Chinggis retired to Mongolia in 1223. He now turned his attention
to the Tanguts, who had failed to send their warriors to join the campaign
against the Khwarizmians in 1218, as they had promised to do as vassals of the
Mongols. The Tanguts had also withdrawn their troops from the campaign against
Chin in 1222, and when Chinggis sent envoys to them warning them to mend their
ways and keep to the terms of the treaty, they reviled him. Although Chinggis
died before the completion of this campaign, the Tangut realm was conquered in
1227. It was fully incorporated into the Mongol Empire and became one of its
most important appanages or fiefdoms. One reason it was important is the fact
that the Tangut Empire had developed a culture that was as refined as China’s
and in some ways similar to it, but nevertheless distinctively non-Chinese (and
also non-Jurchen Chin). Although the Mongols had of necessity to rely upon the
Chinese for help in ruling Chinese territory under their control, they
generally distrusted and disliked the Chinese and were much more inclined
toward fellow Central Eurasians, especially in matters connected with religion
and state organization.
Chinggis had four sons, three of whom survived him. His son
Ögedei (r. 1229–1241) succeeded him as Great Khan. The Mongols continued their
attacks on the Jurchen and in 1234 overthrew the Chin Dynasty. At the same
time, Ögedei organized a great campaign into the west. Earlier, while
campaigning against the Khwârizmshâh, the Mongols had passed through southern
Russia. They now set out to completely subdue it as the inheritance of Batu,
son of Chinggis’s eldest son Jochi, who had died before his father in 1227.
Along with Batu as the nominal commander went Ögedei’s son Güyük, Tolui’s son
Möngke, and Sübedei, the Mongols’ most brilliant general. In 1236 the Mongols attacked
the Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples of the Volga-Kama region, then the Russians
to their northwest, taking Vladimir (east of Moscow) in 1238 and Kiev in 1240,
subjugating the region by 1241. Sübedei continued the campaign further west
into Poland and eastern Germany, where he defeated the Polish and German forces
of Duke Henry of Silesia at Liegnitz and, turning south, the Hungarians and
Austrians, before returning to Hungary to spend the winter. But Great Khan
Ögedei died in December of that year, and the Mongols withdrew as soon as they
learned about it.
Batu remained in the West with a large force. He made his
capital at Saray on the lower Volga River and controlled all of western Central
Eurasia from the Black Sea and northern Caucasus up to Muscovy and east through
the Volga-Kama region. Many of his forces settled at Kazan, not far from the
old city of Bulghâr, where they soon shifted to the language of the majority
ethnic group in the army, Kipchak Turkic, which came to be known as Tatar. The realm
of what was later to be called the Golden Horde soon became de facto
independent, but Batu remained committed to his grandfather’s vision of a
Mongol world empire and participated fully in the governance of the empire and
in imperial military campaigns.
After the short reign of Ögedei’s son Güyük (r. 1246–1248),
a power struggle ended with the succession of Tolui’s son Möngke (r.
1251–1259), who became the next Great Khan. He organized a massive campaign to establish
firm Mongol control over the lands of Central Asia and the Near East and
generally to push the limits of the Mongol Empire toward the sunset. Möngke’s
brother Hülegü, commanding the imperial forces, set out in 1253. In 1256 they
attacked and destroyed the Assassins, the Ismâ’îlî order that had long
terrorized the Islamic world from their base in the Elburz Mountains of
northern Iran. By 1257 the Mongols had taken Alamut, the Assassins’ main
fortress, and their leader, who was executed by order of Möngke himself. The
Mongols then proceeded into Iraq and in 1258 attacked Baghdad. The caliph
refused to surrender, despite the reasonable Mongol offer and explanation of
what would happen if he resisted. The city was put under siege and eventually
succumbed. An estimated 200,000 people were killed in the sack of the city, and
the caliph too was put to death.
The Mongols proceeded westward into Mamluk Syria and were
making good progress until news reached them about Möngke’s death and Hülegü
withdrew with most of the imperial forces. The Mamluks attacked the remaining
Mongols and crushed them in the Battle of ‘Ayn Jalût, in Galilee, on September
6, 1260. This was the first setback for the Mongols in Southwestern Asia.
