Wars of the Mongol Empire's Division

The Mongol Empire kept growing for more than thirty years after Genghis Khan's death. But when Great Khan Möngke died on campaign in 1259, it began to come apart from the inside instead. The rule for choosing the next Great Khan was the kurultai - A kurultai was the assembly Mongol and Turkic nomads held to settle great questions. Princes, tribal chiefs and leading commanders gathered in one place to choose the next Great Khan or to decide on war.Its most important task was the election itself. The Mongols had no rule that the eldest son must inherit, so a man became Great Khan only once the assembly had recognised him.The system had a weakness: the outcome depended on who gathered, and where. In 1260 Kublai and Ariq Böke held separate kurultais in different places and both were proclaimed Great Khan, which is where the division of the Mongol Empire began., an assembly of princes and commanders. The problem was who would gather, and where.

In the spring of 1260 Kublai - A grandson of Genghis Khan who won the succession war against his brother, became Great Khan, and founded the Yuan dynasty that ruled all of China. hurried back from the Southern Song front and held a kurultai at his own base of Kaiping, where he was proclaimed Great Khan. A month later his youngest brother Ariq Böke - Youngest son of Tolui and brother of Kublai, he held the capital Karakorum and contested the title of Great Khan. He stood for those who wanted to preserve the old ways of the steppe. held a separate kurultai in the capital, Karakorum - Karakorum was the capital of the Mongol Empire, founded by Ögedei Khan on the Orkhon River in 1235, near present-day Kharkhorin in Mongolia.Standing in open grassland, it had to be fed by grain convoys from the farming lands to the south. That weakness decided a war: when Kublai cut the routes in 1261, Ariq Böke's hold on the capital collapsed without a decisive battle.It was also a city people reached from all over the world. Guillaume Boucher, a goldsmith taken captive in France, built a great silver tree in the palace whose pipes are said to have poured out wine and fermented mare's milk. Only ruins remain today, beside the Erdene Zuu Monastery built from its stones., and was proclaimed Great Khan as well. For the first time in Mongol history there were two. They clashed fiercely in 1261 at the Battle of Shimultai, resulting in a stalemate. Consequently, Kublai chose to starve his brother rather than rely solely on combat. Karakorum sat in open grassland and had to be fed by convoys from the south, so Kublai seized every route. After a hungry winter, Ariq Böke surrendered in 1264.

Before that quarrel had even ended, another war broke out in the west. Hülegü - A Mongol ruler and commander who founded the Ilkhanate in Persia and led the historic Siege of Baghdad in 1258. Grandson of Genghis Khan, he expanded the empire into much of Western Asia, destroying the Abbasid Caliphate and the Assassin sect before his advance was halted by the Mamluks., who had taken Persia, and Berke - The first Mongol ruler to accept Islam, he went to war against his own cousin Hülegü over the destruction of Baghdad., who ruled the Kipchak steppe - The Kipchak Steppe, also known as Desht-i Qipchaq, is a massive expanse of grassland stretching from north of the Danube River in the west to near the Altai Mountains in the east. Covering parts of modern-day Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan, it was the historic domain of nomadic peoples like the Cumans and Kipchaks. According to local legends, unseen spirit horses race across this vast sea of grass on the wind, and on quiet nights, one can hear the thundering hooves of tens of thousands of them shaking the earth. Later, after Batu Khan (Genghis Khan's grandson) completed his European campaigns, he settled here, making it the heartland of the Golden Horde (also known as the Kipchak Khanate). The endless plains and rich pastures were perfect for raising horses and moving camps, serving as the powerful core of nomadic empires for centuries., clashed over the pastures of the Caucasus. The two were cousins, but Berke was a Muslim and never forgave the sack of Baghdad. In the winter of 1262 Hülegü pushed north through the Derbent pass - A narrow coastal strip between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains, it has historically served as a crucial military and commercial passage connecting the north and south. Its highly defensible terrain made it a natural 'gate' for the region., and in January 1263 he was beaten badly at the Terek River - The Terek River originates in the deep valleys of the Caucasus Mountains and flows for about 620 kilometers before emptying into the Caspian Sea. Because of its fast currents and strategic location, it has historically served as an important geographical boundary and natural defense line for traveling peoples and armies. In the winter of 1262–1263, during the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, the armies of Hülegü and Berke fought a major battle along this river. According to historical accounts, as Hülegü's forces retreated across the frozen river, the ice broke beneath them, and countless soldiers and horses tragically drowned in the freezing water. This battle is remembered as one of the first major civil wars fought between Mongol armies.. As his men fell back across the frozen river the ice broke under them and many drowned, the sources say. It was the first time a Mongol army had been shattered by another Mongol army.

