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Mongol Empire

February 09, 2023

Not to be confused with Mughal Empire.

The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous land empire in history.[5] Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia, the Mongol Empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to parts of Eastern Europe, extending northward into parts of the Arctic;[6] eastward and southward into parts of the Indian subcontinent, attempted invasions of Southeast Asia and conquered the Iranian Plateau; and westward as far as the Levant and the Carpathian Mountains.

Great Mongol Nation
ᠶᠡᠬᠡ
ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ
ᠤᠯᠤᠰ
Yeke Mongγol Ulus (Middle Mongol)
1206–1368
Expansion of the Mongol Empire 1206–1294
superimposed on a modern political map of Eurasia
StatusKhaganate (Nomadic empire)
CapitalAvarga (1206–1235)
Karakorum (1235–1260)
Khanbaliq (1271–1368)
Common languages
Religion
Demonym(s)Mongol
GovernmentElective monarchy
Later also hereditary
Khagan-Emperor[note 2] 
• 1206–1227
Genghis Khan
• 1229–1241
Ögedei Khan
• 1246–1248
Güyük Khan
• 1251–1259
Möngke Khan
• 1260–1294
Kublai Khan (nominal)
• 1333–1368
Toghon Temür (nominal)
LegislatureKurultai
History 
• Enthronement of Genghis Khagan-Emperor
1206
1250–1350
1260–1294
• Proclamation of the dynastic name "Great Yuan"[note 3]
1271
• Fall of the Ilkhanate
1335
• Division of the Chagatai Khanate
1347
• Fall of the Yuan dynasty
1368
• Fall of the Golden Horde (Great Horde)
1502
Area
1206[4]4,000,000 km2 (1,500,000 sq mi)
1227[4]12,000,000 km2 (4,600,000 sq mi)
1294[4]23,500,000 km2 (9,100,000 sq mi)
1309[4]24,000,000 km2 (9,300,000 sq mi)
CurrencyVarious[note 4]

The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of several nomadic tribes in the Mongol homeland under the leadership of Temüjin, known by the more famous title of Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227), 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 Ögedeid and Chagatayid factions, but disputes continued among the descendants of Tolui. A key reason for the split was the dispute over whether the Mongol Empire would become a sedentary, cosmopolitan empire, or would stay true to the Mongol nomadic and steppe-based lifestyle.

After Möngke Khan died (1259), rival kurultai councils simultaneously elected different successors, the brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai Khan, who fought each other in the Toluid Civil War (1260–1264) and also dealt with challenges from the descendants of other sons of Genghis.[7][8] Kublai successfully took power, but war ensued as he sought unsuccessfully to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. By the time of Kublai's death in 1294, the Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own interests and objectives: the Golden Horde khanate in the northwest, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Ilkhanate in the southwest, and the Yuan dynasty[note 3] in the east, based in modern-day Beijing.[13] In 1304, during the reign of Temür, the three western khanates accepted suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty.[14][15]

The part of the empire that fell first was the Ilkhanate, which disintegrated in the period of 1335–1353. Next, the Yuan dynasty collapsed and lost control of Tibetan Plateau and China proper in 1354 and 1368 respectively after its capital of Dadu was taken over by the Ming Chinese rebels. 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 in historiography. The Golden Horde had broken into competing khanates by the end of the 15th century and was defeated and thrown out of Eastern Europe in 1480 by the Grand Duchy of Moscow while the Chagatai Khanate lasted in one form or another until 1687.

Name

The Mongol Empire referred to itself as ᠶᠡᠬᠡ
ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ
ᠤᠯᠤᠰ yeke Mongγol ulus (lit. 'nation of the great Mongols' or the 'great Mongol nation') in Mongol or kür uluγ ulus (lit. the 'whole great nation') in Turkic.[16]

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, centred on China. Kublai officially issued an imperial edict on 18 December 1271 to name his realm Great Yuan (Dai Yuan, or Dai Ön Ulus) and to establish the Yuan dynasty. Some sources give the full Mongol name as Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus.[17]

History

Pre-empire context

Main article: Proto-Mongols
 
Mongol tribes during the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125)
 
The Old World on the eve of the Mongol invasions, c. 1200

The area around Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of North China had been controlled by the Liao dynasty since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty and attempted to gain control over former Liao territory in Mongolia. In the 1130s the Jin dynasty rulers, known as the Golden Kings, successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation, ruled at the time by Khabul Khan, great-grandfather of Genghis Khan.[18]

The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations (khanlig): Keraites, Khamag Mongol, Naiman, Mergid, and Tatar. The Jin emperors, following a policy of divide and rule, encouraged disputes among the tribes, especially between the Tatars and the Mongols, in order to keep the nomadic tribes distracted by their own battles and thereby away from the Jin. Khabul's successor was Ambaghai Khan, who was betrayed by the Tatars, handed over to the Jurchen, and executed. The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier, resulting in a failed Jurchen counter-attack in 1143.[18]

In 1147, the Jin somewhat changed their policy, signing a peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts. The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan, opening a long period of active hostilities. The Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161.[18]

During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the usually cold, parched steppes of Central Asia enjoyed their mildest, wettest conditions in more than a millennium. It is thought that this resulted in a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock, which significantly enhanced Mongol military strength.[19]

Rise of Genghis Khan

Main article: Rise of Genghis Khan
See also: Khamag Mongol and Genghis Khan

Known during his childhood as Temüjin, Genghis Khan was a son of a Mongol chieftain. As a young man he rose very rapidly by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait. The most powerful Mongol leader at the time was Kurtait; he was given the Chinese title "Wang", which means King.[20] Temujin went to war against Kurtait (now Wang Khan). After Temujin defeated Wang Khan he gave himself the name Genghis Khan. He then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin. The term Mongol came to be used to refer to all Mongolic speaking tribes under the control of Genghis Khan. His most powerful allies were his father's friend, Khereid chieftain Toghrul, and Temujin's childhood anda (i.e. blood brother) Jamukha of the Jadran clan. With their help, Temujin defeated the Merkit tribe, rescued his wife Börte, and went on to defeat the Naimans and the Tatars.[21]

Temujin forbade looting of his enemies without permission, and he implemented a policy of sharing spoils with his warriors and their families instead of giving it all to the aristocrats.[22] These policies brought him into conflict with his uncles, who were also legitimate heirs to the throne; they regarded Temujin not as a leader but as an insolent usurper. This dissatisfaction spread to his generals and other associates, and some Mongols who had previously been allies broke their allegiance.[21] War ensued, and Temujin and the forces still loyal to him prevailed, defeating the remaining rival tribes between 1203 and 1205 and bringing them under his sway. In 1206, Temujin was crowned as the khagan (Emperor) of the Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Great Mongol State) at a Kurultai (general assembly/council). It was there that he assumed the title of Genghis Khan (universal leader) instead of one of the old tribal titles such as Gur Khan or Tayang Khan, marking the start of the Mongol Empire.[21]

Early organization

 
Genghis Khan ascended the throne in the Ikh Khuraldai region in the Onan river, from the Jami' al-tawarikh.

Genghis Khan introduced many innovative ways of organizing his army: for example dividing it into decimal subsections of arbans (10 soldiers), zuuns (100), Mingghans (1000), and tumens (10,000). The Kheshig, the imperial guard, was founded and divided into day (khorchin torghuds) and night (khevtuul) guards.[23] Genghis rewarded those who had been loyal to him and placed them in high positions, as heads of army units and households, even though many of them came from very low-ranking clans.[24]

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.[24]

He appointed his stepbrother Shikhikhutug as supreme judge (jarughachi), ordering him to keep records of the empire. In addition to laws regarding family, food, and the army, Genghis also decreed religious freedom and supported domestic and international trade. He exempted the poor and the clergy from taxation.[25] 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.[26]

Push into Central Asia

Main article: Mongol invasion of Central Asia
 
Mongol Empire circa 1207

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.[27]

Before his death, Genghis Khan divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, making the Mongol Empire the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class.[28]

Religious policies

Prior to the three western khanates' adoption of Islam, Genghis Khan and a number of his Yuan successors placed restrictions on religious practices they saw as alien. Muslims, including Hui, and Jews, were collectively referred to as Huihui. Muslims were forbidden from halal or zabiha butchering, while Jews were similarly forbidden from kashrut or shehita butchering.[29] Referring to the conquered subjects as "our slaves," Genghis Khan demanded they no longer be able to refuse food or drink, and imposed restrictions on slaughter. Muslims had to slaughter sheep in secret.[30]

Among all the [subject] alien peoples only the Hui-hui say "we do not eat Mongol food". [Cinggis Qa’an replied:] "By the aid of heaven we have pacified you; you are our slaves. Yet you do not eat our food or drink. How can this be right?" He thereupon made them eat. "If you slaughter sheep, you will be considered guilty of a crime." He issued a regulation to that effect ... [In 1279/1280 under Qubilai] all the Muslims say: "if someone else slaughters [the animal] we do not eat". Because the poor people are upset by this, from now on, Musuluman [Muslim] Huihui and Zhuhu [Jewish] Huihui, no matter who kills [the animal] will eat [it] and must cease slaughtering sheep themselves, and cease the rite of circumcision.[31]

Genghis Khan arranged for the Chinese Taoist master Qiu Chuji to visit him in Afghanistan, and also gave his subjects the right to religious freedom, despite his own shamanistic beliefs.

Death of Genghis Khan and expansion under Ögedei (1227–1241)

Main article: Mongol invasions and conquests
 
Coronation of Ögedei Khan in 1229 as the successor of Genghis Khan. By Rashid al-Din, early 14th century.

Genghis Khan died on 18 August 1227, by which time the Mongol Empire ruled from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, an empire twice the size of the Roman Empire or the Muslim Caliphate at their height.[citation needed] 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.[32]

Among his first actions Ögedei sent troops to subjugate the Bashkirs, Bulgars, and other nations in the Kipchak-controlled steppes.[33] 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.[34] 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.[35][36]

Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin. Two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze, Liu Heima (劉黑馬, Liu Ni),[37] and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army.[38] Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan.[39] Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols.[40] There were four Han Tumens and three Khitan Tumens, with each Tumen consisting of 10,000 troops. The Yuan dynasty created a Han army 漢軍 from Jin defectors, and another of ex-Song troops called the Newly Submitted Army 新附軍.[41]

In the West Ögedei's general Chormaqan destroyed Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, the last shah of the Khwarizmian Empire. The small kingdoms in southern Persia voluntarily accepted Mongol supremacy.[42][43] 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 (overseers); he then moved his imperial court from Gaeseong to Ganghwa Island.[44]

Invasions of Kievan Rus' and central China

Main articles: Mongol invasion of Rus' and Mongol invasion of China
See also: Mongol invasions of India, Mongol invasions of Korea, and Mongol conquest of Tibet
 
The sack of Suzdal by Batu Khan in 1238, miniature from a 16th-century chronicle

Meanwhile, in an offensive action against the Song dynasty, Mongol armies captured Siyang-yang, the Yangtze and Sichuan, but did not secure their control over the conquered areas. The Song generals were able to recapture Siyang-yang from the Mongols in 1239. After the sudden death of Ögedei's son Kochu in Chinese territory the Mongols withdrew from southern China, although Kochu's brother Prince Koten invaded Tibet immediately after their withdrawal.[21]

Batu Khan, another grandson of Genghis Khan, overran the territories of the Bulgars, the Alans, the Kypchaks, Bashkirs, Mordvins, Chuvash, and other nations of the southern Russian steppe. By 1237 the Mongols were encroaching upon Ryazan, the first Kievan Rus' principality they were to attack. After a three-day siege involving fierce fighting, the Mongols captured the city and massacred its inhabitants. They then proceeded to destroy the army of the Grand Principality of Vladimir at the Battle of the Sit River.[45]

The Mongols captured the Alania capital Maghas in 1238. By 1240, all Kievan Rus' had fallen to the Asian invaders except for a few northern cities. Mongol troops under Chormaqan in Persia connecting his invasion of Transcaucasia with the invasion of Batu and Subutai, forced the Georgian and Armenian nobles to surrender as well.[45]

Giovanni de Plano Carpini, the pope's envoy to the Mongol great khan, travelled through Kiev in February 1246 and wrote:

They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery.[46]

Despite the military successes, strife continued within the Mongol ranks. Batu's relations with Güyük, Ögedei's eldest son, and Büri, the beloved grandson of Chagatai Khan, remained tense and worsened during Batu's victory banquet in southern Kievan Rus'. Nevertheless, Güyük and Buri could not do anything to harm Batu's position as long as his uncle Ögedei was still alive. Ögedei continued with offensives into the Indian subcontinent, temporarily investing Uchch, Lahore, and Multan of the Delhi Sultanate and stationing a Mongol overseer in Kashmir,[47] though the invasions into India eventually failed and were forced to retreat. In northeastern Asia, Ögedei agreed to end the conflict with Goryeo by making it a client state and sent Mongol princesses to wed Goryeo princes. He then reinforced his kheshig with the Koreans through both diplomacy and military force.[48][49][50]

Push into central Europe

Main article: Mongol invasion of Europe

The advance into Europe continued with Mongol invasions of Poland and Hungary. When the western flank of the Mongols plundered Polish cities, a European alliance among the Poles, the Moravians, and the Christian military orders of the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and the Templars assembled sufficient forces to halt, although briefly, the Mongol advance at Legnica. The Hungarian army, their Croatian allies and the Knights Templar were beaten by the Mongols at the banks of the Sajo River on 11 April 1241. Before Batu's forces could continue on to Vienna and northern Albania, news of Ögedei's death in December 1241 brought a halt to the invasion.[51][52] As was customary in Mongol military tradition, all princes of Genghis's line had to attend the kurultai to elect a successor. Batu and his western Mongol army withdrew from Central Europe the next year.[53] Today researchers doubt that Ögedei's death was the sole reason for the Mongols withdrawal. Batu did not return to Mongolia, so a new khan was not elected until 1246. Climatic and environmental factors, as well as the strong fortifications and castles of Europe, played an important role in the Mongols' decision to withdraw.[54][55]

Post-Ögedei power struggles (1241–1251)

Following the Great Khan Ögedei's death in 1241, and before the next kurultai, Ögedei's widow Töregene took over the empire. She persecuted her husband's Khitan and Muslim officials and gave high positions to her own allies. She built palaces, cathedrals, and social structures on an imperial scale, supporting religion and education.[56] She was able to win over most Mongol aristocrats to support Ögedei's son Güyük. But Batu, ruler of the Golden Horde, refused to come to the kurultai, claiming that he was ill and that the climate was too harsh for him. The resulting stalemate lasted more than four years and further destabilized the unity of the empire.[56]

 
Batu Khan consolidates the Golden Horde

When Genghis Khan's youngest brother Temüge threatened to seize the throne, Güyük came to Karakorum to try to secure his position.[57] Batu eventually agreed to send his brothers and generals to the kurultai convened by Töregene in 1246. Güyük by this time was ill and alcoholic, but his campaigns in Manchuria and Europe gave him the kind of stature necessary for a great khan. He was duly elected at a ceremony attended by Mongols and foreign dignitaries from both within and without the empire — leaders of vassal nations, representatives from Rome, and other entities who came to the kurultai to show their respects and conduct diplomacy.[58][59]

 
Güyük Khan demanding Pope Innocent IV's submission. The 1246 letter was written in Persian.

Güyük took steps to reduce corruption, announcing that he would continue the policies of his father Ögedei, not those of Töregene. He punished Töregene's supporters, except for governor Arghun the Elder. He also replaced young Qara Hülëgü, the khan of the Chagatai Khanate, with his favorite cousin Yesü Möngke, to assert his newly conferred powers.[60] He restored his father's officials to their former positions and was surrounded by Uyghur, Naiman and Central Asian officials, favoring Han Chinese commanders who had helped his father conquer Northern China. He continued military operations in Korea, advanced into Song China in the south, and into Iraq in the west, and ordered an empire-wide census. Güyük also divided the Sultanate of Rum between Izz-ad-Din Kaykawus and Rukn ad-Din Kilij Arslan, though Kaykawus disagreed with this decision.[60]

Not all parts of the empire respected Güyük's election. The Hashshashins, former Mongol allies whose Grand Master Hasan Jalalud-Din had offered his submission to Genghis Khan in 1221, angered Güyük by refusing to submit. Instead he murdered the Mongol generals in Persia. Güyük appointed his best friend's father Eljigidei as chief commander of the troops in Persia and gave them the task of both reducing the strongholds of the Nizari Ismailis and conquering the Abbasids at the center of the Islamic world, Iran and Iraq.[60][61]

Death of Güyük (1248)

In 1248, Güyük raised more troops and suddenly marched westward from the Mongol capital of Karakorum. The reasoning was unclear. Some sources wrote that he sought to recuperate at his personal estate, Emyl; others suggested that he might have been moving to join Eljigidei to conduct a full-scale conquest of the Middle East, or possibly to make a surprise attack on his rival cousin Batu Khan in Rus.[62]

Suspicious of Güyük's motives, Sorghaghtani Beki, the widow of Genghis's son Tolui, secretly warned her nephew Batu of Güyük's approach. Batu had himself been traveling eastward at the time, possibly to pay homage, or perhaps with other plans in mind. Before the forces of Batu and Güyük met, Güyük, sick and worn out by travel, died en route at Qum-Senggir (Hong-siang-yi-eulh) in Xinjiang, possibly a victim of poison.[62]

 
A stone turtle at the site of the Mongol capital, Karakorum.

