In fact, there are two different definitions of the four great Mongol khanates. The first is to define the four khanates as the Shuchi Khanate, the Wokoutai Khanate, the Chagatai Khanate, and the Torre Khanate according to the division of Genghis Khan Temujin's four concubines during his lifetime, and then count the Yuan Dynasty as one of the four great khanates according to the evolution of these four regimes. But in fact, the land that Genghis Khan divided was only the family land for his four sons, and these four families were still under the rule of the unified Mongol Empire for decades after Genghis Khan's death, so it was not an independent regime, so in fact, this definition was not very reasonable.
Another definition is that, according to later historical realities, the four regimes formed in Central Asia and West Asia under the rule of the descendants of Genghis Khan in Central asia and West Asia were defined as the four great khanates, namely the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe, the Wokoutai and Chagatai Khanates in Central Asia, and the Ilkhanates in West Asia. After 1259 AD, the 4 khanates actually became self-reliant regimes, and they all lasted relatively long, and their influence on the subsequent historical formation of Eurasia was relatively large, so it seemed to be a more reasonable definition in the peach blossom stone miscellany. So what is the history of these four regimes? How did they perish?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > Wokoutai Khanate</h1>
It was developed from the fiefdom of Temujin's third son, Wokoutai, and was the shortest-lived of the four Mongol khanates. The Wokoutai Khanate was mainly located in today's Xinjiang and some areas of surrounding Central Asia, and its capital was located in the territory of present-day Emin County, Xinjiang. Before the Mongol conquest, it was mainly the territory of the ancient tribes of the Barbarians. In 1204 AD, the Sun Khan of the Naimanbu was attacked and killed by the Temujin army, and most of the Naimanbu was incorporated into the Mongol army. Sun Khan's son Qu Chuluze fled to Western Liao and later usurped the throne of Western Liao, but was also defeated by the Mongol army in 1218.
A painting depicting the scene of Wokoutai's ascension to the throne
In 1224 AD, Temujin gave Naiman's homeland to Wokoutai. Perhaps in order to better rule the land of Naiman, Wokoutai also married the Woman of Naimanbu, Thregona. After Temujin's death, Wokoutai became the second Great Khan of Mongolia. After his death in 1241 AD, both the Shuchi and Wokoutai families were interested in competing for the throne of the Great Khan, and under the dispute between the two sides, the Kuriletai Assembly was delayed for four years, and during this period the regent Teregona gradually controlled the situation in the Mongol headquarters, and eventually also controlled the Kuriletai Assembly, so that she and The eldest son guiyu of Wokoutai were elected as the new Great Khan.
In 1248, Guiyu died suddenly while moving west from the Mongol headquarters to inspect his family's territory. Three years later, the Reconvened Kuriletai Congress gave the throne of the Mongol Great Khan to Möngke, who was from the Torre family. Since then, the territory of the Wokoutai family has only been left in the area around Emin County in Xinjiang. After seizing the throne of the Great Khan, the Torre family was also very jealous of the restoration attempt of the Wokoutai family, so it changed the inheritance method of the Wokoutai family and divided it equally among all the descendants of the Wokoutai family, so that each Wokoutai descendant could only get a small piece of land, and there was no strength to compete with the Torre family.
Wokoutai's son Guiyu
But in 1259 AD, Möngke died during his conquest of Chongqing. Later, Möngke's two younger brothers, Kublai Khan and Ali Buge, went to war over the Khan's throne, and the pressure on the Wokoutai family was reduced. During this period, Sun Zi Haidu, who was divided into the western part of present-day Ili in Xinjiang, rose to unify the Fiefdom of the Wokoutai family to a certain extent, and he became the de facto person who established the Wokoutai Khanate.
After that, Haidu united with several sons of Chagatai to support Ali Buge in the Battle for the Mongol Khanate. After the defeat of Ali Buge, Haidu refused to recognize Kublai Khan as the Great Khan of the Mongols, and the Mongol Empire officially split. Since then, the Wokoutai Khanate has joined forces with the Chagatai Khanate and the Golden Horde of the Shuchi family to fight the Yuan Dynasty together. But in 1301 AD, Haidu lost and was wounded in a battle with the Yuan army, and died shortly after. He was then succeeded by his son Chaba'er. But by this time the Chagatai Khanate had fallen out with the Wokoutai Khanate. In 1304 AD, the Chagatai Khanate invaded the Wokoutai Khanate, and the Chaba'er army was defeated and surrendered, but because of his status as a descendant of Temujin, he was still treated with certain courtesy. In 1309 AD, Chaba'er fell out with the monarch of the Chagatai Khanate and fled to the territory of the Yuan Dynasty, and the Chagatai Khanate was officially declared extinct, and most of its homeland was merged into the Chagatai Khanate and a few into the territory of the Yuan Dynasty. The biggest mark left by the Wokoutai Khanate in history can be said to be the decades of war with the Yuan Dynasty.
