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Having taken you, our dear listeners, through the Yuan, Chagatayid and Ilkhanates, we now turn our attention to the northwestern corner of the Mongol Empire: the Jochid ulus, the Golden Horde. Ruled by the line of Chinggis\\u2019 eldest son Jochi, this single division of the Mongol Empire was larger than the maximum extent of most empires, dominating from the borders of Hungary and the Balkans, briefly taking the submission of Serbia, stretching ever eastwards over what is now Ukraine, Russia, through Kazakhstan before terminating at the Irtysh River. Under its hegemony were many distinct populations; the cities of the Rus\\u2019 principalities, the fur trading centres of the Volga Bulghars along the Samara Bend, the mercantile outposts of the Crimean peninsula which gave the Jochid Khans access to the Mediterranean Sea, to the Khwarezm delta, giving them a position in the heart of the Central Asian trade. These distant frontiers, hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres apart, were connected by the western half of the great Eurasian steppe, the Qipchaq Desert as it was known to Islamic writers. Thus was the Golden Horde, and over the next few episodes we\\u2019ll take you through its history, from its establishment under Batu, to the height of its glory under \\xd6zbeg, to its lengthy disintegration from the end of the fourteenth century onwards. This first episode will serve as an introduction to the history of the Golden Horde, beginning first with its very name and important historiographical matters, then taking you through its origins, up to the death of Berke and ascension of M\\xf6ngke-Tem\\xfcr, the first ruler of the Golden Horde as an independent state.\\xa0 I\\u2019m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 As good a place to start as any is terminology, and the Golden Horde is known by a host of names. Firstly and most famously, we can note that the Golden Horde is a later appellation, given to the state centuries later in Rus\\u2019 chronicles. In Russian this is Zolotaya Orda (\\u0417\\u043e\\u043b\\u043e\\u0442\\u043e\\u0439 \\u041e\\u0440\\u0434\\u044b), \\xa0which in Mongolian and Turkish would be Altan Orda. The English word \\u201chorde\\u201d comes directly from Mongolian ordu, though also used in Turkic languages, and signifies, depending on the case, a command headquarters, the army, tent or palace- quite different from the image of uncontrolled rabble that usually comes to mind with the term. While commonly said that the Rus\\u2019 chronicles took the term from the golden colour of the Khan\\u2019s tents, we actually do see the term Golden Horde used among the Mongols before the emergence of the Golden Horde state. For the Mongols and Turks, all the cardinal directions have colour associated with them. Gold is the colour associated with the center; while the divisions of the army would be known by their direction and colour, the overall command or imperial government could be known as the center, the qol, or by its colour, altan. This is further augmented by the association of the colour gold with the Chinggisids themselves, as descent from Chinggis Khan was the altan urugh, the Golden Lineage; and the name of a well-known Mongolian folk band. For example, in 1246 when the Franciscan Friar John de Plano Carpini travelled to Mongolia as an envoy from the Pope, he visited a number of camps of the new Khan, G\\xfcy\\xfck. Each camp was named, and one of these was, as Carpini notes, called the Golden Horde. In this case, Carpini also describes G\\xfcy\\xfck\\u2019s tent as being literally covered in gold, with even the nails holding the wooden beams being gold.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 So Altan orda, or Golden Horde, may well have been in use within the Golden Horde khanate. However, the term is never used to refer to it in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. What we see instead is a collection of other terms. In the Ilkhanate, it was common to refer to the rulers as the Khans of Qipchap, and the state as the Desht-i-Qipchaq, the Qipchaq steppe or desert. Hence in modern writing you will sometimes see it as the Qipchap Khanate. But this seems unlikely to have been a term in use by the Jochid Khans, given that the Qipchaps were the Khan\\u2019s subjects and seen as Mongol slaves; a rather strange thing for the Mongols to name themselves after them. Given that it was the pre-Mongol term for the region, and the Ilkhanid writers liked to denigrate the Jochid Khans whenever possible, it makes rather good sense that they would continue using it.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Many modern historians, and our series researcher, like to refer to it as the Jochid ulus, the patrimony of the house of Jochi, particularly before the actual independence of the Golden Horde following 1260. This term appears closer to what we see in Yuan and Mamluk sources, where the Golden Horde was usually called the ulus of Batu or Berke, or ulus of whoever was currently the reigning Khan. Either designating themselves by the current ruler, or by the more general ulug ulus, meaning \\u201cgreat state or patrimony,\\u201d with perhaps just the encampment of the Khan known as the altan ordu, the Golden Horde, among the Jochids themselves. Over the following episodes the term Jochid ulus will be used to refer to the state in general, and Golden Horde will be used specifically for the independent khanate which emerged after the Berke-H\\xfcleg\\xfc war in the 1260s.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 There is another matter with terminology worth pointing out before we go further. The Jochid domains were split into two halves; west of the Ural river, ruled by the line of Batu, Jochi\\u2019s second son. And east of the Ural River, ruled by the line of Orda, Jochi\\u2019s first son. Now, Batu may have been the general head of the Jochids, or a first amongst equals, or Orda and Batu may have been given totally distinct domains. Perhaps the ulus of Orda simply became more autonomous over the thirteenth century. Opinions differ greatly, and unfortunately little information survives on the exact relationship, but the ulus of Orda was, by 1300, effectively independent and the Batuid Khans Toqta and \\xd6zbeg would, through military intervention, bring it under their influence. So essentially, there were two wings of the Jochids with a murky relationship, which is further obfuscated by inconsistent naming of them in the historical sources. Rus\\u2019 and Timurid sources also refer to the White Horde and the Blue Horde. The Rus\\u2019 sources follow Turko-Mongolian colour directions and have the White Horde, the lands ruled by the line of Batu, the more westerly, and Orda\\u2019s ulus being the Blue Horde to the east.\\xa0 Except in Timurid sources, this is reversed, with Batu\\u2019s line ruling the Blue Horde, and Orda the White.\\xa0

