Along with the recognition of the phenomenon of a unique urban civilization that emerged in the Eurasian steppes during the Golden Horde era, researchers still believe that the inhabitants of the steppes had nothing to do with the creation of this civilization, that it was created by the labor and genius of foreigners, slaves, and not free people.

TURKS OR FOREIGNERS?

The patriarch of historians of the Golden Horde is rightly recognized as the outstanding Russian archaeologist German Alekseevich Fedorov-Davydov, who devoted his entire life to the study of medieval steppe cities. His intensive excavations in the 1960s and 1980s, primarily on the Lower Volga, created the Golden Horde archeology and made it possible to make major steps in the reconstruction of the Golden Horde civilization. To him and his followers belong the most important archaeological finds and on the basis of their understanding of the Golden Horde urban life [Dialog..., 2001; Povolzhye..., 2001] 1.

G. A. Fedorov-Davydov had an unshakeable conviction that the nomads who came to the Southern Russian steppes after the Batu invasion had nothing to do with the steppe cities as creators. This point of view is either confirmed or not expressed otherwise, i.e. tacitly shared, by most modern researchers of the Golden Horde 2. The main arguments, which are repeated by the scientist's followers without introducing anything new, are reduced to the following statements, which, due to their significance, I will give in the form of exact quotations from one of the latest works of the historian [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997].

For the first article, see: Vostok (Oriens), 2006, No. 6, pp. 26-41.

1 In addition to the scientific significance of the discoveries, it was a purely human feat. Behind the thin layer of colored dust from the tiles that once covered the walls of houses and were scattered by the wind for tens of kilometers around the disappeared cities, in place of the buildings themselves there was a one-and-a-half-meter brick dust compressed to the strength of concrete, which had to be "overcome" in order to "reach" the foundations of buildings preserved under this "pillow". In the field season, the air temperature is usually above 30 degrees Celsius.

2 It is only in the works of recent years that a different point of view begins to be established. Thus, V. L. Yegorov writes: "The cities were supplied with everything necessary, and first of all with weapons, by the nomads living around them in the steppes. In return, they received various products of cattle breeding and agriculture. The union of nomadic steppe culture with sedentary urban culture was based on this. They not only supported each other, but also complemented each other, forming the specific economic potential that has long contributed to the preservation of the power of this peculiar state" [Yegorov, 2005, p.9].

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He wrote: "The artificial co-existence of nomadic hordes and cities with their powerful crafts and trade was maintained only by the unifying force of the common Khan's power. In the steppe, a bright urban landscape that is completely alien to nomads blooms luxuriantly.

culture, the culture of watering bowls and mosaics in mosques, Muslim spiritual scholarship, Qur'anic interpreters and algebraist mathematicians, exquisitely fine ornaments and calligraphy. This culture did not rely on the traditions of settlement in the Lower Volga region, where before there were nomadic steppes. Unlike Bolgar and Khorezm, the Golden Horde cities of the Lower Volga region emerged from "nothing". The underlying pre-Mongolian layer was not found anywhere" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997, p. 89] (emphasis added by me-E. K.). " The Golden Horde culture developed in those cities of the Golden Horde that were located in the steppe. These were the central, actually Golden Horde, cities. Their culture was a fusion of the traditions of master craftsmen of various countries conquered by the Mongols. Here the features of Chinese art and crafts, Central Asian decorative art, and house-building features taken from Central Asia, China, and Central Asia got along. This culture was influenced by the powerful influence of the Iranian and Transcaucasian cultures, as well as the craft traditions of the Crimea and Volga Bulgaria" (Fedorov - Davydov, 1997, p. 97).

Only at the end of his life did the scientist begin a careful revision of his views: "A number of authors tend to see the Golden Horde culture as a synthesis. They're probably right. With some reservations, we can accept this thesis. But it should be filled with live content." From his point of view, "filling" is slow. Based on the results of his excavations, he wrote: "In some areas, this fusion has reached the level of synthesis of a new culture, primarily in art ceramics, while in other areas we feel a largely mechanical connection of heterogeneous traditions" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997, p.97].

