Paper long abstract:

The Golden Horde was the northwestern expanse of the Mongol empire. Situated at several major axes of the so-called Silk Routes, the entity was home not only to Mongol conquerers but also to nomadic Türks and ethnically-diverse sedentary peoples and alliances, including Mordvins, Bashkirs, Ossets, Cherkes, and others. The steppe constituted the Golden Horde's geographical core, which was surrounded by several sedentary states. Precisely at the heart of the Cuman steppe the Golden Horde's khans started building cities to facilitate expanding and alternative commercial routes and thus help the state finances which were entirely dependent on slave and fur trade. As a result of the unique demographic, nomadic elites began to settle into these newly-built steppe cities. The urban spaces also became centers of higher religious learning during the islamicization of the Horde under the policies enacted by Uzbek khan.

The following paper argues that despite the noticeable shift toward sedentization and türkicization, nomadism, or at least elements of the nomadic economic and cultural model, remained prevalent amongst the Golden Horde's elite until its demise in the early 16th century. Residential remains and newly-unearthed wealth deposits from the Golden Horde's Kuban region and the expanse along the northern Black Sea demonstrate this continued attachment to a centuries-old nomadic cultural tradition and aesthetic. While modern discourse generally argues in favor of a dramatic and complete shift to monumentality, I show that while the Mongol and Türkic elites might have embraced city grandeur out of economic expediency, they used nomadic art, such as animal style, to market themselves as heirs to the Iron-Age steppe warriors. A continued attachment to portable luxury and zoomorphic visuality was a political strategy meant to project the image of a fearsome steppe warrior to outsiders but also consolidate the "nomadic" elite core even as actual pastoral nomadism was waning. Finally, the vigorous circulation of steppe-inspired artistic forms became even more pronounced after the Black Death started to ravage the newly-built steppe cities, necessitating various smaller hordes to migrate further west and bring with them tokens of nomadic elitism.