Mongol Empire
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The Mongol Empire (Mongolian: 
Монголын Эзэнт Гүрэн (help·info), Mongolyn Ezent Güren or Их Mонгол улс, Ikh Mongol Uls) was the largest contiguous empire and the second largest empire overall in world history, after the British Empire. It emerged from the unification of Mongol and Turkic tribes in modern day Mongolia, and grew through invasions, after Genghis Khan had been proclaimed ruler of all Mongols in 1206. At its greatest extent it stretched from the Danube to the Sea of Japan and from Novgorod to Camboja, covering over 33,000,000 km2 (12,741,000 sq mi),[1] 22% of the Earth's total land area, and held sway over a population of over 100 million people. It is often identified as the "Mongol World Empire" because it spanned much of Eurasia.[2][3][4][5][6][7] As a result of the empire's conquests and political and economic impact on most of the Old World, its wars with other great powers in Africa, Asia and Europe are also believed to be an ancient world war.[8][9] Under the Mongols new technologies, various commodities and ideologies were disseminated and exchanged across Eurasia.
However, the Mongol Empire began to split following the succession war in 1260-1264,[note 2] with the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate being de facto independent and refusing to accept Kublai Khan as Khagan.[10][11] By the time of Kublai Khan's death, the Mongol Empire had already fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives.[12] The khagans of the Yuan Dynasty assumed the role of Chinese emperors and fixed their capital at Dadu (modern-day Beijing) from old Mongol capital Karakorum. Although other khanates accepted them as their titular suzerains and sent tributes and some support after the peace treaty in 1304, the three western khanates were virtually independent,[13][14] and they each continued their own separate developments as sovereign states.[15] Eventually the Mongol rule in China fell in 1368[16][17] and was replaced by the Ming Dynasty,[18][19] though the Genghisid Borjigin Dynasty survived in Mongolia until the 17th century.[20]
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Before the rise of the Jin Dynasty founded by the Jurchens, the Khitan Liao Dynasty had ruled over Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of North China since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin Dynasty overthrew the Liao Dynasty, and attempted to gain control over former Liao territory in Mongolia. However, the Mongols under Qabul Khan, great grandfather of Temujin (Genghis Khan), pushed out the forces of the Jin Dynasty from their territory in the early 12th century. Eventually the Mongols and the Tatars began a deadly rivalry. The Golden Kings of the Jin Dynasty encouraged the Tatars in order to keep the nomads weak. There were five main powerful khanliks (tribes) in the Mongolian plateau at the time: Kereyds, Mongols, Naimans, Merkits and Tatars.
Temujin, the son of a Mongol chieftain, who suffered a difficult childhood, united the nomadic, previously ever-rivaling Mongol-Turkic tribes under his rule through political manipulation and military might. As allies, his father's friend, powerful Kereyd chieftain Wang Khan Toghoril and childhood anda (close friend) Jamukha of the Jadran clan helped him to defeat the Merkits — whose army stole his wife Borte — the Naimans and Tatars. Temujin forbade looting and raping of his enemies without permission, and he divided the spoils to Mongol warriors and their families instead of giving all to the aristocrats.[21] He thus held the title Khan—however, his uncles were also legitimate heirs to the throne. This decision brought conflict among his generals and associates and persuaded Jamukha and the Kereyds to leave Temujin. For rival aristocrats, the latter was no more than an insolent usurper. Temujin's powerful position and reputation among the Mongols and other nomads raised the fears of Kereyd elites. Virtually all his uncles, cousins and other clan chieftains had turned against him. Temujin's forces were nearly defeated in an ensuing war, but he recovered and was reinforced by tribes loyal to him. In 1203-1205, the Mongols under Temujin destroyed all the remaining rival tribes and brought them under his sway. In 1206, Temujin was crowned as the Khaghan of the Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Great Mongol Nation) at a Kurultai (general assembly/council) and assumed the title "Chingis Khan" (or more commonly known as "Genghis Khan", probably meaning Oceanic ruler or Universal ruler) instead of the old tribal titles such as Gur Khan or Tayang Khan. This event essentially marked the start of the Mongol Empire under the leadership of Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan appointed his loyal friends as the heads of army units and households. He also divided his army into arbans (each with 10 people), zuuns (100), myangans (1000) and tumens (10,000) of decimal organization. The Kheshig or the Imperial Guard was founded and divided into day (khorchin, torghuds) and night guards (khevtuul).[22] Genghis Khan rewarded those who had been loyal to him and placed them in high positions. Most of those people were hailed from very low-rank clans. Compared to the units he gave to his loyal companions, those assigned to his own family members were quite fewer.[23] He proclaimed new law of the empire Ikh zasag or Yassa and codified everything related to the everyday life and political affairs of the nomads at the time. For example He forbade the hunting of animals during the breeding time, the selling of women, theft of other's properties as well as fighting between the Mongols, by his law.[24] Genghis Khan appointed his adopted brother Shigi-Khuthugh supreme judge (jarughachi) and ordered him to keep a record of blue devter. In addition to family, food and army, he also decreed religious freedom and supported domestic and international trade. Genghis Khan exempted poor people and clerics with their properties from taxation.[25] Thus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians from Manchuria, North China, India and Persia joined Genghis Khan long before his foreign conquests. The Khaan adopted Uyghur script which would form Uyghur-Mongolian script of the empire and ordered Uyghur Tatatunga who served the khan of Naimans before to instruct his sons.[26]
He quickly came into conflict with the Jin Dynasty of the Jurchens and the Western Xia of the Tanguts in northern China. Under the provocation of the Muslim Khwarezmid Empire, he moved into Central Asia as well, devastating Transoxiana and eastern Persia, then raiding into Kievan Rus' (a predecessor state of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) and the Caucasus. Before dying, Genghis Khan divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, but as custom made clear, it remained the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class.