What can be the content of "live content"? The scientist tried to identify it: "A person creates a special environment around him, filled with things. They reflect him as a social being. To describe this environment is to understand it more deeply. To recreate the ancient way of life means to draw closer to ourselves distant times and see the psychology, worldview, norms of behavior of the ancients-something about which we often know nothing. Understand the everyday, ordinary environment of past generations, their ideas about the values of life... Politics, state events, wars, social struggles-these are the most important objects of historical study. But they can be understood and felt by the historian only when the historical life environment that remains from the ancient people and is preserved primarily in the monuments of archeology becomes available to him in detail. The Golden Horde-the Jochi Ulus-was not so lucky in this respect. Contemporaries and historians wrote about political events, wars, Mongol khans, extortionate tributes, the struggle of the conquered peoples with this state, and sought to assess its role in the historical process. But the very civilization of this state (first of all, the life and culture of the Golden Horde cities, the way of life, the forms of production) remained in the shadows, almost not covered by historical written sources... This civilization is understood by us as a material environment, conditions and way of life, working conditions, production and level of technology, everyday life and culture of everyday life, viewed through the prism of social relations and political development of society. The Golden Horde was a symbiosis of two worlds - urban civilization and the steppe element of nomads, with its own special culture and special structure of society" (Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p.3,4).

You should ask questions: 1) did the Golden Horde develop its own culture, or was there a mechanical, accidental borrowing of the achievements of other countries? 2) was the symbiosis of the two worlds artificial? 3) whether the city was created-

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what was the previous civilization of the Golden Horde with slaves and what was the ratio of Turks and foreigners in its cities?

Regarding cultural borrowings, we can judge from the results of excavations by archaeologists G. A. Fedorov-Davydov, V. L. Yegorov, M. G. Kramarovsky, A. A. Burkhanov and a number of others. All of them note a powerful triple cultural influence: first of all, the countries of the eastern Muslim world-Iran and Central Asia, then the cultures of Byzantium, Chersonesus and Eastern Transcaucasia, and finally the countries of the Far East (Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 78).

Let's start with the Far East, with China. In the everyday culture of the Golden Horde, this influence was expressed primarily in house building, the widespread use of kans, which were invented in Northern China shortly before the conquests of Genghis Khan. Kang is a great invention in the history of mankind. It created the effect of combining a modern central heating system with a traditional Russian wood-burning stove. Kan is a device with an extremely high efficiency factor: with minimal fuel consumption, it allows you to heat large rooms. In the conditions of the steppe climate with its winds and daily temperature changes up to 30°C, a shortage of wood fuel, it was an indispensable protection from the cold.3 Chinese influence can also be seen in the organization of urban economy. As V. L. Yegorov writes, " urban economy was also at a high level for the Middle Ages. This was dictated primarily by the fact that the settlements were located in a hot climate zone, where epidemics of cholera, plague, and smallpox often broke out. That is why in the Golden Horde cities there was a water supply system, city pools and fountains to supply the population with water. Sewers were laid from wooden pipes that divert sewage from all areas of the city." Even a public toilet was found in the Shed, divided into female and male halves (Yegorov, 1997, p. 76). Such toilets after the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe appeared only in the XIX century.

In Novy Saray, " it was possible to identify a system of underground drains in the form of dugout tree trunks forming long systems of wooden pipes in ditches. Numerous ditches have been opened along the streets. At the Tsarevskoye settlement, ditches and ditches were connected by a network of canals with large artificial lakes built on the northern outskirts of the city. There, the hills and spurs of the Volga-Akhtuba river terrace above the floodplain were connected by dikes made of slag and brick fragments, and the water that flowed during the snowmelt season to the low-lying area where the city was located was trapped in these artificial reservoirs. Thus, the protection of the urban area from waterlogging was achieved, and at the same time water reserves were created. In addition, the ditches were filled with water from wells included in their system" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997, p. 94-95].

It is obvious that technological innovations in housing and utilities were not only necessary, but also accessible to perception and reproduction, which cannot be said about many other technologies. "Silk fabrics of Chinese origin were found in the burials excavated at the Selitrenny and Vodyansky ancient settlements. Chinese mirrors and local imitations of them are found in the Golden Horde settlements. A lot of Chinese porcelain was found during the excavations of these ancient settlements... They even find porcelain boxes-headstands, which the Chinese used when sleeping. This porcelain gave rise to imitations in the Golden Horde cities themselves-

3 "If we could go to the most ordinary, ordinary house in the Golden Horde, we would surely see a warm bed under which horizontal chimneys from the stove pass, this device comes from the Chinese heating device kang" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997, p. 98].

