Age of Conquest: A Kings and Generals Podcast

Last time we spoke, the Yuan Dynasty lost their hold over China as a result of famines and a rebellion led by Zhu Yuanzhang that eventually toppled them. Now the Ming Dynasty stood as a marvel to the world achieving great wonders, but how long would it prosper? The Ming Dynasty's first Emperors began their reign hampered by paranoia, leading to bloodshed. Eventually it seemed all was going well for the new Dynasty, but then an external threat came to the door in the form of Japan. The Imjin War of 1592-1598 saw the Ming Dynasty quelling the Japanese challenge at their status as the supreme military power in East Asia, but it also weakened them, opened the door for the Jurchen Chieftain Nurhaci to establish a new state and wage war upon them. Now Nurhaci had won a great victory over 4 Ming armies, what would he do next and how would the Ming stop him? Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. This episode is the Ming strike back After Nurhaci had shocked the Ming Court by defeating the 4 armies they sent to destroy him, they now realized they required bigger actions. The Ming Court appointed Xiong Tingbi as "Jinglue" the Military Affairs Commissioner of Liaodong. Xiong was a veteran, a very skilled commander, an intelligent negotiator and interestingly an ambidextrous archer. He was one of the very few Ming officials who had both civil and military skills. Xiong began his work by taking an account of his forces and the enemy. There was supposed to be roughly 180,000 Ming soldiers in the region, but Xiong's personal inspectors found only 90,000 and of which many were unfit for war. Xiong estimated Nurhaci to have around 100,000 men, so this prompted him to request 1.2 million taels of silver from the Ministry Revenue to pump up the Liaodong defense. This soon escalated into a back and forth situation, prompting Xiong to argue that the bureaucrats were not investing enough funds to actually put up a real defense of Liaodong. In the end the Ministers of War and Revenue coughed up around half what he asked for. This would be a recurring theme until the end of the Ming dynasty. Xiong's strategy was to establish extremely stout defenses instead of sending large forces out in the field to face the Jin. He also sought to "sooth the hearts and minds of the people", emphasizing a psychological aspect of the war. What was meant by this was that Xiong was displaying to the Emperor that they needed the people of Liao to know they were valued subjects, because too many were becoming unhappy and as a result defected to the Jin. Xiong also realized having failed to secure enough funds he needed to find his own and thus they would "use the people of Liao to defend Liao and by using the resources of Liao to support Liao". Xiong realized the only real avantage the Ming held over the Jin, was that of firepower. Thus Xiong wanted to formulate his defensive plans based around taking advantage of that. He quickly began using the funds to build up the moats and walls for the fortresses, build cannons and firearms and paid for the relocation of over 180,000 additional troops from other regions to defend a southern line between Fushun and Fort Zhenjiang. He also built up a system of beacons and watch towers which provided communication and coordination for the defensive efforts, cant help but visualize the beacons of Gondor haha. Xiong's defensive strategy was to not meet the Jin in the open field and allow them to fall upon his fortifications. Thus he would not ride out to meet the invaders, but bide time and gradually recover lost territory through attrition. This would all start from Fushun and Qinghe, he also hoped to eventually gain some assistance from Mongols in the north and Koreans from the east thereby forcing the Jin into a multi front war. Xiong perceived Shenyang to have land too open and thus too difficult to defend so he argued against fortifying it much. This gave fuel to other rival officials to criticize him for this, stating he was simply abandoning it. Unsurprisingly given the Ming political climate, Xiong's plans were attacked by many officials. One of the largest critics was Yang Sichang who said it was too difficult to fund and transport many of the troops Xiong wanted and that this would lead to h

Long Intro China is one of the world's four ancient civilizations, alongside Mesopotamia, the Indus valley and Egypt. It has a written history dating as far back as the Shang Dynasty, that's around 1600 BC, over 3000 years ago! Now as you can also imagine you are not getting the full rundown of the entire history of China, it's simply too immense for the overall story we are getting into. The story I want to tell has been termed by scholars, "the century of humiliation" dating 1839 until 1949. During this period China or better called the Qing Dynasty and later Republic of China faced terrible and humiliating subjugation by Western powers and the Empire of Japan.The story we are going to begin today is one of pain and hardship, but it is also a tale of endurance and resilience that created the China we see today. This is the Fall and Rise of China Podcast I am going to let you in on a little secret, I myself am quite new to the vast history of China. As some of you listeners might already know, I am the writer and narrator of the Pacific War Podcast week by week. I specialize in the Pacific War and Japanese history and I ventured into a journey to explain everything that is the Pacific War of 1937-1945 when I began my personal Channel called the Pacific War Channel on Youtube. Yet when I sat down to begin writing about the history of Tokugawa Japan and how Japan would find itself on a path towards virtual oblivion, I thought to myself, well what about China? This is when I fell down a rabbit hole that is 19th century China. I immediately fell in love with it. I am a westerner, a Canadian, this was knowledge not usually told on my side of the world. So I thought, what are the most important events that made the China we see emerging during the Pacific War, or to be more accurate the Second Sino-Japanese War? I fell upon the first opium war, by the time I read a few books on that, it was the second opium war, then the Taiping Rebellion, the Nian Rebellion, the Boxer rebellion, the list goes on and on. 19th Century China is one of the most fascinating albeit traumatic episodes of human history and has everything to do with the formation of the China we see today. The term a century of humiliation or 100 years of humiliation is how many Chinese historians describe the time period between the First Opium War and the end of the Chinese Civil War. I do not speak the language nor have a full understanding of the culture, I am a lifelong learner and continue to educate myself on the history of one of the most ancient peoples of our world. This will be a long and honestly difficult story to tell, but I welcome you to join me on this journey. Stating all that I want to begin our journey explaining how the Ming Dynasty fell and the Qing Dynasty rose up. This episode is the rise of Nurhaci Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The Ming-Qing transition is a story filled with drama and corruption, heroes and villains, traitors and martyrs. Peasant rebellions, corrupt politicians and terrifying invaders would eventually collapse what was the Ming dynasty. The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China between 1368 and 1644. It would be the last dynasty to be ruled by Han Chinese. They had overthrown the Mongol led Yuan dynasty of 1271-1368 which fell for a plethora of reasons such as class conflict caused by heavy taxation and ethnic conflicts. During the entire history of China, there is always room for rebellions, and quite a number of Han revolts would occur such as the Red Turban rebellion beginning in 1351. Now amongst these many rebellions taking place there was Zhu Yuanzhang a man born into a impoverished peasant family in Zhongli county, present day Fengyang of Anhui Province. He had 7 older siblings, of which several were sold off by his parents because there was not enough food to go around. When he was 16, a severe drought ruined his family's harvest and this was accompanied by a plague that took the lives of both his parents and all his siblings, save for one brother. Around this time the Yellow River dykes had flooded causing a widespread famine. More than 7 million people would starve as a result of the drought and famine in central and northern China. The now orphan Zhu would then dedicate

For the final episode on the Mongol Empire, we take you, our dear listeners, in a quick survey of the final years of Chinggisid rule in Mongolia, after the Yuan Dynasty was forced from China in 1368, until the Manchu conquests in the seventeenth century. This will help bridge the gap with the next series in this podcast, and serve as an afterword to this season. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. We detailed in previous episodes the final years of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China, which culminated with Töghön Temür Khaan fleeing his capital of Dadu to Mongolia. With the Yuan rulers ousted, the new Ming Dynasty, ruled by the Chinese warlord Zhu Yuanzhang now styled the Hongwu Emperor, seized Dadu. Dadu was renamed to Beiping, "northern peace," and would soon to Beijing, "northern capital." The Ming, under its early emperors, was a highly militarized state with what's often described as an oppressively strong government. The Hongwu Emperor, though recognizing that the Mongols had had the Mandate of Heaven, had settled on one key flaw which allowed corruption and poor governance to settle in. That is, that the Yuan Khans simply did not have enough authority within their government, which had been augmented by Töghön Temür Khaan's debauchery. The lords of the Yuan state simply had too much more power in comparison to the Yuan Emperor. The Ming solution to that, was to, at least in early years of the dynasty, ensure there were few checks on the might of the Ming Emperor. This would lead to intense control over society and its own oppression, but that's another matter. The flight of the Yuan rulers back into the steppe was neither the end of the Yuan, nor of the Mongol threat, and the Ming knew this. The flight of 1368, and Töghön Temür's death in 1370, was hardly the end of war, as Ming and Yuan forces raided back and forced over the frontier repeatedly. The Ming led continued assaults into Mongolia itself, on one occasion sacking the much reduced former Mongol capital of Qaraqorum. But the Hongwu Emperor's forces met defeats in Mongolia in 1372, and his armies were forced back in humiliating, destructive routs. The Hongwu Emperor continued to send armies into Mongolia throughout the 1380s, but finally recognized the stalemate. He had solidified rule over China, defeated the last of Yuan holdouts, but in the steppes his armies could be drawn out, starved and crushed by the Mongols. It was better to fall back to military garrisons along the frontier to launch counter attacks, rather than waste more resources in the steppes. Frustratingly, the sons of Töghön Temür continued to claim the right to rule China, and refused to recognize that the Ming now held the Mandate of Heaven. Ming historians from this point on refer to the Yuan in Mongolia as the Northern Yuan, though the Yuan Khaans themselves saw their rule as continuing unabated. In the early fifteenth century, the ascension of the Hongwu Emperor's son, Zhu Di, known as the Yongle Emperor, brought renewed conflict. The Yongle Emperor personally led some of these campaigns, and when he met the Mongols in battle he was victorious, aided by the prodigious usage of gunpowder weapons. But in the final campaigns, the strong man of the Northern Yuan, a fellow named Arughtai, increasingly favoured avoiding direct engagement with the Ming entirely. The Yongle Emperor's ambitions were thus thwarted, and the threat of starvation and isolation in the steppes forced his withdrawal. It was on one of these withdrawals in 1424 that the Yongle Empire succumbed to illness, and with him died the last skilled military emperor of the Ming. The arrival of the Yuan nobility back to the steppe brought with it its own problems, for the sinicized elite accustomed to the finery of great Dadu found life in Mongolia difficult and unrefined. The local lords in Mongolia, having long since felt abandoned by Dadu, did not easily abide the new arrivals or their demands for troops. The Dadu refugees also were decidedly much too Chinese for the liking of Mongolia's local elite. Many of the Mongolian leaders were descendants of Ariq Böke or Chinggis Khan's brothers, those who felt they had been left out of the power and resources of the empire. The upheaval brought on by the constant Ming attacks in eastern and central Mongolia at the same time did no favours to the position of the Yuan. On Töghön Temür's death in 1370, he was succeeded by his son, the much more capable Ayushiridara. Ayushiridara Khaan and his skilled general Koko Temür led effective counter attacks against the Ming, and even succeeded in gaining lost territory, though Ayushiridara's son Maidiribala was captured by the Ming. On Ayushiridara's death in 1378, the Ming released Maidiribala back to Mongolia to influence the election, for Maidiribala had been well treated and was seen as favourably disposed to the Ming. But Ayushiridara was succeeded by his brother Tögüs Temür, who continued war wit

From the heart of the Mongolian steppe, to North China's loess plateaus; from the rugged edges of Northern India, to the hot sands of Syria and the Levant, to humid jungles in southeastern Asia, rocky islands off the coast of Japan, the high peaks of the Caucasus, Himalayas, Altai, Tien Shan and Carpathian Mountains, to the frozen rivers in Rus' granting access to Eastern Europe, and everywhere in between. Our series on the Mongol Empire has taken you across Eurasia, meeting all sorts of figures; the brutal Tamerlane, the indefatigable Sultan Baybars, the brave if shortsighted Jalal al-Din Mingburnu and his foolish father Muhammad Khwarezmshah; the cunning Jia Sidao, the silver-tongued Qiu Chuji, the thorough scholar Rashid al-Din, and travellers like John de Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, and Ibn Battuta, to the exhausted but noble-hearted Yelü Chücai. And of course, the Mongols themselves: the powerful Öz Beğ, Khan of the Golden Horde; the thorough and pious convert Ghazan Il-Khan; the scheming Du'a of the Chagatais, the stout Qaidu Khan of the Ögedaids, to the Great Khans of the thirteenth century, the most powerful of men; Khubilai, whose hands scrambled for more until his body and empire failed his ambitions; his brother Möngke, whose steely determination sought to solidify the empire at all costs, no matter the bloodshed; Güyük, a reluctant and unfortunate man to ascend to the throne; his mother Törögene, whose fierce will forced her son to that same throne; Ögedai, a drunk who despite his failings built the infrastructure of the empire. And of course, Chinggis himself; once a scared boy in the steppes, turned into the greatest conqueror of them all. Today we end our journey with the Empire of the Great Khans, and reflect on the passage of the Chinggisids. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals, Ages of Conquest. Back in our first episode, we highlighted certain trends to look for over the course of this series. The first emphasized looking for the middle ground between the Mongols as inherently evil or good forces, but as people whose expansion was rooted in historical events and personages. The second was the struggles that came with the management of a world empire, and the need to rely on non-Mongolian subject peoples—Chinese, Central Asian Muslims, Persians, Turks and others. The third was the struggle for the purpose of the empire; should it be continued conquest, or consolidation and serving the needs of the imperial princes. This was the balance between the Khan and his central government, or the Chinggisid and military aristocrats. The fourth was the steady assimilation, particularly Turkification, of the Mongols outside of Mongolia, as Mongolian was replaced as the language of administration, legitimacy and finally, among the ruling family itself, even while retaining the Mongolian imperial ideology. Regarding the first theme, we have sought to highlight in our many discussions of sources their often complicated, conflicting portrayals or events and persons. While authors like Ibn al-Athir, Nasawi and Juzjani had little good to say about the Mongols or Chinggis Khan, and fit well with the popular model the destructive brute, we've also looked at many sources which had more positive portrayals of the khans. Some of these are rather obvious, imperial-produced sources such as the Secret History of the Mongols, but even sources from outside the empire could give glowing reviews of Chinggis Khan. For instance, the fourteenth century English writer Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Squire's Tale of his famous Canterbury Tales, opens with the following lines: At Tzarev in the land of Tartary There dwelt a king at war with Muscovy Which brought the death of many a doughty man This noble king was known as Cambuskan And in his time enjoyed such great renown That nowhere in that region up or down Was one so excellent in everything; Nothing he lacked belonging to a king. Written at the same time as Toqtamish Khan of the Golden Horde was fighting for control of that Khanate, here Chaucher remembered Chinggis Khan not as a bloodthirsty barbarian, but as a monarch embodying all ideal qualities of kingship. Chaucer continues thusly; As to the faith in which he had been born He kept such loyalties as he had sworn, Then he was powerful and wise and brave, Compassionate and just, and if he gave His word he kept it, being honourable, The same to all, benevolent, and stable As is a circle's centre; and in fight As emulous as any squire or knight. Young personable, fresh and fortunate, Maintaining such a kingliness of state There never was his match in mortal man, This noble king, this Tartar Cambuskan. For writers in fourteenth century England, obviously distant from the Mongol Empire itself, it was not unbecoming to idealize the portrayal of Chinggis Khan. This is not to say that Chaucher's description is accurate, or necessarily reflects any actual qualities about the man or any of his descendants. But

With the devastating invasion of the Emir Temür, better known as Tamerlane, in 1395, the Golden Horde had suffered a grievous wound. Its armies were dealt crushing defeats; its Khan Toqtamish was sent fleeing for his life; and the major cities of the Horde had all been sacked by the Timurids. The Horde was now held together with a wish and prayer, and in the hands of the powerful lord Edigü. Today in our final episode on the Golden Horde, we take you through its slow breakup in the century after Tamerlane's attack. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. We should note that the fall of the Golden Horde was not a single moment or event. 1380, 1395, 1480 or 1502 are not simply switches where the Golden Horde ceased to exist. Rather, it was a centuries long process, with edges of the empire breaking away or being reclaimed, while multiple claimants for power fought each other and sometimes succeeded in reunifying parts or all of the khanates. Rather than a sudden collapse, it was more like waves ebbing to and fro with the tide, and as they withdraw, they pull back a bit further each time, only to in time not return at all. The Golden Horde of the fifteenth century was a very different beast from the one Öz Beg had ruled in the early fourteenth century. Steadily, though not immediately the cities of the steppe along rivers like the Volga diminished in size and were largely abandoned. Even Sarai, thoroughly sacked by Tamerlane, remained the nominal capital and continued to be fought over for generations. The overland international trade networks which had once so enriched the Jochid khans dried up as the route across Asia became too dangerous, and the merchants who still made the trek were redirected elsewhere. Rounds of bubonic plague still struck on occasion, and with the end of the medieval warm period, the steppe environment itself steadily became less accommodating with colder winters and less productive grasslands. It was not the end to animal husbandry or even agriculture in the steppe, but it was no longer the great, organized system enjoyed by the Jochids in their heyday. Political instability marked the region accordingly; whereas from Batu until the 1360s the Jochid Khans had maintained peace throughout the steppes, now rival claimants raided or invaded each other, at times annually. While Tamerlane did not end the Golden Horde, his attack aggravated and worsened these problems. The ten years of relative peace Toqtamish had overseen as khan had simply not been long enough to recover from the previous two decades of troubles, and now each problem reared its ugly head once more. After Tamerlane's withdrawal in 1396, he left the state reeling in his wake. Toqtamish Khan had survived, but his armies were broken. Tamerlane had installed a new khan, Quyurchuq, a son of Urus Khan, but Quyurchuq had little authority without Tamerlane's presence. Edigü, a non-Chinggisid lord and leader of the Manghit peoples, quickly maneuvered Quyurchuq Khan out of the way, and installed his own puppet, a distant relation of Toqtamish named Temür Qutlugh. Edigü was a wily figure, a skilled politician and one of the wealthiest, most powerful lords within the Golden Horde. Long had he fought Toqtamish, first alongside Urus Khan, and then alongside Tamerlane. Once Tamerlane began to withdraw from the Horde for the final time, Edigü promptly betrayed him and began gathering his own forces to overthrow Tamerlane's puppet. Edigü, as a non-Chinggisid, could not claim the title of khan himself. But by making the khans dependent on him for power and military support, Edigü could hold real authority over the realm. As beylerbeyi, Edigü commanded immense influence among the qarachu families; that is, the non-Chinggisid military elite, those generally bore the title of beğ (pronounced as bey). Every khan that Edigü would enthrone had to confirm Edigü as beylerbeyi, the bey of beys; which Khan Temür Qutlugh promptly did. This gave Edigü an institution position akin to vizier or commander-in-chief, "advising" the khan to do exactly what Edigü wished. In turn the khan continued to function in a more ceremonial role and remained official head-of-state, and his name continued to be minted on coinage. No matter how powerful Edigü might be, in the steppes the prestige of Chinggisid rulership was too strong to be cast aside, and attempting to rule in his own right would have presumably resulted in open rebellion against him. Almost two hundred years since Chinggis Khan's death, his spectre still loomed large over Asia. Edigü and Temür Qutlugh's confirmation took place not a moment too soon, for Toqtamish and his sons were in the midst of collecting forces to retake the khanate. Assisted by the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas the Great, Toqtamish and his Lithuanian allies invaded the Golden Horde in 1399, only to be defeated but Temür Qutlugh Khan and Edigü at the Vorskla River in 1399. The battle solidified Edigü

