Zolotoordynskoe obozrenie=Golden Horde Review

243–257

Authors: Szabó J.B.

The victory of Batu’s army in 1241 has been regarded by both Hungarian and foreign historians as a textbook example of flawed preparation and a badly-fought battle. This is where we run into a question that historians constantly return to: whether the Hungarian defeat was due to the decline of the light cavalry and the one-sided western-style tactics, or possibly the weakness of the heavy cavalry. We know well enough from existing research, however, that the causes of the Hungarian defeat are not to be sought in the Hungarians’ tactical inflexibility. Indeed, a new interpretation of sources containing accounts of the battle reveals signs of attempts to adapt combat tactics to the circumstances. The execution of the tactics on each side, however, were decisively influenced by differences in military technology, morale and quality of leadership. The Mongol commanders were able to order their disciplined troops to carry on the struggle even after incurring serious losses from Hungarian charges, and in the later phase of the battle, they had rested units at their disposal, while the Hungarian knights started to ignore the commands and withdraw from the battle as their combat position deteriorated, and the deployable troops of the Hungarian army gradually dwindled. It was therefore primarily the Mongols’ discipline, experience and smoothly-running command system that put them ahead of the Hungarians, whose commanders lacked coordination and were not able to keep a firm grip on their troops. Consequently, when the position became critical, the potential for coherent action faded.

274–283

Authors: Khromov K.K.

Research objectives: The presentation of an inferred location of the Tatar Shlyakh trade road from Azaq to Lviv along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. The external and internal factors and political processes in the ulus of Jochi and their influence on the direction and period of operation of the road and its development. The period of operation of this road is defined according to numismatic data. Research materials: “Pratica della mercatura” by Francesco Pegolotti, “Kodeks dyplomatyczny miasta Krakowa 1257–1506”, “Diplomatarium veneto-levantinum sive Acta et diplomata res venetas ...”, medieval maps, a physical map and map of the rivers of Ukraine, a topographical study of coin finds on the territory of modern Nikolaev and Kherson regions of Ukraine. Results and novelty of the research: The exact route of the Tatar Shlyakh trade road from Azaq to Lviv along the northern coast of the Azov and the Black Seas is currently not exactly known. Modern researchers make a lot of mistakes, while trying to reconstruct it. They do not take into account the geographical features of the territory, political processes, and economic processes in the western part of the ulus of Jochi. Likewise, military clashes in the Crimea and in the western part of the ulus of Jochi at the beginning of the fourteenth century have been ignored. Some modern researchers believe that the route began in the city of Caffa on the Black Sea. Nevertheless, we took this data into account and recognized the part of the route from Caffa through Solkhat and Perekop as a branch of the main route. The topography of the finds of Jochid coins on the alleged stretch of the road was examined and used in this study. This topography indicates the possible location of another crossing over the Dnieper in the area of Adzhigolskaya Balka on the right bank of the Dnieper estuary. Two periods of the existence of this road in 1280–1300 and 1350–1390 are established according to numismatic data.

293–315

Authors: Vinogradov A.V.

Research objectives: This article investigates the alignment of forces in political elite of the Crimean Khanate in 1613–1616. Research materials: A wide range of published and archived sources – books and ambassadorial documents of the Russian state. Results and novelty of the research: The author discusses the little-studied period of diplomatic relations between the Russian state and the Crimean Khanate in 1613–1616, after the accession of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov: the stay of the embassy of A. Lodyzhensky and P. Danilov in Crimea from autumn 1613 to July 1614, the preparations and implementation of an embassy congress and exchange near Livny in August 1614, the stay of the embassy of Prince G.K. Volkonsky and P. Ovdokimov in the Crimea from August 1614 to June 1615, the preparation and implementation of the embassy exchange near Valuyki in July 1615, and the stay of the embassy of I. Speshnev and B. Nesterov in Crimea from July 1615 to May 1616. The author shows the central role of the political elite of the Crimean Khanate, meaning the most influential people in the government of Janibek Giray Khan, in establishing peaceful relations between the Russian state and the Crimean Khanate in the framework of their parallel military-political confrontation with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The article also discusses the role of individual clans of the Crimean nobility in the implementation of diplomatic relations between the two states.

345–365

Authors: Shalak M.E.

