The Tatar-Mongols created the largest empire in history. Their state stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea. Where did the people who controlled a quarter of the earth's land disappear to?
There were no Mongol-Tatars
Mongol-Tatars or Tatar-Mongols? No historian or linguist will answer this question with precision. For the reason that the Mongol-Tatars never existed.
In the 14th century, the Mongols, who conquered the lands of the Kipchaks (Polovtsy) and Russia, began to mix with the Kipchaks, a nomadic people of Turkic origin. There were more Polovtsians than foreign Mongols, and despite their political domination, the Mongols dissolved in the culture and language of the people they conquered.
“They all became like the Kipchaks, as if they belonged to the same clan, for the Mongols, having settled in the land of the Kipchaks, entered into marriages with them and remained to live on their land,” the Arab historian says.
In Russia and in Europe in the XIII-XIV centuries, all nomadic neighbors of the Mongol Empire, including the Polovtsy, were called Tatars.
After the devastating campaigns of the Mongols, the word "Tatars" (in Latin - tartari) became a kind of metaphor: foreign "Tatars", who attacked their enemies with lightning speed, were supposedly a product of hell - Tartar.
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The Mongols were first identified with “people from hell,” then with the Kipchaks, by whom they were assimilated. In the 19th century, Russian historical science decided that the "Tatars" were the Turks who fought on the side of the Mongols. This is how a curious and tautological term turned out, which is a merger of two names of the same people and literally means "Mongol-Mongols".
The word order was due to political considerations: after the formation of the USSR, it was decided that the term "Tatar-Mongol yoke" too radicalizes relations between Russians and Tatars, and they decided to "hide" behind the Mongols, who were not part of the USSR.
great empire
The Mongol ruler Temuchin managed to win the internecine wars. In 1206 he took the name Genghis Khan and was proclaimed the great Mongol khan, uniting the scattered clans. He conducted an audit of the army, dividing the soldiers into tens of thousands, thousands, hundreds and tens, organized elite units.
The famous Mongolian cavalry could move faster than any other kind of troops in the world - it covered up to 80 kilometers per day.
Over the years, the Mongol army ravaged many cities and villages that came across them on the way. Soon North China and India, Central Asia, and then parts of the territories of North Iran, the Caucasus, and Russia entered the Mongol Empire. The empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
The collapse of the largest state in the world
The aggressive campaigns of the vanguard troops reached Italy and Vienna, but a full-scale invasion of Western Europe never happened. Genghis Khan's grandson Batu, having learned about the death of the Great Khan, returned with the entire army back to elect a new head of the empire.
During his lifetime, Genghis Khan divided his colossal lands into uluses between his sons. After his death in 1227, the greatest empire in the world, occupying a quarter of all land and making up a third of the entire population of the Earth, remained united for forty years.
However, it soon began to disintegrate. The Uluses separated from each other, the independent Yuan Empire, the Hulaguid state, the Blue and White Hordes appeared. The Mongol Empire was destroyed by administrative problems, an internal struggle for power and the inability to control the huge population of the state (about 160 million people).
Another problem, perhaps the most basic, was the motley ethnic composition of the empire. The fact is that the Mongols did not dominate their state either culturally or numerically. Militarily advanced, famous horsemen and masters of intrigue, the Mongols could not keep their national identity as dominant. The conquered peoples actively dissolved the Mongol conquerors in themselves, and when assimilation became tangible, the country turned into fragmented territories, in which, as before, different peoples lived, which did not become a single nation.
Despite the fact that at the beginning of the XIV century the empire was tried to re-create as a conglomerate of independent states under the leadership of the great khan, it did not last long. In 1368, a red-band revolt took place in China, as a result of which the empire disappeared. Only a century later, in 1480, the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Russia was finally lifted.
Decay
Despite the fact that the empire had already collapsed into several states, each of them continued crushing. This especially affected the Golden Horde. For twenty years more than twenty-five khans were replaced there. Some uluses wanted to gain independence.
The Russian princes took advantage of the confusion of the internecine wars of the Golden Horde: Ivan Kalita expanded his possessions, and Dmitry Donskoy defeated Mamai in the Battle of Kulikovo.
In the 15th century, the Golden Horde finally disintegrated into the Crimean, Astrakhan, Kazan, Nogai and Siberian Khanates. The successor to the Golden Horde was the Great or Big Horde, which was also torn apart by civil strife and wars with its neighbors. In 1502, the Crimean Khanate captured the Volga region, as a result of which the Big Horde ceased to exist. The rest of the lands were divided among other fragments of the Golden Horde.
Where did the Mongols go?
There are several reasons for the disappearance of the "Tatar-Mongols". The Mongols were culturally absorbed by the conquered peoples, because they were frivolous about cultural and religious politics.
Moreover, the Mongols were not in the military majority. The American historian R. Pipes writes about the numerical strength of the army of the Mongol Empire: "The army that conquered Russia was led by the Mongols, but its ranks consisted mainly of people of Turkic origin, commonly known as Tatars."
Obviously, the Mongols were finally ousted by other ethnic groups, and their remnants mixed with the local population. As for the Tatar component of the incorrect term "Tatar-Mongols" - numerous peoples who lived in the lands of Asia and before the arrival of the Mongols, called "Tatars" by Europeans, continued to live there after the collapse of the empire.
However, this does not mean that the nomadic Mongol warriors have disappeared for good. After the collapse of the empire of Genghis Khan, a new Mongol state arose - the Yuan Empire. Its capitals were in Beijing and Shandu, and during the wars the empire conquered the territory of modern Mongolia. Some of the Mongols were later expelled from China to the north, where they settled in the territories of modern Inner (part of China's autonomous region) and Outer Mongolia.