After two decades of anarchy, one man appeared from the darkness to restore the Golden Horde to its might: this was Toqtamish. Just as the candle may spark up just before it goes out, Toqtamish seemed poised to right the wrongs of the previous decades, and reaffirm the power of the Golden Horde over its subjects, and thus bring about further centuries of greatness. But then came Temür, Toqtamish's former patron, turned greatest enemy. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Age of Conquest. While our series on the Golden Horde has so far focused on the descendants of Batu Khan, the khans of the Golden Horde until the start of 1360s, the other descendants of Jochi's many other sons had their own appanages within the khanate. Of the fourteen named sons of Jochi, by the late fourteenth century there were two of these lineages left who held any might. These were the lines of Shiban, Jochi's fifth son, and Toqa-Temür, Jochi's youngest son. As the house of Batu and Orda went extinct in the middle of the fourteenth century, the torch of rulership was passed between these lineages. It seems both lineages were largely based in the eastern part of the khanate, in the Blue Horde or the ulus of Orda. The Shibanids held lands in what was to become the Khanate of Sibir, named for the fortress of the same name. The heart of this territory was the upper Irtysh River, and if the name of Sibir sounds familiar, that's because in time it gave its name to Siberia. The Toqa-Temürids meanwhile seem to have generally ranged east of the Ural river, across the Kazakh steppes. In the chaos that followed Berdi Beğ Khan's death in 1359, it was representatives of the Shibanids who first moved west to claim the throne in Sarai. When Orda's line died out in the 1360s, the Toqa-Temürids were the ones on the scene to usurp the ulus in the Blue Horde lands, though it was not a secure power base. The order of khans is a matter of great contention: reigns were brief, and various sources often offer contradictory information, which is often further contradicted with the dates given on coinage in the period. What is clear is that the Blue Horde contenders quickly, if not immediately, saw their conflict and their state as independent of the wars for Sarai ongoing at the same time. The Blue Horde was now separate, once more, from the Golden. One of the earliest figures to seize the vacant throne of the Ordaids was Qara-Nogai, a Toqa-Temürid. In the early 1360s he was elected khan in Sighnaq, the Blue Horde administrative capital, located on the lower reaches of Syr Darya River near the Aral Sea. His reign was brief, but after some years of conflict members of his family continued to claim the throne; the most notable of these was Urus Khan, whose reign is usually dated to beginning in 1368. Urus Khan was a real strong man— and not a descendant of Orda, as newer research has demonstrated. In the decade of his reign Urus established a firm hold on power and firm military backing. Rivals for the throne were violently killed or exiled, and around 1372 he even led an army to take Sarai and declare himself Khan of the Golden Horde, though he soon abandoned the city. Nonetheless he exercised a monopoly on power in the Blue Horde which made it considerably more stable than the ongoing troubles in the Golden Horde, which was too much even for Urus to exert control over. But such was his influence that his sons and descendants continued to be prominent players for decades. Two sons, Quyurchuq and Ulugh Muhammad, later became khans of the Golden Horde, while the latter established the Khanate of Kazan; a grandson of Urus, Baraq, also became Khan of the Golden Horde, while Urus' great-grandchildren established the Kazakh Khanate. It should not be a surprise then that some historians suggest that Urus should be identified with Alash Khan, the legendary founder of the Kazakhs from whom all khans were descended. Descent from Urus, in effect, became a new form of legitimacy after the fourteenth century. As mentioned, Urus took to killing and exiling his rivals to power. These were often fellow Toqa-Temürids. One such fellow who he had killed was his cousin, Toy-Khwaja. In the aftermath, Toy-Khwaja's son was forced to flee; this is our first introduction to Toqtamish. Toy-Khwaja must have been quite the rival and had some following, for Toqtamish never had much trouble finding supporters for himself. One source indicates Toqtamish's mother was a high ranking lady of the Sufi-Qonggirads, a dynasty which had recently established its quasi-independence from the Blue Horde at Urgench and now ruled Khwarezm. A young and courageous warrior, if not the most tactically skilled, Prince Toqtamish deeply desired both revenge and power. Urus Khan's horsemen pursued him, and Toqtamish fled for his life right out of the steppe, crossing the Syr Darya River to seek shelter with a new rising power: Aksak Temür as the Turks of the time knew him; he'd prefer to be know

"The impure and proud Mamai, Lord of the Volga Horde, ruled over the entire Horde, and he slew many lords and khans and he set up a khan according to his own will. He was, however, in great confusion, and everybody distrusted him because he killed many lords and nobles in his Horde. He even killed his own khan, and although he had a khan, this khan of the Horde was ruler in name only, for it was he, himself, who was ruler and master of all. When he learned that the Tatars loved their khan he became afraid that the khan would assume the power from him. Therefore he killed him and all who were faithful to him and those who loved him." So the Rus' Nikonian Chronicle describes the situation in the Golden Horde at the end of the 1370s. Thirty years after the death of Özbeg Khan, the Golden Horde underwent another, much more violent transformation. During the reign of Özbeg's son Jani Beg from 1342 to 1357, he had kept the Golden Horde sailing through rough waters as the overland Asian trade began to unravel and the Black Death ravaged his cities. But with Jani Beg's death in 1357, possibly at the hands of his own son Berdi Beg, the good fortune of the Golden Horde came to a sudden and bloody end. Now the Horde was to enter two decades of anarchy; the bulghaq, the topic of today's episode. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. In 1357, Jani Beg had just returned from his successful conquest of what is now Azerbaijan, when he suddenly died. According to a contemporary writer, al-Ahari, his son Berdi Beg was, at the time of his father's death, still in the Azerbaijani lands. But sources such as the later Nikonian Chronicle have Berdi Beg convinced by a cunning emir to strangle his father himself after bringing numerous princes into an alliance with him. The widespread impression seems to have been that he organized his father's murder, even if the most contemporary sources do not place Berdi Beg there himself. After Berdi Beg left Azerbaijan, the region was lost, seized by the Jalayirids of Baghdad. Berdi Beg in quick order, with the backing of his grandmother Taydula, was proclaimed Khan of the Golden Horde. But feeling he faced threats, real or imagined, the new khan's first actions were violence. Echoing his father and grandfather, Berdi Beg had his brothers murdered: 12 of them, by one count. For one infant brother, Berdi Beg is alleged to have done the deed with his own bare hands, despite the pleadings of grandmother Taydula Khatun. A number of other high ranking princes and officials too met their deaths on Berdi Beg's order. Berdi Beg's actions did little to engender love to the new monarch, for whom Heaven seemed to show little favour. The Horde's trade had declined tremendously in these years. Cities starved and shrunk, as they lost access to international trade, were depopulated by the Black Death and local farmland suffered. The mid-fourteenth century saw the Little Ice Age strike and undo the system built up by the Jochids over the last century. Decreased rainfall over much of the steppe, and likely over-grazing from ever larger herds needed to support cities, when combined resulted in the rapid aridisation across the region. Much of the grassland simply could not sustain the great herds any longer. Almost paradoxically, the Caspian Sea was rising and causing increased flooding along the lower reaches of the Volga, which inundated cities and farmland in the Horde's most densely populated region. The great cities of the Horde saw their population drop rapidly, and the material wealth evaporated without the trade or population to sustain it. The Horde's elites who had enriched themselves off it were frightened, angered and uncertain. Berdi Beg's efforts did little to improve things; he is known, for instance, to have raised trade duties on imports to their highest level ever recorded in the Golden Horde: 5%. And an especially virulent wave of the plague in 1359 really topped things off. His legitimacy already in doubt due to widespread rumours of having murdered his own father, the generally respected Jani Beg, it should not be a surprise that Berdi Beg's rule was on thin ice. After only two years on the throne, Berdi Beg, grandson of mighty Özbeg, was murdered. The exact circumstances are unclear; the Nikonian Chronicle puts the blame on the same beg who had urged Berdi Beg to kill his father. The murder of Berdi Beg Khan in 1359 did not, however, improve things very much. On Berdi Beg's death, the throne was taken by Qulpa, a fellow who is variously identified as a brother or cousin of Berdi Beg. Qulpa was not long to enjoy the throne. After six months, Qulpa and his two sons, curiously with the very Rus' Christian names of Ivan and Mikhail, were all in turn murdered, this time by Nawruz, a brother of Qulpa. Still, the Rus' princes came to pay homage to Nawruz, and momentarily things looked like they might settle. That is, until Khidr came. Khidr ruled an appanage east

The death of Özbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde, in 1341 marked the end of an era for the Jochid Khanate. The thirty year reign of Özbeg had been one of relative internal stability; a stability his successors were not to enjoy. Bloody succession struggles, plague and economic woe were now to be the news of the day within the Horde. And it was Özbeg's sons Tini Beg and Jani Beg Khan who were to face the front of it. Today we take you through the reigns of Özbeg's sons, the eve of the great anarchy which would rip asunder at the very foundation of the Golden Horde. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Özbeg Khan, during his long life, seems to have initially desired his eldest son Temür to succeed him. Having violently purged the Jochid lineage upon his own accession in 1313, Özbeg had the luxury to decide on a successor. But Temür's death around 1330 left Özbeg bereaved, and forced him to make due with his other two sons, Tini Beg and Jani Beg. Born to his wife Taydula Khatun, Tini Beg and Jani Beg were well educated princes. Ibn Battuta noted numerous islamic advisors for both princes, and Jani Beg is specifically described as knowledgeable in Islamic laws. Their names both came from Turkic and Persian words for "spirit," making them "lords of the spirit." Tini Beg, as the elder, was preferred by Özbeg to succeed him. During his trip to the Golden Horde, Ibn Battuta describes Özbeg showering Tini Beg in preferences and honours for this purpose. Additionally, Ibn Battuta describes Tini Beg as one of the most handsome of men. There is slight indication that Özbeg and Tini Beg fell out towards the end of his life, when Jani Beg's name begins to appear alongside Özbeg's on coinage, suggesting perhaps the second son was being groomed to be heir. On Özbeg's death in late 1341, Tini Beg still maneuvered his way onto the throne, likely to the displeasure of Jani Beg. We know little of his reign. There is some suggestion that he was not a Muslim, and had some close links with Franciscans, whom he sent as his envoys to the Pope. One of the earliest pieces of surviving Golden Horde literature dates to his reign, too; a Turkic language poem by the Horde poet Qutb, adapting the Persian language "Khosrow and Shirin" by Nizami. Dedicated to Tini Beg and his wife, it remains a fascinating, if brief, look at the courtly life and social structure of the Horde in the mid-fourteenth century. We can tell you little else of Tini Beg's reign with any certainty. Jani Beg never took kindly to Tini Beg's ascension; we may suspect he felt that Tini Beg had stolen the throne from him. The order of events is conflicting in the sources; potentially their mother, Taydula, preferred Jani Beg and whispered into his ear while Jani Beg's Islamic advisers may have encouraged him, in reaction to the possibly non-Muslim Tini Beg's enthronement. In some versions, Jani Beg first kills one of their brothers, Khidr Beg, in very uncertain circumstances. In Tini Beg's anger, he raises an army to confront his brother Jani Beg, only to be defeated in battle, taken captive and executed. In other versions, Jani Beg only kills Khidr Beg after Tini Beg's death. The fact of the fratricide of two of his brothers though, is well attested. So, Jani Beg became Khan in 1342. There can be little doubt of Jani Beg's islam. We are told he even set out orders for his troops to all don turbans and cloaks. Neither could there be any hesitation among the Rus' princes about recognizing Jani Beg's rule; one of Jani Beg's first orders was sending an army to install a new prince in Pereiaslavl'. The meaning was clear. Jani Beg was going to continue his father's policy of firm mastery over the Rus'. In quick order the Rus' princes all travelled to the Horde to recognize Jani Beg's overlordship; the Grand Prince, now Simeon Ivanovich, too made clear his subservience to Jani Beg Khan. Simeon was a close ally to the Khan, and over his reign made regular trips to the Horde, always returning with gifts, honours and Jani Beg's favour. A smart move, lest the Khan remove him from his post. In doing so, they continued the slow if steady consolidation of Moscow's influence regarding the other Rus' cities. There is also indication that Jani Beg held loftier pretensions. By the start of Jani Beg's reign, he was essentially the last remaining Chinggisid khan with authority. The Blue Horde khans were his vassals, and the Chagatai Khanate and Ilkhanate were either divided or dissolved. In the Yuan Dynasty, with whom contact was infrequent, the Great Khan Töghön Temür was a figurehead in comparison to his Chancellors. In reaction, it seems to an extent Jani Beg went about presenting himself not just as successors to Özbeg, but the rightful heir to Chinggis Khan. Not Jani Beg was not just the Jochid Khan, but the supreme Khan. Özbeg himself seems to have used in some instances the title of "khan of khans," as did Jani Beg. In letters to the Ilkhanid successors

From 1313 to 1341, Özbeg Khan oversaw what is normally described as the Golden Horde's Golden age. As our last episode on Özbeg discussed, things were not going quite so golden for old Özbeg. The appellation of golden age belies the troubles which were growing ready to rock the Golden Horde. As our last episode looked at Özbeg and the Golden Horde's relations south and east, with the other Mongol khanates and the Mamluk Sultanate, today we take you west and north, to see how Özbeg interacted with the powers of Eastern Europe and the Rus' principalities. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. What appears almost shocking at a cursory glance, is that despite so many authors claiming Özbeg's glory, he also oversaw its first loss of Golden Horde territory. We'll begin in the Balkans, and work our way north. On his accession, Özbeg had continued the policy of the late Toqta Khan, by keeping the Bulgarian lands a part of the Horde, backed up by Mongol military presence. Özbeg's support was important for the Bulgarian tsars in this period: the Tsar from 1323 to 1330, Georgi Terter's son Michael Shishman, relied heavily on Mongol military support and kept one of his sons at Özbeg's court as a royal hostage. At the battle of Velbuzjd in 1330, a Bulgarian and Mongol army was defeated by the Serbians, in which Tsar Micheal Shishman was killed. The threat of a military response from Özbeg is probably what kept the Serbians from pressing their advantage. The journey of a Bulgarian embassy to Cairo in 1331 resulted in the Mamluk chronicler al-Umarī to report that despite fighting between the Bulgarians and Serbs, both respected Özbeg due to his great power over them. Though it was not comparable to the influence Nogai had once wielded over the region, the presentation of contemporary chronicles is that the Bulgarian lands remained dependent on the Golden Horde; Bulgaria, for example, was the base from which the Mongols launched attacks on Byzantium, rather than seen as a country they passed through. It was the eventual loss of this Mongol backing that would result in Bulgaria's vulnerability to Ottoman expansion at the end of the century. Like Toqta, Özbeg too married an illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, this time of Andronikos III in 1331. This wife was called by the Mongols Bayalun Khatun, and Ibn Battuta accompanied her when she returned to Constantinople to give birth. The impetus was to dissuade further attacks by Özbeg, for Özbeg had resumed raiding the Byzantine Empire. Annual attacks from 1321 to 1323, the largest coming in 1323 and causing a great deal of damage. Raids at first ceased with the marriage of 1331, but when Bayalun refused to come back to the Horde after returning to Constantinople to give birth, attacks resumed. The last recorded assault came in 1337, advancing as far as the Hellespont. Supposedly in response to the failure of Constantinople to supply its annual tribute, the Horde army spent 50 days plundering Thrace, and in the process defeated a Turkish force sent across the straits by a growing beylik in northwestern Anatolia, the Osmanoğlu. Though you may know them better as the Ottomans. So ended the last recorded attack by the Golden Horde on the Byzantine Empire. Sometimes this is compared as a symbolic act, the passing of the torch from Mongol to Ottoman, from old conqueror to new, when it came to the main threat to the region. In 1341 a Byzantine embassy was sent to the Horde to mollify Özbeg, but arrived after his death. While in truth Özbeg's attacks on the Byzantine Empire were raids rather than efforts at conquest, he apparently played them up somewhat in his own court as great victories over Christian powers. Ibn Battuta, during his visit to Özbeg, presents the Khan as a great victor over the enemies of God who undertook jihad against Constantinople. Özbeg, it must be clarified, never showed any attempt at conquering that famous city, and his military actions against Europe all seem considerably minor efforts compared to his wars against the Ilkhanate. Along the borders of the Hungarian Kingdom, troops of the Horde —perhaps not always with Özbeg's permission— raided regularly, especially in Transylvania. However these assaults could now be repulsed, as Hungary was rejuvenated under the skillful leadership of a new dynasty, headed by Charles I of Hungary. On occasion Charles led attacks onto dependencies of the Horde or of Bulgaria. It is remarkable that most of these raids are known only indirectly; often only from charters, where an individual was rewarded for fighting against the Mongols, rather than through any chronicle mention. Özbeg may have preferred indirect pressure, by supporting the former Hungarian vassal, the voivode of Wallachia, a fellow named Basarab. There is no shortage of debate around Basarab and early Wallachia, and we'll avoid it here; the exact origins and timeline of the emergence of this principality is very far fr

Our previous episode took you through important transformations of the Golden Horde during the long-reign of Özbeg Khan; the islamization, and urbanization, of the khanate. Today we share the first part of our coverage of the political dimensions of Özbeg's nearly thirty year reign, focusing on Özbeg's interactions with the Ilkhanate and the Mamluk Sultanate, an area in which Özbeg suffered almost continual defeats. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. As we covered previously, upon becoming khan of the Golden Horde in 1313, Özbeg ordered a wide purge of the Jochid princes, a two-pronged assault to both remove potential rivals and promote Islam among the elite, for those who refused to convert were punished mortally. After his first year in power Özbeg would be remarkably tolerant to other religions within his empire, but he made it abundantly clear that the religion of the Khan and the court was Islam. One of Özbeg's earliest actions was the construction of a mosque in the Crimean city of Solkhat, or as it's known for Turkic speakers, Eski Qırım, or Staryi Krym after the Russian annexation. [note for David: Qırım=Crimea, hard K sound]. Built in 1314, parts of the mosque are still extant, though in the sixteenth century parts of it were moved into a new building some distance away. Özbeg was no idle khan. With the assistance of the powerful bey Qutlugh-Temür, Özbeg further weakened the power of the remaining Jochid princes with the establishment of the qarachi beys as the lead ministers of the empire, putting greater administrative power into the non-Chinggisid elite. The qarachi beys were headed by the beyleribey, the chief bey, held first by Qutlugh-Temür, and later his brother 'Isa. These two men were instrumental in Özbeg's control. Powerful, islamic lords, their early backing had not just been key in Özbeg seizing power in the first place, but in solidifying Özbeg's islamization of the khanate's upper echelons. Their support and influence among the military-elite were significant in Özbeg's centralization of authority, and in the smooth function of the empire as lands and territories were redistributed with the change in authority. And Özbeg went to great effort to ensure their loyalty, creating a reciprocal marriage alliance with them that the Mongols called quda. Qutlugh-Temür married a Jochid princess named Turabey, while 'Isa married one of Özbeg's daughters, and in turn Özbeg married one of 'Isa's daughters. The brothers were then assigned some of the most economically important and lucrative regions within the khanate; Qutlugh-Temür as governor of Khwarezm, but with his authority expanded to stretch to the Lower Volga, while 'Isa was situated in the Crimean Peninsula. With Özbeg in the capital on the Volga River, three of them were like three weights balancing the khanate. In 1314, only the second year of Özbeg's reign, the Khan of Chagatai Khanate, Esen Buqa reached out to Özbeg. The ten years since the Pax Mongolica in 1304 had hardly instilled the desired unity among the khanates. Esen Buqa Khan was in the midst of growing tensions with the Ilkhanate and Yuan Dynasty, and feared a combined Toluid assault on the Chagatai lands. By then Esen-Buqa had taken captive Ilkhanid and Yuan envoys, and contacted Özbeg in an effort to bring him into an alliance, telling him that the Great Khan, Ayurburwada, saw Özbeg as illegitimate, and wished to depose him. Özbeg, likely on the council of the experienced Qutlugh-Temür, refused the request for support. The Golden Horde did not take part when Yuan forces invaded the Chagatai lands in 1316 while Esen-Buqa was campaigning in the Ilkhanate. The effort at neutrality with the khanates who had influence in Central Asia was also likely influenced by Özbeg's success at bringing the Blue Horde, the eastern wing of the Golden Horde, closely under his control, especially after 1321. The once autonomous, if not outright independent, khanate became essentially a province of the Golden Khan through Özbeg's effort. As the Blue Horde, backed by Özbeg's troops, in this period extended to the Syr Darya and incorporated former Khwarezmian cities of Otrar, Jand and others, Özbeg did not want the Yuan Dynasty intervening with this profitable expansion. Throughout his life Özbeg retained amicable relations with the Yuan Khans, sending them tribute, gifts and his nominal allegiance in exchange for revenues from Jochid estates in China. He valued this income higher, and was not above sending his envoys to the Yuan court to remind them to keep up the payments. Some historians have gone as far as to suggest that Özbeg, influenced by the Yuan administrative system, based his reforms in the Golden Horde upon it's two-tiered system. Others see Özbeg's four qarachi beys an adoption of the system employed by the Yuan, where the keshig's four day-commanders had to countersign the orders of the khan. Furthermore, Özbeg encouraged and profited greatly fro

