Nogai Horde

Overview

The Nogai Horde (also Nogay) was a nomadic confederation founded by the Nogais that occupied the Pontic–Caspian steppe from the late 15th century (conventionally c. 1480; origins in the 1440s) until it was broken by the Kalmyks and Russians in the 1630s. At its widest extent its roaming territory covered roughly 700,000 square kilometres between the Volga, the Yaik (Ural), and the Emba, with its capital and winter camp at Saray-Jük (Saraychik), a caravan town on the lower Yaik.

The Nogais' core was the Mongol Manghud (Manghit) tribe. The name derives from Nogai Khan (d. c. 1300), the Golden Horde kingmaker descended from Jochi, who formed an army of Manghits and Turkic tribes. Around 1390 the commander Edigu — of Manghit paternal and Jochid maternal origin — founded the Nogai ruling dynasty; his role in defeating Tokhtamysh won the Nogais control of much of the Golden Horde's western lands. Because Nogai rulers were not Genghisids, they bore the title of Bey rather than Khan, and they pointedly rejected the Crimean khans' claims to succeed the Golden Horde — a refusal that produced recurring war, including the Nogai killing of the Crimean khan Mehmed I Giray near Astrakhan.

Nogai society was built on semi-autonomous uluses; aristocrats were called mirzas, and below the Bey stood the Nur-al-Din (usually the designated heir, holding the Volga right bank) and the Keikuvat (holding the Emba). Political organization was fluid, resting on personal prestige, since nomadic subjects could simply migrate away from an unpopular leader. The Nogai language was Kipchak Turkic, close to Kazakh, Bashkir, and the Tatar languages; the Nogais were Sunni Muslims whose religious institutions were deliberately decentralized — Ottoman efforts to promote mosque- and madrasa-building as instruments of control largely failed against tribal authority.

The economy combined pastoral nomadism (sheep, horses, camels) with trade, tribute, caravan taxation, and raiding. Slave raiding — the "harvesting of the steppe" conducted with the Crimean Khanate against Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, and Circassia — was a major income source; captives were sold at Caffa and Bukhara, and in Podolia about a third of villages were destroyed or abandoned in 1578–83. Some estimates hold that more than 3 million people were enslaved over the Crimean khanate's existence, though such totals are contested.

Under the beys Musa, Yusuf, and Ismail (c. 1491–1564) the Horde was a major power, claiming (with exaggeration) hundreds of thousands of horsemen and alternately aiding and fighting Moscow, Kazan, and Crimea — Nogais participated in the 1571 burning of Moscow. The Russian annexations of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556) cost the Nogais tribute and trade. In 1557 Kazy Mirza seceded across the Volga to found the Lesser (Small) Nogai Horde on the Kuban; the main body became the Great Nogai Horde. Kazakh khans captured Saraychik in 1520 and again in 1577 under Haqnazar, and Cossacks destroyed the capital in 1577 or 1580/81. From 1600 Moscow began "appointing" Nogai beys amid civil war. In 1634 the Kalmyk Khanate inflicted a crushing defeat on the Horde, after which Nogai groups scattered — some west to Crimea (Budjak, Yedisan, Jamboyluk, Yedickul, Kuban hordes under nominal Crimean suzerainty), some east. Later centuries brought further blows (a 1711 Kalmyk-Russian campaign reportedly killed or captured tens of thousands), Russian annexation of Crimea (1783), and migration of many Nogais to the Ottoman Empire. The modern Nogai people (c. 90,000 in 2002) survive in Dagestan and Karachay-Cherkessia, and the epic of Edigu remains a foundation of Nogai and broader Turkic cultural memory.