of his army drowned in 

 retreating across the frozen river. It was in the same year 

 that Marco Polo came to the Golden Camp, where he 

 stayed for a whole year. Berke, who is generally repre- 

 sented as a prince of great merit, and whose influence in 

 Asia Minor was sensibly felt by the Byzantine emperors, 

 died in 126(3. and was succeeded by Mengku Timur, a 

 grandson of Batu. This prince ceded to the Genoese 

 Kaft'a in the Crimea, a town which was then one of the 

 great markets where the Tatars used to sell the immense 

 number of prisoners that they made in Russia and Poland, 

 ns slaves to the southern nations, and especially to the 

 Sultans of Egypt, who there recruited the body of the 

 Miunluks. He sent commissioners into all the subject 

 Russian towns, who sold as slaves all who did not pay the 

 y poll-tax imposed upon them by the Tatars. This 

 proceeding caused such great mischief to the com- 

 i' of Old Novgorod, that the Germans of Liibeck 

 and other Hanseatic towns, in order to save their stores, 

 sent ambassadors with rich presents to Mengku Timur, 

 who reached the Golden Camp in 1269. Mengku Timur 

 Khan died about 1283. His successors, Tuday Mensjku 

 and Talabugha, ravaged Hun<raiy and Poland, threatened 

 my. and kept up diplomatic relations with France. 

 I Remusat, Memoiren de I'Acad. des Inscript. ct B. L., 

 TO). , 



The following khan was Toktay, whose reign is im- 

 portant in many respects. Under him, paper money, an 

 old invention, afterward* imitated in Persia, was introduced 

 into Kiptshak under the name of Jaw, many years before 

 any such tiling was known in Europe. (J. von Klaproth, 

 Vnnry ; Von Hammer, p. 222.) Toktay 

 owed his elevation to the throne to Noirha'i. above men- 

 tioned, a powerful under-khan of the southern Turks of 

 Kiptshak, who belonged to the house of Genghis Khan, and 

 who was married to Euphrosyna, a natural daughter of the 

 emperor Michael Palacologus. The power and the in- 

 fluence of Nogha'i were so great, that he would perhaps 

 have made himself master of Kiptshak, if jealousy had not 

 i among his sons and led to a civil war, in which 

 Tuktay took an active part. After a strasrsrlc of seven 

 years, Noehai was defeated, and died of u wound in I2.I5, 

 but he left h ; s name to his tribes, who from that time 

 to the present day have been, and are still known 

 undi-r the name of Tatars NosihaT.s, or Nogay Tartars. 

 y Khan, who died in the year 1313, abandoned 

 the Islam and adored idols and the stare, but he never 

 (1 himself intolerant to other believers. He was 

 married to a natural daughter of his ally the emperor 

 Andionicus, who followed the policy of some other By- 

 zantine emperors, who gave their legitimate princesses to 

 ClnUtian princes, while they abandoned their natural 

 to Turks and Tatars, who did not set much 

 on the difference between legitimate and illegitimate 

 children. 



I M.ei;, the successor of Toktay, a boy thirteen years of 

 nge, found the Russian princes disobedient: they delayed 

 ,< the oath of vassalage until the young khan pe- 

 remptorily ordered the first of them, Michael, grand-duke 

 of Moscow, to appear in the Golden Camp. Michael im- 

 fe!y went, justified himself, and was dismissed with- 

 out punishment, but IVbcL' .-ei/ed him some years later, 

 and, after having punished him for some months, or- 

 dered him to be put to death. This happened (in 1319) 

 precisely a year after the pope had written a letter to 

 Usbeg, in which he thanked him fur the kind protection 

 that lie had granted to his Christian subjects. (Mo- 

 i, ///A/. '/' .'., p. 130.) In 1327, 



an garrison of Twer having been surprised and 

 y the Russian inhabitants, who were ex- 

 t ol' national v l,y their prince 



j'-z, Usbeg Khan invaded the coun- 

 1 the inhabitants, expelled Alexander, and 

 i'/hn Jaroslawicx, prince of RiHsan, to be exe- 

 >o and nis two sons were beheaded in 

 death was preceded or followed by the 

 .re, amonsr whom was Juri Dani- 

 l.iki; iif Mo vow. Many common people 

 ii- fate, ami fur tV.rty years aftc-r this bloody re- 

 aa never a:ram duturbed in Russia by any 



rebellion against the authority of the Tatars. By a treaty of 

 the 7th August, 1333, the first which was made between the 

 Tatars and European states, Usbeg granted consideiable 

 commercial advantages to the Venetians of Azof or Tana. 