Research objectives: To conduct a comprehensive historical and geographical analysis of the work of Abdullah Ibn Rizvan. Research materials: The author used the chronicle of Abdullah Ibn Rizvan as well as specialized scholarly works on the sources and history of the Crimean Khanate. Results and novelty of the research: The “Tevarikh-i Desht-i Kipchak” (Chronicles of Desht-i Kipchak) by Abdullah Ibn Rizvan is still a poorly studied historical source as it has not been translated into Russian. The work has been preserved in two manuscripts: the French National Library in Paris and the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. In 1966, Adam Zajączkowski published the “Tevarikh-i Desht-i Kipchak” in Warsaw based on the Istanbul manuscript in comparison with the Paris manuscript. A Polish orientalist added a 1737 French translation of the annals by Pierre Delaunay entitled “Abrégé de l’histoire des quatorze premiers khans”. We used this French translation from the Warsaw edition of Adam Zajączkowski. Researchers practically neglected studying the abundant information of the chronicle on the political history of the Crimean Khanate in the first third of the seventeenth century, as well as on the historical geography of the Crimean Khanate and the entire area of the Kipchak steppe. Since his father was the governor of Kefe, Abdullah knew this area well, receiving the relevant firsthand information. Based on a comprehensive historical and geographical analysis of the chronicle, we can state that despite errors in the history of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate the author was well acquainted with the events that took place in Crimea in 1610, as well as with the geography of the surroundings of Kefe, if not the whole Crimean peninsula. Abdullah mentioned such geographical places as Sarygol and Pasha Tepe. He described in detail two battles between Rizvan Pasha and Muhammad Giray, being a likely eyewitness to the events or basing his account on the oral information of participants including his father.

378–385

Authors: Sayfetdinova E.G.

Research objectives: To introduce into the scholarly circulation a previously unknown source on the history of Tatars. Research materials: The religious and didactic treatise of Ibn Abi al-Hadid (d. 656/1258) “Sharh nahj al-balaga” (“Interpretation of the ‘Ways of Eloquence’”). Results and novelty of the research: This article presents information from the religious and didactic treatise of Ibn Abi al-Hadid (d. 656/1258) “Sharh nahj al-balaga” (“Interpretation of the ‘Ways of Eloquence’”). V.G. Tiesengauzen did not include this treatise in his “Collection of Materials Relating to the History of the Golden Horde (extracts from Arabic works)”. The eighth part of the fourth volume contains information about Chinggis Khan, the fall of Bukhara and Samarkand, the events in Khwarazm, the Mongol invasion of Iran and Azerbaijan, the defeat of the Khwarazmshah’s army, the fall of Hamadan, the invasion of Georgia and Derbent, the invasion of the Eastern European steppes, the fall of Isfahan, Mongolian raids on Syria, the attack on Baghdad. Ibn Abi al-Hadid borrowed most of the information from Ibn al-Athir, in particular about the period from 1220 to 1230. However, the treatise of Ibn Abi al-Hadid contains original information regarding some episodes of the Mongol expansion during the first half of the thirteenth century. The result of the study was the translation of some information about the Tatars into Russian, which was not recorded in other medieval Arabic sources. The scholarly novelty is that this Russian translation, helping researchers in a deeper and more detailed study of the history of Tatars, has been carried out for the first time ever.

391–410

Authors: Timokhin D.M., Tishin V.V.

Research objectives: A.A. Porsin’s monograph “The History of the Golden Horde at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century in the ‘Zubdat al-Fikra’ by Rukn al-Din Beibars al-Mansuri” not only concerns the problems of the Golden Horde’s history, but also a set of important issues of the history of Dašt-i Qipčaq and Khwarazm during the pre-Mongol period. This review focuses specifically on these aspects of the book, primarily on the historical reconstruction undertaken by A.A. Porsin regarding both several Turkic tribal groups in the service in Khwarazm and the intertribal conflict that, from his point of view, took place in Khwarazm before and during the Mongol invasion. The authors of the review cannot agree with the Porsin’s conclusions regarding several issues and consider this section vulnerable to criticism, primarily in terms of research methodology. Research materials: The authors of this review sought to use the maximum number of available written source which allowed for a critical analysis of the reconstruction created by A.A. Porsin. Firstly, these are the works of Arabic and Persian authors used by the author of the monograph himself (al-Nasavi, Juwayni, Juzjani, Rashid al-Din), as well as a number of monuments of later Arab-Persian historiography. In addition, they used the linguistic data of the Turkic and Mongolian languages. Research results and novelty: Based on several of the most striking examples, the authors of the review criticized Porsin’s argument for the monograph: Porsin pays insufficient attention to the analysis of sources and the logic of his argument, like the whole concept, consists of a chain of hypotheses and conjectures arising from each other. The authors of the review managed to prove, in their opinion, the artificiality and, in general, the far-fetched nature of the whole picture of tribal relations within the Khwarazmian state on the eve of the Mongol invasion which Porsin reconstructed. A detailed analysis of Porsin’s argument regarding the origin of Terken Khatun and a number of historical personalities associated with the history of Khwarazm shows the weakness or even fallacy of his hypotheses. In general, we cannot recognize this section of the monograph as having been successful.