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research institute. At the Saltpeter settlement, furnaces were excavated in which bowls were fired with the same salad - colored watering, but not porcelain, but from a special white mass-sand and clay on glue, the so-called kashin. Kashin bowls with white watering and blue cobalt painting were also burned there. They imitate Chinese porcelain not only in their colors - blue drawing on a white background, but also in the subjects and motifs of the painting-lotus flowers, chrysanthemums, bouquets in vases, images of dragons. A fragment of a bowl with a painted bridge was found-a typical Chinese humpback bridge. There are clouds characteristic of Chinese ornaments, Chinese-style birds and dragons were depicted... Under the influence of Chinese craftsmen in the Golden Horde cities, cast iron casting appeared" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997, pp. 97-98].

Of all the above, perhaps only cast iron may have been borrowed from China, but not necessarily from there. Otherwise, there is no borrowing, but imitation 4. The Far Eastern influence was not direct, but indirect. Direct contacts with holders of technological secrets were limited or completely excluded. In such a situation, it is more natural to assume not attempts at direct transfer of technologies, but imitation of samples of Chinese goods, the search for independent solutions, which is characteristic of cultural genesis itself.

The influence of Europe and Byzantium was incomparably more intense due to direct contacts. M. G. Kramarovsky writes directly about the cultural genesis of this region, where he has been excavating for more than a quarter of a century: "The integration of the Black Sea into the international trade of the urban republics of Italy in 1261 and the stabilization of continental caravan routes on the scale of "Pax Mongolica" introduced the Northern Black Sea region into the system of cultural development of the new economic and cultural relations between East and West... the Turkic steppe... It was forced to accept from Overseas, from the Muslim Asian-Middle Eastern and Latin Mediterranean cultural worlds, a new flow of people, goods, coin denominations and ideas-everything that accompanies the creation of a new market. Its main difference from the old pre-Mongol one is its non - traditional nature: the new market was provoked (emphasis added) by a new centralized feudal state.. the real power in the Crimea belonged to Solkhat, who relied not so much on military power as on the power of coinage. The growth of trade intensified the redistribution of "surpluses", which, in turn, contributed to the formation of the market... In essence, we are talking about the formation of one of the most important zones of cultural genesis of the Golden Horde, which had its own specifics and dynamics of development over several centuries. Here, on the basis of a mixed ethnic group, where together with the traditional population of the Crimea and the Azov region lived the Turks of Asia Minor, Iranians, natives of the Balkans, Russians, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Byzantine Greeks, Genoese, Ligurians, Venetians and natives of other regions of Italy, Catalans, etc., a new material and artistic culture of truly cosmopolitan origin is emerging. The new line in material culture is characterized by a close interweaving of Jochid Turkic-Mongolian (urban and steppe), Greek (Byzantine), complex Armenian, Crimean-Asian and Latin craft traditions "(Kramarovsky, 1992, pp. 38-40).

4 The reasons for the difficulties of direct borrowing of innovations are known. Chinese goods were exported from the Middle Empire by foreigners. Chinese merchants did not live far from the borders of China. Artisans, with very few exceptions, did not leave the Middle Kingdom at all. Europeans had a lot of work to get the secret of porcelain production. The Golden Horde did not succeed. Their ceramics have their origin in the traditions of Central Asia, and differ from Chinese porcelain in both drawing technique and technology - a lower firing temperature.

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From the examples given by the scientist [Kramarovsky, 1992,1997], it can be seen that in the Northern Black Sea region there was a process of intensive information exchange, and cultural genesis was different from that which took place on the Lower Volga. We also see that the influence of the surrounding world on the Northern Black Sea region is diverse, but the representatives of the outside world permanently living in the Crimea, for example, Italian artisans, were too few to have a significant impact on ethnogenesis. In general, one should not exaggerate the pre-Renaissance Italian influence. The archaeologist, speaking about the cultural genesis, mentions first of all its Juchid Turkic-Mongolian component, fixing its two parts: urban and steppe. For our further discussion, it is also important to emphasize the ethnic dominance of the Turks. Even in the traditionally multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Crimea, the scientist writes, " at that time, obviously, the predominant language in the young administrative center was Turkic. The Turkic language certainly dominated its bazaars", and "the Islamized part of the Turkic-speaking community played a central role in shaping the appearance of the new Golden Horde city" (Kramarovsky, 1997, p. 4). 103,105]. Thus, in the Black Sea "discord", the dominant "melody" belonged to the Turks.

