Golden Horde

The Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate that ruled much of Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia from the 1240s to the late fifteenth century, established by Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, as the westernmost of the successor states formed after the Mongol Empire's division. Governed from the capital of Sarai on the lower Volga River, the khanate dominated the Russian principalities as a distant but demanding overlord, collecting tribute and requiring princes to receive their authority to rule from the khan, a period Russian history remembers as the Mongol yoke. Under Uzbeg Khan in the fourteenth century the Golden Horde adopted Islam as its state religion and reached its peak of wealth and power, controlling a vast network of Silk Road trade. The khanate began fragmenting in the fifteenth century into smaller successor states including the Crimean, Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberian khanates, and its final remnant, the Great Horde, was effectively destroyed by 1502, ending Mongol political dominance over the region that the rising Grand Duchy of Moscow inherited.