Nogai Khan
Though he never formally ruled the Golden Horde himself, he was effectively the co-ruler of the state alongside whatever khan was in power at the time and had unrestricted control over the portions west of the Dnieper.
After the Mongol invasion of Europe, Batu Khan left Nogai with a tumen (10,000 warriors) in modern-day Moldavia and Romania as a frontier guard.
In 1262, a civil war broke out between the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate, with Berke and Hulagu supporting separate claimants for the title of khagan.
Nogai Khan was given a high role in the army of the Golden Horde; Rashid Al-Din describes him as Berke's "commander-in-chief".
Hulegu rallied his men and a day-long battle ensued; the fighting was fierce, but the Golden Horde's initial advantage was too great.
[10][11] In August 1264, the war effectively ended when Kublai Khan was crowned khagan with the acknowledgement of Berke, Hulegu, and Chagatai.
In 1266, the Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, anxious to make an alliance, gave his daughter Euphrosyne Palaiologina to Nogai as a wife.
Nogai did however slyly ask if the jewels and clothes could ward off lightning bolts, prevent headache, or promote good health, before praising the practicality of the dog skins his people wore.
He also undertook his own foreign policy, sending envoys to the Mamluk Sultanate, forming marriage alliances with Byzantium and the Il-Khanate, and raiding various European kingdoms.
[14] In 1282, Nogai sent 4,000 Mongol soldiers to Constantinople, to help his father in law Emperor Michael suppress the rebels headed by John I Doukas of Thessaly.
Ivaylo subsequently escaped the Mongol blockade and led a Bulgarian force to victory over Nogai's Byzantine allies at the Battle of Devina.
In 1280 Ivaylo began to lose support among his followers, who were not interested in unending wars with the Byzantines, sections of the Bulgarian nobility, and Mongol raiding parties.
After George's flight to Constantinople, Nogai set his close associate Smilets on the Bulgarian throne, keeping Bulgaria a vassal of the Golden Horde.
In the winter of 1285, Nogai and Talabuga Khan invaded Hungary with Mongol and Cuman troops, but unlike Subutai forty years earlier, they were defeated.
Nogai had been told of the perilous political situation in Hungary by fleeing Cuman warriors (King Ladislaus IV's nobles were practically rebelling against him, and Hungary had just been weakened by a Cuman rebellion they had recently defeated), and planned to capitalize on it by launching a vast campaign against the apparently weakened kingdom.
Talabuga's troops devastated Transylvania and raided as far as Pest, but the Hungarians' newly constructed fortification network gave them much trouble.
Nogai was more successful than Talabuga, staying in Hungary into spring and retaining the bulk of his army, but still suffered several serious reverses at the hands of local Hungarian troops (primary Szekelys, Saxons, and Vlachs).
Nogai's column never came into contact with the royal army, as his losses to the local Hungarian forces in the areas he operated in were sufficiently serious to convince him to retreat prematurely.
[citation needed] Overall the campaign was a severe defeat for the Golden Horde and one of Nogai's biggest setbacks; there would be no major incursions into Hungary after it, only raiding along the frontier.
[citation needed] Upon returning from their disastrous campaign in Hungary to the Horde's heartland in 1287, they found Tuda-Mengu Khan sunk in religious torpor.
Eager to prove himself as a capable ruler and not a puppet of Nogai, and probably wanting to make up for his part of the loss in Hungary, Talabuga immediately launched an invasion against the Ilkhanate, attempting to seize the disputed territory of Azerbaijan.
[20] Nogai and Talabuga had never gotten along, and their quarrelling during the invasions of Poland and Circassia is held by 19th-century Russian historian Nikolay Karamzin to be a major reason for the heavy losses taken in those expeditions.
[20] However, Nogai was duplicitous; he had arrived at the designated meeting spot accompanied by a large group of soldiers and Tokhta, as well as three sons of Mengu-Timur.
Nogai and Tokhta soon found themselves embroiled in a deadly rivalry; while they cooperated in raids against rebellious Rus' principalities, they remained in competition.
This enraged Tokhta, angered that a Mongol prince's blood had been shed (he planned to execute Nogai in a bloodless manner in keeping with tradition), had the soldier put to death.
[27][28][29] Despite his power and prowess in battle, Nogai never attempted to seize the Golden Horde khanate for himself, preferring to act as a sort of kingmaker.
Despite this, his religious beliefs apparently followed his diplomatic needs; initially he was a devout Tengrist, like most of the Golden Horde, and remained one even after Berke's conversion to Islam.
[33] He arranged and held the marriage ceremony of Mankus's daughter Encona to Theodore Svetoslav of Bulgaria at his court, and his wife Euphrosyne became her god-mother.