Güyük's widow Oghul Qaimish stepped forward to take control of the empire, but she lacked the skills of her mother-in-law Töregene, and her young sons Khoja and Naku and other princes challenged her authority. To decide on a new great khan, Batu called a kurultai on his own territory in 1250. As it was far from the Mongol heartland, members of the Ögedeid and Chagataid families refused to attend. The kurultai offered the throne to Batu, but he rejected it, claiming he had no interest in the position.[63] Batu instead nominated Möngke, a grandson of Genghis from his son Tolui's lineage. Möngke was leading a Mongol army in Rus, the northern Caucasus and Hungary. The pro-Tolui faction supported Batu's choice, and Möngke was elected; though given the kurultai's limited attendance and location, it was of questionable validity.[63]

Batu sent Möngke, under the protection of his brothers, Berke and Tukhtemur, and his son Sartaq to assemble a more formal kurultai at Kodoe Aral in the heartland. The supporters of Möngke repeatedly invited Oghul Qaimish and the other major Ögedeid and Chagataid princes to attend the kurultai, but they refused each time. The Ögedeid and Chagataid princes refused to accept a descendant of Genghis's son Tolui as leader, demanding that only descendants of Genghis's son Ögedei could be great khan.[63]

Rule of Möngke Khan (1251–1259)

When Möngke's mother Sorghaghtani and their cousin Berke organized a second kurultai on 1 July 1251, the assembled throng proclaimed Möngke great khan of the Mongol Empire. This marked a major shift in the leadership of the empire, transferring power from the descendants of Genghis's son Ögedei to the descendants of Genghis's son Tolui. The decision was acknowledged by a few of the Ögedeid and Chagataid princes, such as Möngke's cousin Kadan and the deposed khan Qara Hülëgü, but one of the other legitimate heirs, Ögedei's grandson Shiremun, sought to topple Möngke.[64]

Shiremun moved with his own forces toward the emperor's nomadic palace with a plan for an armed attack, but Möngke was alerted by his falconer of the plan. Möngke ordered an investigation of the plot, which led to a series of major trials all across the empire. Many members of the Mongol elite were found guilty and put to death, with estimates ranging from 77 to 300, though princes of Genghis's royal line were often exiled rather than executed.[64]

Möngke confiscated the estates of the Ögedeid and the Chagatai families and shared the western part of the empire with his ally Batu Khan. After the bloody purge, Möngke ordered a general amnesty for prisoners and captives, but thereafter the power of the great khan's throne remained firmly with the descendants of Tolui.[64]

Administrative reforms

Möngke was a serious man who followed the laws of his ancestors and avoided alcoholism. He was tolerant of outside religions and artistic styles, leading to the building of foreign merchants' quarters, Buddhist monasteries, mosques, and Christian churches in the Mongol capital. As construction projects continued, Karakorum was adorned with Chinese, European, and Persian architecture. One famous example was a large silver tree with cleverly designed pipes that dispensed various drinks. The tree, topped by a triumphant angel, was crafted by Guillaume Boucher, a Parisian goldsmith.[65]

 
Hulagu, Genghis Khan's grandson and founder of the Il-Khanate. From a medieval Persian manuscript.

Although he had a strong Chinese contingent, Möngke relied heavily on Muslim and Mongol administrators and launched a series of economic reforms to make government expenses more predictable. His court limited government spending and prohibited nobles and troops from abusing civilians or issuing edicts without authorization. He commuted the contribution system to a fixed poll tax which was collected by imperial agents and forwarded to units in need.[66] His court also tried to lighten the tax burden on commoners by reducing tax rates. He also centralized control of monetary affairs and reinforced the guards at the postal relays. Möngke ordered an empire-wide census in 1252 that took several years to complete and was not finished until Novgorod in the far northwest was counted in 1258.[66]

In another move to consolidate his power, Möngke assigned his brothers Hulagu and Kublai to rule Persia and Mongol-held China respectively. In the southern part of the empire he continued his predecessors' struggle against the Song dynasty. In order to outflank the Song from three directions, Möngke dispatched Mongol armies under his brother Kublai to Yunnan, and under his uncle Iyeku to subdue Korea and pressure the Song from that direction as well.[60]

Kublai conquered the Dali Kingdom in 1253 after the Dali King Duan Xingzhi defected to the Mongols and helped them conquer the rest of Yunnan. Möngke's general Qoridai stabilized his control over Tibet, inducing leading monasteries to submit to Mongol rule. Subutai's son Uryankhadai reduced the neighboring peoples of Yunnan to submission and went to war with the kingdom of Đại Việt under the Trần dynasty in northern Vietnam in 1258, but they had to draw back.[60] The Mongol Empire tried to invade Đại Việt again in 1285 and 1287 but were defeated both times.

New invasions of the Middle East and Southern China

Main article: Mongol invasions of the Levant
See also: Mongol invasion of China and Siege of Baghdad (1258)
 
Mongol invasion of Baghdad

After stabilizing the empire's finances, Möngke once again sought to expand its borders. At kurultais in Karakorum in 1253 and 1258 he approved new invasions of the Middle East and south China. Möngke put Hulagu in overall charge of military and civil affairs in Persia, and appointed Chagataids and Jochids to join Hulagu's army.[67]

The Muslims from Qazvin denounced the menace of the Nizari Ismailis, a well-known sect of Shiites. The Mongol Naiman commander Kitbuqa began to assault several Ismaili fortresses in 1253, before Hulagu advanced in 1256. Ismaili Grand Master Rukn al-Din Khurshah surrendered in 1257 and was executed. All of the Ismaili strongholds in Persia were destroyed by Hulagu's army in 1257, except for Girdkuh which held out until 1271.[67]

The center of the Islamic Empire at the time was Baghdad, which had held power for 500 years but was suffering internal divisions. When its caliph al-Mustasim refused to submit to the Mongols, Baghdad was besieged and captured by the Mongols in 1258 and subjected to a merciless sack, an event considered one of the most catastrophic events in the history of Islam, and sometimes compared to the rupture of the Kaaba. With the destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate, Hulagu had an open route to Syria and moved against the other Muslim powers in the region.[68]

His army advanced toward Ayyubid-ruled Syria, capturing small local states en route. The sultan Al-Nasir Yusuf of the Ayyubids refused to show himself before Hulagu; however, he had accepted Mongol supremacy two decades earlier. When Hulagu headed further west, the Armenians from Cilicia, the Seljuks from Rum and the Christian realms of Antioch and Tripoli submitted to Mongol authority, joining them in their assault against the Muslims. While some cities surrendered without resisting, others, such as Mayafarriqin fought back; their populations were massacred and the cities were sacked.[68]

Death of Möngke Khan (1259)

Meanwhile, in the northwestern portion of the empire, Batu's successor and younger brother Berke sent punitive expeditions to Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. Dissension began brewing between the northwestern and southwestern sections of the Mongol Empire as Batu suspected that Hulagu's invasion of Western Asia would result in the elimination of Batu's own dominance there.[69]

In the southern part of the empire, Möngke Khan himself led his army, but did not complete the conquest of China. Military operations were generally successful, but prolonged, so the forces did not withdraw to the north as was customary when the weather turned hot. Disease ravaged the Mongol forces with bloody epidemics, and Möngke died there on 11 August 1259. This event began a new chapter in the history of the Mongols, as again a decision needed to be made on a new great khan. Mongol armies across the empire withdrew from their campaigns to convene a new kurultai.[70]

Disunity

Dispute over succession

 
The Mongols at war

Möngke's brother Hulagu broke off his successful military advance into Syria, withdrawing the bulk of his forces to Mughan and leaving only a small contingent under his general Kitbuqa. The opposing forces in the region, the Christian Crusaders and Muslim Mamluks, both recognizing that the Mongols were the greater threat, took advantage of the weakened state of the Mongol army and engaged in an unusual passive truce with each other.[71]

In 1260, the Mamluks advanced from Egypt, being allowed to camp and resupply near the Christian stronghold of Acre, and engaged Kitbuqa's forces just north of Galilee at the Battle of Ain Jalut. The Mongols were defeated, and Kitbuqa executed. This pivotal battle marked the western limit for Mongol expansion in the Middle East, and the Mongols were never again able to make serious military advances farther than Syria.[71]

In a separate part of the empire, Kublai Khan, another brother of Hulagu and Möngke, heard of the great khan's death at the Huai River in China. Rather than returning to the capital, he continued his advance into the Wuchang area of China, near the Yangtze River. Their younger brother Ariqboke took advantage of the absence of Hulagu and Kublai, and used his position at the capital to win the title of great khan for himself, with representatives of all the family branches proclaiming him as the leader at the kurultai in Karakorum. When Kublai learned of this, he summoned his own kurultai at Kaiping, and nearly all the senior princes and great noyans in North China and Manchuria supported his own candidacy over that of Ariqboke.[53]

Mongol Civil War

See also: Toluid Civil War and Berke–Hulagu war
 
Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson and founder of the Yuan dynasty

Battles ensued between the armies of Kublai and those of his brother Ariqboke, which included forces still loyal to Möngke's previous administration. Kublai's army easily eliminated Ariqboke's supporters and seized control of the civil administration in southern Mongolia. Further challenges took place from their cousins, the Chagataids.[72][73][74] Kublai sent Abishka, a Chagataid prince loyal to him, to take charge of Chagatai's realm. But Ariqboke captured and then executed Abishka, having his own man Alghu crowned there instead. Kublai's new administration blockaded Ariqboke in Mongolia to cut off food supplies, causing a famine. Karakorum fell quickly to Kublai, but Ariqboke rallied and re-took the capital in 1261.[72][73][74]

In southwestern Ilkhanate, Hulagu was loyal to his brother Kublai, but clashes with their cousin Berke, a Muslim and the ruler of the Golden Horde, began in 1262. The suspicious deaths of Jochid princes in Hulagu's service, unequal distribution of war booty, and Hulagu's massacres of Muslims increased the anger of Berke, who considered supporting a rebellion of the Georgian Kingdom against Hulagu's rule in 1259–1260.[75][full citation needed] Berke also forged an alliance with the Egyptian Mamluks against Hulagu and supported Kublai's rival claimant, Ariqboke.[76]

Hulagu died on 8 February 1264. Berke sought to take advantage and invade Hulagu's realm, but he died along the way, and a few months later Alghu Khan of the Chagatai Khanate died as well. Kublai named Hulagu's son Abaqa as new Ilkhan, and nominated Batu's grandson Möngke Temür to lead the Golden Horde. Abaqa sought foreign alliances, such as attempting to form a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Egyptian Mamluks.[77] Ariqboqe surrendered to Kublai at Shangdu on 21 August 1264.[78]

Campaigns of Kublai Khan (1264–1294)

Main article: Kublai Khan's campaigns
 
The samurai Suenaga facing Mongol's bomb and Goryeo's arrows. Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (蒙古襲来絵詞), circa 1293.
 
defeating the Mongol invasion army (left) Samurai Mitsui Sukenaga (right)
 
Samurai Shiraishi clan

In the south, after the fall of Xiangyang in 1273, the Mongols sought the final conquest of the Song dynasty in South China. In 1271, Kublai renamed the new Mongol regime in China as the Yuan dynasty and sought to sinicize his image as Emperor of China to win the control of the Chinese people. Kublai moved his headquarters to Khanbaliq, the genesis for what later became the modern city of Beijing. His establishment of a capital there was a controversial move to many Mongols who accused him of being too closely tied to Chinese culture.[79][80]

The Mongols were eventually successful in their campaigns against (Song) China, and the Chinese Song imperial family surrendered to the Yuan in 1276, making the Mongols the first non-Chinese people to conquer all of China. Kublai used his base to build a powerful empire, creating an academy, offices, trade ports and canals, and sponsoring arts and science. Mongol records list 20,166 public schools created during his reign.[81]

 
Mongol warrior on horseback, preparing a mounted archery shot.

After achieving actual or nominal dominion over much of Eurasia and successfully conquering China, Kublai pursued further expansion. His invasions of Burma and Sakhalin were costly, and his attempted invasions of Đại Việt (northern Vietnam) and Champa (southern Vietnam) ended in devastating defeat, but secured vassal statuses of those countries. The Mongol armies were repeatedly beaten in Đại Việt and were crushed at the Battle of Bạch Đằng (1288).

Nogai and Konchi, the khan of the White Horde, established friendly relations with the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate. Political disagreement among contending branches of the family over the office of great khan continued, but the economic and commercial success of the Mongol Empire continued despite the squabbling.[82][83][84]

In 1274 and again in 1281, Kublai Khan invaded Japan on two separate occasions. However, he was not able to conquer Japan.

Disintegration into competing entities

Main article: Division of the Mongol Empire
 
The funeral of Chagatai Khan.

Major changes occurred in the Mongol Empire in the late 1200s. Kublai Khan, after having conquered all of China and established the Yuan dynasty, died in 1294. He was succeeded by his grandson Temür Khan, who continued Kublai's policies. At the same time the Toluid Civil War, along with the Berke–Hulagu war and the subsequent Kaidu–Kublai war, greatly weakened the authority of the great khan over the entirety of the Mongol Empire and the empire fractured into autonomous khanates, the Yuan dynasty and the three western khanates: the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate and the Ilkhanate. Only the Ilkhanate remained loyal to the Yuan court but endured its own power struggle, in part because of a dispute with the growing Islamic factions within the southwestern part of the empire.[85]

After the death of Kaidu, the Chatagai ruler Duwa initiated a peace proposal and persuaded the Ögedeids to submit to Temür Khan.[86][87] In 1304, all of the khanates approved a peace treaty and accepted Yuan emperor Temür's supremacy.[88][89][90][91] This established the nominal supremacy of the Yuan dynasty over the western khanates, which was to last for several decades. This supremacy was based on weaker foundations than that of the earlier Khagans and each of the four khanates continued to develop separately and function as independent states.

Nearly a century of conquest and civil war was followed by relative stability, the Pax Mongolica, and international trade and cultural exchanges flourished between Asia and Europe. Communication between the Yuan dynasty in China and the Ilkhanate in Persia further encouraged trade and commerce between east and west. Patterns of Yuan royal textiles could be found on the opposite side of the empire adorning Armenian decorations; trees and vegetables were transplanted across the empire; and technological innovations spread from Mongol dominions toward the West.[92] Pope John XXII was presented a memorandum from the eastern church describing the Pax Mongolica: "... 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."[93] However, while the four khanates continued to interact with one another well into the 14th century, they did so as sovereign states and never again pooled their resources in a cooperative military endeavor.[94]

Development of the khanates

 
Mongol rider, Yuan dynasty
 
A European depiction of the four khans, Temür (Yuan), Chapar (House of Ögedei), Toqta (Golden Horde), and Öljaitü (Ilkhanate), in the Fleur des histoires d'orient.[95]

In spite of his conflicts with Kaidu and Duwa, Yuan emperor Temür established a tributary relationship with the war-like Shan people after his series of military operations against Thailand from 1297 to 1303. This was to mark the end of the southern expansion of the Mongols.

When Ghazan took the throne of the Ilkhanate in 1295, he formally accepted Islam as his own religion, marking a turning point in Mongol history after which Mongol Persia became more and more Islamic. Despite this, Ghazan continued to strengthen ties with Temür Khan and the Yuan dynasty in the east. It was politically useful to advertise the great khan's authority in the Ilkhanate, because the Golden Horde in Rus had long made claims on nearby Georgia.[85] Within four years, Ghazan began sending tribute to the Yuan court and appealing to other khans to accept Temür Khan as their overlord. He oversaw an extensive program of cultural and scientific interaction between the Ilkhanate and the Yuan dynasty in the following decades.[96]

Ghazan's faith may have been Islamic, but he continued his ancestors' war with the Egyptian Mamluks, and consulted with his old Mongol advisers in his native tongue. He defeated the Mamluk army at the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, but he was only briefly able to occupy Syria, due to distracting raids from the Chagatai Khanate under its de facto ruler Kaidu, who was at war with both the Ilkhans and the Yuan dynasty.[citation needed]

Struggling for influence within the Golden Horde, Kaidu sponsored his own candidate Kobeleg against Bayan (r. 1299–1304), the khan of the White Horde. Bayan, after receiving military support from the Mongols in Rus, requested assistance from both Temür Khan and the Ilkhanate to organize a unified attack against Kaidu's forces. Temür was amenable and attacked Kaidu a year later. After a bloody battle with Temür's armies near the Zawkhan River in 1301, Kaidu died and was succeeded by Duwa.[97][98]

 
Hungarian King Béla IV in flight from the Mongols under general Kadan of the Golden Horde.

Duwa was challenged by Kaidu's son Chapar, but with the assistance of Temür, Duwa defeated the Ögedeids. Tokhta of the Golden Horde, also seeking a general peace, sent 20,000 men to buttress the Yuan frontier.[99] Tokhta died in 1312, though, and was succeeded by Ozbeg (r. 1313–41), who seized the throne of the Golden Horde and persecuted non-Muslim Mongols. The Yuan's influence on the Horde was largely reversed and border clashes between Mongol states resumed. Ayurbarwada Buyantu Khan's envoys backed Tokhta's son against Ozbeg.[citation needed]

In the Chagatai Khanate, Esen Buqa I (r. 1309–1318) was enthroned as khan after suppressing a sudden rebellion by Ögedei's descendants and driving Chapar into exile. The Yuan and Ilkhanid armies eventually attacked the Chagatai Khanate. Recognising the potential economic benefits and the Genghisid legacy, Ozbeg reopened friendly relations with the Yuan in 1326. He strengthened ties with the Muslim world as well, building mosques and other elaborate structures such as baths.[citation needed] By the second decade of the 14th century, Mongol invasions had further decreased. In 1323, Abu Said Khan (r. 1316–35) of the Ilkhanate signed a peace treaty with Egypt. At his request, the Yuan court awarded his custodian Chupan the title of commander-in-chief of all Mongol khanates, but Chupan died in late 1327.[100]

Civil war erupted in the Yuan dynasty in 1328–29. After the death of Yesün Temür in 1328, Tugh Temür became the new leader in Khanbaliq, while Yesün Temür's son Ragibagh succeeded to the throne in Shangdu, leading to the civil war known as the War of the Two Capitals. Tugh Temür defeated Ragibagh, but the Chagatai khan Eljigidey (r. 1326–29) supported Kusala, elder brother of Tugh Temür, as great khan. He invaded with a commanding force, and Tugh Temür abdicated. Kusala was elected khan on 30 August 1329. Kusala was then poisoned by a Kypchak commander under Tugh Temür, who returned to power.