Central Asia and Iran undoubtedly had the strongest influence on the various crafts and architecture of the main Lower Volga cities. "Trade, cultural and other ties between the Golden Horde and Iran, as well as Transcaucasia, led to a powerful impact of Iranian and Azerbaijani cultures on the culture of the Golden Horde cities of the Lower Volga region. The Persian language is widely spoken in the Golden Horde "(Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 70). All these elements of culture can be called conditionally Muslim. The world of steppe cities, in contrast to the multi-confessional steppe, had a pronounced Muslim accent. It can be traced in the interiors and exteriors of religious buildings, the design of books.

If we talk about everyday culture, it has found a vivid expression in baths and ceramics. A typical phenomenon in the cities of the Golden Horde were baths, which became widespread in the Near and Middle East [Kramarovsky, 2005, p. 117]. G. A. Fedorov-Davydov describes the layout of one of the excavated public baths as follows:: "The entrance to it led from the square in front of the mosque. First we entered a cold waiting room with a floor patterned with bricks, with a fountain in the center, with windows that had alabaster bars and glazed. There were two other warm changing rooms. Hot rooms were heated by underground heating , a tradition dating back to Roman baths. They form a cross-shaped layout typical of Eastern public baths. There was a drainage channel with a sump tank. The bathhouse was intended for the well-to-do part of the city's population" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1997, p.94].

It is necessary to pay special attention to what exactly G. A. Fedorov-Davydov saw as "synthesis", i.e. a manifestation of cultural genesis. He recorded it in the most common form of art - in ceramics: "Watered or glazed ceramics are the brightest and most characteristic manifestation of the civilization and culture of the Golden Horde city. The everyday life of even average and sometimes poor citizens was decorated with these multicolored dishes, so strikingly different from the plain dishes of Ancient Russia" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p.78].

In the generalizations of the scientist, two mutually exclusive conclusions about cultural genesis are struggling, which can be found even together, literally on the same page. "This is a pronounced neoplasm. Many features and elements borrowed from different peoples did not merge quite organically, were combined somewhat mechanically, as if "hastily". In many ways, one feels the short-lived traditions of urban life, lack of understanding of it and unaccustomed to it... But there was still a certain and largely unified style. Discordance of eclecticly connected elements by-

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it opened with a powerful sound of a new style in applied art - the main art of the Golden Horde culture... The researcher finds in this culture the fruits of the work of scientists, artists and craftsmen of the conquered peoples, resettled in foreign places" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, pp. 209-210].

How do you connect such mutually exclusive conclusions? After all, each of them is not a scientist's fantasy, but is based on real archaeological material. The answers to the following two questions will help clarify the situation. Was the symbiosis of the two worlds artificial? And who, the Turks or foreigners, were the builders of the steppe gardarika?

I will repeat some of the above points. By the beginning of the 14th century, the demographic growth of nomads in Eastern Europe exceeded the capacity of the feeding steppe landscape. There were at least half a million "extra" nomads. In the future, their number increased until the plague epidemic in 1346. Demographic growth has led to intensive grazing of livestock in the forests and the gradual transformation of the natural and geographical zone of forests into a forest-steppe. However, the rate of demographic growth exceeded the rate of expansion of the feeding landscape. Not all "extra" nomads could find employment in the traditional sphere of employment. Since nomadic Turks are also warriors, they had several ways of individual and general ethnic self-realization. First, the warriors united by a single state power could conquer new countries and peoples and exploit the vanquished. This possibility was not realized, perhaps because it was blocked by the experience of past generations. Secondly, as mercenaries, they could offer their services to the rulers of other countries. This opportunity was used first by the Kipchaks in their service in Egypt5later in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Third ,the "extra" nomads could abandon the profession of warriors, as the main and prestigious, to become peaceful people, not destroyers, but creators, builders of a new life. To do this, they had to fundamentally change not only the sphere of employment, but also the way of life: to become citizens.

