Zolotoordynskoe obozrenie=Golden Horde Review

684–714

Authors: Agatay O

Research objectives: This article discusses Joči’s military-political role and status in the Mongol Empire (Yeke Mongol Ulus), beginning in the early thirteenth century and within the intra-dynastic relations of Činggis Khan’s chief sons. In particular, the article seeks to answer questions about Joči’s birth. Discrepancies between the Secret History of the Mongols and other written sources cast doubt on whether Joči was even a legitimate son of Činggis Khan, let alone his eldest one. In addition, this article includes an analysis of Joči’s place within the family and the traditional legal system of the medieval Mongols based on the principles of majorat succession outlined in the Mongol Empire. It establishes evidence of his legitimacy within the Činggisid dynasty’s imperial lineage (altan uruġ) – a point of view supported by his military-political career, his pivotal role in the western campaigns, his leadership at the siege of Khwārazm, and the process of division of the ulus of Činggis Khan. Research materials: This article makes use of Russian, English, and Turkic (Kazakh, Tatar, etc.) translations of key primary sources including the Secret History of the Mongols and works of authors from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, including Al-Nasawī, Shіhāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ’Aṭā-Malik Juvāynī, Minhāj al-Dīn Jūzjānī, Zhao Hong, Peng Daya, John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, Jamāl al-Qarshī, Rashīd al-Dīn, Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Uluġbeg, Ötämiš Hājī, Lubsan Danzan, Abu’l-Ghāzī, and Saγang Sečen. New secondary works regarding Joči published by modern Kazakh, Russian, Tatar, American, French, Chinese, Korean and other scholars were also consulted. Results and novelty of the research: Taking into consideration certain economic and legal traits of the medieval Mongols, their traditional practices, military-political events, and longterm developments in the Mongol Empire’s history, descriptions of Joči being no more than a “Merkit bastard” are clearly not consistent. The persisting claims can be traced to doubts about Joči’s birth included in the Secret History of the Mongols, the first extensive written record of the medieval Mongols which had a great impact on the work of later historians, including modern scholars. Some researchers suspect this allegation may have been an indirect result of Möngke Khan inserting it into the Secret History. This article argues that the main motivation was Batu’s high military-political position and prestige in the Yeke Mongol Ulus. After Ögödei Khan’s death, sons and grandsons of Ögödei and Ča’adai made various attempts to erode Batu’s significant position in the altan uruġ by raising questions regarding his genealogical origin. This explains why doubts about Joči’s status in the imperial lineage appeared so widely following his death in an intra-dynastic propaganda struggle waged between the houses of Joči and Тolui and the opposing houses of Ča’adai and Ögödei’s sons. This conflict over the narrative was engendered by the struggle for supreme power in the Mongol Empire and the distribution of conquered lands and property.

733–748

Authors: Vorotyntsev L.V

Research objective: To both study the mechanisms of the formation of the historiographical myth about the so-called “Horde captivity” of the Ryazan Prince Oleg Ingvarevich Krasny and to reconstruct the political history of the Ryazan Principality in the 1240–50s. Research materials: The collection of Russian chronicle sources, the “Tale of the Destruction of Ryazan by Batu”, the “Armenian History” by Kirakos Gandzaketsi, the anonymous Georgian “Chronograph” of the fourteenth century, “History of World Conqueror” by Juvaini, “Compendium of Chronicles” by Rashid al-Din, as well as the “History of the Mongols” by John of Plano Carpini, and the “Itinerarium” by William of Rubruck. Results and novelty of the research: Based on a comprehensive study of narrative sources, the author reconstructs the political contacts of the ruling elites of the Ryazan Principality with the authorities of the Mongol Empire and the Jochid Ulus in 1242–1252. In particular, the author substantiates the thesis that Oleg Krasny received a yarliq to rule as a result of his trip to Töregene Khatun’s headquarters in 1242–1243. Also, a number of additional arguments are made to confirm the mythological nature of the thesis established in the scholarly literature about the long-term “Horde (Mongolian) captivity” of the Ryazan prince, Oleg Ingvarevich Krasny. In addition, the thesis about the existence of an anti-Horde union of Russian princes Daniil Romanovich of Halych, Andrey Yaroslavovich of Vladimir, and Yaroslav Yaroslavovich of Tver’ at the turn of the 1240–50s is argumentatively refuted along with the participation in this union of Oleg Ingvarevich of Ryazan, which allegedly caused his two-year (1250–1252) imprisonment in Batu’s headquarters.

768–790

Authors: Idrisov Yu.M., Khanmurzaev I.I

Research objectives: To conduct a detailed comparative analysis of the toponymic source known as “Hand Drawn Portolan of the Caspian Sea (1519)” by Vesconte Maggiolo, and ascertain the range and chronology of its sources. Research materials: At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were a few navigational maps – portolan charts – created in Italy which contained rather precise outlines of the coastline of the Caspian Sea. The present Portolan excels all earlier items in terms of precision of the depicted topographical realities of the region. The quality of the map we are examining was surpassed only in the seventeenth century after Peter I’s hydrographic expeditions. The high level of shoreline’s precision also strongly suggests that the map was based on authentic topographic input. Maggiolo’s map contains 136 geographical names. Results and novelty of the research: For the first time ever in domestic scholarship, we conducted a comparative historical analysis of the hand drawn portolan chart of the Caspian Sea. We also proved the correlation of some toponyms of the West Caspian region with the Timurid and local sources that covered the military campaigns of Amir Timur in the region. In our view, the “Hand Drawn Portolan Chart of the Caspian Sea (1519)” created by Vesconte Maggiolo is one of the most notable among similar works. It finds many common features with the portolan from the island of Lesina, but also contains some common elements with the Mallorca cartographic school and Fra Mauro, Egerton MS 73, and Egerton MS 2083. This research allows us to extend and systematize our understanding of Italian cartography in relation to the Caspian region. It also details or adds some facts about the presence of Europeans in this region during the Golden Horde era. Based on this topographic and toponymic analysis, we furthermore come to a conclusion that the portolan in question is derived from a protograph created in the first half of fifteenth century, reflecting the realities of the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

