Nogai Khan victorious in Serbia: End Result?

Serbia isn't a suitable geographical region for any group of nomads to conquer or settle in the long term and stay true to their nomadic nature, and only area of the modern Serbia is in that time under Hungary, Vojvodina.

But the prime example of nomads living in the Balkans would be Cumans, right after Mongols came and drove them away from southern Russia. They came to Bulgaria and Hungary, but were a hot political potato for the both states and were encouraged to emigrate elsewhere because they were seen as unreliable and as some sort of a mongol vanguard instead of refugees. They lasted till the early 14 cent ,if I remember, and were assimilated totally in the end.

Were these Cumans by any chance also referred to as the Kipchaks?
 
Nope. I'm not even a Serb. wait a minute. The only reason how some Christians actually converted to Islam in the Ottoman Empire is that they were recruited. Though I'm sure that the Ottoman Janissaries consisted of Christian boys, right?

So let's say the Golden Horde conquers the Balkans and rules over another Christian population, but decides to leave them alone as long as they pay tribute to their Muslim Tatar overlords. Would the Tatars have their version of the Janissaries or would they just try to recruit Christians to fight for the Golden Horde?

The Janissaries were young Christian boys taken and converted to Islam where they became the rulers, elite soldiers, administrators, etc etc of the Ottoman Empire. Ottomans power base was always in the Balkans, between the Janissaries of the Rumeli March Lords.

Other powers such as the Mamluks had similar systems but the Ottoman system was more effective and evolutionary. Granted at a point the Janissaries became like the Praetorian Guard of Rome and dealt heavily with successions of Ottoman Sultans.
 
So basically we have the same people living in the Balkans before the Ottomans came as the same group who would eventually be comprised of the Golden Horde's forces, right?
 
So basically we have the same people living in the Balkans before the Ottomans came as the same group who would eventually be comprised of the Golden Horde's forces, right?

Um...sort of?

The Kipchaks/Cumans (pre-Mongols) were through out SE European Russia (more or less), and then they fled as stated.

But they don't really make up a significant part of the Balkan population, size-wise.
 
So basically we have the same people living in the Balkans before the Ottomans came as the same group who would eventually be comprised of the Golden Horde's forces, right?

You see, the Mongols as they made their way across Eurasia incorporated many of the Turkic Nomads, so much so that the term Turco-Mongol arose. The Mongols were really good at incorporating their conquered regions and subjects and using them to expand their territory. By the time of the arrival of the sons of Jochi in Russia the Mongol forces were probably heavily made up of Cumans/Kipchaks (because in reality the 'Cumans' was a confederation of different Turkic groups), those that fled into Hungary and the Balkans were likely those Cumans who rejected Mongol rule.
 
So in this case, it'd be very hard to create the Serbian Kingdom with the House of Borjigin-Nemanjic. I mean, even Stefan Decanski spent most of his time within the court of the Tatars.
 
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