“Account of the exalted Sultan Muhammad Uzbak Khan.  His name is Muhammad Uzbak, and Khan in their language means ‘sultan.’ This sultan is mighty in sovereignty, exceedingly powerful, great in dignity, lofty in station, victor over the enemies of God, the people of Constantinople the Great, and diligent in the jihad against them. His territories are vast and his cities great; they include al-Kafa, al-Kirim, al-Machar, Azaq, Sudaq and Khwarezm, and his capital is al-Sara. He is one of the seven kings who are the great and mighty kings of the world. [...] this sultan when he is on the march, travels in a separate mahalla, accompanied by his mamluks and his officers of state, and each one of his khatuns travels separately in her own mahalla. When he wishes to be with any one of them, he sends to her to inform her of this, and she prepares to receive him.”   So the great traveller Ibn Battuta describes Özbeg, Khan on the Golden Horde, during his visit to that khan’s camp. From 1313 until his death in 1341, Özbeg enjoyed the lengthiest of reigns of a Mongol ruler, second only to his distant cousin Khubilai Khaan. The powerful Özbeg would be long remembered as the mightiest of Jochid rulers, and his life was  a watershed for the Horde. After him, all khans were Muslims, and his life would be a model, the marker of the Horde’s Golden Age. Yet, despite the proclamations of his excellence, tensions bubbled under the surface, and Özbeg’s great power did not translate into great success. In today’s episode, we take you through the transformation of the Golden Horde under Özbeg, looking specifically at islamization and urbanization. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Özbeg was a son of To’rilcha, a grandson of Möngke-Temür Khan, a great-great-grandson of Batu, a great-great-great-grandson of Jochi, and thereby a descendant of Chinggis Khan. Özbeg’s father To’rilcha had been a part of the four-wary princely junta that ruled the Horde from 1287 to 1291 under Tele-Buqa Khan. As one of the top princes of this union, and one of the sons of the prestigious Möngke-Temür Khan, To’rilcha had certainly been a powerful prince within the horde. It seems Özbeg drew much of his initial legitimacy from this, and retained a great distaste for his uncle Toqta Khan, who had To’rilcha and the other princes  killed in the 1291 coup with the aid of Nogai. Toqta then married Özbeg’s stepmother, To’rilcha’s chief wife Bayalun Khatun, and apparently exiled Özbeg to Khwarezm, which cemented Özbeg’s hatred for his uncle. It’s not surprising then that Özbeg is often accused of being behind Toqta’s somewhat mysterious death in 1312. As we covered in our episode last week, the sources are contradictory over what immediately followed. Though Mamluk sources tend to have Toqta’s sons predecease him, a number of other accounts have Özbeg battle one of Toqta’s surviving sons. Regardless, by the start of 1313 Özbeg was duly enthroned as Khan of the Golden Horde, and if he had not done so already, made public his conversion to Islam.    Özbeg had a particular view on how to hold onto power, which involved executing a great number of potential rivals to the throne. At least one hundred princes and members of the military elite were killed in perhaps the largest princely massacre of the Mongol Empire and its successor khanates. The justification for many of the deaths was the failure of the given princes to convert to Islam, but this was almost certainly little more than an excuse to substantially trim the branches of the aristocracy. Özbeg wanted to ensure that there would be not only no rivals to his own position, but that only his own sons would be able to succeed him.   Certainly, islamization was a key part of Özbeg’s reign. There can be no doubt over its spread amongst the Jochid elite from these years onwards, and accounts like Ibn Battuta not only stress the piety of Özbeg and his court, but how islamic institutions were now seepe