We have made many episodes on the history
of the Mongol Empire: about its creation, early successes, armies and much more. But no
empire survives the tides of history and the fate of each is to fall. The Mongol Empire was indeed
no exception. In today’s documentary, we take you through the collapse of the unified Mongol Empire,
as well as the fall of its successor khanates. And while we see what went wrong for the
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and don’t forget to take care of your pair! The fall of the Mongol Empire is poorly
represented in most popular discussions. Often inaccurately, it is stated that it collapsed
upon the death of its founder, Chinggis Khan, in 1227, and the four khanates- the Golden Horde,
Ilkhanate, Chagatai Khanate and Yuan Dynasty- emerged from this ruin. However, this is
demonstrably incorrect. After Chinggis’ death, the Mongol Empire remained unified for
another 33 years. The successors of Chinggis remained not just surprisingly unified, but
extraordinarily committed to expanding the empire. His son and successor Ögedei Khaan truly
developed the belief in Mongol world domination, as no longer were conquests undertaken based on
lengthy justification, but just for the sake of conquest. Simply remaining an independent power
became an act of revolt against Mongol rule, for Heaven had decreed all people must submit
to rule of the Chinggisids. In Ögedei’s reign, Mongol armies completed the conquest of north
China, largely overran Iran and the Caucasus, and conquered the western steppes before driving
into Hungary and Poland in 1241. It was on the initiative of Ögedai and his advisers that the
Mongol Empire received a proper administrative structure. Rather than leave the conquered
population at the mercy of the Mongolian princes, on the influence of his advisers Ögedai oversaw
the establishment of branch secretariats across the empire, which essentially divided
the empire in three large provinces. The governments of each secretariat
was responsible for regular taxation, civilian governance and reconstruction after the
initial conquests, and answered to the Central Secretariat based in Qaraqorum, the head of
which served as the prime minister of the empire. These secretariats were often in
competition with the Mongol princes who saw the lands of the empire as existing
solely to be exploited by the Chinggisids, and acted as obstacles to the secretariats’ goals
of restoration and protection of the population. Ögedai’s successor Güyük’s two year reign,
sandwiched between regencies of imperial widows, made the 1240s a brief stagnation
of the Mongol dream of conquest. But a grandson of Chinggis named Möngke seized
power and was enthroned as Great Khan in 1251, killing a great many potential rivals to power.
Möngke had despised the instability of the 1240s, and launched a new effort to consolidate
central authority and renew the conquests on a global level. For this he needed to leverage
the resources of the entire empire for this goal, and enacted a massive, Asia-wide census to do so,
through restrengthened secretariat. The result was titanic armies simultaneously operating in
China under Möngke and his brother Khubilai, while another great force under his brother
Hülegü pushed west to conquer the last independent powers of the Islamic world.
For an observer on the ground at the end of the 1250s, there was no reason to doubt the
inevitability of Mongolian success. All powers had so far failed to withstand them, and this great
push seemed poised to bring an even greater swath of the world under their hegemony. Soon all would
be subject to the Grand Khan. However, Möngke’s campaign against the Song Dynasty became bogged
down in sieges, mud and rain in Sichuan province. Disease, possibly cholera from tainted
water, ran rampant among Möngke’s soldiers, and in the summer of 1259 Möngke too succumbed
to it. The succession was an issue once more; while none of Möngke’s sons ever seemed to have
been considered candidates, there is a slight indication that Möngke’s youngest full-brother,
Ariq Böke, was the closest Möngke had to an heir. Ariq Böke had been left in the imperial capital
of Qaraqorum to head the government in Möngke’s absence, and in quick order, the Central
Secretariat in Qaraqorum supported Ariq Böke, as did Möngke’s sons. Considering it had
previously taken years to settle on candidates, it could be that Möngke had left instructions
for Ariq to become either regent, or Great Khan, in event of Möngke’s death to ensure a smooth
transition. Soon after learning of Möngke’s demise, Ariq began to organize a quriltai
to have himself elected as Khan of Khans. This did not sit well with Ariq’s oldest surviving
brother, Khubilai. Khubilai and Möngke had had a poor relationship. Khubilai’s confrontations with
the North China Secretariat, his pretensions to greater autonomy and perhaps even independence,
had resulted in Möngke Khaan removing most of Khubilai’s powers and executing many of Khubilai’s
officials. Khubilai was only removed from the proverbial dog house on the eve of Möngke’s
final campaign against the Song Dynasty. On Möngke’s death in 1259, while the rest of the
army withdrew to ferry the Khaan’s body back to Mongolia, Khubilai continued to campaign.
Khubilai saw his window for rulership open, but needed more military victories to his name to
make himself a more viable candidate. The stench of having been removed from office by Möngke
may have been too great to ignore, as well as Khubilai’s own interest in Chinese culture making
him an uneasy choice for more traditional Mongols. Doubtless, he expected great victories against
the Song Dynasty would improve his standing. Expecting there to be some time before the
next quriltai was held, Khubilai battled the Song until a message arrived from his
wife, Chabi, in November 1259. It informed Khubilai that his younger brother Ariq Böke was
planning an election for the summer of 1260, and expected Khubilai’s support. Reluctantly
Khubilai abandoned his campaign against the Song, but did not return to Mongolia. Instead, in the
first days of 1260, Khubilai arrived in Kaiping in what is now Inner Mongolia. Better known
as by its later name of Shangdu, or Xanadu, it had been constructed by Khubilai in imitation
of a Chinese city, and as a quasi-capital it had previously gotten Khubilai in trouble with
Möngke and his ministers. It was here that, in the spring of 1260, Khubilai had himself
declared Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. While pro-Khubilai biographers such as
Marco Polo or Rashīd al-Dīn portrayed Ariq as rebelling against Khubilai, it appears in
truth that Khubilai had essentially usurped power. By Mongolian standards, his election was decidedly
illegal; it lacked representation from the other descendants of Chinggis Khan’s children, and
was not done in Qaraqorum or Chinggis’ homeland along the Onon and Kherlen Rivers. Instead
it was held in Khubilai’s Chinese-style city close to China, and accompanied by the trappings
of Chinese-rulership, including Khubilai giving himself a Chinese era name. Ariq Böke continued
with a more traditionally styled election held in July 1260. For the first time, the
Mongol Empire had two declared Great Khans. After a summer of posturing and back and forth, by
the end of the year the two brothers were at war. Though Khubilai would emerge the victor,
the consequences of the Toluid Civil War were immense. After taking the surrender of Ariq,
Khubilai invited the other heads of the family to come to a quriltai to decide Ariq’s fate and
confirm Khubilai’s election. None came. In the four years of war, the Mongol Empire had
transformed. In the far west of the empire, the head of Jochi’s descendants, Berke, had gone
to war with Khubilai’s other surviving brother, Hülegü. Berke was a Muslim, and while
his anger at Hülegü’s sack of Baghdad played a role in the hostilities, Berke was also
furious at Hülegü’s occupation of the Caucasus, northern Iran and Anatolia. These were lands Berke
considered as belonging to the Jochid lineage. After learning of Möngke’s death
and the war between his brothers, Hülegü had taken control of these lands,
and killed Berke’s representatives there. In normal circumstances, the Great Khan would
have mediated in such a despite over lands, for such things had happened before. But
due to the war between Khubilai and Ariq, there was no one to intervene between Berke
and Hülegü. Thus they went to war in 1262, concurrent with the Toluid Civil War. By the
time Khubilai had overcome Ariq, the western khanates were effectively independent powers.
