Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history. Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia, the empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe, extending northward into Siberia and east and southward into the Indian subcontinent, mounting invasions of Southeast Asia, and conquering the Iranian plateau; and reaching westward as far as the Levant and the Carpathian Mountains.
The empire emerged from the unification of several nomadic tribes in the Mongol heartland under the leadership of Temüjin, known by the title of Genghis Khan, whom a council proclaimed as the ruler of all Mongols in 1206. The empire grew rapidly under his rule and that of his descendants, who sent out invading armies in every direction. The vast transcontinental empire connected the East with the West, and the Pacific to the Mediterranean, in an enforced Pax Mongolica, allowing the exchange of trade, technologies, commodities, and ideologies across Eurasia.
The empire began to split due to wars over succession, as the grandchildren of Genghis Khan disputed whether the royal line should follow from his son and initial heir Ögedei, or from one of his other sons, such as Tolui, Chagatai, or Jochi. The Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of the Ögedeid and Chagatayid factions, but disputes continued among the descendants of Tolui. The conflict over whether the empire would adopt a sedentary, cosmopolitan lifestyle, or continue its nomadic, steppe-based way of life was a major factor in the breakup.
After Möngke Khan died in 1259, rival kurultai councils simultaneously elected different successors, the brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai Khan, who fought each other in the Toluid Civil War and dealt with challenges from the descendants of other sons of Genghis. Kublai successfully took power, but war ensued as he sought unsuccessfully to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. By Kublai's death in 1294, the empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own objectives: the Golden Horde khanate in the northwest, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Ilkhanate in Iran, and the Yuan dynasty in China, based in modern-day Beijing. In 1304, during the reign of Temür, the three western khanates accepted the suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty.
The Ilkhanate was the first to fall, which disintegrated between 1335–53. Next, the Yuan dynasty lost control of the Tibetan Plateau and China proper in 1354 and 1368, respectively, and collapsed after its capital Dadu was taken over by Ming forces. The Genghisid rulers of the Yuan then retreated north and continued to rule the Mongolian Plateau. The regime is thereafter known as the Northern Yuan dynasty, surviving as a rump state until the conquest by the Qing dynasty in the 1630s. The Golden Horde had broken into competing khanates by the end of the 15th century, and its rule on Eastern Europe is traditionally considered to have ended in 1480 with the Great Stand on the Ugra River by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, while the Chagatai Khanate lasted until 1687, or, in the Yarkent Khanate's case, until 1705.
Name
The Mongol Empire is also referred to as the "Mongolian Empire" or the "Mongol World Empire" in some English sources.The empire referred to itself as the Nation of the Great Mongols or the Great Mongol Nation in Mongol or the Whole Great Nation in Turkic.
After the 1260 to 1264 succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke, Kublai's power became limited to the eastern part of the empire, centered on China. Kublai officially issued an imperial edict on 18 December 1271 to give the empire the Han-style dynastic name of "Great Yuan" and to establish the Yuan dynasty. Some sources give the full Mongol name as Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus.
Background
The predecessors of the Mongol tribe were first recorded in the late tenth century, as they migrated from eastern Manchuria into the Mongolian Plateau, where they settled southeast of Lake Baikal near the mountain Burkhan Khaldun. During the twelfth century, the Mongols rose to prominence as its khans made allies and led raids on the Chinese Jin dynasty. The killing of the khans Qutula and Ambaghai in the 1160s ended this first confederation. The Mongols were reduced to comparative penury; other tribes, such as the Naimans in the west of the plateau and Kerait in the centre, became much more powerful, while the Mongols competed with smaller tribes like the Merkit and the Tatars, the allies of the Jin, in the east and north.One nephew of Qutula Khan, named Yesugei, had some success fighting against the Tatars, and was a great friend of Toghrul, the khan of the Kerait. With his wife Hö'elün, whom he had abducted from her previous Merkit husband, Yesugei had several children, including a boy named Temüjin who was born.
Yesugei was poisoned by Tatars when Temüjin was still young and Hö'elün's family were abandoned by their tribe on the steppe. They survived the hostility of other tribes and the dangers of the steppe itself, while Temüjin killed his older half-brother to secure his familial position. As an adult, Temüjin formed alliances with his father's ally Toghrul and an old friend named Jamukha who was now leader of his own tribe; they worked together to retrieve Temüjin's newlywed wife Börte, who had been kidnapped by Merkit raiders in retaliation for Hö'elün's abduction. Börte was retrieved successfully but because she had been raped in captivity, the paternity of her son Jochi was uncertain. With Temüjin, she had three more sons named Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui, and five daughters named Qojin, Checheyigen, Alaqa, Tümelün, and Al-Altan.