[edit] Great expansion under Ogedei Khan
At the time of Genghis khan’s death in 1227, the Mongol Empire ruled from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea – an empire twice the size of the Roman Empire and Muslim Caliphate.[27] Ogedei succeeded to the throne according to his father’s will in 1229 after his younger brother, Tolui, supervised the Empire for 2 years. To subjugate the Bashkirs, the Bulghars and other nations in the Kipchak controlled steppes, Ogedei sent troops to the area as soon as he was enthroned. They made the Bashkirs their ally.[28] In the east, His armies re-established Mongol authority in whole Manchuria, crushing the Eastern Xia regime and Water Tatars.
When the Jurcheds recovered and defeated a Mongol contingent in 1230, the Great Khan personally led his army in the campaign against Jin Dynasty. General Subotai captured Emperor Wanyan Shouxu’s capital, Kaifeng, after the Mongol envoy was killed in 1232.[29] With the assistance of the Song Dynasty, the Mongols finished off the Jin in 1234. But the belated cooperation did not advance peace between the allies when the Song troops took back their former regions lost to the Jurchens, murdering a Mongol overseer in the process.[30] Meanwhile, general Chormaqan, sent by Ogedei, destroyed Jalal ud-Din Menguberdi, the last shah of Khwarizmian Empire, who had defeated Mongol forces near Isfahan in 1229, and advanced into Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The small kingdoms in Southern Persia voluntarily accepted Mongol supremacy.[31][32] Despite Mongol victories upon Korean armies, Ogedei’s attempt to annex the Korean peninsula met with less success. The king of Goryeo surrendered but revolted and massacred Mongol darugachis (overseers) and pro-Mongol Koreans.[33]
While Ogedei finished the construction of a new capital, Karakorum, in 1235-1238, Mongol administrations headed by Muslims and Khitans were established in North China, Turkestan and Transoxiana. In addition to building relay stations and roads, Ogedei pacified newly conquered populations and suppressed banditry or piracy. Shigi Khutugh and Yelu Chucai shared their administration during the reign of Ogedei whose authority was well respected by stronger willed relatives and generals whom he had inherited from his father. Although he became an increasingly heavy drinker after the death of Tolui, Ogedei showed heroic generosity to his subjects and decreed one out of every sheep should be levied for poor people.
At the kurultai in 1234, Ogedei decided to conquer the Song Dynasty, the Kypchaks and their western allies, and the Koreans, all of whom killed Mongol envoys. Three armies commanded by his sons Kochu and Koten and the Tangut general Chagan invaded southern China. Mongol armies captured Siyang-yang, the Yangtze and Sichuan, however they couldn’t deliver the final blow to their enemy. The Song generals were able to recapture Siyang-yang from the hands of the Mongols in 1239. Kochu’s sudden death in Chinese territory forced the Mongols to be inactive in South China. Prince Koten invaded Tibet after their withdrawal.
The Mongol army under Batu Khan and his advisor Subotai overran the countries of the Bulgars, the Alans, the Kypchaks, the Bashkirs, the Mordvins, and the Chuvash and other nations of the southern Russian steppe. In 1237, they faced first Russian principality of Ryazan. During a 3 day-siege using heavy bombardment, they captured the city and massacred its inhabitants. The Mongols destroyed the army of the Grand principality of Vladimir at the Sit River and captured the Alania capital, Maghas, in 1238. By 1240, all Rus’ lands including Kiev had fallen to the Asian invaders except for a few northern cities. Mongol tumens under Chormaqan in Persia connected his invasion of Transcaucasia with the invasion of Batu and Subotai, forcing the Georgian and Armenian nobles to surrender.[34]
Batu’s relations with Güyük, Ogedei’s eldest son, and Büri, the beloved grandson of Chagatai worsened during the victory banquet in southern Russia. But they could do nothing to harm Batu’s position as long as his uncle was still alive. Meanwhile, Ogedei Khan temporarily invested Uchch, Lahore and Multan of the Delhi Sultanate and stationed a Mongol overseer in Kashmir.[35] He agreed to receive tributes from the court of Goryeo and reinforced his keshig with the Koreans through his diplomacy and military forces.[36][37][38] The court of Goryeo eventually moved their capital to Kanghwa Island. The Mongol army, who lacked a navy, settled in the Korean mainland as conquerors while the Goryeo peasants’ resistance failed.
The advance into Europe continued with Mongol invasions of Poland, Hungary and Transylvania. When the western flank of the Mongols plundered Polish cities, a European alliance consisting of the Poles, the Moravians, the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and the Templars assembled sufficient army to halt their advance at Liegnica. The Mongols destroyed their foes. The Hungarian army and their allies the Croatians and the Templar Knights were beaten at the banks of Sajo River on April 11, 1241. After their stunning victories over European Knights at Liegnica and Muhi, Mongol armies quickly checked the forces of Bohemia, Serbia, Babenberg Austria and the Holy Roman Empire.[39][40] When Batu’s forces reached the gate of Vienna and north Albania, he received news of Ogedei’s death in December, 1241.[41][42] As was customary in Mongol military tradition, all Genghisid princes had to attend the kurultai to elect a successor. The western Mongol army withdrew from Europe the next year.
