Shihab al-Din Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Fadlallah al-ʿUmari (700/1301–749/1349), usually known as al-ʿUmari, was a Damascus-born historian during the Mamluk period. Al-ʿUmari began his career as a bureaucrat who was in and out of the sultan’s favor. He found time to write extensively: he wrote political works, poetry, biographies, etc. This text, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, can be translated as “The Routes towards Insight Concerning the Capital Kingdoms.” It contains elements of a geography, a history, and an encyclopedia. Al-ʿUmari was concerned with both geography and the people who inhabited various lands. The full text is expansive and spans 27 books.

This chapter of Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār is about the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde was originally a Mongol khanate that extended from Siberia to the Danube River and the Black Sea. It was founded by Batu Khan, a grandson of Chingiss Khan.

Slave trading was common in the Golden Horde because captives were often taken after battles. Women and children were taken captive in order to be enslaved and potentially sold in the thriving market for enslaved people both inside and outside of the Horde’s borders or ransomed back to their families. Captives could also be acquired through sale. There are several accounts of parents in this region selling their children due to extreme poverty. The Golden Horde itself was also raided in order to acquire captives to be sold in these markets.

Many of the people captured by the Golden Horde were traded through their extensive trade networks. Residents of the Golden Horde traded along east-west trade routes and through the Black Sea with the Genoese and with Egypt. The Mamluks were a particular trade ally of the Golden Horde, and they utilized the trade in enslaved people to fill the ranks of their armies and to acquire skilled warriors. Many of al-ʿUmari’s sources for this text were Mamluk merchants who traded with the Golden Horde through Mediterranean networks.

Translated from the German by Mackenzie King and checked against the Arabic by Hannah Barker. Shihab al-Din Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Fadlallah al-ʿUmari. “Die Goldene Horde.” In Das Mongolische Weltreich: Al-ʿUmari’s Darstellung der Mongolischen Reiche in Seinem Werk Masalik Al-Absar Fi Mamalik Al-Amsar, mit Paraphrase und Kommentar, translated by Klaus Lech, 136–47. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1968.

Chapter 4. About Khwarazm and the Kipchaks[1]

The Circassians, the Russians, and the Alans[2] are under the rule [of the Golden Horde]. They are people of blossoming and populated cities and wooded and fruitful mountains. Their agriculture thrives and livestock prosper, the rivers flow, and they harvest many fruits. But these people can do nothing against the king and are subject to him, although they are ruled by their own kings. If they flatter him through subservience and gifts and rarities, he lets them rule in peace; in the other case, he overruns them with attacks and besieges their cities. How many times has he slaughtered their men and taken their women and children prisoner and sold them as slaves in all countries of the world.

…

As the merchant al-Sadr Jamal ad-Din ʿAbd Allah al-Hisni reported to me, many of the nomadic people of this kingdom wear furs [or hides] without paying attention to whether the furs are from animals who have been slaughtered [according to the Muslim tradition] or have simply died, whether they are tanned or untanned, or whether they are from a pure or impure animal. At meals, they make no distinction between disgusting and appetizing food, or whether it is forbidden or hallal. In times of crisis, when their circumstances are particularly oppressive for several years, they sell their children in order to survive off the money they receive. They say about the ones who sell their children: it is better if they and their children live than if they perish together.

In the course of conversation with al-Sadr Zayn al-Din ʿUmar ibn Musafir about this country, I inquired about ʿAbd Allah al-Hisni’s report and he said: everything that he told you is true.

…

Although [the Tatars] are superior to the armies of the Circassians, Russians, Magyars, and Alans, those people steal their children and sell them to [slave]traders.

Though Islam has appeared among these people and they recite the shadah[3], they act contrary to [Islamic] laws in many matters. They do not adhere to Genghis Khan’s yasa[4] anymore like the others [Tatars], but they still punish lying, illicit sexual relations, and breaches of contract extremely harshly. If their kings are angry at one of their followers, they confiscate their wealth and sell their children. If someone commits theft, then the victim similarly has a right to the thief’s property and children, which he then sells.

