Paper long abstract:

Michael Hope has proposed that there were two political cultured within the Mongol Empire and its successor states, unlimited authority of the ruler (such as Chingis Khan) and collegial, consensual authority (such as the kuriltai). This paper uses Muscovite diplomatic papers from the reign of Ivan IV, here during the 1560s and 1570, to argue that the Muscovite court perceived the political culture of the Crimean Khanate, a successor state of the Juchid ulus, as conforming to the second paradigm, a consensual, collegial state. Given intimate Muscovite familiarity with the Crimean Khanate, this perception of its political culture deserves to be considered accurate.