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 There has been no shortage of scholarly debate over this, and you will see the terms used differently among modern writers. This is not even getting into the matter if the Golden Horde was then itself another division within this, referring to territory belonging directly to the Khan within the Batuid Horde. For the sake of clarity, this podcast will work on the following assumptions, with recognition that other scholars interpretations may differ greatly: that following Jochi\\u2019s death around 1227, the Jochid lines and lands were divided among Batu and Orda, with Batu acting as the head of the lineage. The western half of this division, under Batu, we will call the White Horde, and Orda\\u2019s eastern division will be the Blue Horde. Together, these were the Jochid ulus, with the rest of their brothers given allotments within the larger domains. While Batu was the senior in the hierarchy, Orda was largely autonomous, which following the Berke-H\\xfcleg\\xfc war turned into the Blue Horde becoming effectively independent until the start of the fourteenth century, as apparently suggested by Rashid al-Din and Marco Polo,\\xa0

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 One final note is that we have effectively no internal sources surviving from the Golden Horde. In the opinion of scholars like Charles Halperin, the Golden Horde simply had no chronicle tradition. Any records they maintained were likely lost in the upheavals of the late fourteenth century that culminated in the great invasion under Tamerlane in the 1390s, where effectively every major city in the steppe region of the Horde was destroyed.\\xa0 The closest we come to Golden Horde point-of-view chronicles appear in the sixteenth century onwards, long after the dissolution of the Horde. The first and most notable was the mid-sixteenth century Qara Tawarikh of \\xd6temish Hajji, based in Khiva in the service of descendants of Jochi\\u2019s son, Shiban. Sent to the lower Volga by his masters, there he collected oral folk tales which he compiled into his history. While often bearing intriguing and amusing tales, they reveal little in the way of the internal machinations of the Golden Horde. Luckily we are serviced from more contemporary sources, most notably Ilkhanid and Mamluk sources- once again our friend the Ilkhanid vizier Rashid al-Din is of utmost importance, who provides us an important outline of the Golden Horde\\u2019s politics up to 1300. The Mamluks and Ilkhanid sources largely collected information from Jochid diplomats or refugees. Most of our understanding of Golden Horde political events, and the details of the following episodes, comes from these sources.

