Mamai was a powerful military commander of the Blue Horde in the 1370s, who resided in the western part of this nomadic state, which is now the Southern Ukrainian Steppes and the Crimean Peninsula. He split apart from Khans of the Golden Horde, trying to establish his own state.

Mamai, holding military rank of tumenbashy (temnik, ?????? in Russian — commander of 10,000 troops, loosely equivalent to a modern general). He may possibly have been a descendant of Genghis Khan through a grandson of the infamous Nogai Khan; however his claim to the throne of the Golden Horde was probably validated by his marriage to a daughter of the last real legitimate khan, Berdi Beg. In 1378–1380 he tried to force Russians to pay annual tribute to him and his puppet khans instead of the court of the Golden Horde (By this time there were numerous squabbling concurrent khans who were probably not of Genghisid lineage).

After being badly defeated by Russians under Dmitri Donskoi first in 1378 at the Battle of the Vozha River and then at the Battle of Kulikovo (1380), Mamai began to assemble large force to punish Dmitri. But he was defeated by Tokhtamysh (who was of genghisid lineage) on the banks of the Kalka River and fled to Crimea. There he was assassinated in Caffa (Crimea) by the Genoese, who could not forgive the total waste of a military unit of Genoese crossbowmen who were slaughtered by the Russians. The assassination of Mamai paved the way for the next khan to reunify the Golden Horde.

The memory of Mamai has endured for centuries. Contemporary Russian has an expression "??? ????? ??????", which translates roughly to "it's as if Mamai came through here", used to describe an utter mess.

Purported descendants

One of his sons, Manzur Kiyat, purportedly escaped to Lithuania, and, serving Grand Prince Vytautas the Great, received the title of Prince of Hlinsk with multiple estates around the modern city of Poltava (Ukraine). These legendary events could have taken place in the 1400s, although the first documented mention of the Glinski princes is made in 1437. Michael Glinski was the most illustrious member of the family: he studied at the German university, took part as a knight in the Italian Wars, was the most powerful man in Lithuania in the 1500s, but later rebelled and run away with his brothers to Muscovy and helped the Russians to retake the city of Smolensk. His niece Elena Glinskaya was married to Vasily III, Grand Prince of Moscow, and Ivan the Terrible was her son.

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