The series “Golden Horde”: the truth about how everything really happened. Essay on the second Mengu-Timur, or the first Khan Attitude to the Orthodox Church

Why should poets care whether posterity learns the story of their life?

All of it is in the glory of their work

Pierre-Jean Beranger

Mengu-Timur (Mongolian Munke-Temur) was very unlucky in historiography: researchers usually tend to present him as a rather mediocre ruler against the background of such outstanding sovereigns and statesmen as Batu, Berke, Nogai, Uzbek, Toktamysh. And in fact, compared to them, he looks quite inexpressive. Meanwhile, the very fact that it was Mengu-Timur who became the first khan of the Golden Horde to officially accept this title already allows us to classify him as one of the most outstanding “kings of the Horde.”

I

Mengu-Timur was the second of five sons of Tukan, the second son of Batu. His mother was Kuchu Khatun, the daughter (or sister) of Bug Timur from the influential Mongolian Oirat tribe. The exact date of birth of Mengu-Timur is unknown, we believe that he was born in the 1240s. His father, whom Borakchin Khatun unsuccessfully tried to elevate to the throne after the death of Ulagchi, probably died at the turn of the 1250-1260s, and by 1262/1263 Tarbu, Mengu-Timur’s elder brother, also died.

As a result, Mengu-Timur remained by this time the eldest in the Batu family, which was believed to have certain advantages in inheriting the Horde throne. Therefore, he became something of a "crown prince" under his great-uncle Burke. Arab diplomats who visited the Golden Horde in 661 AH. (1263), they reported that Mengu-Timur was “appointed heir” to Berke and bore as such the title “Amir Oglu, that is, Amir the Small.” Apparently, Berke himself was considered the “senior emir”, who did not claim to khan's title. It is likely that the recognition of Mengu-Timur as the heir became the condition under which the other Jochids agreed to recognize Berke as the ruler of the Golden Horde.

However, despite the official status of "crown prince", Mengu-Timur's rise to power after Berke's death was not so smooth. Russian chronicles from 1266 (the year of Berke’s death) report: “There was a great rebellion in Samekh Tatareh. the numberless multitude beat themselves up among themselves like the sand of Morsk.” Mengu-Timur had rivals in the struggle for the Horde throne, behind whom stood influential forces.

The first of them was Tuda-Mengu, the younger brother of Mengu-Timur. He was the next oldest, had a rather flexible character and, like Berke, gravitated towards Islam. These qualities attracted, on the one hand, the Muslim population of the Golden Horde to Tuda-Meng, and, on the other, those Mongol noyons who feared the imperious nature of Mengu-Timur. The second contender for the throne was probably Berke's young son, who could have been supported by both Muslim adherents of his father and those representatives of the Jochid clan who did not want the direct descendants of Batu to return to power. The most influential among them was Temnik Nogai, Berke’s favorite, who had great weight in the Horde troops.

However, the origins of Mengu-Timur and the formal status of Berke's heir helped him achieve power. And although the new ruler’s accession to the throne was not bloodless, he did not (or did not have the opportunity) to carry out large-scale repressions against those who opposed his accession, and limited himself to removing his most influential opponents from the court. In particular, Nogai was deprived of command of the Horde troops, sent to his inheritance on the Danube and during the entire reign of Mengu-Timur was not allowed to participate in state affairs. However, Mengu-Timur, for his part, tried not to interfere in the affairs of his ulus, allowing the temnik to create something like an autonomous state within the Golden Horde. Historical sources do not report anything about the further fate of Berke’s young son, and this suggests that he was eliminated by order of Mengu-Timur.

Not wanting to be completely dependent on any overly powerful military leader, Mengu-Timur divided the armed forces of the Golden Horde into three parts. He headed the center himself, entrusting the right wing to Noyon Taira. and the left - to Noyon Mavu. Presumably, both of these commanders contributed to his rise to power and enjoyed the trust of Batu’s grandson.

As we remember, Berke declared himself the head of the Golden Horde without permission, without receiving the consent of Khan Munke. Khubilai, Möngke's successor, was forced to come to terms with Berke's accession and now watched with alarm that Berke's heirs were following in his footsteps and did not at all need confirmation of their power by the khan. After some reflection, Kublai tried to somehow rectify the situation and sent Mengu-Timur a label in which he was appointed ruler of the Golden Horde. Of course, this gesture could not deceive anyone: in fact, Kublai himself admitted that he was coming to terms with the fact that Batu’s grandson had come to power and only recognized his accession. Nevertheless, Mengu-Timur accepted this label: without taking on any obligations in relation to the central government, he acquired legitimacy in the eyes of the khan and the rulers of other Mongol uluses, and this strengthened his position within the Golden Horde. From now on, his word both actually and formally became law for all subjects of the Jochid state.

II

Many expected that Batu's grandson, having come to power, would pursue a policy sharply different from Berke's - if only to show that the legitimate branch of the Jochids had returned to power, and to declare himself as an independent politician. However, in general, Mengu-Timur continued the policies of his great-uncle, only shifting some accents. This was especially evident in his foreign policy.

So, like Berke, Mengu-Timur began to maintain allied relations with Egypt. Sultan Baybars exchanged friendly messages and rich gifts with him - despite the fact that Mengu-Timur professed the traditional Mongolian religion of Tengrism, not Islam! It was quite obvious that Baybars hoped for the continuation of the war between the Golden Horde and Iran of the Hulaguids, and this promised him, the Sultan, freedom of action in the Middle East.

It seemed that at first Baybars’ hopes were fully justified: in the first year of his reign, Mengu-Timur continued the war with Ilkhan Abaga, which began under Berke. But in 1268, the new Horde ruler suffered a serious defeat from the Ilkhan and hastened to make peace with Iran. Much to the chagrin of Baybars, this peace was not disturbed until the death of Mengu-Timur. The Egyptian Sultan tried to influence the Horde dignitaries and through them push Mengu-Timur to a new war with Iran; but only Nogai responded positively to Baybars’ initiatives - and that was probably because at that time he was out of work and tried in every possible way to maintain his prestige in the eyes of foreign sovereigns. In 1277, Sultan Baybars died without waiting for the resumption of the war between the Golden Horde and Iran. Mengu-Timur (again, like Berke) had a calm relationship with Russia: already at the very beginning of his reign, in 1267, he issued the label of the Orthodox Church, freeing it from taxes and duties and granting autonomy in its internal affairs. In the form that has come down to us, the label of Mengu-Timur looks like this: “By the power of the Most High God, by the will of the Most High Trinity, the word of the people is baskak and prince and noble prince and to the tributary and to the scribe and to the passing ambassador and to the falconer and to the pardusnik. Chingiz the king then that there will be tribute or food, but don’t hide them and with the right heart of God pray for us and for our tribe and break us for good. Having said this, the last kings also granted priests and monks along the same route. Whether tribute or anything else, tamga, plow, yam, warrior, whoever asked for anything and they said to give, whoever we don’t know about, we know everything. And we, praying to God, did not erase their letters. Thus, saying along the first path, whoever will be given a tribute, or a cart, or a cart, should not ask for it; do not give yam, warrior, tamga. Or what belongs to the church, land, water, vegetable gardens, vineyards, mills, winter huts, summer huts - don’t take them. And even if they were caught, they would give it back. And whatever the church craftsmen, falconers, pardusnitsa, whoever they may be, do not borrow them, nor guard them. Or what is in the law of their books or anything else - let them not be borrowed, nor eaten, nor torn, nor destroyed. And whoever has the faith to blaspheme them - that person will apologize and die. The priest eats one bread and lives in one house, whoever has a brother or a son, and those who follow the same path receive a reward, even if they do not leave. Whether there will be tribute from them or something else, something else will be given to them. And the priest received a grant from us according to his first letter, praying to God and blessing us. And if you pray for us with the wrong heart, that sin will be upon you. So I say. Even those who are not priests, other people, will have a host, although they pray to God that this will happen. So, this metropolitan was given a letter. Having seen and heard this letter from the priests and from the Chernytsy, no tribute or anything else would be received by the Baskatsi, princes, scribes, servants, customs officers, but if they did not excite it, they would most likely apologize and die. This is how it was written in the fourth summer of the last autumn month on Tala.” This label can be considered, on the one hand, a continuation of the policy of the Mongol khans in relation to religion (starting with Genghis Khan, who issued the first such label to the Taoists back in 1223). On the other hand, this document meant that Mengu-Timur already intended to proclaim himself a khan, since only independent Genghisid monarchs had the right to issue labels.

For Mengu-Timur, Rus' was both a source of income and human resources, as well as a transit point on the trade route with Europe. The heir Berke fully patronized the development of trade and therefore sought to create the most favorable conditions for Western traders to do business in the Golden Horde. So, around 1269, Mengu-Timur issued a label to the Grand Duke Yaroslav Yaroslavich, ordering him to give “the path clear” to the Hanseatic merchants, that is, to let them pass through his lands without duties and taxes.

Around the same time, Mengu-Timur, the first of the Horde rulers, allowed Italian traders to settle in the south of the Golden Horde possessions - in the Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region, where at that time trading posts of the Venetians, Genoese and Pisans appeared. During the era of Mengu-Timur, the Genoese carried out trade expeditions even in the Caspian Sea and adjacent areas. And in 1278, the Venetian consul arrived in Sudak: the first official diplomatic representative of the republic. In domestic politics, Mengu-Timur tried to follow the principles of his grandfather Batu. He perfectly understood the danger that the ruling Chingizids and tribal leaders, having strengthened themselves in the areas allocated to them, could “take root”, establish family and political connections and, relying on the support of the local population, would cease to submit to the authority of the rulers of Sarai. To avoid this, Mengu-Timur periodically ordered his relatives and noyons to migrate together with their subjects to new places. For example, he transferred Uran-Timur (the son of Tug-Timur, whose descendants traditionally had possessions in the eastern regions of the Golden Horde - the Blue Horde) to the Crimea. And it is not Mengu-Timur’s fault that his successors on the Sarai throne stopped practicing such “shuffling.” In the end, the appanage rulers managed to gain a foothold in certain territories and achieve not only broad autonomy, but also lay claim to supreme power themselves. Having maximally strengthened his power within the country and ensured the security of the Golden Horde in the international arena, Mengu-Timur began the work of his life - acquiring complete independence for the Golden Horde.

III

Before Meng-Timur managed to proclaim himself khan, he played a not very long, but complex and eventful military-diplomatic game.

As we remember, Kublai Khan at the beginning of his reign faced opposition in the person of his brother Arik-Buga and his supporters. In 1264, Arik-Buga was defeated and surrendered, but his follower Khaidu, the grandson of Ogedei, remained free. Being at first an unruly prince who had no supporters, no possessions, no funds, by 1268 he managed to become so strong that he dared to challenge Kublai himself. Having convened a kurultai in Mongolia, Haidu proclaimed himself khan, while declaring Kublai Kublai an illegal ruler and, in addition, accusing him of violating all Mongol customs by accepting the title of emperor of the Yuan dynasty. As a result, a war broke out in the east of the Mongol Empire, which lasted until Haidu's death in 1301.

Mengu-Timur, having received from Khubilai a label confirming his right to power in the Golden Horde, at first did not interfere in the feuds of his eastern relatives. On the contrary, he even promised the emperor that he would support him in the fight against the rebels, and condemned Haidu's actions. However, Mengu-Timur's position soon changed, and he decided to support Haida.

In 1268, Borak, the ruler of the Chagataev ulus, protege and ally of Kublai, began a war with Khaidu. Mengu-Timur was not satisfied with the strengthening of the Kublai-Chagataid bloc, and he immediately sent 30,000 soldiers under the command of his great-uncle Berkechar, Berke’s brother, to help Khaid. Sandwiched between two opponents, Borak, who never received help from Kublai Khan, who was stuck in the struggle with the South Chinese Song Empire, was forced to capitulate. In 1269, a kurultai was held in the valley of the Talas River, to which Khaidu, Borak and a number of Chingizid princes from the Juchi uluses arrived. Chagatai and Ogedey. Mengu-Timur, for some reason, did not consider it possible to personally appear at the congress and sent the aforementioned Berkechar to represent his interests - with the same three tumens of troops that defeated Borak.

The participants of the kurultai made a number of decisions that determined the future fate of the Mongol Empire. First of all, the victors, Mengu-Timur and Khaidu, separated a good third of Borak's possessions for their own benefit. When he expressed indignation at their appetites, they offered him, as compensation... to make a predatory campaign against the possessions of Ilkhan Abaghi, the nephew and ally of Emperor Kublai!

However, the most important and fateful of the decisions was that the participants of the kurultai officially declared their possessions independent of the power of Kublai Kublai, and themselves accepted the titles of khan. Although Mengu-Timur already from the beginning of his reign behaved like an independent monarch (minted coins with his own name and issued labels), but now he received formal recognition of his khan's title in the eyes of his relatives. Khaidu, who had previously made claims to the khan's power, was also recognized by his relatives in the khan's dignity. Borak followed suit because he was angry with Kublai Kublai for not providing him military assistance in the war with Haidu and Mengu-Timur.

Having received recognition of the khan's title from the eastern Genghisids, Mengu-Timur stopped interfering in general imperial politics and from that time on provided his allies with more diplomatic and moral support. However, Khubilai and the Genghisids subordinate to him more than once refused to attack the possessions of Khaidu and the Chagataids when they heard rumors that Mengu-Timur was going to send his troops to help the allies. However, the Golden Horde Khan, first of all, defended his interests and did not want any of the opposing khans to become excessively strong. So, for example, in 1271, when Khaidu, not content with the title of an independent monarch in the Ulus of Ogedei, proclaimed himself a great khan (khakan), Mengu-Timur did not recognize his supremacy. On the contrary, when Khubilai appointed his son Numugan as governor in Mongolia, the khan of the Golden Horde entered into negotiations with the new governor and showed full support for his plans to strengthen Khubilai’s power in the Mongolian steppes. According to the Yuan Shi, Mengu-Timur even concluded an agreement with Kublai on a joint fight against internal rebels, which almost caused Haidu to attack the Ulus of Jochi: only after making sure that the Golden Horde khan was ready for war, Ogedei’s grandson abandoned his intentions.

But, seeing that Numugan’s influence in Mongolia was growing and, in turn, beginning to threaten the balance of power in the empire, Mengu-Timur once again took the side of Khaidu. In 1278, Numugan and his supreme military leader Khantun-noyon were betrayed by their allies, the Chingizid princes from the clan of Munke and Ogedei, and handed over to Khaidu. Ogedei's grandson sent them to his ally Mengu-Timur, at whose court both captives remained until his death. Such valuable hostages provided the Khan of the Golden Horde with extremely peaceful relations with Kublai! Thus, having only once used his military forces in the internecine struggle of the Chingizids, Mengu-Timur achieved the independence of the Golden Horde and became its first khan. He did not even have to fight for his independence: this task was transferred to the shoulders of his allies, who created so many problems for Kublai that he simply could not afford a war with the most remote ulus of the empire, which was the Golden Horde.

