Mengu-Timur

Munkh Tumur or Möngke Temür (; ) (?–1280), son of Toqoqan Khan and Köchu Khatun of Oirat (daughter of Toralchi Küregen and granddaughter of Qutuqa Beki) and the grandson of Batu Khan. He was a khan of the Golden Horde, a division of the Mongol Empire in 1266–1280. His name literally means "Eternal Iron" in the Mongolian language. Early reign and foreign policy During his reign, the Mongols together with their subjects, several Turkic tribes and the Russian princes, undertook military campaigns against Byzantium (c. 1269–1271), Lithuania (1275), and Alans in Caucasus (1277). The very first yarlyk (license) found by historians was written on behalf of Mengu-Timur and contained information on the release of the Russian Orthodox Church from paying tribute to the Golden Horde, however, he was a shamanist. During the reign of Mengu-Timur, the Genoese traders purchased Caffa from the Mongols. But those Italian merchants paid taxes to Mongol khans and sometimes to Nogai. Both the German crusaders and the Lithuanians threatened the safety of Russian lands. In 1268, he sent his forces to Novgorod to assist his Russian vassals to conquer Danish Estonia, but after the Battle of Wesenberg was forced to withdraw. In 1274 Smolensk, the last of Russian principalities, became subject to Möngke Temür khan of the Golden Horde. The Khan also dispatched his army along with Russian princes to Lithuania by the request of the duke Lev of Galicia-Volhynia in 1275.