807–831

Authors: Kozintcev M.A., Savelieva N.V

Research objectives: To analyze the genre-typological and stylistic peculiarities of the narrative parts that accompany the actual dictionary entries of the Turkic-Russian dictionary, and thus to add a new source to the group of narrative monuments from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries centuries which pertain to Crimea. Research materials: The Turkic-Russian dictionary (“Kniga Elihv”) included in the manuscript miscellany (“Tsvetnik”) that was compiled by the hieromonk, Prokhor Kolomiatin, in 1668. The manuscript is kept in the collection of the State Historical Museum (Muzeyskoe sobr., No. 2803). Results and novelty of the research: The Turkic-Russian dictionary included in Prokhor Kolomiatin’s miscellany is one of the earliest examples of a Turkic lexicography in the Cyrillic tradition. Along with the records of lexemes and word collocations, it contains lengthy narratives concerning religion, geography, and ethnography of Crimea. The nature of the information provided suggests that the author of the dictionary was living in Crimea for some time, most likely as a prisoner, although having a certain privileged status. Having little opportunity to travel outside the peninsula, he received knowledge, including information about other countries, from verbal communication with the local inhabitants made up of different national and social groups. Analysis of the content of the narrative material allows us to state that the text has its own degree of originality, although it naturally finds thematic and genre parallels with the well-known medieval narratives concerning Crimea.

857–877

Authors: Khrapunov N.I

Research objective: This paper aims at the revealing and analysing various documents, created in different countries of Europe prior to 1783, which suggested the change of the Crimea’s status and its accession to Russia, and the determination of interactions of these sources and general trends and principles behind discussions of the “Crimea question” in Russian and foreign public opinion. Research materials: This research addresses a large body of sources, created in Russia and the West from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, discussing the future of the Crimea – political treatises, memoranda, historical works, and correspondence. Research novelty and results: For the first time in the scholarship, the whole array of available sources on the planned accession of the Crimea to Russia has been analysed. It has been discovered that there were periods when the “Crimea question” was disputed in the West far more widely than in Russia. This “discussion” continued with the participation of very different authors, including the leading minds of the public discourse such as Voltaire or Francesco Algarotti. The attempts of the western intellectuals to influence the Russian government’s decisions have been demonstrated. Therefore, the accession of the Crimea is a product of not only “Russian imperialism”, as it is often suggested, but to a certain extent also of the Western Europe’s public mindset. Obviously, such a development was considered quite admissible in the West, and many authors viewed it positively both for international relations and for the internal perspectives of the region. The given article has exposed the dynamics in these arguments, with initial counter-Muslim rhetoric underlining the existential opposition of Christianity and Islam and the need for “returning” lands which had formerly belonged to Europe. When the Enlightenment era started, the further reason of Europe’s civilizing mission appeared. This mission was thought to be impeded in the Black Sea by the “backward” Islamic society. In Russia, the discussion of the future of the Crimea became topical in the second and third quarter of the eighteenth century, probably when the elite realized that the conquest of the peninsula had now become a reality.

903–911

Authors: Ryabinina E.A., Tataurov S.F

The article summarizes the results of the Fourth All-Russian (national) research conference “History, Economy, and Culture of the Medieval Turkic-Tatar States of Western Siberia”. It took place in the city of Kurgan on October 30, 2020. The conference was held on the Zoom platform due to the current epidemic situation. From various regions of Russia and the Republic of Kazakhstan, 34 researchers took part in it. The reports were chronologically and thematically divided into the following areas: the issues of the historiography and source studies of the political and ethnic history of the Siberian states; the Tyumen Khanate and its heritage, the Siberian Khanate and its neighbors; and Western Siberia from the end of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries: politics, population, and culture. The speakers summed up and set new prospects for research on the problems of archaeological and historical source studies related to Siberian statehood, the ethno-social and political history of the Tyumen and Siberian yurts, and issues of political relations of late medieval Siberian states with their neighbors including the Muscovite state and the Bukhara Khanate. In the latter case, it was proposed to consider these relations in the context of larger geopolitical realities in Eurasia in the sixteenth century. Special attention was paid to the discussion of Tatar-Ugric relations which continue to be a promising research area. The problems and chronology of the entry of the Turkic-Tatar and Ugric peoples of Western Siberia into the Russian state were discussed as well. Further ways of studying the problems of the history, economy, and culture of the medieval Turkic-Tatar states of Western Siberia were considered for the preparation of the next conference in Kurgan in 2023. Using the possibilities of interdisciplinary research by specialists in the field of history, archaeology, ethnology, numismatics, and genetics is of great importance in determining the prospects for further research. Taking into account the limited written base of sources on the history of Western Siberia of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, interdisciplinarity and a combined approach can solve some controversial issues and problems, as well as provide us with new potential opportunities to study the history of the Tyumen and Siberian Khanate.