IV

So, already in the first three years of his reign, Mengu-Timur managed to achieve the independence of the Golden Horde and secure his possessions in the south (by making peace with Ilkhan Abaga) and in the east (by entering into an alliance with Chagataid Borak). It seemed that this was supposed to give him a free hand for an active policy of conquest in the West. However, this cautious and far-sighted pragmatic monarch was more often limited to a demonstration of force than to its actual use.

So, in 1270, when the knights of the Teutonic Order, located in Reval (Tallinn), once again intended to make a campaign against Veliky Novgorod, and the frightened prince Yaroslav Yaroslavich turned to Mengu-Timur for help, the khan ordered his Vladimir Baskak Amragan to appear at negotiations between Novgorodians and the Germans. The khan’s decision turned out to be effective: seeing a Mongol detachment (Baskak’s retinue) among the Russians, the Germans immediately lost their aggressiveness and signed peace with Novgorod “with all the will of Novgorod.”

In the same year, Grand Duke Yaroslav again turned to the khan - this time with a complaint against the Novgorodians themselves. The Novgorodians refused to recognize Grand Duke Yaroslav as their prince and invited his nephew Dmitry Pereyaslavsky, son of Alexander Nevsky, to reign in Novgorod. Despite the fact that the nephew remained loyal to his uncle and even openly took his side in the conflict with Novgorod, the Grand Duke intended to severely punish the Novgorodians. Yaroslav opposed them with the Vladimir, Tver, Pereyaslav and Smolensk squads, and also sent his envoy, the Novgorod mayor Ratibor Kluksovich, to Mengu-Timur with a request to provide Horde troops to restore order in Rus'. And again Mengu-Timur only pretended that he was going to send his troops to solve the problem. In fact, he waited for the arrival of Vasily Kostromsky (brother of the Grand Duke) to the Horde, who personally arrived at the khan’s headquarters and convinced him that “the Novgorodians ruled, and Yaroslav was to blame.” And the khan “return the Tatar army.” The campaign of the Horde troops against Rus' did not take place again.

A year later, Yaroslav Yaroslavich, probably already ill and feeling the approach of death, came to the khan in order, according to already established practice, to agree on the candidacy of his successor at the grand ducal table. The support of the khan this time was very important, because the legal heir, Vasily Yaroslavich Kostroma, brother of Yaroslav, had much less ability for a great reign than the next oldest nephew, Dmitry Pereyaslavsky, son of Alexander Nevsky. Nevertheless, the ancient right of the ladder belonged to Vasily, and Mengu-Timur agreed to support him as the most legitimate contender for the Vladimir Troy. The authority of the khan in Rus' was so high that Vasily, after the death of Yaroslav in 1272, established himself in Vladimir without any problems.

From time to time, Mengu-Timur sent his soldiers to help the Russian princes to fight against common external enemies. So, in 1274-1275. The khan, at the request of Lev Daniilovich Galitsky, sent soldiers to help him, who took part in the campaign of the Galician-Volyn princes against Lithuania. Such a policy of Mengu-Timur had several positive consequences: firstly, the khan demonstrated support for his loyal vassals, the Russian princes, secondly, he set the Lithuanians against them (who could become potential allies of Red Rus' in the fight against the Horde) and, finally, allowed their warriors to capture booty even when the Golden Horde did not formally wage any wars.

In 1276, Grand Duke Vasily Yaroslavich also died (a year before, like his predecessors, he had agreed with the khan on the candidacy of his successor), and the great table finally passed to his nephew Dmitry Alexandrovich. However, Dmitry, perhaps offended by the khan for not wanting to support his grand-ducal claims bypassing Uncle Vasily, did not seek to closely interact with Sarai. The new Grand Duke did not even go on the campaign that Mengu-Timur organized against the Yases (Ossetians) in 1277-1278. and in which many Russian princes took a very active part. With their help, the khan managed to capture the Ossetian city of Dzhulat (in Russian chronicles - Dedyakov). This victory allowed Mengu-Timur to strengthen the position of the Golden Horde in the North Caucasus and thereby further guarantee peaceful relations with Hulaguid Iran.

As can be seen, Mengu-Timur maintained generally favorable relations with Russia. During his reign, only one Russian prince died - the Ryazan ruler Roman Olgovich, and although in Russian sources it is customary to blame Mengu-Timur for his death, it is unlikely that the khan actually had anything to do with the murder of the prince.

Apparently, Roman Olgovich fell in the fight with his rivals - the appanage princes of Pron, who during the XIII-XV centuries. repeatedly laid claim to supreme power in the Ryazan principality. It is possible that the Pron rulers attracted Mongol detachments of local Baskaks to their side and with their help put an end to the Ryazan prince. It is known that just from 1270 Yaroslav, the son of Roman Olgovich, began to reign in Pronsk: apparently, he and his brothers decided to take revenge on the local princes for their father and drove them out of their own principality.

However, later the Ryazan diocese needed to get its “own” Christian great martyr, and as a result, a hagiographic legend about “the life of the holy noble prince Roman of Ryazan” appeared. According to the “life”, someone reported Roman Olgovich to Mengu-Timur that the prince refused to pay the Horde exit and blasphemed the faith of the Mongols. The khan summoned the prince to Sarai, and he condemned his paganism directly to the khan’s eyes and began praising Christianity. The enraged khan ordered him to be put to a painful execution - “to be dismembered at the joints,” and then to cut off his head and hang it on a spear. This is the official version of the Orthodox Church, but it appeared only in the 16th century. and has absolutely no relation to real events. Firstly, not a single case is known of any Golden Horde khan executing a prince or commoner for defending his religious beliefs. Secondly, Mengu-Timur himself patronized the Russian Orthodox Church, as evidenced by his label in 1267. Bishop Mitrofan of Sarai repeatedly carried out diplomatic assignments for the khan in Byzantium. Moreover, throughout his reign, Mengu-Timur, loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, did not allow Catholic missionaries to gain a foothold in the central regions of the Golden Horde: at the end of his reign, several missions operated only on the Horde borders with Hungary, while Catholics were able to settle in Sarai only under the successors of Mengu-Timur. All these facts force us to reject the version of the execution of Roman Ryazansky on the orders of Batu’s grandson.

Having certain religious preferences, the first Golden Horde khan, however, was not strong in religious matters, and sometimes this ignorance of his led to undesirable political consequences. This was manifested, in particular, in the story of the Seljuk Sultan Izz ad-Din Kay-Kavus and his son.

As we remember, at the end of his reign Berke managed to rescue the deposed Sultan Kay-Kavus II from Byzantine captivity. Hoping to return Troy to the Sultan and use him as an instrument of his policy in the Middle East, Berke showered Kay-Kavus with favors, married his daughter and granted control of the Crimean city of Solhat. However, Mengu-Timur made peace with Ilkhan Abaga in 1268 and, probably, in order to avoid reasons for renewing the war, abandoned Berke’s plan and changed his attitude towards Kay-Kavus. He recalled the former Sultan from Crimea and kept him with him, in Sarai. At his court, Izz ad-Din Kay-Kavus died in 1277 or 1278.

This is where Mengu-Timur showed his ignorance of the characteristics of various religions! He suggested to Masud b. Kay-Kavusu marries Urbay-Khatun, the widow of his father and daughter Berka. From the point of view of Mongolian religion and steppe customs, such a marriage was not only allowed, but also welcomed. However, according to the canons of Sharia, it was considered almost as incest and therefore was completely unacceptable for the Seljuk prince. Masud chose to escape from the Golden Horde over a marriage prohibited by religion. Together with his brother Faramarz, he fled from Sarai and voluntarily came to Ilkhan Abaga, who, oddly enough, treated the Seljuk princes favorably and even allocated them a part of the Seljuk state as an inheritance. As a result, Mengu-Timur lost even the illusory opportunity to elevate his protege to the Seljuk throne and return to the Golden Horde control over Asia Minor, which it had enjoyed during the era of Batu.

However, despite such failures, in general, Mengu-Timur’s foreign policy turned out to be very effective, and he managed to leave his successors a power that enjoyed great prestige in the international arena.

V

The power of Mengu-Timur prospered and enjoyed peace. Khan showed himself not only as a far-sighted politician, but also as a fair judge: in the memory of his descendants he remained under the nickname Kelek Khan, that is, a fair khan, under whom “all the offended thanked his nature, and the offenders complained.” Mengu-Timur continued Berke's monetary policy, consistently ensuring the issuance of a single coin throughout the entire territory of the Golden Horde, which would have a single weight and a single design. He also ordered his title to be minted on coins, calling himself "the highest khan" and the title "Sultan", which was probably intended to raise the reputation of Mengu-Timur in the Muslim world. In addition, it was under Mengu-Timur that the so-called “tamga of the house of Batu” appeared on the coins of the Golden Horde, showing that the Golden Horde was no longer the domain of the entire Genghisid family, but rather the descendants of Batu.

They say that those who are favored by the gods die young. Apparently, Mengu-Timur enjoyed their patronage to a large extent: he died before reaching 40 years of age. The death of the khan was the result of an unsuccessful operation: an abscess appeared in his throat, which was opened ineptly by the court doctors, which led to his death. This happened in 1280.

Mengu-Timur had several wives, of which the eldest was Dzhidzhek-Khatun, who became the wife of the first Horde khan after the death of her first husband Berke. His other wives were called Oljay-Khatun (from the Kungrat clan, niece of Munke Khan), Sultan-Khatun (from the clan ushin) and Kutuy-Khatun. From these wives he had ten sons (Alguy, Tokta, Tudan, Burliuk, Abaji, Saray-Buga, Togrul, Malakan, Kadan and Kutugan), who, in turn, left numerous offspring. Thus, the preservation and continuation of the Batu clan was ensured.

This label is the earliest of the labels presented in the brief collection. It was issued, apparently, on August 1, 1267 - “of the late summer of the first autumn month in the fourth month.” Mengu-Timur ascended the throne in 1266. The chronicle under the year 6774 (1266) says: “The Tatar king Berkai died, and Beserman was weakened by the violence of a Christian” (10).

Based on the available translations, it is possible to establish the actual number of those “many other” labels that were not included in the short edition for some reason. This letter of Mengu-Timur contains especially a lot of such information.

In Turkic-speaking practical diplomacy, there was a rule in the narrative part of letters of grant to state the motives for issuing similar acts. In the label of Mengu-Timur there is a reference to Genghis Khan as a justification for the motivation for issuing the label: “Don’t hide them, but with the right heart of God pray for us and for our tribe and bless us.” This is the general rationale for issuing labels.

There is also a second part, which sets out the grants of the “last kings” who acted along the “same path” as the founder. Here we specifically list those exemptions that were granted to the church by the predecessors of Mengu-Timur.

According to Khoroshkevich, the label of Mengu-Timur was based on the label of Batu, since the label of Mengu-Timur was addressed to “priests and monks,” and the previous letter was also issued to them, and not to the head of the church, and at that time Batu ruled.

Along with the exemption of the Russian clergy from extortions in favor of the Tatar khans, Taidula’s label contains an appeal to the Russian princes with a demand not to violate the “duty” in their relations with the metropolitan.

The label was given on behalf of Khansha Taidula. The 14th century historian Al-Omari writes about the Mongols that “their wives participate with them in government; commands come from them (from both) (11).

Taidula's label is not literally a grant, but a decree issued to Russian princes. It contains a note to a certain Ivan. The text of the letter begins with the phrase “all John, the metropolitan, has prayed for us since the good times and is also the prayer book to this day.” However, it is known that in 1347 there was no mysterious Metropolitan John, and Metropolitan Theognostus ruled in Rus'. Here the opinions of many researchers differ: A.L. Khoroshkevich suggested that under the name of John in Taidula’s charter Ivan Kalita is hidden, and in the narration of the label one should see a copy of the label of Uzbek Khan to this prince, dated approximately 1333. And Taidula’s own decree was of a confirmatory nature.

A.P. Grigoriev saw in the “taydulin word” a passing or passing certificate of protection and immunity. His understanding of the label is based on the possible rearrangement of individual fragments of the text and the insertion of expressions key to his interpretation of the text, as well as numerous stretches in the explanation of the terms and phrases of the document (Grigoriev reads the word “Metropolitan” as “bishop”, the plural of the verb in the phrase “deeds”. .. do" turns into a singular and the like).

I think what is compelling in Grigoriev's study is the understanding of the term "taida" as a Russified "toyid" - the plural of "toyon", the Mongolian designation for the entire clergy in the broad sense of the word. However, despite the fact that the label is addressed to the clergy, it is addressed to the Russian princes and this is irrefutably proven by the last phrase of the disposition. The situation is the same as in other labels. All of them were addressed to the Mongolian authorities in Rus' (this is well shown in the works of A.P. Grigoriev, V.V. Grigoriev and V. Kotvich), but their recipients were representatives of the church and the letters themselves contained information and orders specifically about its rights and provisions. In Taidula's label of 1347, the recipient was the metropolitan, but he had to certify his rights with this label not before representatives of the Mongol administration in Rus', but before the Russian princes themselves. The latter circumstance is apparently also connected with the fact that the label includes a “certification” of the metropolitan as a “prayer book” for the khans, which most likely goes back to the label that precedes Taidula’s label. This certification is addressed to the Russian princes, who were supposed to continue to “do things... to be done” by “all metropolitans”, as before.

“And you, Russian princes, are honored by Semyon, all metropolitans, as you did these things in the past, and now do such things.” In this phrase, two places are unclear: “all metropolitans” and the phrase “they do things.” In the first case, it should be translated “with all metropolitans.” In the second turn you can see an order regarding court proceedings. The term "case" meaning "dispute, litigation" was very common in the 14th century (12). In the first part of the label, possibly dating back to the time of Kalita, we are talking about resolving - and with the help of the grand ducal court - conflicts in connection with the collection of bribes and duties from church people, as well as in connection with conflicts between secular persons and the clergy: “from whom before the (princes) to come to the priests and their people with a word (complaint) and you would not give them any force.” The general requirement in the narrative part “rule their affairs in truth” also, obviously, leads to the settlement of relations between the secular and church populations with the help of the court.

A.I. Pliguzov, following M.D. Priselkov, proposes to see in John the Taidula label as the result of damage in the protograph of the Trinity Izvod.