[edit] Struggles for superpower
Ogedei’s widow, Toregene took over the empire and began to persecute her husband’s Khitan and Muslim officials. The Empress gave high positions to her allies instead. She built palaces, cathedrals and social structures on an imperial scale, supporting religion and education. Toregene won over most Mongol aristocrats to support Ogedei's son, Guyuk, but Batu refused to come to the kurultai, claiming he was ill and the Mongolian climate is too harsh for him. The resulting stalemate lasted more than four years. This sudden vacuum of power is seen as the cause of the ensuing events that led to the decline of the Mongol unity. At the same time, the Mongol contingents and general Baiju of Besud had already defeated the Anatolian Seljuks and ravaged territories of the Song Dynasty, Syria, Iraq and India.[43] When Genghis Khan’s youngest brother, Temuge, threatened the Great Khatun Toregene to seize the throne, Guyuk came to Karakorum to secure his position immediately. Batu, the ruler of the Golden Horde, eventually agreed to send his brothers and generals to the kurultai. Toregene at last arranged the kurultai in 1246. Although, Guyuk was sick and addicted to alcohol, his campaigns in Manchuria and Europe gave him the kind of stature necessary for a Khagan. His election was attended by many foreign dignitaries as well as the Mongol people. In addition to Mongol nobles and non-Mongol grandees from all parts of the Mongol Empire, subservient leaders and diplomats arrived from Georgia, Korea, China, Russia, Turkestan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Rome and Baghdad (such as David VII Ulu, Davit VI Narin, Plano Carpini and Vladimir Yaroslav with his two sons Alexander and Andrey) came to the kurultai to show their respects and negotiate diplomacy.[44][45] Once the coronation was concluded, Guyuk limited notorious abuses of nobles and demonstrated that he would continue his father’s policy. He harshly punished his mother’s intimates for bewitching and corruption except governor Arghun the Elder. He had Temuge investigated by Orda and Mongke secretly and put him to death.[46] The Great khan replaced young Khara Hulegu, the Khan of the Chagatai Khanate, with his favorite cousin Yesü Möngke to assert his newly conferred powers. During the reign of Guyuk, Genghis Khan’s daughter Altalaun died mysteriously. There was considerable unhappiness among some members of the Golden family. Nevertheless, Batu needed to respect Guyuk and never decided major foreign affairs himself without his permission. Guyuk put David Ulu on the throne of the Georgian kingdom and decided that David Narin, Batu’s protégé, should be subordinate to him.[47] He divided the Sultanate of Rum between Izz-ad-Din Kaykawus and Rukn ad-Din Kilij Arslan, though Kaykawus disagreed with this decision.[48][49]
The Hashshashins, the former Mongol ally, whose Grand master Hasan Jalalud-Din offered his submission to Genghis Khan in 1221, angered Guyuk by murdering Mongol generals in Persia and ignoring his demand of full-submission.[50][51][52] In order to reduce the strongholds of the Assassins and the Abbasids, in the center of the Islamic world, Iran and Iraq, Guyuk appointed his best friend’s father, Eljigidei, a chief commander of the troops in Persia. Guyuk Khan restored his father’s officials to their former positions and was surrounded by the Uyghur, Naiman and Central Asian officials. He favored Han Chinese commanders who helped his father’s conquest of North China. An empire-wide census was ordered by Guyuk when his armies continued their military operations in Korea, Song China and Iraq.
Guyuk suddenly marched westwards from Karakorum in 1248. While some source wrote that he wanted to heal himself at his personal property Emyl, there is also a theory that he was probably moving to join Eljigidei to conduct a full-scale conquest of the Middle East or to make a surprise attack on his rival cousin Batu Khan in Russia. Suspicious, Sorghaghtani Beki, the widow of Tolui, secretly warned her nephew Batu of Guyuk's approach with a large army. Batu was himself going eastwards to pay homage but had another plan in his mind. Before meeting Batu, Guyuk, sick and worn out by travel, died en route at Qum-Senggir in Eastern Turkestan. According to Plano Carpini’s account, he might have been poisoned. His death aborted the full census he ordered, however local censuses took place in Russia and Turkey.
Oghul Ghaimish, Guyuk’s widow, stepped forward to take control of the empire, but she lacked the skills of her mother-in-law and her young sons Khoja and Naku and other princes challenged her authority. Batu Khan allowed her to serve as regent and suggested unruly princes listen to her words. However, she was still proud and demanded envoys of King Louis IX of France, who wanted to form an alliance against the Saracens, submission and annual tributes.
At last, Batu called a kurultai on his own territory in 1250. Members of the Ogedeid and Chagataid families refused to attend the kurultai that was held beyond the Mongolian heartland. The kurultai offered the throne to Batu Khan who had no interest in promoting himself as the new Grand Khan. Rejecting it, he instead nominated Mongke who led a Mongol army in Russia, Northern Caucasus and Hungary. The pro-Tolui faction rose up and supported his choice. Given its limited attendance and location, this kurultai was of questionable validity. Batu sent Mongke under the protection of his brothers, Berke and Tukhtemur, and his son Sartaq to assemble a formal kurultai at Kodoe Aral in the heartland. The supporters of Mongke invited Oghul Ghaimish and other main Ogedeid and Chagataid princes to attend the kurultai but they refused each time, demanding descendants of Ogedei must be khan. In response to it, Batu accused them of killing his aunt Altalaun and disregardng Ogedei’s nominee, Shiremun.
[edit] The Toluid reformation
When Sorghaghtani and Berke organized a second kurultai on the 1st of July, 1251, the assembled throng proclaimed Mongke Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and a few of the Ogedeid and Chagataid princes, such as his cousin Kadan and the deposed khan Khara Hulegu, acknowledged the decision. Meanwhile, Ogedei’s grandson Shiremun, who was also possible legitimate heir but ignored by Toregene, moved with his relations toward the emperor’s nomadic palace with a covert plan for an armed attack. A Kankali Turk, the falconer for Mongke, discovered the preparations for the attack and told Mongke Khan his story. At the end of the investigation under his father’s loyal servant Menggesar noyan, he found his relatives guilty but at first wanted to give them mercy as written in the Great Yassa. Mongke’s officials opposed it and then he began to punish his relatives. The trials took place on all parts of the empire from Mongolia and China in the east to Afghanistan and Iraq in the west. Estimates of the deaths of aristocrats, officials and Mongol commanders include the ruler of the Uyghurs, Oghul Gaimish, Eljigidei, Yesu Mongke, Buri and Shiremun and range from 77-300. Most of the princes of Genghisid blood involved in the plot, however, were given some form of exile. Mongke eliminated the Ogedeid and the Chagatd families’ estates and shared the western part of the empire with his ally Batu Khan. After the bloody purge, Mongke ordered a general amnesty for prisoners and captives. Since then, the power of the Great khan’s throne had passed into the lineage of Tolui forever.
