Kipchaks

Kipchaks, a Turkic people, who in the 11th century were settled in the steppes of south-east Russia, between the Ural and the Don, north of the river Kuun. After the death of Genghis Khan, one of his four sons, Batu, conquered (1238-43) nearly all the central and southern districts of Russia, and founded the great empire of the Golden Horde or the Kipchaks, fixing his magnificent camp (Turkic, urdu, 'camp,' hence the word Horde) on the Volga. They gradually acquired the rudiments of civilisation as they came into contact with the cultured peoples of the west and south. The Golden Horde and the eastern branch, the White Horde or eastern Kipchak, were united about 1378; but this joint empire was broken up by Tamerlane in 1390-95. Out of the fragments were formed the small khanates of Astrakhan, Kazan, the Crimea, &c., all of which were eventually absorbed by Russia. The modern descendants of the western Kipchaks are the Tartars of Kazan, Astrakhan, the Crimea, &c. (see TARTARS). The descendants of the eastern Kipchaks are the Kirghiz (q.v.), of whose three hordes the middle one is still called Kipchaks. See Howorth, History of the Mongols (1880).