Mongol Conquests

The causes

In the early 13th century, Temüjin united the steppe tribes, previously divided, through force and alliances, and had himself proclaimed Genghis Khan in 1206. He reorganised the army, based on discipline, speed and loyalty. The Mongols sought to control the trade routes and to punish those who resisted them.

The Jurchens, who ruled the Jin dynasty in northern China, had long fomented rivalries among the Mongol tribes. Temüjin eliminated his rivals one by one: he defeated the Keraites in 1203 and the Naimans in 1204, then gathered a quriltai, an assembly of chiefs, which proclaimed him sovereign. The steppe, where herding was the basis of life, offered few resources, and conquest brought booty, pastures and prestige. The trigger came in 1218: at Otrar, a governor had a Mongol merchant caravan seized, and the shah of Khwarazm, Muhammad II, refused to hand over the culprit and had envoys of Genghis Khan executed.

The course of the war

Genghis Khan attacked northern China (the Jin empire) from 1211 and took Beijing in 1215. In 1219, the massacre of Mongol merchants led him to destroy the empire of Khwarazm, whose great cities, such as Bukhara and Samarkand, were ravaged. He died in 1227. His son Ögödei and his grandson Batu pushed west: Kyiv was destroyed in 1240, and the Polish and Hungarian armies were beaten in 1241.

Hülegü, a grandson of Genghis Khan, took Baghdad in 1258 and ended the Abbasid caliphate. But the Mongols were stopped by the Mamluks of Egypt at Ain Jalut in 1260. Kublai Khan, another grandson, completed the conquest of Song China and founded the Yuan dynasty. In 1368, the Ming drove it from power.

Ögedei, son of Genghis Khan, pursued the conquest westward: in 1241, at Legnica in Silesia, a Polish-German army was defeated, and at Mohi on the Sajó the Hungarian army was crushed. The Mongol troops then reached the Adriatic, but the death of Ögedei at the end of 1241 led the chiefs to return to Asia to choose his successor. Batu, who had led the campaign, settled on the Volga at Sarai and founded the khanate of the Golden Horde, which dominated Russia for more than two centuries.

The conquest of southern China, that of the Song, lasted longer. After the death of Möngke in 1259, Kublai Khan, who had made Khanbaliq, present-day Beijing, his capital, waged war on the Song. The last loyalist forces, withdrawn to the south, were defeated at the Battle of Yamen in 1279, where the Song fleet was destroyed. Kublai then organised Chinese society into four categories, placing the Mongols at the top and southern Chinese at the bottom, and recruited officials from Central Asia and Iran.

The Mongols governed their empire with original means. The yam, a network of postal relay stations placed along the main roads, made it possible to send messages over very long distances in little time, and the khans' envoys travelled with passage tablets, the paizas. In Persia, Hulagu founded around 1256 the khanate of Iran, known as the Ilkhanate; in the same year he destroyed the Ismaili fortress of Alamut. The Mongols recruited Muslim, Chinese and Armenian administrators, and tolerated the religions of their subjects.

The consequences

The conquests caused very heavy human losses and destroyed whole cities, particularly in Central Asia and Persia. Once divided, the empire guaranteed for a time the safety of the routes between Europe and Asia: this is called the "Mongol peace". Trade, travel (such as Marco Polo's) and the exchange of techniques benefited. Russia remained under Mongol rule for more than two centuries.

The conquest durably weakened entire regions: northern China, Persia and Central Asia took decades to recover. The Mongol peace facilitated the movement of people, goods and diseases. The Black Death, which struck Europe from 1347, may have spread along these routes, and historians debate the exact role of the Mongols in this spread. In Russia, the princes of Moscow profited from collecting tribute on behalf of the Golden Horde before gaining their independence. Today Mongolia celebrates Genghis Khan as the founder of the nation, and historians are revisiting the image of a headlong, disorderly onslaught.

Timeline

1. 1206Temüjin is proclaimed Genghis Khan
2. 1219Genghis Khan attacks the empire of Khwarazm
3. 1241Mongol victories in Poland and Hungary
4. 1258The Mongols take Baghdad
5. 1368Fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China

Key figures

• Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire
• Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty in China
• Subutai, Mongol general, victor in many battles from the steppe to Europe
• Hülegü, grandson of Genghis Khan, who took Baghdad