Mongke was a serious man who followed the laws of his ancestors and avoided alcoholism. He decorated the capital city of Karakorum with Chinese, European and Persian architectures. One example of those constructions was a large silver tree, with pipes that discharge various drinks and a triumphant angel at its top, made by Guillaume Boucher, a Parisian goldsmith. Foreign merchants’ quarters, Buddhist monasteries, Mosques and Christian Churches were newly built.
Although he had a strong Chinese contingent, he relied heavily on Muslim and Mongol administrators. His court limited government spending and prohibited nobles and the troops from abusing civilians and issuing edicts without authorization. Mongke commuted the contribution system into a fixed poll tax collected by imperial agents and forwarded to the needy units. His court tried to lighten the tax burden to commoners by reducing tax rates. Those reforms made government expenses more predictable. Along with the reform of the tax system, he reinforced the guards at the postal relays and centralized control of monetary affairs. In another move to consolidate his power, he assigned his brothers Hulegu and Kublai to rule Persia and Mongol held China. Mongke ordered a count of the entire empire in a single census in 1252. The census was completed only when Novgorod in far northwest was counted in 1258.[53]
In order to outflank the Song Dynasty from three directions, he dispatched the Mongol armies under Kublai to Yunnan and under his uncle Iyeku to Korea. The latter and his number two, Amugan, demanded the peaceful submission of the Korean court, but Goryeo king Gonjong, the puppet of his own military commanders, refused in 1252. Another forces under Jalayirtai and Yesudar ravaged Korea, working together with Korean officers who had joined them in 1254-1258. At last the Korean king, who had sent tributes and non-imperial hostages before, agreed to send Mongke Khan an imperial prince as a hostage after a coup removed the Choe military faction from power.
When Kublai conquered the Dali Kingdom in 1253, Mongke’s general Qoridai stabilized his control over Tibet inducing leading monasteries to submit to Mongol rule. Subotai’s son ,Uryankhadai, reduced neighboring peoples of Yunnan to submission and beat the Tran Dynasty in northern Vietnam into temporary humiliated submission in 1258.[54]
Since the conquest of Europe from 1236 to 1241, the Mongols had not conducted any large-scale military operations. After stabilizing their finances, the Mongol leaders approved new invasions of the Middle East and south China at kurultais in Karakorum in 1253 and 1258. Mongke put Hulegu in overall charge of military and civil affairs in Persia. He appointed Chagataids and Jochids to join Hulegu’s army. The Muslims from Qazvin denounced the menace of the Nizari Ismailis, a heretical sect of Shiites. They possibly enraged Mongke Khan, dispatching their assassins to kill him. The Naiman commander Kitbuqa began to assault several Ismaili fortresses in 1253 before Hulegu deliberately advanced in 1256. Ismaili Imam or Grand Master Rukn ud-Din surrendered in 1257 and was executed. All of their strongholds in Persia were destroyed by Hulegu’s army in 1257 but Girdukh held out until 1271.
After caliph al-Mustasim’s refusal to submit, Baghdad was besieged and captured by the Mongols in 1258. With the extermination of the Abbasid Caliphate, Hulegu had an open route to Syria. His army resumed their operation, known as the Asian or Yellow Crusade in history, to the Ayyubid-ruled Syria, capturing small local states en route.[55] The sultan Al-Nasir Yusuf of the Ayyubids refused to show himself before Hulegu, however, he had accepted Mongol supremacy two decades ago. When Hulegu headed further west, the Armenians from Cilicia, the Seljuks from Rum and the crusaders from Antioch and Tripoli came to join the Mongol assault. While some cities surrendered without resisting, others such as Mayafarriqin fought back; their populations were massacred and the citiec were sacked. Only Jerusalem and crusader states in Syria remained outside Mongol control. At the same time, Batu’s successor and younger brother Berke sent punitive expeditions to Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland while suspecting that Hulegu’s invasion of Western Asia would result in the elimination of his predominance there.
Mongke Khan led his army to complete the conquest of China, however, his relatives convinced him not to command personally in China; ultimately he believed that this conquest was a priority task to be done for the empire. Military operations, while generally successful, were prolonged. The weather became extremely hot and the Mongols began to suffer from bloody epidemics. Mongke decided to stay instead of retiring north as the Mongols usually did. Unfortunately, he became a victim of fever and died on August 11, 1259. This event began a new chapter of history for the Mongols and forced most Mongol armies to withdraw.
