[5] Older scholarship followed the inaccurate testimony of Naṭanzī in making Urus Khan and, by extension, Tokhtamysh, descendants of Jochi's son Orda.

He refused to join the forces of his cousin and suzerain, Urus, the khan of the former Ulus of Orda centered on Sighnaq, for a campaign to subdue Sarai, the traditional capital of the Golden Horde.

Hearing that Tīmūr Malik spends his time in drinking and pleasures and ignores affairs of importance, and that the exasperated people desire Tokhtamysh to rule them, Timur sent his forces to Sawran and Otrar, which surrendered.

When Tokhtamysh's envoy, Āq Khwāja, came to invite the Russian princes to the khan's court for the confirmation of their diplomas of investiture, he was faced with so much hostility by the population, that he turned back after reaching Nižnij Novgorod.

Three days later, the citizens were tricked into surrendering by Vasilij and Semën of Nižnij Novgorod, and Tokhtamysh's troops stormed into the city, slaughtering, plundering and finally razing it for the insubordination of its ruler.

Seeking cooperation against this and other threats, Tokhtamysh received Vasilij I of Moscow in his camp and invested him with the domain of Nižnij Novgorod despite the protests of its princes.

Despite his sack of Moscow in 1382, Tokhtamysh had strengthened the power and wealth of its ruler in the end, helping set it on the path to annexing other Russian, and later Mongol polities.

[16] In 1383, taking advantage of Timur's preoccupation with affairs in Persia, Tokhtamysh restored the Golden Horde's authority over the semi-autonomous Ṣūfī Dynasty in Khwarazm, apparently without provoking his former patron.

[17] Under pressure from his emirs to provide profitable campaigns for plunder and perhaps possessed by the traditional ambitions of his predecessors, Tokhtamysh crossed the Caucasus with a large force (5 tumens, 50,000 troops) during the winter of 1384–1385, invading Jalayirid Azerbaijan.

He captured the capital, Tabriz, by storm and ravaged the neighboring area for ten days, before retiring with his plunder, including some 200,000 slaves, among them thousands of Armenians from the districts of Parskahayk, Syunik, and Artsakh.

Increasingly aware that he was outmatched, Tokhtamysh sought to create an anti-Timurid coalition, reaching out to neighboring rulers (including the Mamluk sultan Barqūq) concerned by Timur's power.

Gathering a large army, he set out in February 1391 from Tashkent, ignored Tokhtamysh's envoys seeking peace, and struck into the territories of the former Ulus of Orda.

Timur advanced on the Ural and crossed it farther upstream, causing Tokhtamysh to retreat in the direction of the Volga, where he could expect the arrival of reinforcements from the Crimea, Bolghar, and even Russia.

The hard-fought battle ended in the rout of Tokhtamysh's forces and his flight from the battlefield; many of his soldiers, trapped between the enemy and the Volga, were captured or slaughtered.

Tokhtamysh dealt similarly with Edigu, coming to terms with him in exchange for his submission, and leaving him with autonomous authority in the east, greatly weakening the position of Tīmūr Qutluq.

Tokhtamysh felt powerful enough to demand tribute from the Polish King Władysław II Jagiełło in 1393 for the lands his father, Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania, had taken from the Golden Horde in the past.

Passing though Circassia, he proceeded to pillage and destroy the cities along the Volga, from (old) Astrakhan to Sarai, to Gülistan, in the winter of 1395–1396; the surviving inhabitants were enslaved and "driven like sheep."

Timur set out for Samarkand via Derbent in the spring of 1396, laden with plunder and accompanied by herds and captives, including merchants, artists, and craftsmen, leaving the Golden Horde exhausted and pillaged.

The ruined capital, Sarai, was in the hands of Timur's protégé Quyurchuq, while the area of Astrakhan and the eastern portions of the Golden Horde were under the control of Tīmūr Qutluq and Edigu, who had joined forces once again.

Meanwhile, Tokhtamysh had set about reasserting his authority in the southwestern portions of the Golden Horde, killing his cousin Tāsh Tīmūr, who had declared himself khan in the Crimea, and fighting the Genoese there, besieging Kaffa in 1397.

In late 1397 or early 1398, Tokhtamysh briefly triumphed over his rivals, taking over Sarai and the Volga towns, and sent out jubilant missives through his envoys all round.

But his success was short-lived: Tokhtamysh was defeated in battle by Tīmūr Qutluq and fled first to the Crimea, where he was met with hostility, then via Kiev to Grand Prince Vytautas of Lithuania.

On the Vorskla River they encountered the forces of Tīmūr Qutluq, who opened negotiations, intending to delay the engagement until Edigu could arrive with reinforcements.

Tokhtamysh fled the battlefield and made his way east to Sibir; Vytautas survived the battle, although some twenty princes, including two of his cousins fell in the fight.

[33] Russian chroniclers recorded his death in 1406:[34] Тое же зимы царь Женибек уби Тактамыша в Сибирскои земли близ Тюмени, а сам седе на Орде.

His sack of Moscow in 1382 undid the setback suffered by the Golden Horde in its domination over the Russian principalities at the Battle of Kulikovo two years earlier.

[36] Similarly, he helped Lithuania establish a precedent for involving itself in the government and politics of the Golden Horde, and making and unmaking khans, several of them Tokhtamysh's sons, for decades to come.

[37] Neither of these alliances saved Tokhtamysh, whose authority was dealt severe setbacks by the two great invasions of Timur into the core territories of the Golden Horde in 1391 and 1395–1396.

Tokhtamysh's relative solidification of the khan's authority survived him only briefly, and largely due to the influence of his nemesis Edigu; but after 1411 it gave way to another long period of civil war that ended in the disintegration of the Golden Horde.

Moreover, Timur's destruction of the Golden Horde's main urban centers, as well as the Italian colony of Tana, dealt a severe and lasting blow to the trade-based economy of the polity, with various negative implications for its future prospects for prosperity and survival.