The Mongol Empire was irrevocably broken apart, but not into the 4 khanates of popular knowledge.
From the 1260s until the early 1300s, there were actually closer to 6 khanates, ruled by
the descendants of the various sons and grandsons of Chinggis Khan. Before the 1310s, the Golden
Horde was two independent khanates ruled by the descendants of Jochi: the ulus of Batu, the White
Horde, and the ulus of Orda, the Blue Horde. Additionally, the descendants of Chagatai had
their Chagatai Khanate; an Ögedeid Khanate, ruled by Ögedei’s grandson Qaidu, dominated both his own
ulus and the Chagatayids until his death in 1301; the descendants of Khubilai ruled in the
Yuan Dynasty in China; and the descendants of Khubilai’s brother Hülegü ruled over most
of the Middle East in the Ilkhanate. Only in the early 1300s with the dissolution of the
Ögedeid Khanate, and subjugation of the Blue Horde by Özbeg of the Golden Horde, do we
arrive at the well-known “Four Khanates.” Now, we look at the continued history, and
collapse, of the most prominent khanates; the Ilkhanate, the Chagatai Khanate,
the Yuan Dynasty, and the Golden Horde. Established in the 1260s by Hülegü, the sacker of
Baghdad, the Ilkhanate is perhaps one of the best understood of the Mongol khanates with a rich
body of surviving primary source material. The greatest is the chronicle of Rashīd al-Dīn,
an Ilkhanid vizier who wrote the immense Jāmi’ al-Tawārīkh, which forms not only one of the
most important sources on the Mongol Empire, but also of the Ilkhanate’s history
up to the early fourteenth century. Generally, Rashīd al-Dīn portrayed the early
Ilkhanate as a period of instability, with khans more interested in hunting, feasting and
drinking rather than governing, allowing greedy viziers and military commanders to have their
way. This was punctuated with succession struggles affected by an increasingly powerful noyad. The
noyad were the descendants of the non-Chinggisid generals who served alongside Hülegü, and had been
granted lands and peoples to support themselves. They took keen interest in khans who were kinder
to their privileges. This was coupled with famines, economic woes from intense corruption
and foolish policies, including a failed attempt to introduce paper money, as well as expensive,
periodic wars with the Ilkhanate’s neighbours. To Rashīd al-Dīn, this instability ended with
the accession of Ghazan as Il-Khan in 1295. Though Rashīd likely exaggerates the previous
instability in order to glorify his patron Ghazan, there seems to be strong support for a redirection
of the Ilkhanate. Aside from the most obvious, which was Ghazan’s conversion of Islam and efforts
to tie the legitimacy of the Ilkhanate to it, Ghazan oversaw economic revitalization. A major
effort was directed to reducing abuses of the empire’s agricultural base and farming population.
From limiting the numbers of officials, clerks and Mongols who sought to provide for themselves
by extraordinary demands on the population, to stamping out bandity with highway patrols.
These were accompanied by monetary reforms and new silver currency, bearing not Mongolian
inscriptions but the shahada and Ghazan’s title of padishah-i islam. Measurements and weights
throughout the Ilkhanate were ordered standardized based on those in Tabriz to facilitate trade
between regions. Canals and underground waterways were built to provide water for cities and
irrigation. He also forbid the practice of enticing young women into prostitution. He
must have had some success, as he soon had the funds for massive new construction projects at
Tabriz, including a magnificent tomb for himself. Along the Ilkhanate’s borders, he concluded a
peace treaty with Toqta Khan of the Golden Horde, and invaded the Mamluk Sultanate, scoring the only
notable victory of the Mongol-Mamluk war near Homs in December 1299 [Wadi al-Khaznadar], though
ultimately withdrew before the onset of summer. In 1304 Ghazan, like all good Mongol princes,
died in his early 30s. During his reign, he had succeeded in killing a great many potential rivals
to the throne, but produced no heirs. His brother Öljeitü [r. 1304-1316] thus succeeded him, and
continued many of Ghazan’s policies; unlike him, he wavered between multiple faiths
and won no victories over the Mamluks, but with the other khanates he recognized
the overlordship of the Great Khan in the great Mongol peace of 1304. So was the pax
mongolica finally, if briefly, instated. Öljeitü’s greatest success compared to his brother
was that he actually had a son to succeed him. When Öljeitü died in 1316, aged 36, his 12 year
old son Abū Sa’īd was raised to the throne under the guidance of the regent, the powerful noyan
Choban. Abū Sa’īd never wavered in his faith; he was the first Ilkhan who was raised, and would
die, a Sunni Muslim, who unlike his father and uncle never showed interest in Shi’ism. Choban,
as described by the great scholar of the Ilkhanate Charles Melville, saw himself as a servant of
the Chinggisid dynasty, albeit an exceptionally powerful one, who combined adherence to the khans
with observing shari’a law. So Choban protected the young Abū Sa’īd and ensured he had a proper
Islamic education, teaching him to read, write and speak Persian and Arabic, while also versing
him in the history and genealogies of the house of Chinggis Khan and the noyad. Abū Sa’īd throughout
his life maintained a love of poetry and music, and after peace was reached with the Mamluks,
exchanges poems with the Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. Abū Sa’īd Il-Khan’s early reign was often
tumultuous. Dominated by Choban Noyan, the two fought off Chagatayid and Golden Horde
invasions and internal rebellions, during which the young Abū Sa’īd earned the epithet ba’atar for
his courage after throwing himself into battle. Despite working well together and
achieving peace with the Mamluks, Abū Sa’īd’s desire for Choban’s daughter, the
beautiful Baghdad Khatun, resulted in Abū Sa’īd killing almost all of Choban’s family, including
the great noyan himself. After Choban’s death, Abū Sa’īd’s sole rule was remembered as
a golden age by succeeding generations. It was in this period that the famous traveller
Ibn Battuta passed through the Ilkhanate, remarking that Abū Sa’īd was still a beardless
youth, and the most beautiful of God’s creatures. Yet despite no lack of effort on his
part, the khan failed to produce an heir. When it became clear that no child would form in
Baghdad Khatun’s belly, Abū Sa’īd’s eyes wandered, and fell onto Dilshad Khatun. She was a daughter
of Dimashq Khwājā; Baghdad Khatun’s brother, who Abū Sa’īd had murdered several years prior.
With a new target for his affections, he began to ignore Baghdad Khatun, particularly when Dilshad
Khatun became pregnant with his first child. As Baghdad Khatun’s influence waned, Abū
Sa’īd did not realize the mistake he had made. In November 1335, when Abū Sa’īd was marching
north to confront a Golden Horde attack, Baghdad Khatun is alleged to have made her
move. In the account of Ibn Battuta’s —a man, it should be noted, who greatly enjoyed a good
yarn— after one last bout of sexual intercourse, Baghdad Khatun wiped down Abū Sa’īd with a
poisoned handkerchief. Regardless of the veracity of Battuta’s tale, as this was far from the
only exaggerated story he told of women and sex, Abū Sa’īd was dead, only 30 years old. This is
popularly cited as the end of the Ilkhanate. With Abū Sa’īd’s death, the line of Hülagü became
functionally extinct. Abū Sa’īd’s uncle Ghazan, had pruned the lineage, and alcoholism took care
of much of the rest. The fact that few Il-Khans lived past 35, with fewer and fewer heirs each
generation, has led many to search for underlying causes beyond just alcohol. Scholars such as Anne
Broadbridge have suggested this was a consequence of inbreeding, given the Il-Khans’ preferences for
marrying into the same families over generations. The combined effects of rampant alcohol abuse
among both men and women and the consanguinity may explain the alarming drop off in fertility
of the Ilkhanid elite over the last decades of the thirteenth century. While Hülagü had produced
quite the brood of little Chinggisids—at least 25 sons and daughters— by the end of the century
Ghazan had only a daughter survive childhood, while his brother Öljeitü had numerous children
stillborn or dying young. From his twelve wives, Öljeitü only had three children ever reach
marriageable age; Abū Sa’īd and two daughters, one of whom still predeceased him. Abū Sa’īd himself,
despite considerable efforts, only succeeded in impregnating his widow Dilshad Khatun. There
were no surviving brothers, sons or clear male figure of the line of Hülagü to head the state.