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Post-Ilkhanid Timurid and Jalayirid authors help somewhat for the later fourteenth century, while the Rus\\u2019 sources provide information on the Golden Horde almost exclusively in the context of its interactions with the principalities, similar to other European and Byzantine sources. A few details can be gleaned too from travellers like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, and even distant Yuan sources from China. Archaeology has provided some interesting details, particularly relating to trade and the extensive coinage circulation of the Jochids. Despite this, the Golden Horde remains, regardless of its fame, arguably one of the poorer understood of the Mongol Khanates.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 So, with that bit of paperwork out of the way, let\\u2019s get on with it! The kernel of the immense Golden Horde can be found in the first decades of the thirteenth century. In the first ten years of the Mongol Empire Jochi, Chinggis Khan\\u2019s first son, was tasked with leading campaigns around Lake Baikal, as well as the first expeditions that brought their armies far to the west of Mongolia. While around Baikal he had been sent to subdue the local peoples, in 1216 Jochi and S\\xfcbe\\u2019edei pursued fleeing Merkits across Kazakhstan, to the region between the Aral Sea and the Caspian. Here, the Merkits had allied with Qangli-Qipchaps, beginning the long running Mongol animosity to the various Qipchap peoples. While Jochi was the victor here, he was forced into battle with the Khwarezm-Shah Muhammad on his return, as we have previously detailed. But the result seems to have been an association of these western steppes as Jochi\\u2019s lands, in the eyes of the Mongol leadership.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Such an association was strengthened following the campaign against the Khwarezmian Empire. The Mongols saw conquering a region as making it part of the patrimony of a given prince, and such a belief fueled into the interactions between Jochi and his brothers, especially Chagatai. This was most apparent at the siege of the Khwarezmian capital of Gurganj, where Jochi sought to minimize destruction to the city- not out of humanity, but as it would be a jewel in his domains as one of the preeminent trade cities in Central Asia. Chagatai, in a long running competition with his brother, was not nearly so compassionate. The end result was Gurganj being almost totally annihilated, and Jochi and Chagatai\\u2019s antagonism reaching the frustrated ears of their father. As you may recall, Jochi\\u2019s mother B\\xf6rte had been captured by Merkits before he was born, leaving an air of doubt around the true identity of his father. Chinggis, to his credit, always treated Jochi as fully legitimate, and indeed up until 1221, in the opinion of some scholars, appears to have been grooming him as his primary heir. However, the falling out between Jochi and Chagatai over the siege of Gurganj, and Chagatai\\u2019s apparent refusal to accept Jochi as anything but a \\u201cMerkit bastard,\\u201d as attributed to him in the Secret History of the Mongols, left Chinggis with\\xa0 the realization that should Jochi become Khan, it would only lead to war between the brothers. And hence, the decision to make \\xd6gedai the designated heir.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 It has often been speculated that Jochi\\u2019s massive patrimony was essentially a means to keep him and Chagatai as far apart as possible,and appeasing Jochi once he was excluded from the throne.\\xa0 Following the conquest of Khwarezm, Jochi seems to have taken well to the western steppe being his territory, the grasslands between the Ural and Irtysh Rivers. Juzjani, writing around 1260, writes of Jochi falling in love with these lands, believing them to be the finest in the world. Some later, pro-Toluid sources portray Jochi then spending the last years of his life doing nothing but hunting and drinking in these lands, but this seems to have been aimed at discrediting his fitness. Rather he likely spent this time consolidating and gradually pushing west his new realm, past the Aral Sea towards the Ural River, while his primary camp was along the Irtysh. Though effectively nothing is known of Jochi\\u2019s administration, we can regard this period as the true founding of what became the Jochid ulus, and eventually the Golden Horde. Though he died between 1225 and 1227, either of illness, a hunting accident or poisoned by his father, Chinggis immediately confirmed upon Jochi\\u2019s many offspring -at least 14 sons- their rights to their father\\u2019s lands. And Chinggis, or perhaps \\xd6gedai, made Jochi\\u2019s second son Batu the head of the lineage. It was then that the division of the Jochid lands into two wings under Orda and Batu may have been first implemented.\\xa0

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 By the start of \\xd6gedai\\u2019s reign, the western border of the Mongol Empire\\xa0 extended past the Ural River, and Mongol armies were attacking the Volga Bulghars.\\xa0 While we do not have much information on it, we may presume a level of involvement on the part of Batu and his brothers. Of course, in the second half of the 1230s \\xd6gedai ordered the great invasion that overran the western steppe. Starting from the Ural River, within 5 years the Mongol Empire was extended some 3,000 kilometres westwards to the borders of Hungary. Whereas previously the urban area of the Jochid lands was restricted to the Khwarezm Delta and the scattered steppe settlements, now it included the cities of the Rus\\u2019 principalities, Volga Bulghars, other Volga communities, and the Crimean peninsula. All in addition to the western half of the great Eurasian steppe, and the now subdued Cuman-Qipchaq peoples. By 1242, Batu was arguably the single most powerful individual in the Mongol Empire. Enjoying the rich grasslands along the Volga between the Black and Caspian Seas, Batu created a permanent capital, Sarai. Much like the imperial capital of Qaraqorum, Sarai served as a base to collect tribute, receive embassies, and house the administration and records, while Batu and the other Jochid princes continued to nomadize. The newly conquered territories were quickly incorporated in the Mongol tax system, and the Rus\\u2019 principalities began to see Mongol basqaqs and darughachi come to collect the Khan\\u2019s due.