FOURTH GENERATION (1291-1308)

On the verge of the 13th-14th centuriesdemographic growth of nomads forced them to expand the surrounding landscape and / or switch to new types of management. It is at this time that "urban planning takes on an unprecedented scale and certain areas of the state turn into multi-kilometer strips of continuous settlement, consisting of small towns, towns and castles of the aristocracy, surrounded by cultivated fields" [Yegorov, 2005, p.13]. As M. G. Kramarovsky records, "the formation and flourishing of urban life, accompanied by the active work of newcomers and local construction artels, falls at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries" [Kramarovsky, 2005, p. 118]. How did the process of formation of urban life go? There is no evidence of forced placement of nomadic births on land, as there is no evidence of voluntary transition of labor to sedentarism.: "The nomadic way of life did not exclude the settlement of some part of the population-usually the poorest, who lost their livestock for one reason or another. This was the case in Desht-i-Kipchak before the Mongols. But after the formation of the Golden Horde, and especially after the establishment of a strong centralized government, nomads on a massive scale move to urban settlement, becoming residents of new rapidly developing cities. The rich and noble part of the nomads also moves to settlement" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 14]. However, this statement of the scientist is not supported by either written or archaeological data. It is known that in the Golden Horde, in straitened circumstances, parents sold their children.

5 The memory of Egypt is preserved in the form of mosques of Solkhat (Old Crimea), built in their homeland by the Mamluks.

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M. G. Safargaliyev, referring to El-Omari, explains the main reason for the sale of steppe children is the need to pay taxes and writes that the sale of children even in non-famine years was a common occurrence for the steppe. "For example, in 1338 the Horde did not suffer from the loss of livestock, on the contrary, this year was more favorable for pastoralists, and nomads were forced to sell their children" [Safargaliyev, p.366].

Impoverished nomads could sell their children to rich nomad families, rich settled Turks, and outside the state. Selling out of the state meant leaving the children for life. Selling to fellow tribesmen was more preferable. But who among the tribesmen could be a potential mass buyer of children, who at that time most needed workers? The answer is obvious: rich, settled Turks who needed new workers in the context of expanding international trade. Who were the settled Turks in the system of tribal and kinship ties?

As previously mentioned, every Turk remembers at least seven generations of their ancestors. All descendants of a common ancestor are relatives. From the time of the creation of the postal service in the Jochi Ulus, which forced some of the families of the family to settle on the land, to the time of intensive construction of cities, four demographic generations changed. This means that each nomad had his own settled relatives. Socio-psychological and economic expectations, interests and moral restrictions of sellers and buyers of children were in a single network of norms of a large patriarchal family. In a situation where relatives are sold into slavery, there is a responsibility, of course, not gratuitous, rich for poor, older for younger. Therefore, in the Golden Horde, during their lifetime, if slaves did not become free citizens, then their children received freedom. The phenomenon of paternalism is recorded by G. A. Fedorov-Davydov: "Slave labor, resurrected in the era of extensive conquests of the XIII century, was partially transformed in the XIV century into the labor of the feudal-dependent plebs." "We assume that in the first period of its history, the Golden Horde city was a group of aristocratic castles surrounded by the dwellings of captive slaves, dependent artisans and builders who were forcibly resettled in this place. In the second period, the area where the slaves lived turned into a settlement of the urban plebs, who lived on their own estates and farms, and many castles of the aristocracy were gradually surrounded by the dwellings of people dependent on them - clients, freedmen, manor artisans, houses of representatives of the estate administration. The estates of the aristocracy were also overgrown with smaller estates of vassals" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 13, 14].

The blood relationship between nomadic Turks and sedentary Turks forces us to take a different view of the relations between nomads and townspeople in the steppes of the Golden Horde. Relatives could not help but communicate with each other. It is not by chance that in winter nomads drove their herds to the cities, set up their yurts here, sometimes even in the cities themselves [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 59], and lived in the city houses with their relatives. The connection between cities and the steppe was maintained not only by the unifying force of the Khan's power, but also, and perhaps above all, by kinship relations. Under such circumstances, it is impossible to say that urban culture is completely alien to nomads. The symbiosis of cities and the steppe in terms of human relations was not artificial.

But if the Turks in the cities were a minority of the population, and the majority belonged to representatives of other countries and peoples who had merged into a single society, then the Turks themselves in the city were a foreign body, and then G. A. Fedorov-Davydov is right when talking about the artificial symbiosis of two worlds. In other words, the answer can be obtained if we know the quantitative ratio of Turks and foreigners, as well as the direction of the assimilation process: either Turkization of foreigners, or assimilation of Turks by non-Turkic urban society.

