The display devoted to the history and culture of the Golden Horde is based for the most part on materials from archaeological excavations in the Volga basin (the Tsarevskoye site), the northern Caucasus and the Crimea.
The Golden Horde was an extensive state that came into being on the lands to the west of Lake Baikal, stretching as far as the Black Sea. This territory was given by Genghis Khan to his son Jochi, who conquered eastern and southern Siberia. The western part was subjugated later by Batu, the Great Khan’s grandson.
The state’s own name for itself was Ulug Ulus (meaning “Great State” in Turkic). Horde is a name that comes from Russian chronicles, while the actual term “Golden Horde” first occurs in a chronicle for 1556, when the state itself was already a thing of the past.
The formal date for the creation of this polity (within the Great Mongol State) can be considered both 1207 and 1224, when the Mongol empire was divided up between the sons of Genghis Khan. In the first half of the 15th century, the state broke apart into several khanates. The largest entity, the Great Horde, endured until the early 16th century.
On show in the hall are architectural blocks of buildings from the excavations of Solkhat, the capital of the Crimea under the Golden Horde. The display also includes gravestones with inscriptions indicative of the multi-confessional and multi-ethnic composition of that mediaeval city.
Also noteworthy are the mosaic tiles made from a type of ceramic (Gülüstan, 14th century) and a carved wooden door (Solkhat, Crimea, 1512).