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\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 But Batu was an ambitious man. There was clearly an understanding that the Jochids were granted the west of Asia as theirs, and he took this quite literally. As the Mongol Empire incorporated Iran, the Caucasus and Anatolia over the 1230s through 40s, Batu ensured that Jochid land rights were not just respected, but expanded. The administration in these regions was picked either from Batu\\u2019s men, or from his consultation, such as Baiju Noyan, the commander of the Caucasian tamma forces and who brought the Rumi Seljuqs under Mongol rule.\\xa0

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In the turmoil following \\xd6gedai\\u2019s death, Batu extended his hold over western Asia. Naturally, this put him on a collision course with the Central Government. When \\xd6gedai\\u2019s widow, T\\xf6r\\xf6gene tried to hunt down her political rivals, such as the head of the Central Asia Secretariat Mas\\u2019ud Beg, Batu gave shelter to him. When her son G\\xfcy\\xfck took the throne, Batu did not attend his quriltai in person, putting off any meeting due to, Batu claimed, the severe gout he suffered from preventing his travel. Batu and G\\xfcy\\xfck had been rivals ever since the great western campaign, where G\\xfcy\\xfck had insulted Batu\\u2019s leadership. G\\xfcy\\xfck hoped to put a cap on the decentralization of power which had occurred during the last years of his father\\u2019s reign and during his mother\\u2019s regency, and showed a willingness to execute imperial princes, such as the last of Chinggis Khan\\u2019s surviving brothers, Tem\\xfcge. When rumour came to Batu that G\\xfcy\\xfck was planning a massive new campaign to subdue the west, Batu must have suspected that G\\xfcy\\xfck planned on bringing him to heel too; either limiting his political freedom, or outright replacing him with Batu\\u2019s older brother, Orda, with whom G\\xfcy\\xfck was on good terms with.\\xa0

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The news of G\\xfcy\\xfck\\u2019s advance came from Sorqaqtani Beki, the widow of Tolui and sister of one of Jochi\\u2019s most important wives. Sources like William of Rubruck have Batu preemptively poison G\\xfcy\\xfck in spring 1248, thus avoiding civil war. Batu and Sorqaqtani then promptly had many of G\\xfcy\\xfck\\u2019s favourites executed and, in a quriltai in Batu\\u2019s territory, had her son M\\xf6ngke declared Khan of Khans in 1250, before an official ceremony in Mongolia the next year. The relationship was an effective one. In being key supporters for M\\xf6ngke\\u2019s otherwise illegal election, Jochid land rights were confirmed across the empire. Transoxania was cleared of Chagatayids and handed over the Jochids, Georgia confirmed for Batu\\u2019s younger brother Berke, and travellers who passed through the empire in these years like William of Rubruck basically have the empire divided between Batu and M\\xf6ngke. Most of western Asia, both north and south of the Caucasus, was overseen by Batu and his men. When Batu died around 1255, the Jochids enjoyed a preeminence second only to the Great Khan himself. The special place of the Jochid leader was recognized by numerous contemporary sources, and it is notable that while the rest of the empire was divided into the great branch secretariats, that the Jochid lands were not placed into one until late in M\\xf6ngke\\u2019s reign, and there is little indication it was ever properly established before Jochid independence.\\xa0

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However, despite even M\\xf6ngke recognizing Batu\\u2019s power, as a part of his wider centralizing efforts he reminded Batu of the leash on him. Batu\\u2019s interactions with William of Rubruck indicate that Batu saw his power to conduct foreign diplomacy was limited; the Jochid lands were not exempted from M\\xf6ngke\\u2019s empire-wide censuses, and when M\\xf6ngke demanded Batu provide troops for H\\xfcleg\\xfc\\u2019s campaigns against the Nizari Ismailis and Baghdad, Batu duly complied. During Batu\\u2019s lifetime it was the name of the Great Khan who continued to be minted on coinage in the Jochid lands, and Rus\\u2019 princes still had to receive yarliqs, or confirmation, not from Batu but from Qaraqorum. And in 1257, M\\xf6ngke ordered the Jochid lands to be incorporated into a new Secretariat, and thus bring them better under the control of the Central Government. There is no indication from the sources that Batu or his successors resisted M\\xf6ngke in any capacity in these efforts