Yet the explanation of Abū Sa’īd’s death without heir directly causing the fall of the Ilkhanate
has been, in the opinion of scholars like Charles Melville, somewhat overstated. The image of the
Ilkhanate falling without a decline —a counter to Edward Gibbon— encourages us to overlook problems
which had developed. Essentially, Melville notes, a gap had widened between the military elite,
the noyad, and the Il-Khan, which accompanied a lack of respect for the Chinggisids. The death
of a monarch with no clear heir was hardly a new issue in the Mongol Empire. The quriltai system
wherein a candidate was confirmed by the princes could supply new khans at need, with a regent
heading things until this could be sorted out. The unified Mongol Empire and other khanates
were ruled in this fashion at times. In the form of Baghdad Khatun the Ilkhanate certainly
had a powerful woman to step into the role. The well-connected Baghdad Khatun was described
as an intimidating, intelligent and proud woman, who openly walked around with a sword strapped to
her waist and greatly influenced matters of state. In the opinion of some, Abū Sa’īd was bossed
around by her. In a more classic Mongolian system, Baghdad Khatun would have been an obvious regent.
But as Melville argues, the actions of the khans from Ghazan onwards had alienated the military
elite. More or less, they must have felt disenfranchised from the government and that the
old Mongolian way of life was being abandoned. Certainly, Islamization was the most obvious
demonstration of this. Ghazan and Öljeitü both abandoned the traditional secret burials of
Mongol Khans in favour of massive, expensive, and very public mausoleums. The quriltai as a
means of choosing the next ruler and affecting major decisions was abandoned, and even the end
of the war with the Mamluks —not by conquest, but by diplomacy— must have felt like a betrayal of
Mongol imperial ideology. By removing their stake in government, and not replacing it with a new
loyalty to adhere to in the replacement system, the Il-Khans had gradually undermined the need of
the noyad to maintain Chinggisid ideology or rule. When Abū Sa’īd came to the throne in 1317, he was
but a 12-year-old boy. The long period of Choban’s regency further reduced the khan’s authority
and increased that of the military elite. Only after Choban’s death in 1327 did Abū Sa’īd
really rule in his own right, and did so for only eight years. His vizier, Ghiyath al-Dīn
Muhammad, the son of the late Rashīd al-Dīn, sought to enforce tax reforms that would have
strengthened the hand of the central government towards the regional princes and their appanages.
It seems to have been an ineffective measure that only angered these military princes. Per
Melville’s theory, the only outcome of such failed measures was only widening the gap
between the Il-khan and the military elite. On Abū Sa’īd’s death in November 1335, it fell
to the vizier Ghiyath al-Dīn Muhammad to try and steer the ship in the face of Özbeg
Khan’s invasion. Only five days later, on December 5th, Ghiyath al-Dīn orchestrated the
enthronement of the new Khan, a man named Arpa Ke’un. Arpa was not a descendant of Hülagü,
but of Hülagü’s younger brother Ariq Böke. Plucked from obscurity by Ghiyath al-Dīn, he
was chosen for his ability to lead the army, for all indication is that Arpa Khan
was a man of military background, an “old school Mongol,” in the words of every
secondary source that mentions him. Arpa was given command of the Ilkhanid army, and in winter
1335 forced Özbeg back to the Golden Horde. Arpa Khan returned triumphant, and Ghiyath al-Dīn
had high hopes for his new protege. Arpa was a competent commander proven in his defence of the
Ilkhanate, a promising figure to rally the Mongols around. Apparently, he had little taste for court
procedure or niceties, and it is unclear if he was a Muslim. One anonymous Armenian chronicler
asserts Arpa was a Christian, and at the very least he was very proud of the “old ways.” We
might wonder if Ghiyath al-Dīn was deliberate here too, choosing a man who would be more palatable
to the noyad due to his distaste of courtly life. In the opinion of Oleg Grabar and Sheila Blair,
it was shortly after Arpa’s ascension that Ghiyath al-Dīn ordered the commission of a Great Mongol
Shahnama, a wonderfully illustrated version of the Persian national epic by Firdausi. An undertaking
of massive expense, given the large and lovingly detailed artwork, it certainly indicates that the
top levels of the Ilkhanid elite did not imagine they were entering into a crisis anytime soon.
But Arpa Khan was not on solid footing. Abū Sa’īd’s widow, the pregnant Dilshad Khatun, had
fled to ‘Ali-Padshah, the governor of Diyarbakir. ‘Ali-Padshah’s sister, Abū Sa’īd’s mother Hajji
Khatun, also opposed Arpa’s enthronement. In an effort to shore up his legitimacy, Arpa Khan
was married to Abū Sa’īd’s sister, Sati Bey; commanders who had been alienated or jailed by
Abū Sa’īd were given expensive gifts or freed from prison. And the blame for Abū Sa’īd’s
death was laid squarely on Baghdad Khatun, who never had the chance to assume the regency.
Accused not just of poisoning Abū Sa’īd, but of treason with the Golden Horde,
Baghdad Khatun was executed, supposedly beaten to death by a Greek slave with a club.
Arpa Khan still looked for enemies in the wrong direction. ‘Ali-Padshah rallied those
unhappy with Arpa’s placement as Khan, an energetic man who might reduce their
privileges. Dilshad Khatun had finally given birth to Abū Sa’īd’s only child, a girl,
but this did not stop Ali-Padshah's manoeuvring. At the start of 1336 ‘Ali-Padshah raised his own
candidate, Musa, as Il-Khan. Supposedly a grandson of a former Il-Khan, Musa was entirely a puppet
of ‘Ali-Padshah. In alliance with Hajji Khatun and Shaykh Hasan Jalayir, who had once been forced
to give up his wife Baghdad Khatun to Abū Sa’īd, ‘Ali-Padshah in the name Musa Il-Khan armed a
revolt against Arpa Il-Khan. In the April of 1336, Arpa’s army was defeated in the field. He and
Ghiyath al-Dīn Muhammad were soon captured and killed. So ended the reign of Arpa Khan, the
final Il-Khan to wield any individual authority. Arpa’s death can be considered the true end of
the Ilkhanate, for it removed any attachment the regional commanders held to the Ilkhanid state.