Ilkhanate
The Ilkhanate was the latest Mongol khanate to be established, but it was also a khanate that died out earlier. The biggest difference between the Ilkhanate and the other three Mongol khanates was that it did not develop directly from Temujin's fiefdoms, but was built on lands that Temujin conquered after his death.
We have just mentioned that the Torre family seized the throne of the Mongol Great Khan in 1251 AD, but at this time, the Shuchi family represented by Battu had already shown signs of self-reliance. In order to expand his power and suppress the Shuchi family, which already had a large territory in Eastern Europe at that time, Möngke soon sent his younger brother Hulagu to conquer the Western Regions.
Painting depicting Hulagu's travels
During this expedition, Hulagu's army soon destroyed the remnants of the Arab Empire, the Abbasid dynasty in Iraq, and the Ayyubid dynasty in the Middle East, and occupied a large area of territory from the southern Caucasus to the surrounding area of present-day Iran. Subsequently, he established the Ilkhanate with the present-day city of Taori Monastery (Tabriz) in northwestern Iran as its capital.
Because the Ilkhanate was founded at the time of the Mongol Empire's division, and the Ilkhanate was also controlled by the Torre family, after the mongol Empire split, the khanate that was the last to be established and did not border the Yuan Dynasty became the khanate most closely related to the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, the great khans of the Ilkhanate were all crowned by the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty, and even the national seals of the early Ilkhanate were the Han Chinese state seals given by the Yuan Dynasty.
The Ilkhanate at its height
However, the Ilkhanate was located in The Western Asia region after all, so its development focus was soon placed on the West Asian region. Shortly after the establishment of the Ilkhanate, there was a fierce war with the Golden Horde controlled by the Shuchi family in the Caucasus. Since then, the Ilkhanate has fought several wars with the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt, invading what is now Palestine/Israel several times, trying to enter Africa from the local area through the Sinai Peninsula. But these offensives were thwarted by the Mamluk dynasty. In order to deal with the Mamluk dynasty, the Ilkhanate also sent envoys to Europe many times to contact the Holy See and the countries of Western Europe, but these efforts did not receive a positive response from the Holy See and the countries of Western Europe, and eventually failed.
After the division of the Ilkhanate, several small dynasties, among which the blue Cupini dynasty continued to support the Ilkhanate
By 1335 AD, the Great Khan of the Ilkhanate, Bhusaiyin, had no heirs after his death, and eventually A'erba, who was born from the Alibugo family, became its Great Khan, but the Ilkhanate quickly fell apart. The descendants of the local Mongols established small dynasties such as the Khubaini dynasty and the Zarayil dynasty, of which the Khubaini dynasty once continued to support an Ilkhan. However, in 1355 AD, the Chubaini dynasty was destroyed by its old enemy, the Golden Horde, and the last Ilkhan nur was lost. In 1393, the Zarayir dynasty, which occupied Baghdad and other places, was destroyed by the Timurid Empire, and the last remnants of the Ilkhanate came to an end. The local Mongol descendants are integrated into the various local ethnic groups. But after the rule of the Ilkhanate, the Persian region was freed from its subordination to the Arabs, and a fully independent Persian dynasty re-emerged.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > Chagatai Khanate</h1>
The Chagatai Khanate was first a fiefdom of Chagatai, the second son of Temujin. In the early days, the territory of the Chagatai Khanate was basically the territory of the original Western Liao. Chagatai and Temujin's eldest son, Shuka, had a tense relationship since childhood, and from an early stage, he strongly opposed Shuchi becoming Temujin's heir, which had a certain influence on Temujin's eventual selection of Wokoutai as the heir.
Chagatai statue
After the mongol conquest for the throne broke out in 1259, the Chagatai Khanate oscillated several times between Kublai Khan and Ali Buge. After Kublai Khan's victory, the Chagatai Khanate soon allied itself with the Wokoutai Khanate, and decades of war broke out with the Yuan Dynasty. However, in 1304 the Chagatai Khanate made peace with the Yuan Dynasty, after which it quickly defeated the Wokoutai Khanate and annexed most of its territory in the following years.
After that, the Chagatai Khanate fought against the Yuan Dynasty and the Ilkhanate, and after the truce, the relationship with the latter became increasingly estranged, and the Chagatai Khanate began to focus its development on Central and South Asia. During this period, the Chagatai Khanate made several attempts to destroy the Delhi Sultanate of India and attacked Delhi several times, but these invasions ended in failure.
