THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 1206–1368 · East Asia

Mongol Empire

Also known as Mongols

In 1206 an assembly of steppe tribes proclaimed Temüjin as Genghis Khan, ruler of all the Mongols. Reorganising his followers into units of tens, hundreds and thousands loyal to him rather than to their clans, he created a disciplined army of mounted archers that conquered northern China, Central Asia and parts of Persia.

His sons and grandsons continued the expansion: Ögedei finished off the Jin dynasty, Batu overran Russia and invaded Poland and Hungary, Hulagu took Baghdad, and Kublai conquered the Song. The Mongols ruled through local officials, a postal relay system and religious tolerance, and their peace made Eurasian trade routes safer than ever. After Möngke's death in 1259 the empire split into four khanates, and Mongol rule in China ended in 1368.

Follow its story on the map

Portrait of Genghis Khan from an album of Mongol emperors painted at the Yuan court, 14th century
Portrait of Genghis Khan from an album of Mongol emperors painted at the Yuan court, 14th century Unknown author · Public domain
Years
1206–1368
Capital
Avarga, then Karakorum (from 1235); from 1264 Khanbaliq (Beijing) for the Great Khan
Greatest extent
1270, about 24.00 million km²
Region
East Asia

Largest contiguous land empire in history, from Korea to eastern Europe; c. 24.0M km² (Turchin, Adams & Hall 2006, dated 1270; Taagepera 1997 gives 23.5M in 1294 and 24M in 1309)

Legacy

The Mongol Empire connected East and West as never before, spreading goods, technologies and ideas, and also the Black Death, across Eurasia.

Timeline of Mongol Empire

  1. Kurultai proclaims Temüjin Genghis Khan

    Temüjin was born around 1162, the son of a Mongol chieftain. After his father's death his family was abandoned and lived in poverty. Through skill in war and alliances, he defeated rival steppe leaders one by one, including his former allies Toghrul of the Kereits and Jamukha, and the Tatars, Merkits and Naimans. In 1206 an assembly of the steppe peoples, a kurultai, met near the Onon river and proclaimed him Genghis Khan, a title whose meaning is uncertain. For the first time the tribes of the Mongolian steppe were united under one ruler, and the Mongol Empire appears on the map.

  2. Invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire begins (1219–1221)

    The Khwarazmian Empire ruled Central Asia and Iran under Shah Muhammad II. In 1218 Genghis Khan sent a large trading caravan there, but the governor of Otrar seized its goods and executed the merchants as spies. When the shah refused to punish him and killed one of the Mongol envoys sent to complain, Genghis invaded in 1219. Over the next two years Bukhara, Samarkand and Urgench fell, and the shah fled and died on an island in the Caspian Sea. The war was one of the bloodiest in history, and the empire's map now stretched west across Central Asia.

  3. Genghis Khan dies during the campaign against Western Xia

    The Western Xia, a kingdom of the Tangut people in what is now north-western China, had submitted to the Mongols after a raid in 1209, but it later refused to send troops for the war against Khwarazm. Genghis Khan returned from the west to punish it. In August 1227, while subduing the rebellious Tanguts, he died, after falling from his horse while hunting the previous winter and growing increasingly ill. His burial place was kept secret and has never been found. The Western Xia was destroyed, and his son Ögedei was later chosen as Great Khan.

  4. Mongols and Song finish off the Jin dynasty

    The Jin dynasty of the Jurchen people ruled northern China. The Mongols had attacked it since 1211, taking its capital Zhongdu (Beijing) in 1215 and forcing the Jin court to move south to Kaifeng. Under Ögedei the Mongols besieged Kaifeng in 1232, and the Jin emperor Aizong fled south to Caizhou. In 1233 the Southern Song dynasty allied with the Mongols, and their combined armies besieged Caizhou, which fell on 9 February 1234. The Jin dynasty ended, and the Mongols now ruled all of northern China, bringing them face to face with the Song.

  5. Batu attacks Ryazan, the first Rus' principality to fall

    In 1236 a huge Mongol army under Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, with the general Subutai, set out to conquer the lands west of the Volga. In late 1237 it invaded Ryazan, the first of the Rus' principalities to be attacked, whose prince's call for help from Vladimir went unanswered. The Mongols besieged the city from 16 December, stormed it on 21 December, killed the prince and nearly all the inhabitants and burned it. Batu then pushed on into Vladimir-Suzdal, destroying city after city in the north-east of Rus'.

  6. Kiev falls; nearly all Rus' under Mongol rule

    Kiev, the ancient capital of the Rus', had been the greatest city of Eastern Europe, though it was now weakened by quarrels among the princes. Batu's army, under the command of Subutai, besieged it from 28 November 1240 and stormed it on 6 December, after the defenders made a last stand in the Church of the Tithes. The fall of Kiev completed the conquest of the Rus' lands, which became tributaries of the Mongol khans, later known as the Golden Horde. The Mongol map now reached into Eastern Europe.