Even after Ariq Böke surrendered, resistance from the steppe did not end. Kaidu - A grandson of Ögedei whose family had lost the throne, he fought Kublai and his successor in Central Asia for more than thirty years., the leader of the Ögedei Khanate founded by Genghis Khan's third son, took center stage. He rallied Central Asian nomads, and in 1269 held a kurultai at Talas where the princes divided the empire's lands without the Great Khan's consent. The parties at Talas were Kaidu, Baraq - Ruler of the Chagatai Khanate who seized power and fought against both Kaidu and the Ilkhanate. and envoys of the Golden Horde - The nomadic state Batu founded on the lower Volga, which collected tribute from the Rus principalities for some 250 years.; the Ilkhanate - The Mongol khanate Hülegü founded in Persia and the Middle East; its very name means a khan who obeys the Great Khan. was not among them. The deal split the pastures and taxes of Transoxiana - The land of Central Asia between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya rivers. Mawarannahr is Arabic for 'what lies beyond the river', and the Greek and Roman name Transoxiana means the same thing. It covers today's Uzbekistan and Tajikistan along with southern Kazakhstan.Water drawn from the two rivers let oasis cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara grow in the middle of the desert, and they thrived as staging posts on the Silk Road. Because the taxes of those cities and the profits of their merchants were so large, the khanates that emerged from the divided Mongol Empire fought hard to control the region. The Talas kurultai of 1269 was, in the end, a meeting about how to share out its pastures and its taxes.Samarkand carries an old legend of its own. It is said to have been founded by Afrasiab, the king of Turan in the Persian epics, and the mound of the old city is still called Afrasiab today. (present-day Uzbekistan and its neighbours) three ways and told Baraq to make up his share in Khorasan to the west. Rather than stopping the khanates from fighting, it pointed Baraq's spear at the one khanate that had not signed. In 1270 Baraq marched west and met the Ilkhan Abaqa - The second Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate, who successfully defended Persia against invasions from the Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate. near Herat, but the troops Kaidu had promised slipped away before the battle and Baraq was decisively beaten. When Baraq died the next year, Kaidu seized the opportunity to place the entire Chagatai Khanate - The khanate that grew from the share given to Chagatai, second son of Genghis Khan, ruling the steppes and oasis cities of Central Asia. under his control.

For over thirty years, Kaidu, allied with Duwa—whom he had installed as the new Chagatai Khan—fought a relentless war against Kublai's Yuan dynasty - The Mongol-Chinese empire founded by Kublai Khan, the realm of the Great Khan that ruled all of China.. In 1301, Kaidu and Duwa led a massive army to seize the old capital of Karakorum, clashing with Yuan forces at the Battle of the Zavkhan River - A river in western Mongolia. It rises in the Khangai Mountains and runs northwest into Khyargas Lake. It never reaches the sea but ends in a salt lake inland, as many rivers in Central Asia do.Grass and watering places follow the river, which made it a precious road for nomads who had to feed their animals as they travelled. Anyone moving from the Altai in the west toward the Orkhon valley, where the old capital Karakorum stood, found it easiest to keep to this water, so armies used it as a corridor during the Mongol civil war. The clash between the Yuan army and the combined forces of Kaidu and Duwa in 1301, as they marched on Karakorum, is placed along this river.The name survives today in Mongolia's Zavkhan Province. The Khangai Mountains where the river begins have long been called the bountiful mountains and treated as sacred, a place where offerings were made to the spirits that own the mountains and the rivers.. The brutal fight ended in a stalemate with heavy losses, leaving Duwa wounded. Kaidu was also injured and died soon after. Upon Kaidu's death, the situation flipped. Duwa made a secret pact with the Yuan dynasty, launched a surprise attack on Kaidu's heirs, and absorbed almost all the territories of the Ögedei Khanate. With the Ögedei Khanate wiped from history, the remaining four realms—Yuan, Chagatai, Ilkhanate, and Golden Horde—signed a peace treaty in 1304, nominally recognizing the Yuan emperor as the supreme Great Khan. Though the empire never truly reunited as one, this treaty ended over forty years of civil war and ushered in an era of east-west exchange known as the Pax Mongolica.