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G. A. Fedorov-Davydov captures the general trend of slaves becoming free in the following phrase:: "Gradually, artisan slaves were freed from slave dependence, turned into feudal-dependent people, bound by a number of obligations to their owners, but living their own home, their own economy, although under guardianship" (Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 12). However, the archaeologist discovers the dynamics of the process only for a relatively late time - for the New Barn, whose intense political and economic life dates back to the period of 1340-1390s [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 22]: "It turned out that even before the appearance of street planning in the 1350s, there were extensive buildings on this site. dugouts that did not have stoves, but were heated only by braziers. We assumed that they were the homes of slaves, those who were involved in the construction of the city and in the first period made up the main part of the ordinary population. But soon, due to the general trend of development of the city in the era of feudalism, this population turned into a semi-independent urban plebs, who built semi-dugouts and above-ground wooden houses. At the same time as the above-ground houses, there was a street layout with ditches and reservoirs at intersections and squares" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 28, 30]. It is obvious that the slaves who were the children of the Turks could have become free in the first place, but from this assumption and the general trend, it cannot yet be concluded that the majority of slaves were formed by the sale of their children into slavery by the Turks. In other words, the data of archaeological excavations do not give a clear answer to the question "Turks or foreigners". Therefore, it should be looked for in other areas, namely in the political, social and demographic processes in neighboring countries.

Medieval rulers could acquire skilled foreign artisans in three ways. First, invite specialists, tempting them with high earnings. Privileged foreign craftsmen were always "worth their weight in gold", and their number was limited. Secondly, it was possible to buy an artisan slave. Such a slave was expensive, and even rich rulers could not afford large purchases of slaves. Third, artisans were enslaved in large numbers during their conquests. There was also the possibility of a voluntary mass arrival of craftsmen from other countries, if these countries created absolutely impossible living conditions for citizens.

In the cities of the Golden Horde, perhaps from two dozen to one hundred thousand artisans lived. Townspeople made up a small, sometimes negligible, share of the total population in the Middle Ages. If the artisans were foreigners, then such a huge mass of artisans for the Middle Ages could only have been formed as a result of grandiose victorious wars or mass migrations.

As a result of Batu's invasion of Europe, the Mongols could enslave and drive tens of thousands of artisans to build steppe cities. But, as we know, these slaves did not build cities. Intensive mass construction of cities begins more than half a century later, under the great-grandchildren of the conquerors. There is no evidence of mass dispersals of artisans from the peoples of the Golden Horde conquered by the Mongols. There are no victorious wars with the capture of numerous cities. But maybe there were voluntary mass migrations of foreigners?

At that time, only the Seljuk Turks were moving through Asia Minor, forcing Armenians and Greeks to flee from their native places. Fugitives also settled in the cities of the Golden Horde, but only in one region - the Black Sea region. The population explosion in the 11th and 13th centuries was observed in Western Europe; it led to the phenomenon described by Mark Blok and called by him the Great Plowing, to the construction of cities and mass migrations. But these migrations had a geographical limit in the east-the Carpathians. In addition, by the end of the 13th century, this demographic explosion ended [Blok, 1957, p. 57].

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To the question: "Turks or foreigners?" - the answer may be this. The Khans did invite outstanding scholars and masters. Specialists who were not in demand at home came to the rich empire on their own. In wars, prisoners were captured and became slaves. Artisan slaves were purchased by the elite. In capitals that always had diverse populations, foreigners could be numerous. But due to the arguments presented above, foreigners could not be the overwhelming majority of the population of the cities of the Golden Horde. Most of the population of the cities of the Golden Horde were Turks. The relations between nomads and townspeople were close and related. Citizens did not mechanically borrow the achievements of other countries and peoples: the cities had their own cultural genesis.

LIFE OF THE FIFTH AND SIXTH GENERATIONS OF THE CONQUERORS (1308-1343) - CREATORS OF THE STEPPE GARDARIKA

The fifth and sixth generations lived almost entirely during the reign of Uzbek Khan (1312-1342), which is considered the heyday of the empire. Historians note that during this era there was a sharp strengthening of the central government, a unified system of government was formed, 6 borders were stabilized, and a huge army appeared, consisting mainly of small holders of conditional possessions. There were no major wars or uprisings in the era of Uzbek Khan7. In the sphere of ideology, the state Islamization of the elite has become an important event.