 
The successor states of the Mongol Empire in 1335: the Ilkhanate, Golden Horde, Yuan dynasty and Chagatai Khanate

Tugh Temür (1304–32) was knowledgeable about Chinese language and history and was also a creditable poet, calligrapher, and painter. In order to be accepted by other khanates as the sovereign of the Mongol world, he sent Genghisid princes and descendants of notable Mongol generals to the Chagatai Khanate, Ilkhan Abu Said, and Ozbeg. In response to the emissaries, they all agreed to send tribute each year.[101] Furthermore, Tugh Temür gave lavish presents and an imperial seal to Eljigidey to mollify his anger.

Rump states of the Mongol Empire

 
Iron helmet, Mongol Empire

With the death of Ilkhan Abu Said Bahatur in 1335, Mongol rule faltered and 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. Taking advantage of the chaos, the Georgians pushed the Mongols out of their territory, and the Uyghur commander Eretna established an independent state (Eretnids) in Anatolia in 1336. Following the downfall of their Mongol masters, the loyal vassal, the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, received escalating threats from the Mamluks and were eventually overrun in 1375.[102] Along with the dissolution of the Ilkhanate in Persia, Mongol rulers in China and the Chagatai Khanate were also in turmoil. The plague known as the Black Death, which started in the Mongol dominions and spread to Europe, added to the confusion. Disease devastated all the khanates, cutting off commercial ties and killing millions.[103] The plague may have taken 50 million lives in Europe alone in the 14th century.[104]

As the power of the Mongols declined, chaos erupted throughout the empire as non-Mongol leaders expanded their own influence. The Golden Horde lost all of its western dominions (including modern Belarus and Ukraine) to Poland and Lithuania between 1342 and 1369. Muslim and non-Muslim princes in the Chagatai Khanate warred with each other from 1331 to 1343, and the Chagatai Khanate disintegrated when non-Genghisid warlords set up their own puppet khans in Transoxiana and Moghulistan. Janibeg Khan (r. 1342–1357) briefly reasserted Jochid dominance over the Chaghataids. Demanding submission from an offshoot of the Ilkhanate in Azerbaijan, he boasted that "today three uluses are under my control".[105]

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. The last Yuan ruler Toghan Temür (r. 1333–70) was powerless to regulate those troubles, a sign that the empire had nearly reached its end. His court's unbacked currency had entered a hyperinflationary spiral and the Han-Chinese people revolted due to the Yuan's harsh impositions. In the 1350s, Gongmin of Goryeo successfully pushed Mongol garrisons back and exterminated the family of Toghan Temür Khan's empress while Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen managed to eliminate the Mongol influence in Tibet.[105]

Increasingly isolated from their subjects, the Mongols quickly lost most of China to the rebellious Ming forces and in 1368 fled to their heartland in Mongolia. After the overthrow of the Yuan dynasty the Golden Horde lost touch with Mongolia and China, while the two main parts of the Chagatai Khanate were defeated by Timur (Tamerlane) (1336–1405), who founded the Timurid Empire. However, remnants of the Chagatai Khanate survived; the last Chagataid state to survive was the Yarkent Khanate, until its defeat by the Oirat Dzungar Khanate in the Dzungar conquest of Altishahr in 1680. The Golden Horde broke into smaller Turkic-hordes that declined steadily in power over four centuries. Among them, the khanate's shadow, the Great Horde, survived until 1502, when one of its successors, the Crimean Khanate, sacked Sarai.[106] The Crimean Khanate lasted until 1783, whereas khanates such as the Khanate of Bukhara and the Kazakh Khanate lasted even longer.

Military organization

Main article: Mongol military tactics and organization
 
Reconstruction of a Mongol warrior

The number of troops mustered by the Mongols is the subject of some scholarly debate,[107] but was at least 105,000 in 1206.[108] The Mongol military organization was simple but effective, based on the decimal system. The army was built up from squads of ten men each, arbans (10 people), zuuns (100), Mingghans (1000), and tumens (10,000).[109]

The Mongols were most famous for their horse archers, but troops armed with lances were equally skilled, and the Mongols recruited other military specialists from the lands they conquered. With experienced Chinese engineers and a bombardier corps which was expert at building trebuchets, catapults and other machines, the Mongols could lay siege to fortified positions, sometimes building machinery on the spot using available local resources.[109]

 
Mongol general Subutai of the Golden Horde

Forces under the command of the Mongol Empire were trained, organized, and equipped for mobility and speed. Mongol soldiers were more lightly armored than many of the armies they faced but were able to make up for it with maneuverability. Each Mongol warrior would usually travel with multiple horses, allowing him to quickly switch to a fresh mount as needed. In addition, soldiers of the Mongol army functioned independently of supply lines, considerably speeding up army movement.[110] Skillful use of couriers enabled the leaders of these armies to maintain contact with each other.

Discipline was inculcated during a nerge (traditional hunt), as reported by Juvayni. These hunts were distinctive from hunts in other cultures, being the equivalent to small unit actions. Mongol forces would spread out in a line, surround an entire region, and then drive all of the game within that area together. The goal was to let none of the animals escape and to slaughter them all.[110]

Another advantage of the Mongols was their ability to traverse large distances, even in unusually cold winters; for instance, frozen rivers led them like highways to large urban centers on their banks. The Mongols were adept at river-work, crossing the river Sajó in spring flood conditions with thirty thousand cavalry soldiers in a single night during the Battle of Mohi (April 1241) to defeat the Hungarian king Béla IV. Similarly, in the attack against the Muslim Khwarezmshah a flotilla of barges was used to prevent escape on the river.[citation needed]

Traditionally known for their prowess with ground forces, the Mongols rarely used naval power. In the 1260s and 1270s they used seapower while conquering the Song dynasty of China, though their attempts to mount seaborne campaigns against Japan were unsuccessful. Around the Eastern Mediterranean, their campaigns were almost exclusively land-based, with the seas controlled by the Crusader and Mamluk forces.[111]

All military campaigns were preceded by careful planning, reconnaissance, and the gathering of sensitive information relating to enemy territories and forces. The success, organization, and mobility of the Mongol armies permitted them to fight on several fronts at once. All adult males up to the age of 60 were eligible for conscription into the army, a source of honor in their tribal warrior tradition.[112]

Society

Main article: Society of the Mongol Empire

Law and governance

See also: Organization of the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan
 
The executed – the long and full beard probably means he is not a Mongol – has been thrown off a cliff.

The Mongol Empire was governed by a code of law devised by Genghis, called Yassa, meaning "order" or "decree". A particular canon of this code was that those of rank shared much the same hardship as the common man. It also imposed severe penalties, e.g., the death penalty if one mounted soldier following another did not pick up something dropped from the mount in front. Penalties were also decreed for rape and to some extent for murder. Any resistance to Mongol rule was met with massive collective punishment. Cities were destroyed and their inhabitants slaughtered if they defied Mongol orders.[citation needed] Under Yassa, chiefs and generals were selected based on merit. The empire was governed by a non-democratic, parliamentary-style central assembly, called kurultai, in which the Mongol chiefs met with the great khan to discuss domestic and foreign policies. Kurultais were also convened for the selection of each new great khan.[113]

Genghis Khan also created a national seal, encouraged the use of a written alphabet in Mongolia, and exempted teachers, lawyers, and artists from taxes.[citation needed]

The Mongols imported Central Asian Muslims to serve as administrators in China and sent Han Chinese and Khitans from China to serve as administrators over the Muslim population in Bukhara in Central Asia, thus using foreigners to curtail the power of the local peoples of both lands.[114] The Mongols were tolerant of other religions, and rarely persecuted people on religious grounds. This was associated with their culture and progressive thought. Some historians of the 20th century thought this was a good military strategy: when Genghis was at war with Sultan Muhammad of Khwarezm, other Islamic leaders did not join the fight, as it was seen as a non-holy war between two individual powers.[citation needed]

Religions

Main article: Religion in the Mongol Empire
 
Persian miniature depicting Ghazan's conversion from Buddhism to Islam.

At the time of Genghis Khan, virtually every religion had found Mongol converts, from Buddhism to Christianity, from Manichaeism to Islam. To avoid strife, Genghis Khan set up an institution that ensured complete religious freedom, though he himself was a shamanist. Under his administration, all religious leaders were exempt from taxation and from public service.[115]

Initially there were few formal places of worship because of the nomadic lifestyle. However, under Ögedei (1186–1241), several building projects were undertaken in the Mongol capital. Along with palaces, Ögedei built houses of worship for the Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, and Taoist followers. The dominant religions at that time were Tengrism and Buddhism, although Ögedei's wife was a Nestorian Christian.[116]

Eventually, each of the successor states adopted the dominant religion of the local populations: the Mongol-ruled Chinese Yuan dynasty in the East (originally the Great Khan's domain) embraced Buddhism and Shamanism, while the three Western khanates adopted Islam.[117][118][119]

Arts and literature

See also: List of historical cities and towns of Mongolia and Mongolian literature

The oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolian language is The Secret History of the Mongols, which was written for the royal family some time after Genghis Khan's death in 1227. It is the most significant native account of Genghis's life and genealogy, covering his origins and childhood through to the establishment of the Mongol Empire and the reign of his son, Ögedei.

Another classic from the empire is the Jami' al-tawarikh, or "Universal History". It was commissioned in the early 14th century by the Ilkhan Abaqa Khan as a way of documenting the entire world's history, to help establish the Mongols' own cultural legacy.

Mongol scribes in the 14th century used a mixture of resin and vegetable pigments as a primitive form of correction fluid;[120] this is arguably its first known usage.

The Mongols also appreciated the visual arts, though their taste in portraiture was strictly focused on portraits of their horses, rather than of people.[citation needed]

Science

 
A 1363 astronomical handbook with Middle Mongolian glosses. Known as the Sanjufini Zij.
 
Mongols look on as Persian astronomers work. Early 14th century illustration in the Compendium of Chronicles.

The Mongol Empire saw some significant developments in science due to the patronage of the Khans. Roger Bacon attributed the success of the Mongols as world conquerors principally to their devotion to mathematics.[121] Astronomy was one branch of science that the Khans took a personal interest in. According to the Yuanshi, Ögedei Khan twice ordered the armillary sphere of Zhongdu to be repaired (in 1233 and 1236) and also ordered in 1234 the revision and adoption of the Damingli calendar.[122] He built a Confucian temple for Yelü Chucai in Karakorum around 1236 where Yelü Chucai created and regulated a calendar on the Chinese model. Möngke Khan was noted by Rashid al-Din as having solved some of the difficult problems of Euclidean geometry on his own and written to his brother Hulagu Khan to send him the astronomer Tusi.[123] Möngke Khan's desire to have Tusi build him an observatory in Karakorum did not reach fruition as the Khan died on campaign in southern China. Hulagu Khan instead gave Tusi a grant to build the Maragheh Observatory in Persia in 1259 and ordered him to prepare astronomical tables for him in 12 years, despite Tusi asking for 30 years. Tusi successfully produced the Ilkhanic Tables in 12 years, produced a revised edition of Euclid's elements and taught the innovative mathematical device called the Tusi couple. The Maragheh Observatory held around 400,000 books salvaged by Tusi from the siege of Baghdad and other cities. Chinese astronomers brought by Hulagu Khan worked there as well.

Kublai Khan built a number of large observatories in China and his libraries included the Wu-hu-lie-ti (Euclid) brought by Muslim mathematicians.[124] Zhu Shijie and Guo Shoujing were notable mathematicians in Yuan China. The Mongol physician Hu Sihui described the importance of a healthy diet in a 1330 medical treatise.

Ghazan Khan, able to understand four languages including Latin, built the Tabriz Observatory in 1295. The Byzantine Greek astronomer Gregory Chioniades studied there under Ajall Shams al-Din Omar who had worked at Maragheh under Tusi. Chioniades played an important role in transmitting several innovations from the Islamic world to Europe. These include the introduction of the universal latitude-independent astrolabe to Europe and a Greek description of the Tusi-couple, which would later have an influence on Copernican heliocentrism. Choniades also translated several Zij treatises into Greek, including the Persian Zij-i Ilkhani by al-Tusi and the Maragheh observatory. The Byzantine-Mongol alliance and the fact that the Empire of Trebizond was an Ilkhanate vassal facilitated Choniades' movements between Constantinople, Trebizond and Tabriz. Prince Radna, the Mongol viceroy of Tibet based in Gansu province, patronized the Samarkandi astronomer al-Sanjufini. The Arabic astronomical handbook dedicated by al-Sanjufini to Prince Radna, a descendant of Kublai Khan, was completed in 1363. It is notable for having Middle Mongolian glosses on its margins.[125]

Mail system

Main article: Yam (route)
 
A 1305 letter (on a scroll measuring 302 by 50 cm or 9 ft 11 in by 1 ft 7+1⁄2 in) from the Ilkhan Mongol Öljaitü to King Philip IV of France.

The Mongol Empire had an ingenious and efficient mail system for the time, often referred to by scholars as the Yam. It had lavishly furnished and well-guarded relay posts known as örtöö set up throughout the Empire.[126] A messenger would typically travel 40 kilometres (25 miles) from one station to the next, either receiving a fresh, rested horse, or relaying the mail to the next rider to ensure the speediest possible delivery. The Mongol riders regularly covered 200 km (125 mi) per day, better than the fastest record set by the Pony Express some 600 years later.[citation needed] The relay stations had attached households to service them. Anyone with a paiza was allowed to stop there for re-mounts and specified rations, while those carrying military identities used the Yam even without a paiza. Many merchants, messengers, and travelers from China, the Middle East, and Europe used the system. When the great khan died in Karakorum, news reached the Mongol forces under Batu Khan in Central Europe within 4–6 weeks thanks to the Yam.[51]

Genghis and his successor Ögedei built a wide system of roads, one of which carved through the Altai mountains. After his enthronement, Ögedei further expanded the road system, ordering the Chagatai Khanate and Golden Horde to link up roads in western parts of the Mongol Empire.[127]

Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty, built special relays for high officials, as well as ordinary relays, that had hostels. During Kublai's reign, the Yuan communication system consisted of some 1,400 postal stations, which used 50,000 horses, 8,400 oxen, 6,700 mules, 4,000 carts, and 6,000 boats.[citation needed]

In Manchuria and southern Siberia, the Mongols still used dogsled relays for the Yam. In the Ilkhanate, Ghazan restored the declining relay system in the Middle East on a restricted scale. He constructed some hostels and decreed that only imperial envoys could receive a stipend. The Jochids of the Golden Horde financed their relay system by a special Yam tax.[citation needed]

Silk Road

Main article: Silk Road
See also: Pax Mongolica and Black Death

The Mongols had a history of supporting merchants and trade. Genghis Khan had encouraged foreign merchants early in his career, even before uniting the Mongols. Merchants provided information about neighboring cultures, served as diplomats and official traders for the Mongols, and were essential for many goods, since the Mongols produced little of their own.

Mongol government and elites provided capital for merchants and sent them far afield, in an ortoq (merchant partner) arrangement. In Mongol times, the contractual features of a Mongol-ortoq partnership closely resembled that of qirad and commenda arrangements, however, Mongol investors were not constrained using uncoined precious metals and tradable goods for partnership investments and primarily financed money-lending and trade activities.[128] Moreover, Mongol elites formed trade partnerships with merchants from Italian cities, including Marco Polo’s family.[129] As the empire grew, any merchants or ambassadors with proper documentation and authorization received protection and sanctuary as they traveled through Mongol realms. Well-traveled and relatively well-maintained roads linked lands from the Mediterranean basin to China, greatly increasing overland trade and resulting in some dramatic stories of those who travelled through what would become known as the Silk Road.

Western explorer Marco Polo traveled east along the Silk Road, and the Chinese Mongol monk Rabban Bar Sauma made a comparably epic journey along the route, venturing from his home of Khanbaliq (Beijing) as far as Europe. European missionaries, such as William of Rubruck, also traveled to the Mongol court to convert believers to their cause, or went as papal envoys to correspond with Mongol rulers in an attempt to secure a Franco-Mongol alliance. It was rare, however, for anyone to journey the full length of Silk Road. Instead, merchants moved products like a bucket brigade, goods being traded from one middleman to another, moving from China all the way to the West; the goods moved over such long distances fetched extravagant prices.[citation needed]

 
Gold dinar of Genghis Khan, struck at the Ghazna (Ghazni) mint, dated 1221/2

After Genghis, the merchant partner business continued to flourish under his successors Ögedei and Güyük. Merchants brought clothing, food, information, and other provisions to the imperial palaces, and in return the great khans gave the merchants tax exemptions and allowed them to use the official relay stations of the Mongol Empire. Merchants also served as tax farmers in China, Rus and Iran. If the merchants were attacked by bandits, losses were made up from the imperial treasury.[citation needed]

Policies changed under the Great Khan Möngke. Because of money laundering and overtaxing, he attempted to limit abuses and sent imperial investigators to supervise the ortoq businesses. He decreed that all merchants must pay commercial and property taxes, and he paid off all drafts drawn by high-ranking Mongol elites from the merchants. This policy continued under the Yuan dynasty.[citation needed]

The fall of the Mongol Empire in the 14th century led to the collapse of the political, cultural, and economic unity along the Silk Road. Turkic tribes seized the western end of the route from the Byzantine Empire, sowing the seeds of a Turkic culture that would later crystallize into the Ottoman Empire under the Sunni faith. In the East, the Han Chinese overthrew the Yuan dynasty in 1368, launching their own Ming dynasty and pursuing a policy of economic isolationism.[130]

Legacy

See also: History of Mongolia
 
Map showing the boundary of the 13th century Mongol Empire compared to today's Mongols in Mongolia, Russia, the Central Asian States, and China

The Mongol Empire, at its height of the largest contiguous empire in history, had a lasting impact, unifying large regions. Some of these (such as eastern and western Russia, and the western parts of China) remain unified today.[131] Mongols might have been assimilated into local populations after the fall of the empire, and some of their descendants adopted local religions. For example, the eastern khanate largely adopted Buddhism, and the three western khanates adopted Islam, largely under Sufi influence.[117]

According to some[specify] interpretations, Genghis Khan's conquests caused wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in certain geographic regions, leading to changes in the demographics of Asia.