‘Ali-Padshah’s enthronement of Musa Khan gave all of them the realization that each, too, could rule
through his own puppet Chinggisid, if he happened to have one on hand. From 1335 until 1343, no less
than 8 Il-Khans were declared by these commanders. Most are known only by their names and who
controlled them. The allies who had taken down Arpa Khan immediately fought each other
and appointed their own candidates. By 1338, a grandson of Choban named Hasan-i Küchik - Little
Hasan enthroned his grandfather’s widow Sati Bey, daughter of the late Il-Khan Öljeitü, sister
of Abū Sa’īd and also the widow of Arpa Khan. For the first time, late in 1338,
a Chinggisid woman became Khan. Coins were minted in her name bearing the title of
khan, the khutba was read in her name and she was officially the ruler of the Ilkhanate, such as it
was. But Sati Bey Khan, the only Chinggisid female Khan, held no real power, and largely was a tool
through which Little Hasan maintained his power. By the middle of 1339 she was married off to the
next puppet khan before disappearing in the 1340s. The pretext of an Ilkhanate was maintained until
the 1350s, when the final puppet ruler was deposed in 1353. The new Persianized Turko-Mongolian
Dynasties in northwestern Iran and Iraq, the Chobanids and Jalayirids, claimed descent
and legitimacy from being generals of Il-Khans, but did not take the title themselves. Eastwards,
rule fell to local dynasties and warlords, while westwards new Turkic beyliks,
from the Qara Qoyunlu to the Osmanli, rose. Chinggisid legitimacy as the basis for rule
did not long outlast Abū Sa’īd, and it took a surprising figure to reinstate its legitimacy
in the region; Temür-i-lang, or, Tamerlane. Tamerlane had risen to power from the ruins
of Chagatai Khanate. This middle ulus remains more poorly understood of the khanates, and its
history is messy, complicated and awash with minor khans vying for power. For most of the thirteenth
century the Chagatais had been dominated by Qaidu, a grandson of Ögedei Khaan. The Khanate of the
Ögedeids was centred around the region later known as Dzungaria, in today’s eastern Kazakhstan
and China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. Both Great Khans Ögedei and Güyük had
enjoyed the pastures of this region. But following the seizure of power by Möngke Khaan
in 1251, the new Great Khan had ordered a purge of the Ögedeids and Chagatayids. Most of the princes
descended from Ögedei were killed, and their lands seized by the Central Government. Only a few
minor princes survived, including the young Qaidu. Qaidu remained quiet in his isolated
pastures until after Möngke’s death in 1259. In the aftermath, Qaidu steadily sought to bring
the former Ögedeid lands back under his control, fighting with the Chagatai Khans and
backed, briefly, by the Golden Horde. By the 1270s, Qaidu was strong enough to not
just reconstruct the Ögedeid khanate, and declare himself its khan, but also begin to bring
the disunited Chagatais under his influence. In 1282 he appointed Du’a, a grandson of Chagatai,
to the Chagatayid throne. Together, Du’a and Qaidu proved a dangerous set of allies, and would raid
the Yuan Empire of Khubilai Khaan, even briefly arriving in the former capital of Qaraqorum.
Their influence was great, stretching from western Mongolia to the borders of India, where
Du’a’s sons would attack the Delhi Sultanate. Contrary to popular belief though, there is
no evidence that Qaidu ever tried to contend for the position of Great Khan. He was Khan
of the Ögedeids, and no friend to Khubilai, but never sought to challenge Khubilai
for total supremacy over the Mongols. After Qaidu died of injuries sustained in battle
in 1301, the Chagatai Khan Du’a helped organize a peace between the Mongol Khanates, in fear that
the other khans might cooperate against him. In 1304 and 1305, the Mongols once again
recognized the supremacy of the Great Khan, then Khubilai’s grandson Temür-Ölejitü, albeit
nominally. Until the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the western khanates would not just continue
to adhere to a fictional overlordship of the Yuan Khans, but also exchange embassies
and tribute. The Khans of the Golden Horde, for instance, enjoyed revenues from lands
in China which had once belonged to Jochi. With this gap in hostilities, Du’a and his
successors, with cooperation of the Yuan Dynasty, dismantled the Ögedeid Khanate and
divided its lands between them. After Du’a’s death in 1307, over the next 27
years his six sons succeeded each other to the Chagatayid throne. The rapid successions
brought instability to the Chagatayids, and made the khanate’s leadership less able to
respond to an emerging divide within the state. There was competition between the various sons,
for those who sought to remain true to nomadism and the old ways, and those influenced by Islam
and the urbanized culture of the wealthy cities of Transoxania. As the khans grew increasingly
found of this western wealth of the khanate, the princes and lords in the eastern part of
the khanate, who remained nomadic and much less influenced by Islam, felt ever-more left
out of power. When the last of Du’a’s sons, Tarmashirin, came to the Chagatayid throne
in 1331, his efforts at islamization, while also never even visiting the eastern half of the
khanate, provided the spark that set off tensions. In summer 1334, a rebellion arose in this eastern
part of the khanate against Tarmashirin Khan. In quick order Tarmashirin was killed, and
in the matter of succession all hell broke loose. For thirty years the succession had been
confined to Du’a’s sons, but with Tarmashirin dead the position was open to all claimants. Various
contenders, of different lineages and different faiths, fought for the throne, and were usually
overthrown almost as soon as they took power. The legitimacy of the Chagatayids Khans was eroded
as more and more regional lords acted as their own rulers, at best paying nominal heed to whoever
had most recently claimed the title of khan. At various times, there were even several khans
reigning simultaneously. By 1347 in Transoxania, a non-Chinggisid, Qazaghan, deposed the reigning
khan and began ruling through puppet khans. In the same year, in the eastern part of the
khanate the lords elected their own khan, Tughluq-Temür, a descendant of Du’a. With
now two major rival claimants for power, 1347 becomes the usual date in scholarship for the
division of the Chagatai Khanate into two realms: Transoxania in the west, sometime still called the
Chagatai Khanate, and Moghulistan east of the Syr Darya River. Both halves of the Chagatai Khanate
considered themselves the true heirs of Chagatai, and referred to the other with disparaging
terms. In Moghulistan in the 1350s, Tughluq-Temür Khan converted to Islam,
cementing the process of Islamization there. However, the sources indicate that the process of
conversion of the nomads of Moghulistan continued well into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
After the murder of Emir Qazaghan at the end of the 1350s, Tughluq-Temür Khan used
this as a prextet to invade Transoxania. In two campaigns over 1360 and 1361, Tughluq-Temür
enforced a reunification of the Chagatai Khanate. In Transoxania Tughluq-Temür installed his
son Ilyas as the regional governor before withdrawing to Moghulistna. Many tribal leaders
joined Tughluq-Temür while others fled, including Hajji Beg, the chief of the Barlas. One member
of the upper echelons of the Barlas did not flee, and was able to convince the conquering
Tughluq-Temür Khan to appoint him as head of the Barlas in Hajji Beg’s absence. This
was the first appearance of the young Temür; though you may perhaps know him better by
the nicknames given to him later in life that refer to his limp: Aksak Temür in Turkish,
Temür-i-lang in Persian, which in English became Temür the Lame: Tamerlane.
The Chagatai Khan Tughluq-Temür did not long enjoy his conquest, for like all
good Chinggisid monarchs, he suddenly died in his early 30s in 1363. So powerful had he been
though, that his descendants continued to rule in parts of Moghulistan through to the seventeenth
century. Without his father’s backing, Ilyas was driven out of Transoxania in 1365 by a coalition
of forces under Qazaghan’s grandson, Emir Husayn, and Temür of the Barlas. Soon after, Temür and
his ally Husayn were at each other’s throats, a competition in which Temür emerged the victor.