The Mongol-Tatar yoke was not at all the same as it was described for a long time by domestic historians, and the real Mongol-Tatars were different from the ones we can see in the new series “Golden Horde”

We remember from school that there was a long and difficult period of the Mongol-Tatar yoke in the history of Rus'. But how things really were in those days is a complex question. Three consultants worked on one of the main television premieres of the season, the Channel One series “Golden Horde,” and each of them told completely different things about the Mongol-Tatars. Which, however, is not surprising: the period of the Horde yoke is one of the most controversial in the history of Rus'. Researchers have been unable to come to a common point of view for many years; some even doubt whether the yoke actually existed.

The Golden Horde in cinema and in reality

The action of "The Golden Horde" takes place at the end of the 13th century - at the very height of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the starting point for which is considered to be 1237, the beginning of the global campaign of the Mongol-Tatars against Rus'. The creators of the series admitted on the eve of the premiere that their project was not a historical reconstruction, but a fairy tale, fantasy film. Therefore, there is no point in looking for parallels between real-life characters and the heroes of the Golden Horde. So, the main character of the picture, Prince Yaroslav(played by Alexander Ustyugov) has no historical prototype - it is a collective image.

As the director of the series said Timur Alpatov, the historical part of the picture was especially difficult. We prepared for filming for several months. Each of the three consultants had his own point of view on what the Mongol-Tatars looked like and how they behaved, and on the impact this period had on the Russian lands.

As a result, after four months of studying the material, the director came to the conclusion that it was simply impossible to get to the bottom of the truth - and decided not to chase historical correspondences, but to shoot historical fantasy.

Descendants of Genghis Khan

However, the names of some historical characters that we hear in the film are also found in the chronicles. Khan featured in the picture Berke(actor Ramil Sabinov) was a grandson Genghis Khan, ruled the Horde from 1257 until his death in 1266. And in the first episode of The Golden Horde, an envoy, the handsome Khan, arrives in Rus' Mengu-Temir(played by actor Sanzhar Madiev). Real Mengu-Temir ( Timur) lived at the end of the 13th century, was the grandson of the khan Batu, the successor of Khan Berke and had good relations with Russia and many of its princes.

In particular, it is believed that thanks to him the historical reconciliation of the Grand Duke of Tver took place Yaroslav Yaroslavovich with the Novgorodians. Mengu-Temir introduced significant tax breaks for the Russian Orthodox Church and actively supported Orthodoxy.

And here is the plot with the wife of the Russian prince “gifted” to him ( Ustinho played Yulia Peresild) does not appear in historical sources in any way - but it is a well-known fact: the Horde often took Russian women not only as concubines, but also married them.

Whether the khan was as good-looking as shown in the series is also not mentioned in the sources. The appearance of the heroes of the Golden Horde, of course, was rather embellished by the creators of the series - the clothes fit too well, the men’s haircuts are too neat, the women’s hairstyles are too neat, and the beautiful and rich jewelry still looks too modern.

All women, both from the Golden Horde and from the Russian lands, are like a choice of beauty, although there are a sufficient number of references to the fact that many representatives of the Golden Horde were frankly not good-looking. But the filmmakers have their own view: who wants to watch ugly women in movies?

And the young khan and other Horde soldiers look too fresh, while the lifestyle and years spent on campaigns and the steppes clearly had to leave their mark. However, the genre of historical fantasy allows such liberties.

By the way : The actors participating in the filming had to actively engage in physical training. So, swords weighed about 8 kilograms, and chain mail weighed about 20; some armor of Mongol warriors was even heavier. In total, about 2,000 historical costumes were created for the Golden Horde.

Was there a yoke?

Everyone has heard about how difficult it was in Rus' during the Mongol-Tatar yoke. But how much can you trust this information? What’s interesting is that this term cannot be found in early Russian chronicles and testimonies of contemporaries - they started talking about the Horde yoke only at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, the first mentions of the yoke are found in Polish historical literature - and it was beneficial for the Poles, who at that time were striving for dominance over Russia present her story in the most “black” color possible. Perhaps it was then that the idea of ​​the Mongols as uneducated, dirty savages arose, which was completely untrue.

According to most modern historians, stories about the horrors and hardships of this period, and about many events, starting from the ruin of Rus' by Batu Khan, are greatly exaggerated - and since over the years, real events have become overgrown with many legends, it is quite difficult to get to the truth today. Some researchers believe that in fact there were almost no Mongols among the Mongol-Tatars - there were Tatars.

There is a version that in fact there was no yoke, the Mongols were very loyal to the Russians, and what later came to be called tribute was actually a payment for certain services. There is quite a lot of evidence that the size of the tribute, even if it did exist, was greatly exaggerated in subsequent centuries. And Rus' was ravaged by the civil strife of the princes, who raided and robbed their neighbors, and also attracted numerous allies to divide the lands - be it Tatars, or Poles, or highway robbers. And the raids of the Crimean khans, which began after the Tatar yoke, devastated the Russian lands much more severely.

What’s interesting is that there is information that the khans of the Golden Horde were forced to pay tribute to the Russian river pirates-ushkuiniks operating on the Volga, and even asked the Russian princes for protection from them - this really doesn’t fit well with the images of the conquerors.

Be that as it may, this period in Russian history also had its advantages. Since the khans were very loyal to Orthodoxy, this contributed to the spread of the influence of the Russian church.

Contrary to the stereotype that the Horde was ignorant, closed and alien to enlightenment, which is completely untrue, this period contributed to the development of geography and other sciences. In addition, the Golden Horde involved Rus' in extensive international trade. So modern historians avoid asserting that the absence of the “yoke” would benefit the historical development of the country, as some previously asserted.

In 1266, Khan Mengu-Timur allowed the Genoese, through his governor in Crimea, the nephew of Oran-Timur, to settle in Kafa, as a result of which Crimean trade revived and the importance of the Crimean peninsula itself and its capital, the city of Solkhat, increased.

At the same time, in 1268, Khan Mengu-Timur started a war with the Mongol Ilkhan of Iran, Abaka, over Azerbaijan. In this war, the ruler of the Golden Horde was supported by the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Syria, Baybars I. A year later, a peace treaty was concluded between Khan Mengu-Timur and Abaka.

In 1269, at the request of the Novgorodians, Khan Mengu-Timur sent an army to Veliky Novgorod to organize a campaign against the Livonian crusading knights, and one military demonstration near Narva was enough to conclude peace “according to the entire will of Novgorod.” In the Nikon Chronicle it was described as follows: ... the great prince Yaroslav Yaroslavich, the grandson of Vsevolozh, sent an ambassador to Volodymer to gather armies, although he was going against the Germans, but the gathered force was large, and the great Basque of Volodymer Iargaman and his son-in-law Aidar came with many Tatars, and then hearing the Germans were afraid, and the ambassadors were in trepidation sending gifts his own, and finished off all his wills, and gave them all, and the great Baskak, and all the Tatar princes and Tatars; I am very afraid of the name of Tatar. And so the Grand Duke Yaroslav Yaroslavich had done all his will, and the Narovs had given up everything and returned everything in full(PSRL, vol. X, p. 147).

The reconciliation of the Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal Yaroslav Yaroslavich of Tver with the Novgorodians also occurred with the help of the ambassadors of Mengu-Timur - this is evidenced by the “Contractual Letter of Novgorod with the Tver Grand Duke Yaroslav Yaroslavich” dated 1270: Behold, ambassadors arrived from Mengu Temer, the Tsar / Tsar, and imprisoned Yaroslav with a letter from Chevgu and Baisha.

In 1270, by order of Mengu-Timur, the Ryazan prince Roman Olgovich the Saint was executed, who stood up for his subjects and, according to the denunciation, condemned the faith of the khan, and therefore had to be punished in accordance with the religious legislation of Yasa - his dismembered alive at the joints.

In 1274, under Mengu-Timur, a campaign took place in the North Caucasus, during which the destruction of the Yasky city of Dedyakov took place. Russian princely regiments also took part in the campaign.

In 1275, Khan Mengu-Timur supported the King of Rus' Lev Danilovich Galitsky in hostilities against the Grand Duke of Lithuania Troyden. At the same time, other Russian princes dependent on the power of the Golden Horde also took part in this campaign, for example, the Chernigov prince Roman Mikhailovich Stary.

Mengu-Timur continued the policy of his predecessors to strengthen the independence and increase the influence of the Jochi ulus within the Mongol Empire. By his decree, a census was carried out in Rus' in order to streamline the collection of tribute. The government of Mengu-Timur took measures aimed at strengthening the power of the khan in the Jochi ulus: the remaining khans did not receive basic funds. The apparatus of imperial officials, created to collect tribute from subject territories, lost its importance - now the tribute went directly to the khan himself. Russian, Mordovian, Mari princes (and princes of other nationalities of the Golden Horde) received, along with a label, a financial register for collecting the Golden Horde tribute, which was also imposed on the inhabitants of the Golden Horde. They were divided into two categories: townspeople (not participating in wars), who paid ten percent of the profit, and nomads (replenishing the army), paying a hundredth of the profit.

Mengu-Timur began minting coins with his tamga in the city of Bulgar. New cities were built: Akkerman (now Belgorod-Dnestrovsky), Kilia (the westernmost city of the Golden Horde, located several tens of kilometers from the Black Sea), Tavan (40 km above Kherson), Kyrk-Er (not far from Bakhchisarai), Soldaya ( Sudak), Azak (Azov), Saraichik (60 km above modern Atyrau), Isker (near Tobolsk) and others. During the reign of Mengu-Timur, the Genoese colony of Kafa was founded in Crimea.

Under him, the Tatars, together with the Russian princes, made campaigns against the Byzantine Empire (about 1269-1271), Lithuania (1274), and the Caucasus (1277). In 1281, the army of Mengu-Timur took part in the battle with the Mamluks in Syria (between Hama and Homs). The battle ended without a clear winner; After suffering heavy losses, both sides retreated.

Attitude to the Russian Orthodox Church

In the name of Mengu-Timur, the first of the surviving labels, dated 1267, was written on the exemption of the Russian Orthodox Church from paying tribute to the Horde. This is a kind of charter of immunity for the Russian church and clergy - the name of Genghis Khan was placed at the beginning of the label. It should be noted that following the commandments of Yasa Genghis Khan, the khans even before Mengu-Timur did not include Russian abbots, monks, priests and sextons among those “counted” during the census (Laurentian Chronicle). Now the label affirmed the privileges of the clergy as a broad social group, including family members; Church and monastery land with all the people working there did not pay tax; and all “church people” were exempted from military service.

Muslim merchants stopped holding positions as tax collectors (baskaks) among the peasants. Insult (slander, slander) of the Orthodox religion (including from Muslims) was punishable by death. Horde officials were forbidden, on pain of death, to take away church lands or demand the performance of any service from church people.

The benefits of Mengu-Timur to the Orthodox Church in comparison with the labels of his predecessors were so great that in the Moscow Chronicle of the late 15th century it is directly written: ... the Tatar king Berkai died, and became weakened by Christian violence and besermen .

For the granted privileges, Russian priests and monks were required to pray to God for Mengu-Timur, his family and heirs. It was especially emphasized that their prayers and blessings should be earnest and sincere. " And if one of the clergy prays with a hidden thought, then he will commit a sin." It can be assumed that the text of the label was compiled jointly by Mengu-Timur (or his chief Mongol secretary) and Bishop Mitrofan of Sarai, representing the Russian clergy. And if so, then the moral sanction against insincere prayer must have been formulated by this bishop.

Thanks to this label, as well as a number of subsequent ones, the Russian clergy constituted a privileged group, and it was this that laid the foundation for church wealth. This page in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church was well known to educated people of the 19th century, for example to the poet A. S. Pushkin, who in his letter to P. Ya. Chaadaev wrote: The clergy, spared by the amazing ingenuity of the Tatars, alone - for two dark centuries - nourished the pale sparks of Byzantine education.

Under the khan, Bishop Athenogenes of Sarai was appointed head of the Tatar (Volga-Bulgar) delegation sent to Constantinople, that is, in fact, he became the ambassador of the Golden Horde. The rule of those times is known that if a member of the ruling dynasty of the Horde became an Orthodox Christian, then he did not lose his rights and property.

Mengu-Temur's relations with the Russian princes were relatively good precisely because of his positive attitude towards the Orthodox religion. This religious tolerance was spelled out in the Yasa of Genghis Khan: Genghis Khan did not obey any faith and did not follow any confession; he shied away from fanaticism and from preferring one religion to another, and from exalting some over others., which all Mongol rulers were supposed to follow, but not everyone followed, especially after the adoption of Islam in the Horde. But Khan Mengu-Timur himself was a follower of the traditional Mongolian religion - Tengrianism and therefore was able to balance the religious policy of the Golden Horde.

Mengu-Timur family.

1. Oljey-Khatun, daughter of Buk-Timur, sister of Oljey-Khatun.
2. Abish-Turkan, daughter of the Fars atabek Sa"da, son of atabek Abu-Bakr, mother of Kurduchin.
3. Nojin-khatun, daughter of Durabai-noyon.

Daughters: (Mengu-Timur had many daughters, only those known from the chronicle are given).

LABEL OF MENGU-TIMUR: RECONSTRUCTION OF CONTENTS

The so-called collection of khan's labels to Russian metropolitans was compiled in the first half of the 15th century. from ancient Russian translations of four immunity and two travel documents written on behalf of three Golden Horde khans and one khansha between 1267 and 1379. The initiative to create the collection belonged to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, which used it as a polemical weapon designed to protect church and monastic property from encroachment by secular authorities for three and a half hundred years. During this time, the content of the documents that made up the collection was constantly changing due to insertions and other deliberate distortions of their texts, which were aimed at maximizing the rights and privileges of the church. The collection functioned in two editions - the original, or short, and the later, which appeared in the 40s of the 16th century, - a lengthy one.

Created on Russian soil and for the Russian reader with a very specific purpose, the collection of khan's labels has long fulfilled its historical mission and, in the quality given to it, has lost its relevance. However, the original content of the documents that make it up, distorted by translators, editors and copyists, remains hidden from the eyes of historians to this day and cannot yet be used as a full-fledged historical source. The problems of reconstructing the original contents of the documents in the collection are generally known. An abstract form of the Golden Horde letters of grant has been identified. We begin to reconstruct the content of the oldest act of the collection - the label of Mengu-Timur from 1267.

A mechanical comparison of the surviving text of the said document with individual articles and turns of the abstract form of the Golden Horde letters of grant, identified mainly on the material of later acts, is, of course, mandatory. However, such a comparison should be carried out after understanding the specific facts of the history of the mid-13th century that happened in the territory where the events took place that necessitated the creation of a source, the reconstruction of the original content of which we have to begin. In other words, we need at least a brief concept of the historical period that explains the appearance of the Tsangu-Timur label.

