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Our previous episode took you through important transformations of the Golden Horde during the long-reign of \xd6zbeg Khan; the islamization, and urbanization, of the khanate. Today we share the first part of our coverage of the political dimensions of \xd6zbeg\u2019s nearly thirty year reign, focusing on \xd6zbeg\u2019s interactions with the Ilkhanate and the Mamluk Sultanate, an area in which \xd6zbeg suffered almost continual defeats.\xa0 I\u2019m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.

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As we covered previously, upon becoming khan of the Golden Horde in 1313, \xd6zbeg ordered a wide purge of the Jochid princes, a two-pronged assault to both remove potential rivals and promote Islam among the elite, for those who refused to convert were punished mortally. After his first year in power \xd6zbeg would be remarkably tolerant to other religions within his empire, but he made it abundantly clear that the religion of the Khan and the court was Islam. One of \xd6zbeg\u2019s earliest actions was the construction of a mosque in the Crimean city of Solkhat, or as it\u2019s known for Turkic speakers, Eski Q\u0131r\u0131m, or Staryi Krym after the Russian annexation. [note for David: Q\u0131r\u0131m=Crimea, hard K sound]. Built in 1314, parts of the mosque are still extant, though in the sixteenth century parts of it were moved into a new building some distance away.

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\xd6zbeg was no idle khan. With the assistance of the powerful bey Qutlugh-Tem\xfcr, \xd6zbeg further weakened the power of the remaining Jochid princes with the establishment of the qarachi beys as the lead ministers of the empire, putting greater administrative power into the non-Chinggisid elite. The qarachi beys were headed by the beyleribey, the chief bey,\xa0 held first by Qutlugh-Tem\xfcr, and later his brother \u2018Isa. These two men were instrumental in \xd6zbeg\u2019s control. Powerful, islamic lords, their early backing had not just been key in \xd6zbeg seizing power in the first place, but in solidifying \xd6zbeg\u2019s islamization of the khanate\u2019s upper echelons. Their support and influence among the military-elite were significant in \xd6zbeg\u2019s centralization of authority, and in the smooth function of the empire as lands and territories were redistributed with the change in authority. And \xd6zbeg went to great effort to ensure their loyalty, creating\xa0 a reciprocal marriage alliance with them that the Mongols called quda. Qutlugh-Tem\xfcr married a Jochid princess named Turabey, while \u2018Isa married one of \xd6zbeg\u2019s daughters, and in turn \xd6zbeg married one of \u2018Isa\u2019s daughters. The brothers were then assigned some of the most economically important and lucrative regions within the khanate; Qutlugh-Tem\xfcr as governor of Khwarezm, but with his authority expanded to stretch to the Lower Volga, while \u2018Isa was situated in the Crimean Peninsula.\xa0 With \xd6zbeg in the capital on the Volga River, three of them were like three weights balancing the khanate.

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In 1314, only the second year of \xd6zbeg\u2019s reign, the Khan of Chagatai Khanate, Esen Buqa reached out to \xd6zbeg. The ten years since the Pax Mongolica in 1304 had hardly instilled the desired unity among the khanates. Esen Buqa Khan was in the midst of growing tensions with the Ilkhanate and Yuan Dynasty, and feared a combined Toluid assault on the Chagatai lands.\xa0 By then Esen-Buqa had taken captive Ilkhanid and Yuan envoys, and contacted \xd6zbeg in an effort to bring him into an alliance, telling him that the Great Khan, Ayurburwada, saw \xd6zbeg as illegitimate, and wished to depose him. \xd6zbeg, likely on the council of the experienced Qutlugh-Tem\xfcr, refused the request for support. The Golden Horde did not take part when Yuan forces invaded the Chagatai lands in 1316 while Esen-Buqa was campaigning in the Ilkhanate. The effort at neutrality with the khanates who had influence in Central Asia was also likely influenced by \xd6zbeg\u2019s success at bringing the Blue Horde, the eastern wing of the Golden Horde, closely under his control, especially after 1321. The once autonomous, if not outright independent, khanate became essentially a province of the Golden Khan through \xd6zbeg\u2019s effort. As the Blue Horde, backed by \xd6zbeg\u2019s troops, in this period extended to the Syr Darya and incorporated former Khwarezmian cities of Otrar, Jand and others, \xd6zbeg did not want the Yuan Dynasty intervening with this profitable expansion.

