Batu Khan

Batu was a Mongol prince, the second son of Jochi, who was the eldest son of Genghis Khan. The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls him the conqueror of Russia and the founder of the Golden Horde, and dates his rule from 1227 to 1255. ¹ It says he was born in the early years of the 13th century. ¹ His importance for the Muslim world is indirect but large: the state he founded on the Volga later became a Muslim khanate under his brother Berke, and his support decided who became Great Khan in 1251. ²

During Genghis Khan's lifetime Jochi had received, as his appanage, the lands stretching from Khwarazm to Saksin and Bulghar on the Volga. When Jochi died in 624/1227, the eastern part, Western Siberia and the lower basin of the Syr Darya, passed to his eldest son Orda. To Batu fell the western part, meaning Khwarazm and the Kipchak Steppe to the north and north-east of the Black Sea. ¹

Of Batu's first ten years the article says only that he attended the assembly of Mongol princes in 626/1229 at which Ogedei was elected Great Khan, and probably the one in 632/1235 that decided to renew the war against the Russians and neighbouring peoples; he never returned to East Asia. ¹ The army that set out in the spring of 633/1236 included sons of Chaghatay, Ogedei and Tolui, but Batu held the supreme command. ¹

The article traces the campaign as follows. The town of Bulghar was destroyed in the autumn of 635/1237. The Mongols crossed the frozen Volga in November 1237, took one Russian city after another, and by March 1238 had the road to Novgorod open before them, but turned back about 65 miles short, evidently fearing the spring thaw. ¹ After a rest on the lower Don and minor operations in the Caucasus, the war resumed and ended with the fall of Kiev on 6 December 1240. ¹ From Ukraine one force went through Poland into Silesia and beat Duke Henry the Pious at Liegnitz on 9 April 1241, while the main army, led by Batu in person, crossed the Carpathians and inflicted a decisive defeat on the Hungarians in April 1241. On Christmas Day Batu crossed the frozen Danube to take Esztergom, and a last expedition went through Croatia and Dalmatia to the Adriatic after King Bela IV. ¹

When news came that the Great Khan Ogedei had died, on 11 December 1241, Batu decided to withdraw. He returned by way of the Balkans and reached his camps on the lower Volga late in 1242. ¹

Of the lands overrun in 1237-41 only Russia stayed subject to the Mongols. The article says Grand Duke Yaroslav of Vladimir came to Batu's camp as early as 1240-42 to pledge loyalty and was confirmed as senior of all the Russian princes, and that Prince Daniel of Galicia had to do the same in 1245. ¹ In the companion article on his descendants, the Encyclopaedia says Batu gave this western Mongol realm a centre in the towns of Old and later New Saray on the lower Volga, which grew into busy trading towns with a mixed population. Russians called the new state the "Golden Horde", and the article offers possible reasons for the name without settling on one. ² It adds that Batu, though absorbed in the affairs of the whole empire, refrained from taking the title of Great Khan. ²

Ogedei's eldest son Guyuk, described as a personal enemy of Batu, was raised to the throne at the assembly of 644/1246. Batu was represented there by five of his brothers; according to Rashid al-Din he excused himself on grounds of ill health. ¹ The article records that in early 1248 Guyuk set out westward from Qara-Qorum, saying he was going to his own lands on the Emil. Tolui's widow suspected that he meant to attack Batu and sent a warning. Guyuk died suddenly on the way, at a place called Kum-Sengir; the Yuan shih puts his death in the third month of 1248. ¹

Juwayni and Rashid al-Din disagree about where Batu was then and where the princes met. Juwayni has him advancing east at Guyuk's invitation and calling the princes to a place near the Ili; Rashid al-Din places the meeting in Batu's own territory, with the sons of Ogedei and Chaghatay refusing the long journey. ¹ Either way, the gathering acclaimed Mongke, the eldest son of Tolui, as Great Khan on Batu's proposal. The enthronement took place on 9 Rabi II 649/1 July 1251, Batu being represented by Berke, and a plot against the new Khan was uncovered during the festivities; most of its Ogedeid leaders were punished by banishment. ² The article on Mongke calls the result a coup by Batu and Mongke in which the senior (Jochid) and junior (Toluid) branches prevailed, and says the price of Batu's support was autonomy in his own lands. ³ The mother of Guyuk, Ogedei's widow Toregene, had earlier kept the throne open for her son; the article on her says Batu was able to hold off the election of Guyuk for four and a half years. ⁴

The article says the empire now stood, in effect, under two powers, Mongke and Batu. It cites William of Rubruck, who quotes Mongke in 1254 saying that his authority and Batu's reached everywhere, and who places the boundary between their territories in the steppes near the Talas river. As the senior Genghisid and the man to whom Mongke owed his throne, Batu enjoyed very great prestige and even exercised certain sovereign rights in Transoxiana, as when he confirmed the son of Temur Malik of Khujand in his father's estate. ²

Rubruck says Batu had twenty-six wives; Rashid al-Din says he had four sons. In his last years he handed some authority to his eldest son Sartaq, a Nestorian Christian, who from 646-7/1249 received the homage of the Russian princes. ² The sources differ considerably on the date of his death; the article thinks 653/1255 most likely, and the companion article gives 1255-56. ² From Rubruck's narrative he lived on the east bank of the Volga, moving north in summer and wintering near the river's mouth, where, the article says, he founded the town of Saray on a channel of the delta. ²

The article contrasts two images. The Russians knew him only as a cruel conqueror, while his Mongol contemporaries gave him an epithet that the scanned text cuts off; the Persian writer Juzjani, no friend of the Mongols, is said to praise him as just and wise. ² On religion, the article reports that he recognised only belief in God, which it explains as the worship of the Sky practised by his ancestors. ² The museum records no Muslim faith for him; it was his brother Berke who is called the first Mongol prince to become a Sunni Muslim. ²

The date of Batu's birth is not given beyond the early 13th century, the date of his death is disputed, and the sources disagree on where he was when Guyuk died. The epithet the article says his Mongol contemporaries gave him is lost in the scanned text, so it is not reproduced here, and the position of the Talas boundary is given only as the article's reading of Rubruck.