[edit] Civil war
After the fall of Aleppo, Hulegu received news of his brother’s death and withdrew to Mughan, leaving Kitbuqa with a small contingent in 1260. The Mongols quickly lost Syria after Kitbuqa was crushed and beheaded by Sultan Qutuz of Mamluk, Egypt, at the battle of Ain Jalut which marked the western limit of Mongol expansion. But Kublai, who heard of the great khan’s death at the Huai, continued his advance to Wuchang near the Yangte. Their younger brother, Arikboke, used his position in Mongolia to prepare to win the title of Great Khan. Representatives of all the family branches proclaimed him as the Khagan at the kurultai in Karakorum. Kublai abandoned the siege of Wuchang, leaving the besiegers in Ezhou and Yuezhou as soon as he learned in a message from his wife that Ariboke was raising troops. Following the advice of his Chinese staff, Kublai summoned his kurultai at Kaiping. Virtually all the senior princes and great noyans resident in North China and Manchuria supported the latter’s candidacy. Kublai’s army easily eliminated Arikboke’s supporters from the Hebei-Shangdong-Shanxi-Southern Mongolia. Kublai himself seized control of the civil administration and beat Mongke’s army, which was sympathetic to rival Great Khan Arikboke, through the efforts of the Uyghur, Lian Xixian. When Kublai sent Abishka, the Chagataid prince, to put him in charge of Chagatai’s realm, Arikboke captured him and had his own man, Alghu, crowned there. His protégé Alghu won control of the Qaraunas and arrested their commander, Sali, who was loyal to both Hulegu and Kublai.[56][57][58] After a defeat during the first armed clash, Ariboke executed Abishka in revenge. Kublai’s new administration ordered widespread emergency mobilization of military equipment and manpower while he and his cousin Khadan blockaded Arikboke in Mongolia to cut off food supplies. The resulting famine intensified when Alghu betrayed Arikboke and began supporting Kublai. Karakorum fell quickly to Kublai Khan, but Arikboke Khan temporarily retook it in 1261.
The more serious clashes between Kublai’s younger brother Hulegu and his cousin Berke, the ruler of Golden Horde, had begun in 1262. The suspicious deaths of Jochid princes in Hulegu’s service, unequal distribution of war booties and the Hulegu's massacres of the Muslims increased the anger of Berke. He considered supporting a rebellion of the Georgian Kingdom against Hulegu’s rule in 1259-1260.[59] As a result of failed rebellions, King David Ulu lost his effective control over Georgia and Armenia to the Mongols while David Narin in Imereti was forced to pay nominal homage to the Ilkhans.[60][61] The increasing tension between Berke and Hulegu was a warning to the contingents belonging to the Golden Horde which had marched with Hulegu that they had better escape. Their one section reached the Kipchak Steppe, another traversed Khorasan and a third body took refuge in Mamluk ruled Syria where they were well received by Sultan Baybars (1260-77). Hulegu harshly punished the rest of them in Iran. Berke sought a joint attack with Baybars and forged an alliance with the Mamluks against Hulegu. The Ilkhan threw his support to Kublai, while Berke strongly supported Arikboke. The latter sent Nogai to invade the Ilkhanate and the former dispatched his army under Abagha to the Golden Horde in retaliation; both sides suffered disastrous defeats. Chagatai Khan Alghu also insisted Hulegu attack Berke’s realm because he accused Berke of purging of his relatives in 1252. When the Muslim elites and the Jochid retainers in Bukhara declared their loyalty to Berke, Alghu smashed the Jochids appendages in Khorazm. In Bukhara, he and Hulegu slaughtered all the retainers of the Golden Horde and reduced their families into slavery, leaving only the Great Khan Kublai’s and Sorghaghtani’s men alive.[62]
Due to the winter disaster and the desertions of his allies, Arikboke Khan’s force weakened. He proceeded to Shangdu where he surrendered on August 21, 1264, realizing his brother’s advantages. With Arikboke defeated, the rulers of the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate and the Ilkhanate acknowledged the reality of Kublai’s victory and rule.[63] When Kublai summoned them to organize another kurultai, Alghu Khan demanded security for his illegal position from Kublai in return. Despite tensions between them, both Hulegu and Berke accepted Kublai’s invitation at first.[64][65] However, they soon declined to attend the new kurultai. In the absence of a quorum for the kurultai, Kublai who was partially recognized pardoned his brother Arikboke and started preparations for his conquest of the Song Dynasty. The khanates now began to politically disintegrate, each asserting its claims and choosing its own rulers with nominal recognition from others.[66]
[edit] The Mongol Empire during the reign of Kublai Khan
When the Byzantine Empire, the ally of the Ilkhanate, captured Egyptian envoys, Berke sent an army through his vassal Bulgaria, prompting the release of the envoys and the Seljuk Sultan Kaykawus II. He tried to raise civil unrest in Anatolia using Kaykawus but failed. In the new official version of the family history, Kublai Khan refused to write Berke’s name as the khan of Golden Horde for his support to Arikboke and wars with Hulegu, however, Jochi’s family was fully recognized as legitimate family members.[67]
Khagan Kublai also reinforced Hulegu with 30,000 young Mongols in order to stabilize the political crises in western khanates.[68] As soon as Hulegu passed away on the 8th of February, 1264, Berke marched to cross near Tiflis, but he died on the way. Within a few months of these deaths, Alghu Khan of the Chagatai Khanate died too. Nevertheless, this sudden vacuum of power relieved Kublai’s control over the western khanates somehow. However, he named Abagha as the new Ilkhan and nominated Batu’s grandson Mongke Temur for the throne of Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde.[69][70] The Kublaids in the east retained suzerainty over the Ilkhans (obedient khans) until the end of its regime.[71][72] Kublai also sent his protégé Baraq to overthrow the court of Oirat Orghana, the empress of the Chagatai Khanate, who put her young son Mubarak Shah on the throne in 1265, without Kublai's permission after Alghu’s death. Ogedeid prince Kaidu declined to personally come to the court of Kublai. Kublai instigated Baraq to attack him. The latter began to expand his realm northward, fighting Kaidu and the Jochids after he seized power in 1266. He also pushed out Great Khan’s overseer from Tarim basin. When Kaidu and Mongke Timur defeated him together, Baraq joined an alliance with the House of Odedei and the Golden Horde against Kublai in the east and Abagha in the west. But smart Mongke Temur stayed out of any direct military expedition into the Empire of the Great Khan. The armies of Mongol Persia defeated Baraq’s invading forces in 1269. When Baraq died the next year, Kaidu took the control over the Chagatai Khanate.