"Account of the exalted Sultan Muhammad Uzbak Khan. His name is Muhammad Uzbak, and Khan in their language means 'sultan.' This sultan is mighty in sovereignty, exceedingly powerful, great in dignity, lofty in station, victor over the enemies of God, the people of Constantinople the Great, and diligent in the jihad against them. His territories are vast and his cities great; they include al-Kafa, al-Kirim, al-Machar, Azaq, Sudaq and Khwarezm, and his capital is al-Sara. He is one of the seven kings who are the great and mighty kings of the world. [...] this sultan when he is on the march, travels in a separate mahalla, accompanied by his mamluks and his officers of state, and each one of his khatuns travels separately in her own mahalla. When he wishes to be with any one of them, he sends to her to inform her of this, and she prepares to receive him." So the great traveller Ibn Battuta describes Özbeg, Khan on the Golden Horde, during his visit to that khan's camp. From 1313 until his death in 1341, Özbeg enjoyed the lengthiest of reigns of a Mongol ruler, second only to his distant cousin Khubilai Khaan. The powerful Özbeg would be long remembered as the mightiest of Jochid rulers, and his life was a watershed for the Horde. After him, all khans were Muslims, and his life would be a model, the marker of the Horde's Golden Age. Yet, despite the proclamations of his excellence, tensions bubbled under the surface, and Özbeg's great power did not translate into great success. In today's episode, we take you through the transformation of the Golden Horde under Özbeg, looking specifically at islamization and urbanization. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Özbeg was a son of To'rilcha, a grandson of Möngke-Temür Khan, a great-great-grandson of Batu, a great-great-great-grandson of Jochi, and thereby a descendant of Chinggis Khan. Özbeg's father To'rilcha had been a part of the four-wary princely junta that ruled the Horde from 1287 to 1291 under Tele-Buqa Khan. As one of the top princes of this union, and one of the sons of the prestigious Möngke-Temür Khan, To'rilcha had certainly been a powerful prince within the horde. It seems Özbeg drew much of his initial legitimacy from this, and retained a great distaste for his uncle Toqta Khan, who had To'rilcha and the other princes killed in the 1291 coup with the aid of Nogai. Toqta then married Özbeg's stepmother, To'rilcha's chief wife Bayalun Khatun, and apparently exiled Özbeg to Khwarezm, which cemented Özbeg's hatred for his uncle. It's not surprising then that Özbeg is often accused of being behind Toqta's somewhat mysterious death in 1312. As we covered in our episode last week, the sources are contradictory over what immediately followed. Though Mamluk sources tend to have Toqta's sons predecease him, a number of other accounts have Özbeg battle one of Toqta's surviving sons. Regardless, by the start of 1313 Özbeg was duly enthroned as Khan of the Golden Horde, and if he had not done so already, made public his conversion to Islam. Özbeg had a particular view on how to hold onto power, which involved executing a great number of potential rivals to the throne. At least one hundred princes and members of the military elite were killed in perhaps the largest princely massacre of the Mongol Empire and its successor khanates. The justification for many of the deaths was the failure of the given princes to convert to Islam, but this was almost certainly little more than an excuse to substantially trim the branches of the aristocracy. Özbeg wanted to ensure that there would be not only no rivals to his own position, but that only his own sons would be able to succeed him. Certainly, islamization was a key part of Özbeg's reign. There can be no doubt over its spread amongst the Jochid elite from these years onwards, and accounts like Ibn Battuta not only stress the piety of Özbeg and his court, but how islamic institutions were now seeped into the actual administration of the Golden Horde. This ranged from readers of the quran accompanying the royal family everywhere, to Islamic qadi courts now operating alongside the initial justice system established by the dynasty, the jarquchi courts. From Özbeg's coinage, we know he took the Islamic title and name of Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, and in his contacts with the Mamluk Sultanate he expressed loudly the notice of his conversion, and his success in converting the nomads of his empire to Islam. The specific mentions of him killing shamans and Buddhist lamas also indicates an effort to actively uproot the old ways. Yet there remains considerable evidence to continued religious plurality within the Golden Horde and for Özbeg himself. For example, at the very start of his reign he wedded his step-mother, Bayalun Khatun, a widow of both Toqta and his father To'rilcha. An experienced political player with many contacts, her support was important in Özbeg's ascension. Yet wedding his o

With the death of Nogai by 1300, one man was now master of the Golden Horde; Toqta, son of Möngke-Temür Khan, great-grandson of Batu, great-great-grandson of Jochi, and great-great-great-grandson of Chinggis Khan. After the troubles of the 1290s, Toqta ushered in a new age of stability as rivals to power were snuffed out over his twenty year reign. Today we take you through the reign of Toqta Khan. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Toqta, known also as Toqtogha, was one of Möngke-Temür Khan's ten sons. While most of Möngke-Temür's children had joined Tele-Buqa Khan's alliance from 1287 to 1291, Toqta and three other brothers— Tudan, Sarai-Buqa and Bürlük—seem to have been excluded for unclear reasons. We have only reference to Toqta being seen as a strong figure of certain manly qualities, supposedly embodying Mongol ideals of rulership. Perhaps a skilled archer and rider, a fearsome wrestler and warrior, Toqta appeared an ideal rival to the always militarily-doomed Tele-Buqa. Regardless of why, Toqta first appears in the sources being singled out as a rival by Tele-Buqa and his allies. The story, as you heard in our previous episodes, resulted in Toqta allying with Nogai and killing most of his brothers. In 1291 Toqta was enthroned as khan, perhaps also in another four way power division with his surviving brothers, according to the Mamluk chroniclers. Nogai then returned to his territory along the Danube. Popularly it is claimed that Toqta spent his first years as Khan under Nogai's thumb, but there is relatively little information to support that. Both Toqta and Nogai demanded the other kill surviving supporters of Tele-Buqa Khan, but Nogai is given no involvement in the sources in the major actions Toqta undertook. In 1293, on the request of the Rus' prince Andrei, son of the famed Alexander Nevskii, Toqta sent his brother Tudan on a devastating attack on the Rus', aimed on ousting Andrei's rival brother, Dmitri. 14 Rus' cities, including Moscow, were sacked, and Novgorod only narrowly avoided destruction due to a timely, and very expensive, pile of gifts. Dmitri died the next year, leaving Andrei as Grand Prince of the Rus' undisputed. In 1294 Toqta also organized a peace treaty with the Il-Khan Geikhatu, ending hostilities with the Ilkhanate. As we covered in the last episode, most of Toqta's reign in the second half of the 1290s was caught up dealing with Nogai, as growing tensions were fanned into open war between them. After initial defeats, Toqta succeeded in overcoming Nogai, and the old dog was dead by 1300. So ended the first decade of Toqta's reign, and he could begin to restore the Jochid Khanate's wider influence. On Nogai's defeat the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II sent a daughter to marry Toqta, while the Rus' princes reaffirmed their vassalage. At a gathering of the princes in 1304 Toqta's influence over them was confirmed with a reallotment of certain cities. Like his father Möngke-Temür Khan, Toqta sought to extend the Jochids' influence over their borders, though faced difficulties in doing so. He placed his brothers Bürlük, Sarai-Buqa and his own sons Ilbasar and Tükel-Buqa into prominent governorships. Sarai-Buqa was made the master of the late Nogai's former territory. On Toqta's permission, the new Bulgarian tsar Theodore Svetoslav killed Nogai's son Chaka in 1301, and on Chaka's death Sarai-Buqa moved into the Nogayid lands, and Toqta's son Tükel-Buqa took Nogai's former administrative centre at Saqchi, thus reasserting the Horde's mastery over the region. Bulgaria, counter to some suggestions, remained a part of the Golden Horde as a vassal. Toqta might have thought the matter finished, had Nogai's sole surviving son, Turai, not come out of hiding. Turai, through some silver tongue-work, was welcomed into the local court of Toqta's brother Sarai-Buqa. In short order, Turai convinced Sarai-Buqa that he should be khan, and thereby had Sarai-Buqa march against Toqta. Sarai-Buqa sought to get another brother, Bürlük, in on the plot. Bürlük made a show of agreeing, while contacting Toqta in secret. With his brother's permission, Bürlük turned on Turai and Sarai-Buqa, capturing and killing them. Toqta's son Ilbasar was then made overseer of Nogai's former lands. Meanwhile, on his far eastern border, Toqta had another opportunity arise. There lay the Blue Horde, the khanate under the rule of the line of Orda, the older brother of Batu. Whether the Blue Horde was ever really under the authority of Batu's line, or was in fact its own independent khanate from its inception, is a matter of hot debate in the scholarship. Regardless of the original intention, during the reign of Orda's grandson Qonichi from the 1270s until 1300, the Blue Horde was, for all intents and purposes, its own power outside of the influence of the Batuid lineage. Independent contemporaries like Marco Polo and Rashīd al-Dīn attest to the fact. Qonichi, according to Rashīd al-Dīn,

"In [this year] Nogai sent his wife [Yaylaq] Khātūn to the king Țuqṭā with a missive she would carry to him, and advice she would give to him. When she arrived at the [Golden] Horde he greeted her with honor, and celebrated hospitality and gifts with her, and she stayed in the hospitality for days. Then he asked her as to the reason for her coming, she said to him, "[Nogai] says to you that there are some thorns left on your path, so clean them up!" [Toqta] said, "What are the thorns?" so she named off the emirs who Nogai had mentioned to her, who were [23 in numer]. These were those who had conspired with Töle Buqa against Nogai. When this missive was conveyed to him, and she told him this story, [Toqta] sought after those emirs, one after another, and killed all of them. So [Yaylaq] Khātūn returned to Nogai, informing him of their killing, so his worry subsided, and his fear gone." So the Mamluk chronicler Baybars al-Mansūrī records an interaction between Nogai, the Mongol master of the lower Danube and southeastern Europe, and Toqta, Khan of the Golden Horde. In 1291 Nogai had assisted Toqta Khan to the Jochid throne, overthrowing the previous Khan, Tele-Buqa. Now both expected favours of the other, which would have deadly consequences. Our last episode looked at Nogai's role in Europe; today, we look at his interactions with the Khans of the Golden Horde, culminating in the destructive civil war between Toqta and Nogai at the end of the 1290s. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. As noted before, much of this is based off the research of our series historian, Jack Wilson, who offered a reinvestigation of Nogai in the process of his Masters thesis. If you're curious about more on this matter of his reinterpretation of Nogai, you can speak with directly through his Youtube channel The Jackmeister: Mongol History, where he is in the midst of sharing this reinterpretation in a video form. While Nogai was the governor of the Golden Horde's territory in southeastern Europe, he was hardly removed from wider Jochid affairs. After the death of Möngke-Temür Khan in 1280 or 1282, Nogai was the aqa of the Jochid lineage, as a few sources state, including an interesting letter from the Il-Khan Tegüder Ahmad to the Mamluks. As aqa, he was one of the senior-most members of the family, respected and consulted on all sorts of familial and government matters. And indeed, this is the role he often appears in; when Töde-Möngke Khan considered releasing a captive son of Khubilai Khaan, he is recorded consulting with Nogai as well as other prominent members of the Jochids. Most of Nogai's interactions from the Jochid khans Töde-Möngke, Tele-Buqa and Toqta all seem based on this aqa relationship. While scholarship has often accused Nogai of putting these various khans on the throne, and reducing the khans Töde-Möngke and Tele-Buqa to puppets, this is unsupported by the sources. In the royal succession, Nogai is unmentioned in the transition except in the overthrow of Tele-Buqa, as we covered in a previous episode. Over these years Nogai appears focused on the territory he was assigned to in southeastern Europe. On occasion he sent troops to assist Rus' princes in raids in Poland and Lithuania, but Nogai only did so when requested by these princes, as described in the Rus' chronicles. Likewise, when he led armies into Hungary and Poland himself, as we discussed in our previous episodes, Nogai only did so when demanded by Tele-Buqa. If not presented as overthrowing khans, or reducing them to figureheads, literature often presents Nogai actively undermining the khans, or undertaking his own diplomatic efforts. But the evidence for this is likewise weak. An interesting case of Nogai possibly undermining Tele-Buqa Khan comes in 1288, when he sent an embassy to the Il-Khan, Arghun, which gave him Buddhist relics. A few weeks after this meeting, Tele-Buqa unleashed his first invasion of the Ilkhanate. It's tempting to see this as Nogai having his own Ilkhanid diplomacy or alerting Arghun of Tele-Buqa's attack, but this is the only record of such an embassy, and Arghun was caught unawares by the invasion, as he was in the midst of leaving the Caucasus when the attack occurred. We might wonder if Nogai had actually been instructed to placate Arghun, sending him gifts in order to not suspect any Jochid attacks; Arghun may have seen little reason to believe the truce with the Ilkhanate was in any danger. Neither did Nogai carry out a marriage alliance with the Il-Khan, as if sometimes stated; references to him marrying one of his sons to a daughter of Abaqa Il-Khan have confused Nogai of the Golden Horde with another Nogai, a non-Chinggisid general who lived in the Ilkhanate, and the father of Abaqa's son-in-law, in this instance. Nogai did gave shelter to at least one Rus' prince, who was out of favour with the reigning khan. Dmitri Alexandrovich, a son of the famous Alexander Nevskii, had a decades lo

"In [this year] Nogai sent his wife [Yaylaq] Khātūn to the king Țuqṭā with a missive she would carry to him, and advice she would give to him. When she arrived at the [Golden] Horde he greeted her with honor, and celebrated hospitality and gifts with her, and she stayed in the hospitality for days. Then he asked her as to the reason for her coming, she said to him, "[Nogai] says to you that there are some thorns left on your path, so clean them up!" [Toqta] said, "What are the thorns?" so she named off the emirs who Nogai had mentioned to her, who were [23 in numer]. These were those who had conspired with Töle Buqa against Nogai. When this missive was conveyed to him, and she told him this story, [Toqta] sought after those emirs, one after another, and killed all of them. So [Yaylaq] Khātūn returned to Nogai, informing him of their killing, so his worry subsided, and his fear gone." So the Mamluk chronicler Baybars al-Mansūrī records an interaction between Nogai, the Mongol master of the lower Danube and southeastern Europe, and Toqta, Khan of the Golden Horde. In 1291 Nogai had assisted Toqta Khan to the Jochid throne, overthrowing the previous Khan, Tele-Buqa. Now both expected favours of the other, which would have deadly consequences. Our last episode looked at Nogai's role in Europe; today, we look at his interactions with the Khans of the Golden Horde, culminating in the destructive civil war between Toqta and Nogai at the end of the 1290s. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. As noted before, much of this is based off the research of our series historian, Jack Wilson, who offered a reinvestigation of Nogai in the process of his Masters thesis. If you're curious about more on this matter of his reinterpretation of Nogai, you can speak with directly through his Youtube channel The Jackmeister: Mongol History, where he is in the midst of sharing this reinterpretation in a video form. While Nogai was the governor of the Golden Horde's territory in southeastern Europe, he was hardly removed from wider Jochid affairs. After the death of Möngke-Temür Khan in 1280 or 1282, Nogai was the aqa of the Jochid lineage, as a few sources state, including an interesting letter from the Il-Khan Tegüder Ahmad to the Mamluks. As aqa, he was one of the senior-most members of the family, respected and consulted on all sorts of familial and government matters. And indeed, this is the role he often appears in; when Töde-Möngke Khan considered releasing a captive son of Khubilai Khaan, he is recorded consulting with Nogai as well as other prominent members of the Jochids. Most of Nogai's interactions from the Jochid khans Töde-Möngke, Tele-Buqa and Toqta all seem based on this aqa relationship. While scholarship has often accused Nogai of putting these various khans on the throne, and reducing the khans Töde-Möngke and Tele-Buqa to puppets, this is unsupported by the sources. In the royal succession, Nogai is unmentioned in the transition except in the overthrow of Tele-Buqa, as we covered in a previous episode. Over these years Nogai appears focused on the territory he was assigned to in southeastern Europe. On occasion he sent troops to assist Rus' princes in raids in Poland and Lithuania, but Nogai only did so when requested by these princes, as described in the Rus' chronicles. Likewise, when he led armies into Hungary and Poland himself, as we discussed in our previous episodes, Nogai only did so when demanded by Tele-Buqa. If not presented as overthrowing khans, or reducing them to figureheads, literature often presents Nogai actively undermining the khans, or undertaking his own diplomatic efforts. But the evidence for this is likewise weak. An interesting case of Nogai possibly undermining Tele-Buqa Khan comes in 1288, when he sent an embassy to the Il-Khan, Arghun, which gave him Buddhist relics. A few weeks after this meeting, Tele-Buqa unleashed his first invasion of the Ilkhanate. It's tempting to see this as Nogai having his own Ilkhanid diplomacy or alerting Arghun of Tele-Buqa's attack, but this is the only record of such an embassy, and Arghun was caught unawares by the invasion, as he was in the midst of leaving the Caucasus when the attack occurred. We might wonder if Nogai had actually been instructed to placate Arghun, sending him gifts in order to not suspect any Jochid attacks; Arghun may have seen little reason to believe the truce with the Ilkhanate was in any danger. Neither did Nogai carry out a marriage alliance with the Il-Khan, as if sometimes stated; references to him marrying one of his sons to a daughter of Abaqa Il-Khan have confused Nogai of the Golden Horde with another Nogai, a non-Chinggisid general who lived in the Ilkhanate, and the father of Abaqa's son-in-law, in this instance. Nogai did gave shelter to at least one Rus' prince, who was out of favour with the reigning khan. Dmitri Alexandrovich, a son of the famous Alexander Nevskii, had a decades lo

Kings and Generals: Mongol Empire Podcast Episode 64: Golden Horde #4, Tele-Buqa and the Third Mongol Invasion of Poland Our previous episode saw a watershed moment in the normally stale politics of the Golden Horde: in the aftermath of the second Mongol invasion of Hungary, the reigning Khan, Töde-Möngke, was deposed by his nephew, Tele-Buqa. Accusing his uncle of insanity, Tele-Buqa and a group of allies now ruled in a four-way alliance, dividing the Golden Horde between them. Over the next four years, all sorts of hell broke loose, as Tele-Buqa ordered a number of new military ventures, all of which ended in failures. An increasingly desperate Tele-Buqa brought the princes Nogai and Toqta into a whirlpool, which would spell disaster for Tele-Buqa, and open warfare as the Golden Horde approached its first civil war. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Tele-Buqa was a great-grandson of Batu Khan, a son of Tartu, the older brother of Khans Möngke-Temür and Töde-Möngke. As is standard for the Jochid Khans, we know almost nothing about his life before he took the throne of the Golden Horde in 1287, just over 80 years after Chinggis Khan first declared the Mongol Empire. A great-great-great-grandson of Chinggis, Tele-Buqa shared little in common with his illustrious ancestor, though certainly sought to emulate him through military ventures. Tele-Buqa first appears leading the army into Hungary in 1285, as covered in our last episode. You'll sometimes see in the literature and Wikipedia that Tele-Buqa and Nogai both took part in the 1259 attack on Poland. We covered this campaign in our first episode on the Golden Horde, where it was commanded by Burundai Noyan. The placement of Nogai and Tele-Buqa in the 1259 attack first appears in the fifteenth century chronicle of Jan Długosz, which almost certainly conflated it with the attack Tele-Buqa did lead on Poland in 1287. No other contemporary source supports it, and given that Tele-Buqa was born in the sixth generation of Chinggisids, he was at best a young boy when the 1259 attack occurred. Though children can be known for their lack of mercy, it's rather doubtful even the most ruthless of toddlers would be given an army. When Tele-Buqa took the throne in 1287, he was probably in his late twenties or early thirties. As we discussed in our last episode, Töde-Möngke Khan entered in a religious or mental torpor by the mid-1280s, and the Golden Horde was governed by a widow of Möngke-Temür Khan, Jijek-Khatun. While Nogai is popularly said to have deposed Töde-Möngke and sat Tele-Buqa onto the throne, our series researcher, Jack Wilson, has demonstrated in his own studies how this is not the portrayal in the surviving primary sources. Rather, it seems Tele-Buqa eyed the throne himself, and the ensuing attack on Hungary in 1285, led by Tele-Buqa, was an effort to garner the status and resources to succeed his uncle Töde-Möngke. As we detailed in the last episode, this campaign resulted in the loss of much of his army while crossing the Carpathian mountains. Tele-Buqa was furious over his defeat, particularly as Nogai's forces had escaped comparatively whole with considerable loot. Requiring a new plan, Tele-Buqa conspired with his brother, Könchak, and two sons of Möngke-Temür, Alghui and To'rilcha. As the Mamluk chronicles recorded Töde-Möngke exiling a number of these sons during the succession to Möngke-Temür, we might suspect they had nursed their vengeance throughout Töde-Möngke's reign. Together, they forced Töde-Möngke to abdicate early in 1287. The justification they told the Mamluks was that Töde-Möngke willingly stepped down to live as a religious hermit; the justification within the Golden Horde seems to have been that Töde-Möngke was insane and unfit to rule. This was what Rashīd al-Dīn learned in the Ilkhanate, and when Ötemish Hajji was collecting folktales from former Horde lands in the sixteenth century, stories of an insane Töde-Möngke had grown in popularity and particularly vulgar ones were supposedly favourites around the campfire. The four-way princely junta that Tele-Buqa ruled through is not well understood, beyond the fact that it was some sort of division of power between them, with Tele-Buqa the first-amongst-equals rather than overlord. Rashīd al-Dīn simply remarks that they ruled jointly. The Rus' chronicles typically mention Alghui alongside Tele-Buqa, indicating that he may have been Tele-Buqa's #2. As Alghui was the oldest of Möngke-Temür Khan's sons, it was unsurprising that Alghui was likewise predominant. Their division of power is also supported archeaologically. In the Mongol Empire, coinage generally bore the khan's name and the tamgha, a sort of individual stamp or crest. In the Golden Horde, Möngke-Temür had been the first to mint coins not in the name of the Great Khan, but in his own name. Likewise, Töde-Möngke followed him in this pattern, and so did Tele-Buqa. Except under Tele-Buqa, it was

Last week you heard the first part of the interview between our series researcher, Jack Wilson, and Dr. Stephen Pow on his theory regarding the death of the famous Mongol general, Jebe Noyan. Dr. Pow argues that Jebe died in a small skirmish in the days leading up to the Kalka River, and today they discuss some of the reaction to Pow's theory, further expanding upon his evidence as well as the possibility of Jebe's survival. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.

