Interior Elements Of The Golden Horde Residential Buildings In The Lower Volga Region

Abstract

The article deals with analysis of the main elements of the Golden Horde house interior. The interior of a “Mongolian” house consists of an adobe bench – sufa, a hearth, most often a tandoor and a horizontal chimney – kang bed-stove. A washbasin – toshnau – could be made in the floor. These elements are present not only in poor one-room houses, but are required for any living space, including in rich aristocratic estates. The main “furniture” is a U-shaped or L-shaped sufa, which can occupy most of the room. Specialists associate it with the Mongolian tradition, but similar sufas have been widespread in Central Asia since the early Middle Ages. The heating system of Golden Horde houses is represented by kangs, which have been known in the Far East since the early Iron Age. The oven for baking flatbreads, the tandoor, is most likely of Central Asian origin, since similar ovens have been known in this region since the Bronze Age. The U-shaped sufa, kang and tandoor form a kind of “triad” that characterizes the interior of not only the simplest one-room “Mongolian” house, but also any living space in rich multi-room estates in the Golden Horde. In addition to these three elements, a washbasin – toshnau, which was also brought to the Golden Horde from Central Asia, can be made in the floor of living rooms. Thus, most of the living room elements of the Golden Horde house were borrowed from Central Asia. Only the heating system in the form of kangs can be considered unambiguously Mongolian. The combination of tandoor, kang and large U-shaped sufa is a Golden Horde tradition, which later became widespread.

Keywords

• archaeology
• golden horde
• mongolian house
• interior
• bench-sufa
• horizontal chimney – kang
• stove-tandoor
• washbasin-toshnau
• mongolia
• central asia