Meanwhile, Kublai stabilized the Mongol rule in Korea by mobilizing for another Mongol invasion after he appointed Wonjong (r. 1260-1274) as the new Goryeo king in 1259 in Kanghwa. He forced two rulers of the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate to call a truce with each other in 1270 despite the Golden Horde’s interests in the Middle East and Caucasia.[73] After the fall of Xiangyang in 1273, the Mongols proposed the final conquest of the Song Dynasty in South China. Therefore, Kublai ordered Mongke Temur to revise the second census of the Golden Horde to provide sources and men for his conquest of China.[74] The census took place in all parts of the Golden Horde, including Smolensk and Vitebsk in 1274-75. The Khans also sent Nogai to Balkan to strengthen Mongol influence there.[75]
As the Great Khan Kublai renamed the Mongol regime in China Dai Yuan in 1271, he sought to sinicize his image as Emperor of China in order to win the control of millions Chinese people. When he moved his headquarters to Khanbalic or Dadu at modern Beijing, there was an uprising in the old capital Karakorum that he barely staunched. His actions were condemned by traditionalists and his critics still accused him of being too closely tied to Chinese culture. They sent a message to him: “The old customs of our Empire are not those of the Chinese laws… What will happen to the old customs?”.[76][77] Even Kaidu attracted the other elites of Mongol Khanates, declaring himself to be a legitimate heir to the throne instead of Kublai who had turned away from the ways of Genghis Khan.[78][79] Defections from Kublai’s Dynasty swelled the Ogedeids' forces. Because Khagan Kublai wanted to make sure that he laid claims to Mongolia and the sacred place Burkhan Khaldun where Genghis was buried, Mongolia was strongly protected by the Kublaids.
The Song imperial family surrendered to the Yuan in 1276, making the Mongols the first non-Chinese people to conquer all of China. Three years later, Yuan marines crushed the last of the Song loyalists. Kublai succeeded in building powerful Empire, creating an academy, offices, trade ports and canals and sponsoring arts and science. The record of the Mongols lists 20,166 public schools created during his reign.[80] Achieving actual or nominal dominion over much of Eurasia, and having seen his successful conquest of China, Kublai was in a position to look beyond China. [81] However, Kublai’s costly invasions of Burma, Annam, Sakhalin and Champa secured only the vassal status of those countries. Mongol invasions of Japan (1274 and 1280) and Java (1293) failed. At the same time his nephew Ilkhan Abagha tried to form a grand alliance of the Mongols and the Western Europeans to defeat the Mamluks in Syria and North Africa that constantly invaded the Mongol dominions. Abagha and his uncle Kublai focused mostly on foreign alliances, and opened trade routes. Khagan Kublai dined with a large court every day, and met with many ambassadors, foreign merchants, and even offered to convert to Christianity if this religion was proved to be correct by 100 priests.
In 1277, a group of Genghisid princes under Mongke’s son Shiregi rebelled, kidnapping Kublai’s two sons and his general Antong. The rebels handed them over to Kaidu and Mongke Temur. The latter was still allied with Kaidu who fashioned an alliance with him in 1269, although, he promised Kublai Khan his military support to protect him from the Ogedeids.[82] Great Khan’s armies supressed the rebellion and strenghtened the Yuan garrisons in Mongolia and Uighurstan.
As the successor of previous great khans, Kublai had to propose all foreign affairs at least nominally. When the Muslim Ahmad Teguder seized the throne of the Ilkhanate in 1282, attempting to make peace with the Mamluks, Abagha’s old Mongols under prince Arghun appealed to the Great Khan. After the execution of Ahmad, Kublai confirmed Arghun’s coronation and awarded his commander in chief who helped his master the title of chingsang. In spite of his lack of direct administration over the western khanates and the Mongol princes’ rebellions, it seems Kublai could intervene in their affairs because Abagha’s son Arghun wrote that Great Khan Kublai ordered him to conquer Egypt in his letter to the Pope Nicolas IV.[83]
Kublai’s niece Kelmish, who was married a Khunggirat general of the Golden Horde, was powerful enough to have Kublai’s sons Nomuqan and Kokhchu returned. The court of the Golden Horde sent them back as a peace overture to the Yuan Dynasty in 1282 and induced Kaidu to release the general of Kublai. Nogai and Konchi, the khan of White Horde, established friendly relations with the Yuan and the Ilkhanate. Despite political disagreement between contending branches of the family over the office of Khagan, the economic and commercial system which trumped their squabbles continued. Thus, later developments of the Mongol Empire are seen as the commonwealth of Mongol Khanates or the Pan-Mongolism of the Mongol World while some just name it simply new Mongol Empire.[84][85][86][87]
[edit] Peace treaty and political struggles
In seizing the throne in 1295, Ghazan islamized Mongol Persia. Unlike previous Ilkhans, he stopped minting coins with the name of Great Khan in Iran. But his coins in Georgia carried traditional Mongolian formula: “Struck by Ghazan in the name of Khagan”. [88] Ghazan found it politically expedient to advertise Great Khan’s sovereignty there because the Golden Horde had long made claims on Georgia.[89] Within 4 years, he began to send tributes to the court of the Kublaids. Ghazan also call upon other khans to accept Temur Khagan as their true overlord.[90] Although, he had a seal certifying the authority of his Royal Highness to establish a country and govern its people, he was styled as a prince under the Great Khan.[91]
Ghazan continued his ancestors’ war with the Mamluks and consulted with his old Mongolian advisers in his native tongue, though he had deep faith in Almighty Allah. He defeated the Mamluk army at the battle of Wadi al-Khazandar but temporarily occupied Syria in 1299. The Chagatai Khanate and its de facto ruler Kaidu’s constant raids on Khorasan made difficulties to Ghazan’s plan to conquer Syria. Despite his wars with the Ilkhans and the Yuan, Kaidu tried to restore his influence in the Golden Horde by sponsoring his own candidate Kobeleg against Bayan (r.1299-1304), the Khan of White Horde.[92] After taking military support from the Mongol court in Russia, Bayan asked help from Temur and the Ilkhanate to organize a unified attack of the Mongol Khanates of Kaidu and his number two Duwa Khan. However, Temur was unable to send quick military support.[93] But the Yuan enlarged their counterattacks to Kaidu a year later. Ghazan was satisfied with Temur Khan’s policy that the Yuan led full-scale campaign in Central Asia. After the bloody battle with Temur’s armies near Zawkhan River in 1301, old valiant Kaidu died.[94] His death gave breathing space of internal conflicts of Mongol Khans.