On September 30, 1246, the Vladimir Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich died. The Vladimir table passed to his brother Svyatoslav, who carried out Yaroslav’s will - he distributed the seven Yaroslavich brothers among the city-appanages. The eldest of them, Alexander, was by that time a Novgorod prince with already ten years of experience, half of which bore the honorary nickname Nevsky. He received Tver, located in the westernmost part of the territory of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, as his patrimonial possession. The lands of the appanage Tver principality merged with the possessions of Novgorod. In 1247, Alexander’s second brother Andrei went to Bata to seek the expansion of his estate. He was followed by Alexander Nevsky. The brothers stayed away from their homeland until the end of 1249. Andrei returned home with the khan's grant, which confirmed him as the Grand Duke of Vladimir. Alexander the Mongol-Tatars “ordered” “Kyiv and the entire Russian land.”

It is known that Nevsky returned to Novgorod in 1249, where he reigned until 1252, when Andrei Yaroslavich refused to serve the Horde Khan, fled “overseas” and found temporary refuge in Sweden. Then Alexander became the Grand Duke of Vladimir and remained so until his death in 1263. The question arises - why did Alexander Nevsky need the title of Grand Duke of Kyiv? Namely the title, because he himself did not even visit Kyiv. He did not need the Kyiv lands, devastated and devastated as a result of the Horde invasion. Here it is appropriate to remember that the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' was considered the head of the Orthodox Church for all Russian lands at that time. After the defeat of Kievan Rus by the Mongol-Tatars, the Russian Orthodox Church, which was weaker than the princely authorities in economic and organizational relations, lost its support and protection in the person of the Kyiv Grand Duke. Alexander Nevsky, having secured the Principality of Kiev for himself, had a long-range political goal - to move the church center to North-Eastern Rus'. Having seized the title of Grand Duke of Kyiv, Alexander received the legal right to take Kyiv Metropolitan Kirill under his hand. The latter was forced to accept the patronage of Nevsky.

Kirill received the post of Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus' on the recommendation of the Galician prince Daniel and his brother Vasilko. He was mentioned in the chronicle as a designated metropolitan, accompanying Prince Daniel, as early as 1243. Cyril did not have the opportunity to go to Constantinople to the patriarch for ordination at least until 1248, for until that time Daniel was negotiating with the Pope about church union . It was assumed that if the union were accepted, the metropolitan would be consecrated not by the Patriarch of Constantinople, but by the Pope. In 1248, negotiations on the union were interrupted. In 1249, Alexander Nevsky became the Grand Duke of Kyiv, who retained his residence in Novgorod, and appointed boyar Dmitry Eykovich as governor in Kyiv. The response to this move by Nevsky was Daniil’s trip to Batu, which he made in 1250 through Kyiv. That same year, having returned home, the Galician prince hastily sent Cyril to Constantinople for initiation. With the help of the Hungarian king, this trip was successfully completed. Kirill, who returned from Constantinople, went to Vladimir without delay as a person accompanying Daniel’s daughter, who was declared the bride of Andrei Yaroslavich. Thus, the Metropolitan was removed from the control of the Grand Duke of Kyiv.

For a correct understanding of some of the events mentioned above, explanations and clarifications are required. In the first half of the 13th century. The Byzantine Empire as such did not exist. As a result of the fourth crusade, on April 13, 1204, the crusader army captured Constantinople. The Byzantine state fell to pieces. Its capital became the main city of a new state called the Latin Empire. By the end of 1204 - beginning of 1205, three main ones emerged from the many Greek centers, which are usually called the Nicaean Empire, the Kingdom of Epirus and the Empire of Trebizond. The Nicaean nobility and clergy, in agreement with the Constantinople hierarchs who lived in the city occupied by the Latins, in the spring of 1208 elected the new “ecumenical” patriarch Michael IV Authorian (1208-1214), whom the majority of the clergy and population of the Greek lands considered as the legitimate successor of the Constantinople patriarch and head all “Orthodox.” By the middle of the 13th century, the Nicene Empire became for the Greeks the main stronghold of the struggle for the reconquest of Constantinople and the revival of the Byzantine state within its former borders.

Thus, in 1250, the appointed Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus', Kirill, went to his post not in Constantinople, but in Nicaea (Iznik), located on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. He was ordained by Patriarch Manuel II (1244-1254), who obediently followed the will of the Nicene emperor John III Ducas Vatatzes (1222-1254). Vatatz sought to completely subordinate the church to the tasks of his domestic and foreign policy. Under this emperor, all the prerequisites were actually prepared for the return of Constantinople.

Daniil Galitsky, who by 1246 had completed almost 40 years of struggle with the Hungarian and Polish feudal lords and Galician boyars for the restoration of the unity of Galician-Volyn Rus, intervened in the war for the Austrian ducal throne and in the early 50s achieved recognition of the rights to it for his son Roman. Daniel's negotiations with the papal curia about the church union led to the fact that in 1254 he received the royal title from the Pope. Alexander Nevsky's political interests were directed towards North-Eastern Rus'. Any dependence on the Roman Catholic Church did not fit into his calculations. He was much more satisfied with the nominal supremacy of the Greek Orthodox Church, whose “ecumenical” patriarch could not then exert any real influence on North-Eastern Rus' and the policies of the Russian Grand Duke.

In 1251, Nevsky summoned Kirill from Vladimir to Novgorod to install the Novgorod archbishop. At the same time, ambassadors from the Pope arrived there with an offer to the prince to convert to Catholicism. Alexander, in the presence of the Metropolitan, decisively rejected this proposal, which apparently attracted Cyril to his side. Nevsky returned the metropolitan to Vladimir, and in 1252 he himself returned. went to the Horde, after which Andrei lost the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. Andrei's place was taken by Alexander, who was solemnly greeted at his new residence by Metropolitan Kirill.

In the same year, the Galician prince Daniel accepted the church union. From that time on, Metropolitan Kirill forever linked his activities with the interests of the Grand Dukes of Vladimir.

Kirill’s subsequent “pastoral” activities were reflected in the chronicles. In the spring of 1255, he buried Nevsky’s brother Konstantin in Vladimir; in the winter of 1256, he came to Novgorod with Nevsky; in 1261, he approved a replacement for the Rostov bishop Kirill. And suddenly we meet the news of that in 1261 Metropolitan Kirill installed Mitrofan Saraya as bishop. This message sounds to the attentive reader literally like a bolt from the blue. , established an Orthodox bishopric in the khan’s residence! Some new stage was opening in the relationship between the Horde khans and the great princes of Vladimir. There is no doubt that the interests of the khan were in the foreground here, for it was he who dictated his will at that time. side We already know that Kirill’s foreign policy activities, especially those related to the Horde, were inseparable from the interests of Alexander Nevsky. Why was it necessary to establish an Orthodox bishopric in Sarai for each of the parties?

To answer the question posed, let us somewhat expand the scope of our research and look at Horde-Russian relations from the point of view of a historian, the object of study of which is a whole complex of international problems that developed by 1261 on the European-Asian continent.

In the east of the mainland stretched the domains of the All-Mongolian Chinggisid khans, on whom the khans of the Golden Horde nominally depended. Since 1260, mortal enmity existed between the two great khans - the siblings Arigbuga and Kublai. Their third brother Hulagu from the late 50s of the 13th century. became the founder of a new independent Mongol ulus on the territory of the Iran-Hulaguid state. Very soon, the offensive impulse of Hulagu’s troops was stopped by the armed opposition of the Egyptian Mamluks, whose power extended to Syria and the Hejaz. Having stormed Baghdad and executed the last Abbasid caliph Mustasim (1258), the Mongols attacked Syria and captured Aleppo, Damascus and other cities (1260). The Mamluk Sultan Baybars I, who came to power at the end of 1260, established the caliphate in Cairo (1261) and conducted a “holy war” against the “infidel” Hulagu. In this struggle, the Mamluk Sultan found a powerful ally in the person of the “true believer” Golden Horde Khan Berke. Diplomatic relations between both sides began in 1261.

In the first years of the conquests in the lands of Iran, Iraq and Syria, Hulagu was supported financially and by human resources by the Khan of the Golden Horde. Hulagu recognized him as the eldest in his family. Berke sent 3 Tyumens (10-thousand-strong detachments) led by Juchid princes to the Hulaguid army. As the conquered territory expanded and Hulagu strengthened his power, mistrust grew between him and the Horde khan. Berke hoped to include Azerbaijan and Georgia in his possessions, but encountered decisive opposition from the founder of the Hulaguid state. In February 1260, three Horde princes who were in the Hulaguid army were killed openly or secretly one after another. After this event, enmity and hatred arose between both khans and grew from day to day, which soon led to an open break.

The leaders of the Horde detachments in the Hulaguid army received a secret order from Sarai to leave the Hulagu army and seek refuge with the Mamluk Sultan. Berke's plan was successfully implemented. The leaders of the detachments that arrived at the disposal of Baybars were the first diplomatic representatives of the Golden Horde in Egypt. In 1261, the Great Khan Kublai sent Hulagu a label for all the territories conquered in Iran and neighboring countries and the title of ulus khan (ilkhan). Since Berke supported Khubilai's rival Arigbuga, this label served as a legal basis for the Horde khan to begin military action against Hulagu.

A look at the political map of that time convinces the researcher that the practical interaction of alliance partners against Hulagu was possible only through the territory of the revived Byzantine Empire. There was simply no other way. The Mamluk Sultan and the Horde Khan took advantage of it.

We parted with the Nicene Empire in the early 50s of the 13th century. In 1259, Patriarch Arseny (1255-1259) crowned Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259-1282) as the next emperor there. All the efforts of the new emperor were aimed at capturing Constantinople. In the spring of 1260 he made his first attempt. However, Nicaean troops managed to capture the city only on July 25, 1261. Constantinople again became the capital of the empire. Arseny (1261-1264), who was again invited to the patriarchal throne, anointed Michael as king for the second time in the church of St. Sofia August 15, 1261 The fall of the Latin Empire was a heavy blow for many European sovereigns. The interests of a number of countries were affected, but primarily the prestige of the papal throne, the constant protector of the Latin emperors of Constantinople, was damaged. The position of Venice, which lost its dominant position in trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, also suffered significantly. Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) immediately began to take measures against Byzantium, demanding that Genoa break its alliance with Michael Palaiologos. Since the Genoese refused, there followed the excommunication of the government of Genoa and a papal interdict on the entire population of the republic.

Byzantine diplomacy, faced with the fact of the activation of anti-Byzantine coalitions in the West, began to look for a way out in simplifying relations with the East. The evidence of the Arabic-speaking author Ibn Abd al-Zahir about the existence of a written oath of friendship between Michael Paleologus and the Mamluk Sultan Baybars has been preserved. Baybars's first message to the Horde khan, sent in 1261, was delivered through his proxy to Sarai, most likely as part of the Byzantine diplomatic mission to Berke. The basis for this assumption is the fact that the reciprocal official Horde embassy to Egypt was sent in transit through Constantinople together with Byzantine diplomats and Berke ambassadors to Mikhail Paleologus. The Horde Khan was very sober about matters of faith. If in relations with the Muslim sovereign of Egypt Berke acted as an ardent fighter for the “restoration of the beacon of orthodoxy” against the shamanist Hulagu, then with the Orthodox Russian princes and with the Byzantine emperor he maintained completely normal diplomatic relations.

The reconquest of Constantinople by the Greeks and the revival of the Byzantine Empire in 1261 forced the Horde khan to believe that a powerful Christian state, since ancient times connected with the Russian principalities by many threads, was once again established on the most important international political and trade routes. Baybars used Orthodox clergymen, among whom was a bishop, as his ambassadors to Michael Paleologus. Berke followed the same path. In 1261 he founded an Orthodox bishopric in Sarai. Now the khan always had at hand a qualified adviser on issues of the Christian faith, a diplomat personally dependent on the khan, who knew Greek and was ready to use for communications with both the Byzantine emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was the recognized head of the Orthodox Church, who officially ordained and leaders of the Russian church - metropolitans.

A chronicle message has been preserved that Theognost, who in 1269 replaced Mitrofan as bishop of Sarai, returned in the winter of 1279 “from Greece, sent by Metropolitan [Cyril] to the Patriarch and Tsar Mengutemerem to Tsar [Mikhail] Palaeologus.” This evidence seems very valuable. It is clear from it that in relations with Byzantium, the Russian metropolitan and the Horde khan acted as if they were a “united front.” Of course, Kirill could in some way represent the interests of the Vladimir Grand Duke. The metropolitan also had his own, purely ecclesiastical, matters to deal with the patriarch. For example, it is known that the same Theognostus, on behalf of Cyril, presented questions regarding the rules of church service to the patriarchal synod in Constantinople on August 12, 1276. However, the interests of the Horde khan Mengu-Timur, who preserved the diplomatic ties of his predecessor with Mikhail Paleologus, were undoubtedly of decisive importance in these relations.

The basis of the union of the Russian church with the Horde administration was the economic interest of the Russian side. The Chinggisid khans, pursuing their political goals, traditionally exempted clergy from taxes, duties and emergency fees. Benefits for temples, monasteries and the leadership of a given cult in general were enshrined in writing in letters of grant.

The charter issued to Cyril in 1257 was hardly the first. The Russian Church already enjoyed tax immunity, apparently from the beginning of Berke's reign. Documentation of immunity required the personal presence of the metropolitan at the khan's headquarters, and Kirill undoubtedly went there several times. The chronicle reports on the stay in Rus' in the winter of 1258 of the Horde “numerals” - census takers of the population - with the aim of subsequently imposing regular taxes on it. They “destroyed the entire land of Suzdal, and Ryazan, and Murom... so much for the abbots, monks, priests, kriloshans, who look up to the Holy Mother of God and the Bishop (i.e., Metropolitan Kirill. - A. G.)". In this passage we see an indication of the receipt by the Russian Church of the immunity charter of Berke in the same 1258. True, specifically about the metropolitan’s trip to the Horde at that time or about the issuance of the khan’s charter of grant to him, not a word has been preserved in Russian chronicles. But then about the charter of Mengu-Timur, issued to Cyril in 1267, we have no contemporary written evidence of this event, unless, of course, we take into account this charter itself, which has come to us in a Russian translation in a collection of khan’s labels, the reconstruction of the original content of which we are trying to reconstruct. Now let's get started.

The initial article of the form of the Golden Horde letters of grant - theology - is typical only for letters written in letters of the Arabic alphabet. Since it is known that the original texts of the documents in the collection of Khan's labels were written by a Uyghur woman, the theology article is excluded for their forms. The first article of the individual form of the Mengu-Timur label was the appeal. In the old Russian translation, the article read: “By the power of the Most High God, the High Trinity by the will of Mengutemer, the word of the human Baskak and the Prince and the Polish Prince and the Danshik and the Scribe and the passing Ambassador and the Falconer and the Pardusnik.”