Any experience reading sources from the Mongol Empire will find a frustrating tendency for them to not mention the fates of some of the empire's key figures. A recent theory by Dr. Stephen Pow, a frequent guest on our podcast, has sought to cast a light on the possible last days of one of the top generals of the early Mongol Empire, Jebe Noyan, the associate of Subedei during their pursuit of the Khwarezm-shah Muhammad. In part one of their discussion, our series researcher Jack Wilson talks with Dr. Pow on Jebe's life, the Kalka River battles, and his theory and evidence for Jebe's death, and what this reveals about the use of sources in the Mongol Empire. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.

Perhaps no Khan of the Golden Horde in the thirteenth century has had his reputation so maligned as Töde-Möngke. This younger brother of Möngke-Temür ruled the Jochid ulus from around 1282 until he gave up the throne in 1287. His reign is, at the most charitably, usually described as Töde-Möngke being dedicated to religious pursuits, leaving real power in the hands of the rising prince, Nogai. At worst, as in the sixteenth century Qara-Tawarikh of Öttemish Hajji, Töde-Möngke suffered from a debilitating mental condition that left him hopelessly unable to deal with the strains of governance, or indeed even the world around him. Here, based on the research of our series historian conducted during the process of his Masters thesis, we'll offer a somewhat more nuanced portrayal of Töde-Möngke, who appears to have acted with a little more energy than he has generally been credited with. Along the way, we'll also deal with the Second Mongol Invasion of Hungary, which occurred during his reign. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Töde-Möngke, or Tuda-Mengu as he's known to Turkic speakers, was a younger brother of the previous Khan of the Golden Horde, Möngke-Temür and therefore a grandson of Batu Khan. Like his brother, his life before he became Khan is entirely unknown to us. His older brother died as early as 1280, or as late as 1282, depending on the source. Literature has often placed Töde-Möngke's rise to power as being through the efforts of prince Nogai maneuvering him to the throne, and entering into a power sharing agreement. However, the primary sources do not portray such a manner of succession. Möngke-Temür died of complications following an operation on an abcess in his throat. There is no indication of a preferred successor. He instead left behind nine sons, who in the works of the Mamluk historians Baybars al-Mansuri and al-Nuwayri, immediately squabbled for the throne. His brother Töde-Möngke though, as apparently the oldest surviving descendant of Batu, is described by these sources as essentially fighting off his nephews to take the throne himself. Whether it was open fighting is not particularly clear: the process was probably a mix of threats, bribery and promises over several months, far from unusual in a Chinggisid succession. We might assume that Möngke-Temür died around 1280-1281, and it took until early 1282 for the ascension of Töde-Möngke to be finalized. For anyone claiming Nogai controlled this process, there is simply no mention of his involvement in any of the contemporary sources, nor is there evidence for Professor Vernadsky's claim that, at the time of Töde-Möngke's enthronement, that Nogai was also enthroned as a "Khan of the Manghit tribe." As far as we can tell, there is no reason to assume Nogai was not among the princes and commanders who simply backed Töde-Möngke at the quriltai. The first years of Töde-Möngke's reign are somewhat hazy, but a few details can be made out by comparing the various sources he's mentioned in. It appears his most notable efforts were related to diplomacy. Though modern writers often by this point give Nogai most control over the Golden Horde's foreign policy, there is little direct evidence for this. In fact, Töde-Möngke seems to have acted with a bit of vigour in this area. A Mamluk embassy sent with gifts to Möngke-Temür in 1282 arrived too late, and found Töde-Möngke on the throne. The gifts were instead given to Töde-Möngke, and friendly relations commenced. There is nothing particularly distinct in the embassy's first description of Töde-Möngke, in comparison to his late brother. This first embassy, as recorded by the Mamluk chroniclers, does not describe Töde-Möngke as a Muslim; this is interesting, as not only is Töde-Möngke's status as the second Muslim khan of the Golden Horde is one of the most notable things of his reign to modern authors, but we would think that the Mamluks would also have been quite interested by such a prospect following Möngke-Temür, who is generally agreed to have been a shamanist-animist. But Töde-Möngke's 1283 letter to the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun was markedly different. In this second letter, Töde-Möngke espouses at length about his conversion to Islam, how he had established sharia law in the Golden Horde, and asked for an Islamic name as well as banners from the Mamluk Sultan and his puppet 'Abbasid Caliph. If Töde-Möngke was such an intensely devout Muslim, how did the previous embassy fail to note it? Well, Professor Peter Jackson offers an intriguing explanation. First we must look to the year prior to Töde-Möngke's letter. In June of 1282, a new Il-Khan had taken the throne following the death of Abaqa. This was Tegüder Ahmad, the first Muslim Il-Khan, who we have covered in a previous episode. Soon after taking the throne, Tegüder sent envoys to both the Golden Horde and to the Mamluk Sultanate, informing them of his enthronement and conversion to islam. The letter he sen

Having taken you, our dear listeners, through the Yuan, Chagatayid and Ilkhanates, we now turn our attention to the northwestern corner of the Mongol Empire: the Jochid ulus, the Golden Horde. Ruled by the line of Chinggis' eldest son Jochi, this single division of the Mongol Empire was larger than the maximum extent of most empires, dominating from the borders of Hungary and the Balkans, briefly taking the submission of Serbia, stretching ever eastwards over what is now Ukraine, Russia, through Kazakhstan before terminating at the Irtysh River. Under its hegemony were many distinct populations; the cities of the Rus' principalities, the fur trading centres of the Volga Bulghars along the Samara Bend, the mercantile outposts of the Crimean peninsula which gave the Jochid Khans access to the Mediterranean Sea, to the Khwarezm delta, giving them a position in the heart of the Central Asian trade. These distant frontiers, hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres apart, were connected by the western half of the great Eurasian steppe, the Qipchaq Desert as it was known to Islamic writers. Thus was the Golden Horde, and over the next few episodes we'll take you through its history, from its establishment under Batu, to the height of its glory under Özbeg, to its lengthy disintegration from the end of the fourteenth century onwards. This first episode will serve as an introduction to the history of the Golden Horde, beginning first with its very name and important historiographical matters, then taking you through its origins, up to the death of Berke and ascension of Möngke-Temür, the first ruler of the Golden Horde as an independent state. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. As good a place to start as any is terminology, and the Golden Horde is known by a host of names. Firstly and most famously, we can note that the Golden Horde is a later appellation, given to the state centuries later in Rus' chronicles. In Russian this is Zolotaya Orda (Золотой Орды), which in Mongolian and Turkish would be Altan Orda. The English word "horde" comes directly from Mongolian ordu, though also used in Turkic languages, and signifies, depending on the case, a command headquarters, the army, tent or palace- quite different from the image of uncontrolled rabble that usually comes to mind with the term. While commonly said that the Rus' chronicles took the term from the golden colour of the Khan's tents, we actually do see the term Golden Horde used among the Mongols before the emergence of the Golden Horde state. For the Mongols and Turks, all the cardinal directions have colour associated with them. Gold is the colour associated with the center; while the divisions of the army would be known by their direction and colour, the overall command or imperial government could be known as the center, the qol, or by its colour, altan. This is further augmented by the association of the colour gold with the Chinggisids themselves, as descent from Chinggis Khan was the altan urugh, the Golden Lineage; and the name of a well-known Mongolian folk band. For example, in 1246 when the Franciscan Friar John de Plano Carpini travelled to Mongolia as an envoy from the Pope, he visited a number of camps of the new Khan, Güyük. Each camp was named, and one of these was, as Carpini notes, called the Golden Horde. In this case, Carpini also describes Güyük's tent as being literally covered in gold, with even the nails holding the wooden beams being gold. So Altan orda, or Golden Horde, may well have been in use within the Golden Horde khanate. However, the term is never used to refer to it in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. What we see instead is a collection of other terms. In the Ilkhanate, it was common to refer to the rulers as the Khans of Qipchap, and the state as the Desht-i-Qipchaq, the Qipchaq steppe or desert. Hence in modern writing you will sometimes see it as the Qipchap Khanate. But this seems unlikely to have been a term in use by the Jochid Khans, given that the Qipchaps were the Khan's subjects and seen as Mongol slaves; a rather strange thing for the Mongols to name themselves after them. Given that it was the pre-Mongol term for the region, and the Ilkhanid writers liked to denigrate the Jochid Khans whenever possible, it makes rather good sense that they would continue using it. Many modern historians, and our series researcher, like to refer to it as the Jochid ulus, the patrimony of the house of Jochi, particularly before the actual independence of the Golden Horde following 1260. This term appears closer to what we see in Yuan and Mamluk sources, where the Golden Horde was usually called the ulus of Batu or Berke, or ulus of whoever was currently the reigning Khan. Either designating themselves by the current ruler, or by the more general ulug ulus, meaning "great state or patrimony," with perhaps just the encampment of the Khan known as the altan ordu, the Golden Horde, among the Jochids

At the start of the twenty-first century, a study was released which brought the thirteenth century starkly into the present. A 2003 study led by Chris Tyler-Smith published in the American Journal of Human Genetics simply titled "The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols," determined that an alarming number of men across Asia, from China to Uzbekistan, carried the same haplotype on their Y-chromosome, indicating a shared paternal lineage. 8% of the studied group, just over 2100 men from 16 distinct populations in Asia shared this haplotype, which if representative of the total world population, would have come out to about 16 million men. This was far beyond what was to be expected of standard genetic variation over such a vast area. The researchers traced the haplogroup to Mongolia, and with the BATWING program determined that the most recent common ancestor lived approximately 1,000 years ago, plus or minus 300 years in either direction. The study determined that this could only be the result of selective inheritance, and there was only man who fit the profile, who had the opportunity to spread his genes across so much of Asia and have them be continually selected for centuries to come; that was Chinggis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire. Identifying him with the Y-Chromosome haplogroup, the C3* Star Cluster, the image of Chinggis Khan as the ancestor of 0.5% of the world population has become irrevocably attached to his name, and a common addition in the comment sections on any Mongol related topic on the internet will be the fact that he is related to every 1 in 200 men in Asia today. Yet, recent studies have demonstrated that this may not be the case, and that Chinggis Khan's genetic legacy is not so simple as commonly portrayed. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Inside each human being are the genes we inherit from our parents. Distinct alleles within the thousands of genes of our 23 chromosomes affect the makeup of our bodies, from our physical appearances to blood type. Each allele is inherited from our parents, who inherited from their parents, and so on, leaving in each human being a small marker of every member of their ancestry. Due to interbreeding and mixing over time, people living in a certain region will share alleles, given that various members of their community shared ancestors at some point. A collection of these alleles is a haplotype, and a group of similar haplotypes with shared ancestry is a haplogroup. Tracing specific haplogroups attached to the Y-Chromosome, for instance, allows us to trace paternal ancestry of selected persons. It was the haplogroup dubbed the C3*star cluster that the researchers identified as Chinggis Khan's haplotype, though later research has redefined it to the C2* star cluster. Thus, while you may see it somewhat interchangeably referred to as C3 or C2, depending on how recent the literature you're reading is. Whoever carried the markers on their chromosome associated with this haplogroup, according to the study, was therefore a descendant of Chinggis Khan. The lineage, it should be noted, does not start with Chinggis Khan; it is detectable in the ancestors of the Mongols dating back at least to the fifth century BCE, to the Donghu people in eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. It is found in high frequencies in populations which had close contact with Mongols from Siberia to Central Asia, as as the Buryats, Udeges, Evens, Evenks, Kazakhs, and in lower frequencies in places conquered by the Mongol Empire. As demonstrated by the 2003 study, a map of these haplogroups lines up rather neatly with a map of the Mongol Empire at the time of Chinggis Khan's death. The 2003 study found that 8% of the men sampled had high frequencies of haplotypes from a set of closely related lineages, the C2* star cluster. With the highest numbers of this cluster found in Mongolia, it was the logical origin point for this cluster. Its frequencies in so many populations of the former Mongol Empire seemed to suggest it spread with Mongol imperial expansion. The researchers therefore identified Chinggis Khan and his close male-relatives as the likely progenitors. While the public has understood this as Chinggis Khan and his family raping a massive percentage of the thirteenth century human population, this was not quite what the study implied. Rather, the selective marriage into the Chinggisid royal family, with each son having high numbers of children, and so on for generations due to prestige associated with the lineage, was the cause for the haplogroup's spread. The study decided that, since the haplogroups showed up in high frequencies among the Hazara of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as they were deemed to be direct descendants of Chinggis Khan, then this must have meant no one else other than the Great Khan himself was the most recent common ancestor for this haplogroup. The high frequencies across Asian populations, an origin point in Mongolia, an est

The Mongols were famous for their ultimatums of destruction and submission. No shortage of thirteenth century states received demands for their unconditional surrender to the Great Khan granted divine mandate to rule by Eternal Blue Heaven. Initially, the Mongol imperial ideology was extremely black and white: you could submit to Mongol rule, or face total annihilation. There was no room for other relationships, for the Great Khan had no allies, only subjects. But as the thirteenth century went on and the dream of Chinggisid world hegemony slipped away as the divisions of the Mongol Empire went their separate ways, the Mongol Khans in the west began to seek not the capitulation, but the cooperation of western Europe to aid in their wars against Mamluks. For the Ilkhanate's sixty-year struggle against the Mamluk Sultanate, the Il-Khans sought to bring the Popes and Monarchs of Europe to a new crusade to assist in the defeat of the Mamluks, an ultimately fruitless endeavour, and the topic of today's episode. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. The first Mongol messages to the Kings of Europe came in the late 1230s and 40s, accompanying Batu and Sube'edei's western invasion, asking the Hungarians how they possibly could hope to flee the grasp of the Mongols. We know the Mongols sent a number of envoys to European monarchs and dukes, and employed a variety of peoples in this enterprise, including at least one Englishman. Over the 1240s and 50s, European envoys like John de Plano Carpini or William of Rubrucks to the Mongol Empire returned from Karakorum with orders for the Kings and Popes to come to Mongolia and submit in person.While Rus' and Armenian lords and kings did do so, there is little indication that European rulers even responded to these demands. For the Mongols, who seemed poised to dominate everything under the Eternal Blue Sky, there was little reason to adopt more conciliatory language. From their point of view, the Europeans were only stalling the inevitable: soon Mongol hoofbeats would certainly be heard in Paris and Rome. The Mongols treated the European states as their diplomatic inferiors, subjects basically in a state of rebellion by fact that they had not already submitted. Cruel, threatening and demanding letters were the norm, and it's safe to say any future efforts at alliance were greatly hampered by this opening salvo. The rare diplomatic exception was an embassy sent to King Louis IX of France during his stay in Cyprus in 1248 just before the 7th Crusade. There, messengers came from the Mongol commander in the west, Eljigidei, an ally to the reigning Great Khan, Guyuk. Headed by two Christians in Eljigidei's service, the embassy bore letters from Eljigidei. These letters called Louis 'son,' and had no demand of submission, but mentioned Mongol favouritism to Christians, urged the French King not to discriminate between Latin and non-Latin Christians as all were equal under Mongol law, and wished him well in his crusade. The two Christian representatives of Eljigidei asserted that he was a Christian and that Guyuk himself had already been baptised. The urged Louis to attack Egypt, and prevent its Ayyubid prince from sending forces to aid the Caliph in Baghdad, who the Mongols were soon to attack. Louis, is should be noted, almost certainly had not been anticipating any cooperation from the Mongols; he had been well aware of their attacks on Hungary only a few years before, learned of Mongol demands and treatment of foreign powers from travellers like Carpini, and apparently received Mongol ultimatums for his submission in 1247. Further, a devout Christian, it is unlikely he would have gone looking for allies among "pagans," even for fighting against Muslims. Still, he reacted well to Eljigidei's messengers and sent a return embassy with gifts with them back to Eljigidei which were to be sent on to Guyuk, while the initial letter was forwarded back to France and ultimately to King Henry III of England. Ultimately, it was for naught. Guyuk was dead even before Louis received Eljigidei's letter, and Eljigidei himself was soon put to death in the following political turmoil. Little is known of the embassy Louis sent back with Eljigdei's representatives, but from the little heard of it through William of Rubruck a few years later, it seems to have achieved nothing beyond meeting Guyuk's widow and the regent, Oghul Qaimish, who portrayed Louis' gifts as tokens of the French King's submission. Following the meeting on Cypress, Louis IX suffered a humiliating defeat in Egypt at Mansura, captured and was ransomed by the newly emerging Mamluks. By the time he returned to France and received Oghul Qaimish's reply, not only was she dead, but the responding letter was essentially another demand for his surrender. This first non-threatening Mongol embassy succeeded only in making the King of France feel like he had been tricked, especially since the new Great Kha