Connecting the West and the East, the Mongol Empire collapsed. After that, the Jochids made a decisive ethnic and religious choice. Ethnically, they became Turkicized, and therefore linked their fate with one of the many peoples of the empire, thereby separating themselves from other ethnic groups. Ideologically, they made a difficult choice (not all representatives of the nobility, and later not all Turks agreed with this), but the final choice of the denomination was Islamized. The consequence of the choice of religion was also the choice of orientation of cultural evolution: strengthening ties with the Islamic world and weakening ties with Christian countries and peoples. The elite of the Golden Horde linked the further evolution of their culture with the peoples of Islam, which had long-term consequences.8

Although the state continued its internal and foreign policies aimed at upholding the laws established by Genghis Khan, protecting the borders of the state by military force and diplomacy, it removed itself from the responsibility of directly managing the life of the marginal peoples of the empire, practically without interfering in their current economic and political life.

Let's sum up some results. The most important factor in the first half of the 14th century was the demographic growth of the Turks in the steppes, the center of the great empire. The nomadic population grew, and the ability of the land to feed it with the same methods of farming, with the same technologies of driving cattle remained unchanged. The degradation of pastures contributed to the impoverishment of some nomads, while impoverishment led to the sale of children into slavery.

We do not know when the number of nomads crossed the threshold of feeding capacity of the earth, but we do know that this happened during the life of the fourth or fifth generations, i.e., either in the last decade of the XIII century, or, more likely, in the first XIV century.-

6 As G. A. Fedorov-Davydov wrote ," by this time the formation of the state of the Jochid Mongol aristocracy was completed. The central government and its apparatus, the power and power of the khan are growing dramatically. The country is governed by khan's governors" [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, p. 16].

7 In the hundred-year slow-moving war with the Hulaguids in Azerbaijan, there were both the successful campaign of the Uzbek (1318-1319) and the failures of the Horde (1325 and 1335).

8 In particular, were the processes of Islamization in the Golden Horde not connected with the transfer of part of the vassal Russian lands under the hand of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania? [Kulpin and Petkevich, 2004].

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It seemed that everything in the life of the people of that time was developing in the best possible way: military power is at its zenith, relations between power and subjects are regulated, the nobility is rich, the people are not yet starving. But history shows that it is precisely in conditions of apparent well-being that the most severe crisis is growing - the crisis associated with the relationship between man and nature [for the example of China, see Kulpin, 1990, pp. 157-165]. The contradiction between the possibilities of the host, feeding landscape of the steppes and population growth required a radical solution, which, in the end, as in all times and among all peoples, was reduced to choosing the path of development. The steppe Turkic ethnic group could not survive without the transition of a part of it to an intensive path of development. The natural process involved the transformation of nomads into farmers. There were two limitations in this way: socio-psychological and natural.

The nomad, turning into a farmer, intensified his work and lost his social status. Less labor intensity and more free time made the nomad's life more attractive. Due to more free time, the nomad mastered the second profession, and the most honorable and highly paid in ancient times and the Middle Ages - military. In the era of great conquests, every nomad is a professional soldier. Mass subsidence was always a tragedy for nomads. But there is no evidence that such subsidence was perceived as a tragedy in the Golden Horde. Apparently, two factors played a role here: individual-psychological and socio-psychological, i.e. the age of transformation of nomads into a settled population and natural and geographical restrictions that led to an unconventional form of settling of nomads on the land.

Recall that financial and economic difficulties forced nomads to sell their children into slavery, and not to go into slavery themselves. It is children, i.e. those who have not yet started or completed the process of forming a system of values - the formation of personality. For those who become urbanites at an early age, urban life becomes a natural state. They are gradually adapting to it, and the prospect of social mobility - becoming a freedman - forces them to actively develop areas of activity that are unusual for nomads. In the Golden Horde, adaptation was facilitated by kinship relations, the existence of a common information and spiritual network, in which, as in biocenoses, roles and relationships were largely unified and ritualized. Settling of children on the ground, in comparison with settling of adults, is a more gentle form of adaptation.

However, it was not only the adaptation from childhood to urban life that made this transition painless. It is possible that it was not only painless, but also desirable. The Golden Horde cities were fundamentally different from the European ones. The main difference was that the cities had no walls. City walls in Europe caused terrible crowding. In the Western European "city" it was not only crowded. The housewives poured the slop directly into the streets, so it was not easy to walk and drive through the city. Pigs and poultry roamed in the mud of the street, and children played here... (the city) was a hotbed of diseases. Mud, crowding, primitive medicine... " [Gurevich, Kharitonovich, 1994, p. 135]. "One of the most difficult problems due to the small size of urban areas was to protect drinking water sources from faecal contamination. In the 13th-century Vienna, drinking fountains in the courtyards of houses were located at a distance of no more than a meter from the latrine. The danger of pollution was fully realized only in the 15th century ... Plague, cholera, and gastrointestinal diseases were typical urban diseases throughout the Middle Ages " [Yastrebitskaya, 1995, pp. 109-110].