The non-military achievements of the Mongol Empire include the introduction of a writing system, a Mongol alphabet based on the characters of the Old Uyghur, which is still used in Mongolia today.[132]

 
Tokhtamysh and the armies of the Golden Horde initiate the Siege of Moscow (1382).

Some of the other long-term consequences of the Mongol Empire include:

  • Moscow rose to prominence while it was still under the rule of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, some time after Russian rulers were accorded the status of tax collectors for the Mongols. The fact that the Russians collected tribute and taxes for the Mongols meant that the Mongols themselves rarely visited the lands which they owned. The Russians eventually gained military power, and their ruler Ivan III completely overthrew the Mongols and formed the Russian Tsardom. After the Great Stand on the Ugra River proved that the Mongols were vulnerable, the Grand Duchy of Moscow gained independence.
  • Europe's knowledge of the known world was immensely expanded by the information which was brought back to it by ambassadors and merchants. When Columbus sailed in 1492, his mission was to reach Cathay, the land of the Grand Khan in China, and give him a letter from the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.[citation needed]
  • Some studies indicate that the Black Death which devastated Europe in the late 1340s may have traveled from China to Europe along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire. In 1347, the Genoese possessor of Caffa, a great trade emporium on the Crimean Peninsula, came under siege by an army of Mongol warriors under the command of Janibeg. After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army was reportedly withering from disease, they decided to use the infected corpses as a biological weapon. The corpses were catapulted over the city walls, infecting the inhabitants.[133][134] The Genoese traders fled, transferring the plague via their ships into the south of Europe, from where it rapidly spread. The total number of deaths worldwide from the pandemic is estimated at 75–200 million with up to 50 million deaths in Europe alone.[135]
 
Dominican martyrs killed by Mongols during the Mongol invasion of Poland in 1260.
  • Western researcher R. J. Rummel estimated that 30 million people were killed by the Mongol Empire. Other researchers estimate that as many as 80 million people were killed, with 50 million deaths being the middle ground. The population of China fell by half during fifty years of Mongol rule. Before the Mongol invasion, the territories of the Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported that China's total population was roughly 60 million. While it is tempting to attribute this major decline in China's population solely to Mongol ferocity, today scholars have mixed opinions about this subject. Scholars such as Frederick W. Mote argue that the wide drop in numbers reflects an administrative failure to keep records rather than a de facto decrease, while others such as Timothy Brook argue that the Mongols reduced much of the south Chinese population, and very debatably the Han Chinese population, to an invisible status through cancellation of the right to passports and denial of the right to direct land ownership. This meant that the Chinese had to depend on and be cared for chiefly by Mongols and Tartars, which also involved recruitment into the Mongol army. Other historians such as William McNeill and David O. Morgan argue that the bubonic plague was the main factor behind China's demographic decline during this period.[citation needed]
  • The Islamic world was subjected to massive changes as a result of the Mongol invasions. The population of the Iranian plateau suffered from widespread disease and famine, resulting in the death of up to three-quarters of its population, possibly 10 to 15 million people. Historian Steven Ward estimates that Iran's population did not reach its pre-Mongol levels again until the mid-20th century.[136]
  • Mesopotamia, for millennia a showplace and pinnacle of human civilization and achievement, was depopulated and pastoralized, never to resume its previous pre-eminence. In his Outline of History, H.G. Wells attributed this to a Mongol prejudice against urban life:

[I]n this region [Mesopotamia] nomadism really did attempt, and really did to a very considerable degree succeed in its attempt, to stamp a settled civilized system out of existence. When Jengis Khan first invaded China, we are told that there was a serious discussion among the Mongol chiefs whether all the towns and settled populations should not be destroyed. To these simple practitioners of the open-air life the settled populations seemed corrupt, crowded, vicious, effeminate, dangerous, and incomprehensible; a detestable human efflorescence upon what would otherwise have been good pasture. They had no use whatever for the towns. **** But it was only under Hulagu in Mesopotamia that these ideas seem to have been embodied in a deliberate policy. The Mongols here did not only burn and massacre; they destroyed the irrigation system that had endured for at least eight thousand years, and with that the mother civilization of all the Western world came to an end.[137]

  • David Nicole states in The Mongol Warlords, "terror and mass extermination of anyone opposing them was a well tested Mongol tactic."[138] About half of the Russian population may have died during the invasion.[139] However, Colin McEvedy in Atlas of World Population History, 1978 estimates the population of Russia-in-Europe dropped from 7.5 million prior to the invasion to 7 million afterward.[138] Historians estimate that up to half of Hungary's two million population were victims of the Mongol invasion.[140] Historian Andrea Peto says that Rogerius, an eyewitness, said that "the Mongols killed everybody regardless of gender or age" and "the Mongols especially 'found pleasure' in humiliating women."[141]
  • One of the more successful tactics employed by the Mongols was to wipe out urban populations that refused to surrender. During the Mongol invasion of Rus', almost all major cities were destroyed. If they chose to submit, the people were generally spared, though this was not guaranteed. For example, the city of Hamadan in modern-day Iran was destroyed and every man, woman, and child executed by Mongol general Subadai, after surrendering to him but failing to have enough provisions for his Mongol scouting force. Several days after the initial razing of the city, Subadai sent a force back to the burning ruins and the site of the massacre to kill any inhabitants of the city who had been away at the time of the initial slaughter and had returned in the meantime. Mongol armies made use of local peoples and their soldiers, often incorporating them into their armies. Prisoners of war sometimes were given the choice between death and becoming part of the Mongol army to aid in future conquests. Due to the brutal methods employed to subdue their subjects, Mongols maintained long lasting resentment from those they conquered. This resentment towards the Mongol rule has been highlighted as a cause for the empire's rapid fracturing.[142] In addition to intimidation tactics, the rapid expansion of the empire was facilitated by military hardiness (especially during bitterly cold winters), military skill, meritocracy, and discipline.
  • The Kalmyks were the last Mongol nomads to penetrate European territory, having migrated to Europe from Central Asia at the turn of the 17th century. In the winter of 1770–1771, approximately 200,000 Kalmyks began the journey from their pastures on the left bank of the Volga River to Dzungaria, through the territories of their Kazakh and Kyrgyz enemies. After several months of travel, only one-third of the original group reached Dzungaria in northwest China.[143]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ Especially western Kipchak dialects in the Golden Horde,[1] Chagatai in the Chagatai Khanate[2] and Old Uyghur in the Yuan dynasty.
  2. ^ Decades before Kublai Emperor announced the dynastic name "Great Yuan" in 1271, khagans (Great Khans) of the "Great Mongol State" (Yeke Mongγol Ulus) already started to use the Chinese title of Emperor (Chinese: 皇帝; pinyin: Huángdì) practically in the Chinese language since the enthronement of Genghis Emperor (成吉思皇帝; 'Chéngjísī Huángdì') in Spring 1206.[3]
  3. ^ a b As per modern historiographical norm, the "Yuan dynasty" in this article refers exclusively to the realm based in Dadu (present-day Beijing). However, the Han-style dynastic name "Great Yuan" (大元) as proclaimed by Kublai, as well as the claim to Chinese political orthodoxy were meant to be applied to the entire Mongol Empire.[9][10][11][12] In spite of this, "Yuan dynasty" is rarely used in the broad sense of the definition by modern scholars due to the de facto disintegrated nature of the Mongol Empire.
  4. ^ Including coins such as dirhams and paper currencies based on silver (sukhe) or silk, or the later small amounts of Chinese coins and paper Jiaochao currency of the Yuan dynasty.

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General and cited sources

Further reading

General surveys

  • Atwood, Christopher, P. Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire , New York: Facts on File (2004)
  • Bartold, Vasily. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (Trans. T. Minorsky & C. E. Bosworth), London: Luzac & Co. (1928)
  • Bartold, Vasily. Four Studies on Central Asia, vol. 1 (Trans. V. Minorsky and T. Minorsky), Leiden: Brill. (1956)
  • The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, (ed.) Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, Peter B. Golden 6 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • The Cambridge History of China, vol. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368, (ed.) Herbert Franke, Denis C. Twitchett 10 April 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  • The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, (ed.) J. A. Boyle 2 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Buell, Paul. 'Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire, 1200–1370' 2003
  • Howorth, Henry. History of the Mongols: From the 9th to the 19th Century, part 1. The Mongols proper and the Kalmuks (1876)
  • Howorth, Henry. History of the Mongols: From the 9th to the 19th Century, part 2. The so-called Tartars of Russia and Central Asia, 2 divions (1880)
  • Howorth, Henry. History of the Mongols: From the 9th to the 19th Century, part 3. The Mongols of Persia (1880)
  • Morgan, David. The Mongols (2007)
  • Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion, Yale University Press (2017). isbn 9780300125337

Administration, economy and finance

  • Allsen, Thomas T. (1987). Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251–1259. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520055278.
  • Thomas, Allsen. (1989). Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners, 1200-1260. Asia Major, 2(2), third series, 83-126. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41645437 29 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Badarch, Nyamaa (2005). The Coins of Mongol Empire and Clan Tamgha of Khans (XIII – XIV [Centuries]). Ulaanbaatar. ISBN 9789992904237.
  • Ciocîltan, Virgil (2012). The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-22666-1.
  • Enkhbold, Enerelt. (2019). "The role of the ortoq in the Mongol Empire in forming business partnerships", Central Asian Survey, 38:4, 531-547, DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2019.1652799 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  • Endicott-West, Elizabeth (1989). Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty. Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 9780674585256.
  • Kim, Hodong. "The Unity of the Mongol Empire and Continental Exchange over Eurasia," 28 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Journal of Central Eurasian Studies 1 (2009): 15–42.
  • Kolbas, Judith (2006). The Mongols in Iran: Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu, 1220–1309. Routledge. ISBN 9780700706679.
  • Lambton, Ann, K.S. (1988). Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia: Aspects of the Administrative Econmic and Social History, 11th-14th Century. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780887061332.
  • Lane, George (2003). Early Mongol Rule in Thirteenth-Century Iran: A Persian Renaissance. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415297509.
  • Ostrowsk, David (2010). Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304-1589. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521894104.
  • Prajakti, Kalra (2018). The Silk Road and the Political Economy of the Mongol Empire. Routledge. ISBN 9780415786997.
  • Vogel, Hans-Ulrich (2012). Marco Polo Was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues. Brill. ISBN 9789004231931.
  • Schurmann, Herbert (1956). Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty. Translation of Chapters 93 and 94 of the Yüan shih. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674432925.
  • Schurmann, Herbert. (1956). "Mongolian Tributary Practices of the Thirteenth Century," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 19(3/4), 304-389. doi:10.2307/2718506 27 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  • Smith, John (1970). "Mongol and Nomadic Taxation," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30, 46–85. doi:10.2307/2718765 27 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine

Culture, arts and science

  • Allsen, Thomas (1997). Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521583015.
  • Allsen, Thomas (2009). Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511497445.
  • Biran, Michal (ed.). (2019). Mobility Transformations and Cultural Exchange in Mongol Eurasia, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62(2–3). 27 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  • Buell, Paul (2010). A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era As Seen in Hu Sihui's Yinshan Zhengyao. Brill. ISBN 978-90-47-44470-1. [1] 13 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Kadoi, Yuka (2009). Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0748635825.
  • Pfeiffer, Judith (2014). Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th–15th Century Tabriz. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-26257-7.
  • Prazniak, Roxann (2019). Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0824876579.
  • “Islamic and Chinese Astronomy under the Mongols: a Little-Known Case of Transmission”, in : Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, Joseph W. Dauben, Menso Folkerts & Benno van Dalen, éds., From China to Paris. 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas. Series: Boethius 46, Stuttgart (Steiner), 2002, pp. 327–356.

Institutions

  • Allsen, Thomas T. (1986). Guard and Government in the Reign of The Grand Qan Möngke, 1251-59. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46(2), 495-521. doi:10.2307/2719141
  • Allsen, Thomas T. (2011). "Imperial Posts, West, East and North: A Review Article: Adam J. Silverstein, Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic Morld," Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 17:1, 237–76
  • Atwood, Christopher P. "Ulus Emirs, Keshig Elders, Signatures, and Marriage Partners: The Evolution of a Classic Mongol Institution," 9 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-Twentieth Centuries, (ed.) Sneath, D. (Bellington WA, 2006), pp. 141–174 Google Scholar.
  • Jackson, Peter. "YĀSĀ," Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2013, available at Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica 29 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine (accessed on 20 September 2016)
  • Munkuyev, N.Ts. (1977). A NEW MONGOLIAN P'AI-TZŬ FROM SIMFEROPOL. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 31(2), 185–215. Retrieved November 9, 2020, from A NEW MONGOLIAN P'AI-TZŬ FROM SIMFEROPOL 16 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  • Ostrowski, Donald. The tamma and the Dual-Administrative Structure of the Mongol Empire Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 61, no 2, 1998, p. 262–277 doi: 10.1017/S0041977X0001380X
  • Vasary, Istvan. (1976). THE GOLDEN HORDE TERM DARUĠA AND ITS SURVIVAL IN RUSSIA. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 30(2), 187–197. Retrieved November 9, 2020, from THE GOLDEN HORDE TERM DARUĠA AND ITS SURVIVAL IN RUSSIA 9 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine

Biography, society and gender

Diplomatic and military

  • Amitai-Preiss, Reuven (1995). Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281 (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  • Dashdondog, Bayarsaikhan (2011). The Mongols and the Armenians (1220–1335). Leiden: Brill. DOI: The Mongols and the Armenians (1220-1335)
  • Fiaschetti, Francesca (ed.). (2019). Diplomacy in the Age of Mongol Globalization, Eurasian Studies 17(2) 30 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Halperin, Charles (1988). Russia and The Golden Horde (Pennsylvania: Indiana University Press)
  • Henthorn, W. E. (1963). Korea: the Mongol invasions (Leiden: Brill)
  • Hsiao, Chi-chi'ng (1978). The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press)
  • Jackson, Peter. (2005). The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow and New York: Pearson Longman)
  • May, Timothy (2007). The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System (Yardley: Westholme Publishing)