In 1370 the Emir Temür was master of Transoxania. So began Tamerlane’s great wars of conquest,
and the transition from Chagatayid Transoxania to Temürid. Meanwhile, the Eastern Chagatayids
in Moghulistan continued to rule in often rather-petty minor khanates. The very last of
Chagatai’s descendants would only be removed from power in 1705 [Yarkant Khanate], by another Mongol
state; the non-Chinggisid Dzungars. With that, we turn eastwards to Mongol rule in China.
By the time of Khubilai Khan’s death in 1294, he had outlived his designated heir, passing it
instead onto his drunken grandson Temür Öljeitü. In the almost 40 years from Khubilai’s death
to the ascension of Toghon Temür Khan in 1333, nine khans were enthroned: of them, only Temür
Öljeitü reigned over a decade. Rampant alcoholism and assassinations meant few khans lived past 35.
Temür Öljeitü attempted to continue the policies of his grandfather, but within a year the treasury
was nearly empty, almost totally spent in lavish gifts for the princes after his enthronement.
He learned too of the intense corruption of the Yuan court. The quota for court and capital
officials was set at 2,600 persons. In the first year of Temür Öljeitü’s reign, it was found to
be over 10,000. A 1303 investigation led to some 18,000 clerks and officials being charged with
bribery. In typical fashion, Temür Öljeitü lacked the commitment to push through with charges,
and most of the accused maintained their posts. While it has been common to attest the Yuan
Dynasty’s economic failings to corruption and lavish gift-giving—of which there was no shortage
of— recent studies have highlighted a greater struggle. The fourteenth century was the start
of the Little Ice Age, a global climatic shift towards generally cooler and wetter temperatures.
These strongly affected the Asian monsoon season, which in the fourteenth century manifested into
a general trend of intense colds and snowfall in the Eurasian steppe, droughts in north China and
unending rains and typhoons in southern China. These began to be felt in the very
first years of Temür Öljeitü’s reign. In 1295, typhoons struck the Yangzi River
delta; the Yellow River broke its banks in multiple places and caused repeated flooding;
and a dry spell from the previous years resulted in plagues of locusts that eradicated crops and
continued for the rest of the decade. In Mongolia, harsher winters starved herds and forced
thousands south to seek support from the Khaan. These ecological problems directly
tied to the Yuan’s economic woes. Khubilai continued the Song policy of huang zheng,
government-provided disaster relief in the form of cash, grain, rice, animals and other supplies. It
fit well into Khubilai’s efforts at reconstruction and relieving the burdens of the lower classes.
None of Khubilai’s heirs dared repeal such a law, for it was a basis of Yuan legitimacy. However,
in a century of unprecedented climatic disasters over a vast geographic area, this was an
impossible burden. The detailed Chinese records and the Yuanshi reveal a dynasty facing
yearly crises. From 1272 until 1357, there was a major famine somewhere in China almost every
other year; over 56 earthquakes were recorded; super typhoons on the southern coast coincided
with super snowstorms in the steppe. Exceptionally cold winters and unexpected frosts meant certain
crops could no longer be grown in the north. The densely populated Yangzi River Delta, home to one
of the most economically and agriculturally vital areas of the empire, suffered annual droughts,
flooding, epidemics, starvation, and typhoons which destroyed towns and farmland, causing
thousands more to die in the ensuing famines. In 1301 alone, a spring drought in the Yangzi
Delta was followed by a massive typhoon; arable farmland was destroyed for
50 kilometers along the coastline, and a 40 meter high wave pushed 280 kilometres
inland. 17,000 were killed during the storm, and 100,000 starved in the aftermath. Only a month
later flooding displaced people in Manchuria; a freak August snowstorm killed herds in
Mongolia in Mongolia; the imperial capital of Dadu was flooded; and a locust plague
struck Hebei province. Survivors needed government relief. Grain and rice shortages
caused the Yuan to cover costs only with cash, and to provide more cash, more had to be printed,
to the point it outstripped government revenues. Inflation was the result, and Yuan paper money
became ever more worthless over the 1300s. With seemingly unending waves of natural
calamities and an ever-more worthless currency, it seemed the Yuan were losing the Mandate
of Heaven, the right to rule China. On Temür Öljeitü’s death in 1307 without surviving
children, factions formed around his nephews. His nephew Qaishan was a man of the steppe with
no love or understanding of Chinese culture. Hoping to rule like a nomad through his noyad
- Mongol military elite, lavish gifts, princely titles, and palaces were spent on his friends
and allies. Four months into his reign, Qaishan found he spent over a year’s worth of government
revenue. In a panic, he spent the rest of his reign trying to address this, increasing taxes
and collecting debts cancelled by Temür Öljeitü. A new currency was put into circulation,
based on an exchange of 1:5 with the old. The volume of currency printed in 1310 was 7 times
higher than the three previous years, succeeding only in furthering inflation. On his death, in
1311 he was succeeded by his brother Ayurburwada. The new khan unleashed a violent purge of his
brother’s officials, reversed his policies, and abolished his currency. Ayurburwada wanted a
more traditionally Chinese-Confucian government, and reinstated the civil service examination
system to choose officials. He promoted the translation of Chinese classics in Mongolian, and
began the codification of the Yuan legal system. Such was the ongoing back and forth with each
new khan, with the top layer of government usually suffering a bloody overhaul and total
reversal of policies with each succession. Ayurburwada died in 1320, aged only 35: his
son and successor, Shidebala spent most of his reign battling Ayurburwada’s powerful
mother, only to be assassinated in 1323. His successor, his cousin Yesün-Temür,
was likely involved in the plot, and after only five years on the throne
died in 1328 of illness, also only 35. Yesün-Temür’s eight-year-old son Ragibagh
was enthroned at Shangdu on the efforts of Yesün-Temür’s Chancellor, but the plan went awry
when the Central Capital at Dadu was seized by the head of the powerful Qipchaq Guard, El-Temür,
who placed Prince Tüq-Temür on the throne. El-Temür violently seized Shangdu, and young
Ragibagh Khaan disappeared in the chaos. Soon after, Tüq-Temür’s older brother Qoshila
returned from his exile in the Chagatai Khanate. In August 1329 they met in a warm reunion,
Tüq-Temür recognizing his brother’s overlordship. Four days later Qoshila was dead,
and Tüq-Temür returned to the throne. But Tüq-Temür did not enjoy power for
his efforts, for El-Temür of the Qipchaq and his ally Bayan of the Merkit held real
power, reducing the Khaan to a figurehead. The Khaan dedicated his reign to studying
Chinese classics, practicing his calligraphy, and suffering immense guilt over his
brother’s murder. When he died in 1332, he had declared his brother’s son Irinjibal
as his heir in place of his own minor son. An aging and ill El-Temür reluctantly agreed, and
the six-year-old Irinjibal was duly enthroned as Great Khan… only to die two months later. The
court pressured El-Temür to recall Irinjibal’s exiled older half-brother, Toghon Temür, though
not before El-Temür married his daughter to him. Toghon Temür was the longest-reigning
Yuan sovereign after Khubilai, ruling from 1333 until his death in 1370. At
first he, like his predecessors, was a puppet. On El-Temür’s death, his ally Bayan took his
place. He desired restoration to an imagined “good old days,” under Khubilai, and sought
to enforce separations between Mongols and Chinese which had blurred over previous decades.
