The Mongol Successor States: A Brief Overview

The Mongol Empire formed in 1206 under Genghis Khan and united steppe armies with conquered territories across Asia. The united empire recognized a Great Khan as its senior ruler, while the ruling family also held ulus, princely domains that included grazing lands, troops and subject peoples. Genghis Khan’s sons inherited different regional bases, so the later successor states grew from family commands as well as from new wars. The Yuan, Ilkhanate, Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate each claimed Chinggisid, or Genghis Khan’s dynastic, legitimacy while ruling a different part of the former empire.

After Great Khan Möngke died in 1259, his brothers Kublai and Ariq Böke each claimed the throne. Their civil war ended with Ariq Böke’s surrender in 1264, but by about 1261–1262 four regional khanates were already exercising separate authority. The four names describe the main centers of successor rule, not a single agreed partition made on one date.

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Yuan: Mongolia and China

The succession conflict eventually left Kublai in control of the imperial center. He moved the capital from Karakorum to Beijing in 1264 and adopted the Chinese dynastic name Yuan in 1271. The conquest of the Southern Song was completed in 1279, bringing all China under Mongol rule. The Yuan court at Dadu, present-day Beijing, governed China while retaining Mongolia within its northern domain.

Kublai and his successors continued to claim the Great Khan’s senior place in the dynasty, but their rule did not give them direct command over every western Mongol realm. The Yuan dynasty is therefore part of both Mongol imperial history and Chinese dynastic history. Ming forces captured Dadu in 1368; the ruling house withdrew north into Mongolia, where its descendants continued to rule beyond China.

Ilkhanate: Iran and neighbouring lands

At a 1251 assembly, Möngke ordered his brother Hülegü to campaign in Muslim lands; Hülegü’s army set out in 1253 and reached Transoxiana in 1255. In 1256 it subdued fortified mountain centers of the Nizari Ismailis, a branch of Shia Islam, in Iran, and captured Baghdad in 1258. After Möngke’s death in 1259, Hülegü’s western command developed into an autonomous dynasty based in Azerbaijan, the historical region of northwestern Iran, and ruling across much of Iran, Iraq, the southern Caucasus and adjoining lands. Its rulers were called Il-khans, and the dynasty is usually dated from about 1260 to 1335.

The Ilkhans remained related to Kublai’s Yuan branch, which recognized Hülegü’s line; that alliance continued into the fourteenth century. Their western position also brought them into conflict with the Jochid rulers of the Golden Horde over territory around the Caucasus and northwestern Iran. Ghazan, the Ilkhan, converted to Islam in 1295. When Abu Saʿid died in 1335 without a son, rival Mongol leaders backed different claimants and the unified Ilkhanid dynasty broke apart.

Golden Horde: the Jochid domains in the west

Jochi, Genghis Khan’s eldest son, received the westernmost of the family’s original ulus. After Jochi died before his father, his son Batu led the 1236–1240 campaigns across the Pontic and Caspian steppes, north of the Black and Caspian seas. Batu became the effective founder of the Mongol power later known as the Golden Horde. Its lands included steppe communities and tributary Rus’ principalities, East Slavic realms across eastern Europe; Sarai, a city Batu built on the lower Volga, served as an administrative center.

Batu’s brother Berke ruled from 1257 to 1267. During the succession conflict he backed Ariq Böke, while Hülegü supported Kublai. From the early 1260s, Berke and Hülegü’s forces fought over claims in the Caucasus, the mountain region between the Black and Caspian seas, and neighboring territories.

Chagatai Khanate: Central Asian domains

After Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, Chagatai’s ulus included Transoxiana, the region around Bukhara and Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, as well as lands around Lake Issyk-Kul in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Jetisu, the Seven Rivers region of southeastern Kazakhstan. These holdings extended east toward Xinjiang in present-day China. In the thirteenth century, Chagatai’s pastures and neighboring Ögedei domains met around Lake Balkhash; their boundaries were not sharply drawn, and the two territories shared economic and linguistic ties.

Chagatai’s descendants developed a regional khanate as princes made Central Asian resources increasingly independent of the Great Khan’s officers. Around 1269, Chagataid princes allied with Qaidu, a grandson of Ögedei, Genghis Khan’s son and former Great Khan. Qaidu led resistance to Kublai’s authority in Central Asia, drawing Chagataid princes into campaigns against Kublai’s eastern allies. After Qaidu died in 1301, Chagatai and Tolui descendants reached an agreement; in 1304–1305, several Mongol rulers briefly recognized Kublai’s successor Temür as Great Khan.