Nevertheless, Hülegü soon returned, and the Mongols
succeeded in establishing their power over most of the Near East. They
eventually made their home encampment in northwestern Iran near Tabriz, where
there were good pasturelands. Hülegü founded the Il-Khanate, which ruled over
Iraq, Iran, and some of the neighboring territories; warred periodically with
the northerly Golden Horde and with the Central Asian Chaghatai Horde, the
successors of Chinggis’s son Chaghatai; and extended his influence as far as
Tibet.
Tolui’s inheritance included the former Tangut realm. Under
Ögedei, his second son Köden (Godan, d. 1253/1260), who was assigned Tangut as
his appanage, was responsible for the nearly bloodless subjugation of Tibet. In
1240 Köden sent a small force into Tibet under Dorda Darkhan. The Tibetan
monasteries evidently resisted it; two were attacked and damaged, and some
monks are said to have been killed. The Mongols eventually withdrew, having been
told to contact the leading cleric in Tibet, Saskya Panḍita (d. 1251). Köden
sent a letter to him in 1244 summoning him to the Mongol camp. In 1246 the
elderly monk arrived in Liang-chou, having sent ahead his two nephews, ‘Phagspa
(Blogros Rgyal-mtshan, 1235–1280)25 and Phyag-na-rdorje (d. 1267). In 1247 the
Tibetans surrendered to the Mongols. Saskya Pandita was appointed viceroy of
Tibet under the Mongols and Phyag-na-rdorje was married to Köden’s daughter to
seal the treaty. After the death of Saskya Panḍita in 1251, the Mongols sent
another expedition, under a certain Khoridai, who restored their control in
Central Tibet in 1252–1253.26 Köden, who because of his chronic illness—for
which he had been treated by Saskya Panḍita—had been passed over for the throne
in favor of his elder brother Güyük, seems to have been dead by this time.
Khubilai (b. September 23, 1215, r. 1260/1272-February 18,
1284) was one of the sons of Tolui. He married Chabi, a fervent Buddhist. When
their first son was born in 1240, they gave him the Tibetan Buddhist name Dorji
(Tibetan rdorje ‘vajra; thunderbolt’). Already by 1242 Khubilai had begun
assembling Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist teachers at his appanage in Hsing-chou,
in Hopei. With the accession of his brother Möngke as Great Khan in 1251,
Khubilai was in direct line to succeed to the throne. His brother appointed him
to several other appanages in North China, greatly strengthening Khubilai’s
power and making him effectively the Mongol viceroy over this rich, populous region.
In 1253 Khubilai called for ‘Phagspa and his brother to be sent to him. They
arrived and were well received by the Mongol prince. He left shortly afterward
in command of an imperial campaign to conquer the Kingdom of Ta-li (in what is
now Yunnan Province) as a preliminary flanking movement before invading the large
and aggressive Sung Dynasty, which had been repeatedly attacking Mongol
territory to its north.
After a year’s preparation, Khubilai’s forces, with
Sübedei’s son Uriyangkhadai as general in chief, set out late in 1253. Before
attacking the Ta-li forces, he sent envoys to them with an ultimatum demanding
their surrender and assuring their safety if they did. When they responded by
executing the envoys, the Mongols attacked and defeated them, forcing them to
retreat to their capital. The Mongols notified the people of the city that they
would be spared if they surrendered. They did so, and Khubilai then took the
city, establishing Mongol power over Ta-li with a minimum of bloodshed. General
Uriyangkhadai continued the Mongol campaign in the southwest with considerable
success, eventually marching southeast to Annam (the area of modern northern
Vietnam) by 1257, where however the Mongols suffered from the heat and insects.
When the ruler offered to send tribute to the Mongols, Uriyangkhadai withdrew.
In 1256 Khubilai, who had returned to his appanage after the
victory in Ta-li, began work on a summer capital, K’ai-p’ing (renamed Shang-tu
‘Xanadu’ in 1263). It was about ten days’ journey north of Chung-tu (Peking) in
an area with both agricultural and pasture lands. In 1258, after Khubilai
answered accusations made against him by conspirators at court, his brother put
him in command of one of the four wings of the army in his new campaign against
the Sung. In 1258 the invasion was launched, with Möngke himself leading the
campaign in Szechuan, while Khubilai attacked southward from his appanage in
the east.
