Once again on the Meaning of the Term “Horde” and the Categories “Golden Horde”, “White Horde”, “Blue Horde”

Abstract

Research objectives: This article discusses some issues related to the problem of the relationship between the concepts of the “Golden Horde”, the “White Horde”, and the “Blue Horde”, with an emphasis on the term “horde” itself – both as a scientific definition and as a historical concept related to the phonetic forms in which it situated in the sources. The author proposes to reveal the original meaning of the term ordo ~ orda and to outline the stages of expansion of its semantics with the delineation of semantic fields. Research materials: The article may be considered largely as a kind of commentary on the research of recent years. Since all materials on the affected issues have been known to researchers for a long time, the selection of sources looks proverbially traditional. These are Mongolic, Chinese, Latin, Muslim (Arabic and Persian), and Old Russian texts containing the word ordo in its various forms. The author did not use the whole body of sources, but rather the most illustrative materials in his opinion. Mostly, the linguistic material was employed which comprises the lexical basis for researching specific languages. Research results and novelty: In the process of researching the contexts of using of the term ordo ~ orda in various sources and different orthographic variants (corresponding to phonetic ones), the author came to the following contention. Secondary senses reflecting one of the aspects of the original sense evolved from the basic meaning recorded among thirteenth-century Mongols – “the abiding-place of a ruler, his family, his entourage, and all the attendants”. Since the development took place in parallel, this did not exclude the words being used with different intended meanings in the same texts, which can be revealed only as a result of the analysis of the context. The contexts of the use of the term in the sources make it possible to assert that there was a process of expansion of the term’s original mea­ning, reflected in the perception of different authors being representatives of foreign cultures. This occurs in the period after the middle of the fourteenth century, being directly caused by the events of political history of the Jochid ulus as it was plunged into an era of trouble. Also, the emergence of additional senses associated with the concept of territory was the result of a comprehension of the word in related contexts within the worldview specific for sedentary cultures. The author of the article accepts the point to identity the terms “Golden Horde” and “White Horde”, both contrasted with the concept “Blue Horde”, originally associated respectively with the designation of the domains of the descendants of Batu in the western part, and the descendants of Urdu in the eastern part, of the Jochid ulus. In addition, it is recognized that the hypothesis on the correlation of these color markers with the traditional geosymbolism of the Turkic and Mongolian peoples is not sufficiently substantiated although it is theoretically permissible. The fact that the term ordo ~ orda with both color markers of “gold” and “white” was more often associated with the sense “qan’s tent”, corresponds with the source data on similar epithets for tents of different qans. Historically, the possession of such tent was typical for certain leaders, at least in the Mongolian tradition, but from an early age it had come to be claimed as the attribute of the ru­lers of the Jochid ulus primarily. Nonetheless, a solid identification of the relationship bet­ween the concepts “golden” and “white” requires special research.