Many people may have heard a story that before Genghis Khan died, he called his four sons together and gave each of them an arrow to let them do this. The four sons were able to do it with ease. Genghis Khan gave each son an arrow and let them do this. As a result, no one can do it.
This story is usually used to prove the importance of brotherhood. In fact, this story is obviously impossible to exist, and it was made up by later generations. Because when Genghis Khan died, the eldest son, Shuchi, was already dead. Chagatai was also basically active in his own fiefdom, and Wokoutai was also in his fiefdom, and only the youngest son, Tuolei, was followed by Genghis Khan.
The reason for the emergence of this legend, in turn, can also be said that Genghis Khan knew very well before his death that behind him, the division of the empire was inevitable. Because, before his death, the contradiction between the eldest son Shuchi and the second son Chagatai had already become public, and had already broken out during Genghis Khan's Western Expedition.
Earlier, after Genghis Khan's territory expanded, the first batch of his three younger brothers were divided, of which the youngest brother Hesar was once suspected by Genghis Khan, Genghis Khan even killed him, or their mother Ha Erlun came forward to dissuade him, and Genghis Khan spared Hesar.
The main reason for this situation is that the inheritance system that prevailed in Mongolia at that time was still a system of separation of production, rather than the inheritance system of the eldest son, or the winner-take-all inheritance method. At the beginning of the establishment of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan was greatly divided, and his four sons and three younger brothers were each given large fiefs, and each of them also received a number of Mongolian thousand households, that is, bingyuan.
This practice is actually very similar to the practice of the early Zhou Dynasty. After the establishment of the state, it divided its own clan children and allocated a considerable number of people as the backbone force. In this way, each feudal prince not only has a fief, but also has soldiers, and within his own territory is the supreme monarch, and the people in the fiefdom are first and foremost the subjects of these feudal monarchs, and then the people of Tianzi.
The practice of the Zhou Dynasty was that tianzi divided their sons into princes, and each prince continued to divide his sons into smaller feudal princes in his fiefdoms, so that the layers of feudalism continued to form a hierarchical system of tianzi, princes, secretaries, doctors, and scholars. The Mongol practice was also the same as that of the Zhou Dynasty, where every king with a fief would continue to divide his sons within his fiefdom.
Therefore, after the death of Genghis Khan, wokoutai succession was basically no one questioned, and the only person who had the strength to oppose wokoutai was Tuolei, but Tuolei expressed support for Wokoutai. There were no greater problems during the Wokoutai period. After wokoutai's death, Guiyu Khan succeeded to the throne and was able to maintain apparent unity. By the time of Möngke Khan, infighting had intensified.
By the death of Guiyu Khan in 1259, the Mongol Empire was divided. The most notable landmark event is that after Möngke's death, Ali Buge, who remained in Mongolia, became the most qualified person to succeed to the throne, but Kublai Khan returned to Kaiping from the song front, and with the support of the three eastern royal families, that is, the family of Genghis Khan's three younger brothers, kaiping also established himself as emperor and immediately went to war with Ali Buge.
The war between Ali Buge and Kublai Khan lasted for a while and then gradually subsided, the Chagatai Khanate gradually annexed the Wokoutai Khanate, and both the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde intended to attack the Chagatai Khanate. After Battus' death, Bergo, who succeeded to the throne of the Golden Horde, led an army over the Gazso Mountains and prepared to attack the Ilkhanate. That is to say, the four khanates of the Mongol Empire entered a stage of melee.
According to the French expert on Mongol history, Gruse, each had its own task when dividing the four khanates. Among them, the task of the Golden Horde was to conquer Europe, the task of Hulagu's Ilkhanate was to conquer the Middle East, the task of the Chagatai Khanate was to conquer India, and Kublai Khan's task was to conquer China. But apart from Hulagu and Kublai Khan, which basically completed their tasks, the two remaining khanates were too busy with civil wars to complete their tasks.
In addition to the production system, the succession of the Mongol Khanate has another important feature, that is, it continues the system of electing khans before the formation of the Mongol state, which is what the Mongols call the Kuriletai Assembly. Because Genghis Khan was crowned emperor in this way, he continued this system.
It is also because of this Kuriletai assembly system that Ali Buge is obviously a more legitimate heir, but Kublai Khan also held a Kuriletai assembly in Kaiping to convene the three eastern royal families, and also went through three pushes and three concessions before finally ascending the throne. In this way, there are loopholes in the system, and it is possible to establish itself as a great khan in a procedurally legal way.
Moreover, because Mongolia did not have a primogeniture system, there would be more and more princes with nominal inheritance rights like all nomadic countries. Therefore, after the death of Wokoutai, Guiyu Khan succeeded to the throne, still in the Wokoutai lineage, but after Guiyu Khan's death, Guiyu Khan's empress did not allow Guiyu Khan's son to lose the Liemen to succeed to the throne, so that Möngke could succeed to the throne with the support of Battu, and the imperial lineage was transferred to the Tuolei clan.
After Kublai Khan, although the imperial lineage was still in the hands of the Tuolei clan, it was also in repeated infighting, and from the death of Emperor Timur of Yuancheng, there would be serious infighting almost every time the emperor was inherited. Not only did the empresses try to supervise the state and control the political situation, but the princes were also eager to move.
Therefore, fundamentally speaking, the Yuan Dynasty still did not jump out of the law of "Hu Yu's fortune without a hundred years", the main reason is that there is no mature and stable inheritance system, too much continuation of the tradition of nomadic peoples, so that the Mongol Empire can not continue to mature and develop from generation to generation, but debut is the peak, and then continue to decline.