…

Al-Mawla al-Fadil Nizam al-Din Abu al-Fada’il Yahya ibn al-Hakim told me: the whole population pays taxes to the ruler of the country. Sometimes, when they collect the tax in a bad year when plagues afflicted the flocks or snow fell and harsh frosts ruled, the people sell their children in order to pay them.

The merchant al-Sharif Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Husaini al-Karbala’i reported to me immediately on his return from this country in Rajab 738 [January 1338]. He had traveled around there and eventually, in the western direction, came to Aqja Karman and the country of the Bulgars. As he told me, on that journey he had bought boys and girls from their fathers and mothers. They had to sell their children because they had to pay taxes due to the ruler’s order (yasaq) to campaign against Persia. He imported good and valuable slaves from there.

…

Siberia and Julman share a border with Bashqird, where a highly respected Muslim judge lives. In Siberia and Julman there is fierce cold; mountains, houses, and countries lay under a thick layer of snow for six months. Therefore, the inhabitants of these lands own very little livestock; they live in the heart of the north and are rarely met by anyone. Nourishment is scarce for them. It is said that some even collect bones—no matter what animal they may be from—cook them as needed, and store them away again. This is repeated seven times until there are no bits of fat left. Despite their arduous lives, there is no type of slaves more favored in their physique or more beautiful in their whiteness, their form is perfectly beautiful in appearance and white and wonderfully favored. Their eyes are blue.

…

Shaykh ʿAla’ al-Din ibn al-Nuʿman, who was once asked about the armies [of the Golden Horde], answered that there were countless many. He replied to the question about their approximate strength: I do not know that, but once Esen Buqa, the Sultan of Transoxania,[5] rose up against the ruler of the Golden Horde and the Great Khan. He won the upper hand, and, with the claim that he had a greater right to kingship than them both, blocked the roads, plundered the travelers and refused to serve the Great Khan. So the Great Khan wrote to Tuqtaqa to campaign against him. He deployed one in every ten men against him, a total of 250,000. But these were—as Nu’mān continues—only the calculated and numerically recorded troops, quite separate from the volunteers and adventurers. Each rider had to bring two slaves [ghulamayn], thirty small livestock, and five horses plus two copper cauldrons and a wagon for weapon-transport with him. He attacked Esen Buqa, beat him, and achieved a shining success over him; then he returned a victor with renewed power.

…

In connection with his report about the ruler of the kingdom of Kipchak [the Golden Horde], al-Nuʿman remarked that most of the subjects of the king —vast numbers of peoples—live in the northwest of the country. The most numerous of them are the Russians, followed by the Turks of the Kipchak steppe. They have many tribes, some Muslim and some pagan. During famine and drought they sell their children. Usually they permit the sale of daughters but not sons. They do not sell a male child except under compulsion.

[1] Al-ʿUmari does not use the phrase “Golden Horde”.

[2] The Circassians and the Alans lived in the Caucasus region.

[3] The declaration of faith for Muslims.

[4] The Mongol law code.

[5] Esen Buqa I was the Khan of the Chagatai Khanate from 1310 to 1318.

Discussion Questions

  1. How does al-ʿUmari characterize the practices and the people he describes? Is his interpretation favorable or unfavorable? What is his relationship with the people he describes?
  2. Are the claims about child enslavement believable? What makes them either suspicious or plausible? What reasons does this text give as to why parents sold their children?
  3. What is the significance of mentioning the specific names of the merchants from whom al-’Umari received his information?

Related Primary Sources

Related Secondary Sources

  • Biran, Michal. “Encounters Among Enemies: Preliminary Remarks on Captives in Mongol Eurasia.” Archivum Eurasia Medii Aevi 21 (2015): 27-42.
  • Favereau, Marie. The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.

Themes

children, property, race, religion, trade, women