Mongol Empire

A

The Yuan Dynasty of China

After becoming the great khan, Kublai continued the war against the Southern Song dynasty, which governed the regions south of the Yangtze River. The long campaign against the Song effectively ended with the capture of its emperor in 1276, but the area around Guangzhou (also known as Canton) held out until 1279. Kublai founded the Yuan dynasty and proclaimed himself emperor of China. He moved the Mongol capital from Karakorum to the site now occupied by Beijing, which he named Khanbalik (romanized as Cambaluc).

Kublai had accomplished the Mongols’ ultimate conquest, bringing one of the world’s most advanced civilizations under Mongol domination. All of China was united under a single ruler for the first time in more than 300 years. In addition, the kingdoms of Korea and the mainland of Southeast Asia were reduced to docile tributaries (payers of tribute).

Kublai’s overseas expeditions were less successful. An army sent to the island of Java (now part of Indonesia) was tricked by Prince Wijaya, a local ruler, into destroying his enemies. Wijaya then forced his unwitting allies to withdraw by a skillful guerrilla campaign. Even more disastrous were Kublai’s attempts to invade Japan. In 1274 a typhoon, celebrated in Japanese history as the kamikaze (“divine wind”), destroyed the entire Mongol armada sent to invade Japan. A similar disaster ended a second invasion attempt in 1281.

In China, Kublai’s reign was a period of peace, commercial prosperity, religious tolerance, and a cultural flowering. Kublai himself converted to Buddhism and made it the official religion of his empire. He lived in a style of dazzling opulence that belied his nomadic origins. He also encouraged contacts with the outside world, giving audience to ambassadors and merchants from many nations. His curiosity about Christianity led to a visit in 1275 by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, who ended up staying in China for 17 years as Kublai’s civil servant. Polo’s accounts of his travels and experiences gave Europeans their first inside view of the great civilization in the East.

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A

1

Decline of the Yuan Dynasty

The decline of the Yuan dynasty began with Kublai’s death in 1294. His successors were prevented by dynastic conflict, lack of discipline, and short-lived reigns from achieving any renown. Only Kublai ruled longer than his final successor, Tokon-Temur, who took power in 1333. During his reign, constant intrigues and dissensions among the Mongol aristocracy encouraged the outbreak of revolts. By the late 1350s the greater part of southern China was in the hands of various guerrilla leaders.

One rebel, a former Buddhist monk named Zhu Yuanzhang, had gained control over the entire area south of the Yangtze River by 1368. The Mongols, who were involved in their own internal quarrels, seemed almost indifferent to the loss of this vast region, and they offered no effective resistance to Zhu’s invasion of the north that year. Tokon-Temur fled, and Zhu made a triumphal entry into Khanbalik. He founded the Ming dynasty, which ruled China until 1644.  

B

The Jagatai Khanate of Central Asia

To his second son, Jagatai, Genghis Khan gave a territory stretching westward from what is now China’s westernmost region, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to the area southeast of the Aral Sea. His domain came to be known as the Jagatai khanate.

The central location of this khanate made it a strategic communications zone of the Mongol Empire. It was also the weakest of the Mongol khanates. Jagatai khans were made and unmade by the great khans, who through the reign of Kublai Khan maintained a tight grip over the khanate’s affairs.

Jagatai and his early successors continued the Mongols’ traditional nomadic way of life in the eastern part of the khanate. The major cities of the west were mostly inhabited by Turkic-speaking Muslims. They had a settled way of life based on agriculture and regarded their Mongol overlords as barbarians.

In the 14th century the authority of the Jagatai khans over their Muslim subjects diminished sharply. The Jagatai khanate lost Transoxiana (roughly corresponding to present-day Uzbekistan) to the Turkic aristocracy in 1347. The Jagatai khans’ rule was thereafter confined to the eastern region of the original khanate, lasting there until the 1500s.

B

1

Rise of Tamerlane

By 1370 Transoxiana had become the first conquest of Tamerlane. He came from the Barlas tribe of Mongols, who had settled in Transoxiana in the 1200s and over time had adopted Turkic Muslim culture. Originally a minor aristocrat, Tamerlane concocted a mythical descent from Genghis Khan and rose to power by an adroit combination of treachery and military genius. By 1402 he loosely controlled an empire stretching from India to the Mediterranean Sea. Tamerlane’s rise to power signaled the end of the Mongol Empire. His exploits delivered the fatal blow to the empire’s two westernmost khanates, the Golden Horde of Russia and the Il-Khanid dynasty of Southwest Asia.

C

The Golden Horde of Russia

To his eldest son, Jochi, Genghis Khan gave a vast and indeterminate domain extending from east of present-day Kazakhstan to the banks of the Volga River in western Russia. Upon Jochi’s death in 1227, his territory was divided by his heirs. The western portion went to his second son, Batu, who subsequently led the Mongol campaign into Europe and thereby extended his domain westward to the Danube River.

Batu’s khanate became known as the Golden Horde. (The Turkic word ordu, from which the word horde is derived, means an encampment.) It was also known as the khanate of Kipchak, after the Kipchak Turks who originally dominated the region. Over time, they mingled with their Mongol conquerors, and their Turkic language gradually replaced Mongolian. The Mongols themselves became known to Europeans as Tatars (or Tartars), after the Turkic-speaking people who made up a large portion of their forces.

Batu established his capital, Sarai, on the eastern bank of the lower Volga, near modern Volgograd. He allowed the local Russian princes to keep their thrones as long as they paid tribute and homage to him. This system operated without significant resistance for more than 130 years.

Islam became the official religion of the Golden Horde under Özbeg (Uzbek). His long and prosperous reign, from 1313 to 1341, is generally regarded as the golden age of the Russian Mongols. A period of anarchy followed, during which the real ruler of the Golden Horde was a general named Mamay. With his defeat in 1380 by the Russian grand prince of Muscovy (a Russian principality), Dmitry Donskoy, the Russians seemed on the verge of overthrowing the Golden Horde.

However, the Mongol khan Tokhtamish intervened. He saw an opportunity to expand his domain in southern Siberia, the khanate of the White Horde, which abutted the eastern border of the Golden Horde. By the end of 1378 Tokhtamish occupied Sarai. The final clash between Mamay and Tokhtamish resulted in a complete victory for the White Horde. Now also master of the Golden Horde, Tokhtamish sacked the Russian capital of Moscow in 1382 and reduced the Russians once again to the status of vassals and tributaries.

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