At its peak, the Chagatai Khanate had rough territory
Subsequently, Islamic forces within the Chagatai Khanate rose, and there were many civil wars within the Chagatai Khanate, which finally split into two khanates, the East and the West, in 1365 AD. The Great Khan of the Western Chagatai Khanate soon became a puppet, and in the late 14th and early 15th centuries AD, the Western Chagatai Khanate was completely controlled by the warlord Timur, during which Time Timur fought everywhere, not only greatly weakening the Golden Horde, but also defeating the Ottoman Empire and taking its sultans prisoner, as well as attempting to invade the Ming Dynasty. In 1402, after the death of the Great Khan Maha of the Western Chagatai puppet, Timur did not establish another puppet, and the Western Chagatai Khanate collapsed. The empire established by Timur also collapsed rapidly after Timur's death in 1405 AD.
Yi Li and other regimes were subject to the Ming Dynasty
The Eastern Chagatai Khanate was later successively known in Chinese history books as Bei lost eight miles, yili and Turfan, and accepted the ming dynasty's canonization many times. In 1580, Turpan was destroyed by the Yarkand Khanate, and the orthodox successor of the Chagatai Khanate ceased to exist. However, the ruling family of the Yarkand Khanate also came from the Chagatai Khanate branch. The Yarkand Khanate was a vassal of the Qing Dynasty, but was eventually destroyed by the Dzungar Khanate in 1680. The chagatai khanate ruled the ethnic groups during this period and were integrated into the different ethnic groups in the western region.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="38" > the Golden Horde</h1>
Of the four great Mongol khanates, the Golden Horde was undoubtedly the most powerful and the one that had the greatest impact on Eurasian history. The Golden Horde was developed from the fiefdom of temujin's eldest son, the Shuchi family. However, because Shuchi died earlier than Temujin, the real founder of the Golden Horde was actually Shuchi's son, Battu.
Portrait of Battus
The Golden Horde initially had only the Aral Sea and the area around the Caspian Sea in present-day Central Asia, but later occupied a large area of Eastern and Central Europe through expansion, firmly controlling the Rus' region in Eastern Europe, as far as its territory reached the Danube River Valley. After the death of Wokoutai in 1241 AD, Battus, who was on an expedition to Eastern Europe, aborted the Siege of Vienna in Austria and attempted to return east to compete for the Khan's throne. However, this attempt ultimately failed, and after Guiyu became the Great Khan of the Mongols, the Golden Horde gradually began to break away from the control of the Mongol Khanate.
Around 1300 AD, the Golden Horde had a rough territory
After the formal division of the Mongol Empire in 1259 AD, the Golden Horde soon focused its development on Eastern Europe, invading Poland again the following year and occupying its capital, Krakow. In the decades that followed, the Golden Horde invaded Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans several times, waging several wars with Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Serbia, and making long-term alliances with the Eastern Roman Empire.
Painting depicting the Great War between the Golden Horde and the Lithuanian Army
After entering the 13th century AD, the ruling class of the Golden Horde deeply integrated with the surrounding Turkic and Slavic ethnic groups to form a new ethnic Tatar ethnic group (not the same as the Tatars in ancient Chinese texts). At that time, although the Rus' region had long been under the rule of the Golden Horde, because the area directly ruled by the Golden Horde was mainly limited to the Eurasian steppe region, the Rus' region was mainly indirectly ruled by the local princes, and in this case, the Muscovite princes gained the trust of the rulers of the Golden Horde and became an important gripper for maintaining their rule in the Rus' region, which also contributed to the gradual rise of Moscow, which was originally insignificant.
All but Moscow (Muscovy) are the remnants of the Golden Horde
In 1357 AD, after the death of Zanibe Khan of the Golden Horde, the khanate fell into civil strife. In 1396, the Golden Horde was invaded by a series of successive invasions by the Central Asian conqueror Timur, and gradually declined. In the late 15th century AD, the Golden Horde split into at least 6 small khanates. In 1480 AD, Moscow nominally inherited the independence of the Great Horde of the Golden Horde. In 1502, the Great Horde was destroyed by the Crimean Khanate, which had split off from the Golden Horde. The remnants of the Golden Horde, including the Crimean Khanate, were destroyed by Tsarist Russia, which was developed by Moscow in the 16th and 19th centuries AD, and the ruling ethnic group of the Golden Horde became the Tatars, the largest minority in Russia today. Therefore, from this point of view, the greatest influence of the Golden Horde on eurasian history can also be said to have indirectly contributed to the birth and rise of Russia. (Image from the Internet, infringement notice deleted)