ABSTRACT
COMMENTARY 34 The origin of the name' White Tsar' (ref. Chap. 6, p. 200, n. I) For several explanations of the origin of the name 'White Tsar', see Brockhaus and Efron (Vol. v, pp. 246, 249). George Vemadsky has re-examined the problem in his Mongols and Russia; for detailed discussion, see pp. 139-40, 388--9. In his view, Juchi's ulus, conventionally known among historians as the Golden Horde, was originally designated the White Horde. Thus Tinibeg, a mid-fourteenth century Khan of Kipchak is described in a Persian source as ruler of the White Horde; and the German traveller, Johan Schiltberger, in the early fifteenth century, wrote of White Tartary. The convention of describing western hordes as 'white' goes back to the Chinese practice of assigning colours to the different points of the compass. For an earlier period cf. the name 'White Huns'. The Russian Autocrat, as successor to the empire of Juchi's ulus, called himself the White Tsar. As late as the eighteenth century he was still the White Khan (tsagan khan) to the Kalmucks and Buryats.
