The Role of the Turkic-Tatar Constituent People in the Formation of the State-Forming “People” of the Jochid Ulus in the 13th–14th centuries

• Main Author: D.M. Iskhakov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: State Institution «Sh.Marjani Institute of History of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences» 2017-06-01
• Series: Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie
• Online Access: http://goldhorde.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/%D0%97%D0%9E-2-2017-290-324.pdf

Research objectves: Study of ethnic processes that took place in the Jochid ulus (Golden Horde) in the 13th–14th centuries, which remain out of the sight of historians. Research materials: A complex of written historical sources, materials of historical, ethnological, linguistic and archaeological research. Results and novelty of the research: These processes are treated in extremely simplified forms, the essence of which is reduced to the “assimilation” of the Mongols with numerically predominant Polovtsians (Kypchaks). In addition to these shortcomings, domestic research suffers from other shortcomings under the influence of historians from Tatarstan who seek to eliminate the tradition of negative labeling of the ruling “people” of the Golden Horde, which was called the “Tatar-Mongols” in the old literature. In reality, one must well conceive the ethnic components of the given “people” for a reliable description of ethnic processes that took place in the 13th–14th centuries within the framework of the Golden Horde society, which ended with the formation of ethnic medieval Tatars. Meanwhile, this issue has not yet been fully developed. The role of the eastern Kypchaks-Kimaks in the formation of medieval Tatars is particularly poorly understood: their elite had a Tatar identity. In addition, we should pay attention to the participation of the Altai Turks in the ethnopolitical processes in the Jochid ulus, as well as of the Uighurs from the former Kimak Kaghanate closely associated with the Tatars. The study of these aspects of the extensive problem of the formation of a new “people” of medieval (Golden Horde) Tatars makes it possible to construct a different model of ethnic processes in the Jochid ulus, different from the previous one.