1. Jani Beg, known as Janibek Khan, was Khan of the Golden Horde from 1342 until his death in 1357.
11 Facts About Jani Beg
1. 2.
Jani Beg is known to have actively interfered in the affairs of the Russian principalities and of Lithuania.
3.
Jani Beg commanded a massive Crimean Tatar force that attacked the Crimean port city of Kaffa, then a Genoese colony, in 1343.
4.
Jani Beg's army catapulted infected corpses into Kaffa in an attempt to use the plague to weaken the defenders.
5.
In 1356, Jani Beg conquered the city of Tabriz, installing his own governor.
6.
Jani Beg asserted Jochid dominance over the Chagatai Khanate, attempting to unite the three khanates of the Mongol Empire.
7.
The Chudov Monastery in Moscow, founded at about the time of Jani Beg's fall by Metropolitan Aleksii and Sergii of Radonezh, was built on land that according to legend was granted to Aleksii by the Khan as thanks for the miraculous curing of his mother Taydula by the former.
8.
The reign of Jani Beg was marked by the first signs of the feudal strife which would eventually contribute to the demise of the Golden Horde.
9.
Jani Beg appears in the 1375 Catalan Atlas: the Mongol polity of the Golden Horde is accurately depicted north of the Caspian Sea.
10.
Jani Beg had a number of sons, only one of whom, Berdi Beg, reigned after him but who proceeded to eliminate his brothers.
11.
The 2012 Russian film The Horde is set during the reign of Jani Beg and is a highly fictionalised narrative of how Aleksii healed Taidula from blindness.