Tuqa-Timur


Tuqa-Temür was the thirteenth and youngest or penultimate son of Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan. He was a younger brother of Batu Khan and Berke Khan, the rulers of what came to be known as the Golden Horde.

Career

Tuqa-Timur's mother is identified as Jochi's concubine Kaghri Khatun, a woman from the Merkit tribe. As Jochi's apparently youngest son of standing or significance, Tuqa-Timur was perhaps deemed too young to attend the qurultai for the proclamation and enthronement of the great khan Ögedei in 1229. Instead, Tuqa-Timur remained behind in his father's ulus, apparently governing it during the absence of his older brothers at the assembly. When Batu Khan returned, Tuqa-Timur organized a three-day feast in his honor.
Tuqa-Timur subsequently received an ulus of his own from Batu, somewhere within the Left Wing of Batu's possessions, that is to say east of the Ural Mountains and Ural River, and perhaps under the intermediate authority of another brother, Orda. Tuqa-Timur participated in Batu's Western Campaign, but does not seem to have played a very distinguished role in it; he is also credited with a leading role in campaigns against the Bashkirs and Alans. He was among the Jochid princes participating in the qurultai at which the great khan Güyük was formally proclaimed and enthroned, in 1246, Batu having refused to attend. After Batu's quriltai that resulted in the proclamation of Möngke as great khan in 1250, Berke and Tuqa-Timur escorted Möngke to Mongolia with an army, and were generously rewarded by the new great khan for their support. Tuqa-Timur appears to have survived Batu and to have died some time after Berke's accession as khan of the Golden Horde in 1257; it is presumed that he was already dead by 1267, when his son Urung-Timur received lands from the new khan Mengu-Timur. The Mongol prince Toktemir, who attacked Tver' in Russia in 1294/1295, is a distinct individual, bearing the same or similar name.
Following the example of his older brother Berke, Tuqa-Timur converted to Islam, sometime after Berke's conversion in 1251–1252. Unlike his brothers Batu, Orda, and Shiban, Tuqa-Timur does not appear to have headed an autonomous and lasting territorial polity, something brought up as a negative comparison in disputes between his descendants and those of Shiban in the late 14th century; the Shibanids argued that this made the Tuqa-Timurids substantially inferior. Some of Tuqa-Timur's descendants appear to have remained in the Left Wing of the Golden Horde, while others were settled in the Right Wing when Khan Mengu-Timur gave the Crimea to Tuqa-Timur's son Urung-Timur.

Family

and the genealogical compendium Muʿizz al-ansāb attribute four sons to Tuqa-Timur as follows:
  • Bāy-Tīmūr
  • Bāyān
  • Ūrungbāš or Ūrung-Tīmūr
  • Kay-Tīmūr

    Descendants

Apart from his involvement in the affairs of the Golden Horde and his actions as representative of his older brothers, Tuqa-Timur is important as the progenitor of some of the most prolific and historically significant lines of Jochid and Chinggisid descent. From the 1360s, Tuqa-Timur's descendants vied with those of his brother Shiban for possession of the throne of the Golden Horde, starting with the probable Tuqa-Timurid Ordu Malik, who overthrew the Shibanid Timur Khwaja in 1361. A Crimean branch of Tuqa-Timur's descendants furnished the beglerbeg Mamai with a succession of three puppet khans in 1361–1380. Several families descended from Tuqa-Timur ensconced themselves in the former Ulus of Jochi's eldest son Orda in the east, under Qara Noqai in 1360, then Urus Khan in 1369, and finally Tokhtamysh in 1379. The descendants of Urus and Tokhtamysh subsequently disputed possession of the Golden Horde mostly among themselves. Among the successor states of the Golden Horde, the khanates of Kasimov, Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea were all founded by princes descended from Tuqa-Timur. This was also the case with the Kazakh Khanate and, after 1599, the Khanate of Bukhara in Central Asia.