Sarai (city)

Sarai (also transcribed as Saraj or Saray) was the name of two cities, which were successively capital cities of the Golden Horde, the Mongol kingdom which ruled much of Central Asia and part of Eastern Europe, in the 13th and 14th centuries. Located in present-day Russia, they were among the largest cities of the medieval world, with a population estimated by the 2005 Britannica at 600,000.

Sarai is Persian for "palace" and Russian for "shed". There is also a variation meaning home (Saraa), similar to Sarajevo in the Balkan peninsula.

"Old Sarai", or "Sarai Batu" or "Sarai-al-Maqrus" (al-Maqrus is Arabic for "the blessed") was established by Mongol ruler Batu Khan in the mid-1240s, on a site east of the Akhtuba river, near to the modern village of .

This site was most probably located on the Akhtuba River, a channel of the lower Volga River, near the contemporary village of Selitrennoye in Kharabali District, Astrakhan Oblast, Russia, about 120 km north from Astrakhan.

Sarai was the seat of Batu and his successor Berke. Under them Sarai was the capital of a great empire. The various Rus' princes came to Sarai to pledge allegiance to the Khan and receive his patent of authority (yarlyk).

"New Sarai" or "Sarai Berke" (called Sarai-al-Jadid on coins) was at modern Kolobovka, formerly Tsarev, an archeological site also on the Akhtuba channel 85 km east of Volgograd, and about 180 km northwest of Old Sarai; or possibly on the site of Saqsin (which may itself have stood on the site of the Khazar capital, Atil). The bishops of Krutitsy resided in Tsarev from 1261 to 1454. It had probably succeeded Sarai Batu as the capital of the Golden Horde by the mid-14th century.

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