  7. Hungarians crushed at Mohi; Ögedei's death halts the invasion

    In 1241 the Mongols invaded Central Europe. One force defeated the Poles and Germans at Legnica, while the main army under Batu and Subutai entered Hungary. On 11 April 1241 it destroyed the army of King Béla IV at Mohi, near the Sajó river, and went on to ravage Hungary. Then news arrived that the Great Khan Ögedei had died in December 1241, and the Mongol armies withdrew from Central Europe, though historians doubt this was the only reason. They never returned in such force.

  8. Möngke elected Great Khan

    After Ögedei's death, his widow ruled as regent, then his son Güyük reigned briefly until his death in 1248. Batu, the most senior prince, backed Möngke, the son of Genghis Khan's youngest son Tolui. On 1 July 1251 a kurultai in Mongolia proclaimed Möngke Great Khan. He purged rival princes and reorganised the empire's government and finances. He then launched two great new campaigns: his brother Hulagu was sent west against the Islamic lands, and his brother Kublai south against the Song.

  9. Hulagu sacks Baghdad and ends the Abbasid caliphate

    Hulagu destroyed the Isma'ili Assassins' strongholds in Iran and demanded that the Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim submit, but the caliph refused. The Mongols attacked Baghdad at the end of January 1258, and on 10 February the caliph surrendered. The city was sacked and its people massacred, and al-Musta'sim was killed. A later story says so many books were thrown into the Tigris that it ran black, though some libraries reopened within two years. The five-century Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad was ended, and Iraq and Iran became the base of Hulagu's Ilkhanate.

  10. Möngke dies besieging Diaoyu; succession war follows

    Möngke personally led an army against the Southern Song in Sichuan, where the Song had fortified mountain strongholds such as Diaoyu. In 1259 the Mongols besieged Diaoyu fortress, near modern Chongqing, but disease swept through their camp. Möngke died there on 11 August 1259, from disease according to most accounts, though one source says he was killed in battle. He had not named a successor, and his brothers Kublai and Ariq Böke fought each other in the Toluid Civil War (1260–1264). The empire began to break into separate khanates.

  11. Mamluks defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut

    Hulagu's army had taken Aleppo and Damascus and threatened Egypt, ruled by the Mamluks. After Möngke's death Hulagu withdrew with most of his army, leaving about 10,000 men under his general Kitbuqa. The Mamluk sultan Qutuz marched from Cairo, and on 3 September 1260 the two armies met at Ain Jalut, a spring in Galilee. Using a feigned retreat led by Baybars, the Mamluks defeated the Mongols and killed Kitbuqa. It was the first major halt to the Mongol advance, and Syria and Egypt stayed outside the empire.

  12. Kublai proclaims the Yuan dynasty

    After winning the civil war, Kublai Khan ruled from northern China and adopted Chinese ways of government to win over his Chinese subjects. In 1271 he proclaimed a new dynasty with the Chinese name Dai Yuan, 'Great Yuan', and claimed succession to earlier Chinese dynasties. He built a new capital, Dadu (Khanbaliq), on the site of modern Beijing. As Great Khan he still had influence over the Ilkhanate and less over the Golden Horde. In practice, though, his real power was limited to the Yuan realm, which now became the core of the empire.

  13. Song imperial court surrenders at Hangzhou

    Kublai's conquest of the Southern Song had stalled for years at Xiangyang, a fortress city on the Han river guarding the Yangtze plain. It fell in 1273, after the Mongols brought in Persian-designed counterweight trebuchets. The Mongol general Bayan then advanced down the Yangtze toward Hangzhou (Lin'an), the Song capital. In 1276 the Song court surrendered, and the boy emperor Gong was captured, while loyalists fled south with his younger brothers. Most of southern China was now in Mongol hands.

  14. Conquest of Song China completed

    Song loyalists carried on the fight from southern China, crowning two young princes in turn. Their last refuge was a fleet at Yamen, in Guangdong near the Pearl River delta. On 19 March 1279 the Yuan navy under Zhang Hongfan destroyed the Song fleet. With the seven-year-old emperor Zhao Bing lost in the defeat, the Song dynasty ended, and Kublai became the first non-Han emperor to rule all of China. The Mongol Empire reached its greatest extent on the map around this time.

  15. Second invasion of Japan fails, as the first did in 1274

    After the Korean kingdom of Goryeo submitted, Kublai demanded that Japan also become his vassal, but the Japanese ignored his envoys. In 1274 a Mongol and Korean force landed in Kyushu near Hakata but withdrew after a storm. The Japanese then built a defensive stone wall at Hakata Bay, and in 1281 Kublai sent a much larger invasion. It was held back by the samurai and then wrecked by a typhoon, which the Japanese called kamikaze, 'divine wind'. Japan stayed independent, and the failure marked one of the limits of Mongol expansion by sea.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Wars

Sources