November, 1335. The Khan of the Ilkhanate, Abu Sa'id Bahadur, is dead. Allegedly poisoned by a spurned wife, Baghdad Khatun, his death was the unravelling of the Ilkhanate. Facing an invasion by the mighty Ozbeg of the Golden Horde, and a succession crisis due to Abu Sa'id's failure to produce an heir, the Ilkhanate rapidly, and violently, tore itself to pieces. Today, we look at the disintegration of the Mongol Ilkhanate, the stories of two men named Hasan, and the history of the region up until the arrival of Emir Temur, fearsome Tamerlane, at the end of the fourteenth century. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Abu Sa'id had not been an incompetent monarch by any stretch of the means, and his rule was remembered as a golden age, at least in comparison to the mess that followed. A great-great-grandson of the Ilkhanid founder Hulegu, Abu Sa'id's reign had seen the consolidation of the islamization of the Mongol state, as well as the end of the long war with the Mamluks of Egypt. Il-Khan since 1316, Abu Sa'id had been controlled by the emir Choban, until he nearly eradicated the house of Choban in the late 1320s in an effort to marry Baghdad Khatun, one of Choban's daughters. For a few years Abu Sa'id had enjoyed a comparatively quiet majority, pursuing art, culture, poetry, building and architecture, as well as efforts to produce an heir. Baghdad Khatun, despite her beauty and the violence he had undertaken to acquire her- which included, among others things, killing her father, brothers and forcing her to divorce her husband- simply did not provide him his much desired son. When Abu Sa'id's eyes fell upon her niece, Dilshad Khatun, the Il-Khan basically forgot about his current wife, wed her niece and soon enough got her pregnant. For Baghdad Khatun to be humiliated like this, after suffering through the destruction of her family, this was the last straw. The widespread belief was that she had him poisoned in some manner- in Ibn Battuta's account, this was administered via a handkerchief that she used to clean themselves after sexual intercourse. So did Abu Sa'id die, aged 30 years old, in what is now Azerbaijan while marching north to repel an invasion by the Khan of the Golden Horde, Ozbeg. With Abu Sa'id's death, the line of Hulegu became extinct- or at least, the line through Hulegu's son Abaqa, which had provided most of the Il-Khans. Abu Sa'id uncle, Ghazan, had done much to prune the lineage during his reign, and it seems alcoholism took care of much of the rest. The fact that few Il-Khans lived past 35, with fewer and fewer heirs each generation, has led many to search for underlying causes beyond just alcohol. Scholars such as Charles Melville and Anne F. Broadbridge have pointed to possible consequences of consanguinity among the Il-Khans: that is, essentially inbreeding, given the Il-Khan's preferences for marrying into the same families, like the Oirats, over generations. The combined effects of rampant alcohol abuse among both men and women and the consanguinity may be the answer behind the alarming drop off in fertility of the Ilkhanid elite over the last decades of the thirteenth century. While Hulegu had produced quite the brood of little Chinggisids- at least 25 sons and daughters-, by the end of the century Ghazan had only a daughter survive childhood, while his brother Oljeitu Il-Khan had an alarming amount of children stillborn or died young. From his twelve wives, Oljeitu only had three children ever reach marriageable age; Abu Sa'id and two daughters, Sati Beg and Dawlandi: the last of whom still died before her father. For Abu Sa'id himself, despite considerable efforts, by his death he had only succeeded in getting his widow Dilshad Khatun pregnant. With no surviving brothers, sons or clear male figure to step into the role, the Ilkhanate suddenly faced a new problem; no clear monarch of the line of Hulegu to head the state. The explanation of Abu Sa'id's death without heir directly causing the fall of the Ilkhanate has been, in the opinion of scholars like Charles Melville, somewhat overstated. The image of the Ilkhanate falling without a decline -a counter to the model popularized by Edward Gibbon so long ago- encourages us to overlook problems which had developed. Essentially, Melville notes, a gap had widened between the military elite, the noyad, and the Il-Khan, which accompanied a lack of respect for the Chinggisids. The death of a monarch with no clear heir was hardly a new issue in the Mongol Empire- in fact, the quriltai system wherein a candidate put his name forward and was confirmed by the princes served to supply new khans at need. Additionally, neither were regents unheard of within the empire's history. The 1240s had seen two regencies, with Ogedai's widow Torogene and Guyuk's widow Oghul Qaimish steering the empire in the absence of a Khan- Oghul Qaimish of course, doing this much less successfully than her predecessor. In the fo

"Ket Buqa Noyan kept attacking left and right with all zeal. Some encouraged him to flee, but he refused to listen and said, "Death is inevitable. It is better to die with a good name than to flee in disgrace. In the end, someone from this army, old or young, will reach the court and report that Ket Buqa, not wanting to return in shame, gave his life in battle. The padishah should not grieve over lost Mongol soldiers. Let him imagine that his soldiers' wives have not been pregnant for a year and the mares of their herds have not folded. [...]The life or death of servants like us is irrelevant." Although the soldiers left him, he continued to struggle in battle like a thousand men. In the end his horse faltered, and he was captured. [...] After that, Ket Buqa was taken before Quduz with his hands bound. "Despicable man," said Quduz, "you have shed so much blood wrongfully, ended the lives of champions and dignitaries with false assurances, and overthrown ancient dynasties with broken promises. Now you have finally fallen into a snare yourself."[...] "If I am killed by your hand," said Ket Buqa, "I consider it to be God's act, not yours. Be not deceived by this event for one moment, for when the news of my death reaches Hülägü Khan, the ocean of his wrath will boil over, and from Azerbaijan to the gates of Egypt will quake with the hooves of Mongol horses. They will take the sands of Egypt from there in their horses' nose bags. Hülägü Khan has three hundred thousand renowned horsemen like Ket Buqa. You may take one of them away." So the great Ilkhanid vizier and historian Rashid al-Din records the heroic, and certainly greatly dramatized, account of Kitbuqa Noyan's final stand at the battle of Ayn Jalut in September 1260. This was the famous Mongol defeat at the newly established, and rather fragile, Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. The Mongols however, did not see it as an irreversible cataclysm, but the defeat of a small force which would soon be avenged, for Heaven demanded nothing less. The defeat of the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260 was not the end of the war between the Mongols and the Mamluks, and over the next 50 years Hulegu's successors, the Ilkhans, tried repeatedly to avenge their losses only to be halted by the Mamluks' valiant resistance. Here, we will look at the efforts by the Mongol Ilkhanate to bring their horses to the Nile. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. First, we should note that for anyone wishing to read more about the war between the Mongols and the Mamluks, the most detailed work on the subject can be found in Reuven Amitai-Preiss' Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, released in 1995. No other work details the entire conflict and its sources so fully, and is an absolute must read for anyone desiring the most effective overview on the subject possible. With the death of Grand Khan Mongke in 1259, the Mongol Empire was irrevocably broken: while Hulegu and his successors stayed on good terms with his brother Khubilai, the nominal Great Khan, Hulegu was independent, ruler of vast domain stretching from Anatolia to the Amu Darya, known as the Ilkhanate. Hulegu's cousins in the neighbouring Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and the Neguderis were almost immediately antagonistic to the Ilkhans, who found themselves defending their distant frontiers from all three, in addition to internal revolts. For the Ilkhans, the Mamluks were but one frontier amongst several, one they could turn to only when the threat from the other Khanates was low. More often than not, this simple fact prevented any great Ilkhanid invasion of the Mamluk state. For the Mamluks though, their border with the Ilkhanate along the Euphrates river was of utmost importance. In the aftermath of Ayn Jalut, the Mamluk Sultan Qutuz was assassinated by the energetic Baybars, who had fought alongside Qutuz against Kitbuqa. We introduced Baybars back in episode 30 of this podcast. While much credit can be given to Qutuz and the quality of the Mamluk soldiery for the victory at Ayn Jalut, the reason for continued Mamluk successes against the Mongols can be attributed to Baybars. A Qipchaq from the great Eurasian steppe, as a young boy Baybars had been sold into slavery to the Ayybuid Sultan of Egypt. There, Baybars was converted to Islam and received extensive training in all matter of military affairs. An excellent soldier, coupled with immense ambition, endurance and drive, Baybars understood clearly the danger the Mongols posed, and set up his entire kingdom to defend against them. The new Sultan greatly expanded the Mamluk regiments, encouraging good relations with the Golden Horde, Genoese and Byzantine Empire to keep up the flow of Turkic slave soldiers from the Eurasian steppe, over the Mediterranean to the ports of Egypt. He established a sophisticated intelligence network to inform him on the Ilkhanate and spread misinformation within it, supported by a system of signal towers, messeng

One of the most enduring images of the Mongolian Empire is that it was a model of religious tolerance, one where each of the Khan's subjects were free to worship as they pleased. This is not a new belief; in the 18th century, Edward Gibbon presented Chinggis Khan as a forerunner of the enlightenment, and for modern audiences the notion was repopularized with Jack Weatherford's book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Some use the notion to counter the common presentations of Mongol brutality, usually accompanying blanket terms that all religious clergy were exempted from taxation, labour and were respected- or go as far as to present the Mongols as the inspiration for modern liberal religious toleration. While there is an element of truth to be had here, as with so much relating to the Mongols, describing the Chinggisid empire as a state of religious tolerance where all religions east and west lived in harmony fails to capture the reality of the period. Even before the founding of the empire, Chinggis Khan interacted with a variety of religions. During his war to unify Mongolia, Chinggis Khan was supported by men of various religious backgrounds: Mongolian shamanist-animists, Nestorian Christians, Buddhists and Muslims, one of whom, Jafar Khoja, was supposedly a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and stood with him at the muddy waters of Lake Baljuna during one of his lowest moments. The most prominent tribes in the Mongolian steppe in the 12th century were Nestorian Christians such as the Kereyid and Naiman, and on the declaration of the Mongol Empire in 1206 Chinggis Khan's army and administration were quite mixed. Chinggis Khan himself was an animist: in Mongolian belief, all things in the world were inhabited by spirits which had to be consulted and placated. It was the job of shamans to intercede with these spirits on the Mongols' behalf. Generally, shamanism is not an exclusive religion; one can consult a shaman and still practice other faiths. The shaman was not like a Christian priest or Islamic imam, but a professional one could consult with regardless of other religious affiliation. The persuasion and power of religion in the Mongol steppe came from the charisma of specific holy men -such as shamans- and their power to convene with spirits and Heaven on the Khan's behalf in order to secure his victory. This seems to have been the guiding principle for how Chinggis Khan, and most of his successors, approached religion. Some Mongols viewed the major religions they encountered -Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam- as all praying to the same God via different methods. This was more or less the statement that in the 1250s, Chinggis' grandson Mongke Khaan provided to the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck during an interview, stating that "We Mongols believe that there is only one God through whom we have life and through whom we die, and towards him we direct our hearts [...] But just as God has given the hand several fingers, so he has given mankind several paths." Usually for the Khans, it did not matter who was right, as basically all of the major religions were. What mattered was that these religions should pray to God on behalf of the Chinggisids to ensure divine favour for their rule. Heaven's will was manifested through victories and rulership, while it's displeasure manifested in defeats and anarchy. Much like the concept of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule provided by heaven could be rescinded, and thus the Mongols hoped to continually appease Heaven. But the Mongols' views on religion were not static and took years to develop into their political theology- and nor were they inherently tolerant, and favours were allotted more on a personal basis. For example, in 1214 Chinggis Khan, or one of his sons, had an encounter with a Buddhist monk named Haiyun. Haiyun, with his head shaved bare in accordance with his role as a monk, was told by the Khan to grow his hair out and braid it in Mongolian fashion- for at that time, the Mongols were attempting to order the general population of north China to do so as a sign of their political subordination. Religions in China dictated how one should maintain their hair; Buddhist monks had to shave their heads, Daoist monks could keep their hair long, while the general Chinese population, on Confucian teaching, could not cut their hair in adulthood, as it was a gift from the parents, and thus was kept in topknots. Demanding that the general population adopt the unique, partly shaved Mongolian hairstyle, was therefore a decree against all of China's major religions. The Mongols did not succeed in this policy and soon abandoned it's implementation on its sedentary subjects, though other sources indicate it was enforced on nomadic Turkic tribes who entered Mongol service, indicating their submission to the Great Khan. Notably the Manchu would successfully implement such a policy after their conquest of China 400 years later, f

It was this Khudhābandah who embraced Islam [...] when he died, there succeeded to the kingdom his son Abū Sa'īd Bahādur Khān. He was an excellent and a generous king. He became king while of tender age, and when I saw him in Baghdād he was still a youth, the most beautiful of God's creatures in features, and without any growth on his cheeks. His vizier at that time was the amīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad, son of Khwāja Rashīd; his father was one of the migrant Jews, and had been appointed vizier by the sultan Muḥammad Khudhābandah, the father of Abū Sa'īd. I saw both [the sultan and his vizier] one day on the Tigris in a launch [...]; in front of him was Dimashq Khwāja, son of the amīr [Choban], who held the mastery over Abū Sa'īd, and to the right and left of him were [...] musicians and dancers. I was witness to one of his acts of generosity on the same day; he was accosted by a company of blind men, who complained to him of their miserable state, and he ordered each one of them to be given a garment, a slave to elad him, and a regular allowance for his maintenance. So the great Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta describes Abu Sa'id in the early 1330s, the final ruler of the Ilkhanate to preside over the united ulus, and to hold any authority. Succeeding his father Oljeitu as a 12 year old boy in July 1317, Abu Sa'id spent his first years on the Ilkhanid throne in the shadow of the great emir, the Noyan Choban. Today, we take you through the life and reign of Abu Sa'id, the last of the Khan in the line of Hulegu, grandson of Chinggis and conqueror of Baghdad. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Abu Sa'id's early life was spent under the control of Choban. Unlike his contemporary, El-Temur, the Yuan Dynasty chancellor who left the boy-khan Toghon Temur a mistreated and ignored puppet who feared for his life; Choban protected the young Abu Sa'id and ensured he had a proper Islamic education, teaching him to read, write and speak Persian and Arabic, while also versing him in the history and genealogies of the house of Chinggis Khan and the noyans. In the opinion of the great historian of the Ilkhanate, Charles Melville, Choban viewed himself as a servant of the state, a man who combined pride in service to the Chinggisids while observing sharia law. He was, granted, an exceptionally powerful servant. But his Khan, Oljeitu, had put Abu Sa'id in the care of Choban, and Choban was going to provide for the young lad. Needless to say, almost all decrees of the early reign of Abu Sa'id, if not all of them, first had to pass the approval of Choban, if they did not come from his mind originally. A military man, Choban was not always aware of, or cared for, court protocols both in the Ilkhanate or those it engaged in diplomacy with. Yet he was still a pragmatist, who recognized the strengths and weaknesses of the khanate he now oversaw. Initially, Abu Sa'id Il-Khan and Choban had kept Rashid al-Din and Taj al-Din 'Ali-Shah in place as Ilkhanid viziers. Rashid al-Din had of course served since the last years of Ghazan's reign, and 'Ali-Shah had been appointed to the position in 1312 by Oljeitu. Neither man much liked the other, and 'Ali-Shah saw the new khan as an opportunity to oust Rashid. Only two months after Abu Sa'id's enthronement, 'Ali-Shah's whispers succeeded in getting the young Khan to dismiss Rashid al-Din from service. Rashid's retirement did not last long, as Choban swiftly recalled him, telling Rashid that his service to the state was as necessary as salt to food. Choban seemed to genuinely recognize Rashid al-Din's talents and wanted to keep him on, but had not counted on Taj al-Din 'Ali Shah conspiring with Rashid al-Din's enemies, who loathed him for his wealth, success and still doubted the authenticity of his conversion to Islam. Rashid al-Din, of course, had been born and raised in a Jewish family. While he had converted to Islam over four decades prior, his Jewish heritage was reason enough for some to despise him. Rashid's rivals, aided with money and whispers, raised new charges: that Rashid al-Din's son Ibrahim had poisoned Oljeitu Il-Khan on Rashid's orders. As Rashid al-Din had been Oljeitu's physician during his final illness, it was a damning charge. Choban, never one skilled in the subtleties and conspiring of government, either believed the rumours or was paid off by 'Ali-Shah. He informed Abu Sa'id of the accusation, and various bribed commanders affirmed the veracity. It was a tough trial, and Rashid al-Din fought vigorously. But Abu Sa'id wanted revenge for his father. In July 1318, Rashid al-Din watched helplessly as his son Ibrahim was decapitated before him. As the executioner's blade came for him, he yelled his final defiance: "say to 'Ali Shah, "You have had me killed for no crime. It will not be long before fate will requite you of me, and the only difference between us will be that my grave will be older than yours." Rashid al-Din was then cut in h

Our last episode dealt with the reign of Ghazan Khan, ruler of the Mongol Ilkhanate from 1295 to 1304. A powerful Muslim monarch, Ghazan's reign reinvigorated the Khanate, greatly advancing the already underway islamization of the region's Mongol population. With his death, we enter the final phase of the Ilkhanate's history. First, we will look at the reign of Ghazan's brother and successor, Oljeitu Khudabandah, the penultimate ruler of the united Ilkhanate. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. When Ghazan Khan succumbed to his illness on the 17th of May, 1304, the always thorough Ghazan had been prepared. Leaving no male heirs behind and wishing to avoid having the realm descend into warfare, he had forced the military elite and princes to elect his younger brother Oljeitu as Khan. The 24 year old Oljeitu was duly enthroned that July, under the title of Sultan Ghiyath al-Din. The process was remarkably peaceful, with no resistance or massacres accompanying it- with the exception of Oljeitu preemptively having Prince Ala-Fireng, a son of the former Il-Khan Geikhatu, killed, for he had been seen as a potential rival. As far as Ilkhanid successions went, it was nearly as calm as you could hope for. Granted, Ghazan had killed most potential claimants during his own reign. Oljeitu was a son of Arghun Il-Khan, born in 1280. He and Ghazan were of different mothers: Ghazan was born to one of Arghun's concubines, whereas Oljeitu was born to Arghun's third wife, a Kereit Nestorian Christian named Orug Khatun. If Oljeitu's life could be remarked upon for one thing, even before he became Il-Khan, it was experimentation with religion, usually accompanied by a change of name. Firstly, it seems he was born and raised a Buddhist, much like Ghazan and their father Arghun. The name he was originally given is unclear: in some sources it was Oljeitu or Oljei Buqa, a Mongolian Buddhist name meaning "blessed." Yet in others, he is confusingly called Kharbandah or Khudabandah. The two names confused even medieval sources. Khudabandah in Persian means "servant of God," and it seems that Oljeitu often went by this name in his adult life. However, he was also called Kharbandah, which means "donkey driver," or "servant of the donkey." No one, medieval or modern, has provided a fully accepted explanation for why he bore such competing names. The Mongols had a custom for a child to be named after the first thing the mother saw after giving birth. Ibn Battuta, travelling through the Ilkhanate in the 1330s, reported that Oljeitu's mother Orug Khatun had first seen a donkey driver. Yet, as none of her other children bore Persian names, it is confusing that she would not have given him the Mongolian equivalent, Qulanchi. Other sources have him first called Kharbandah, and then change it to Khudabandah upon his enthronement, while others have him take Oljeitu at that time, after the reigning Great Khan, Khubilai's grandson Temur Oljeitu. Historian Timothy May suggests the kharbandah/khudabandah matter was a rude pun given to him by Sunni schoalars upon Oljeitu's conversion to Shia Islam. Of course, this is not helped by the fact that the main biography of Oljeitu's life, written by Qashani soon after the Il-Khan's death, has him also called Temuder at some point in his youth too. Regardless if Oljeitu had the name of Oljeitu or Khudabandah at birth, when he was around 10 years old he was given another name and religion: Nicholas, after Pope Nicholas IV. Arghun, during negotiations with said Pope, had Oljeitu baptised and given a Christian name, or rather it's Mongolian form, Nikolya. The young Oljeitu did not stick with Christianity, as he returned to Buddhism in his teenage years. But this was not to be his final conversion, no sir. He soon joined his brother Ghazan in becoming a Muslim, when he took the name Muhammad. This was not enough for him: first he was an adherent to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, before choosing the school of Shafi'ism. Disgusted by infighting between these schools, some of the noyans who had less love for Islam convinced Oljeitu to "return to the Old ways." This meant a brief return to Buddhism, possibly a dabble in traditional Mongol Tengriism, before in 1309 or 1310, settling onto Twelver Shi'a Islam. And if that wasn't enough for you, some authors then have him return to Sunni Islam on his deathbed in 1316, though this may just be a posthumous effort by Sunni authors in the Ilkhanate to rehabilitate him. So, for those of you who had trouble following that, his full name and title was Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad Khudabandah Oljeitu, and his religious path went Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Buddhism, Sunni Islam in two different schools, Buddhism, Shi'a Islam and then a possible return to Sunni Islam. As Oljeitu is the most common name by which he is known, we'll stick with that. When Oljeitu became Khan of the Ilkhanate in 1304, he was in the midst of his Sunni Isla