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Throughout his life \xd6zbeg retained amicable relations with the Yuan Khans, sending them tribute, gifts and his nominal allegiance in exchange for revenues from Jochid estates in China.\xa0 He valued this income higher, and was not above sending his envoys to the Yuan court to remind them to keep up the payments. Some historians have gone as far as to suggest that \xd6zbeg, influenced by the Yuan administrative system, based his reforms in the Golden Horde upon it\u2019s two-tiered system.\xa0 Others see \xd6zbeg\u2019s four qarachi beys an adoption of the system employed by the Yuan, where the keshig\u2019s four day-commanders had to countersign the orders of the khan. Furthermore, \xd6zbeg encouraged and profited greatly from the great overland trade. Wares both originating from, and influenced by, China\xa0 are found within the remains of the Horde cities. The trade across Asia, from Egypt, India, China, the Chagatais and even the Ilkhanate, was the source of much of the great wealth enjoyed by the Jochid khans in the fourteenth century. For more on that, be sure to listen to our previous episode though.\xa0

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But \xd6zbeg was no man of peace. His lack of involvement in Esen Buqa\u2019s war with the Ilkhanate and Yuan was not out of a firm belief in the pax Mongolica. In 1314 \xd6zbeg was simply not in a position of security to take part in a larger conflict, and neither did he wish to sour relations with the Great Khan. In fact, \xd6zbeg was to take up seriously Jochid claims on the Caucasus. After his enthronement he sent envoys to the Ilkhanate demanding they cede these lands to the Golden Horde, while another letter reached the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, urging Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad to join him in an attack on the Ilkhanate. When the opportunity presented itself, \xd6zbeg was to commit wholeheartedly to the task.\xa0

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This came after the death of Il-Khan \xd6lejit\xfc in 1316, and the enthronement of the young Abu Sa\u2019id as Il-Khan the next year. \xd6zbeg promptly set about ordering preparations for an all-out assault; a prince of the Chagatai lineage who had recently defected to the Ilkhanate, Yasa\u2019ur, was convinced to revolt in the eastern part of the Ilkhanate, while \xd6zbeg rallied a great host to assault the Caucasus.\xa0 In late 1318 the invasion commenced, in what was likely the largest army put to the task since the days of Berke and Nogai almost 60 years before. In the account of the contemporary writer Wassaf, \xd6zbeg\u2019s official pretext was that he came to rest the regency of the Ilkhanate away from Choban, the non-Chinggisid who really ran the Ilkhanate while Abu Sa\u2019id was still in his minority. Yet, Abu Sa\u2019id and Choban rose to the occasion. In the east, Yasa\u2019ur\u2019s revolt was crushed, and the young Abu Sa\u2019id and Choban defeated and repulsed \xd6zbeg along the river Kur, though not before Abu Sa\u2019id was nearly overcome by the Jochid forces.

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\xd6zbeg was not put aside though; in the early 1320s he resumed the effort, this time in conjunction with an army under the Chagatai Khan Kebek.\xa0 The dating is a bit uncertain; 1322 or 1325, or perhaps these were two distinct invasions. Regardless of the date, the result was the same. The Ilkhanate was victorious, Choban\u2019s skilled military mind outplaying \xd6zbeg, and Choban even pursued \xd6zbeg\u2019s fleeing army back into the Golden Horde. \xd6zbeg\u2019s dreams at conquering the Caucasian pastures did not end. In 1335 \xd6zbeg gave it another go, rumoured to have been invited by Abu Sa\u2019id\u2019s wife, Baghdad Khatun. In the midst of riding north to meet him, Abu Sa\u2019id died, possibly poisoned by his estranged wife. Yet here too, \xd6zbeg was defeated by Abu Sa\u2019id\u2019s hastily chosen successor, Arpa Khan. It may have been too that \xd6zbeg was demoralized when news came of the death of his ally, Qutlugh-Tem\xfcr, late in 1335. So ended \xd6zbeg\u2019s final attempt to invade the lands of the Ilkhanate. No single reason is obviously apparent for the consistent defeats. It was not based on an inherent military differentiation; both armies continued to field lightly-armoured horse archers. The Ilkhans relied on knowledge of the Caucasus, fortifying and blocking the Jochids at river crossings and preempting Jochid mobility. Jochid defeats may not have necessarily been military failures, as much as an inability to advance except through strategic choke points controlled by large, well-supplied Ilkhanid armies. There is an assumption that Ilkhanid troops were on average better armed and equipped than their Jochid counterparts, even though\xa0 \xd6zbeg may have fielded larger armies.\xa0 One factor seems to have been \xd6zbeg himself; the Ilkhanate\u2019s commanders he faced, Choban Noyan and Arpa Khan, were simply better commanders than \xd6zbeg.\xa0