The first turn of the article of appeal was a decree, or a reasoned decree. In Mengu-Timur's label it read: "By the power of the Most High God, the Highest Trinity by the will of Mengu is the word." In form it was a motivated decree. However, in terms of content, his motivation did not fit into the verbal matrix familiar from the Genghisid documents of the ulus khans, which was translated into Russian as follows: “The Eternal God by the power of the Great Khan with prosperity.” If the first phrase of the decree’s motivation did not raise any doubts among any of the past researchers about either the authenticity or the original affiliation with the Mengu-Timur label, then its final phrase gave rise to at least four different kinds of interpretations among scientists.

Orientalist V.V. Grigoriev, who monographically studied the collection of khan’s labels back in the first half of the 19th century, believed that the phrase “the highest trinity by the will” was added to the line “the highest god by the power” by the Russian translator of the letter. The scientist, however, stipulated that “this It is still impossible to prove beyond doubt." The author of these lines initially shared the opinion of V.V. Grigoriev, considering its validity to be evidential. Then he leaned toward the assumption of a Buddhist interpretation of the "higher trinity." At present, neither one nor the other opinion seems convincing enough.

Indeed, if we admit that the first line of the motivation for the decree in Mengu-Timur’s yarlyk was originally inherent to him, and the second is his later Russian tracing paper, then we are presented with the motivation for the decree in the charter of not the ulus, but the great khan. Similar motivations in one line were found in some letters of grant of the great khans, written in Chinese. However, when translated into Russian, they did not sound quite adequate to the first line of the motivation for the decree in the label that interests us: “With the good pleasure of the Almighty God.” The first line of the two-line motivation in the charters of the ulus Hulaguid khans exactly corresponded to the first line of motivation in Mengu-Timur’s label. It can be assumed that the elimination of the second line, which expressed the dependence of the addressee on the great khan, mechanically transformed the motivation for the decree of the ulus khan into that of the great khan. The problem here is that without exception, all such motivations in the Hulaguid acts were written in letters of the Arabic alphabet on behalf of the Muslim khans, i.e. they are not suitable for our case.

As for the assumption that the second line of motivation in Mengu-Timur’s label indicates the “benevolence” of the Buddhist “supreme trinity,” three points prevent its acceptance. Firstly, we do not know a single Genghisid act where the Buddhist trinity acted as a component of the motivation for the decree; secondly, there are no known written documents in which the designation of the Buddhist trinity would be preceded by the name of the shamanistic “high sky”; thirdly, even if such coexistence were allowed even contrary to the facts, then we would be presented with two independent lines of motivation for the decree of the Great Khan. As is known, the second line of motivation for the decree in documents emanating from the person of the Great Khan was not independent, but only an intermediate, dependent link that separated the designation of the person of the khan from the designation of the “eternal god.”

Since, criticizing the above assumptions, in both cases we came to the conclusion that, although they cannot be accepted, their analysis invariably leads us to formal indicators inherent not in the ulus, but in the great khans, there is a need to check the real relationships between the khans of the ulus Jochi and the All-Mongolian khans, the relations that developed between them during the reign of Mengu-Timur. Let us turn to the testimony of surviving sources and the research of our predecessors.

The Mongolian chronicle “The Secret Legend” contains two lines of motivation in the name of the Golden Horde Khan Batu, which began his letter to the Great Khan Ogedei, sent in 1238: “The Eternal God by the power of the Great Khan-Uncle with prosperity.” This formula repeated the motivation for the circulation of the decree in the Genghisid documents of the ulus khans, being a written reflection of the actual seniority of the Great Khan over the ulus, his former nephew.

In 1241, Ogedei died, and in the same year the second son of Genghis Khan, Chagatai, died. For five years, various groups from representatives of the clan of Genghis Khan fought for the victory of their candidacy for the Great Khan's throne. Finally, in 1246, a kurultai was held, at which Ogedei Guyuk’s son was elected great khan. Batu did not recognize the new Great Khan and did not give him the oath. In 1248, Guyuk set out on a campaign against Vatu, but died before leaving Mongolia. Two houses - Jochi and Tuluya - united in the struggle for the election of Tuluy's son Munke (Mengu) as the great khan. They were opposed by the houses of Ogedei and Chagatai. At the kurultai in 1251, Munke (1251-1259) was elected great khan. Batu and Möngke finally eliminated the former role of the houses of Çağatay and Ögedei. In fact, during these years the Mongol Empire was divided into two parts ~ the possessions of Munke and the possessions of Batu.

After the death of the Great Khan Munke, the struggle for the throne was waged between the sons of Tuluy Arigbuga and Kublai. In 1260, at the kurultai in Karakorum, Arigbuga was elected great khan. That same year, his brother convened a kurultai in Kaiping and proclaimed himself great khan. In the hostilities that unfolded between the brothers, Arigbuga was defeated. In 1264 he surrendered to Kublai Kublai and died two years later. The struggle for the throne of the Great Khan in Mongolia did not end there. It was led and continued by Ogedei's grandson Hajdu. Hostilities between Haidu and Kublai continued until the death of the latter in 1294. The most active support for Haidu in his struggle for the throne was constantly provided by Batu's grandson Mengu-Timur (1267-1280). In the 60s of the 13th century. The Golden Horde actually broke away from the united Mongol center, headed by the Great Khan.

History has not preserved written documents of the Golden Horde of the Batu era, created after 1238. Neither letters nor letters of grant have reached us from the subsequent Horde khans who ruled before Mengu-Timur. The complete list of these khans and the more or less exact time of their reign was brought to us by Russian chronicles. Thanks to them, we know that after the death of Batu, which occurred in the winter of 1255, the khans were first his sons Sartak (1255-1256) and Ulagchi (1256-1258), and then his brother Berke (1258-1266). After the death of the Great Khan Ogedei, the aforementioned Horde khans no longer considered themselves dependent on the metropolis. True, their nominal dependence on the all-Mongolian center was still expressed in the minting of coins on the territory of the Golden Horde in the name of the great khans Munke and Arigbuga. Let us remember, however, that these great khans were actually proteges of the house of Jochi. So, in their written acts, the Horde khans were unlikely to make their power dependent on the well-being of the great khan, i.e., perhaps they simply eliminated the motivation for issuing the decree, as the khans of the Chagatai ulus did in their documents.

It is known that Berke was the first to take the initiative to introduce Islam in the Golden Horde. During the reign of this particular khan, the Russian lands experienced an increase in the severity of the Orda tribute, the collection of which began to be carried out through Muslim tax farmers. It is unlikely that under Burke the process of Islamization deeply affected even the top of Horde society. Rather, on the contrary, Berke’s course to spread the new religion from the very beginning aroused the opposition of the nomadic nobility, which resulted in an outbreak of internecine struggle in the Horde. Chronologically, it fell on the time from the death of Berke to the accession of Mengu-Timur.

According to the Persian-language historian Rashidaddin, Berke's death occurred from illness in 664 AH. (October 13, 1265 - October 1, 1266) in the Caucasus, during the period of hostilities with the son of Hulagu Abaga. Berke's body was taken to Sarai and buried there. The Arabic-language author al-Wahabi claims that Berke died in the month of Rabi al-Soni 665 AH. (December 30, 1266 - January 27, 1267). Considering that this author shifts the time of Hulagu’s death and Abaga’s accession to the throne from 663 AH. at 664 gh. it turns out that in fact Berke died in Rabi al-Sani 664 AH. (January 10 - February 7, 1266). It can be assumed that the turmoil in the Golden Horde lasted from the spring of 1266 to the spring of 1267 - the time of the final establishment of Mengu-Timur on the throne. In the Russian chronicle of 6774 (March 1266 - February 1267) we read the following message: “There was a great rebellion among the Tatars themselves.

Mengu-Timur returned the dominant position to the religion of his ancestors - shamanism. In the interpretation of Russian chronicles after Berke’s death, “Rus was weakened by the violence of the Beserman.” The new khan did not stop there. Beginning in 1267, he was the first among the Horde khans to mint coins in his own name. It was produced in Crimea (Old Crimea), Bulgar and Ukek (Uvek). On the coin legend, in front of the name of Mengu-Timur there was, inscribed in Arabic, the title “justified great khan”. In the Ipatiev Chronicle, the new title of the Horde khan is recorded in the form “Great Caesar”. The issue of a personal coin and the inclusion of the definition “great” in the title of the khan already marked the formal separation of the Jochi ulus from the all-Mongolian center.

The new title should have entailed a change in the motivation for the circulation of the decree (if there was one) in written documents emanating from the person of the khan. The Khan's acts themselves were now to be called not letters (decrees), but labels (commands). The surviving materials from Russian sources contemporary to Mengu-Timur do not reflect the expected formal changes in the khan’s documents.

To this day, the original letter of the Vladimir Grand Duke Yaroslav Yaroslavich (1263-1270), addressed to the people of Riga, about a free path for foreign (“German”) merchant guests, has been preserved. The certificate has no date of writing. This time is determined by publishers within the range from 1266 to 1272. The text of the letter of Yaroslav himself was preceded by a kind of preamble, consisting of the decree letter of Mengu-Timur or its fragment: “Mengu Temerevo word or Yaroslav prince; give way to the German guest to his volost.” Before analyzing the text of this letter from Mengu-Timur, we will try to more accurately determine in time the letter of Yaroslav, which contained the above text. Let's turn to the sources.

On January 27, 1266, the Novgorodians placed Alexander Nevsky's brother Yaroslav on the princely table. In 1270, the residents of Novgorod, outraged by his arbitrariness, “began to expel Prince Yaroslav from the city.” They sent a delegation to the prince, “writing all his guilt on the letter.” One of the points of this indictment was the question: “Why are you taking away from us the foreigner who is living with us?” The letter ended with the words: “And now, prince... eat from us, and we will provide for a prince for ourselves.” Yaroslav was forced to leave Novgorod. He sent an ambassador to Mengu-Timur, “asking for help in Novgorod.” Yaroslav's brother Vasily, who himself had designs on the Novgorod throne, personally went to the Horde and at a reception with the khan told him: “The Novgorodians are right, but Yaroslav is to blame.” Mengu-Timur ordered the return of the Horde army, which had already been sent to pacify the rebellious city. Yaroslav with the Tver, Pereyaslav and Smolensk regiments approached Novgorod, but did not besiege it, but turned to the residents with repentant speeches: “Everything that you disliked before me, I will lose; and all the princes will vouch for me.” The Novgorodians answered: “ Prince... eat, or we’ll die honestly... but we don’t want you.” Only the mediation of Metropolitan Kirill led to Yaroslav finally “taking peace on the whole will of Novgorod.”

Although the army of Mengu-Timur, sent to help Yaroslav, was returned to the Horde halfway, the ceremony of his imprisonment was attended by the khan’s ambassadors Chevgu and Baishi, who came to Novgorod “to imprison Yaroslav with a letter.” The content of the last document is illustrated by the contractual document between Novgorod and Yaroslav, drawn up in the same 1270. It has been preserved in the original. On the back of the document, in contemporary handwriting, the news about the Horde ambassadors is recorded. The letter contains the following lines: “And in the German court you (Yaroslav. - A. G.) trade with our brothers; but don’t close your courtyard; and don’t bother the bailiffs. And our guests will visit the Suadal lands without borders according to the Tsar's charter."

The claims of the Novgorodians to Yaroslav, the contents of his treaty letter with Novgorod and his letter addressed to the people of Riga are inextricably intertwined. Thus, the “Tsar’s charter” mentioned in the treaty with Novgorod, and a fragment of Mengu-Timur’s charter, placed in Yaroslav’s letter to the people of Riga, are written reflections of the same act of Mengu-Timur, created in 1270. It follows that, firstly, Yaroslav’s letter to the people of Riga was written in 1270, and secondly, the decree of Mengu-Timur was called a “letter” in Russian. Yaroslav's appeal to the people of Riga could not have been compiled later than 1270, since that same winter the prince left Novgorod, apparently accompanied by the aforementioned Tatar ambassadors, and went through Vladimir to the Horde, where he soon died. The Novgorodians' reference to the "Tsar's charter" was repeated verbatim in their treaty charters by Yaroslav's son Mikhail between 1307 and 1308.

One of the earliest Russian designations of the khan’s acts as “tsar’s labels” was preserved in the Trinity Chronicle only in 1304. The fact is that in Russian written monuments of the 13th century. We do not find the designation “label” does not mean the absence of such a designation in the authentic acts of Mengu-Timur and his successors. Apparently, the Old Russian borrowing from the Greek language “letter” as a general designation for any business document covered the Horde term “label” in the Russian chancellery. It took some time for the new term to take root in the Russian language environment in its original form.

Regarding the circulation of a decree without motivation, that is, the decree itself, which, according to our assumption, was only preserved in the acts of the Horde khans - the predecessors of Mengu-Timur, the following is known. The form of the decree in the documents of the subsequent Horde and the Crimean khans that replaced them in the 14th-16th centuries. has not changed, it remained a decree of the ulus khan. It is precisely this decree that we see in the Russian transmission of the texts of Mengu-Timur’s labels from 1267 and 1270. Another thing is known. In the Berdibek label from 1357, presented in Russian translation in the collection of khan labels, and on the Mongol-language silver payzakhs of the khans Tokta (1290-1312), Uzbek (1313-1342), Keldibek (1361-1362) and Abdullah (1361) that have come down to us -1370) under the decree characteristic of documents of ulus khans, the two-line motivation adopted for the labels of great khans was preserved. Consequently, it can be assumed that Mengu-Timur, having declared himself a great khan, did not replace in his documents the decree of the ulus khan with the decree of the great khan, but only shortened the two-line motivation for the decree to the second line (“The Eternal God by strength, the great khan by prosperity”) . Subsequent Horde khans supplemented the preserved first line of motivation with a second line (“great prosperity of the flame through patronage”), which was borrowed from the motivation at the decree of the Great Khan.

In the label of Mengu-Timur from 1270, more precisely in the Russian translation of a fragment from it, there is no motivation for the decree. This circumstance can be explained by the fact that the Russian compiler of Yaroslav’s letter to the people of Riga simply did not need the Mongolian motivation for the name of the khan. But in the full Russian text of Mengu-Timur’s label from 1267, the motivation took place. This motivation consisted of one youth ("the highest god by power") and its Russian tracing paper - an interpretation attributed to the later editor of the text of the label ("the highest trinity by will"). Since this document of Mengu-Timur was included in the collection of khan's labels much later than, for example, the acts of Berdibek and Bulek, already in the 15th century. then its text underwent more radical editorial changes. And so it happened that instead of the definition “prime-eternal” to the word “god”, preserved in Berdibek’s label in the form “immortal”, in Mengu-Timur’s label the definition “supreme” appeared, i.e. “the most high”.