Of all the rulers of the Ilkhanate, perhaps none matched the might or the glory of Ghazan. Of a prestigious lineage: son of Arghun Ilkhan, grandson of Abaqa Ilkhan, great-grandson of Hulegu Ilkhan, great-great-grandson of Tolui and great-great-great-grandson of Chinggis Khan, Ghazan ruled with the self-assured confidence of a proud Chinggisid, who at the same time was veiled in an Islamic legitimacy. For Ghazan, while not the first Muslim monarch of the Ilkhanate, was the one who permanently islamicized the khanate. The Ilkhanate after Ghazan was a very different entity from the time before him, and the course of this we will examine in today's episode. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Ghazan did not come to the throne peacefully. As we covered in our last episode on the Ilkhanate, since the reign of his father Arghun Ghazan had been the top commander on the Ilkhanate's eastern border, defending against Chagatais, Neguderis and the rebelling general Nawruz. Though Ghazan was not happy with his uncle Geikhatu's election as Il-Khan in 1291, he accepted it. Geikhatu was murdered in early 1295 and an invitation soon came to Ghazan for the throne, he happily accepted. But when a cousin, Baidu, was hurriedly elected by a group of rambunctious princes led by Taghachar Noyan, Ghazan was furious. The result was skirmishing and near full out civil war only narrowly averted. In the end, on the urging of his former foe Nawruz, Ghazan converted to Islam, rallied his forces and stole away Baidu's supporters. On Ghazan's order, Baidu was executed, and Ghazan was finally elected as Il-Khan in autumn 1295; taking the title of Sultan Mahmad, as well as padishah-i islam, Emperor of Islam. Twenty-four years old when he stepped onto the throne, Ghazan was already an individual who had made himself known for his military ability and defence of the Ilkhanate's eastern border. Having brought about the submission of the former rebel Nawruz Noyan, Ghazan had made Nawruz his number two man. A staunch and loyal supporter of Ghazan, especially once he had convinced the young prince to convert to Islam, Nawruz became Ghazan's na'ib, viceroy, and acted a sword and shield for Ghazan… as long as Ghazan did as he wished. It seems that at the start of his reign, Ghazan struggled to control Nawruz, and on Nawruz's urging, Ghazan's first decree had been to order the destruction of Christian, Jewish and Buddhist places of worship in Islamic cities in the Ilkhanate, especially in Tabriz and Baghdad, the empire's chief cities. While Ghazan, as a new convert to Islam, may have sought to establish his credentials as a good Muslim monarch, Nawruz seems to have been the more zealous of the two and behind this pogrom. Once Ghazan reached Tabriz in October 1295 and was officially enthroned the following November, his first orders of business were to set out allotments, who would govern where, who was rewarded for their loyalty, and other enthronement celebrations. One of his bodyguard commanders, Mulai, was made the governor of Diyarbakir, and in a decidedly un-islamic ceremony, Ghazan married one of his father's widows, Bulughan Khatun. Already it was clear that Ghazan's conversion to Islam and lofty islamic titles had not replaced his Mongolian identity; while such a marriage, called levirate, was not just encouraged but expected among Mongols, particularly their monarchs, this sort of marriage was expressly forbidden in islam. Ghazan's servants sought to justify it based on the fact that Ghazan's father Arghun had not been a Muslim, and hence the marriage never truly legal. Whether this convinced anyone is debatable, but none could tell Ghazan "no." But in what was to be a common trend in Ghazan's reign, punishment was also to be violently meted out once celebrations were done. Ghazan had seen the noyans who had proven themselves duplicitous over the previous reigns, jumping from candidate to candidate as fortunes change. Ghazan would have none of it. The noyan Qunchuqbal was put on trial and executed. Qunchuqbal's comrade, Taghachar Noyan, who had betrayed every Il-Khan since Teguder Ahmad, was too powerful with too many friends to be so summarily executed, so he was instead "rewarded" with a cushy appointment in Anatolia, where he was quietly murdered. The murder of Taghachar angered one of his friends, the governor of Anatolia named Baltu Noyan. Baltu rebelled at the start of 1296, and Ghazan responded with a large army led by his loyal commander and brother-in-law, Qutlughshah Noyan. It took until the winter of 1296 for Qutlughshah's forces to defeat and kill Baltu. This was not the only plot Ghazan faced. In the winter of 1295 forces from the Chagatai Khanate attacked Khurasan and Mazandaran. Ghazan sent Nawruz Noyan and two princes, Sögä and Barula, to repulse them, but the princes soon began to plot against Ghazan. Once learning of their plots, Ghazan ordered Nawruz to turn back and kill them. Another Chi

The Mongols were known for unleashing a series of unrelenting horrors upon the Islamic world, from the catastrophic destruction of the Khwarezmian Empire under Chinggis Khan, to the sack of Baghdad under his grandson Hulegu, where the Caliph himself was killed on Mongol order. No shortage of Islamic authors over the thirteenth century remarked upon the Mongols as a deathblow to Islam, a punishment sent by God for their sins. Yet, many of the Mongols of the west end of the empire even before the end of the thirteenth century converted to Islam, and in time some of the heirs of Chinggis Khan held the sharia over the yassa. In today's episode, we explore why so many Mongols chose to convert to Islam. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. The Mongolian interaction with Islam began in the twelfth century, as Muslim merchants came to Mongolia with expensive goods such as textiles or metal weapons and tools to exchange for furs and animals to sell in China or Central Asia. Some of these merchants took up valued roles among the up and coming Mongol chiefs; at least two Muslims, Hasan the Sartaq and Ja'far Khoja, were among the warlord Temujin's close allies during his fabled escape to lake Baljuna, where they swore long lasting loyalty to him. Hasan's arrival brought much need flocks of sheep to help feed Temujin's starving men, while Ja'far Khoja was supposedly a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Ja'far served Temujin in valued roles for the rest of his life, acting as an embassy to the Jin Emperor and as daruqachi, or overseer, over the Jin capital of Zhongdu and its environs once the Mongols took it in 1215. When Temujin took the title of Chinggis Khan and began to expand the Mongol Empire, initially Muslims found little reason to lament the expansion of the Great Khan. Muslim merchants continued to serve in prominent roles, acting as emissaries and spies on behalf of Chinggis Khan, who rewarded them handsomely: gladly did Chinggis give them gifts and overpay for their wares in order to encourage them to make the difficult journey to Mongolia, as well as bring him useful information of Central Asia. One such Central Asian, Mahmud, served as Chinggis' loyal envoy to the Khwarezm-Shah Muhammad. His actions earned him the title of Yalavach, becoming Mahmud the Messenger. In the Tarim Basin in 1218, the local Muslim population had suffered oppression under the Naiman prince Kuchlug, who had usurped power in the Qara-Khitai Empire. When Chinggis Khan's great general Jebe Noyan entered the region pursuing Kuchlug, he proclaimed that all those who willingly submitted would be free to worship as they chose. The region largely seems to have swiftly thrown out Kuchlug's garrisons and officers and happily accepted Mongol rule, not as conquerors but liberators. This, of course, was not the case for the next stage of Mongol expansion. The highly destructive campaign against the Kwarezmian Empire launched in 1219 resulted in the deaths of perhaps millions of people from what is now Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan through eastern Iran and Afghanistan, a predominatly Muslim region. There are no shortage of accounts of horrendous atrocities suffered throughout the former domains of the Khwarezm-shahs. Though most of what is now modern Iran submitted peacefully to the Mongol commander Chormaqun over the 1230s, with the arrival of Hulegu in the 1250s a new wave of massacres were unleashed, culminating in the infamous sack of Baghdad in 1258 and death of the 'Abbasid Caliph, an immense blow the psyche of the ummah. At the end of the 1250s it seemed reasonable to anticipate that soon the whole of the remaining Muslim world would become the subject of the Grand Khan. The initial period after the Mongol conquest was, for many Muslims, not easier. Statements by modern writers of Mongol religious toleration have been greatly over-exaggerated. While it is true that the Mongols in the early years of the Empire generally did not persecute on the basis of religion, the Mongols did persecute on the basis on specific beliefs that they felt ran contrary to steppe custom or the laws of Chinggis Khan, the great yassa. For example, for slaughtering animals the Mongols forbid the spilling of blood. This differed greatly from Muslim and Jewish halal and kosher slaughter, that mandated the draining of it. This in particular became a frequent source of conflict over the thirteenth century, with the Mongols feeling the spilling of blood on the earth would bring misfortune. We are told from the Persian writer Juvaini, a member of Hulegu's entourage in the 1250s, that Chinggis Khan' second son Chagatai so thoroughly enforced this prohibition that "for a time no man slaughtered sheep openly in Khorasan, and Muslims were forced to eat carrion." Essentially, the Mongol viewpoint was that as long as a given religion adherents remained loyal and did not perform the tenets the Mongols forbid, then the worshippers could practice fr

After the death of the Ilkhan Arghun in 1291 at the end of our last episode, the Ilkhanid throne came to Arghun's brother, Geikhatu, the governor of Anatolia. Geikhatu's ascension set off one of the most unstable periods in the Ilkhanate's history so far, which would ultimately culminate in the rise of perhaps the most significant ruler of the Ilkhanate's later history, Ghazan, who would skillfully weld Chinggisid ideology with Islam. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. On the death of Arghun Ilkhan due to excessive consumption of mercury and sulphur in at the start of 1291, there were three candidates for the throne: Arghun's brother Geikhatu, the governor of Anatolia; Arghun's cousin Baidu, based in Baghdad, and Arghun's son, Ghazan, who was stationed in the east of the Khanate battling the rebelling general Nawruz. While some members of the military elite, particularly the noyans Taghachar and Qunchuqbal, wished for Baidu to take the throne, a number backed Geikhatu. Among those who flocked to Geikhatu were the noyans Qurumshi, son of Alinaq, and Choban, better known as the Emir Choban.This is the first mention of Choban in the sources, though for today's episode he will play on a minor role. On the 23rd of July, 1291 Geikhatu was elected as Khan of the Ilkhanate. Neither Baidu nor Ghazan challenged him, though in accounts such as Marco Polo's, Ghazan was rather quietly furious at the matter. In his early thirties when he took the throne, like his late brother Arghun, Geikhatu was a Buddhist. Arghun had placed Geikhatu as the viceroy of Anatolia, bringing a region considered a distant frontier into closer connection with the rest of the Ilkhanate. Perhaps the greatest distinction from his brother though was his clemency. In part, it seems to have been a mixture of a personally more peaceful nature, and a belief that Arghun's reign was cut short by the many executions he had ordered in his final years. One of Geikhatu's first actions upon taking the throne was personally overseeing an investigation and trials into events surrendering the deaths of Arghun, his vizier Sa'd al-Dawla and other misdeeds undertaken by the noyans in Arghun's final days. The blame for these murders and abuses were, rightfully, laid onto the noyans Taghachar and Qunchuqbal, who had led the efforts. While Arghun would have met their disloyalty with the removal of heads, Geikhatu showed himself of a different ilk. Almost all of the conspirators received simple pardons, while others were subject to a temporary prison sentence. Taghachar, who was making a habit of being a traitorous sot, was given a pardon as well. Once the trials were completed, and Geikhatu hoped everyone could now start off fresh, the new Il-Khan immediately returned to his preferred Anatolia. His Noyan Shiktur was left to oversee almost the entirety of the Ilkhanate east of Anatolia as a supreme deputy. The Ilkhan's sudden removal back to Anatolia left a sort of vacuum behind. It's not clear to us today exactly what Geikhatu was doing in Anatolia, and it certainly wasn't clear to contemporaries as rumours spread that the Ilkhan had been killed in an uprising by local Turkic tribes. In Geikhatu's absence, his clemency paid dividends as the noyans he forgave almost immediately conspired against him. Taghachar Noyan, aided by his deputy Sadr' al-Din Zanjani, started to organize a coup to topple Geikhatu and enthrone one of Geikhatu's cousins, Anbarchi. The plot was discovered and foiled, but again, Geikhatu pardoned most of the conspirators. Taghachar himself was given an army to relieve an Ilkhanid fortress besieged by the Mamluks late in 1292 (something which he was unsuccessful at) and Sadr' al-Din Zanjani, after a brief imprisonment, was even made Geikhatu's vizier before the end of the year. Suffice to say, these men did not learn their lessons. While these plotters continued to plot, most of Geikhatu's reign was spent apparently enjoying the… uh, benefits of being king, if we should say politely. Effectively every medieval source which comments on Geikhatu presents him as a man of utter vice, enjoying constant parties, revelry, and the sons and daughters of the nobility. To quote the continuator of the Syriac churchman Bar Hebraeus, writing not long after Geikhatu's death: Now [Geikhatu] being ruler, [...] occupied himself with nothing except riotous living, and amusement and debauchery. He had no thought for anything else except the things which were necessary for kings, and which they were bound to have, and how he could get possession of the sons and daughters of the nobles and have carnal intercourse with them. And he would wanton with them without shame and without modesty. And very many chaste women among the wives of the nobles fled from him, and others removed their sons and their daughters, and sent them away to remote districts. But they were unable to save themselves from his hands, or to escape from the shameful ac

After the long reign of Abaqa Il-Khan, as covered in our previous episode, the Ilkhanate entered it's somewhat messy "middle period." These are the years between the death of Abaqa, in 1282, and the ascension of Ghazan in 1295. In these 13 years, four men came to the Ilkhanid throne: Teguder Ahmad, Arghun, Geikhatu and Baidu. Their reigns, if we believe the historians writing under Ghazan and his successors, constituted a period of disorder and anarchy before the stabilizing and centralizing rule of Ghazan. Usually glossed over in favour of Abaqa or Ghazan, today we take you through one of the lesser known periods of the Ilkhanate, beginning with the ilkhans Teguder and Arghun. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Our last episode ended with the death of Abaqa, son of Hulegu and a great-grandson of Chinggis Khan. A capable enough monarch, Abaqa had ruled the Ilkhanate stably from the mid 1260s until his death in April 1282. His death left three primary candidates: two of his brothers, Mongke-Temur and Teguder, and Abaqa's eldest son Arghun. The death of Mongke-Temur only a few weeks after Abaqa's death removed him from the running, and the more senior, powerful and well connected Teguder was able to claim the throne over the young Arghun. Prince Arghun was very bitter of the loss, and nursed his resentment though accepted Teguder's election. In June 1282 Teguder was installed as the third Ilkhan. In many ways he sought continuity with late brother. The beleaguered vizier Shams al-Din Juvaini and his brother 'Ala al-Din 'Ata-Malik Juvaini, the historian and governor of Baghdad, were retained in their posts, as were many other officials in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy. The new Ilkhan's reign differed from his late brother's in one significant respect though: Teguder was a Muslim, who on his enthronement took the name of Ahmad and the title of Sultan. For this reason he is often known, somewhat interchangeably, as Teguder Ahmad or Ahmad Teguder in modern writing, and usually just as Sultan Ahmad in the 13th and 14th century sources. As with so many Mongol converts to Islam, it is unclear when he converted; according to the contemporary Armenian writer Het'um Patmich', known also as Het'um of Corycus, Teguder had been a Christian in his youth with the baptismal name of Nicholas, but had converted sometime before taking the throne in 1282. It seems he was converted by sufis, as a number of dervishes were attached to his court and inner circle. One sufi in particular, Shaykh Kemal al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman held such great influence over Teguder that he continually consulted with him and referred to him as father. Teguder's Islam has been a tricky thing to define, as his commitment to islam varies depending on the source. In a letter Teguder sent to the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun, Teguder spoke of how he has established sharia law in the Ilkhanate, protected pilgrimage routes and built new religious buildings. Indeed, Teguder argued, based on their shared religion it should have been now easier for the Mamluk Sultanate to submit to him. Armenian writers from Cilicia like Het'um of Corycus generally portray Teguder as a great prosecutor of Christians who also destroyed churches, while his countryman Step'annos Orbelian believed Teguder wanted to exterminate Christianity. Yet at the exact same time, the Syriac churchman Bar Hebraeus wote of Teguder as a friend to Christians, an upholder of religious toleration who exempted churches and Christians from taxation and allowed Hebraeus to build a new church. 14th century writers from both the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ilkhanate write of Teguder's Islam in doubting terms. The Mamluks seem to have been largely skeptical of his conversion, while the great Ilkhanid vizier and historian Rashid al-Din, writing at the start of the 1300s under the aegis of the mighty Muslim monarch Ghazan and his brother Oljeitu, remarked Teguder only "claimed to be a Muslim." Teguder's conversion to Islam was not the start of Islamization of the Mongols; it instead reflects the gradual trend for conversion among some of the younger generation, but at the same time it does not seem to have been an issue for the acceptance of the new Ilkhan, with the exception of the opinion of the his nephew Arghun. Arghun, as Abaqa's oldest son, felt the throne was his by right. Teguder Ahmad's extended generosity on his enthronement, including many gifts for Arghun, did not ease Arghun's hard feelings. The always suspicious Teguder must have taken note of it, but Teguder had an empire to run and wanted to avoid civil strife so showed Arghun his due respect. In our last episode, we left of with the Juvaini brothers, the vizier Shams al-Din and the historian 'Ala al-Din, placed in a bind due to the efforts of their enemy, Shams al-Din's former protege Majd al-Mulk. Majd al-Mulk had found a willing ear in Prince Arghun, who in Abaqa's final years managed to imprison, fine, and gen

Now that we have gone through the Yuan Dynasty, Ogedeid Khanate and Chagatai Khanate, our attention comes to the other Mongol Khanate ruled by the descendants of Tolui; the Ilkhanate. Ruling Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus and the Anatolian peninsula to the borders of the Byzantine Empire, the Ilkhanate was among the most powerful, and also perhaps the best understood of the Khanates, due to a wonderful surviving library of historical works, best exemplified by the mammoth universal history the Ilkhanate's vizier, Rashid al-Din. For our first episode on the Ilkhanate, we look at its establishment by Hulegu and his son Abaqa, the first twenty years of the Ilkhanate's history which did much to define the final fifty years. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. As a brief aside, you can revisit a two part discussion between our series historian, Jack Wilson, with professor Michael Hope, a specialist on the Ilkhanate, which we have uploaded on all sites that host our podcast. We last left off with the Ilkhanate in episode 33 of our main series, on the Berke-Hulegu war, where Hulegu fought with his cousin Berke of the Golden Horde over the Caucasus in the early 1260s. Hulegu was the younger brother of Great Khan Mongke and of Khubilai. The third son of Tolui, they were grandsons of Chinggis Khan and thus of prestigious lineage. As we saw in episodes 28 and 29, Hulegu had been ordered by his brother Mongke in the 1250s to complete the conquest of southwestern Asia. Despite the claims of some Ilkhanid writers, or of modern historians who write of Khubilai and Hulegu being made viceroys of China and western Asia, respectively, it is highly unlikely Mongke had commissioned Hulegu to found a new Khanate. Rather, his role was almost certainly just a limited military one, assigned by his brother to complete the conquest so that the Middle East could be properly incorporated into the Central Governmental structure, or even territory that belonged directly to the Khan. Given Mongke's crackdown on the independence of the Ogedeids, Chagatayids and to a lesser extent, the Jochids, it seems unlikely he was setting up a vast area to become personal fief to another member of the family, even if it was his younger brother. Certainly, we can also ignore statements that this was land Chinggis Khan had granted specifically to the Toluids, or that the Ilkhanate emerged from a division of the empire following Chinggis' death in 1227. The conquest of Iran proper did not begin until after Chinggis' death, and it took until Hulegu in the 1250s for the Middle East to become territory of the house of Tolui. Infact, it seems much of this territory was considered, up until 1260 or so, as belonging to the house of Jochi. At least, the Jochids considered this to be the case. Whatever Mongke's intentions, as with so much, his plans were upset by his death on campaign in 1259. Hulegu was an important commander during Mongke's lifetime, but not necessarily one about to be appointed a long term governor. Though he had greatly expanded the Mongol Empire westwards and taken Baghdad, the territory that later became the Ilkhanate was divided between Jochids in the north, especially in the Caucasus and northern Iran but also scattered throughout the region; some Chagatayid territory in the east, namely in parts of Khurasan; and territory that belonged directly to the Great Khan, for whom it seemed Hulegu's conquests would all go to. Following Mongke's death, Hulegu essentially seized all these lands. Whether Hulegu had done this in order to declare his independence, or to take advantage of a primary lapse in imperial authority and then force Mongke's successor to recognize his gains, over 1260 Hulegu seized control of territory claimed by the Jochids and other branches of the family. The Jochid Khan, Berke, was particularly angered at the loss of the pastures and trade cities of the Caucasus, which Mongke had only shortly before re-confirmed for him. Hulegu did not return east to take part in the election of Mongke's successor or observe matters there, but thought of himself first, using the lull to enrich himself. It was this which precipitated war between the Jochids under Berke in 1262 over the Caucasus. As we addressed briefly in episode 30, it seems that following the sack of Baghdad in 1258, Hulegu began using the title of il-khan. While popularly translated as viceroy or subject khan, more recent scholarship has demonstrated that the title bore no such connotations of submission or subservience. Rather, it simply designated a sovereign in his own right. Most of the uses of the term il-khan reflect this usage in the historical sources, with rulers from Chinggis Khan himself to the Khans of the Golden Horde referred to as il-khan. By the start of the 1260s we can speak in earnest of Hulegu and his successors as the Ilkhans. We should expect that to contemporaries, Hulegu was understood as his own monarch in truth, whate

