Golden Horde: Batu's Gilded Tent, Mongol Census Takers and Sarai Burned

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Genghis Khan gave his eldest son Jochi the westernmost lands, and Jochi's son Batu Khan, with the general Subutai, pushed across the Kipchak steppe in the 1230s, crushing the Volga Bulgars, taking Ryazan and sacking Kiev in the winter of 1240. In 1241 they defeated Polish, German and Hungarian armies, then turned back in 1242 when Ogedei died and a kurultai would choose the next Great Khan. Batu settled on the lower Volga, where his gold-covered tent likely gave the Golden Horde its name, and taxed the trade linking the northern fur trade with the Islamic world and the Silk Road. In the 1250s census officials counted hearths village by village, and Russian princes collected the tribute for the khan.

Batu's brother Berke converted to Islam and fought his cousin Hulagu, who had sacked Baghdad, at the Terek River in 1262, then allied with Egypt's Mamluks. Ozbeg Khan made Islam the state religion from 1313, and Ibn Battuta described Sarai's boulevards, baths and plumbing. The khans played Moscow against Tver with the yarlik patent to rule. The Black Death reached Caffa in the 1340s, trade and patronage dried up, and the Great Troubles of 1359 to 1381 followed. Dmitry Donskoy beat the warlord Mamai at Kulikovo in 1380. Tokhtamysh reunified the Horde and burned Moscow in 1382 after a false truce, but Timur defeated him at the Terek in 1395 and burned Sarai.

• The Mongols organized subject peoples into units of tens, hundreds and thousands to set tribute quotas.
• Hulagu's retreating troops drowned when the ice of the Terek River broke.
• Prince Mikhail of Tver was executed after Moscow's prince accused him of poisoning the khan's sister.
• In 1480 the Great Stand on the Ugra River ended without a battle as the Tatar forces withdrew.
• In 1502 the Crimean Khanate sacked what remained of the old capital.