Nogai Horde

The Nogai Horde was the confederation of the Nogais on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a Manghud-cored host named for Nogai Khan, the kingmaker of the Golden Horde from the 1250s to about 1300. From its capital at Saray-Juk on the lower Ural, the horde pastured between the Volga and the Emba from about 1500, riding with and against Muscovy, the Crimean khanate and the Kazakhs as interest dictated. Its begs commanded the northern caravan roads and sold horses and captives to every neighbour. In the seventeenth century the Kalmyks pressed in from the east and the Russians raised their fortress line from the north; the great horde broke apart, its uluses scattering west toward the Kuban and the Danube or bending to the Crimean khan. By 1634 the united horde had ceased to exist, though Nogai bands rode the steppe for another century under foreign banners, and their name endures in the peoples and districts of Dagestan and the northern Caucasus.