Everyone who is even slightly interested in history has heard about the Golden Horde. And how not to hear, if so many dramatic and important for our past events are connected with it. But the Blue Horde is almost absent in the mass consciousness, although it is sometimes even mentioned in school textbooks. Rarely, though. The information that Tokhtamysh, who burned Moscow in 1382, was the Khan of the Blue Horde, and again everything sinks into a fog.
“A king from the east, named Tokhtamysh, from the Blue Horde,” it is written in the Russian annals. Some, by the way, after this are confused definitively. What business then it was to Moscow, if it from “blue”? What he did not share there with Mamai? And everything like that.
In order to understand this, it is necessary to understand what the Blue Horde is in general, where it was located, how it appeared and how it is connected with the Golden Horde. And for this we will have to tell a little about the Golden Horde itself.
Usually they say that it was created by Khan Batu on the conquered lands. But in this there is a certain simplification. In fact, part of the territories of the Golden Horde was conquered before the Great Western campaign of 1236 — 1242. In fact, this state emerged as early as 1224, when the Mongol power was divided into three ulus. One of them was given to Genghis Khan’s eldest son Djuchi
Dzhuchi ulus included vast lands west of the Irtysh and up to the Caspian Sea, some of which had not yet been conquered. Juchi himself died in 1227, after which the ulus was given to his two sons, Batu and Orda-Ichen. After the western campaign Batu has considerably expanded borders of Dzhuchy ulus, having included Russia and Northern Black Sea coast.
And now we pass to the Blue Horde …
At Mongols there was a tradition according to which uluses were divided on “wings”. Just as a large army is divided into two wings — right and left. The ulus of Juchi was also divided between two sons. Batu ruled the western, and Orda-Ichen — the eastern. Thus the state remained united, exactly it we know as Golden Horde.
The western wing of the Golden Horde, where Batu ruled, was called the White Horde, and the eastern wing was called the Blue Horde. Both parts were independent, had their own khans, their own system of management, their own troops. In fact, we have before us an ancient form of federation.
Interestingly, a number of historians believe that the colors are actually mixed up — the east was white, and the west was blue. So under the power of Batu was the Blue Horde. But this version is less provable and less popular. In traditional historiography all the same the Blue Horde is located exactly in the east.
And what there with Khan Tokhtamysh all the same… Why did he come to burn Moscow, and not sit quietly in his Blue Horde?
Here the situation is as follows.
In 1359 was killed Khan Berdibek, on which the direct line of Batu’s descendants was cut off. It became the reason for grandiose turmoil in Golden Horde which is known to Russian annals under the name of Velikaya Zamyatnya. Twenty years Sarai passed from hand to hand, khans changed like gloves. At the end of all lines, going from the senior sons of Djuchi, have interrupted. Both in the White Horde and in the Blue Horde. There were no legitimate descendants of Batu left, no legitimate descendants of Orda-Ichen.
And the star hour of Sheibanids (Shibanids) has come. These are descendants of Shiban, the youngest of Juchi’s sons, to whom the lands on the territory of modern Kazakhstan were allocated in management.
Tokhtamysh is just a representative of the Sheibanid branch. In 1377 he decided that all rights to the Golden Horde pass to him, and went to conquer this vast state. First of all he took under control its eastern part — the Blue Horde. And then fought with Mamai for the western part. That is why the annals say that Tokhtamysh came from the Blue Horde.