Chinese were banned from many government offices, forbidden from learning Mongolian and
other west Asian languages, the civil service examinations cancelled, the general
population disarmed and their horses confiscated. Yet Bayan also wanted to make the government
more efficient by cutting court expenditures, and reducing stress on the empire’s population
by decreasing the high fees on the salt monopoly, encouraging agriculture, and improving and
speeding up the government relief system. All his efforts were, of course, signed off by
young Toghon Temür, who lived in fear of him. Bayan’s centralization of power, and willingness
to respond to rumours of threats with great violence, galvanized resistance to him, including
by his own nephew, Toghto. In spring 1340 Toghto and Toghon Temür exiled Bayan, who died a
month later. With him went the last of those who wanted to go back to the ‘old ways,’ succeeded
by those who recognized, and even celebrated, the sinicization of the Mongol dynasty.
The new generation of court leadership was symbolized by Toghto. Only 26 years old at
Bayan’s ouster, Toghto was well educated and raised to prominence by his uncle. Unlike Bayan,
Toghto had no misconceptions about restoring things to Khubilai’s time. To Toghto, Chinese
culture and Confucianism were to be appreciated. Believing all dynastic problems could be solved
with a steady hand and powerful government, Toghto sought to centralize and strengthen
the Yuan with a variety of reforms. His first period as chancellor saw the removal of
the last of Bayan’s allies, the restoration of the civil service examinations, greater incorporation
of Confucian scholars into government than ever before, and actual visibility to Toghon Temür
Khaan. The Khaan finally gave a decree denouncing his uncle Tüq-Temür for murdering Qoshila,
and had Tüq-Temür’s surviving son executed. Toghon Temür’s own son Ayushiridara was
entrusted to Toghto to be raised and educated, and Toghto put great energy into molding the
boy into an ideal, Confucianized Mongol ruler. Throughout this political upheaval, the
environmental crises only worsened. The flight of Mongols and other peoples of the
northwest grew so bad that in 1323, 39% of the money printed was spent on trying
to send the refugees back with aid, before ultimately forbidding anyone from
leaving Mongolia on pain of death. Intense flooding every year of the 1320s annihilated
croplands, and inflation only continued to rise, and the population grew ever more agitated.
Over Tüq Temür’s three year reign, 21 rebellions broke out. No new revenues
could be found to pay for these expenditures while the costs of relief, war, the court, and
corruption continued to soar alongside inflation. While Chancellor Toghto imagined carrying
out great works to dazzle his contemporaries, his plans were cut short by the environment.
This was a decade of annual earthquakes, unseasonal snowstorms eradicating entire
herds, severe flooding, widespread famine, drought, and epidemic; including, in the opinion
of some scholars, the start of the bubonic plague. For the general population, the field of
frustration finally began to bloom into violent uprisings in the 1340s. In 1341, there were
over 300 bandit uprisings across central China, including the Red Turban Movement.
So-called for their red headbands, this was a number of loosely connected groups
which espoused a radical Confucianism calling for a drastic change of society through military
means to return to an older, ‘purer’ China. Toghto resigned his position in 1344,
allowed his successor to take the blame, then returned triumphant in 1349 when recalled
by the court. As by then Toghon Temür Khaan had grown bored of governing, Toghto was
now the dominant figure of the Yuan realm. Toghto ordered the printing of great sums of
money to tackle his greatest scheme: forcing back the Yellow River to once more enter the sea
south of the Shandong peninsula. Back in 1344, 20 days of nonstop rain caused the River to break
its banks and flood numerous districts and cities, cutting off the Grand Canal and draining into
the Huai River, which caused it to rise and threaten the salt fields in Shandong and Hebei
provinces. All before settling into a course north of the Shandong Peninsula. The threat
to the salt fields was a particular concern, as the salt trade and its taxes provided
six-tenths of Yuan yearly revenue, while the Grand Canal needed to be kept open to transport
rice and grain north to feed the capital of Dadu. There was intense opposition to the
project to reroute the Yellow River, but Toghto forced the plan through. Printing
2 million ingots worth of a new currency to pay for it, from May to December 1351, 150,000
labourers, and 20,000 soldiers dug a 140-kilometer long channel to successfully reroute the
river. Once more the Grand Canal was fed, the salt fields were protected and the Yellow
River exited into the sea south of Shandong. Toghto’s project was designed to protect the
producers and economy of the Yuan Dynasty, but it accidentally sparked off its ultimate
collapse. The large gathering of workers, hungry and weak from years of famine, punished by
cruel overseers trying to meet a strict timetable, and paid in money only a little above
worthless, was fertile soil for the Red Turbans. Even as work continued on the canal, a massive
revolt erupted in the Huai River valley. The Yuan were taken by surprise, and a number
of cities fell in quick succession, with few city walls having been rebuilt after the initial
conquest. In the first engagements, the government forces were poorly prepared and beaten back,
including an army commanded by Toghto’s brother. These were not the highly mobile horse archers
of the conquest but generally, local Chinese militias commanded by Mongols and Central Asians.
But Chancellor Toghto was custom-made for this emergency. He immediately organized the defense,
raised new armies, and conscripted militias. New training and command structures were
implemented. He knew he had to tread carefully, lest mismanaged and underpaid troops join in
the revolts. In a dizzying juggling effort, Toghto constantly shuffled larger military units,
transferring and reappointing commanders around the empire to prevent them from forming
alternate powerbases. The Yellow Army, mostly Chinese volunteers under Mongol and Turkic
commanders in yellow uniforms, became Toghto’s “nationwide apparatus of pacification,” as termed
by historian John Dardess. Leading the most important campaigns himself, Toghto began to halt,
then push back, and finally overrun the rebellion. By the end of 1352, Toghto had brought
the Huai River valley back under control. Methodically, they retook cities and by the end
of 1354, Toghto was about to crush the final major figure of a largely broken movement, Zhang
Shicheng, now isolated in his capital at Gao-Yu. And at the last moment, Toghon Temür Khaan
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. For unclear reasons, the Khaan ordered Toghto
dismissed at the start of 1355. A short-sighted and inept monarch, perhaps fearful of Toghto’s
growing might, yet at the same time unable to replace him, Toghon Temür ensured that Toghto’s
carefully balanced military machine collapsed instantly, much of the army deserting, and the
Red Turban rebellion exploded with new vigour. Toghto, a loyal servant to the end, accepted his
dismissal and was assassinated the following year. Toghon Temür sat almost idle as the Red Turban
warlords fought for the right to succeed the Yuan; after the battle of Lake
Poyang, this was Zhu Yuanzhang, who soon declared the Ming Dynasty. Toghon Temür
had little power over his remaining commanders, who fought each other as much as the Red Turbans.
By the end of the summer of 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang, now enthroned as the Hongwu Emperor, sent his
trusted general Xu Da to take Dadu. Toghon Temür and his heir Ayushiridara fled to Mongolia
only days before the arrival of the Ming armies, and on the 20th of September, 1368, Dadu came into
Chinese rule for the first time in over 400 years. The Hongwu Emperor renamed the city to Beiping,
meaning ‘pacified north.’ In time the city became the capital of the Ming Dynasty and was
renamed to Beijing, the name it holds today. Aside from a few Yuan loyalists who held out
for another twenty odd years, Mongol rule in China ended in 1368. The Yuan Dynasty, contrary
to common depictions, had responded vigorously to a dramatic climatic emergency, but could not
overcome such a massive crisis. Few states though, could have survived such a threat while
simultaneously suffering rampant political and economic turmoil that was continually
compounded by the environmental crisis. In this respect, it remains impressive that the
successors of Khubilai Khaan last even 70 years. Even after their flight to Mongolia, the
descendants of Toghon Temür Khaan continued to claim they were the legitimate rulers of
China, and that the Yuan Dynasty in fact was continuing unabated, though for historians
this state is known as the Northern Yuan. However, by the start of the fifteenth century
the Yuan Khans even in Mongolia were reduced to puppets by the rise of the Oirats, whose
leaders were not descendants of Chinggis Khan. Throughout the 1400s, Mongolia was ruled by the
Oirats who maintained Chinggisid figureheads. Some of these figures were quite powerful, and launched
vicious assaults on the Ming Dynasty. In 1449 the Oirat leader Esen Taishi captured the Ming Emperor
in battle [Tumu Crisis] and laid siege to Beijing. The Ming survived the crisis, but their fear
of the Mongols was renewed, which prompted the expansion and construction of the Great Wall
of China as we know it today. In the 1500s, a descendant of Chinggis Khan named Dayan Khan
succeeded in reuniting Mongolia under Chinggisid leadership, and so it would remain until the
mid-1600s, when both Mongolia and Ming China were conquered by a new power; the Manchus,
who would established the final imperial dynasty to rule over China, the Great Qing.