External links

February 09, 2023
mongol, empire, confused, with, mughal, empire, 13th, 14th, centuries, largest, contiguous, land, empire, history, originating, present, mongolia, east, asia, height, stretched, from, japan, parts, eastern, europe, extending, northward, into, parts, arctic, ea. Not to be confused with Mughal Empire The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous land empire in history 5 Originating in present day Mongolia in East Asia the Mongol Empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to parts of Eastern Europe extending northward into parts of the Arctic 6 eastward and southward into parts of the Indian subcontinent attempted invasions of Southeast Asia and conquered the Iranian Plateau and westward as far as the Levant and the Carpathian Mountains Great Mongol Nationᠶᠡᠬᠡᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯᠤᠯᠤᠰ Yeke Monggol Ulus Middle Mongol 1206 1368Expansion of the Mongol Empire 1206 1294superimposed on a modern political map of EurasiaStatusKhaganate Nomadic empire CapitalAvarga 1206 1235 Karakorum 1235 1260 Khanbaliq 1271 1368 Common languagesMiddle MongolTurkic languages note 1 ChinesePersian and other languagesReligionTengrismShamanismBuddhism Tibetan Buddhism as state religion in Yuan dynasty Nestorian ChristianityIslamDemonym s MongolGovernmentElective monarchyLater also hereditaryKhagan Emperor note 2 1206 1227Genghis Khan 1229 1241Ogedei Khan 1246 1248Guyuk Khan 1251 1259Mongke Khan 1260 1294Kublai Khan nominal 1333 1368Toghon Temur nominal LegislatureKurultaiHistory Enthronement of Genghis Khagan Emperor1206 Pax Mongolica1250 1350 Division of the Mongol Empire1260 1294 Proclamation of the dynastic name Great Yuan note 3 1271 Fall of the Ilkhanate1335 Division of the Chagatai Khanate1347 Fall of the Yuan dynasty1368 Fall of the Golden Horde Great Horde 1502Area1206 4 4 000 000 km2 1 500 000 sq mi 1227 4 12 000 000 km2 4 600 000 sq mi 1294 4 23 500 000 km2 9 100 000 sq mi 1309 4 24 000 000 km2 9 300 000 sq mi CurrencyVarious note 4 Preceded by Succeeded byKhamag MongolKhwarazmian EmpireQara KhitaiJin dynastySouthern Song dynastyWestern XiaAbbasid CaliphateNizari Ismaili stateKievan Rus Volga BulgariaCumaniaAlaniaDali KingdomKimek Kipchak confederationSultanate of RumYenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate Chagatai KhanateGolden HordeIlkhanateYuan dynasty The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of several nomadic tribes in the Mongol homeland under the leadership of Temujin known by the more famous title of Genghis Khan c 1162 1227 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 Ogedei or from one of his other sons such as Tolui Chagatai or Jochi The Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ogedeid and Chagatayid factions but disputes continued among the descendants of Tolui A key reason for the split was the dispute over whether the Mongol Empire would become a sedentary cosmopolitan empire or would stay true to the Mongol nomadic and steppe based lifestyle After Mongke Khan died 1259 rival kurultai councils simultaneously elected different successors the brothers Ariq Boke and Kublai Khan who fought each other in the Toluid Civil War 1260 1264 and also dealt with challenges from the descendants of other sons of Genghis 7 8 Kublai successfully took power but war ensued as he sought unsuccessfully to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ogedeid families By the time of Kublai s death in 1294 the Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires each pursuing its own interests and objectives the Golden Horde khanate in the northwest the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia the Ilkhanate in the southwest and the Yuan dynasty note 3 in the east based in modern day Beijing 13 In 1304 during the reign of Temur the three western khanates accepted suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty 14 15 The part of the empire that fell first was the Ilkhanate which disintegrated in the period of 1335 1353 Next the Yuan dynasty collapsed and lost control of Tibetan Plateau and China proper in 1354 and 1368 respectively after its capital of Dadu was taken over by the Ming Chinese rebels 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 in historiography The Golden Horde had broken into competing khanates by the end of the 15th century and was defeated and thrown out of Eastern Europe in 1480 by the Grand Duchy of Moscow while the Chagatai Khanate lasted in one form or another until 1687 Contents 1 Name 2 History 2 1 Pre empire context 2 2 Rise of Genghis Khan 2 3 Early organization 2 3 1 Push into Central Asia 2 3 2 Religious policies 2 4 Death of Genghis Khan and expansion under Ogedei 1227 1241 2 4 1 Invasions of Kievan Rus and central China 2 4 2 Push into central Europe 2 5 Post Ogedei power struggles 1241 1251 2 5 1 Death of Guyuk 1248 2 6 Rule of Mongke Khan 1251 1259 2 6 1 Administrative reforms 2 6 2 New invasions of the Middle East and Southern China 2 6 3 Death of Mongke Khan 1259 2 7 Disunity 2 7 1 Dispute over succession 2 7 2 Mongol Civil War 2 7 3 Campaigns of Kublai Khan 1264 1294 2 8 Disintegration into competing entities 2 8 1 Development of the khanates 2 9 Rump states of the Mongol Empire 3 Military organization 4 Society 4 1 Law and governance 4 2 Religions 4 3 Arts and literature 4 4 Science 4 5 Mail system 5 Silk Road 6 Legacy 7 See also 8 Explanatory notes 9 References 9 1 Citations 9 2 General and cited sources 10 Further reading 10 1 General surveys 10 2 Administration economy and finance 10 3 Culture arts and science 10 4 Institutions 10 5 Biography society and gender 10 6 Diplomatic and military 11 External linksNameThe Mongol Empire referred to itself as ᠶᠡᠬᠡᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯᠤᠯᠤᠰ yeke Monggol ulus lit nation of the great Mongols or the great Mongol nation in Mongol or kur ulug ulus lit the whole great nation in Turkic 16 After the 1260 to 1264 succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Boke Kublai s power became limited to the eastern part of the empire centred on China Kublai officially issued an imperial edict on 18 December 1271 to name his realm Great Yuan Dai Yuan or Dai On Ulus and to establish the Yuan dynasty Some sources give the full Mongol name as Dai On Yehe Monggul Ulus 17 HistoryPre empire context Main article Proto Mongols Mongol tribes during the Khitan Liao dynasty 907 1125 The Old World on the eve of the Mongol invasions c 1200 The area around Mongolia Manchuria and parts of North China had been controlled by the Liao dynasty since the 10th century In 1125 the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty and attempted to gain control over former Liao territory in Mongolia In the 1130s the Jin dynasty rulers known as the Golden Kings successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation ruled at the time by Khabul Khan great grandfather of Genghis Khan 18 The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations khanlig Keraites Khamag Mongol Naiman Mergid and Tatar The Jin emperors following a policy of divide and rule encouraged disputes among the tribes especially between the Tatars and the Mongols in order to keep the nomadic tribes distracted by their own battles and thereby away from the Jin Khabul s successor was Ambaghai Khan who was betrayed by the Tatars handed over to the Jurchen and executed The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier resulting in a failed Jurchen counter attack in 1143 18 In 1147 the Jin somewhat changed their policy signing a peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan opening a long period of active hostilities The Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161 18 During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century the usually cold parched steppes of Central Asia enjoyed their mildest wettest conditions in more than a millennium It is thought that this resulted in a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock which significantly enhanced Mongol military strength 19 Rise of Genghis Khan Main article Rise of Genghis Khan See also Khamag Mongol and Genghis Khan Genghis Khan National Palace Museum in Taipei Taiwan Known during his childhood as Temujin Genghis Khan was a son of a Mongol chieftain As a young man he rose very rapidly by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait The most powerful Mongol leader at the time was Kurtait he was given the Chinese title Wang which means King 20 Temujin went to war against Kurtait now Wang Khan After Temujin defeated Wang Khan he gave himself the name Genghis Khan He then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin The term Mongol came to be used to refer to all Mongolic speaking tribes under the control of Genghis Khan His most powerful allies were his father s friend Khereid chieftain Toghrul and Temujin s childhood anda i e blood brother Jamukha of the Jadran clan With their help Temujin defeated the Merkit tribe rescued his wife Borte and went on to defeat the Naimans and the Tatars 21 Temujin forbade looting of his enemies without permission and he implemented a policy of sharing spoils with his warriors and their families instead of giving it all to the aristocrats 22 These policies brought him into conflict with his uncles who were also legitimate heirs to the throne they regarded Temujin not as a leader but as an insolent usurper This dissatisfaction spread to his generals and other associates and some Mongols who had previously been allies broke their allegiance 21 War ensued and Temujin and the forces still loyal to him prevailed defeating the remaining rival tribes between 1203 and 1205 and bringing them under his sway In 1206 Temujin was crowned as the khagan Emperor of the Yekhe Mongol Ulus Great Mongol State at a Kurultai general assembly council It was there that he assumed the title of Genghis Khan universal leader instead of one of the old tribal titles such as Gur Khan or Tayang Khan marking the start of the Mongol Empire 21 Early organization Genghis Khan ascended the throne in the Ikh Khuraldai region in the Onan river from the Jami al tawarikh Genghis Khan introduced many innovative ways of organizing his army for example dividing it into decimal subsections of arbans 10 soldiers zuuns 100 Mingghans 1000 and tumens 10 000 The Kheshig the imperial guard was founded and divided into day khorchin torghuds and night khevtuul guards 23 Genghis rewarded those who had been loyal to him and placed them in high positions as heads of army units and households even though many of them came from very low ranking clans 24 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 24 He appointed his stepbrother Shikhikhutug as supreme judge jarughachi ordering him to keep records of the empire In addition to laws regarding family food and the army Genghis also decreed religious freedom and supported domestic and international trade He exempted the poor and the clergy from taxation 25 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 26 Push into Central Asia Main article Mongol invasion of Central Asia Mongol Empire circa 1207 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 27 Before his death Genghis Khan divided his empire among his sons and immediate family making the Mongol Empire the joint property of the entire imperial family who along with the Mongol aristocracy constituted the ruling class 28 Religious policies Prior to the three western khanates adoption of Islam Genghis Khan and a number of his Yuan successors placed restrictions on religious practices they saw as alien Muslims including Hui and Jews were collectively referred to as Huihui Muslims were forbidden from halal or zabiha butchering while Jews were similarly forbidden from kashrut or shehita butchering 29 Referring to the conquered subjects as our slaves Genghis Khan demanded they no longer be able to refuse food or drink and imposed restrictions on slaughter Muslims had to slaughter sheep in secret 30 Among all the subject alien peoples only the Hui hui say we do not eat Mongol food Cinggis Qa an replied By the aid of heaven we have pacified you you are our slaves Yet you do not eat our food or drink How can this be right He thereupon made them eat If you slaughter sheep you will be considered guilty of a crime He issued a regulation to that effect In 1279 1280 under Qubilai all the Muslims say if someone else slaughters the animal we do not eat Because the poor people are upset by this from now on Musuluman Muslim Huihui and Zhuhu Jewish Huihui no matter who kills the animal will eat it and must cease slaughtering sheep themselves and cease the rite of circumcision 31 Genghis Khan arranged for the Chinese Taoist master Qiu Chuji to visit him in Afghanistan and also gave his subjects the right to religious freedom despite his own shamanistic beliefs Death of Genghis Khan and expansion under Ogedei 1227 1241 Main article Mongol invasions and conquests Coronation of Ogedei Khan in 1229 as the successor of Genghis Khan By Rashid al Din early 14th century Genghis Khan died on 18 August 1227 by which time the Mongol Empire ruled from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea an empire twice the size of the Roman Empire or the Muslim Caliphate at their height citation needed Genghis named his third son the charismatic Ogedei as his heir According to Mongol tradition Genghis Khan was buried in a secret location The regency was originally held by Ogedei s younger brother Tolui until Ogedei s formal election at the kurultai in 1229 32 Among his first actions Ogedei sent troops to subjugate the Bashkirs Bulgars and other nations in the Kipchak controlled steppes 33 In the east Ogedei 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 Ogedei s general Subutai captured the capital of Emperor Wanyan Shouxu in the siege of Kaifeng in 1232 34 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 Ogedei 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 35 36 Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin Two Han Chinese leaders Shi Tianze Liu Heima 劉黑馬 Liu Ni 37 and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army 38 Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogodei Khan 39 Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols 40 There were four Han Tumens and three Khitan Tumens with each Tumen consisting of 10 000 troops The Yuan dynasty created a Han army 漢軍 from Jin defectors and another of ex Song troops called the Newly Submitted Army 新附軍 41 In the West Ogedei s general Chormaqan destroyed Jalal ad Din Mingburnu the last shah of the Khwarizmian Empire The small kingdoms in southern Persia voluntarily accepted Mongol supremacy 42 43 In East Asia there were a number of Mongol campaigns into Goryeo Korea but Ogedei s attempt to annex the Korean Peninsula met with little success Gojong the king of Goryeo surrendered but later revolted and massacred Mongol darughachis overseers he then moved his imperial court from Gaeseong to Ganghwa Island 44 Invasions of Kievan Rus and central China Main articles Mongol invasion of Rus and Mongol invasion of China See also Mongol invasions of India Mongol invasions of Korea and Mongol conquest of Tibet The sack of Suzdal by Batu Khan in 1238 miniature from a 16th century chronicle Meanwhile in an offensive action against the Song dynasty Mongol armies captured Siyang yang the Yangtze and Sichuan but did not secure their control over the conquered areas The Song generals were able to recapture Siyang yang from the Mongols in 1239 After the sudden death of Ogedei s son Kochu in Chinese territory the Mongols withdrew from southern China although Kochu s brother Prince Koten invaded Tibet immediately after their withdrawal 21 Batu Khan another grandson of Genghis Khan overran the territories of the Bulgars the Alans the Kypchaks Bashkirs Mordvins Chuvash and other nations of the southern Russian steppe By 1237 the Mongols were encroaching upon Ryazan the first Kievan Rus principality they were to attack After a three day siege involving fierce fighting the Mongols captured the city and massacred its inhabitants They then proceeded to destroy the army of the Grand Principality of Vladimir at the Battle of the Sit River 45 The Mongols captured the Alania capital Maghas in 1238 By 1240 all Kievan Rus had fallen to the Asian invaders except for a few northern cities Mongol troops under Chormaqan in Persia connecting his invasion of Transcaucasia with the invasion of Batu and Subutai forced the Georgian and Armenian nobles to surrender as well 45 Giovanni de Plano Carpini the pope s envoy to the Mongol great khan travelled through Kiev in February 1246 and wrote They the Mongols attacked Russia where they made great havoc destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men and they laid siege to Kiev the capital of Russia after they had besieged the city for a long time they took it and put the inhabitants to death When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town but now it has been reduced almost to nothing for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery 46 Despite the military successes strife continued within the Mongol ranks Batu s relations with Guyuk Ogedei s eldest son and Buri the beloved grandson of Chagatai Khan remained tense and worsened during Batu s victory banquet in southern Kievan Rus Nevertheless Guyuk and Buri could not do anything to harm Batu s position as long as his uncle Ogedei was still alive Ogedei continued with offensives into the Indian subcontinent temporarily investing Uchch Lahore and Multan of the Delhi Sultanate and stationing a Mongol overseer in Kashmir 47 though the invasions into India eventually failed and were forced to retreat In northeastern Asia Ogedei agreed to end the conflict with Goryeo by making it a client state and sent Mongol princesses to wed Goryeo princes He then reinforced his kheshig with the Koreans through both diplomacy and military force 48 49 50 Push into central Europe Main article Mongol invasion of Europe The advance into Europe continued with Mongol invasions of Poland and Hungary When the western flank of the Mongols plundered Polish cities a European alliance among the Poles the Moravians and the Christian military orders of the Hospitallers Teutonic Knights and the Templars assembled sufficient forces to halt although briefly the Mongol advance at Legnica The Hungarian army their Croatian allies and the Knights Templar were beaten by the Mongols at the banks of the Sajo River on 11 April 1241 Before Batu s forces could continue on to Vienna and northern Albania news of Ogedei s death in December 1241 brought a halt to the invasion 51 52 As was customary in Mongol military tradition all princes of Genghis s line had to attend the kurultai to elect a successor Batu and his western Mongol army withdrew from Central Europe the next year 53 Today researchers doubt that Ogedei s death was the sole reason for the Mongols withdrawal Batu did not return to Mongolia so a new khan was not elected until 1246 Climatic and environmental factors as well as the strong fortifications and castles of Europe played an important role in the Mongols decision to withdraw 54 55 Post Ogedei power struggles 1241 1251 Following the Great Khan Ogedei s death in 1241 and before the next kurultai Ogedei s widow Toregene took over the empire She persecuted her husband s Khitan and Muslim officials and gave high positions to her own allies She built palaces cathedrals and social structures on an imperial scale supporting religion and education 56 She was able to win over most Mongol aristocrats to support Ogedei s son Guyuk But Batu ruler of the Golden Horde refused to come to the kurultai claiming that he was ill and that the climate was too harsh for him The resulting stalemate lasted more than four years and further destabilized the unity of the empire 56 Batu Khan consolidates the Golden Horde When Genghis Khan s youngest brother Temuge threatened to seize the throne Guyuk came to Karakorum to try to secure his position 57 Batu eventually agreed to send his brothers and generals to the kurultai convened by Toregene in 1246 Guyuk by this time was ill and alcoholic but his campaigns in Manchuria and Europe gave him the kind of stature necessary for a great khan He was duly elected at a ceremony attended by Mongols and foreign dignitaries from both within and without the empire leaders of vassal nations representatives from Rome and other entities who came to the kurultai to show their respects and conduct diplomacy 58 59 Guyuk Khan demanding Pope Innocent IV s submission The 1246 letter was written in Persian Guyuk took steps to reduce corruption announcing that he would continue the policies of his father Ogedei not those of Toregene He punished Toregene s supporters except for governor Arghun the Elder He also replaced young Qara Hulegu the khan of the Chagatai Khanate with his favorite cousin Yesu Mongke to assert his newly conferred powers 60 He restored his father s officials to their former positions and was surrounded by Uyghur Naiman and Central Asian officials favoring Han Chinese commanders who had helped his father conquer Northern China He continued military operations in Korea advanced into Song China in the south and into Iraq in the west and ordered an empire wide census Guyuk also divided the Sultanate of Rum between Izz ad Din Kaykawus and Rukn ad Din Kilij Arslan though Kaykawus disagreed with this decision 60 Not all parts of the empire respected Guyuk s election The Hashshashins former Mongol allies whose Grand Master Hasan Jalalud Din had offered his submission to Genghis Khan in 1221 angered