Back in our 15th episode of this series, we looked at Khwarezmian prince Jalal al-Din Mingburnu's exploits in India in the early 1220s. Having fled there after Chinggis Khan's devastating invasion of the Khwarezmian Empire, Jalal al-Din's flight brought India to the attention of the Mongols. While Chinggis Khan did not invade the subcontinent, this was not the last that India would see of the Mongols. In today's episode, we return to northern India, dominated by the Sultanate of Delhi, and look at its interactions with the Mongols who repeatedly raided its borders. Why the Delhi Sultans, from Iltutmish, Balban to Alauddin Khalji were able to largely successfully resist the Mongols will be examined, over nearly the century of Mongol-Delhi interactions. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. The Delhi Sultanate arose from the ruins of the Ghurid Empire which had stretched from Afghanistan to Bengal. The Ghurids, or Shansabanids, had been a regional power in central Afghanistan emerging in the ninth century but were subdued by the Ghaznavids, also known as the Yamanids, a persianised Turkic dynasty which dominated much of the Iranian world up to the borders of India from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. The Ghaznavids under their great expander, the mighty Mahmud of Ghazna, reduced the Ghurids to a subject state early in the eleventh century, though in turn the Ghaznavids were pushed from Iran by the Seljuqs with the famous battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, and became tributary to the Seljuqs under their Sultan Sanjar at the start of the twelfth century. In this time, the Ghurid elite converted from Buddhism to Islam, and could be said to have bided their time. The Seljuqs weakened over the twelfth century with the arrival of the Qara-Khitai, the Ghuzz Turk invasions and independence of the Khwarezmian Empire in the north. In turn, the weakness of the Seljuqs advanced the weakness of the Ghaznavids, which provided an opportunity for the Ghurids to rise in the second half of the twelfth century. Under the brilliant leadership of Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad Ghuri, better known simply as Muhammad of Ghor, and his brother Ghiyath al-Din, the Ghurids conquered the remnants of the Ghaznavids. Repulsing invasions by the Ghuzz Turks and proving a staunch foe to the Qara-Khitai and Khwarezm-Shahs, Muhammad of Ghor received backing from the Caliph and expanded across the region. By the end of his life, he had forged an empire stretching from eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan across Northern India to Bengal. Muhammad of Ghor's military might rested in large part on his loyal ghulams, Turkic slave soldiers, though over the thirteenth century the term gave way to mamluk. A similar institution existed in the form of the Ottoman janissaries. While it was common for any good regional warlord to employ nomadic Turkic tribes due to their military prowess, they often proved unreliable and self-interested. For the conquest-minded Muhammad of Ghor, he could not put much stock on nomad chiefs who may value their own advancement over Muhammad's glory. Instead, Muhammad looked to the classic islamic institution of slave soldiers. Ghulams and Mamluks were young boys, generally sold by enemy Turkic tribes, that were brought into the Islamic world and raised from birth to be elite soldiers. Generally having already some horse and archery skills from their youth, these boys were converted to Islam and given the finest training in military matters, with top of the line equipment, weapons and horses, in addition to receiving education and even salaries. The result was a core of fierce warriors loyal not to any tribal or family ties, but to their fellow ghulams and their master, who sheltered and provided for them. No shortage of Islamic princes lamented on how their ghulams tended to be more loyal than their own sons; the sons awaited only the death of the father, while the ghulams wanted only his glory. Famously, the child-less Muhammad of Ghor is supposed to have remarked that, while other monarchs could have a few sons, he had thousands in the form of his ghulams. The source of many of Muhammad of Ghor's ghulams were various Qipchap Turkic tribes from the great steppe. As in late Ayyubid and early Mamluk Egypt, and indeed much of the islamic world, the Cuman-Qipchaqs were prized as warriors. His ghulams proved themselves in combat repeatedly. Though supported by local tribes, both Turkic and Pashtun, Muhammad of Ghor over his life increasingly relied on his ghulams, and in time they commanded his armies and acted as his governors. Attacking the Hindu kingdoms of northern India at the close of the twelfth century, Muhammad of Ghor had to return to Afghanistan to face the Khwarezm-Shah Tekish, and Tekish's son Muhammad. Muhammad bin Tekish, of course, we know best as the gentleman who antagonized Chinggis Khan some two decades later. In Muhammad of Ghor's absence fighting the Khwarezmians, his ghulams like Qutb

Our previous two episodes have taken you through an overview of the history of the Chagatai Khanate, the middle ulus of the Mongol Empire. From its establishment following Chinggis Khan's western campaign in the 1220s, through rebuilding efforts by Mahmud Yalavach and Mas'ud Beg, to the turmoil of the 1260s and 70s with the Mongol civil wars and then consoldiation under Qaidu and Du'a, then the many successions of Du'a's sons to the throne in the first three decades of the fourteenth century. At the end of the last episode, the sixth and last of Du'a's sons to rule the Chagatais, Tarmashirin Khan, was murdered in the early 1330s, killed in a rebellion led by his nephew Buzan, supported by emirs from the eastern half of the Chagatayids. Over the period we saw the slow spread of Islam among the Mongols and their khans, as well as a widening gap between the western half of the Khanate, in Transoxania, and the Eastern half, Moghulistan. Today, both of trends continue as the Chagatai Khanate descends into anarchy following Tarmashirin's murder, finally culminating in Emir Temur seizing control of the western half of the ulus Chagatay in 1370, and forever changing the face of western Asia. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Tarmashirin Khan's murder in 1334 had a significant impact on the Chagatai Khanate. The last in the long lateral succession of Du'a Khan's sons, his death essentially opened up the throne to any willing claimant. His antagonizing of the Mongols of the eastern half of the khanate, particularly through his Islamic policies, supposedly abandoning of the laws of Chinggis Khan and leaving them out of government, ensured his reign ended bloodily. The Mongol chiefs of the eastern half of the Khanate rose up behind Buzan, Tarmashirin's nephew, who had allied with other grandsons of Du'a. They invaded Transoxania hunting down and killing Tarmashirin and causing a flight of pro-Tarmshirin, Islamic Mongol chiefs to the Ilkhanate and Delhi Sultanate in India. Buzan, according to most sources, was not a Muslim, though ibn Battuta wrote of him as a 'tainted Muslim.' Most sources accuse him of being anti-Muslim and strongly pro-Christian, though it seems more likely he was just religiously tolerant, simply allowing Jews and Christians to rebuild their religious structures. It seems he wanted to rule in a more traditional, steppe based fashion, a strong counter reaction to Tarmashirin's rule.. At least he would have, if Buzan wasn't murdered only a few months into his reign by a cousin, Changshi, another grandson of Du'a. If we believe ibn Battuta, Buzan was strangled by a bowstring. The thing about violently overthrowing your predecessor, is that it does not leave a lot of the legitimacy that is needed to prevent you being overthrown in turn by the next power-hungry individual. What we start to see in this period is princes refusing to recognize the legitimacy of these new Khans, and deciding to remedy this by replacing these new Khans with themselves. So begins an exceptionally chaotic period in the Chagatai realm. The new Khan of the Chagatais, Changshi, did not take the throne because he was a supporter of Tarmashirin. Like Buzan, Changshi sought to bring the center of power back to the steppe and Almaliq, the traditional capital of the Chagatais, rather than having it based in the more sedentarized, Islamic Transoxania as Tarmashirin had sought to do. He was apparently a devout Buddhist, ordering the construction of many Buddhist and temples and supposedly, ordering sculptures of the Buddha painted in mosques throughout the Khanate. Yet he also showed great favour to Christians, especially Catholic Franciscans. He was apparently cured of a cancer through the prayers of one Franciscan, and in response heaped rewards on them. Changshi had at least one of his sons baptized, taking the name of Johannes, and placed the Franciscan in charge of their education. A bishopric was established at Almaliq in the 1320s and flourished under Changshi. At Almaliq, Changshi also met with Nicholas, the newly appointed Archbishop of Khanbaliq, who was on his way to China. Changshi gave Archbishop Nicholas authorization to preach freely throughout the Chagatai lands, to repair and build churches and provided him lands on which to build a friary. News of Changshi's friendship to the Christians reached Pope Benedict XII, who sent a letter to Changshi in 1338. This was not the first letter between the popes and the Khans of Central Asia. In 1289 Pope Nicholas IV sent letters to Qaidu Khan; in 1329 Pope John XXII sent a letter to Eljigidei Khan in response to a message of friendship Eiljigidei had sent prior; and Benedict XII's letter in 1338 urged Khan Changshi to build stronger relations with Christianity and sponser the growth of the faith in his kingdom. Changshi never received the letter, for in 1337 he and his four sons were killed by his brother, Yesun-Temur. Many islamic sources portra

While the Chagatai Khanate, the division of the Mongol Empire encompassing much of Central Asia and Northwestern China, has a reputation as the Mongol Khannate to fragment into infighting first, this would not have been the view for an observer on the ground in the early fourteenth century. Following the death of Qaidu, the Ogedeid master of Central Asia in the last decades of the thirteenth century, his former ally Du'a, Khan of the Chagatais, stood dominant, particularly with the Great Peace he achieved between the Khanates in 1304. Picking up from our previous episode, we take you through the history of the Chagatai Khanate in the early fourteenth century, from Du'a's singular rule in 1301 through the reigns of the six of his sons who became Khan, ending with Tarmashirin in 1334. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. At the close of the previous episode, Qaidu Khan was dead. Qaidu was a descendant of Great Khan Ogedai, and as we covered thoroughly in episode 41, had from 1271 until 1300 been the most influential figure in Central Asia. Over the 1270s he came to dominate the Chagatai Khanate, finally consolidating his hold over them in 1282 when he appointed Du'a, a grandson of Chagatai, as their Khan. Du'a and Qaidu worked well together, ushering in a period of rebuilding for the Chagatai Khanate after the tumultuous 1260s and 70s. Qaidu was definitely the senior partner in the relationship, and led their wars against Khan Khubilai in northwestern China and western Mongolia. But with Qaidu's death in 1301, Du'a had had enough of the fighting. Du'a had been injured and forced to retreat before the Yuan armies. Only the year before, his eldest son Qutlugh Khwaja was killed fighting in India, and the Khan of the Blue Horde, the eastern wing of the Golden Horde, was attempting to rally the other Khanates into making a joint attack on the Ogedeids and Chagatayids. For the Central Asian Khanates, such a coalition would be absolutely disastrous. A combined Golden Horde, Ilkhanate and Yuan assault from all directions would be unstoppable. Du'a wanted to rest, recoup his strength and throw Mongol energies away from each other, and against unconquered lands like India. Interfering with the Ogedeid succession after Qaidu's death, Du'a ensured Qaidu's less compentent son Chapar was on the throne, then sent an embassy to the Great Khan Temur Oljeitu offering to recognize his authority. Temur Oljeitu was delighted, immediately accepted and over 1304 and 1305 messengers were sent across the Mongol Empire, inviting the Golden Horde and Ilkhanate to once more recognize the Great Khan. The Great Rapproachment saw the resumption of tribute and revenues back and forth across the empire, reconstruction and expansion of postal stations, the travelling of envoys and merchants, and the true start of a pax Mongolica. Against the Delhi Sultanate of India Du'a sent more armies, though no joint-Mongol campaign against India ever materialized. Du'a made good use of the partnership with the Yuan, for he was soon skirmishing, and then at war with, the Ogedeids. Many of the Ogedeid princes had not taken kindly to Du'a efforts to divide them, and had begun to oppose him. In 1306 Du'a, in conjunction with a Yuan army under the future Khaghan Qaishan, defeated a Ogedeid army under Qaidu's sons Chapar and Orus. Chapar surrendered, and the Ogedeis were left splintered. Chagatai horsemen were unleashed to hunt down those princes who still resisted; it is in these raids that Qaidu's famous daughter Qutulun was likely killed. Du'a would have wiped out the last of the Ogedeids, had he not died the next year in 1307. So ended the life of the longest reigning Chagatai Khan, who had overseen a recovery of the weakened ulus. Realigning their diplomatic position with their Mongol kinsmen, the Chagatais seemed poised to enter a new period of strength. Du'a was succeeded by his son Konchek, who continued his father's policies until his sudden death in 1308. Power was then seized by a distant cousin, Naliqo'a. Naliqo'a was the brother of a man who had briefly been Khan in the 1270s before Du'a took the throne, and was a great-grandson of Chagatai via his son Buri. Naliqo'a's reign as Khan was a shock to the Khanate. Firstly was the fact that he was not of the line of Du'a Khan. Du'a had been Khan for many years, and had many sons desiring the throne. Many within the Chagatai Khanate, especially those same sons, felt the throne belonged to the line of Du'a, and that Naliqo'a was thus a usurper despite his Chagatai heritage. Additionally, he was a Muslim, and sought to impose islamisizing policies upon the Chagatais. While the Chagatai Khanate is often dismissed as one of the Khanates which immediately converted to Islam, the conversion of the Chagatai realm was a slower and more difficult process than in either the Golden Horde or Ilkhanate. Mubarak Shah, during the few months he had been Khan in the previous episode, ma

Having now taken you to the end of Mongol rule in China, we move westwards in our histories of the Mongol Khanates. Our next stop is the middle Khanate: the ulus of Chagatai. Encompassing much of Central Asia, the Khanate ruled by the descendants of Chinggis Khan's second son Chagatai is perhaps the most poorly known. In our first episode on the Chagatais, we'll take you through their history in the 13th century, touched on often in previous episodes but now recieving its own focus. From efforts at reconstruction by Mahmud Yalavach and his son Mas'ud Beg, to stability under the regeny of the widow Orghina Khatun, to disasters in battle at Herat to domination under Qaidu and the rise of Du'a Khan. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. The territory which became the Ulus of Chagatai was conquered by the Mongols in two stages. The eastern half of the ulus, in what is now southeastern Kazakhstan and northwest Xinjiang, was taken largely peacefully when Jebe Noyan overran the empire of Qara-Khitai in 1218-1219. As covered back in episode 8, the fleeing Naiman prince Kuchlug had fled to Qara-Khitai and usurped power there. When Jebe invaded, Kuchlug ran for his life, leaving the cities of his new empire defenseless. The lack of defense was ironically beneficial, as they largely submitted peacefully, and the former Qara-Khitai troops joined their new Mongol overlords. The more densely populated western half of the empire was not so lucky. This region, including Transoxania and the Ferghana valley in modern southern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan down to Turkmenistan, was controlled by the Khwarezmian Empire, and was violently crushed by Chinggis Khan in the first years of the 1220s, as we saw in episode 9. Each site that put up resistance fell victim to the Khan's wrath. The destruction not just of cities, but of agriculture and irrigation canals. The toll on the population was horrific. Perhaps millions were killed in the course of the conquest. Perhaps as many died from the ensuing starvation, spread of disease and banditry. Thousands upon thousands were displaced from their homes, or transported elsewhere on Mongol order. The initial governors set over the region and cities did little to help, simply bringing more taxation and material demands onto the population. Chinggis Khan's second son, Chagatai, stayed in the region after the conquest. Contrary to popular belief, Chinggis did not divide his empire among his sons in order for them to become distinct states. Rather, they were each allotted territory within the empire in order to support themselves. Chagatai was granted much of the former Khwarezmian and Qara-Khitai realms, becoming the basis of the ulus of Chagatai. Stern and demanding, Chagatai had little care for city life or the cultures of the people he ruled over. He was a man of the steppe, and his reign was spent in the steppe. Though he maintained a quasi-capital at Almaliq, near modern Kulja, northwestern Xinjiang on the Ili River, Chagatai resided in his summer and winter pastures. Almaliq served to collect tribute and house his treasures, his officials and received messengers from the court. Reconstruction of the conquered territories was not his concern. His engineers were used to build large pools for water fowl to flock to for Chagatai to hunt. This is not to say Chagatai had no interaction with his subjects. Chagatai was a strict upholder of the yassa and the yosun, the laws and customs of his father Chinggis Khan. We have mentioned in previous episodes that there was conflict on who these laws should apply to; that is, just nomads, or to the sedentarized populations of the empire as well. Well, Chagatai was of the opinion that everyone was subject to the laws, which were to be enforced as strictly as possible. Laws against theft were violently enforced. The Persian historian Juvaini, writing in the mid 1250s, who worked for the Mongols and spent quite some time in the Chagatai realm, wrote this famous passage you may have heard variations of: "For fear of his yasa and punishment his followers were so well disciplined that during his reign no traveller, so long as he was near his army, had need of guard or patrol on any stretch of road; and, as is said by way of hyperbole, a woman with a golden vessel on her head might walk alone without fear or dread." The presence of Chagatai was enough to discourage thievery, although the quote has often been taken out of context to suggest a woman could walk across all of Asia under Mongol rule and not face any danger. While a strict enforcer of the yassa's promulgations against theft, Chagatai was more infamous in the Muslim world for the anti-Islamic aspects of the yassa. Though the Mongols have a popular image as a beacon of religious liberty, this has been overstated. Though often tolerant in the most literal sense, as in they just tolerated certain religions seen as useful, the Mongols were less accommodating when

The rapid expansion of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century cannot be attributed to a single new military invention providing technological supremacy over their enemies. The weaponry and equipment of the Mongols differed little from those of their enemies or from previous nomadic empires. Still, the Mongols were adept in employing the tools of their foes. As historian Timothy May wrote, "the Mongols rarely met a weapon they did not like." Therefore, many questions have been raised regarding the usage, or lack thereof, of gunpowder weapons in Mongolian expansion, particularly outside of China. Today, we give a brief introduction to gunpowder weapons, both their history of use, their use by the Mongols, and the possible role of the Mongol Empire in the dissemination of these weapons. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. For some historians, like J.J. Saunders or Kate Raphael, the Mongols as both users of gunpowder and transmitters of its knowledge to the west is a total negative or extremely unlikely. They see no clear indication of it's usage in the western historical sources, seeing possible mentions as too equivocal to be relied upon. But the great British sinologist Joseph Needham and his associates, after a thorough study of well over a millennium of Chinese written sources and archaeology, has demonstrated thoroughly that not only were a number of a gunpowder weapons a common feature of Chinese warfare by the thirteenth century, but that the Mongols also used these during their wars in China. More recent historians such as Iqtidar Alam Khan, Thomas T. Allsen and Stephen G. Haw, have advanced Needham's arguments, arguing that the Mongols carried gunpowder weapons, such as bombs, fire-lances and rockets, west in their conquests over the rest of Eurasia. Stephen Haw in particular has suggested that the infamous smoke-screen employed by the Mongols in Poland at the battle of Liegnitz in 1241 was a gunpowder-based weapon. To demonstrate this, we must very briefly give an introduction to Chinese usage of gunpowder. Chinese alchemists and engineers had been mixing various chemicals for medicinal and experimental purposes for centuries, including some of those which constitute gunpowder. Gunpowder itself was not the result of any single individual's experiments, in the style of the old European fable of Berthold Schwarz, but rather a long series of trials combining materials -often, rather ironically, in search of elixirs to eternal life- which ultimately resulted in discovering a rather flammable substance. The first recipe for gunpowder finally appears during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century CE, in a Taoist work urging alchemists not to mix saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulphur and carbon-rich materials like coal, and to especially not add arsenic to the mixture, as the result would light aflame. The Chinese quickly found the energy produced by these materials quite mesmerizing when used in fireworks display, and found use for it in civil engineering and mining, but contrary to some popular sentiments that the Chinese only used it for peaceful purposes, it appears they rather quickly applied this new material for warfare. From the 10th century to the 13th, the Chinese created a great number of weapons to violently disseminate knowledge of gunpowder. By 1044, possibly in reaction to military defeats against the newly established Tangut ruled Xi Xia Dynasty, the Song Dynasty was presented a collection of nine kinds of gunpowder weapons and three distinct gunpowder recipes in the Wujing Zongyao. This technology advanced under the Song Dynasty, which faced a collection of ever-more fearsome foes on its northern borders. From the 10th century onwards, these weapons took a number of forms. Bombs thrown from catapults (huopao), enclosed in pottery or fragmenting metal shells. Arrows (huojian) with incendiary packages strapped to them, launched from bows or massive mounted crossbows, developing into early rockets over the twelfth century. Most infamous was the fire-lance (huojiang): a bamboo or metal tube capable of shooting a jet of flame three metres in length, sometimes with shrapnel and toxic materials packed into the tube to form a terrifying, flame-spouting shotgun. The proportions of consitutent chemicals were refined to increase power, with other additives such as lime to even human faeces to produce a number of horrific bombs; some to explode and throw armour piercing shrapnel, some to spread flame and destroy buildings, with others to have a choking, blinding gas dispersed by the explosion to envelop and confuse the enemy. The Song Dynasty government was so reliant on these weapons -and so terrified of their foes acquiring them- that it prohibited the sale of any of the materials composing gunpowder to the Khitan Liao Dynasty or Tangut Xi Xia in the 11th century. Both lacked access to natural reserves of saltpetre producing lands. But with the Jurchen conquest of

