A07_05

Carbon-14 chronology of the Golden Horde in Kazakhstan

Panyushkina I¹,  Usmanova E², Uksenbay K³, Jull T^1,4, Molnar M⁴, Varga T⁴

¹University of Arizona, Tucson, United States, ²Buketov Karaganda University, Kraganda, Kazakhstan , ³ABDI Institute for Humanitarian Studies , Almaty, Kazakhstan, ⁴Isotope Climatology and Environmental Research Centre, Debrecene , Hungary

The historiography of the Golden Horde (1221–1438 CE), the successor of the Mongol World Empire ruled by the Chinggisids, is not well-defined and bears many contradictories. We located 34 burial complexes of Islamic tradition attributed to the Golden Horde with folk and legends in the Ulytau Mountains of Kazakhstan, which is translated from Turk languages as a “Grand Place of Ancestors”.  The burial rites of Mongol nobility remained the same throughout the Mongol Empire and were under the sacred rules of Tengri. The royal cemetery was forbidden ground with an undisclosed grave. The Chinggis funeral tradition excluded a mausoleum, although most of the known Mongol burials today are enclosed in the Islamic Mausoleums. Since Islam became the official religion of the Golden Horde after 1313 AD, we propose high-resolution carbon-14 measurements for the Golden Horde mausoleums to link historical evidence and the calendar chronology of medieval architecture in Kazakhstan. We present the results on ¹⁴C dating of two mausoleums: Joichi Khan, the oldest son of Chinggis Khan, died in 1225 CE and Alasha Khan lived in the early 15th century and was a highly acclaimed tribal leader of Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, Kirghiz, Bashkirs, Nogays, and Tatars. The dating argues that the Jochi Khan mausoleum was built about 100 years after the death of Jochi and renovated at least once in the mid-14th century. The Alasha-Khan Mausoleum is most likely built ca. 1315-1360 CE. Historical attribution of both mausoleums does not concur with the age of the building materials.