The victory over the Merkit brought Temüjin prestige and a considerable following; although he and Jamuqa initially remained close, their individual ambitions soon conflicted and turned hostile. In 1187, Jamukha decisively defeated Temüjin, who took refuge in China. Sponsored by the Jin, he returned to the steppe in 1196 and led a successful campaign with Toghrul against the Tatars in 1196, which re-established his prestige. Temüjin and Toghrul steadily increased their power over the next five years, culminating in a 1201 victory over a coalition led by Jamukha. In 1202, Temüjin eradicated the Tatars; this left the Mongols as the preeminent power in eastern Mongolia. Relations with Toghrul ruptured in 1203, but Temüjin managed to avoid utter defeat and overcome Toghrul. The Naimans were subjugated and Jamukha was executed in the next two years. With these victories, Temüjin became the undisputed ruler of not only Mongolia, but a newly unified people.
United Mongol Empire (1206–60)
Early organization
At a kurultai in 1206, the shaman Teb Tenggeri proclaimed Temüjin khan of the "Great Mongol Nation". Here Temüjin assumed the title Genghis Khan, the meaning of which is not certain. He then instituted a series of institutional reforms which constituted, according to the historian Timothy May, a "social revolution". Genghis reconstituted steppe society by redistributing the tribal peoples into "a military-industrial complex" based on the decimal system. His favoured followers—some of whom were of low birth—were allocated to command ninety-five , or units of a thousand, which were in turn subdivided into hundreds and tens.Compared to the units he gave to his loyal companions, those assigned to his own family members were relatively few. He proclaimed a new code of law of the empire, Ikh Zasag or Yassa; later he expanded it to cover much of the everyday life and political affairs of the nomads. He forbade the selling of women, theft, fighting among the Mongols, and the hunting of animals during the breeding season.
He appointed his stepbrother Shikhikhutug as supreme judge, ordering him to keep records of the empire. In addition to laws regarding family, food, and the army, Genghis decreed religious freedom and supported domestic and international trade. He exempted the poor and the clergy from taxation. He also encouraged literacy and the adaptation of the Uyghur script into what would become the Mongolian script of the empire, ordering the Uyghur Tata-tonga, who had previously served the khan of Naimans, to instruct his sons.
Push into Central Asia
Genghis quickly came into conflict with the Jin dynasty of the Jurchens and the Western Xia of the Tanguts in northern China. He also had to deal with two other powers, Tibet and Qara Khitai.Before his death, Genghis Khan divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, making the Empire the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class. Genghis arranged for the Chinese Taoist master Qiu Chuji to visit him in Afghanistan, and gave his subjects the right to religious freedom, despite his own shamanistic beliefs.
Death of Genghis Khan and expansion under Ögedei (1227–1241)
Genghis Khan died on 18 August 1227, by which time the Mongol Empire ruled from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, twice the size of the Roman Empire or Muslim Caliphate at their height, and the largest contiguous state in history. Genghis named his third son, the charismatic Ögedei, as his heir. According to Mongol tradition, Genghis Khan was buried in a secret location. The regency was originally held by Ögedei's younger brother Tolui until Ögedei's formal election at the kurultai in 1229.Among his first actions Ögedei sent troops to subjugate the Bashkirs, Bulgars, and other nations in the Kipchak-controlled steppes. In the east, Ögedei's armies re-established Mongol authority in Manchuria, crushing the Eastern Xia regime and the Water Tatars. In 1230, the great Khan personally led his army in the campaign against the Jin dynasty of China. Ögedei's general Subutai captured the capital of Emperor Wanyan Shouxu in the Siege of Kaifeng in 1232. The Jin dynasty collapsed in 1234 when the Mongols captured Caizhou, the town to which Wanyan Shouxu had fled. In 1234, three armies commanded by Ögedei's sons Kochu and Koten and the Tangut general Chagan invaded southern China. With the assistance of the Song dynasty the Mongols finished off the Jin in 1234.
In the West, Ögedei's general Chormaqan destroyed Jalal al-Din Mangburni, the last shah of the Khwarizmian Empire. The small kingdoms in southern Persia voluntarily accepted Mongol supremacy. In East Asia, there were a number of Mongol campaigns into Goryeo Korea, but Ögedei's attempt to annex the Korean Peninsula met with little success. Gojong, the king of Goryeo, surrendered but later revolted and massacred Mongol darughachis ; he then moved his imperial court from Gaeseong to Ganghwa Island.
In 1235, the Mongols established Karakorum as their capital lasting until 1260. During that period, Ögedei Khan ordered the construction of a palace within the surrounding of its walls.