Great Troubles
The Great Troubles[10][11][d] (Church Slavonic: Великая замятня, romanized: Velikaya zamyatnya, as found in Rus' chronicles[3][e]), also known as the Golden Horde Dynastic War,[14] was a war of succession in the Golden Horde from 1359 to 1381.[14]
This article is about the 14th–century Golden Horde war of succession. For the 1598–1613 Tsardom of Russia successon crisis, see Time of Troubles. For the 20th–century Northern Ireland conflict, see The Troubles.
This era, which followed shortly after the Black Death had ravaged the cities of the Golden Horde, was characterised by two decades of near anarchy.[15] A long series of short-reigning khans deposed and killed each other, only to suffer the same fate next. Mamai emerged as the most powerful Mongol warlord, frequently employing Rus' principalities such as Tver and Ryazan as his allies.[3] Because he was not a Chingisid (descendant of Genghis Khan), Mamai had no legitimate claim to the throne, and instead used Chingisid puppet-khans to exercise political control.[16]
The Rus' principalities and neighbouring states frequently changed their allegiancies at this time, joining forces with or against various Mongol factions and with or against each other, in tactical efforts to exploit rapidly shifting situations.[8] The Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well as Horde vassals such as Tver and Muscovy were opportunistic in profiting from the internecine warfare that weakened Mongol-Tatar control in the region.[17] Algirdas defeated Mamai's forces at the Battle of Blue Waters and thereby conquered the Principality of Kiev, while Dmitry Donskoy successfully united most Rus' princes against Mamai at the 1380 Battle of Kulikovo, solidifying Muscovite pre-eminence amongst them.[18] However, Tokhtamysh's lightning rise to power in the late 1370s, his definitive victory over Mamai (1381) and subsequent sack of Moscow (1382) confirmed the Rus' principalities' vassalage to the Golden Horde.[19]
Background[edit]
The Golden Horde had reached the height of its power and prosperity under Özbeg Khan (r. 1313–1341), when overland trade from the Black Sea to Yuan dynasty China flourished. While Özbeg adopted Islam, the Orthodox Church (exempt from taxes through yarliks or patents[20]) continued supporting his rule, and the Turco-Mongolian population of his realm gradually assimilated and became known as "Tatars".
Taxes regularly collected by the darughachi or basqaq (baskak) from the subordinate Rus' principalities provided the Horde's coffers with plenty revenue. The responsibility of tax collection was eventually transferred from the basqaq to the Rus' princes, although it is unclear when this happened, or why, though the Golden Horde officials authorised with collecting the taxes were widely hated in Rus' sources.[21] The last references to the basqaq system are found from the 1350s to 1382 in the Principality of Ryazan (possibly the last region to switch to princely tax collection), while emir Mamai is said to have intended to restore the basqaq system around 1380, indicating that it had fallen into disuse by then.[21]
The khans obtained the prerogative of granting the title of Grand Prince of Vladimir to any Rus' prince they favoured through a yarlik (patent).[22] They employed this highly symbolic title to prop up a weaker Rus' principality (usually Muscovy) against a stronger one (usually Tver) to keep the latter in check as a divide and rule policy.[23] The Principality of Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal also played this power game according to the Mongol rules in 1353 and 1371.[22] In the mid-14th century, Algirdas (Olgerd) of Lithuania would try to bring Tver and Ryazan under his control during the Lithuanian–Muscovite War (1368–1372), and also played by the Mongol rules by sending a delegation to Golden Horde (as the neutral power-broker) in order to negotiate peace.[3] But the Mongols used Moscow to counterbalance the rise of Lithuanian power; they arrested the Lithuanian envoys and handed them over to the Muscovites, so that Algirdas had to ransom his emissaries from his enemies.[3]
Two developments in the mid-14th century were catastrophic for the Horde's society and economy: several Mongol khanates fell between 1330 and 1370, and the Black Death reached the capital city of Sarai in the 1340s, spreading to all urban centres of Golden Horde and its vassals, with many in the ranks of the khan's army and up to 25% of the Rus' population dying to the pandemic. The end of Özbeg Khan's reign in 1341 also sparked a series of dynastic regicides, first intermittently, then from 1359 with alarming frequency. Özbeg's son Tini Beg was murdered by his brother Jani Beg (1342), who in turn was possibly killed by his son Berdi Beg (1357). The latter's assassination by his brother Qulpa in 1359 is usually considered the start of the Great Troubles.[24] When Qulpa was killed (1360) by yet another brother, Nawruz Beg, who himself died under suspicious circumstances after a year on the throne, the lineage of Batu Khan (the 1242 founder of the Golden Horde) went extinct. From 1360 to 1380, competing branches of the Jochid clan fought bitterly over the fate of the dynasty, while no fewer than 24 khans (possibly even more) were enthroned. The capital city of Sarai changed hands multiple times, in one year being successively conquered by 6 different pretenders.
1359–1360[edit]
Khan Berdi Beg (Berdibek) was killed in 1359[24] in a coup by his brother Qulpa. Qulpa's two sons were Christians and bore the Slavic names Michael and Ivan, which outraged the Muslim populace of the Golden Horde. In 1360, Qulpa's brother Nawruz Beg (Navruz) revolted against the khan and killed him and his sons.
When Rus' princes heard of Berdi Beg's death, they had begun travelling to Sarai to receive patents from his successor, but by the time they arrived, Nawruz had already assumed the throne.[24] Nawruz did not award the title of Grand Prince of Vladimir to Muscovite prince Dmitry Ivanovich (later known as "Donskoy"), but to Dmitry Konstantinovich of Suzdal, the prince of Nizhny Novgorod–Suzdal, nephew of Alexander of Suzdal who previously held it (before Ivan I "Kalita" of Moscow).[24] Dmitry Konstantinovich was part of a group of Rus' princes who were concerned about the rise of the Daniilovichi princely dynasty of Muscovy; the princes of Rostov, Beloozero, and Galich–Dmitrov supported Konstantinovich's claim to grand prince in return for receiving extra power for themselves from Nawruz.[25] Nawruz was overthrown in 1361, however.[1]
By 1360, Urus Khan had set up court in Sighnaq (near modern Shieli, Kazakhstan). He was named Urus, which means "Russian" in the Turkish language, presumably because "Urus-Khan's mother was a Russian princess... he was prepared to press his claims on Russia on that ground."[26]
1370s[edit]
Mamai also had to deal with a rebellion in Nizhny Novgorod. Muscovite troops impinged on the Bulgar territory of Arab-Shah, the son of Bulat Temir, who caught them off guard and defeated them on the banks of the Pyana River (1377). However Arab-Shah was unable to take advantage of the situation because of the advance of another Mongol general from the east.[29] Mamai sent an army against the Muscovite alliance in 1378, but Dmitri Donskoy defeated Mamai's forces led by general Begich at the Battle of the Vozha River.[3]
In 1372, Urus marched west and occupied Sarai. His nephew and lieutenant Tokhtamysh deserted him and went to Timur for assistance. Tokhtamysh attacked Urus, killing his son Kutlug-Buka, but lost the battle and fled to Samarkand. Soon after, another general Edigu deserted Urus and went over to Timur. Timur personally attacked Urus in 1376 but the campaign ended indecisively. Urus died the next year and was succeeded by his son, Timur-Melik, who immediately lost Sighnaq to Tokhtamysh. In 1378, Tokhtamysh conquered Sarai.[30]