Guyuk by refusing to submit Instead he murdered the Mongol generals in Persia Guyuk appointed his best friend s father Eljigidei as chief commander of the troops in Persia and gave them the task of both reducing the strongholds of the Nizari Ismailis and conquering the Abbasids at the center of the Islamic world Iran and Iraq 60 61 Death of Guyuk 1248 In 1248 Guyuk raised more troops and suddenly marched westward from the Mongol capital of Karakorum The reasoning was unclear Some sources wrote that he sought to recuperate at his personal estate Emyl others suggested that he might have been moving to join Eljigidei to conduct a full scale conquest of the Middle East or possibly to make a surprise attack on his rival cousin Batu Khan in Rus 62 Suspicious of Guyuk s motives Sorghaghtani Beki the widow of Genghis s son Tolui secretly warned her nephew Batu of Guyuk s approach Batu had himself been traveling eastward at the time possibly to pay homage or perhaps with other plans in mind Before the forces of Batu and Guyuk met Guyuk sick and worn out by travel died en route at Qum Senggir Hong siang yi eulh in Xinjiang possibly a victim of poison 62 A stone turtle at the site of the Mongol capital Karakorum Guyuk s widow Oghul Qaimish stepped forward to take control of the empire but she lacked the skills of her mother in law Toregene and her young sons Khoja and Naku and other princes challenged her authority To decide on a new great khan Batu called a kurultai on his own territory in 1250 As it was far from the Mongol heartland members of the Ogedeid and Chagataid families refused to attend The kurultai offered the throne to Batu but he rejected it claiming he had no interest in the position 63 Batu instead nominated Mongke a grandson of Genghis from his son Tolui s lineage Mongke was leading a Mongol army in Rus the northern Caucasus and Hungary The pro Tolui faction supported Batu s choice and Mongke was elected though given the kurultai s limited attendance and location it was of questionable validity 63 Batu sent Mongke under the protection of his brothers Berke and Tukhtemur and his son Sartaq to assemble a more formal kurultai at Kodoe Aral in the heartland The supporters of Mongke repeatedly invited Oghul Qaimish and the other major Ogedeid and Chagataid princes to attend the kurultai but they refused each time The Ogedeid and Chagataid princes refused to accept a descendant of Genghis s son Tolui as leader demanding that only descendants of Genghis s son Ogedei could be great khan 63 Rule of Mongke Khan 1251 1259 When Mongke s mother Sorghaghtani and their cousin Berke organized a second kurultai on 1 July 1251 the assembled throng proclaimed Mongke great khan of the Mongol Empire This marked a major shift in the leadership of the empire transferring power from the descendants of Genghis s son Ogedei to the descendants of Genghis s son Tolui The decision was acknowledged by a few of the Ogedeid and Chagataid princes such as Mongke s cousin Kadan and the deposed khan Qara Hulegu but one of the other legitimate heirs Ogedei s grandson Shiremun sought to topple Mongke 64 Shiremun moved with his own forces toward the emperor s nomadic palace with a plan for an armed attack but Mongke was alerted by his falconer of the plan Mongke ordered an investigation of the plot which led to a series of major trials all across the empire Many members of the Mongol elite were found guilty and put to death with estimates ranging from 77 to 300 though princes of Genghis s royal line were often exiled rather than executed 64 Mongke confiscated the estates of the Ogedeid and the Chagatai families 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 but thereafter the power of the great khan s throne remained firmly with the descendants of Tolui 64 Administrative reforms Mongke was a serious man who followed the laws of his ancestors and avoided alcoholism He was tolerant of outside religions and artistic styles leading to the building of foreign merchants quarters Buddhist monasteries mosques and Christian churches in the Mongol capital As construction projects continued Karakorum was adorned with Chinese European and Persian architecture One famous example was a large silver tree with cleverly designed pipes that dispensed various drinks The tree topped by a triumphant angel was crafted by Guillaume Boucher a Parisian goldsmith 65 Hulagu Genghis Khan s grandson and founder of the Il Khanate From a medieval Persian manuscript Although he had a strong Chinese contingent Mongke relied heavily on Muslim and Mongol administrators and launched a series of economic reforms to make government expenses more predictable His court limited government spending and prohibited nobles and troops from abusing civilians or issuing edicts without authorization He commuted the contribution system to a fixed poll tax which was collected by imperial agents and forwarded to units in need 66 His court also tried to lighten the tax burden on commoners by reducing tax rates He also centralized control of monetary affairs and reinforced the guards at the postal relays Mongke ordered an empire wide census in 1252 that took several years to complete and was not finished until Novgorod in the far northwest was counted in 1258 66 In another move to consolidate his power Mongke assigned his brothers Hulagu and Kublai to rule Persia and Mongol held China respectively In the southern part of the empire he continued his predecessors struggle against the Song dynasty In order to outflank the Song from three directions Mongke dispatched Mongol armies under his brother Kublai to Yunnan and under his uncle Iyeku to subdue Korea and pressure the Song from that direction as well 60 Kublai conquered the Dali Kingdom in 1253 after the Dali King Duan Xingzhi defected to the Mongols and helped them conquer the rest of Yunnan Mongke s general Qoridai stabilized his control over Tibet inducing leading monasteries to submit to Mongol rule Subutai s son Uryankhadai reduced the neighboring peoples of Yunnan to submission and went to war with the kingdom of Đại Việt under the Trần dynasty in northern Vietnam in 1258 but they had to draw back 60 The Mongol Empire tried to invade Đại Việt again in 1285 and 1287 but were defeated both times New invasions of the Middle East and Southern China Main article Mongol invasions of the Levant See also Mongol invasion of China and Siege of Baghdad 1258 Mongol invasion of Baghdad After stabilizing the empire s finances Mongke once again sought to expand its borders At kurultais in Karakorum in 1253 and 1258 he approved new invasions of the Middle East and south China Mongke put Hulagu in overall charge of military and civil affairs in Persia and appointed Chagataids and Jochids to join Hulagu s army 67 The Muslims from Qazvin denounced the menace of the Nizari Ismailis a well known sect of Shiites The Mongol Naiman commander Kitbuqa began to assault several Ismaili fortresses in 1253 before Hulagu advanced in 1256 Ismaili Grand Master Rukn al Din Khurshah surrendered in 1257 and was executed All of the Ismaili strongholds in Persia were destroyed by Hulagu s army in 1257 except for Girdkuh which held out until 1271 67 Fall of Baghdad 1258 The center of the Islamic Empire at the time was Baghdad which had held power for 500 years but was suffering internal divisions When its caliph al Mustasim refused to submit to the Mongols Baghdad was besieged and captured by the Mongols in 1258 and subjected to a merciless sack an event considered one of the most catastrophic events in the history of Islam and sometimes compared to the rupture of the Kaaba With the destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate Hulagu had an open route to Syria and moved against the other Muslim powers in the region 68 His army advanced toward Ayyubid ruled Syria capturing small local states en route The sultan Al Nasir Yusuf of the Ayyubids refused to show himself before Hulagu however he had accepted Mongol supremacy two decades earlier When Hulagu headed further west the Armenians from Cilicia the Seljuks from Rum and the Christian realms of Antioch and Tripoli submitted to Mongol authority joining them in their assault against the Muslims While some cities surrendered without resisting others such as Mayafarriqin fought back their populations were massacred and the cities were sacked 68 Death of Mongke Khan 1259 Meanwhile in the northwestern portion of the empire Batu s successor and younger brother Berke sent punitive expeditions to Ukraine Belarus Lithuania and Poland Dissension began brewing between the northwestern and southwestern sections of the Mongol Empire as Batu suspected that Hulagu s invasion of Western Asia would result in the elimination of Batu s own dominance there 69 In the southern part of the empire Mongke Khan himself led his army but did not complete the conquest of China Military operations were generally successful but prolonged so the forces did not withdraw to the north as was customary when the weather turned hot Disease ravaged the Mongol forces with bloody epidemics and Mongke died there on 11 August 1259 This event began a new chapter in the history of the Mongols as again a decision needed to be made on a new great khan Mongol armies across the empire withdrew from their campaigns to convene a new kurultai 70 Disunity Dispute over succession The Mongols at war Mongke s brother Hulagu broke off his successful military advance into Syria withdrawing the bulk of his forces to Mughan and leaving only a small contingent under his general Kitbuqa The opposing forces in the region the Christian Crusaders and Muslim Mamluks both recognizing that the Mongols were the greater threat took advantage of the weakened state of the Mongol army and engaged in an unusual passive truce with each other 71 In 1260 the Mamluks advanced from Egypt being allowed to camp and resupply near the Christian stronghold of Acre and engaged Kitbuqa s forces just north of Galilee at the Battle of Ain Jalut The Mongols were defeated and Kitbuqa executed This pivotal battle marked the western limit for Mongol expansion in the Middle East and the Mongols were never again able to make serious military advances farther than Syria 71 In a separate part of the empire Kublai Khan another brother of Hulagu and Mongke heard of the great khan s death at the Huai River in China Rather than returning to the capital he continued his advance into the Wuchang area of China near the Yangtze River Their younger brother Ariqboke took advantage of the absence of Hulagu and Kublai and used his position at the capital to win the title of great khan for himself with representatives of all the family branches proclaiming him as the leader at the kurultai in Karakorum When Kublai learned of this he summoned his own kurultai at Kaiping and nearly all the senior princes and great noyans in North China and Manchuria supported his own candidacy over that of Ariqboke 53 Mongol Civil War See also Toluid Civil War and Berke Hulagu war Kublai Khan Genghis Khan s grandson and founder of the Yuan dynasty Battles ensued between the armies of Kublai and those of his brother Ariqboke which included forces still loyal to Mongke s previous administration Kublai s army easily eliminated Ariqboke s supporters and seized control of the civil administration in southern Mongolia Further challenges took place from their cousins the Chagataids 72 73 74 Kublai sent Abishka a Chagataid prince loyal to him to take charge of Chagatai s realm But Ariqboke captured and then executed Abishka having his own man Alghu crowned there instead Kublai s new administration blockaded Ariqboke in Mongolia to cut off food supplies causing a famine Karakorum fell quickly to Kublai but Ariqboke rallied and re took the capital in 1261 72 73 74 In southwestern Ilkhanate Hulagu was loyal to his brother Kublai but clashes with their cousin Berke a Muslim and the ruler of the Golden Horde began in 1262 The suspicious deaths of Jochid princes in Hulagu s service unequal distribution of war booty and Hulagu s massacres of Muslims increased the anger of Berke who considered supporting a rebellion of the Georgian Kingdom against Hulagu s rule in 1259 1260 75 full citation needed Berke also forged an alliance with the Egyptian Mamluks against Hulagu and supported Kublai s rival claimant Ariqboke 76 Hulagu died on 8 February 1264 Berke sought to take advantage and invade Hulagu s realm but he died along the way and a few months later Alghu Khan of the Chagatai Khanate died as well Kublai named Hulagu s son Abaqa as new Ilkhan and nominated Batu s grandson Mongke Temur to lead the Golden Horde Abaqa sought foreign alliances such as attempting to form a Franco Mongol alliance against the Egyptian Mamluks 77 Ariqboqe surrendered to Kublai at Shangdu on 21 August 1264 78 Campaigns of Kublai Khan 1264 1294 Main article Kublai Khan s campaigns The samurai Suenaga facing Mongol s bomb and Goryeo s arrows Mōko Shurai Ekotoba 蒙古襲来絵詞 circa 1293 defeating the Mongol invasion army left Samurai Mitsui Sukenaga right Samurai Shiraishi clan In the south after the fall of Xiangyang in 1273 the Mongols sought the final conquest of the Song dynasty in South China In 1271 Kublai renamed the new Mongol regime in China as the Yuan dynasty and sought to sinicize his image as Emperor of China to win the control of the Chinese people Kublai moved his headquarters to Khanbaliq the genesis for what later became the modern city of Beijing His establishment of a capital there was a controversial move to many Mongols who accused him of being too closely tied to Chinese culture 79 80 The Mongols were eventually successful in their campaigns against Song China and the Chinese Song imperial family surrendered to the Yuan in 1276 making the Mongols the first non Chinese people to conquer all of China Kublai used his base to build a powerful empire creating an academy offices trade ports and canals and sponsoring arts and science Mongol records list 20 166 public schools created during his reign 81 Mongol warrior on horseback preparing a mounted archery shot After achieving actual or nominal dominion over much of Eurasia and successfully conquering China Kublai pursued further expansion His invasions of Burma and Sakhalin were costly and his attempted invasions of Đại Việt northern Vietnam and Champa southern Vietnam ended in devastating defeat but secured vassal statuses of those countries The Mongol armies were repeatedly beaten in Đại Việt and were crushed at the Battle of Bạch Đằng 1288 Nogai and Konchi the khan of the White Horde established friendly relations with the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate Political disagreement among contending branches of the family over the office of great khan continued but the economic and commercial success of the Mongol Empire continued despite the squabbling 82 83 84 In 1274 and again in 1281 Kublai Khan invaded Japan on two separate occasions However he was not able to conquer Japan Disintegration into competing entities Main article Division of the Mongol Empire The funeral of Chagatai Khan Major changes occurred in the Mongol Empire in the late 1200s Kublai Khan after having conquered all of China and established the Yuan dynasty died in 1294 He was succeeded by his grandson Temur Khan who continued Kublai s policies At the same time the Toluid Civil War along with the Berke Hulagu war and the subsequent Kaidu Kublai war greatly weakened the authority of the great khan over the entirety of the Mongol Empire and the empire fractured into autonomous khanates the Yuan dynasty and the three western khanates the Golden Horde the Chagatai Khanate and the Ilkhanate Only the Ilkhanate remained loyal to the Yuan court but endured its own power struggle in part because of a dispute with the growing Islamic factions within the southwestern part of the empire 85 After the death of Kaidu the Chatagai ruler Duwa initiated a peace proposal and persuaded the Ogedeids to submit to Temur Khan 86 87 In 1304 all of the khanates approved a peace treaty and accepted Yuan emperor Temur s supremacy 88 89 90 91 This established the nominal supremacy of the Yuan dynasty over the western khanates which was to last for several decades This supremacy was based on weaker foundations than that of the earlier Khagans and each of the four khanates continued to develop separately and function as independent states Nearly a century of conquest and civil war was followed by relative stability the Pax Mongolica and international trade and cultural exchanges flourished between Asia and Europe Communication between the Yuan dynasty in China and the Ilkhanate in Persia further encouraged trade and commerce between east and west Patterns of Yuan royal textiles could be found on the opposite side of the empire adorning Armenian decorations trees and vegetables were transplanted across the empire and technological innovations spread from Mongol dominions toward the West 92 Pope John XXII was presented a memorandum from the eastern church describing the Pax Mongolica 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 93 However while the four khanates continued to interact with one another well into the 14th century they did so as sovereign states and never again pooled their resources in a cooperative military endeavor 94 Development of the khanates Mongol rider Yuan dynasty A European depiction of the four khans Temur Yuan Chapar House of Ogedei Toqta Golden Horde and Oljaitu Ilkhanate in the Fleur des histoires d orient 95 In spite of his conflicts with Kaidu and Duwa Yuan emperor Temur established a tributary relationship with the war like Shan people after his series of military operations against Thailand from 1297 to 1303 This was to mark the end of the southern expansion of the Mongols When Ghazan took the throne of the Ilkhanate in 1295 he formally accepted Islam as his own religion marking a turning point in Mongol history after which Mongol Persia became more and more Islamic Despite this Ghazan continued to strengthen ties with Temur Khan and the Yuan dynasty in the east It was politically useful to advertise the great khan s authority in the Ilkhanate because the Golden Horde in Rus had long made claims on nearby Georgia 85 Within four years Ghazan began sending tribute to the Yuan court and appealing to other khans to accept Temur Khan as their overlord He oversaw an extensive program of cultural and scientific interaction between the Ilkhanate and the Yuan dynasty in the following decades 96 Ghazan s faith may have been Islamic but he continued his ancestors war with the Egyptian Mamluks and consulted with his old Mongol advisers in his native tongue He defeated the Mamluk army at the Battle of Wadi al Khazandar in 1299 but he was only briefly able to occupy Syria due to distracting raids from the Chagatai Khanate under its de facto ruler Kaidu who was at war with both the Ilkhans and the Yuan dynasty citation needed Struggling for influence within the Golden Horde Kaidu sponsored his own candidate Kobeleg against Bayan r 1299 1304 the khan of the White Horde Bayan after receiving military support from the Mongols in Rus requested assistance from both Temur Khan and the Ilkhanate to organize a unified attack against Kaidu s forces Temur was amenable and attacked Kaidu a year later After a bloody battle with Temur s armies near the Zawkhan River in 1301 Kaidu died and was succeeded by Duwa 97 98 Hungarian King Bela IV in flight from the Mongols under general Kadan of the Golden Horde Duwa was challenged by Kaidu s son Chapar but with the assistance of Temur Duwa defeated the Ogedeids Tokhta of the Golden Horde also seeking a general peace sent 20 000 men to buttress the Yuan frontier 99 Tokhta died in 1312 though and was succeeded by Ozbeg r 1313 41 who seized the throne of the Golden Horde and persecuted non Muslim Mongols The Yuan s influence on the Horde was largely reversed and border clashes between Mongol states resumed Ayurbarwada Buyantu Khan s envoys backed Tokhta s son against Ozbeg citation needed In the Chagatai Khanate Esen Buqa I r 1309 1318 was enthroned as khan after suppressing a sudden rebellion by Ogedei s descendants and driving Chapar into exile The Yuan and Ilkhanid armies eventually attacked the Chagatai Khanate Recognising the potential economic benefits and the Genghisid legacy Ozbeg reopened friendly relations with the Yuan in 1326 He strengthened ties with the Muslim world as well building mosques and other elaborate structures such as baths citation needed By the second decade of the 14th century Mongol invasions had further decreased In 1323 Abu Said Khan r 1316 35 of the Ilkhanate signed a peace treaty with Egypt At his request the Yuan court awarded his custodian Chupan the title of commander in chief of all Mongol khanates but Chupan died in late 1327 100 Civil war erupted in the Yuan dynasty in 1328 29 After the death of Yesun Temur in 1328 Tugh Temur became the new leader in Khanbaliq while Yesun Temur s son Ragibagh succeeded to the throne in Shangdu leading to the civil war known as the War of the Two Capitals Tugh Temur defeated Ragibagh but the Chagatai khan Eljigidey r 1326 29 supported Kusala elder brother of Tugh Temur as great khan He invaded with a commanding force and Tugh Temur abdicated Kusala was elected khan on 30 August 1329 Kusala was then poisoned by a Kypchak commander under Tugh Temur who returned to power The successor states of the Mongol Empire in 1335 the Ilkhanate Golden Horde Yuan dynasty and Chagatai Khanate Tugh Temur 1304 32 was knowledgeable about Chinese language and history and was also a creditable poet calligrapher and painter