Authors

Angus Russell¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

Building on the paradigm of ‘kinetic empire’ introduced by Pekka Hämäläinen and recently explored by Catherine Holmes with respect to Byzantium, this paper interrogates how discussions around the Mongol governance of Rus’ have often been underpinned by ‘fixed’ notions of territoriality, at the expense of more flexible forms of administration. In particular, my interest lies in two kinds of Mongol agent, darugha and basqaq, and how these figures – attested not only in Rus’, but across regions of Eurasia under the khans’ authority – acted alongside more generic ‘envoys’ (posly) described in the Slavonic sources. 

Earlier Anglophone scholarship – exemplified by debates between Donald Ostrowski and Charles Halperin – has tended to focus on demarcating agents’ responsibilities in an institutional hierarchy. I instead aim to draw the analytical net wider, to assess the appearance of Mongol posly across the surviving source material, both chronicles and charters. By attending to these envoys as arbiters of authority, rather than simply as ‘messengers’ or go-betweens, a more nuanced picture of Mongol Rus’ emerges: more fluid, more ‘mobile’, and grounded on contingent structures that shaped the relationship between Rus’ princes and the khans at Sarai.