 (The treaty is contained in Hammer, Geschichte des Osma- 

 nischen Reiches, vol. iii., p. 665.) Usbeg's court was bril- 

 liant. Although as a Mohammedan he had several wives, 

 he was far from keeping them in that close confinement 

 to which the women of the Oriental nations have always 

 been subjected. Sitting on a silver throne under a golden 

 canopy, and surrounded by his royal children and the 

 nobles of his court, the gallant khan rose when one of his 

 women entered the room, and stepping forwards, took the 

 hand of the unveiled lady and led her to a seat by 

 his side. (Hammer.) One of his daughters was mar- 

 ried to Kusun, sultan of Egypt, a native of Kiptshak. 

 Usbeg died in 1340, and his descendants became khans of 

 some Turkish tribes to the east of the Caspian Sea, which 

 are still known by the name of Usbecks. 



One of Usbeg's successors, Berdibeg (1359), murdered 

 his old father, strangled his twelve brothers, and assumed 

 the title of ' king of the just, the sublime support of the 

 world and of religion.' He himself was murdered three 

 years later, and with his death the house of Batu became 

 extinct. The reign of all the following khans was short 

 and bloody. Civil wars shook the empire, and Kiptshak 

 was divided for some time into several khanats, the most 

 powerful of which were those of Kasan, of Astrakhan, of the 

 Crimea, and of the Yai'k, each of which claimed the supre- 

 macy. At last Mamay was successful in reuniting them 

 for a short time. He made an alliance with Jaghello, the 

 Errand-dttke of Lithuania, for the purpose of subjugating 

 the different Russian princes, who had become less depend- 

 ent on Kiptshak in proportion as its strength was under- 

 mined by war and rebellion. Dmitri, the grand-duke of 

 Moscow, had just assembled his troops, when, on the 8th 

 of September, 1380, he was attacked in the plain of Kiili- 

 kow, by 700,000 (?) Tatars and Lithuanians. (Karamsin, 

 v., p. 31 ; and all the other Russian historians.) The 

 Tatars were defeated with dreadful slaughter ; 200,000 (?) of 

 them were left on the field, and Mamay fled to Kaffa in 

 the Crimea, where he was treacherously murdered. For 

 the first time during a hundred and forty years, a hope of 

 national independence consoled the Russians. 



Toktamish Khan, the son of Urus Kkan, who was the 

 founder of the dynasty of the White Horde, avenged the 

 defeat of Kulikow. In 1382 he took Moscow by storm, 

 burnt the town, and ravaged Russia. He renewed the 

 treaties with the Venetians and the Genoese, and Kiptshak 

 was in a fair way to recover from all its calamities, when 

 Timur, or Tamerlane, the conqueror of Asia, appeared on 

 he banks of the YaVk. Toktamish was twice defeated 

 Dy Timur, and in a third battle on the banks of the Kama, 

 north of the mouth of the Bielaya, which happened on the 

 18th of June, 1391, his whole army was slaughtered. The 

 <han of Kiptshak, however, did not despair : he appeared 

 n the field with a new army, and advanced to meet Timur. 

 The encounter took place near the mouth of the Terek, on. 

 :he 15th of April, 1395; but notwithstanding their heroic 

 resistance, the Tatars were again defeated, and Timur's 

 host overwhelmed Russia. Serai and Astrakhan were 

 destroyed, Moscow was threatened, and saved by the in- 

 terposition of the Holy Virgin, who appeared on the 

 walls (26th of August, 1395), and Toktamish fled to 

 Witold, grand-duke of Lithuania. Meanwhile Timur had 

 eft Kiptshak, and his beys, unable to maintain themselves 

 n the hostile country, were driven out in 1399 by some en- 

 :erprising Tatar chiefs. One of them, Kpstlogh Timur, 

 became khan of Kasan, and the others maintained them- 

 selves in the Crimea, on the Yai'k, and at Great Serai', the 

 ihan of which assumed the name of khan of the Golden 

 florde, without having much authority over the others. 

 Encouraged by the divisions among their masters, the 

 ilussian princes paid their tribute very irregularly, and 

 ceased to appear in the Golden Camp and to take the oath 

 of vassalage. In 1450 Haji Ghiray was almost independ- 

 ent in the Crimea. From 1462 there were constant wars 

 >etween the khan of Kasan and Ivan Wassiliewicz, grand- 

 duke of Moscow, who at last conquered the whole khanat, 

 and took the capital, Kasan, in the autumn of 1468. 

 During this time, Casimir, king of Poland, defeated the 

 Southern Tatars, and when the Great Khan of SeraY was 

 )old enough to send ambassadors to Ivan to claim the 