In order to be accepted by other khanates as the sovereign of the Mongol world he sent Genghisid princes and descendants of notable Mongol generals to the Chagatai Khanate Ilkhan Abu Said and Ozbeg In response to the emissaries they all agreed to send tribute each year 101 Furthermore Tugh Temur gave lavish presents and an imperial seal to Eljigidey to mollify his anger Rump states of the Mongol Empire Iron helmet Mongol Empire With the death of Ilkhan Abu Said Bahatur in 1335 Mongol rule faltered and 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 Temur d 1353 and Persian warlords Taking advantage of the chaos the Georgians pushed the Mongols out of their territory and the Uyghur commander Eretna established an independent state Eretnids in Anatolia in 1336 Following the downfall of their Mongol masters the loyal vassal the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia received escalating threats from the Mamluks and were eventually overrun in 1375 102 Along with the dissolution of the Ilkhanate in Persia Mongol rulers in China and the Chagatai Khanate were also in turmoil The plague known as the Black Death which started in the Mongol dominions and spread to Europe added to the confusion Disease devastated all the khanates cutting off commercial ties and killing millions 103 The plague may have taken 50 million lives in Europe alone in the 14th century 104 As the power of the Mongols declined chaos erupted throughout the empire as non Mongol leaders expanded their own influence The Golden Horde lost all of its western dominions including modern Belarus and Ukraine to Poland and Lithuania between 1342 and 1369 Muslim and non Muslim princes in the Chagatai Khanate warred with each other from 1331 to 1343 and the Chagatai Khanate disintegrated when non Genghisid warlords set up their own puppet khans in Transoxiana and Moghulistan Janibeg Khan r 1342 1357 briefly reasserted Jochid dominance over the Chaghataids Demanding submission from an offshoot of the Ilkhanate in Azerbaijan he boasted that today three uluses are under my control 105 Crimean Tatar khan Mengli Giray 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 The last Yuan ruler Toghan Temur r 1333 70 was powerless to regulate those troubles a sign that the empire had nearly reached its end His court s unbacked currency had entered a hyperinflationary spiral and the Han Chinese people revolted due to the Yuan s harsh impositions In the 1350s Gongmin of Goryeo successfully pushed Mongol garrisons back and exterminated the family of Toghan Temur Khan s empress while Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen managed to eliminate the Mongol influence in Tibet 105 Increasingly isolated from their subjects the Mongols quickly lost most of China to the rebellious Ming forces and in 1368 fled to their heartland in Mongolia After the overthrow of the Yuan dynasty the Golden Horde lost touch with Mongolia and China while the two main parts of the Chagatai Khanate were defeated by Timur Tamerlane 1336 1405 who founded the Timurid Empire However remnants of the Chagatai Khanate survived the last Chagataid state to survive was the Yarkent Khanate until its defeat by the Oirat Dzungar Khanate in the Dzungar conquest of Altishahr in 1680 The Golden Horde broke into smaller Turkic hordes that declined steadily in power over four centuries Among them the khanate s shadow the Great Horde survived until 1502 when one of its successors the Crimean Khanate sacked Sarai 106 The Crimean Khanate lasted until 1783 whereas khanates such as the Khanate of Bukhara and the Kazakh Khanate lasted even longer Military organizationMain article Mongol military tactics and organization Reconstruction of a Mongol warrior The number of troops mustered by the Mongols is the subject of some scholarly debate 107 but was at least 105 000 in 1206 108 The Mongol military organization was simple but effective based on the decimal system The army was built up from squads of ten men each arbans 10 people zuuns 100 Mingghans 1000 and tumens 10 000 109 The Mongols were most famous for their horse archers but troops armed with lances were equally skilled and the Mongols recruited other military specialists from the lands they conquered With experienced Chinese engineers and a bombardier corps which was expert at building trebuchets catapults and other machines the Mongols could lay siege to fortified positions sometimes building machinery on the spot using available local resources 109 Mongol general Subutai of the Golden Horde Forces under the command of the Mongol Empire were trained organized and equipped for mobility and speed Mongol soldiers were more lightly armored than many of the armies they faced but were able to make up for it with maneuverability Each Mongol warrior would usually travel with multiple horses allowing him to quickly switch to a fresh mount as needed In addition soldiers of the Mongol army functioned independently of supply lines considerably speeding up army movement 110 Skillful use of couriers enabled the leaders of these armies to maintain contact with each other Discipline was inculcated during a nerge traditional hunt as reported by Juvayni These hunts were distinctive from hunts in other cultures being the equivalent to small unit actions Mongol forces would spread out in a line surround an entire region and then drive all of the game within that area together The goal was to let none of the animals escape and to slaughter them all 110 Another advantage of the Mongols was their ability to traverse large distances even in unusually cold winters for instance frozen rivers led them like highways to large urban centers on their banks The Mongols were adept at river work crossing the river Sajo in spring flood conditions with thirty thousand cavalry soldiers in a single night during the Battle of Mohi April 1241 to defeat the Hungarian king Bela IV Similarly in the attack against the Muslim Khwarezmshah a flotilla of barges was used to prevent escape on the river citation needed Traditionally known for their prowess with ground forces the Mongols rarely used naval power In the 1260s and 1270s they used seapower while conquering the Song dynasty of China though their attempts to mount seaborne campaigns against Japan were unsuccessful Around the Eastern Mediterranean their campaigns were almost exclusively land based with the seas controlled by the Crusader and Mamluk forces 111 All military campaigns were preceded by careful planning reconnaissance and the gathering of sensitive information relating to enemy territories and forces The success organization and mobility of the Mongol armies permitted them to fight on several fronts at once All adult males up to the age of 60 were eligible for conscription into the army a source of honor in their tribal warrior tradition 112 SocietyMain article Society of the Mongol Empire Law and governance See also Organization of the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan The executed the long and full beard probably means he is not a Mongol has been thrown off a cliff The Mongol Empire was governed by a code of law devised by Genghis called Yassa meaning order or decree A particular canon of this code was that those of rank shared much the same hardship as the common man It also imposed severe penalties e g the death penalty if one mounted soldier following another did not pick up something dropped from the mount in front Penalties were also decreed for rape and to some extent for murder Any resistance to Mongol rule was met with massive collective punishment Cities were destroyed and their inhabitants slaughtered if they defied Mongol orders citation needed Under Yassa chiefs and generals were selected based on merit The empire was governed by a non democratic parliamentary style central assembly called kurultai in which the Mongol chiefs met with the great khan to discuss domestic and foreign policies Kurultais were also convened for the selection of each new great khan 113 Genghis Khan also created a national seal encouraged the use of a written alphabet in Mongolia and exempted teachers lawyers and artists from taxes citation needed The Mongols imported Central Asian Muslims to serve as administrators in China and sent Han Chinese and Khitans from China to serve as administrators over the Muslim population in Bukhara in Central Asia thus using foreigners to curtail the power of the local peoples of both lands 114 The Mongols were tolerant of other religions and rarely persecuted people on religious grounds This was associated with their culture and progressive thought Some historians of the 20th century thought this was a good military strategy when Genghis was at war with Sultan Muhammad of Khwarezm other Islamic leaders did not join the fight as it was seen as a non holy war between two individual powers citation needed Religions Main article Religion in the Mongol Empire Persian miniature depicting Ghazan s conversion from Buddhism to Islam At the time of Genghis Khan virtually every religion had found Mongol converts from Buddhism to Christianity from Manichaeism to Islam To avoid strife Genghis Khan set up an institution that ensured complete religious freedom though he himself was a shamanist Under his administration all religious leaders were exempt from taxation and from public service 115 Initially there were few formal places of worship because of the nomadic lifestyle However under Ogedei 1186 1241 several building projects were undertaken in the Mongol capital Along with palaces Ogedei built houses of worship for the Buddhist Muslim Christian and Taoist followers The dominant religions at that time were Tengrism and Buddhism although Ogedei s wife was a Nestorian Christian 116 Eventually each of the successor states adopted the dominant religion of the local populations the Mongol ruled Chinese Yuan dynasty in the East originally the Great Khan s domain embraced Buddhism and Shamanism while the three Western khanates adopted Islam 117 118 119 Arts and literature See also List of historical cities and towns of Mongolia and Mongolian literature The oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolian language is The Secret History of the Mongols which was written for the royal family some time after Genghis Khan s death in 1227 It is the most significant native account of Genghis s life and genealogy covering his origins and childhood through to the establishment of the Mongol Empire and the reign of his son Ogedei Another classic from the empire is the Jami al tawarikh or Universal History It was commissioned in the early 14th century by the Ilkhan Abaqa Khan as a way of documenting the entire world s history to help establish the Mongols own cultural legacy Mongol scribes in the 14th century used a mixture of resin and vegetable pigments as a primitive form of correction fluid 120 this is arguably its first known usage The Mongols also appreciated the visual arts though their taste in portraiture was strictly focused on portraits of their horses rather than of people citation needed Science A 1363 astronomical handbook with Middle Mongolian glosses Known as the Sanjufini Zij Mongols look on as Persian astronomers work Early 14th century illustration in the Compendium of Chronicles The Mongol Empire saw some significant developments in science due to the patronage of the Khans Roger Bacon attributed the success of the Mongols as world conquerors principally to their devotion to mathematics 121 Astronomy was one branch of science that the Khans took a personal interest in According to the Yuanshi Ogedei Khan twice ordered the armillary sphere of Zhongdu to be repaired in 1233 and 1236 and also ordered in 1234 the revision and adoption of the Damingli calendar 122 He built a Confucian temple for Yelu Chucai in Karakorum around 1236 where Yelu Chucai created and regulated a calendar on the Chinese model Mongke Khan was noted by Rashid al Din as having solved some of the difficult problems of Euclidean geometry on his own and written to his brother Hulagu Khan to send him the astronomer Tusi 123 Mongke Khan s desire to have Tusi build him an observatory in Karakorum did not reach fruition as the Khan died on campaign in southern China Hulagu Khan instead gave Tusi a grant to build the Maragheh Observatory in Persia in 1259 and ordered him to prepare astronomical tables for him in 12 years despite Tusi asking for 30 years Tusi successfully produced the Ilkhanic Tables in 12 years produced a revised edition of Euclid s elements and taught the innovative mathematical device called the Tusi couple The Maragheh Observatory held around 400 000 books salvaged by Tusi from the siege of Baghdad and other cities Chinese astronomers brought by Hulagu Khan worked there as well Kublai Khan built a number of large observatories in China and his libraries included the Wu hu lie ti Euclid brought by Muslim mathematicians 124 Zhu Shijie and Guo Shoujing were notable mathematicians in Yuan China The Mongol physician Hu Sihui described the importance of a healthy diet in a 1330 medical treatise Ghazan Khan able to understand four languages including Latin built the Tabriz Observatory in 1295 The Byzantine Greek astronomer Gregory Chioniades studied there under Ajall Shams al Din Omar who had worked at Maragheh under Tusi Chioniades played an important role in transmitting several innovations from the Islamic world to Europe These include the introduction of the universal latitude independent astrolabe to Europe and a Greek description of the Tusi couple which would later have an influence on Copernican heliocentrism Choniades also translated several Zij treatises into Greek including the Persian Zij i Ilkhani by al Tusi and the Maragheh observatory The Byzantine Mongol alliance and the fact that the Empire of Trebizond was an Ilkhanate vassal facilitated Choniades movements between Constantinople Trebizond and Tabriz Prince Radna the Mongol viceroy of Tibet based in Gansu province patronized the Samarkandi astronomer al Sanjufini The Arabic astronomical handbook dedicated by al Sanjufini to Prince Radna a descendant of Kublai Khan was completed in 1363 It is notable for having Middle Mongolian glosses on its margins 125 Mail system Main article Yam route A 1305 letter on a scroll measuring 302 by 50 cm or 9 ft 11 in by 1 ft 7 1 2 in from the Ilkhan Mongol Oljaitu to King Philip IV of France The Mongol Empire had an ingenious and efficient mail system for the time often referred to by scholars as the Yam It had lavishly furnished and well guarded relay posts known as ortoo set up throughout the Empire 126 A messenger would typically travel 40 kilometres 25 miles from one station to the next either receiving a fresh rested horse or relaying the mail to the next rider to ensure the speediest possible delivery The Mongol riders regularly covered 200 km 125 mi per day better than the fastest record set by the Pony Express some 600 years later citation needed The relay stations had attached households to service them Anyone with a paiza was allowed to stop there for re mounts and specified rations while those carrying military identities used the Yam even without a paiza Many merchants messengers and travelers from China the Middle East and Europe used the system When the great khan died in Karakorum news reached the Mongol forces under Batu Khan in Central Europe within 4 6 weeks thanks to the Yam 51 Genghis and his successor Ogedei built a wide system of roads one of which carved through the Altai mountains After his enthronement Ogedei further expanded the road system ordering the Chagatai Khanate and Golden Horde to link up roads in western parts of the Mongol Empire 127 Kublai Khan founder of the Yuan dynasty built special relays for high officials as well as ordinary relays that had hostels During Kublai s reign the Yuan communication system consisted of some 1 400 postal stations which used 50 000 horses 8 400 oxen 6 700 mules 4 000 carts and 6 000 boats citation needed In Manchuria and southern Siberia the Mongols still used dogsled relays for the Yam In the Ilkhanate Ghazan restored the declining relay system in the Middle East on a restricted scale He constructed some hostels and decreed that only imperial envoys could receive a stipend The Jochids of the Golden Horde financed their relay system by a special Yam tax citation needed Silk RoadMain article Silk Road See also Pax Mongolica and Black Death Tuda Mengu of the Golden Horde The Mongols had a history of supporting merchants and trade Genghis Khan had encouraged foreign merchants early in his career even before uniting the Mongols Merchants provided information about neighboring cultures served as diplomats and official traders for the Mongols and were essential for many goods since the Mongols produced little of their own Mongol government and elites provided capital for merchants and sent them far afield in an ortoq merchant partner arrangement In Mongol times the contractual features of a Mongol ortoq partnership closely resembled that of qirad and commenda arrangements however Mongol investors were not constrained using uncoined precious metals and tradable goods for partnership investments and primarily financed money lending and trade activities 128 Moreover Mongol elites formed trade partnerships with merchants from Italian cities including Marco Polo s family 129 As the empire grew any merchants or ambassadors with proper documentation and authorization received protection and sanctuary as they traveled through Mongol realms Well traveled and relatively well maintained roads linked lands from the Mediterranean basin to China greatly increasing overland trade and resulting in some dramatic stories of those who travelled through what would become known as the Silk Road Western explorer Marco Polo traveled east along the Silk Road and the Chinese Mongol monk Rabban Bar Sauma made a comparably epic journey along the route venturing from his home of Khanbaliq Beijing as far as Europe European missionaries such as William of Rubruck also traveled to the Mongol court to convert believers to their cause or went as papal envoys to correspond with Mongol rulers in an attempt to secure a Franco Mongol alliance It was rare however for anyone to journey the full length of Silk Road Instead merchants moved products like a bucket brigade goods being traded from one middleman to another moving from China all the way to the West the goods moved over such long distances fetched extravagant prices citation needed Gold dinar of Genghis Khan struck at the Ghazna Ghazni mint dated 1221 2 After Genghis the merchant partner business continued to flourish under his successors Ogedei and Guyuk Merchants brought clothing food information and other provisions to the imperial palaces and in return the great khans gave the merchants tax exemptions and allowed them to use the official relay stations of the Mongol Empire Merchants also served as tax farmers in China Rus and Iran If the merchants were attacked by bandits losses were made up from the imperial treasury citation needed Policies changed under the Great Khan Mongke Because of money laundering and overtaxing he attempted to limit abuses and sent imperial investigators to supervise the ortoq businesses He decreed that all merchants must pay commercial and property taxes and he paid off all drafts drawn by high ranking Mongol elites from the merchants This policy continued under the Yuan dynasty citation needed The fall of the Mongol Empire in the 14th century led to the collapse of the political cultural and economic unity along the Silk Road Turkic tribes seized the western end of the route from the Byzantine Empire sowing the seeds of a Turkic culture that would later crystallize into the Ottoman Empire under the Sunni faith In the East the Han Chinese overthrew the Yuan dynasty in 1368 launching their own Ming dynasty and pursuing a policy of economic isolationism 130 LegacySee also History of Mongolia Map showing the boundary of the 13th century Mongol Empire compared to today s Mongols in Mongolia Russia the Central Asian States and China The Mongol Empire at its height of the largest contiguous empire in history had a lasting impact unifying large regions Some of these such as eastern and western Russia and the western parts of China remain unified today 131 Mongols might have been assimilated into local populations after the fall of the empire and some of their descendants adopted local religions For example the eastern khanate largely adopted Buddhism and the three western khanates adopted Islam largely under Sufi influence 117 According to some specify interpretations Genghis Khan s conquests caused wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in certain geographic regions leading to changes in the demographics of Asia The non military achievements of the Mongol Empire include the introduction of a writing system a Mongol alphabet based on the characters of the Old Uyghur which is still used in Mongolia today 132 Tokhtamysh and the armies of the Golden Horde initiate the Siege of Moscow 1382 Some of the other long term consequences of the Mongol Empire include Moscow rose to prominence while it was still under the rule of the Mongol Tatar yoke some time after Russian rulers were accorded the status of tax collectors for the Mongols The fact that the Russians collected tribute and taxes for the Mongols meant that the Mongols themselves rarely visited the lands which they owned The Russians eventually gained military power and their ruler Ivan III completely overthrew the Mongols and formed the Russian Tsardom After the Great Stand on the Ugra River