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princes of Moscow in the fourteenth century was closelylinked up with their privileged relations with the GoldenHorde, especially as the khan's tax-gatherers; and thereis also no doubt as to the constant comings and goings(sometimes long sojourns) of the Russian princes to thekhan's capital of Sarai on the lower Volga, where therewas a Russian colony. There was intermarriage withTatar princesses, though it seems to have been rare,much rarer than with the Polovtsy before the Mongolconquest, and except in two cases only minor princeswere concerned. Certain general features of the ruleof the Horde and of Tatar influence have been sketchedabove (pp. 37-38), where it was pointed out that it isoften difficult to determine whether particular instancesof borrowing by or influence on the Russians came duringor before the Mongol period. The Russian Slavs hadbeen in contact with the steppe peoples for centuriesand the Mongols themselves formed only a very thintop layer in the Golden Horde. But it was underthem that a governmental and a new military systemwas created with which the Russians had all too goodcause to become acquainted, in contrast with far-awayByzantine administration.The inscribing of the taxable population, the systemof taxation by households, a new coinage and the organizationof customs dues and of transport and courierservices were distinctive features of the first century ofMongol rule (1240-1340). They appear in kindredforms in the Muscovy of Ivan the Great. What requiresfurther investigation is whether, in this outlyingfringe of the far-flung dominions of the Mongols, theirgovernmental methods were made to fit somewhatsimilar existent Russian practice, and exactly to whatextent later Muscovite practice directly inherited oradapted them. In military matters there was certainlysome direct borrowing; and the state monopoly of drink,later a corner-stone of the state budget, was likewisetaken from Tatar practice. Whether the khan's centraladministrative departments, the diwani, were to someextent the prototypes for the Muscovite departments,the prikazi, or whether these developed solely from the91