When Möngke died of fever outside Chungking (Chongqing) in
Szechuan (August 11, 1259), the campaign against the Sung came to a halt. Arik
Böke, his youngest brother, who had been left in Karakorum to guard the
homelands, began assembling his forces to contest the succession. Hülegü halted
his campaign in Syria and hurried home to support Khubilai at the great khuriltai,
but Arik Böke too had substantial support and sent forces to attack Khubilai’s
appanage. When Khubilai finally reached his capital at K’ai-p’ing, a khuriltai
was assembled in May 1260, and Khubilai was elected Great Khan. The decision
was vehemently opposed by Arik Böke, who had powerful adherents—including
Berke, the successor of Batu, and Alghu, ruler of the Chaghatai Khanate in
Central Asia. They proclaimed him Great Khan in June 1260, and civil war broke
out. Khubilai outmaneuvered Arik Böke at every turn, despite the latter’s many
supporters. Alghu broke with him in 1262, and in the following year Arik Böke
surrendered to Khubilai. The civil war was over. In 1266 Khubilai began
building a new winter capital, Ta-tu ‘great capital’, slightly northeast of the
old city of Chung-tu (the site of modern Peking), moving the power base of the
Great Khanate further into China and solidifying his control there.
After spending the next few years settling affairs within
the Great Khanate, Khubilai returned to the Sung problem. First he sent an
embassy to the Sung (May 1260) to propose a peaceful solution. But the
chancellor of Sung detained the envoys and sent his forces to attack the
Mongols (August 1260). After Khubilai retaliated in early 1261, the Sung invaded
three times in 1262. The Chinese also refused to release Khubilai’s envoys.
Finally, the Mongols attacked the Sung in force, defeating them soundly in
Szechuan early in 1265 and following with a full-scale invasion in 1268. The
war with the Sung was not an easy matter. Mongol victory came only in 1276,
when the Sung empress dowager surrendered and handed over the imperial seal and
regalia. In 1279 the last resistance ended.
The new Chinese-style Yüan Dynasty officially began on
Chinese New Year’s Day, January 18, 1272. Despite the orthodox procedures
followed in the establishment of the dynasty, and in much of the structure of
the administration, the new government was very clearly Mongol. Unlike their
Jurchen predecessors in North China, the Mongols generally did not trust the
Chinese. Khubilai himself did have many important Chinese advisers, but his
successors put Mongols, Central Asian Muslims, Tibetans, Tanguts, or other
non-Chinese in all key administrative positions. The Great Khanate continued to
exist, and included Mongolia and Tibet as major constituent parts that were
recognized as not being Chinese. While in many respects Yüan China was
integrated into the Mongol Empire, the Great Khanate continued to be the larger
unit. The two were not equated with each other.
One of the most important events of Mongol history took place at this time. The early Mongols had already come under the influence of various world religions, and some of the nation’s constituent peoples had converted, at least theoretically, to one of them—for example, the Naiman and Kereit had converted, at least nominally, to Nestorian Christianity, and the Mongols of Khubilai’s generation were already becoming Buddhists under Uighur and, especially, Tibetan tutelage. But, on the whole, the Mongols had remained pagan and for long were suspicious of all organized religions. The early European travelers’ accounts note how much the Mongols relied on their soothsayers in all things. But by the time of Marco Polo, the Mongols of the Great Khanate had unofficially, but enthusiastically, adopted Buddhism, mostly of the Tibetan variety. With its idea of the dharmarâja or ‘religious king’, the religion provided legitimation for Khubilai’s rule and also gave the Mongols access to a great body of learning and wisdom that was not Chinese.
When Khubilai decided he wanted to have a unified “Mongol”
script for all the languages of the Mongol Empire, he appointed to the
commission the Tibetan Buddhist leader ‘Phagspa, who was his National Preceptor
and the viceroy of Tibet. The new script, based on the Tibetan alphabet (but
written vertically like Chinese script and Uighur-Mongol script), was
promulgated as the official writing system in 1269. Known today as ‘Phagspa
Script, it is in effect the world’s first multilingual transcription system.
Examples of it are preserved in several languages from around the Mongol
Empire, including Chinese, and it is thought that the script influenced the
later creation of the Korean Han’gul writing system. ‘Phagspa was also in
charge of other intellectual projects, including the compilation of a great
comparative catalogue of the Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist canons, the
respective compendia of translations of sacred texts from Sanskrit.
