The land of darkness and the Golden Horde [The fur trade under the Mongols, XIIIrd-XIVth centuries

Abstract

Janet Martin, The land of darkness and the Golden Horde. The fur trade under the Mongols. XIII-XIVth centuries. At the time the Mongols conquered the Volga Bulgars and the Russian land, the fur trade system they found was already a reduced form of the extensive system that in previous centuries had supplied northern luxury fur to "all ends of the world". In contrast, the XIIIth-century system dealt mainly with local fur, which was sold at Sudak to Seljuk Turk merchants. After the initial devastation caused by their conquest, however, the Mongols at Sarai stimulated a renewal of traffic in luxury fur. Rostov and later Moscow, by tapping Novgorod's fur supplies as they were transported from the northeast through Ustiug, and Bulgar, by developing a new access route along the Kama river to the fur-hunting tribes of the northeast, were able to obtain northern sable, ermine, and other furs, which they sent down the Volga to Sarai. That city became not only a consuming center of northern fur, but also a commercial transit center, from which luxury fur was shipped westward to the Italian merchants stationed in the Crimea and eastward through Central Asia as far as India and China.