In the 15th century The Horde Muslim khans and the rulers of the khanates that broke away from the Great Horde had already abandoned the motivated decree in their written antas. However, in the main text of their labels and letters, they continued to use the formula “pre-eternal god by power” with the definition of “pre-eternal” replaced by “almighty”, for the latter more accurately corresponded to the common definition of god accepted among Muslims. The formula of “the most high god by force” in relation to the person of the khan was adopted and actively used in correspondence with the Chinggisid khans by the scribes of the Russian chancellery. For example, in the letter of the Moscow Metropolitan Jonah to the Kazan Khan Makhmutek, compiled c. 1455-1456 it is written: "...by the power of the Most High God you maintain your dominion." In the same fifteenth century. in the said formula a synonym for the word “by force” appeared - “by will”. In 1474, the Russian ambassador N.V. Beklemishev had to submit to the discretion of the Crimean Khan Mengli-Girey the Moscow version, allegedly written on behalf of the khan, sworn letters, the main text of each of which began with the formula: “By the will of the Most High God.”

Based on what has been provided, we reconstruct the content of the circulation of the decree in the article addressing the label of Mengu-Timur in the following form; "By the power of the Eternal God, ours, Mengu-Timur, decree"

The final turn of the article is the address in Mengu-Timur's label to the addressee: "... the human Baskak and the prince and the Polish prince and the tribute and the scribes and the passing ambassador and the falconer and the pardusnik." The addressee has already undergone reconstruction. At that time, it was carried out under the erroneous motto of restoring the original text of the label. It was believed that the text that has come down to us is completely authentic to the one created in 1267 by a Russian translator, having before his eyes a literal Turkic translation from the Mongolian original and transmitting the Turkic text in Russian using the “word for word” method. Reconstruction was previously expressed in the simple replacement of Russian words with the corresponding Turkic and Mongolian equivalents. Now we abandon such a simplified approach to the problem and set ourselves the task of recreating not the original text of the label, but only its content. The task seemed to be simplified, but in fact, compared to the previous method of solving the problem, it became more complicated. We were clearly convinced of this already by the signs” of the reconstruction of the content of the decree.

Let's consider the initial designations of the addressee's representatives in the Mengu-Timur label. Before us are two groups of officials: “human Basques and princes” and “polchy princes.” The first group in other documents of the collection - the charters of Taidula (1331 and 1354), Berdibek (1357) and Bulek (1379) - corresponds to the second group of officials: "volost and city roads and princes." In the original text of Toktamysh’s label (1381), the first group is indicated at the beginning of the addressee: “Darug-princes of the Crimean Tyumen.” However, the second group is completely absent. In the defective text of the copy of Timur-Kutluk's label (1398), the first group is in second place: “inner cities [darug-princes].”

It is known that the Turkic term “baskak” clearly corresponded to the Mongolian term “daruga”. In Russian chronicles of the XIII-XIV centuries. Only one designation “baskak” was used. This word probably became famous among us back in the. the era of Russian-Polovtsian ties. In the original Mongolian text of the addressee of Mengu-Timur's label, of course, there was the term "daruga". Its Turkic equivalent turned out to be quite appropriate in the Russian translation of the 13th century. By the middle of the 14th century. The employees of the Russian chancellery who dealt with the Horde became quite familiar with the term in its original form - “daruga”. Therefore, in the remaining documents of the collection of khan’s labels, in place of the Baskaks we see “drog” = “darug”.

Darugs - Baskaks of Russian chronicles - permanently lived on the territory of this principality and exercised general control over the collection of taxes from it in favor of the khan. The main Baskaks, who supervised the activities of the Russian Grand Dukes, lived in the capital of the Grand Duchy. They came from the Mongol-Turkic elite. Around 1270, the chronicle notes the great Vladimir Baskak Amragan. Some Baskaks were Muslim merchant-farmers, apparently Persians by origin. They "bought their position from the khan and at the same time bought off all the taxes recorded for the given territory, in order to then cover all costs at the expense of the tax-paying population. Under 1283-1284, the chronicle tells of heavy tax oppression established in the Kursk principality by the Muslim tax farmer Akhmat. There were also Baskaks by Russians. Under 1255, the chronicle tells about the governor of Bakota, Miley, who became a Horde Baskak.” The governor of Kremenets Andrei was also a Baskaq, who received his position under Batu’s charter.

Noteworthy in Mengu-Timur’s label is the definition of “human” in relation to the Baskaks. Previously, we believed that it was equivalent to the word “ulus” in other acts of the collection of khan’s labels. However, the words “Tatar ulus” in other acts did not refer to Baskaks. Therefore, it is preferable to assume that by the phrase “human Baskaks and princes” the Russian editor of the collection of khan’s labels, who belonged to church-monastic circles, understood “secular, worldly”, i.e. in this case, civil darug-princes. In other words, the definition of “human” here is equivalent to the definition of “volost and city” in other acts of the collection. This means that the combination of “human basqak and prince” in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label can be conveyed by the combination of “cities and villages of darug-princes,” as, for example, it appears in the addressee of the Mongol charter of Mangala, the son of Kublai Kublai, dated 1276.

The second group of officials in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label corresponds to the first group in the charters of Taidula (1351): “Tatar ulus princes”, Taiduly (1354): “dark and thousand-strong princes and centurions and foremen”, Berdibek: “Tatar ulus and ratine princes” Mualbuta's thoughts" and Bulek: "Tatar ulus and military princes are Mamaev's uncle's thoughts." Let us note that in the text of the earliest list of translations of Berdibek and Bülek’s labels, the words “and military” were absent. The addressee organizes, placing in their places, the above-mentioned obscure designations of the second group of officials in the Timur-Kutluk label; "(The Great Ulus) of the right and left wings of the Oglans, those (i.e. tens of thousands) with Edigei under their command, thousands, hundreds and tens of princes." It turns out that directly adjacent to the official name of the Jochi ulus - the Great, or Mongolian ulus - were the designations of the khan's blood relatives - "sons" ("oglans"). They were followed by the personal names of the main family princes (Tuduns, Beglerbeks, Ulugbeks), to whom commanders over tens of thousands (tmami), thousands, hundreds and tens of warriors were subordinate. The addressee of the Mongolian letters of the great and ulus khans of the XIII-XIV centuries. the name “princes of the army” was encountered, but such a designation was always accompanied by the name of the ordinary soldiers subordinate to them - “military people”.

What has been said about the first and second groups of officials in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label raises doubts about the correctness of the order of their arrangement and even about the very possibility of the existence of the second group in this context. However, it turns out that in the addressee, for example, of the Mongol charter of Khaisan, son of Darmabala dated 1305, the arrangement of the first and second groups of officials is the same as in our case. As for the missing component for the second group - the name "military people" - in Mengu-Timur's yarlik, it is possible that in the Chinggisid yarliks ​​of the mid-13th century. named component, but was required. For example, we do not find it in the Chinese charter of Khubilai dated 1281.

The third group of officials in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label are “tributers,” this term in Russian documents of the 14th century. and almost the entire XIV century. is not found, but in the documents of the 15th century. it is used constantly. Let us remember that the content of the Russian text of Mengu-Timur’s label that has come down to us is closely intertwined with the content of the so-called charter charter of Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich and Metropolitan Cyprian about church people, created as a form in the 15th century. In this document, the term “tributer” is also presented. So, “danschiki” is a later Russian interpretation of some other Horde term. Which one exactly? I turned to the texts of the acts of the collection. In the addressee of Taidula's charter of 1351, the labels of Berdibek and Bülek, we find officials authorized to collect trade tax (tamga) - customs officers. In the text of Mengu-Timur's own yarlyk award, tamga is named in first place among the taxes levied. There we also meet the collectors of this tax - customs officers. The term “givers” is not included in the award for this label. It remains to be assumed that the Russian designation “danschiki” in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label corresponded to the word “customs officers.”

One of the main functions of the Baskaks (= Darug) was to supervise the collection of tribute (yasak) from the conquered peoples. The Russian chronicle of 1283 tells how the Kursk baskak Akhmat "ustavisha yasak", the Mongolian designation of tribute "yasak" corresponded to the Turkic name "salyk". The last term is noted in the Toktamysh label as a total tax collection, a certain part of which, apparently, was “chikysh” (Russian “exit”), recorded in the award of the same label.

There is no barn tax indicated either. The grant - druk of Timur-Kutluk confirms the correspondence of the names “yasak” and “salyk”, and mentions barn and trade taxes (tamga). In the award of the Ulug-Muhammad label, the names of the Taxes “yasak” and “chikysh” are given. On a recently discovered copy of this label, the text of which, with minor omissions, was published in 1872. I. N. Berezin, the name of the trade tax is also read. According to Rashidaddin, in 1235, the Great Khan Ogedei introduced a tax called “tagar” everywhere. For every 10 tagars (a large measure of bulk solids that varies in different regions) of grain, one Tatar was collected into the state treasury.” Perhaps this “tithe” was equivalent to the above-mentioned granary tax. In the Novgorod chronicle of 1257, it is reported: “Evil news has come from Rus', that the Tatars want tamgas and tithes in Novgorod.” It must be assumed that by that time in other Russian principalities tamga and tithes were already levied in favor of the khan. In the winter of the same year, Horde ambassadors arrived in Novgorod and demanded payment of the said taxes. The Novgorodians paid off with gifts in favor of the khan, that is, they refused to regularly pay taxes.

The fourth group of officials in the addressee of the Mentu-Timur label are “scribes”. This term is well known from Chinggisid letters from various regions. In most cases, it was adjacent to the designation of tax collectors. This juxtaposition was not accidental. Scribes were the name given to officials of state chancelleries—“men of the pen.” The regular collection of taxes on the conquered peoples was preceded by a house-to-house census, which in Rus' received the name “number”. The “number” scribes methodically described the yards on the territory of each Russian principality. In the Golden Horde, as in other Chinggisid uluses-states, among the military-nomadic Mongol-Turkic nobility formed a feudal hierarchy of captives, smoldering the following steps: khan, prince of darkness (temnik), prince of a thousand, prince of a hundred, prince of a dozen and an ordinary warrior-flax. The smallest military-administrative unit on the territory of the Horde proper was a nomadic economy, obliged field 10 warriors, and the largest one - a possession (Tyumen), which gave the khan the opportunity to mobilize 10 thousand people.

In cases where households in a conquered agricultural country were described, the calculation remained the same. Foremans, centurions, thousanders and temniks were appointed from the local environment, whose duties were fundamentally different from the functions of the Mongol-Turkic feudal lords. They had to monitor the receipt of taxes from each group of households assigned to them, forced to supply food, fodder and money, with which it was possible to support a certain number of Horde warriors. Each higher-ranking authorized official of the named chain was responsible for the subordinate superiors subordinate to him, and all of them were responsible for the timely receipt of taxes from the tax-paying population.

Details of the household census in the Russian principalities are contained in the chronicles. In the winter of 1257/58, the Horde enlisted men "destroyed" the entire land of Suzdal, Ryazan, Murom "and installed foremen, and centurions, and thousanders and temniks." In the winter of 1258/59, a new detachment of scribes arrived 80 Vladimir. The Horde people enlisted the armed support of the Russian Grand Duke and moved on to Veliky Novgorod. The Novgorodians initially rebelled, but the boyars gained the upper hand, forcing the city's lower classes to "follow their numbers." On this occasion, the chronicler bitterly notes: “The boyars do things easily for themselves, but evil for the lesser. And the accursed ones (numbers - A.R.) are increasingly driving through the streets, writing peasant houses.”

It must be emphasized that the designations of scribes and customs officers in the texts of the Golden Horde charters not only stood side by side, but the scribes were always placed in front of the customs officers. We see this in the recipients of Berdibek and Bülek’s labels. The same situation persists in the awarding of the label to Mengu-Timur himself. The violation of the order in the designation of the third and fourth groups of officials in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label was apparently caused by the fact that the editor of the Russian text of the label, replacing the name “customs officers” with “danshchiki” in its addressee, carelessly put “danshchiki” in the wrong own place. This error should be corrected in our recommended recipient.

The fifth group of officials in the addressee of Mengu-Timur's label are “cute ambassadors.” This group, called “traveling ambassadors,” is well known as one of the obligatory elements of the addressee according to the Golden Horde and Crimean Khan labels, as well as according to the Chinggisid acts of other regions. In Russian sources, “Tatar ambassadors” were called not only diplomatic representatives of the Horde khan, but also other officials sent from the khan’s headquarters on any other occasion. For example, census scribes were also called ambassadors. Annalistic evidence from 1259 has been preserved about forced collections from of the population of the Novgorod principality in favor of the Horde ambassadors, no regular Yam service was organized in the Novgorod land, and “tusku” was collected to support the ambassadors. This was an ancient Turkic designation for a special collection, which was recorded in the Dictionary of Mahmud of Kashgar in the form of “tuzgu”. There it meant “an offering of food, supplies for the journey to loved ones or relatives.” Apparently, the Russians became familiar with the name of this collection even before the Tatar-Mongol invasion, having heard it from the Polovtsians, and understood it without translation. which originally arose from voluntary offerings, has been known since ancient times in Rus' under the name “gift”. The last name is found in surviving Russian documents of the 13th century. This Russian term was not forgotten in documents of the 14th-15th centuries.

The sixth and seventh groups of officials in the addressee of Mengu-Timur's label - "falconers" and "pardusniks" - were also examined. Previously, according to a long-established tradition in scientific literature, we conveyed these terms with the words “falconers” and “hunters.” This is exactly how the terms “kushchi” and “barschi” were translated from eastern languages ​​into Russian, which meant people obliged to supply hunting birds and leopards to the court of one or another Genghisid. In Rus', falconry and many other types of hunting were widespread long before the creation of the Golden The hordes of people who caught and supplied falcons for the princely hunt, and also took part in falconry, were already called falconers in the 11th century. After the Horde invasion, Russian falconers remained at the princely courts.

They caught and trained game birds, most of which the princes transported as gifts - “wake” to the Horde rulers. The Khan's Kushchis were left to accept the birds and practically use them in falconry. In the Russian chronicle of 1283, there is a mention of the “tsar’s falconers,” that is, the khan’s falconers who hunted swans. The term “falconer” in Russian documents of a later period denoted the court position of chief over the princely falconers.

The same thing happened with the term “hunter”. For a long time, under the Russian princely economy, there was a special department of court hunting. Simple hunters were called catchers, and the object of their hunt was usually specified - “lovitva”. Bird catchers, trappers, and fishermen could be called catchers. “Animal catchers” were divided into specialists in the extraction of certain types of animals, for example, “beaver hunters”, “bear hunters”, etc. There was a special princely collection - “hunters”, noted in the 13th century. and designed to contain all kinds of catchers. Hunting with leopards was not practiced in Rus', although the word “leopard” itself in the Latinized form “pardus” has been known from Russian sources since the 10th century. The term pardusnik, derived from the type falconer, is no longer found anywhere except in the collection of khan’s labels. The above allows us to retain the term falconer in the addressee of Mengu-Timur’s label, and replace the term pardusniki with another designation - “animal catchers”.