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\xd6zbeg\u2019s repeated assaults on the Ilkhanate became a main detail of his reign in numerous medieval accounts, and was evidently well known; the Book of the Knowledge of all the Kingdoms, an anonymous, late-fourteenth century work by a Spanish Franciscan, is a source where the author claims to have travelled around the world, though generally repeats nonsensical claims. Yet even here, a recognizable account of \xd6zbeg\u2019s invasion of the Ilkhanate is presented. A circa 1330 Franciscan account, the Book of the Estate of the Great Khaan, has \xd6zbeg attack Abu Sa\u2019id with 707,000 horsemen, a forced he raised \u201cwithout pressing hard on his empire.\u201d Some centuries later, Turkic histories like that of Abu\u2019l Ghazi Bahadur Khan even retained mentions of\xa0 \xd6zbeg\u2019s campaigns against the Ilkhanate, even when such sources are otherwise rather brisk or religion focused when it comes to describing\xa0 \xd6zbeg\u2019s reign.\xa0\xa0

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With the military front making no progress, \xd6zbeg was not above that other favoured Jochid strategy. That is,\xa0 attempting to get the Mamluks to do the work for them. \xd6zbeg had opened contact with the Mamluks soon after his enthronement, where he signaled his support for the alliance. \xd6zbeg heavily promoted his conversion to Islam in his letters, as well as his successes in converting the nomadic population. Coupled with allowing the Genoese back into the Black Sea ports and reopening the slave trade with the Mamluks, \xd6zbeg was clearly marking the time had come to move past the poor Jochid-Mamluk relations that had existed during the reign of his predecessor Toqta Khan. For the Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, this seemed a convincing enough transformation, and showed himself willing to commit to \xd6zbeg\u2019s initiative. It was this detente, as well as his dreams of a glorious Qalawunid dynasty, that led al-Nasir Muhammad to make an unusual request. In 1315, his messengers arrived in \xd6zbeg\u2019s ordu requesting a Chinggisid princess for al-Nasir Muhammad. Thus began the lengthy, and headache inducing, process of organizing the first, and only, marriage between a Chinggisid and the Mamluks of Egypt.\xa0

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It should first be noted that the marriage of Chinggisid women to non-Mongol dynasties was not uncommon. Numerous examples can be found with the other khanates, but for the Golden Horde alone, shortly before al-Nasir\u2019s offer \xd6zbeg had married his own sister Konchaka to Prince Yurii Daniilovich of Moscow, and during the 1250s the khans had offered princesses in marriage to the Hungarian king B\xe9la IV. To the Mongols, such a marriage symbolized one thing; submission to the house of Chinggis Khan, for only a subject could have the right to marry a daughter of his lineage. And \xd6zbeg certainly thought so. As we noted in earlier episodes, the Golden Horde likely imagined the Mamluks as their vassals, and \xd6zbeg must have seen this as a confirmation of it, even if the Mamluks did not view it as such. Negotiations went on, and \xd6zbeg\u2019s demands for a great dowry \u2014some 27,000 dinars, which the Sultan had to borrow from merchants\u2014were reluctantly met. The princess, Tulunbey, arrived in Cairo in 1320 after five years of back and forth, and the marriage was undertaken.\xa0

