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Summary
The now sparse and divided by administrative borders Noghay people has an ancient and eventful history. The heyday of that history was the time of the Noghay Horde, a powerful nomadic empire that, during the 15th — 17th cc., occupied parts of what is now Russia and Kazakhstan. It was one of the leading political entities that all neighboring rulers had to reckon with. It was also an important factor in the foreign policy of medieval Russia.
The book gives, for the first time, a detailed history of the Noghay state. It investigates into the shaping of the steppe state of the Manghït Yurt, the core of the future Noghay Horde. The career of the Golden Horde ruler Edigii (Yedigei), the founder of the Noghay nobility, is being followed. The work also covers the developments that led to the independence of the Noghay Horde and its highest peak of power in the first half of the 16th c. The circumstances of the three major cases of unrest in its history (in the 1510s, 1550s and 1590s) are being looked into, and the Horde's gradual decline and fall, as well as its conflicts with the Cossacks and the Kalmyks are described. Aside from the inner history of the Noghays, the book discusses their contact with neighboring lands, including the Tartar, Central Asian and Kazakh Khanates, Russia, Turkey and the Caucasus.
The sources covering the history of the Noghay Horde are sufficiently numerous and diverse. Records of the 15th — 18th cc. originating from different countries and written in a number of languages shed light on all aspects of life of that nomadic empire. As the Noghays had regular contact with Russia, the records of Moscow archives became the principal source of information for the present study. Many of said records are being introduced into the sphere of scholarly analysis for the first time. Besides, Oriental and Western sources — together with Russian chronicles and other documents — are used here as well.
As a result of the effort of several scholarly generations, a sizeable bulk of data was accumulated, which is useful for analyzing the history of the Noghay Horde. However, it was only in a very few works on history that the Noghays figured as the central object of study. They were for the vast majority of authors a mere background detail necessary for their analysis of the main topic — the history of Russia, the Kazan or Crimean Khanates, etc. Those few books that do treat of the Noghays as such are often based on outdated concepts and very inadequate sources. The situation existing in historiography could, on the whole, be described as follows: the history of the Noghay Horde was known in outline, but remained as yet unwritten. The present book is an attempt to fill this gap.
The first part of the book ("The Emergence and Disintegration of the Noghay State") deals with the political history of the Noghay Horde.
In the early 1390s, after prolonged wanderings, the Q'fpchaq tribe (el) of the Mangh'its, headed by their leader (bek) Edigii, settled in the steppes of West Kazakhstan, in the basin of the Yayi'q and the Emba. The Mangh'its established there a nomadic domain of their own, the Yurt. Given the conditions of the disintegration of the Golden Horde, the main safeguard of the new Yurt's existence was de facto the ruler of the Horde and the leader of the Mangh'it el Edigti.
Their close and regular contact with the monarchs enabled the Mangh'it aristocrats — Edigü's descendants — to secure the highest governmental post of the beklerbek and even to usurp the election of candidates to the khan's throne. A pithy expression of that prerogative can be found in the decision passed by a congress of the Mangh'it nobility regarding the possible enthronement of one of the Uzbek princes in the 1470s: "From the days of yore to this day, every khan who was pronounced [khan] by the amirs of the Mangh'its gave the amirs of the Mangh'its liberty in the land". The acquisition by the Mangh'it Yurt of political significance in Dasht-i Q'ipchaq of the second half of the 15th c. is associated with the name of Edigti's grandson, the biy (= head of the Yurt) Musa. The sundry nomadic tribes that were under his rule acquired the common name of the "Noghays".
By the early 16th c., Noghay nomadic areas united to form an entirely independent political entity that had administration, army and territory of its own. Subsequent to Musa's death (ca. 1502), the early phase of the Noghay Horde history, during which the state was regarded as part of the Khanate of the left wing of the Ulus of Jochi, came to an end.
The two opening decades of the 16th c. were the time of a most dangerous upheaval for the Noghay Horde. Having inherited from Musa the influential and powerful Yurt, his brothers and sons came very close to losing their lands and subjects. The conflicts between the Noghay mirzas (noblemen), the simultaneous emergence of several biys put forward by fighting aristocratic factions, the Crimean and Kazakh invasions were the factors that brought the nomadic state to the brink of destruction. However, historical conditions became eventually more favorable to it. In the East, the Noghays succeeded in taking advantage of the unrest in the Kazakh Khanate that followed after the death of its powerful ruler Qasim. They mustered their forces and launched an offensive against the Eastern Dasht-i Q'ipchaq. The Kazakhs were soon driven as far as the Uzbek frontiers, and their former lands were one by one ceded to Noghay mirzas. In the West, after they had — several times and in a degrading manner — to pledge allegiance to the Crimea, Noghay leaders also proved able to change the situation in their favor. Simultaneously with the anti-Kazakh "reconquest", they overthrew the Crimean Yurt (1523) and substantially reduced the power of the Astrakhan Khanate which became subordinate. Noghay political influence became felt more and more in Kazan.
Mirza Mamay came to occupy the most prominent position in the Noghay Horde. However, he was not resolute enough to become a self-proclaimed ultimate ruler, or perhaps was unable to achieve this. He was primarily a military leader, a warlord. It was under his leadership that the Noghays achieved the decisive victories of the 1520s, which enabled them during the following decade to transform their state into a powerful and independent nomadic empire.
The 1530s — 40s became the time when the Noghay Horde reached the peak of its power and influence. Having defeated and intimidated their neighbors, Musa's descendants were finally able to make their land safe from foreign threat. Despite the unstable nature of unity within the ruling clan and the overthrow of the biy Sayyid Ahmad, the Noghay Horde of that time was still seen by the neighboring peoples as a dreadful and relatively cohesive force. The Noghays were also able to incorporate the Kazakh Khanate into the sphere of their hegemony, to consolidate and regularize their rule in Bashkiria. They competed on equal terms with Crimea for influence in Astrakhan and with Russia — though covertly — in Kazan. It was then that the Horde began to show certain signs of the incipient state machinery: the mirzas and the els under their administration were subdivided into "wings" (provinces) submitted now to the ultimate control of military governors; the biy, as regards his position and authority within the state (but not outside it), approached the status of the sovereign khan. The rule of the biy Shaykh Mamay (ca. 1540–49) was the highest peak in the development of Noghay political and social structure.