This is where the addressee in the Mengu-Timur label ends. Its apparent incompleteness is noteworthy. This feeling arises when comparing it with the corresponding passages in other acts of the collection - Taidula’s charters from 1351 and 1354, Berdibek’s and Bülek’s labels. Their characteristic ending is the element we call “the whole people.” This element is missing in Mengu-Timur's label. It is not found in the Mongol letters of grant of the 13th century, written on behalf of the great and ulus khans. Therefore, in our case there is no need to speculate on it.

The second article of the individual form of the Mengu-Timur label is the announcement of the award. The article reads: “Genghis king then that there will be tribute or norms, they will not cover them up, but with the right heart of God, pray for us and for our tribe and bless us, saying so, and the last kings along the same path granted the priests and monks a tribute or something else that will not happen tamga ravine yam warrior who didn’t ask for anything and rykli were dati who again we don’t know everything, we know everything and we prayed to God and their letters did not disappear, saying on the first route which is tribute or trodden or cart or feed whoever will not ask for yam warrior tamga not to give or that the church land water vegetable garden grapes mills winter huts letovisha let them not occupy them and even if they were caught and they will give them back and that the church craftsmen falconers pardusnitsa whoever will not occupy them or guard them or what is in the law of their books or otherwise they will not borrow or accept or tear them apart or destroy them, and whoever has the faith to blaspheme them, that person will apologize and die, the priest eats only bread and lives in the same house, who has a brother or a son, and those along the same path will not receive benefits from them Will there be a tribute from them or something else to give them and the priests from us according to the right letter of God, praying and blessing you and you stand and you have the wrong heart for us, pray to God that sin will be on you so much so that even whoever is not a priest will "Some people should come to them and pray to God that this will happen, and they gave this metropolitan a letter."

The only guide in this incredibly cumbersome and difficult-to-understand phrase can be the abstract form of Golden Horde labels, from which, judging by a number of supporting words, it follows that here we are dealing with a confirmatory charter. Therefore, the first turn of the article under consideration is the precedent of the award, which is a message about the past awards of Genghis Khan and his successors to the clergy, which served as a model for this award of Mengu-Timur. How to isolate the desired phrase from the text of an article announcing an award? As an example, let us consider the precedent of the award in the Mongolian yarlyks of the Chinggisids, which read: “Genghis Khan, the great khans... [a number of names of the great khans] / in the yarlyaks / the clergy of Buddhist, Christian, Taoist, Muslim, / whatever not seeing taxes, / prayed to God [for the khans], offered good wishes, / it was said.” The text of this passage is divided into six semantic pieces by paired slashes. The result is text fragments that will serve as milestones for researchers to facilitate the analysis of the extant Russian text of the precedent of the award in the Mengu-Timur label.

We write out the text of the precedent for the award from the article announcement of the award in Taidula’s charter of 1351 and divide it accordingly into 6 parts: “From the good old times and to this day / that the pilgrims and the entire priestly rank pray / and they do not know any duties / themselves To pray to God for our tribe from generation to generation and to offer prayer / thus mlvya / The king granted Metropolitan Theognost with a scarlet tamga label.” We increase the number of examples of the precedent of the award due to Berdibek’s label, and we divide this text into 6 similar parts: “Chengiz the king and the last king are our fathers / and prayer books and the entire rank of priests prayed for them / no matter what the tribute or duty, otherwise there is no need for to see / that they pray for God’s repose and offer prayer / in such a way / they give labels.”

Examination of the precedent of the award in the charter of Taidula and Berdibek's yarlyk reveals the obvious identity of its components with those in the Mongol yarlykas of the great khans. A slight difference is observed only in the order of arrangement of semantic pieces in their Russian translation. This order is: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 2.

Neck, in view of the above analysis, we write out the text of the turnover precedent of the award from the article announcement of the award of Mengu-Timur’s label and divide it into the parts we have determined: “Genghis king then / what will be tribute or food not to cover them up / with the right heart of God for us and for our tribe they pray and bless us / thus saying / and the last kings / along the same path granted / the priests and the Cherkians / whether it was tribute or something else, tamga plough, warrior, whoever asked for anything, and they gave it / whoever again We don’t know everything, we know everything.” The order of the parts in this text is as follows: 1, 4, 5, 6, 1, 4, 2, 4, 7.

When reading this rather vague text, the researcher still gets some idea of ​​​​its content. It seems that its author tried to reproduce the precedent of the award, but did not do it very skillfully. He unlawfully separated the award of Genghis Khan from the awards of his successors, thus constructing two from one turn. The semantic pieces of text of both turns, already familiar to us from the examples, are given in an incomplete set and in disorder. Almost every preserved semantic piece of any of the turns is either filled with a new meaning, or does not correspond to the one accepted in the 13th-14th centuries. the form of its display,

Let's try to perform the opposite operation to the one performed by the editor of the Russian text of Mengu-Timur's label, i.e., we will connect the disparate elements of a single turn of precedent of the award.

The first semantic piece comes together without a trace: “Genghis is the king then and the last king.” The second semantic piece, if we adhere to the order of arrangement of elements observed in Taidula’s letter and Berdibek’s label, there is only one; "Half the monks." The third semantic piece is presented in three versions: “whether there will be tribute or food, not to hide them,” “they were granted along the same path,” “whether tribute or something else will be the tamga of the warrior, whoever asked for anything, and they were given.” These options coincide in general meaning. Before combining, each of them needs separate analysis. The fourth semantic piece is only one: “may God pray with the right heart for us and for our tribe and bless us.” The fifth semantic piece: “say so.” The sixth semantic piece is missing in its pure form. But there is an additional, seventh, saying: “Whoever does not know us, we know everything.”

The meaning of the fragment: “Genghis is the king then and the last king” is quite transparent. If you correct it with the text of Berdibek's label, then it is reconstructed as follows, “Genghis Khan and subsequent khans, our elder brothers.” We convey the expression from the Russian text of Berdibek’s yarlyk “our kings are our fathers” with the pilaf “khaki, porridge elder brothers”, guided by the original texts of the yarlyk Timur-Kutluk and Ulug-Muhammad.

The fragment “priests to monks” appears only in the second part, attributed by the editor, of the turnover to the precedent for awarding the label to Mengu-Timur. Priests and monks are also designated in the charter of Vasily Dmitrievich and Cyprian, created in the 15th century. The enumeration of representatives of various religions - Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, Muslims - adopted in the precedent of granting Mongol letters of grant, originally took place in the label of Mengu-Timur. When translating the label into Turkic and then into Russian “word by word,” the Mongolian designations of these representatives were left without translation. The interpreters of that time simply did not know how to correctly convey them in Russian, although from the context they understood that they were talking about all kinds of clergy. These names in Russian transliteration looked something like this: doyid, erkzyud, senshinud, dashmad. For the Russian reader they seemed like incomprehensible “gibberish.” Therefore, only in Taidula’s charter of 1347 was the first of the mentioned designations preserved in the form of “taida”. In Taidula's charter dated 1351. they were generally understood as “prayers and the entire priestly rite,” and in Berdibek’s label - “prayer books and the entire priestly rite.” Since we do not know the set of designations for representatives of various religions that took place in the original text of Mengu-Timur’s label, we leave the later, generally correct, Russian interpretation of this fragment: “priests and monks.”

All three versions of the semantic piece about taxes and duties from which representatives of the clergy were exempted, in general terms, boil down to a fragment of the precedent of the award of Mongol letters of grant: “without seeing any taxes.” In such a Russian transmission, it is quite suitable as an integral part of the precedent for awarding the label to Mengu-Timur.

In the first of the variants of this fragment in the Russian text of Mengu-Timur's yarlyk ("what will be tribute or food, but not bury them"), it speaks of tribute and food. Tribute is a tax in general, food is one of the duties, which here replaces the general designation of duties such as “duty” in Berdibek’s label. Is the combination “yasak-kalan” preserved in the original text of Timur-Kutluk’s label?

This Turkic paired term is close in meaning to the concept of “any taxes.”

The second option (“along the same path they were granted”) is specified by the Russian editor in the third option (“whether it’s a tribute or something else, whatever will be tamga, a plowed pit, a warrior who asked for anything and rykli were given”). Bachem needed such a detailed decoding of the general concepts for the editor. completely uncharacteristic of khan’s labels?

In the charter charter, the Grand Duke's daischik is prescribed a "tribute to imati" from the ancient church metropolitan villages only in the case when the prince himself needs to pay the Horde "exit", and only to the extent provided for by the princely quitrent charter. The charter document also specifies the procedure for paying tamga to “metropolitan church people”: “Whoever sells his household goods will not give tamga, but whoever has a purchase price to trade with will give tamga.” "Polzhnoe" - collection from a plow - land tax. The mention of the rogue in Russian letters of grant begins in the first quarter of the 15th century. Apparently, the tax term “afternoon” also appeared at the same time. “Yam”, or “Yam money”, is a tax that replaced some forms of in-kind service, such as carts. In Russian sources it appeared in the early 60s of the 14th century, i.e., significantly later than the time the label of Mengu-Timur was issued. "Warrior", i.e. "war" is a tax on the maintenance of military people. It could also be a “natural” service. In the charter document on this occasion it is written: “And about the warrior, if I myself, the great prince, sit on a horse, then the metropolitan boyars in the metropolitan, and under the metropolitan the commander, and under my banner, the great prince; and who ... ordered new to the metropolitan, and they will go under my commander, the Grand Duke." The appearance of the tax term “war” dates back to the 15th century. The practical participation of Russian troops in the Horde campaigns took place starting from the 13th century. As the Russian chronicler put it in 1274: “Then all the princes will be free in Totarism.”

“Church people,” although with reservations, were still subject to the taxes and duties listed in the charter of Vasily Dmitrievich and Cyprian. In the third version of the fragment from the precedent of granting the label of Mengu-Timur, the same taxes and duties were declared optional for priests and monks. In order not to pay them, it was enough to allegedly just “ask” the Horde khan about it. In other words, the precedent of the award in Mengu-Timur's yarlyk was directly compared by the editor of the collection of khan's yarlyks with the text of the charter. From this comparison an unambiguous conclusion emerged about the superiority of the label of the Horde khan over the charter charter of the Grand Duke. Of course, this was an advantage from the point of view of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. For this reason, the Russian editor of the text of the label assigned this version of a fragment of the grant precedent, which was in no way consistent with the form of the Mongol and, in particular, the Golden Horde grant letters. The author of the postscript justified and at the same time exposed himself with an exclamation that had nothing to do with the original text of the label: “Who doesn’t know this among us? - We know everything!”

The fragment: “may God pray and bless us with the right heart of God for us and for our tribe” - fits well with the corresponding fragment of the grant precedent in the Mongol letters of grant: “they would pray to God (for us), they would offer good wishes to [you].” The words “for us and for our tribe,” which were only implied in early Mongol letters, began to be specifically emphasized in later labels of the Horde Muslim khans in a similar context. So. Timur-Kutluk’s label reads: “for us and our clan.” Let us reconstruct the content of the entire fragment with the words: “let them pray to God for us and offer us good wishes.”

The fragment “tako molvya” in the context of the entire turn of phrase is preferable to convey in one word “saying”.

We do not find the final fragment of the turnover of the precedent of the award (which in Mongolian charters was conveyed by the expression “in labels”, and in the Taidula charter, Berdibek and Bülek’s labels - with the words “labels were submitted”) in Mengu-Timur’s label. As a result of distortion of the original text of the back, this fragment disappeared. We see its ending in the Verb “dati”, which completes the last version of the fragment, which talks about the optional payment of any taxes by priests and monks. Our reconstruction of the content of the last fragment: “they were given labels.”

Now it remains to analyze the contents of the announcement of the award, which gives the title to the second article as a whole. In the Mongolian labels of the great khans, the text of the reverse reads: “And now [they], / in accordance with the previous labels, / not seeing any taxes, / will pray to God for us, offer good wishes [to us], / saying, / (in in a certain place / to a certain person), / in order to keep with us, [we] gave a label.” The text of the reverse is divided into 8 parts according to its meaning.

In Taidulla’s charter from 1351, a similar phrase read: “And we / without issuing the first labels / mlavya / to the feognost metropolitan / with a niche gave a charter” to us / and how in Volodymeri we sat / to pray to God for Zdenibek and for us and for our children a prayer to repay / but he does not need a fee, no supply, no food, no request, no gift, no honor will be repaid by his people.” The text of the back is easily divided into the same 8 parts, but

We divide the announcement of the award in Berdibek’s yarlyka into the same parts: “And now we / the first kings of the yarlyaks, without thinking about it, have therefore / granted Metropolitan Alexy / and like Sed and Volodymeri / to pray to God for us and for our tribe he makes a prayer / so they thought / and no matter what tribute or duty they receive, they don’t accept carts, feed, drink, they don’t pay any requests or honors.” In this case, the order of the parts of the text, as well as their content, deviate even further from the Mongolian model: 1, 2, 7, 8, 6, 4, 5, 3.

We write out the entire text remaining from the second turn from Mengu-Timur’s label, simultaneously dividing it into parts that more or less correspond to the examples given above: “And we / praying to God and their letters on the basis of the word on the first path / which is a tribute or a plough or a cart or whoever will be fed, don’t ask for pits, warriors, tamga, don’t give, or that church land, water, garden, grapes, mills, winter huts, let them not occupy them, even if they caught them, and let them return them back, and that church craftsmen, falconers, pardusnitsa, whoever won’t, don’t occupy them either guard them or what is in the law of their books or anything else, let them not borrow or eat or destroy them, but whoever has faith blasphemes them, that person will apologize and die, the priest eats only bread and lives in the same house, who has a brother or a son, and so according to that But the ways of the award will not come from them, will it be from them that a tribute or something else should be given to them / but the priest received a grant from us according to the right letter of God with prayers and blessing us, and those who have a wrong heart for us, pray to God for that sin It will be so bad for you even if someone who is not a priest will have other people come to you, even if you pray to God, what will happen in that / so this metropolitan / has been given a letter.”

The text of the turn of the announcement of the award in the label of Mengu-Timur was divided into 7 parts, the order of which, if we take the same turn in the Mongol letters of grant as a model, turned out to be as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8. Others In other words, in general (if you do not take into account the absence of the 6th semantic piece), the announcement of the award in Mengu-Timur’s yarlyk is constructed in the same way as in the Mongol grant letters of the great khans. Taking a closer look at the resulting fragments of text, it is easy to notice that some of them combine semantic pieces that are by no means homogeneous. Let's try to understand their content sequentially.

