HistoryMemes.com

Making Sense of History

Mongol Empire: A Visual History

Get My 10 Best History Memes:

Visual history of an empire

The largest contiguous land empire ever, built in a single lifetime by nomads who had no cities of their own.

Existed
1206 to 1368
Duration
162 years
Peak area
About 24 million km2 (c. 1270-1300)
Peak population
Perhaps 100 million or more
Capital
Avarga, then Karakorum, then Khanbaliq (Beijing)
Founder
Genghis Khan (Temujin), r. 1206-1227
Ended
Yuan expelled from China, 1368

In 1206 a steppe chieftain named Temujin united the feuding Mongol tribes and took the title Genghis Khan. Within a century his family ruled from Korea to Hungary and from Siberia to the Persian Gulf. The Mongols were ferocious in conquest, wiping out cities that resisted, but also pragmatic rulers who protected trade routes, tolerated religions and moved ideas, technologies and diseases across Eurasia at unprecedented speed. The unified empire fractured after 1260 into four khanates that outlived it for generations.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Mongol Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

7008009001000110012001300140015001600Mongol Empire (1206 to 1368)Open: Abbasid CaliphateAbbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)Open: Khwarazmian EmpireKhwarazmian Empire (1077 to 1231)Open: CrusadesCrusades (1096 to 1291)Open: Southern Song dynastySouthern Song dynasty (1127 to 1279)Open: Mongol invasions and conquestsMongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)Open: Chagatai KhanateChagatai Khanate (1226 to 1347)Open: Golden Horde (Jochi Khanate)Golden Horde (Jochi Khanate) (1242 to 1502)Open: IlkhanateIlkhanate (1256 to 1335)Open: Yuan dynastyYuan dynasty (1271 to 1368)Open: Conquests of TimurConquests of Timur (1370 to 1405)

Growth of Mongol territory

Approximate area under Mongol control. After 1260 the figure combines the four khanates.

06.2512.518.75251206: 1.51215: 41227: 13.51241: 181259: 221279: 241300: 241335: 201368: 1512201240126012801300132013401360million km2 (approximate)

Timeline of the Mongol Empire

  1. c. 1162
    Temujin bornNear the Onon river in present-day Mongolia.
  2. 1206
    Genghis Khan proclaimedThe tribes unite under a single Great Khan.
  3. 1215
    Zhongdu (Beijing) fallsThe Jin capital is captured and burned.
  4. 1219-1221
    Khwarazmian campaignCentral Asia and eastern Persia devastated.
  5. 1227
    Death of Genghis KhanDuring the final campaign against Western Xia; his burial place remains unknown.
  6. 1235
    Karakorum builtOgedei establishes a fixed capital.
  7. 1241
    Legnica and MohiMongols destroy European armies in Poland and Hungary, then withdraw.
  8. 1258
    Sack of BaghdadHulagu ends the Abbasid Caliphate.
  9. 1260
    Ain JalutMamluks defeat a Mongol army in Palestine; the first decisive check.
  10. 1271
    Yuan dynasty foundedKublai Khan adopts a Chinese dynastic name.
  11. 1279
    Song China conqueredAll of China under Mongol rule.
  12. 1274 and 1281
    Invasions of Japan failStorms wreck the fleets, the famous kamikaze.
  13. 1368
    Yuan expelledThe Ming take Beijing; the Mongols retreat to the steppe.

From outcast to Great Khan

Temujin was born around 1162 into a minor noble family; after his father was poisoned the family was abandoned by their clan and survived on roots and marmots. He rebuilt his fortunes through alliances, loyalty and a talent for organisation, breaking the old tribal structure by promoting commanders on merit and mixing tribes within decimal military units of ten, a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand.

At a great assembly (kurultai) in 1206 he was proclaimed Genghis Khan, ruler of 'all who live in felt tents'. He issued a legal code, the Yassa, adopted a written script for Mongolian, and turned outward. The Western Xia and the Jin dynasty in northern China were the first targets.

The conquests

The Mongol war machine combined mounted archery, extreme mobility, disciplined feigned retreats and superb intelligence gathering. Cities that surrendered were usually spared; those that resisted were often destroyed as a warning. When the Khwarazmian shah murdered a Mongol trade caravan in 1218, Genghis Khan responded with a campaign that levelled Samarkand, Bukhara and Merv and pushed Mongol power to the Caspian.

After Genghis died in 1227, his son Ogedei continued the expansion. Batu and the general Subutai crushed the Rus principalities, destroyed a Hungarian army at Mohi and a Polish-German force at Legnica in 1241, and were poised to enter western Europe when news of Ogedei's death recalled the princes to elect a successor. Hulagu later sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid Caliphate, while Kublai completed the conquest of Song China by 1279.

How the empire actually worked

The Mongols governed with a light touch and borrowed heavily from their subjects: Chinese and Persian administrators, Uyghur scribes, Muslim tax farmers. The yam relay system of post stations let messages cross the empire in weeks, and merchants carrying an imperial passport (paiza) travelled with remarkable security. Marco Polo's account of Kublai's court comes from this period, sometimes called the Pax Mongolica.

Religious tolerance was practical policy: Genghis Khan exempted clergy of every faith from taxes, and Mongol courts hosted debates between Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Daoists. The same open roads that carried silk and gunpowder westward almost certainly carried the Black Death too.

Fragmentation

Succession was the empire's fatal weakness. Every khan's death triggered a kurultai, and by the 1260s the disputed election of Kublai produced open civil war with his brother Ariq Boke and cousin Kaidu. The empire settled into four largely independent states: the Yuan dynasty in China, the Ilkhanate in Persia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia and the Golden Horde (Jochi Khanate) in Russia and the steppe.

The Yuan were driven out of China by the Ming in 1368, which is the usual end date for the empire as a whole. But the Golden Horde dominated Russia until the late fifteenth century, Timur claimed the Mongol mantle in the 1370s, and Genghisid descent remained a source of legitimacy across Asia for centuries.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Wars of the same era and region

10 surprising things about the Mongol Empire

  1. Genghis Khan's tomb has never been found. Legend says the burial party killed everyone they met, then were killed themselves, and horses were ridden over the site to hide it.
  2. One genetics study estimated that about 1 in 200 men alive today (some 16 million) carry a Y chromosome that probably traces back to Genghis Khan's family.
  3. The Mongols were among the first states to grant diplomatic immunity, and killing envoys was one of the few things guaranteed to bring total destruction on a city.
  4. The word 'horde' comes from the Mongol and Turkic 'ordu', meaning a camp or court, not a chaotic mob.
  5. Mongol soldiers reportedly drank blood from a small cut on their horse's neck when supplies ran out, so they could keep riding for days without stopping to cook.
  6. The Mongols conquered more territory in 25 years than the Romans did in 400.
  7. Marco Polo, William of Rubruck and other Europeans reached the Mongol court, and a Nestorian Christian monk from Beijing, Rabban Bar Sauma, travelled the other way to meet the Pope and the King of France.
  8. Karakorum had a silver tree fountain built by a captured Parisian goldsmith that dispensed wine, mare's milk, mead and rice wine from four spouts.
  9. The empire had a paper money system, an early postal service and a census long before most European kingdoms.
  10. The 1281 typhoon that sank Kublai's second invasion fleet gave Japan the term kamikaze, 'divine wind', later reused for World War II suicide pilots.

Sources

Back to all empires and wars