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Following Batu\\u2019s death, M\\xf6ngke promptly ratified Batu\\u2019s son Sartaq as his successor, but as Sartaq returned from Qaraqorum, he died under mysterious circumstances; in a few sources, the blame falls onto his uncles, Berke and Berkechir. Sartaq\\u2019s son or brother Ilagchi was made Khan under the regency of Batu\\u2019s widow Boraqchin Khatun, but soon both were dead. Though Ilagchi\\u2019s cause of death is unmentioned, for Boraqchin the Mamluk sources note that Berke had her tried and executed for treason. Still, for Sartaq and Ilagchi the tendency for Mongol princes to die at inopportune times can\\u2019t be forgotten, and Berke may have simply reacted to a favourable circumstance.\\xa0 The fact that he stood with the most to gain from their deaths made him the likely scapegoat even to contemporary writers, even if he happened to actually be innocent of the matter. Much like how Batu may or may not have poisoned G\\xfcy\\xfck, the deaths are a little too convenient for the relevant Jochid princes to be easily dismissed.

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Between 1257 and 1259, possibly waiting for M\\xf6ngke to begin his Song campaign and be unable to interfere, Berke became the head of the Jochid ulus. As the aqa of the Jochids, that is, the senior member of the line of Jochi, he did this with the approval of his fellow Jochid princes and military leaders. But there is no indication that Berke ever received support from Qaraqorum for his enthronement. Given that Chinggis Khan had confirmed upon Batu the right to rule, the shift from brother-to-brother, though common in steppe successions, was still an extreme matter.

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Part of the success of Berke\\u2019s ascension may have been achieved through an agreement with Batu\\u2019s family. According to the fourteenth century Mamluk author al-Mufaddal, the childless Berke designated Batu\\u2019s grandson M\\xf6ngke-Tem\\xfcr as his heir. Some historians like Roman Pochekaev have suggested that Berke\\u2019s enthronement may have been leveraged as part of an agreement; that Berke, as the most senior member of the Jochids, could take the throne following the death of Ilagchi Khan. But, the prestige of Batu made his line the designated leaders of the White Horde. Without his own children, on Berke\\u2019s death the throne would fall back to the line of Batu, under his grandson M\\xf6ngke-Tem\\xfcr.\\xa0 And so it would remain among Batu\\u2019s descendants until the 1360s, almost 100 years after Berke\\u2019s death.\\xa0

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As you likely know, Berke was the first Mongol prince known to convert to Islam. The exact time of his conversion varies in the sources, but a convincing argument has been put forward by professor Istv\\xe1n V\\xe1s\\xe1ry. Essentially, that Berke, likely through a Muslim mid-wife that raised him (and not a Khwarezmian Princess, as sometimes suggested) was either in his youth a convert to Islam, or at least extremely influenced by it. By the time of the 1251 quriltai in Mongolia which confirmed M\\xf6ngke as Great Khan, Berke is attested in independent sources writing at the same time to have sought to Islamize the event; getting the meat to be slaughtered for the feast to be halal, according to Juvaini, and trying to get M\\xf6ngke to swear on the Quran, according to Juzjani. On his return from Mongolia, he was contacted by a Sufi shaykh in Bukhara, Sayf ad-Din Bakharzi, who is mentioned in a number of sources in connection with Berke\\u2019s conversion. Having heard of a prominent Mongol prince\\u2019s interest in Islam, the Shaykh invited Berke to Bukhara, and there gave him a formal education in the religion, leading to Berke to make a more official declaration of his faith likely around 1252. Berke\\u2019s conversion was accompanied by the conversion of his wives, a number of other princes, members of his family and his generals, though all evidence suggests there was only limited spread of the faith among the rank and file Mongols at the time.\\xa0

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As Khan, Berke sought to ensure Jochid hegemony on frontier regions. His troops crushed a newly independent Ruthenian Kingdom in Galicia, and in 1259 his armies under Burundai Noyan led a devastating raid into Poland. Possibly in this time Bulgaria began paying tribute to the Jochids as well. Berke demanded the submission of the Hungarian King, B\\xe9la IV, and offered a marriage alliance between their families. As Hungary was spared any damage in Burundai\\u2019s 1259 campaign, it has been suggested that B\\xe9la undertook a nominal submission to Berke, sending tribute and gifts in order to spare Hungary from another assault.\\xa0

