The Golden Horde, 1241-1390 Eastward Expansion






Disintegration of the Golden Horde, 1390-1500



The Tatar defeat in the BATTLE OF KULIKOVO at the hands of Grand Prince of Muscovy DMITRY DONSKOY in 1380 marked the end of Tatar supremacy over Russia's principalities.
In 1395-98 TAMERLANE raided the lands of the Golden Horde and sacked their capital, Sarai. The Horde never fully recovered from that blow. In the west, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded, annecting Russian principalities previously subject to the Golden Horde. Muscovy also utilized the Horde's weakness to expand. The Golden Horde itself disintegrated, the UZBEKS (in the Asian steppe east of the Ural) seceded in 1425, the KHANATE OF KAZAN in 1439, the KHANATE OF THE CRIMEAN TATARS in 1441, the KHANATE OF ASTRAKHAN in 1447. Kazan fell to Russian troops in 1552, Astrakhan in 1556, both during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The Khanate of the Crimean Tatars, with the capital at BATCHISARAI, placed itself under Ottoman protection in 1475, and was to last on until 1783.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Encyclopedic description from infoplease
The Kazan Khanate, from the History of Tatarstan
Batchisarai by George Page et al., illustrations of the Palace of the Khans of the Crimean Tatars
The Umdet ul=ahbar and the Turkic Narrative Sources for the Golden Horde and the Later Golden Horde, by Uli Schamiloglu (Central Asian Studies) a survey of literature from the Golden Horde
Timeline Kipchaks, by Zakiev M. Z. Sakaliba
DOCUMENTS Travels of Ibn Batuta in Asia and Africa, from Medieval Sourcebook, on Astrakhan, Sarai, Bolgar, scroll down
Ibn Battuta's Trip: Part Six - The Steppe - Land of the Golden Horde, 1332 - 1333, from The Travels of Ibn Battuta - A Virtual Tour with the 14th Century Traveler
REFERENCES Colin McEvedy, The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, London : Penguin, without year
Charles J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde : The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History, reprint 1987


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on July 7th 2005

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