Nogai Horde

The Nogai Horde was a nomadic confederation of Turkic and Mongol peoples on the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, between the Volga and the Ural rivers, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. One of the successors of the Golden Horde, it was a major power on the steppe and a key supplier of horses to Moscow.

The Nogais took their name from Nogai, a powerful general and kingmaker of the Golden Horde in the late thirteenth century, a great-grandson of Genghis Khan, though the confederation itself formed later. Its real founder was Edigu, a leader of the Manghit tribe, a Mongol tribe that had become Turkic-speaking. Edigu effectively ruled the Golden Horde from around 1396 to 1411, putting puppet khans on the throne, and fought Lithuania, defeating Grand Duke Vytautas at the Vorskla river in 1399, and raided Moscow in 1408. He was killed around 1419. Edigu became a hero of steppe epic poetry.

Because Edigu and his descendants were not descended from Genghis Khan in the male line, they did not take the title of khan, but were called biy, or bey, or mirza, prince. They often supported Genghisid khans of other states. The Nogai Horde was organised as a confederation of tribes and clans under the bey, with a second-in-command, the nureddin.

In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Nogai Horde controlled the steppe between the Volga and the Irtysh. Its capital was Saraychik, on the Ural river, a trading town and burial place of the beys. The Nogais were herders of horses, sheep and camels, moving with the seasons and living in felt tents on wagons. They were famous horse breeders.

The Nogais sold tens of thousands of horses every year to Moscow, which needed them for its cavalry, in return for cloth and other goods, and Nogai traders came to Moscow in large caravans. The Nogais were also deeply involved in the politics of the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, Sibir and Crimea, supporting different candidates for the thrones.

After Ivan IV of Moscow conquered Kazan in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556, the Nogai Horde split. Bey Ismail allied with Moscow, and the Great Nogai Horde, east of the Volga, came under Russian influence. Other Nogais moved west of the Volga and, as the Lesser Nogai Horde, settled on the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Kuban, allied with the Crimean Khanate. Famine and civil war weakened the Great Nogai Horde in the 1550s. The Cossacks sacked Saraychik in 1580.

In the early seventeenth century, the Kalmyks, Oirat Mongols migrating from Dzungaria, drove the Nogais from the Volga and Ural steppes, and the Great Nogai Horde broke up by the 1630s. Many Nogais moved west, to the Crimean Khanate or the North Caucasus, or became subjects of the Kalmyks. After Russia annexed Crimea in 1783, many Nogais were forcibly resettled, and others emigrated to the Ottoman Empire. In 1783 Russian forces under Alexander Suvorov massacred Nogais in the Kuban who resisted resettlement.

The Nogai people, numbering around 100,000, live today mainly in Dagestan, Stavropol and Karachay-Cherkessia, in Russia, and their language belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages. Nogai communities also live in Turkey and Romania.

Our maps show the Nogai Horde from 1530 to 1715. Its largest outline, about 1.7 million square kilometres on the 1530 map, is two-thirds in today's Russia and a quarter in Kazakhstan, with a small part in Ukraine. On the 1783 map the region is shown as Central Asian khanates and Russian territory.