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Unfortunately for Tulunbey, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad was not the most loving of husbands. Al-Nasir Muhammad had, by that point in his life, lost his throne three separate times, and his youth been manhandled by greedy emirs; the consequences of these emirs resulted in the\xa0 boy sultan suffering an humiliating defeat at the hands of Ghazan Il-Khan in 1300. Extreme paranoia of all those around him was al-Nasir Muhammad\u2019s primary personality trait, and he was not exactly unjustified in this. But it seems the Sultan rather quickly came to doubt Tulunbey\u2019s heritage, and accused her of not actually being a Chinggisid. The Mamluk chronicles are confused over her background; variously, they identify her as a descendant of Batu, of Berke, or as \xd6zbeg\u2019s daughter, sister or niece. Yet these chroniclers do not share al-Nasir Muhammad\u2019s doubt over the fact of her being a Chinggisid, and appear almost embarrassed at his accusation. As the Mamluks\u2019 general portrayal of \xd6zbeg is as a pious and sincere Muslim monarch, such an accusation of an important ally was a bit of a needless incident. Furthermore, it seems an unusual ploy for \xd6zbeg to play given the scenario, and his outrage over al-Nasir\u2019s treatment of her seems rather much had \xd6zbeg in-fact sent a dummy Chinggisid.\xa0

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But even before al-Nasir\u2019s suspicions of Tulunbey developed, his detente with \xd6zbeg had already begun to fray.\xa0 \xd6zbeg had used the marriage to make greater economic and military demands of the Mamluks, requesting that al-Nasir Muhammad attack the Ilkhanate.\xa0 As the early 1320s saw the ongoing peace talks between al-Nasir Muhammad and the Il-Khan Abu Sa\u2019id, \xd6zbeg\u2019s demands for military asssitance were evermore discomforting.\xa0 The frustration of \xd6zbeg Khan resulted in him sending lower-ranking embassies to the Mamluks, beginning a spiraling game of tit-for-tat where each side further disrespected the other\u2019s envoys in an ever-escalating series of diplomatic slaps. At one point \xd6zbeg even forbid the sale of slaves to Egypt in reaction. Perhaps not coincidentally, \xd6zbeg also began to build up his own body of mamluk guards, according to Ibn Battuta. This fall out hardly bode well for the relationship between Sultan al-Nasir and Tulunbey.

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The marriage to Tulunbey produced no children, and by 1327 al-Nasir divorced her and married her off to a lower ranking commander. It took \xd6zbeg some time to learn of this, but once he did he was furious. In 1334 his letter arrived in Cairo, and lambasted the Sultan, telling him that Tulunbey should have been sent back to the Horde, and wrote \u201cSomeone like you should not injure the daughters of the Qa\u2019ans!\u201d \xd6zbeg, like all khans, thought little of the Mamluks\u2019 origins as Qipchap slaves. For him to divorce and humiliate a Chinggisid princess was an insult beyond measure.

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Al-Nasir\u2019s very thoughtful response was to claim that \xd6zbeg had been misinformed, and that actually Tulunbey had sadly died. In fact, Tulunbey was still very much alive; her second husband had recently died though, so al-Nasir forced her to marry another commander. This fellow too predeceased her, and Tulunbey was married to a fourth husband. She never returned to the Golden Horde, and died in Cairo in the 1360s, where her tomb remains today.\xa0

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\xd6zbeg requested that al-Nasir Muhamamd provide him a daughter to marry in recompense. Just like he would do with the Ilkhanate when they made the same request, al-Nasir equivocated, claiming his daughters were too young to marry. At the same time, he was marrying them off to Mamluk emirs. The relationship between their two states remained strained. While Mamluks chronicles retain a high opinion of \xd6zbeg, neither al-Nasir or \xd6zbeg cared much for the other, and tension remained until both died in 1341. In effect this was the great result of much esteemed Jochid-Mamluk alliance. What initially may have proved promising, largely turned into diplomatic squabbling, annoyance at the failure of the other party to meet expected demands, and never materialized into actual cooperation against the Ilkhanate. At best it stopped the Ilkhanate from truly concentrating too greatly on the Mamluk or Golden Horde frontiers. At worst, it was coincidental diplomatic posturing with two states the Ilkhanate had gone to war with independently. \xd6zbeg, the mighty Islamic khan, proved no more effective with the Mamluks than his non-Muslim predecessors.

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\xd6zbeg\u2019s \u201csouthern policy\u201d with the Mamluks and the Ilkhanate then, was not one of great successes. But what of his western frontiers, with Europe and the Rus\u2019? That will be the topic of our next 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 at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. 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