Mongol Empire · 1265
Was the division of the Mongol Empire inevitable?
The seminar question: “Was the empire’s division inevitable, or did Möngke’s death during the Song campaign determine it?”
Möngke’s death in 1259 produced rival elections: Khubilai claimed the great khanship from his Chinese base and Ariq Böke from Mongolia, and Khubilai won the civil war in 1264. Meanwhile Berke of the Golden Horde went to war with Hülegü’s Ilkhanate, and the khanates developed separate revenues, armies and alliances.
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When Möngke died in 1259, his brothers Khubilai and Ariq Böke had to secure support from a ruling family spread across an immense empire. They did not submit their claims to one gathering. Khubilai’s supporters elected him at Shangdu; another assembly in Mongolia raised Ariq Böke. Neither spoke for the whole family, and each claimant had an army with which to defend the choice.
The short answer
- A disputed inheritance. The family had more than one principle to draw on when a ruler died. Ultimogeniture associated the youngest son with the family hearth; tanistry gave weight to a ruler acclaimed by an assembly. Neither settled every claim to the empire. Succession could interrupt campaigns while princes returned or maneuvered for a decision: the atlas records pauses after 1227, 1241 and 1259, followed by rival elections in 1260. Those pauses did not by themselves decide the fate of Hungary or Syria, but they show how a question at the center could affect armies far away.
- Regional power before division. Long before open division, the branches had learned to govern with different resources. Khubilai relied on north Chinese grain, generals and taxes; Berke drew on Volga trade and Muslim merchants; Hülegü worked with Persian administrators. These were practical arrangements for ruling their regions. They also meant that each branch had interests of its own and the resources to defend them when relations within the family broke down.
- Berke and Islam. Berke’s conversion to Islam gave him a particular reason to condemn Hülegü’s destruction of Baghdad. It did not displace the disputes over pastures and shares of plunder. Faith helped him find common cause with the Mamluks, who faced Hülegü’s armies in Syria, while those material disputes gave him reasons of his own to oppose his cousin. In later decades Islam gained ground among Mongol rulers; three of the four major khanates eventually had Muslim rulers, at different times.
THE TURNING POINT
The Terek, winter 1262–63. The fighting at the Terek in winter 1262–63 showed what the family quarrel had become: major Chinggisid states were at war. It followed Ain Jalut in 1260, where the Mamluks had shown that an outside army could defeat a Mongol force. Hülegü now had to consider the Golden Horde to his north as well as the Mamluks in Syria. The dashed borders mark military frontiers between rulers who nevertheless shared descent from Chinggis Khan.
What it changed
An ally for the Mamluks. A campaign against the Mamluks exposed the Ilkhans to danger from the Golden Horde in the north. The Mamluks therefore gained a useful partner in Berke. Baybars corresponded with him as a fellow Muslim, and Egypt acquired enslaved people through the Horde’s steppe networks. Ain Jalut had checked an invasion (Ch. 8); the alliance gave the Mamluks a continuing diplomatic advantage, even though Ilkhan campaigns against Syria continued.
Different regional futures. Each branch’s future was shaped by the region it ruled. The Yuan acted as a Chinese dynasty (Ch. 10), while the Ilkhans patronized Persian institutions. The Golden Horde drew on Turkic and Muslim networks and the fur and slave trades, and the Chagatai lands retained strong connections to the steppe. These differences did not erase Mongol dynastic identity. They made each branch part of a distinct regional history as well (Ch. 12).
Kaidu’s prolonged challenge. Ögedei’s grandson Kaidu challenged Khubilai in Central Asia for decades; fighting continued into the 1300s. The dashed line near the Altai marks a long contest within the family. Men and resources committed there could not be used elsewhere at the same time. Khubilai’s overseas invasions in Chapter 11 thus took place alongside a war with relatives, although the precise share of the Yuan army committed to that war requires evidence.
The full answer, argued
The branches already commanded their own armies, revenues and advisers, and no succession procedure obliged every claimant to accept one choice. Those conditions put strong pressure on imperial unity. Möngke’s death in 1259 brought the decision forward and helped determine which rivals faced one another. Had he lived longer, central reforms might have delayed or altered the break. Regional division was a serious possibility; the particular civil wars of 1260–64 were not predetermined.
An interesting fact
Marco Polo and Rashid al-Din, writing at opposite ends of the empire, both describe Kaidu’s daughter Khutulun as a formidable wrestler who accompanied her father in war. Polo adds that she would marry only someone who could defeat her, that she staked a hundred horses on each contest, and that she amassed ten thousand. That extraordinary total is his claim. Later retellings have also connected her story with the princess of Puccini’s Turandot.
This is the study layer of Division of the Mongol Empire, chapter 9 of The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294; the full index of the atlas is here.
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