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In Khwarezm and the Caucasus Berke continued to exercise influence. But tensions were fraying with his cousin H\\xfcleg\\xfc, who in 1258 sacked Baghdad and killed the \\u2018Abbasid Caliph. Obviously, as a Muslim Berke was not keen to learn of the Caliph\\u2019s death. According to the contemporary author Juzjani, writing from distant Delhi, Berke had been in contact with the Caliph in the years preceding the siege. Much of Berke\\u2019s anger though, as gleaned from his letters to the Mamluks and the writing of Rashid al-Din, was at H\\xfcleg\\xfc\\u2019s failure to consult with Berke as the senior member of the family, and as the master of western Asia. Though Jochid troops partook in the siege, and we have no indication from the sources that Berke tried to prevent them taking part, it seems H\\xfcleg\\xfc did not reach out to Berke regarding the fate of Baghdad, or in the dispensation of loot.

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Berke was greatly angered at this, and relations only worsened over the following years, once H\\xfcleg\\xfc killed the Jochid princes in his retinue on charges of sorcery; it just so happened that these same prince had previously annoyed H\\xfcleg\\xfc through attempting to enforce Jochid land rights over Iran and Iraq. The final straw came in early 1260 once H\\xfcleg\\xfc learned of M\\xf6ngke\\u2019s death. H\\xfcleg\\xfc by then had already set up in the pastures of Azerbaijan, land Berke considered his. As he learned of the fighting between his brothers Khubilai and Ariq B\\xf6ke which broke out later that year, H\\xfcleg\\xfc decided to use the interregnum to seize the pastures of the Caucasus, as well as all of the land between the Amu Darya and Syria, for himself. Berke\\u2019s officials in these lands were driven out or killed. With no Great Khan to intercede, Berke felt forced to resort to violence to avenge his fallen kinsmen and retake his lands; in 1262 he went to war with H\\xfcleg\\xfc, and so did the Mongol Empire in the west split asunder.

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We\\u2019ve covered the Berke-H\\xfcleg\\xfc war in detail in a previous episode, so we don\\u2019t need to repeat ourselves here. The end result was both Berke and H\\xfcleg\\xfc dead by 1266, and the frontier between them set along the Kura River, where H\\xfcleg\\xfc\\u2019s son and successor Abaqa built a wall to keep out the Jochids- though the jury is out on whether he made them pay for it. The conflict set the border between the newly emerged Ilkhanate and the Jochid state for the next century, and the Jochids would not forget the sting of losing this territory to the Ilkhanids for that time either.\\xa0

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On Berke\\u2019s death his coffin was carried back to Sarai.\\xa0 Berke\\u2019s reign, though much shorter than Batu\\u2019s, had been a decisive one. For not only did it determine many aspects of the Golden Horde\\u2019s diplomacy and character, notably antagonism to the Ilkhans, a predatory view to the Chagatayids who in the 1260s retook control of Transoxiana and killed Berke\\u2019s officials, and a cool, distant view to Khubilai Khaan\\u2019s legitimacy. He helped begin the alliance with the Mamluk Sultans, which never materialized into any actual military cooperation but uneased the Ilkhans and allowed the Mamluks to continue to purchase Qipchaq slaves from the steppe. This alliance too would survive essentially until the dissolution of the Golden Horde at the start of the fifteenth century.\\xa0

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But it also seeded the kernel for eventual islamization of the Khanate, a slow process which would only be fulfilled some sixty years later under \\xd6zbeg Khan. While their father was the true founder of the Jochid ulus in the 1200s, both Batu and Berke could argue for this title. Batu posthumously became the Sain Khan, the Good Khan, while to the Mamluks the Golden Horde rulers ascended to the throne of Berke. With his death, it seems at Sarai a quriltai was held to confirm the enthronement of his grand-nephew, M\\xf6ngke-Tem\\xfcr, the first true independent ruler of what we can call the Golden Horde, and subject of our new episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon a www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals, or giving us a like, comment and review on the podcast catcher of your choice, and share with your friends, it helps immensely. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I\\u2019m your host David, and we\\u2019ll catch you on the next one.\\xa0

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