proved that the Mongols were vulnerable the Grand Duchy of Moscow gained independence Europe s knowledge of the known world was immensely expanded by the information which was brought back to it by ambassadors and merchants When Columbus sailed in 1492 his mission was to reach Cathay the land of the Grand Khan in China and give him a letter from the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile citation needed Some studies indicate that the Black Death which devastated Europe in the late 1340s may have traveled from China to Europe along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire In 1347 the Genoese possessor of Caffa a great trade emporium on the Crimean Peninsula came under siege by an army of Mongol warriors under the command of Janibeg After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army was reportedly withering from disease they decided to use the infected corpses as a biological weapon The corpses were catapulted over the city walls infecting the inhabitants 133 134 The Genoese traders fled transferring the plague via their ships into the south of Europe from where it rapidly spread The total number of deaths worldwide from the pandemic is estimated at 75 200 million with up to 50 million deaths in Europe alone 135 Dominican martyrs killed by Mongols during the Mongol invasion of Poland in 1260 Western researcher R J Rummel estimated that 30 million people were killed by the Mongol Empire Other researchers estimate that as many as 80 million people were killed with 50 million deaths being the middle ground The population of China fell by half during fifty years of Mongol rule Before the Mongol invasion the territories of the Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants after the conquest was completed in 1279 the 1300 census reported that China s total population was roughly 60 million While it is tempting to attribute this major decline in China s population solely to Mongol ferocity today scholars have mixed opinions about this subject Scholars such as Frederick W Mote argue that the wide drop in numbers reflects an administrative failure to keep records rather than a de facto decrease while others such as Timothy Brook argue that the Mongols reduced much of the south Chinese population and very debatably the Han Chinese population to an invisible status through cancellation of the right to passports and denial of the right to direct land ownership This meant that the Chinese had to depend on and be cared for chiefly by Mongols and Tartars which also involved recruitment into the Mongol army Other historians such as William McNeill and David O Morgan argue that the bubonic plague was the main factor behind China s demographic decline during this period citation needed The Islamic world was subjected to massive changes as a result of the Mongol invasions The population of the Iranian plateau suffered from widespread disease and famine resulting in the death of up to three quarters of its population possibly 10 to 15 million people Historian Steven Ward estimates that Iran s population did not reach its pre Mongol levels again until the mid 20th century 136 Mesopotamia for millennia a showplace and pinnacle of human civilization and achievement was depopulated and pastoralized never to resume its previous pre eminence In his Outline of History H G Wells attributed this to a Mongol prejudice against urban life I n this region Mesopotamia nomadism really did attempt and really did to a very considerable degree succeed in its attempt to stamp a settled civilized system out of existence When Jengis Khan first invaded China we are told that there was a serious discussion among the Mongol chiefs whether all the towns and settled populations should not be destroyed To these simple practitioners of the open air life the settled populations seemed corrupt crowded vicious effeminate dangerous and incomprehensible a detestable human efflorescence upon what would otherwise have been good pasture They had no use whatever for the towns But it was only under Hulagu in Mesopotamia that these ideas seem to have been embodied in a deliberate policy The Mongols here did not only burn and massacre they destroyed the irrigation system that had endured for at least eight thousand years and with that the mother civilization of all the Western world came to an end 137 David Nicole states in The Mongol Warlords terror and mass extermination of anyone opposing them was a well tested Mongol tactic 138 About half of the Russian population may have died during the invasion 139 However Colin McEvedy in Atlas of World Population History 1978 estimates the population of Russia in Europe dropped from 7 5 million prior to the invasion to 7 million afterward 138 Historians estimate that up to half of Hungary s two million population were victims of the Mongol invasion 140 Historian Andrea Peto says that Rogerius an eyewitness said that the Mongols killed everybody regardless of gender or age and the Mongols especially found pleasure in humiliating women 141 One of the more successful tactics employed by the Mongols was to wipe out urban populations that refused to surrender During the Mongol invasion of Rus almost all major cities were destroyed If they chose to submit the people were generally spared though this was not guaranteed For example the city of Hamadan in modern day Iran was destroyed and every man woman and child executed by Mongol general Subadai after surrendering to him but failing to have enough provisions for his Mongol scouting force Several days after the initial razing of the city Subadai sent a force back to the burning ruins and the site of the massacre to kill any inhabitants of the city who had been away at the time of the initial slaughter and had returned in the meantime Mongol armies made use of local peoples and their soldiers often incorporating them into their armies Prisoners of war sometimes were given the choice between death and becoming part of the Mongol army to aid in future conquests Due to the brutal methods employed to subdue their subjects Mongols maintained long lasting resentment from those they conquered This resentment towards the Mongol rule has been highlighted as a cause for the empire s rapid fracturing 142 In addition to intimidation tactics the rapid expansion of the empire was facilitated by military hardiness especially during bitterly cold winters military skill meritocracy and discipline The Kalmyks were the last Mongol nomads to penetrate European territory having migrated to Europe from Central Asia at the turn of the 17th century In the winter of 1770 1771 approximately 200 000 Kalmyks began the journey from their pastures on the left bank of the Volga River to Dzungaria through the territories of their Kazakh and Kyrgyz enemies After several months of travel only one third of the original group reached Dzungaria in northwest China 143 See alsoMughal Mongol genealogy Tellurocracy Xiongnu origin of Mongol Destruction under the Mongol Empire Mongol dynasty disambiguation Mongol khanate disambiguation Gokturk Khaganate Mongolization List of Mongol states List of medieval Mongol tribes and clansExplanatory notes Especially western Kipchak dialects in the Golden Horde 1 Chagatai in the Chagatai Khanate 2 and Old Uyghur in the Yuan dynasty Decades before Kublai Emperor announced the dynastic name Great Yuan in 1271 khagans Great Khans of the Great Mongol State Yeke Monggol Ulus already started to use the Chinese title of Emperor Chinese 皇帝 pinyin Huangdi practically in the Chinese language since the enthronement of Genghis Emperor 成吉思皇帝 Chengjisi Huangdi in Spring 1206 3 a b As per modern historiographical norm the Yuan dynasty in this article refers exclusively to the realm based in Dadu present day Beijing However the Han style dynastic name Great Yuan 大元 as proclaimed by Kublai as well as the claim to Chinese political orthodoxy were meant to be applied to the entire Mongol Empire 9 10 11 12 In spite of this Yuan dynasty is rarely used in the broad sense of the definition by modern scholars due to the de facto disintegrated nature of the Mongol Empire Including coins such as dirhams and paper currencies based on silver sukhe or silk or the later small amounts of Chinese coins and paper Jiaochao currency of the Yuan dynasty ReferencesCitations Kolodziejczyk Dariusz 2011 The Crimean Khanate and Poland Lithuania International Diplomacy on the European Periphery 15th 18th Century A Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents Leiden South Holland Brill ISBN 978 90 04 19190 7 via Google Books Kim Hyun Jin 2013 The Huns Rome and the Birth of Europe Cambridge University Press p 29 ISBN 978 1 107 06722 6 Retrieved 20 November 2016 via Google 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England New York NY Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 24331 5 Grousset Rene 1970 The Empire of the Steppes A History of Central Asia Translated by Walford from French Naomi New Brunswick NJ Rutgers University Press ISBN 9780813506272 Halperin Charles J 1985 Russia and the Golden Horde The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History Bloomington IN Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0 253 20445 5 Howorth Henry H 1965 London edition 1876 History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century Part I The Mongols Proper and the Kalmuks New York NY Burt Frankin Hull Mary 1997 The Mongol Empire World History Series Greenhaven Press ISBN 978 1 56006 312 4 Jackson Peter 1978 The dissolution of the Mongol Empire Central Asiatic Journal XXXII 208 351 Jackson Peter 2003 The Delhi Sultanate A Political and Military History Cambridge England New York NY Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 54329 3 Jackson Peter 2005 The Mongols and the West 1221 1410 Harlow England New York Longman ISBN 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Berkeley CA University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 04383 1 Sanders Alan J K 2010 Historical Dictionary of Mongolia Lanham Maryland Scarecrow Press ISBN 978 0 8108 6191 6 Saunders John Joseph 2001 The history of the Mongol conquests Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978 0 8122 1766 7 Rybatzki Volker 2009 The Early Mongols Language Culture and History Indiana University ISBN 978 0 933070 57 8 Sverdrup Carl November 2010 Numbers in Mongol Warfare In Rogers Clifford J DeVries Kelly France John eds Journal of Medieval Military History Vol 8 Woodbridge Suffolk Boydell amp Brewer ISBN 978 1 84383 596 7 Archived from the original on 6 October 2022 Retrieved 23 August 2020 via Google Books Vernadsky George 1953 The Mongols and Russia New Haven Yale University Press Vladimortsov Boris 1969 The Life of Chingis Khan B Blom Weatherford Jack 2004 Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World New York NY Crown and Three Rivers Press ISBN 978 0 609 80964 8 Further readingThis section uses bare URLs which are uninformative and vulnerable to link rot Please consider converting them to full citations to ensure the article remains verifiable and maintains a consistent citation style Several templates and tools are available to assist in formatting such as Reflinks documentation reFill documentation and Citation bot documentation April 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message General surveys Atwood Christopher P Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire New York Facts on File 2004 Bartold Vasily Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion Trans T Minorsky amp C E Bosworth London Luzac amp Co 1928 Bartold Vasily Four Studies on Central Asia vol 1 Trans V Minorsky and T Minorsky Leiden Brill 1956 The Cambridge History of Inner Asia The Chinggisid Age ed Nicola Di Cosmo Allen J Frank Peter B Golden Archived 6 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine The Cambridge History of China vol 6 Alien Regimes and Border States 907 1368 ed Herbert Franke Denis C Twitchett Archived 10 April 2022 at the Wayback Machine The Cambridge History of Iran vol 5 The Saljuq and Mongol Periods ed J A Boyle Archived 2 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine Buell Paul Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire 1200 1370 2003 Howorth Henry History of the Mongols From the 9th to the 19th Century part 1 The Mongols proper and the Kalmuks 1876 Howorth Henry History of the Mongols From the 9th to the 19th Century part 2 The so called Tartars of Russia and Central Asia 2 divions 1880 Howorth Henry History of the Mongols From the 9th to the 19th Century part 3 The Mongols of Persia 1880 Morgan David The Mongols 2007 Jackson Peter The Mongols and the Islamic World From Conquest to Conversion Yale University Press 2017 isbn 9780300125337Administration economy and finance Allsen Thomas T 1987 Mongol Imperialism The Policies of the Grand Qan Mongke in China Russia and the Islamic Lands 1251 1259 University of California Press ISBN 9780520055278 Thomas Allsen 1989 Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners 1200 1260 Asia Major 2 2 third series 83 126 Retrieved November 3 2020 from http www jstor org stable 41645437 Archived 29 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine Badarch Nyamaa 2005 The Coins of Mongol Empire and Clan Tamgha of Khans XIII XIV Centuries Ulaanbaatar ISBN 9789992904237 Ciociltan Virgil 2012 The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Brill ISBN 978 90 04 22666 1 Enkhbold Enerelt 2019 The role of the ortoq in the Mongol Empire in forming business partnerships Central Asian Survey 38 4 531 547 DOI 10 1080 02634937 2019 1652799 Archived 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine Endicott West Elizabeth 1989 Mongolian Rule in China Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty Harvard University Asia Center ISBN 9780674585256 Kim Hodong The Unity of the Mongol Empire and Continental Exchange over Eurasia Archived 28 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Journal of Central Eurasian Studies 1 2009 15 42 Kolbas Judith 2006 The Mongols in Iran Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu 1220 1309 Routledge ISBN 9780700706679 Lambton Ann K S 1988 Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia Aspects of the Administrative Econmic and Social History 11th 14th Century SUNY Press ISBN 9780887061332 Lane George 2003 Early Mongol Rule in Thirteenth Century Iran A Persian Renaissance Routledge ISBN 978 0415297509 Ostrowsk David 2010 Muscovy and the Mongols Cross Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier 1304 1589 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521894104 Prajakti Kalra 2018 The Silk Road and the Political Economy of the Mongol Empire Routledge ISBN 9780415786997 Vogel Hans Ulrich 2012 Marco Polo Was in China New Evidence from Currencies Salts and Revenues Brill ISBN 9789004231931 Schurmann Herbert 1956 Economic Structure of the Yuan Dynasty Translation of Chapters 93 and 94 of the Yuan shih Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0674432925 Schurmann Herbert 1956 Mongolian Tributary Practices of the Thirteenth Century Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 19 3 4 304 389 doi 10 2307 2718506Archived 27 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Smith John 1970 Mongol and Nomadic Taxation Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 30 46 85 doi 10 2307 2718765Archived 27 November 2020 at the Wayback MachineCulture arts and science Allsen Thomas 1997 Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521583015 Allsen Thomas 2009 Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780511497445 Biran Michal ed 2019 Mobility Transformations and Cultural Exchange in Mongol Eurasia Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62 2 3 Archived 27 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Buell Paul 2010 A Soup for the Qan Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era As Seen in Hu Sihui s Yinshan Zhengyao Brill ISBN 978 90 47 44470 1 1 Archived 13 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine Kadoi Yuka 2009 Islamic Chinoiserie The Art of Mongol Iran Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978 0748635825 Pfeiffer Judith 2014 Politics Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th 15th Century Tabriz Brill ISBN 978 90 04 26257 7 Prazniak Roxann 2019 Sudden Appearances The Mongol Turn in Commerce Belief and Art University of Hawaii Press ISBN 978 0824876579 Islamic and Chinese Astronomy under the Mongols a Little Known Case of Transmission in Yvonne Dold Samplonius Joseph W Dauben Menso Folkerts amp Benno van Dalen eds From China to Paris 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas Series Boethius 46 Stuttgart Steiner 2002 pp 327 356 Institutions Allsen Thomas T 1986 Guard and Government in the Reign of The Grand Qan Mongke 1251 59 Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46 2 495 521 doi 10 2307 2719141 Allsen Thomas T 2011 Imperial Posts West East and North A Review Article Adam J Silverstein Postal Systems in the Pre Modern Islamic Morld Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 17 1 237 76 Atwood Christopher P Ulus Emirs Keshig Elders Signatures and Marriage Partners The Evolution of a Classic Mongol Institution Archived 9 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Imperial Statecraft Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia Sixth Twentieth Centuries ed Sneath D Bellington WA 2006 pp 141 174 Google Scholar Jackson Peter YASA Encyclopaedia Iranica online edition 2013 available at Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica Archived 29 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine accessed on 20 September 2016 Munkuyev N Ts 1977 A NEW MONGOLIAN P AI TZŬ FROM SIMFEROPOL Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31 2 185 215 Retrieved November 9 2020 from A NEW MONGOLIAN P AI TZŬ FROM SIMFEROPOL Archived 16 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Ostrowski Donald The tamma and the Dual Administrative Structure of the Mongol Empire Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London vol 61 no 2 1998 p 262 277 doi 10 1017 S0041977X0001380X Vasary Istvan 1976 THE GOLDEN HORDE TERM DARUĠA AND ITS SURVIVAL IN RUSSIA Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 30 2 187 197 Retrieved November 9 2020 from THE GOLDEN HORDE TERM DARUĠA AND ITS SURVIVAL IN RUSSIA Archived 9 November 2020 at the Wayback MachineBiography society and gender Biran Michal ed 2017 In the Service of the Khans Elites in Transition in Mongol Eurasia Asiatische Studien 71 4 ISBN 9781108347990 Biran Michal Jonathan Brack amp Francesca Fiaschetti ed Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia Generals Merchants and Intellectuals Univ of California Press 2020 Broadbridge Anne 2018 Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781108347990 Paul Buell Some Royal Mongol Ladies Alaqa beki Ergene Qatun and Others Archived 21 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine World History Connected 2010 Lane George 2009 Daily Life in the Mongol Empire Hackett Publishing Company ISBN 978 0872209688 Wang May 1993 In the Service of the Khan Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol Yuan Period 1200 1300 Wiesbaden Harrassowitz ISBN 978 3 447 03339 8 McLynn Frank 2016 Genghis Khan His Conquests His Empire His Legacy Da Capo Press ISBN 978 0306825170 Ratchnevsky Paul 1993 Genghis Khan His Life and Legacy Wiley Blackwell ISBN 978 0631189497 Rossabi Morris 1988 Khubilai Khan His Life and Times University of California Press ISBN 978 0306825170 Weatherford Jack 2011 The Secret History of the Mongol Queens How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire Broadway Books ISBN 978 0307407160 Diplomatic and military Amitai Preiss Reuven 1995 Mongols and Mamluks The Mamluk Ilkhanid War 1260 1281 Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization Cambridge Cambridge University Press Mongols and Mamluks The Mamluk Ilkhanid War 1260 1281 Archived 2 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine Dashdondog Bayarsaikhan 2011 The Mongols and the Armenians 1220 1335 Leiden Brill DOI The Mongols and the Armenians 1220 1335 Fiaschetti Francesca ed 2019 Diplomacy in the Age of Mongol Globalization Eurasian Studies 17 2 Archived 30 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine Halperin Charles 1988 Russia and The Golden Horde Pennsylvania Indiana University Press Henthorn W E 1963 Korea the Mongol invasions Leiden Brill Hsiao Chi chi ng 1978 The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty Cambridge Harvard University Press Jackson Peter 2005 The Mongols and the West 1221 1410 Harlow and New York Pearson Longman May Timothy 2007 The Mongol Art of War Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System Yardley Westholme Publishing External linksGenghis Khan and the Mongols The Mongol Empire Mongols The Mongols in World History The Mongol Empire for students Archived 27 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine Paradoxplace Insight Pages on the Mongol Emperors William of Rubruck s Account of the Mongols Mongol invasion of Rus pictures Worldwide Death Toll Neumann Iver B Wigen Einar Remnants of the Mongol imperial tradition PDF The London School of Economics and Political Science Mongol Empire Google Earth permanent dead link Portals Asia History China IranMongol Empire at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Travel guides from Wikivoyage Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mongol Empire amp oldid 1137258472, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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