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.
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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.
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