Having now covered the other Mongol states, we now turn to the far west, to the
ulus of Jochi, the Golden Horde. After Mongol rule was firmly established over the
western steppes and Rus’ principalities by the 1240s, the successors of Batu were unassailable.
While sometimes presented as outside or even independent of the Golden Horde, the Rus’
principalities were the khan's total vassals, providing tax, tribute and
soldiers as the khan required, and each Rus’ prince had to receive confirmation
for his right to rule from the khan’s yarliq. Firmly supported by both the Rus’ princes and the
Orthodox Church, after the 1250s there was minimal resistance to Mongol authority in the Rus’ lands.
Yet the Rus’ were but one of the subjects of the Jochid khan, and not where his attention was most
directed, for they continued to live as nomads. Mongol rule reorganized the society in
the steppes. They brutally enforced a new organization, where all the peoples of the steppe
were divided into uluses, or patrimonial peoples. Grouped into units of 1,000 and further
subdivided, all of these uluses were allotted to the new Mongol elite; the altan urag, the princes
of the line of Chinggis Khan, and the noyad, the military leadership. Each ulus was given
its own grazing grounds and natural resources; transfer between units was forbidden, and they
were forbidden to use another ulus’ resources. The revenues from the uluses, in the
form of the products of their herds, went to the Jochid khans. In this way the
Mongol rule over the steppe was maintained and the Chinggisid elite spread
amongst the Turkic population. It proved a remarkably effective system for
maintaining stability and preventing native rebellion. The Jochid khan in this way could
keep track of his manpower and resources of the khanate, and trade could travel easier without
fear of being raided by a Qipchap chief. Another byproduct was the steady growth in the population
of the steppe and the Rus’ principalities. Under Jochid rule numerous settlements were
established; over 100 are known archeological and from written sources. While many of these must
have been initially quite humble, and the capital of Sarai at its inception perhaps just thousands
of felt tents, gers, as the population grew, nomadic encampments turned into permanent
cities, with rectangular districts of suburbs and craftsmen emanating from central squares. The
archeological remains of the largest of these, Sarai al-Jadid, stretches for 7 kilometers along
the Akhtuba River, and at its height in the mid 14th century may have held some 75,000 people.
The thirteenth century was a climatic optimum in the steppe, of warm and wet temperatures.
Political stability allowed an expansion in agricultural production to supply these massive
cities. In addition to the millions of sheep, goats, cattle and horses the nomads supplied
cities with, so too were more lands cultivated. Various kinds of wheat and millet were
extensively cultivated in the Ukrainian steppes, and the Golden Horde was a primary regional
exporter. Slaves and horses were also important exports for the Jochid state; the excellence of
the Jochid horses saw many thousands sold yearly from the Rus’ to India. The Golden Horde was
further enriched by the great overland trade. Wares from China and Egypt are found in the
remains of Horde cities, and industries within these cities developed around supporting and
providing for the merchants who led this caravan trade across the Mongol Khanates. Jochid Khans
encouraged trade through low customs duties, and transplanting Rus’ and Qipchaps to
rivers to permanently man ferry crossings. The Golden Horde’s golden age was reached in the
first half of the fourteenth century, during the thirty year reign of Khan Özbeg. In the final
years of his life the good fortune of the Jochid khanate began to ebb. Environmental data indicates
a steady decrease in precipitation in the steppe beginning in 1280 and dropping precipitously after
1320. In already dry steppe grasslands, this led to less productive pastures and desertification.
For an economy and population that still relied on their great herds of livestock, an upset to
the steppe biome pushed many into destitution, and sought shelter in the Horde’s great cities.
Further woes came as the Caspian Sea rose; the Italian geographer Marino Sanuto wrote in
1320 that it rose by hand’s breadth every year. Low lying farmland and communities
in the Volga Delta were destroyed, driving yet more people to the cities.
The disintegration of the Ilkhanate and Chagatai Khanate in the 1330s unraveled the overland trade
which had helped enrich the Jochid’s cities. The greatest disaster came just after Özbeg’s
death, when the Black Death struck. Overpopulated and undersupplied cities were ravaged; in Crimea,
one source speaks of 85,000 dying of plague there. It was there in 1343 that Özbeg’s son
Jani Beg[1] , while besieging Caffa, infamously is alleged to have thrown plague bodies
into the city, which brought it to Europe. Rounds of plague would strike repeatedly for the
remainder of the Horde’s history. The nomadic population suffered less than the urban, while
the steppe itself could act as a barrier; the plague only came to the Rus’ lands in the 1350s,
from contacts with Europe rather than the Horde. On Jani Beg Khan’s death in 1357, the dynasty’s
luck ran out. In quick succession his sons killed each other and by the start of the 1360s the line
of Batu was extinguished. The door was opened to any claimant descended from Jochi. During the
next twenty years, over 25 men claimed the throne; some are only known from coinage minted in their
name. Some ruled little more than weeks, until pushed out by another contender or power broker;
of these, the most famous was the general Mamai, who from his base in Crimea became the
most powerful individual kingmaker. While the Jochid wasted their energies in two
decades of anarchy, its hold over the border regions weakened. Lithuania seized the far west,
taking Kiev and pushing to the Black Sea coast; the eastern wing of the ulus became independent.
In the Rus’ lands, princes stopped making the treks to the Horde for confirmation. The Rus’
princes grew bolder, and the Prince of Moscow, previously the Khan’s favourite tax-collector,
grew in might, culminating in Prince Dmitri’s victory over Mamai at Kulikovo in 1380, when
Mamai came to chastise Dmitri for his failures to provide tribute. Shortly after, Toqtamish, a
descendant of Jochi’s son Tuqa-Temür, succeeded in overcoming Mamai and the other khanmakers, and
re-established central authority. Angered at the Rus’ princes’ tardiness with in-person submissions
and tribute, Toqtamish took his army into the Rus’ lands, sacking Moscow in 1382 and sending Dmitri
Donskoi fleeing. The battle of Kulikovo, despite its standing in Russian popular memory, did not
alter the dynamic between the Rus’ and the Horde. Yet Dmitri’s policies over his reign solidified
Moscow as one of the most preeminent cities of the Rus’. On his death in 1389 his son was
accepted as Grand Prince with little issue, though the Rus’ were still vassals of the khan.
Toqtamish enacted reforms to strengthen his power, combat inflation and reset the Horde’s diplomacy.
