With the death of Nogai by 1300, one man was now master of the Golden Horde; Toqta, son of Möngke-Temür Khan, great-grandson of Batu, great-great-grandson of Jochi, and great-great-great-grandson of Chinggis Khan. After the troubles of the 1290s, Toqta ushered in a new age of stability as rivals to power were snuffed out over his twenty year reign. Today we take you through the reign of Toqta Khan. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Toqta, known also as Toqtogha, was one of Möngke-Temür Khan’s ten sons. While most of Möngke-Temür’s children had joined Tele-Buqa Khan’s alliance from 1287 to 1291, Toqta and three other brothers— Tudan, Sarai-Buqa and Bürlük—seem to have been excluded for unclear reasons. We have only reference to Toqta being seen as a strong figure of certain manly qualities, supposedly embodying Mongol ideals of rulership. Perhaps a skilled archer and rider, a fearsome wrestler and warrior, Toqta appeared an ideal rival to the always militarily-doomed Tele-Buqa.   Regardless of why, Toqta first appears in the sources being singled out as a rival by Tele-Buqa and his allies. The story, as you heard in our previous episodes, resulted in Toqta allying with Nogai and killing most of his brothers. In 1291 Toqta was enthroned as khan, perhaps also in another four way power division with his surviving brothers, according to the Mamluk chroniclers. Nogai then returned to his territory along the Danube. Popularly it is claimed that Toqta spent his first years as Khan under Nogai’s thumb, but there is relatively little information to support that. Both Toqta and Nogai demanded the other kill surviving supporters of Tele-Buqa Khan, but Nogai is given no involvement in the sources in the  major actions Toqta undertook. In 1293, on the request of the Rus’ prince Andrei, son of the famed Alexander Nevskii, Toqta sent his brother Tudan on a devastating attack on the Rus’, aimed on ousting Andrei’s rival brother, Dmitri. 14 Rus’ cities, including Moscow, were sacked, and Novgorod only narrowly avoided destruction due to a timely, and very expensive, pile of gifts. Dmitri died the next year, leaving Andrei as Grand Prince of the Rus’ undisputed. In 1294 Toqta also organized  a peace treaty with the Il-Khan Geikhatu, ending hostilities with the Ilkhanate.    As we covered in the last episode, most of Toqta’s reign in the second half of the 1290s was caught up dealing with Nogai, as growing tensions were fanned into open war between them. After initial defeats, Toqta succeeded in overcoming Nogai, and the old dog was dead by 1300.  So ended the first decade of Toqta’s reign, and he could begin to restore the Jochid Khanate’s wider influence. On Nogai’s defeat the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II sent a daughter to marry Toqta, while the Rus’ princes reaffirmed their vassalage. At a gathering of the princes in 1304 Toqta’s influence over them was confirmed with a reallotment of certain cities.     Like his father Möngke-Temür Khan, Toqta sought to extend the Jochids’ influence over their borders, though faced difficulties in doing so. He placed his brothers Bürlük, Sarai-Buqa and his own sons Ilbasar and Tükel-Buqa into prominent governorships. Sarai-Buqa was made the master of the late Nogai’s former territory. On Toqta’s permission, the new Bulgarian tsar Theodore Svetoslav killed Nogai’s son Chaka in 1301, and on Chaka’s death Sarai-Buqa moved into the Nogayid lands, and Toqta’s son Tükel-Buqa took Nogai’s former administrative centre at Saqchi, thus reasserting the Horde’s mastery over the region. Bulgaria, counter to some suggestions, remained a part of the Golden Horde as a vassal. Toqta might have thought the matter finished, had Nogai’s sole surviving son, Turai, not come out of hiding.  Turai, through some silver tongue-work, was welcomed into the local court of Toqta’s brother Sarai-Buqa. In short order, Turai convinced Sarai-Buqa that he should be khan, and thereby had Sarai-Buqa mar