The absence of walls in the Golden Horde cities allowed them to spread indefinitely in the surrounding area, to have wide streets that were not the focus of urban dirt, hotbeds of diseases. Cities were distinguished by their homestead pla-

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a business trip. In the estates there were not only houses, outbuildings, craft workshops, but also gardens and reservoirs. All the houses of both rich and poor residents were located in gardens (Fedorov-Davydov 1997, p. 94). From the excavations of archaeologists, we know that the largest of the discovered estates occupied an area of 260 acres, the average ones had an area of approximately 50 acres, and even small, poor ones-more than 10 acres of land [Fedorov-Davydov, 1994, pp. 60-66] .9

As mentioned, the main cities of the Golden Horde had water supply (in ceramic pipes) and sewerage (in wooden ones), a system of underground drains in wooden pipes. Residents took drinking water from fountains. The role of drains was played by ditches. To this should be added a general assessment of the urban economy by V. L. Yegorov, who states that it was at a high level for the Middle Ages [Yegorov, 1997, p. 76].

A European peasant entering the city was shocked only by the smells caused by the extreme crowding of people.10 Nomad, however, getting into the Golden Horde town of the manor type, did not experience such a shock. The smells of even artisan quarters were lost in the almost endless expanse of estates along the Volga River from the Old to the New Barn.

Nomads in the Golden Horde, settling on the land, became not so much and not only farmers, but townspeople. It should be noted that for the nomads of the Golden Horde, a different process of settling on the land, namely, becoming farmers rather than townspeople, was practically excluded. In order to become farmers, they needed land on which productive farming was possible. By the Middle Ages in Europe and Asia, all the land capable of producing high and medium yields and which could be converted into arable land without extreme effort with the development of technology and technology at that time was already arable. The remaining areas for development for agriculture required such financial, material and human resources that no nation of that time had. It is no accident that the Golden Horde people developed narrow strips of land along the rivers. Gardens could be planted on them, but they could not be turned into wheat fields.11

One important detail should also be noted: the cities were inhabited by an Islamized population, whose idea of paradise is always associated with gardens and gurgling water. Of course, the exceptionally favorable climate of the 13th - first half of the 14th century contributed to the creation of orchards and vegetable gardens [Sleptsov and Klimenko, 2005; Demkin and Demkina, 2004], but a lot of work and agronomic knowledge were invested in the creation of fertile soils. The soils of the main urban agglomeration on the Lower Volga at that time were of artificial origin12. Of course, the residents of Zolotoy

9 In Western Europe at that time, urban estates did not exist. In Eastern Europe, for example, in Novgorod, posadsky estates did not exceed the size of 20 acres [Fedorov-Davydov 1994, p.63] and there were no gardens in them.

10 Even in the eighteenth century, the cities of France "reeked of a stench almost unimaginable to us modern people... in the eighteenth century, there was still no barrier to the decomposing activity of bacteria, and therefore every human activity, both creative and destructive, every manifestation of nascent or dying life was accompanied by a stench" [Suskind, 2002, pp. 5-6].

11 Under arable land South Russian steppes (in the territory of present-day Ukraine) Russia began to develop only at the end of the XVIII century and actually mastered it in the XX century, when powerful irrigation systems were created. The steppe on both sides of the Lower Volga has not yet been developed for agriculture.

12 This is evidenced by modern reconstructions based on field morphological-genetic and laboratory chemical and microbiological analyses of paleosols in the Lower Volga region (Demkin and Demkina, 2004, p. 28). Just as the presence of a metro in a modern city allows us to draw conclusions about its size, level of development, organization and-more broadly-the civilization of the population, so the composition and structure of artificial soils allows us to talk about a high culture of agriculture, which is possible with a high level of general culture.

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The hordes used the experience of gardening and gardening in other countries, but the specific nature of the steppes did not allow them to use this experience mechanically, but forced them to create an original agricultural culture based on borrowing. Considering the culture of gardening and gardening of the inhabitants of steppe cities, we have come close to other criteria of civilizational synthesis than those used by historians.

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