To the Mamluks, Ottomans, Jalayirids and Moghulistan he renewed friendly relations while
in the west made Lithuania and Moldova vassals of the Horde. His vision was a renewal of the
preeminence of the Golden Horde; not only did he seek to revive the overland trade routes, which
had further been undone by fall of the Yuan, but he also presented himself as the heir to Chinggis
Khan. His pretensions put him on a collision course with the master of Central Asia and his
former ally, the great conqueror Aksak Temür; Tamerlane. Toqtamish wanted Khwarezm and the
Caucasus back under Jochid suzerainty; Tamerlane desired both. The two great generals went to war
in 1391 and 1395, and narrowly was Tamerlane the victor. Over 1395 Tamerlane systematically sacked
the major cities of the Horde. The destruction ensured the near total dismantling of the urban
economy and overland trade through the steppe. After Tamerlane’s withdrawal, Toqtamish and his
sons could not overcome the Horde’s new master, Edigü. As he was not a descendant of Chinggis
Khan, Edigü could not become khan, but as beylerbeyi empowered by Tamerlane he controlled
the succession. For the next two decades Edigü reduced the khans to puppets, removing those
who challenged him and had some success in strengthening the Horde, even retaking Khwarezm
after Tamerlane’s death and besieging Moscow in 1408. Some economic recovery is indicated
from the restarting of mints in major cities. To help legitimize himself he also furthered
conversion to Islam of the Horde’s nomadic population, continuing the process begun by
Özbeg. But Edigü’s power was never secure; rival factions put up their own khans, and the
sons of the late Toqtamish continued to fight him. In 1419 Edigü was finally killed by one
who had been declared khan, and with him died the final figure who had the capability of
holding together the Horde’s constituent parts. The 1420s saw another decade of khans who ruled
only briefly, and often at the same time. The situation stabilized slightly over the 1430s
and 40s into three main powers; Abu’l Khayr Khan in the east, Küchük Muhammad in the Volga
steppe, and Sayyid Ahmed west of the Don River. Küchük Muhammad’s nearly twenty year reign[2]
is when scholarship and the Rus’ sources call the state the Great Horde. The Rus’, who spent
most of these years locked in their civil wars, still paid tribute to the Khan of the Great Horde.
Each khan saw himself as the legitimate ruler, and new claimants continued to arise. One Khan, Ulugh
Muhammad, made himself independent at Kazan after being ousted from Sarai; on the Ural River emerged
the Nogai Horde under the descendants of Edigü; when Küchük Muhammad’s son Mahmud was ousted by
his brother, Mahmud’s heirs took over Astrakhan; and in 1442, Crimea and the surrounding steppes
came under the rule of Sayyid Ahmad’s nephew, Hajji Giray, establishing Crimea’s long ruling
Giray Dynasty. Hajji Giray, and his son Mengli Giray, dedicated their lives to fighting the
heirs of Küchük Muhammad, the khans of the ever declining Great Horde. In a twenty year struggle,
Küchük Muhammad’s son Ahmad Khan enjoyed few successes, overrelying on useless Polish allies
and denied tribute by the Russian Grand Princes. Ivan III continued the domination of Moscow over
the other principalities and like his predecessors recognized the overlordship of the Khan, though
maintained diplomacy with the other emerging khans. From the 1440s onwards Rus’ tribute to the
Horde lagged, and in 1471 Ivan ceased it algother. Ahmad Khan frequently sent messengers demanding
its resumption, or for Ivan to come and reaffirm his submission in person. The ever more frustrated
Ahmad Khan, who had aborted a march on Moscow in 1472, ordered another attack in 1480 in
cooperation with his Polish ally Casimir IV. Ivan marched against him, and the armies
faced off across the Ugra River over the summer and into the autumn. Ahmad waited in vain
for Casimir, who never arrived. Arrows were shot, arquebuses were fired; Ivan worried the river
would freeze and allow Ahmad free passage. Ahmad retreated first, downtrodden his ally had
failed to show, and was murdered the next year. So ended the Great Stand on the Ugra
River, a glorified staring contest. Only centuries later did Rus’ chronicles see
it as marking the independence of the Rus’. It did not directly affect either
parties’ standing. Twenty years later, Ivan sent a message to Ahmad’s son and successor,
Shaykh Ahmad Khan, inquiring about resuming their earlier relationship in the midst of a
fierce round of struggle with Lithuania, while tribute, under different names,
would continue to the Crimean Khans. After Ahmad Khan’s death, his sons attempted to
act as co-rulers but were soon at each other’s throats. Shaykh Ahmad emerged the victor,
with futile dreams of reuniting the Horde. His cousin in Astrakhan defied him; Ivan III of
Moscow allied with Mengli Giray of Crimea against him; efforts to bring Lithuania into a military
alliance failed. Rounds of plague and bad seasons brought further misery; harsh winters and poor
grazing killed thousands of livestock every year of the 1490s. Famine weakened his forces,
destroyed his herds and caused thousands to flee to neighbouring khanates. Shaykh Ahmad led his
underfed and weakened army in one last gamble, seeking to push west of the Dnieper for greener
pasture in winter 1501. Trapped by a vicious snowstorm, his demoralized army suffered for
months, and many deserted to Mengli Giray. Already depressed from the failure of the
Lithuanians to arrive, Shaykh Ahmad watched the last of his brothers fall ill and die. As
Mengli Giray summoned the entirety of his forces, the last of Shaykh Ahmad’s will broke when his
own wife abandoned him with much of his family and remaining troops. When Mengli Giray met
Shaykh Ahmad near the Dnieper in June 1502, the Khan of the Great Horde was caught with
a paltry 20,000 men. Chased from the field, his ordu looted, Shaykh Ahmad Khan spent
most of the next twenty years in Lithuania a political prisoner. So, according to
traditional scholarship, did the humiliating career of the final Khan of the Golden Horde end.
Historians like Leslie Collins have demonstrated, though, how Mengli Giray began to style himself as
Great Khan of the Great Horde; a claim recognized in diplomacy by his Ottoman overlord, the
Rus’, the Poles and Lithuanians. It seems to contemporaries, the Great Horde did not end
in 1502; the throne was simply taken by another branch of the dynasty, as it had been dozens
of times before, only now based in Crimea. The power of the Giray Khans grew considerably, and
by 1520s Mengli’s son, Mehmed, raised candidates onto the thrones of Kazan and Astrakhan. The
brief rise was cut short by Mehmed’s death by Nogais, launching a succession struggle that
led to the Ottomans taking greater control over the Crimean succession. Meanwhile the alliance
with Moscow frayed, and the Princes of Moscow, particularly Ivan IV and his crusade-minded
advisers, were now masters of the Rus’ and were eager to gain access to the Volga trade, taking
advantage of the weakness of the Volga Khanates. In 1552 the first khanate, Kazan, fell to
Ivan’s armies; Astrakhan followed in 1554. The powerful Crimean Khan Devlet I Giray sought
to halt Moscow’s expansion, with yearly raids and in 1571, even succeeded in capturing and
burning down Moscow, but this was followed by a humiliating defeat the next year. The Crimean
Khans reluctantly ceded control of the former Golden Horde to Moscow, which soon stretched deep
into Siberia. Over a century of continuous warfare had left the Russians nothing but depopulated,
weakened khanates to pick off one by one; only to the south did the Crimean Khan’s armies stop
Russian expansion. Not until 1783 was the Khanate finally annexed, thus ending the last vestige
of the Golden Horde, and the Mongol Empire. We are planning to cover the fall
of many empires past and present, so make sure you are subscribed and
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