In 1227 AD, Genghis Khan died of illness at the foot of Liupan Mountain. In the will, the "Generation Of Heavenly Pride" divided the territory laid down by his lifelong conquest to his four sons, while the bitter cold land in the east of Mongolia itself was divided among his four brothers.
Among them, the fiefdom of the eldest son Shuchi was established by his son Batu in the later Western Expedition, the second son Chagatai fief established the Chagatai Khanate after the Western Liao, and the third son Wokoutai, as the successor of the Great Khan, was entrusted with the administration of the entire Mongol Empire, and his fiefdom was divided between Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty and the Chagatai Khanate in the later Khanate dispute, becoming the most unfortunate khanate. According to the Mongolian tradition of the younger son "guarding the family business", the fourth son, Tuolei, was in charge of the Mongolian mainland.
For a long time, there have been two theories of the "four great khanates" of Mongolia: one is composed of the Yuan Dynasty established by Kublai Khan plus the Khanate of Chincha, the Khanate of Chagatai and the Ilkhanate; the other is composed of the Khanate of Chincha, the Khanate of Chagatai, the Ilkhanate and the Wokoutai Khanate. It is not difficult to see from this that the emergence of the Yuan Dynasty and the Ilkhanate formed two versions of the "Four Great Khanates".
Either way, the Yuan Dynasty and the Ilkhanate were founded by Genghis Khan's younger son, Tuolei. There are many descendants of Genghis Khan who can fight a good war, but it is rare for a person like the Tuolei family to be so powerful. Although the youngest son, Torre, "supervised the country" for two years, he had the "common family property" of the Mongolian native golden family, and in fact did not have his own fiefdom.
However, the four sons of Tuolei and his wife Instigator Lu Hethini were more contentious than one another: the eldest son Möngke became the Great Khan of the Great Mongolian State, the second son Kublai Khan not only became the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire but also the founder of the Yuan Dynasty, the third son Hulagu was forced to fight an Ilkhanate, and the fourth son Ali Buge was also a fierce horn, and after being proclaimed as the Great Khan of the Great Mongolian State by some of the kings and ministers in Kulitai, a four-year-long khaganic dispute broke out with his brother Kublai Khan.
Let's take a look at the great deeds of Tuolei's four sons in turn:
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Mungo</h1>
Although Genghis Khan left his third son Wokoutai to inherit the Khan's throne, he stipulated that the heir of the Mongol Great Khan must be elected by the Kulitai Assembly. It has to be said that this kind of tribal council, attended by kings and nobles, seems democratic but difficult to centralize. The later history of the "Great Mongol State" shows that almost every change of khan position was accompanied by bloody rain and wind.
In 1229, after more than a month of fierce debate and game, Wokoutai was able to inherit the Khan's throne without any danger. After a reign of 13 years, Wokoutai died of booze in 1241. According to the rules laid down by Genghis Khan, the Kulitai Assembly was reconvened, and the eldest son of Wokoutai, Guiyu, was elected as the Great Khan.
Probably seeing the "institutional drawbacks" of the handover of the Khan's throne, guiyu clearly put forward the condition: the Khan's position must be passed on from generation to generation by his descendants. Kiyu died less than two years into his reign, and his elaborate "hereditary system of khanship" followed. At the Kulitai Assembly in 1251, the commander of the "Eldest Son Western Expeditionary Army", Battus, supported Tuolei's eldest son Möngke, and there was another open struggle, and Möngke finally won the position of Great Khan.
At this point, the Khan of the Mongol Empire was "moved" from the Wokoutai family to the Torre family, and the change of supreme power not only led to the division of the imperial family, but also laid the groundwork for the later division of the Mongol Empire.
After ascending the throne, Möngke worked hard to rule, and during his reign of more than eight years, Möngke achieved a series of feats such as conquering Dali, expeditioning west Asia, and conquering the Southern Song Dynasty. In response to the "disobedience" of the kings of the Wokoutai clan, Möngke did not back down at all, and led a large-scale army to suppress the "rebellion". In 1259, Möngke was accidentally killed in battle in Hezhou, Sichuan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Kublai Khan</h1>
When Möngke died of illness, Kublai Khan was leading an army to attack the Southern Song Dynasty, and in his advice to return to the north to compete for the Khan's throne at an early date, Kublai Khan initially thought, "I have been ordered to come south, how can I not repay it without merit?" "Excuse me. After forcing the Southern Song Dynasty to cut off the land and ask for peace and send the old coins, Kublai Khan returned to Yanjing with a large army at the end of that year. In May 1260, with the support of his younger brother Hulagu and his fiefdom vassals, Kublai Khan established himself as the Great Khan of the Great Mongol State, with the title of Emperor of the Great Mongol State.
In 1271, Kublai Khan changed the name of the country to "Dayuan" and became the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. During his 34-year reign, Kublai Khan achieved great achievements in unifying China, and the actual territory of the Yuan Dynasty was unprecedented.
In addition, Kublai Khan fought many battles with the "Four Great Khanates" in the western part of the empire, especially the Chagatai Khanate and the Wokoutai Khanate. By the eleventh and eighteenth years of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan also launched two expeditions to Japan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Hulagu</h1>
In terms of fighting, Hulagu was no weaker than his three brothers. In 1258, Hulagu attacked the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad and forced the caliph Kaesong to surrender in a beautiful siege. The Mongol army slaughtered Baghdad for a week, killing hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants and killing the last caliph in bags.
In 1259, Hulagu attacked Damascus in three ways, and the following year destroyed the Ayyyubid dynasty in Syria, and most of Asia Minor was occupied by Hulagu's army. At this point, hulagu's western conscription army reached the Palestinian area on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and the Islamic world was immediately in a state of extreme panic.
In Kublai Khan's struggle for the Khan's throne with Ali Buge, Hulagu clearly supported Kublai Khan. In return, Kublai Khan assigned the persian territory that had been under the direct administration of the Great Khan to Hulagu. In this way, Hulagu established the Ilkhanate, whose territory stretched from the Amu Darya River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and from the Caucasus in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, occupying the rich two rivers valleys.
After defeating his younger brother Ali Buge, Kublai Khan fulfilled his promise in 1264, when he became emperor, and made Hulagu Ilkhan. Hulagu smiled happily at his brother's reward. With this blood relationship, Hulagu's Ilkhanate was of course the most closely related to Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Ali bu brother</h1>
In March 1260, Kublai Khan established himself as Great Khan, and within a month, Ali Buge was elected by some nobles at the Kulitai Assembly as the Great Khan of the Great Mongol State. In order to compete for the position of Great Khan, the two brothers engaged in fierce infighting, and the war lasted for four years.
After claiming the title of emperor, Kublai Khan took control of the desert steppe in the south of the desert, and imposed a blockade on the desert grassland where Ali Buge was located, and in the face of material scarcity and economic withering, Ali Buge finally became unable to continue and surrendered to his brother in 1264. By this time, Kublai Khan controlled the eastern part of the Mongol Empire and most of the territory that had previously belonged to the Great Khan.
Ali Buge had always opposed Kublai Khan's sinicization policy and had always been hostile to his brother. After his surrender, Kublai Khan pardoned Ali's death penalty and beheaded only a group of his advisers. Two years later, in 1266, Ali Bu Brother died of depression, and it is not known whether he was poisoned by his brother.
Text/Tian Ruian Original is not easy, please pay attention to; welcome to leave a comment, criticism and correction.