It seems that the fragment: “let no one ask for tribute or ploughs, or carts, or food, pits, warrior tamga, or that church land, water, vegetable gardens, grapes, mills, winter huts, let them not occupy them, and even if they are caught, let them return back / and that the church masters falconers pardusnitsy whoever will not occupy them or guard them / or what is in the law of their books or anything else that they will not occupy nor eat nor tear them apart or destroy them / and whoever has faith in them blasphemes that person will apologize and die / priest who eats one bread and lives in one house, who has a brother or a son, and who along the same path will receive grants from them who have not given up, will they have given up tribute or “but what else should I give them,” - in turn, is divided according to content into the 6 parts we have already noted.

The first part: “which tribute or raft or cart or feed, whoever will not ask for pits of a warrior tamga is not given” - is a summary repetition of the taxes and duties mentioned in the precedent of the award of Mengu-Timur’s label, i.e. a fragment, the content of which has already been reconstructed by us. In relation to the content of the circulation of the announcement of the award, we reconstruct the content of this part with the words: “without seeing any taxes.”

The second part: “or that church land, water, vegetable gardens, grapes, mills, winter huts, let them not occupy them, and even if they are foolish, let them return back” - requires special consideration. The fact is that its text coincides with part of the article of the terms of the award, but in turn the immunity privileges that took place in the Mongolian letters of grant: “On the lands and waters, gardens, mills ... whatever the jurisdiction of the temples, let taxes they don’t take; whoever they are, let them not commit violence [against representatives of cults]; let them take away anything they have.” In Taidula's charter dated 1351, the corresponding text read: “And its land and waters, or gardens, or grapes, or millet, no one borrows from them, neither strength nor languor does anything to them, nor does anything take away from them.” In a similar fragment of Berdibek’s label it was said: “Or that the church house of land and water, vegetable gardens, mills, and they do not have any power over them, they do not do anything, and whoever takes what, or whoever takes it, let him give it back.”

In the Mongolian labels, Taidula's charter and Berdibek's label, the above texts were located after the article announcing the award, and in Mengu-Timur's label such text represented a seemingly unjustified inclusion of an announcement of the award in the article. How can this be explained? Apparently because the Russian editor of the text of Mengu-Timur's label arbitrarily increased its size by increasing privileges for the church. In the original text of the label, in all likelihood, there was no special article on the terms of the award at all. The editor borrowed the text of the phrase “immunity privileges” from Taidula’s charter and Berdibek’s label, constructing their consolidated text. The following signs convince us of this. In Taidula’s letter there is a final phrase: “let them not take anything away from them,” which in Mongolian labels corresponds to the words: “let them not take away whatever they have, taking it away and dragging it away.” Berdibek's label does not contain this phrase. But in Berdibek’s label the text of the fragment contains the words: “and whoever takes what, or whoever takes it, let him give it back,” which are not in Taidula’s letter. These words were not only not in the Mongolian labels of the Chinggisids, but, most likely, also in the original text of Berdibek’s label. They greatly impressed Russian churchmen in the first quarter of the 15th century, when Metropolitan Photius launched vigorous efforts for the return of church property. Then the mentioned words were inserted into Berdibek’s label, and from it into Mengu-Timur’s label. The Russian editor, of course, had no idea about the abstract form of the Golden Horde labels. Few people know about him even now. That's why the deception was not discovered for so long.

The third part: “and that the church masters, falconers and pardusnits, let no one occupy them or guard them” - seems to echo the contents of the second part. Here we are talking about craftsmen, falconers and animal catchers belonging to the “church people”, who are prohibited from being captured and kept in custody. Apparently, the Russian editor included this part, which was very relevant for Russian reality in the 15th century, in the text of Mengu-Timur’s label, having borrowed it and “modified” it from Taidula’s travel document of 1354, which said that “no people would (Metropolitan - A. G.) no one took possession of their horses." Noteworthy here is the mention of craftsmen. An appeal to them is found in the Horde document of the 15th century - the label of Ulug-Muhammad.

The fourth part: “or that in the law their books or anything else do not occupy them, they eat them, they tear them apart, they destroy them,” advocating for the safety of liturgical books, is not found in the Chinggisid acts and can be entirely attributed to the work of the Russian editor of the text of the label Mengu-Timur .

The fifth part: “and whoever has faith in their blasphemy, that person will apologize and die” - also has no relation to the original text of Mengu-Timur’s label. Such an irreconcilable attitude of the leadership of the Russian church towards detractors of the Orthodox faith is explained by the struggle of spiritual feudal lords against the anti-feudal heretical movements that unfolded in Rus' by the 15th century.

Inclusion of the sixth part in the text of Mengu-Timur’s label: “the priest eats only bread and lives in one house, who has a brother or a son, and those along the same path will receive a grant from them, but will they receive a tribute or something else?” give them" - is explained by the content of the statutory charter of Vasily Dmitrievich and Cyprian, which contained the following article: "And whoever the priest will be written to my (Grand Duke. - A. G.) service, but he wants to become a priest or a deacon, otherwise he doesn’t care. And the priest, who lives with his father, and eats his fathers bread, is another metropolitan. And the priest who is separated and lives next to his father, and eats his own bread, or else mine, is the great prince." A comparison of both texts reveals their unambiguousness.

Fragment: “and the priest received a grant from us according to the right letter of God, praying and blessing on the stand / and those who have a wrong heart for us, pray to God, that sin will be on you like this / as many as the priest will not have other people accept even though God’s prayers what will be in it" is divided into three parts according to its content.

The first part: “and the priest received a grant from us according to the right letter of God, praying and standing blessing us” - is the main one for us. The repeated words “and the priest received awards from us according to his rightful charter” were needed by the editor of the Russian text in order to return the Russian reader to the main idea of ​​the label -

award. We reconstruct the content of the fragment “pray to God and stand blessing us” in the form: “pray to God for us, offer good wishes to us.”

The second part: “if you have a wrong heart for us, pray to God, that sin will be upon you.” - is the editorial interpretation of two turns of the article on the terms of the award, which we previously called a warning to the reader and a mandate to the reader. In the Mongol letters of grant of the great khans, a warning to the reader was presented in several versions. Before the eyes of the editor of the text of Mengu-Timur’s label, there were the corresponding two turns in Taidula’s charter from 1351 (“and you, Metropolitan Fegnost, said that you have been granted this way, and whoever has nothing to do with you, gardens, grapes, waters of the earth, you yourself do something wrong, then you yourself know and for give us a prayer to God") and in Berdibek's label ("and you are Metropolitan Alexey and your entire priestly rank will say that this is a grant of osmy and a church house to the lands of a garden of grapes or over the church people, what you will do through a duty, otherwise on you or who is a robbery by lying Tatboy It’s a bad thing to do something, but if you don’t have it, look at it, you yourself know what kind of correction it is, you’ll do it, and for us, make a prayer to God first, and then we won’t say anything.” The editor of Mengu-Timur's shortcut made a short and clear summary of both turns.

The third part: “whoever is not a priest will receive other people, even if they pray to God, what will happen in that” - was inserted into the text of Mengu-Timur’s label, as opposed to the words included in the charter charter: “And my servants, the great prince, and “My people should not be appointed deacons and priests by the metropolitan.” Of course, the clergy were more satisfied with the text as interpreted by the editor of the label than with the categorical wording of the charter.

We reconstruct the content of the fragment “so mlvya” with the words “by telling [them].” The pronoun “to them” in this context seems obligatory, because the following, transparent in content, fragment “to this metropolitan (= “to this metropolitan”) names the metropolitan not as the main object of the award, but only as a representative of Russian priests and monks. Why is it not in the label the personal name of the metropolitan is given? We see the reason for this in the fact that Cyril was elected metropolitan during Batu’s lifetime and continued to lead the Russian church during the khanates of Sartak, Ulagchi, Berke and Mengu-Timur. In Rus', he was the only “eternal” metropolitan. Therefore, there was no need to call him in the label other than simply metropolitan. The same applies to the place of his residence, which, again, was not indicated in the label. Kirill practically did not live in Kiev, since he was constantly with the person of Vladimir. Grand Duke.

The content of the last fragment “the certificate was given here” - “the label was given” - exhausts the content of the circulation of the announcement of the award and the entire article of the same name, which as a whole appears in this form: “Genghis Khan and subsequent khans, our elder brothers, saying: “Priests and Monks, not seeing any taxes, let them pray to God for us and offer us good wishes!” — they were given labels. And now we, in accordance with the previous labels, told them: “Not seeing any taxes, pray to God for us, offer us good wishes!” - this metropolitan was given a label."

Now, if we are guided by the form of the Golden Horde letters of grant, made on the basis of documents from the late 14th-15th centuries, then the subsequent fragment of Mengu-Timur’s label could contain an article on the conditions of the award. It could be divided into the following phrases: immunity privileges, a call for assistance, a warning to representatives of the addressee, a warning to a literate person, an order to a literate person. Earlier Mongol grants of the great khans, issued at the end of the 13th-14th centuries, as a rule, also contained an article on the conditions of the award, which included a number of phrases under the general name of immunity privileges. Among them was a phrase from which later, in the Golden Horde charters of the 14th-15th centuries, the phrase warning to representatives of the addressee sprang off. Above we examined this circulation, in its still undeveloped form, using the example of Taidula’s charter from 1351 and Berdibek’s label, and found out that it had nothing to do with Mengu-Timur’s label.

And here we have before us another fragment of the Russian text of Mengu-Timur’s label: “seeing and hearing this letter from the priests and from the monks, neither tribute nor anything else they want, the Baskas, the princes, the scribes, the customs officers, but they will disturb, and they will not apologize in the grandest way, and they will die like that.” . It seems that the warning to the representatives of the addressee is being repeated, threatening those who disobey with death. We examined it above and considered it a later insertion. In Taidula’s charter from 1351, this kind of phrase read: “and whoever inflicts wanton force or plans to pay will die and be observed.” In Berdibek’s label it read: “Whoever has the power to build or destroy them will die in sin.” In the authentic texts of the Golden Horde labels of the late XIV - early XV centuries. the form of such a turnover looked somewhat different. In the labels of Toktamysh and Ulug-Muhammad, the turn began with the words: “Such [our] command after.” This was followed by an impersonal indication of possible disobedience. The turn ended with the words: “They will certainly be afraid!”

In what ways do the texts of the turnover warning to the representatives of the addressee of the named letters of complaint coincide and in what ways do they not coincide? In the acts of Taidula and Berdibek, disobedient people are called “and who”. The picture is approximately the same in the labels of Toktamysh and Ulug-Muhammad. In Mengu-Timur's label, the text of the phrase in which detractors of the faith were warned almost literally coincided with the quoted phrases in the acts of Taidula and Berdibek. And in this last turn of the Mengu-Timur label we see a detailed list of possible disobedients, coinciding with the list of representatives of the addressee in the same label. The seemingly small difference is that the addressee includes “Baskaks and princes”, and here – “Baskaci princes”, i.e., princely Baskaks! Consequently, the scribes, clerks and customs officers named by them also meant princely ones. In other words, the turnover warns and threatens with death the representatives not of the Horde, but of the grand ducal administration. This means that before us is a foreign insert.

In this turn, as in the acts of Taidula and Berdibek, disobedient people are afraid of death, and in the original texts of the labels of Toktamysh and Ulug-Muhammad, the expression is softer (“they will certainly be afraid”). If we look at the final lines of the phrase warning to the reader in early Mongol acts (there was no separate phrase warning to representatives of the addressee yet), we will see there the words: “Will they not be afraid?” There was no threat of death in them either. Where could it have appeared in falsified inserts that imitated a warning to representatives of the addressee in the acts of Mengu-Timur, Taidula and Berdibek? It seems possible to assume that the editor of the collection of khan's labels could have borrowed the death threat from the content of the inscriptions engraved on the paizas of the Golden Horde khans. These inscriptions were translated at a modern level and scrupulously commented on by N. Ts. Munkuev. It is difficult to admit that the Russian literati of the 14th-15th centuries, who along with the granted letter also learned its metal certificate - paizu, were not aware of the content of the inscription on it. The ending of such an inscription read: “Anyone who does not respect [this khan’s command] must be killed and die!”

The last thing in the individual form of the Mengu-Thymus label was the certification article. “By the summer of the autumn month of the fourth, it was written on the talis.” The word order of its Russian translation coincides in detail with that in the Mongolian charters of the great and ulus khans. The principle of constructing the article in the acts of Taidula and Berdibek was the same. The contents of the article have already been reconstructed. Now we would make some adjustments to this reconstruction. The place of writing will be designated by the words “[our headquarters] was in the steppe [when it was].” The last word of the article, taking into account our conclusion that the charter of Mengu-Timur was called a yarlyk, will be “written”. As a result, the content of the article as a whole appears as follows: “In the year of the hare, the first month of autumn on the fourth [day] of the old [month], when [“our headquarters] was in the steppe, it is written.” The date indicated in Mengu-Timur’s label Our calendar corresponded to August 10, 1267.

Perhaps, only this article of Mengu-Timur’s label, the text of which has reached us in a literal translation in its entirety and without visible distortions, can serve as a guarantee that we have before us a Russian translation of an authentic Mongolian charter. Only this fragment of it was not considered necessary, and even if they wanted, subsequent editors of the text of the translation of Mengu-Timur’s label could not have changed it, much less come up with it.

The overall result of the work done to reconstruct the content of Mengu-Timur’s label comes down to the following:

“By the power of the Eternal God, ours, Mengu-Timur, decree to the darug-princes of cities and villages, princes of the army, scribes, customs officers, traveling ambassadors, falconers and animal catchers.

Genghis Khan and subsequent khans, our elder brothers, saying: “Priests turned into monks, not seeing any taxes, Let them pray to God for us, offer us good wishes!” - gave them labels “And now we” agree with the previous labels, saying to them; “If you don’t see any taxes, pray to God for us and offer us good wishes!” — this metropolitan was given a label.

In the year of the hare, the first month of autumn, on the fourth [day] of the old [month], when [our headquarters] was in the steppe, it was written."

If our reconstruction seems sufficiently justified to researchers, it can be used as material for various kinds of historical constructions.

The text is reproduced from the publication: Yarlyk Mengu-Timur: Reconstruction of the content) // Historiography and source studies of the history of Asian and African countries, Vol. XII. L. LSU. 1990

Text - Grigoriev A. P. 1990
network version - Strori. 2013
OCR - Stankevich K. 2013
design - Voitekhovich A. 2001
Historiography and source study of the history of Asian and African countries. 1990