In spite of his conflicts with Kaidu and Duwa, Temur established tributary relationship with the war-like Shan brothers after his series of military operations against Babai-Xifu in Thailand from 1297 to 1303. It was the end of the southern expansion of the Mongols. However, the Mongols now began to look for their unity. Duwa, who was tired of costly wars, initiated a general peace and persuaded the Ogedeids that “Let we Mongols stop shedding blood of each other. It is better to surrender to Khagan Temur”.[95][96] All Khanates approved the peace treaty in 1304 and accepted Temur's supremacy. Ghazan’s successor Oljeitu and Tokhta, the ruler of the Golden Horde, introduced the Mongol unity to the Kingdom of France and Russia while Temur ratified Oljeitu as the new Ilkhan.[97][98][99][100]
However, the fighting between Duwa and Kaidu’s son Chapar broke out shortly afterwards. With the assistance of Temur Khagan, Duwa defeated the Ogedeids. And Tokhta who strongly supported a general peace sent 20,000 men to buttress the Yuan frontier.[101] Under the general peace of the Mongols, international trade and cultural exchanges flourished between Asia and Europe. For example, patterns of the Yuan royal textiles influenced Armenian decorations and a different variety of trees and vegetables were transplanted in the provinces of the Empire including China and Iran while technological innovations spreading from Mongol dominions to the West.[102][103] The Chagataids' expansion was primarily south against India after the treaty.
After Tokhta’s death in 1312, Ozbeg (r.1313-41) seized the throne and persecuted non-Muslim Mongols. The Yuan’s influence to the Horde was largely reversed and border clashes between Mongol states continued again. Khagan Ayurbawda’s envoys seem to have backed Tokhta’s son against Ozbeg. Esen Buqa I (r. 1309-1318) was enthroned as khan of the Chagatai Khanate after suppressing a sudden rebellion by Ogedei's descendants and driving Chapar into exile in the Yuan. The Yuan and Ilkhanid armies eventually attacked the Chagatai Khanate and their Qaraunas despite the conciliatory attitude of Duwa’s son Esen Buqa. The latter asked Ozbeg Khan who was loyal ally of Egypt to form an alliance against Ayurbawda but Ozbeg refused. However, Esen buqa’s successor Kebek (d.1325) mitigated the situation, recognizing the Yuan’s nominal authority in Uighurstan after his brother’s failed wars with emperor Ayurbawda and Ilkhan Oljeitu who conquered Gilan in 1307 and attacked Mamluk fortresses in 1312-13.
Realizing economic benefits and the Genghisid legacy, Ozbeg reopened friendly relations with the Khagans of the Yuan in 1326. The Golden Horde assembled its own khan’s guards, following the Yuan style. After crushing a large rebellion in Tver in 1327, Ozbeg sent Russian prisoners to the court of Mongol Dynasty in China to show his respect. He revived the Horde's Balkan ambitions. For successfully expanding Islam, he connected Sarai city with international network of Muslim culture, building mosques and other elaborate places such as baths. Despite paying tributes to the Khagans, Ozbeg and his successors never left their claims on Caucasus and Middle East, menacing the Ilkhanate and the Chobanids in 1318, 1324, 1335 and 1356. By the second decade of the 14th century, Mongol invasions had been decreased. In 1323, Abu Said Khan (r. 1316-35) of the Ilkhanate signed a peace treaty with Egypt. By the request of him, the Yuan court awarded his custodian Chupan the title of a chief-commander of all Mongol Khanates. But Chupan’s reputation could not rescue his life in 1327.[104]
When a civil war erupted in the Yuan Dynasty in 1327-1328, Chagatai Khan Eljigidey (r.1326-29) and Kusala, the Yuan Khagan Khayisan’s son, saw their chance. The former sent the latter under the protection of his troops to Mongolia. Kusala was elected Khagan on August 30,1329 because he was supported by a large part of Mongolian commanders and nobles. Fearing Chagataid influence on the Yuan, Tugh Temur’s (1304–1332) Kypchak commander poisoned him. In order to be accepted by other khanates as the sovereign of Mongol World, Tugh Temur, who had a good knowledge of the Chinese language and history and was also a creditable poet, calligrapher, and painter, sent Genghisid princes and notable old Mongol generals’ descendants to the Chagatai Khanate, Ilkhan Abu Said and Ozbeg. In respond of his emissaries, they all agreed to send him tributary missions each year.[105] Tugh Temur also gave lavish presents and imperial seal to Eljigidey to mollify his anger. Since the reign of Tugh Temur, the Kypchak and the Alans became even more powerful at the court of the Yuan. Pope John XXII was presented a memorandum from the eastern church describing their Pax Mongolica that "...Khagan is one of the greatest monarchs and all lords of the state, e.g. the king of Almaligh (Chagatai Khanate), emperor Abu Said and Uzbek Khan, are his subjects, saluting his holiness to pay their respects. These 3 monarchs send their overlord leopards, camels, falcons as well as precious jewelries every year. ... They acknowledge him as their absolute supreme lord.".[106]
[edit] Fall
With the death of Abu Said Bahatur Khan in 1335, the Mongol rule in Persia fell into political anarchy. A year later his successor was killed by an Oirat governor and the Ilkhanate was divided between the Suldus, the Jalayir, Qasarid Togha Temür (d.1353) and Persian warlords. Using the dissolution, the Georgians had already pushed out the Mongols when Uyghur commander Eretna established an independent state in Anatolia in 1336. Following the downfall of their Mongol masters, all-time loyal vassal Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was threatened by the Mamluks more. Alongside the lost of Mongol colony in Persia, Mongol rulers of the Yuan and Chagatai Khanate were in a turmoil so deep that it threatened continuation of their power. Much fear arose outside the Mongol court. The Black Death began in the densely inhabited Mongol dominions from 1313 to 1331. This disastrous plague devastated all khanates, cutting off commercial ties and killing off millions. By the end of the 14th century, it may have taken 70-100 million lives of Africa, Asia and Europe.
As the power of the Mongols declined, chaos erupted everywhere. Golden Horde lost all of its western dominions (including modern Belarus and Ukraine) to Poland and Lithuania from 1342 to 1369. Muslim and non-Muslim princes in the Chagatai Khanate warred with each other from 1331-1343. But the Chagatai Khanate disintegrated when non-Genghisid warlords set up their own puppet khans in Mawarannahr and Moghulistan separately. Janibeg Khan (r. 1342-1357) briefly reasserted Jochid dominance over the Chaghataids to restore their former glory. Demanding submission from an offshoot of the Ilkhanate in Azerbaijan, he boasted that "today three uluses are under my control". However, rival families of the Jochids began fighting for the throne of the Golden Horde after the assassination of his successor Berdibek Khan in 1359. Nominal Khagan Toghan Temur (r. 1333-70) was powerless to regulate those troubles because the empire nearly reached its end.[107] His court’s unbacked currency had entered a hyperinflationary spiral and the Han-Chinese people revolted due to the Yuan's late harsh restrictions. King Gongmin of Goryeo, which was a part of the Empire under the Yuan Dynasty, pushed Mongolian garrisons back and exterminated the family of Khagan Toghan Temur's empress while Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen eliminated the Mongol influence in Tibet. Increasingly isolated from their subjects, the Mongols quickly lost most of China to the Ming rebels in 1368 and fled to their homeland Mongolia. After the overthrow of the Yuan Dynasty, the Golden Horde lost touch with Mongolia and China[108] while the two main parts of Chagatai Khanate were defeated by Timur (Tamerlane) (1336-1405). The Golden Horde broke into smaller turkic-hordes that declined steadily in power through four long centuries. Among them, the Khanate's shadow Great Horde survived till 1502 that one of its successors - Crimean Khanate sacked Sarai. The Borjigin emperors had ruled Mongolia until 1635 when the Qing Dynasty defeated them. The Khalkha under the Genghisids and their former subjects-the Oirat Mongols lost their independence to the semi-nomadic Manchus in 1691 and 1755 respectively.
The Mongol military organization was simple, but effective. It was based on an old tradition of the steppe, which was a decimal system known in Iranian cultures since Achaemenid Persia, and later: the army was built up from squads of ten men each, called an arbat; ten arbats constituted a company of a hundred, called a zuut; ten zuuts made a regiment of a thousand called myanghan and ten myanghans would then constitute a regiment of ten thousand (tumen), which is the equivalent of a modern division.
Unlike other mobile-only warriors, such as the Xiongnu or the Huns, the Mongols were very comfortable in the art of the siege. They were very careful to recruit artisans and military talents from the cities they conquered, and along with a group of experienced Chinese engineers and bombardier corps, they were experts in building the trebuchet, Xuanfeng catapults and other machines with which they could lay siege to fortified positions. These were effectively used in the successful European campaigns under General Subutai. These weapons may be built on the spot using immediate local resources such as nearby trees.
Within a battle Mongol forces used extensive coordination of combined arms forces. Though they were famous for their horse archers, their lance forces were equally skilled and just as essential to their success. Mongol forces also used their engineers in battle. They used siege engines and rockets to disrupt enemy formations, confused enemy forces with smoke, and used smoke to isolate portions of an enemy force while destroying that force to prevent their allies from sending aid.
The army's discipline distinguished Mongol soldiers from their peers. The forces under the command of the Mongol Empire were generally trained, organized, and equipped for mobility and speed. To maximize mobility, Mongol soldiers were relatively lightly armored compared to many of the armies they faced. In addition, soldiers of the Mongol army functioned independently of supply lines, considerably speeding up army movement. Skillful use of couriers enabled these armies to maintain contact with each other and with their higher leaders. Discipline was inculcated in nerge (traditional hunts), as reported by Juvayni. These hunts were distinct from hunts in other cultures which were the equivalent to small unit actions. Mongol forces would spread out on line, surrounding an entire region and drive all of the game within that area together. The goal was to let none of the animals escape and to slaughter them all.
All military campaigns were preceded by careful planning, reconnaissance and gathering of sensitive information relating to the enemy territories and forces. The success, organization and mobility of the Mongol armies permitted them to fight on several fronts at once. All males aged from 15 to 60 and capable of undergoing rigorous training were eligible for conscription into the army, the source of honor in the tribal warrior tradition.
Another advantage of the Mongols was their ability to traverse large distances even in debilitatingly cold winters; in particular, frozen rivers led them like highways to large urban conurbations on their banks. In addition to siege engineering, the Mongols were also adept at river-work, crossing the river Sajó in spring flood con