With the Yuan Dynasty reduced to an ever shrinking area of land around Dadu in north China, to tell the story of the expulsion of the Mongol rulers in 1368 is to tell the story of Zhu Yuanzhang, a peasant turned monk turned warlord turned emperor. Today, we give you the rise to power of Ming Taizu, the Hongwu Emperor, his great victory at Lake Poyang and the Rise of the Ming Dynasty, and the final Yuan efforts to hold onto their dynasty. I'm you host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Our last two episodes took us through the period of Mongol rule in China from Khubilai Khan's death in 1294, through his many successors until the reign of Toghon Temur Khan, who took the throne in 1333. Toghon Temur was largely a puppet to his chancellors; first Bayan of the Merkit, and most notably Bayan's nephew, Toghto. Though faced with a colossal economic and environmental crisis which spawned a series of uprisings in 1351, the Red Turbans, by the end of 1354 Toghto had nearly crushed the movement and restored order. But Toghon Temur Khan made the foolish decision to banish Toghto in January 1355, a decision which signalled the death blow to the Yuan Dynasty. Toghto was the last actor who could have arrested the fate of the Yuan or controled the dynasty's resources. Within months of Toghto's dismissal, the rebellion picked up with new energy, and the power of the Yuan court became restricted to the very north. The rest of the empire became subject to various warlords, some with nominal allegiance to the Yuan, and some seeking nothing but its utter destruction. A few points should be emphasized. The lack of interest Toghon Temur had in governing ensured that there was no individual in the Yuan court who could step into the role of Toghto. The strengthening of the regional rulers during the chancellorship of Berke Bukha, followed by mass mobilization in Toghto's last years left provincial, regional and local rulers newly empowered and at the heads of much stronger military forces. The famed Mongol army was one of conquest, not garrison duty: there were simply not enough Mongols to garrison all of China, leaving a light Mongol presence past even the Yellow River. Most actual Mongolian and Turkic cavalry were kept in a few strategic areas, largely centrered around the capital and the steppes. Southern China had been poorly integrated into the Yuan, where Song dynasty structures had often been hastily co-opted. With most of the Yuan government and armed forces in the north, in the south's countryside banditry became a real problem, as years of flood, famine, locust plagues and other environmental catastrophy annihilated farmland, the local economies and regular support networks. Unable to rely on the Yuan army for protection, regional and local leaders organized local defense forces for protection against bandits, the Red Turbans or even the undisciplined newly mobilized Yuan troops, which militarized and armed the population. It must have seemed apparent that the Yuan had lost the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule China. In the years immediately after Toghto's dismissal, three warlords emerged within the Red Turban movement as the most powerful, all along the Yangzi River: Zhang Shicheng, the former salt-worker who became a warlord, declared himself emperor and was nearly crushed by Toghto during the chancellor's final campaign; Chen Youliang a former fisherman, then office clerk who became leader of the southern Red Turbans and declared his own Han Dynasty with himself as emperor; and a peasant, turned monk, turned warlord, Zhu Yuanzhang. Born into a destitute family of tenant-farmers in 1328, Zhu Yuanzhang grew up surrounded by famine and uncertainty in central Anhwei. His grandfather had fought against the Mongols for the Song Dynasty in its final years, and Zhu grew up listening to his exploits. In summer 1344, he lost most of his family to famine within three weeks. Unable to feed him, his surviving family gave him away to a Buddhist monastery for labour. With the monastery also unable to feed him, he spent a few years wandering before the twenty year old Zhu returned to the monastery, where he learned to read and write. There he may have happily stayed, until a local battle between Yuan forces and Red Turbans in 1352 resulted in some of the Chinese troops in the Yuan army sacking and looting Zhu's temple. Once again having lost everything, Zhu went to the only place he could: he joined a nearby Red Turban group. For a starving peasant turned monk, Zhu showed a surprising aptitude for war and gained the attention of the local Red Turban leader, Kuo Tzu-Hsing. Under Kuo's tutelage, Zhu rose in the ranks, and within a year was given his own command and married Kuo's adopted daughter, the future Empress Ma. By the start of 1355 Zhu was leading an army of about 30,000 men and building his own staff of educated men around him, most notably the scholar Li Shanchang, who encouraged Zhu's ambitions, urg

In the almost 40 years from the death of Khubilai Khan in February 1294, to the ascension of Toghon Temur Khan in July 1333, nine Khans of the Yuan Dynasty had been enthroned, with only Temur Oljeitu Khan reigning over a decade. It was a period of treachery, political infighting, civil wars, fraticide, economic mismanagement and inflation and environmental crises upon environmental crises. It was for Toghon Temur, the final Yuan ruler in China, to have the longest reign, sitting for 35 years in the two capitals of Dadu and Shangdu. His long, passive reign saw the disintegration of Mongol rule in China and the expulsion of the Yuan court in 1368- despite some energetic efforts to save the dynasty. Today, we present to you the final years of the Yuan Dynasty, and the last, but doomed, efforts to save it from total ruin by a series of energetic chancellors, none more famous than Toghto of the Merkit. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Toghon Temur was only 13 years old when he became Khan of Khans in July of 1333. A great-great-grandson of Khubilai Khan, Toghon Temur was a son of Qoshila, who had briefly reigned as Khan in 1329 before being murdered by his brother, Tuq Temur. The young Toghon Temur had been exiled from the Yuan court by Tuq Temur Khan and his chancellor, El-Temur, first to Korea, then to Guangxi province in China's far south. It was unlikely he'd ever see the throne, and aside from some time with a Buddhist teacher in his exile, he received no training for governance. But when Tuq Temur Khan's designated heir died in 1331, the reigning Khan had a crisis of conscience, evidently from his guilt in the murder of his brother Qoshila. On his deathbed, Tuq Temur indicated he wanted the throne to go to the line of Qoshila; not to Toghon Temur, but his younger half brother, the six year old Irinjibal. There was a major obstacle to this, in the form of El-Temur, the real power in the Yuan Dynasty. It was El-Temur who had engineered the coup which placed Tuq Temur on the throne in 1328, and Tuq Temur Khan had been a puppet for El-Temur throughout his reign. Of Qipchaq descent, El-Temur was from the fourth generation of a celebrated family of Qipchap servants to the Khans. His great-grandfather and grandfather had both served Khubilai Khan in his campaign against the Dali Kingdom in the early 1250s, and since then the family had been among the most prominent in the Yuan realm, controlling one of the empire's key military units, the Qipchaq Guard. El-Temur and his father had loyally served Qaishan Khan, but after his death in 1311 had lost wealth and prestige. The coup El-Temur orchestrated in 1328 was not just to restore the line of Qaishan and place Tuq Temur on the throne, but restore his family's power. Alongside another non-Chinggisid powerbroker named Bayan of the Merkit, El-Temur controlled the Yuan court and married into the imperial family. Before his death, Tuq Temur Khan had entrusted his youngest son El-Tegus into Chancellor El-Temur's care, and El-Temur wanted the young boy to succeed his father. But Tuq Temur's widow Budashiri rallied the court into supporting her husband's final wish, and the aging and ill El-Temur reluctantly agreed to make Qoshila's six year old son Irinjibal Khan… until Irinjibal died of illness not even two months later. Once again El-Temur wanted El-Tegus to become Khan of Khans, but resistance from the court was too great; they wanted the throne to go to Qoshila's 13 year old son Toghon Temur. Even El-Temur's number 2, Bayan, was convinced of it by Empress Budashiri, and after several months of argument over early 1333, a declining El-Temur acquiesced, in part due to agreement to marry his daughter Danashirin, to Toghon Temur. With that, El-Temur died soon after. In July 1333, a little over a century since the death of Chinggis Khan, Toghon Temur was enthroned as the Khan of Khans. The boy was, as to be expected, a puppet. This time, for Bayan of the Merkit, who after serving as second fiddle to El-Temur, wanted to implement his own designs. Part of this was by securing power. In 1335 he unleashed a bloody coup which killed the members of El-Temur's family and loyalists still in government. Even the daughter married to Khan Toghon Temur was killed. That year, Bayan made himself the sole chancellor of the Yuan Dynasty, the maximum power and authority he could ever hope to attain. Bayan was not in the office simply for the sake of authority and killing his former coworkers. He actually had a dream. A rejuvenation of the Yuan Dynasty, desiring a restoration to the way things had been in Khubilai's time; the good old days, when Mongols and Chinese were separated, the racial hierarchy and ensuing privileges clearly enforced. Bayan changed Toghon Temur's reign title to Chih-yuan, which Khubilai had used from 1264 until his death, a clear symbolism, but there were much more overt and practical methods to Bayan's plan. Chinese were banned f

After Khuiblai Khan's death in 1294, his successors ruled over the most powerful kingdom on earth, the Yuan Dynasty, controlling all of China and Mongolia. Yet not even one hundred years after the declaration of the Yuan in 1271, the Dynasty was pushed from China, their rulers a shadow of the men Chinggis Khan and Khubilai had been. In our first episode on the Yuan Dynasty, we take you through the first 40 years of their rule after Khubilai, and introduce you to ten Khans, from Temur Oljeitu to Toghon Temur, and the manner in which they lurched from crisis to crisis in the fourteenth century. It was an age of political chaos and bloodthirsty brothers, scheming bureacrats, overbearing mothers and misplaced Khans, and a century where every other person was seemingly named a variation of Temur. It was a period to have strangled even the greatest of rulers and most robust of dynasties; and these were not the greatest of rulers. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Our first of ten Khans for today is Temur Oljeitu, Khubilai's grandson and first successor. Khubilai, as we demonstrated rather thoroughly, had outlived his chosen heir, Jinggim, as well as a plethora of other sons and grandsons. After Jinggim's death, Khubilai had vacillated on who should succeed him. It was much more traditional Chinese custom for chosen heirs and the like, as opposed to the Mongolian method of 'to the strongest,' and declarations of quriltais. Seemingly reluctantly, only in the very twilight years of his life almost a decade after Jinggim's death, did Khubilai move to make Temur Oljeitu, one of the late Jinggim's younger sons, his heir. In 1293 Khubilai gave Temur Oljeitu the jade seal of the heir apparent, but had not provided him the full titles and honorifics that Jinggim had held. Thus, when the old Khubilai finally did die in February 1294, Temur Oljeitu was the favourite candidate, but not the only one. He was challenged by his older brother, another son of Jinggim named Kammala. It came to the quriltai in April 1294, where both made their speeches, each demonstrating their knowledge of the maxims of Chinggis Khan, aiming to convince the elite and each other of their fitness for the Grand Khanate. Of course, it wasn't really just a matter of speeches which determined the outcome. Being the selected heir of Great Khan Khubilai was obviously a powerful boost, but Temur Oljeitu had a number of powerful allies backing him. His mother, Kokejin, was well respected and beloved by Khubilai; military leaders, especially Bayan of the Baarin, the great conqueror of the Song Dynasty, backed Temur Oljeitu; and prominent members of the bureaucracy, such as the Chancellor of the Right, Oljei. This was to be a heralding of the future of the succession Yuan Khans, where the bureaucracy and military elite became the decision makers. Kammala was convinced to accept Temur Oljeitu, who on April 15th, 1295, was duly enthroned as Khan of Khans and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. Temur Oljeitu was a respectable choice. Conservative minded, both he and Chancellor Oljei, as well as Oljei's successor Harghasun, aimed to consoldiate and stabilize the Yuan Dynasty after the struggles of Khubilai's final years. Open minded regarding Chinese culture, respecting Confucianism but not enmeshed in it, while also having connections to the military elite in the Mongolian steppe, Temur Oljeitu was very much a Khan in the mold of his grandfather Khubilai, though lacking his physical and intellectual vigour, while also keeping one of Khubilai's worst vices, a penchant for alcoholism. In order to stabilize the government and economy, reconciliation of various branches of the family was favoured and great invasions abandoned. Lavish gifts to princes on his accession helped affirm their loyalty and quiet some of the Mongols in Manchuria who had been so problematic in Khubilai's last years. Plans to invade Annam and Japan were cancelled; the only foreign ventures were to be brief excursions into Burma and northern Thailand which, though largely failures, were not on the scales of any of Khubilai's efforts. Tax debts from Khubilai's reign were cancelled, and Temur Oljeitu sought to reduce the tax burden on the people, forbidding the collection of anything beyond established quotas. Diplomatically, Temur enjoyed a significant triumph over his father. In 1301 his armies under his nephew Qaishan finally defeated Qaidu Khan, the master of central Asia. When Qaidu died of his wounds in September 1301, Qaidu's puppet Chagatai Khan Du'a decided he had enough of fighting the Yuan. With Qaidu's son Chapar, Du'a contacted Temur Oljeitu indicating his willingness to recognize Temur Oljeitu's overlordship. Temur Oljeitu was delighted and immediately accepted. Their representatives were sent to the Khan of the Ilkhanate, also called Oljeitu, and the Khan of the Golden Horde, Toqta. By 1304, peace had reached between the Khanates. For the first time sin

The history of the Mongol Empire is not just a history of the Mongols, but the people they interacted with. In today's interview, our series historian, Jack Wilson, talks with Dr. John Latham-Sprinkle on one of those peoples affected by the Mongol Conquests, the Alans of the North Caucasus. Dr. John Latham-Sprinkle is a historian based at Ghent University in Belgium, whose work focuses on the history of the North Caucasus region, which today is part of the Russian Federation. He researches the Medieval kingdom of Alania, the formation of political power in imperial borderlands, and the history of slavery

"There was a certain man who was a believer, and he was a nobleman and a fearer of God. He was rich in the things of this world, and he was well endowed with the qualities of nature; he belonged to a famous family and a well-known tribe. His name was SHIBAN the Sa'ora. He dwelt in the city which is called [...] KHAN BALIK , [...] the royal city in the country of the East. He married according to the law a woman whose name was KEYAMTA. And when they had lived together for a long time, and they had no heir, they prayed to God continually and besought Him with frequent supplications not to deprive them of a son who would continue [their] race. And He who giveth comfort in His gracious mercy received their petition, and He showed them compassion. For it is His wont to receive the entreaty of those who are broken of heart, and-to hearken unto the groaning of those who make supplications and petitions [to Him]. [....] Now God made the spirit of conception to breathe upon the woman Keyamta, and she brought forth a son, and they called his name " SAWMA." And they rejoiced [with] a great joy, neighbours of his family and his relations rejoiced at his birth.' So begins the history of Rabban bar Sauma, as translated by E. Wallis Budge. There were a number of travellers, missionaries, diplomats and merchants who made journey from Europe to China during the height of the Mongol Empire. While Marco Polo is the most famous of these, we have also covered a few other travellers in previous episodes. Yet, there were also those who made the harrowing journey from China to the west. Of these, none are more famous than Rabban bar Sauma, the first known individual born in China who made the journey to Europe. Rabban bar Sauma was a Turkic Christian monk who travelled from Khanbaliq, modern-day Beijing, across Central Asia, the Ilkhanate, the Byzantine Empire, Italy, all the way to the western edge of France, visiting Khans, Emperors, Kings and Popes. Our episode today will introduce you to Rabban Sauma and his incredible journey across late 13th century Mongol Eurasia. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Sauma was born around 1225 in the city of Yenching, on which Beijing now sits. Yenching of course, we have visited before, when it was known as Zhongdu, the capital of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty. The Mongols took the city after a bloody siege in 1215, which we covered back in episode 7 of this season. Sauma was born to Turkic parents, either Onggud or Uighur, two groups which had long since recognized the supremacy of Chinggis Khan. Sauma's parents were Christians of the Church of the East, often called, rather disparagingly, Nestorians. Nestorius was a 5th century archbishop of Constantinople who had argued, among other things, the distinction between Christ's humanity and his divinity, and that Mary was mother of Jesus the man, but not of Jesus the God. For if God had always existed, then he could not have had a mother. For this Nestorius was excommunicated at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and his followers scattered across the east. From the Sassanid Empire they spread across Central Asia, reaching China during the Tang Dynasty. By the 12th century, the adaptable Nestorian priests converted several of the tribes of Mongolia, from the Naiman, the Kereyit to the Onggud, to which Sauma likely belonged. These Eastern Christian priests stayed influential among the Mongols for the remainder of the 13th century, with a number of prominent Mongols adhering to their faith. Sorqaqtani Beki, the mother of Great Khans Mongke and Khubilai, was perhaps the best known of these. The young Sauma took his Christian faith seriously; so seriously, his parents sought to dissuade him, fretting the end of their family line if their son became a monk. Refusing fine meats and alcohol, Sauma instead hungered for ecclestical knowledge and purity. Accepted into the Nestorian clergy of Yenching in 1248, at age 25 he donned the tonsure and garb of the monk. Developing a reputation for asceticism beyond even his fellow monks, he largely secluded himself in his own cell for 7 years before leaving the monastery for the mountains. His devotion to Christ made him famous among the Nestorians of North China and Mongolia, attracting the attention of a young Onggud Turk named Markos. From the Onggud capital of Koshang in modern Inner Mongolia, Markos was mesmerized by the stories of the holiness of Sauma. The 15 year old Markos marched by himself to Sauma in 1260. Impressed by the youth's tenacity even as he attempted to dissuade him from joining the monastery, Sauma eventually took Markos under his wing. Markos proved himself an excellent student, and within three years was accepted into the Nestorian monastic life. Sauma and Markos became fast friends and pillars of the Nestorian community around Yenching, which by then was the capital of the new Great Khan, Khubilai, and renamed to Dadu, "Great City," or Khanbaliq, "The Khan's Ci

The weight of years will bear down on each of us heavily, from the humblest farmer to the most august monarch. And Khubilai Khan, mighty even among the mighty, over his nearly forty year reign found even his immense energies sapped by this burden. Age, grief, the rigours of government, and military defeats ground down the vision of Khubilai, and in reaction he directed his energies to drink and food. In the vacuum left behind, corruption grew like mold on the young Yuan Dynasty, sowing problems neither Khubilai nor his successors would be able to solve. Today, we look at the last years of Khubilai Khan, the end of an era in the Mongol Empire: I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals, Ages of Conquest. For the past few episodes, we have dealt with Khubilai's long reign. First, we dealt with his conflict with his brother Ariq-Boke for the Mongol imperial throne. Khubilai was victorious by 1264, but in his victory was left with hardly even a nominal mastery over the western Khanates of the empire: the Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate, Ilkhanate and Ogedeid Khanate under Qaidu were all effectively independent powers by the time of Khubilai's victory. As a result, Khubilai focused his attention on China. Over three episodes we detailed Khubilai's renewed effort to end the long war with the Song Dynasty, a victory finalized by 1279 which marked the conquest of China, almost 60 years since Chinggis Khan had first attacked the Jin Dynasty. Then, we looked at Khubilai's efforts to build his administration from 1264-1279, the period of his greatest energy and vision. By all standards, Khubilai was an impressive monarch, merging Mongolian and Chinese imperial traditions into a carefully balanced new system which, in many areas, seems to have genuinely sought to reduce the burdens upon Khubilai's subject population. Our following episodes dealt with the beginning of the end of Khubilai's good fortune. In Japan, Vietnam, Myanmar and Java, Khubilai's military forces met with either inconclusive, or outright diastrous results. A stunning expenditure of resources and lives for little in the way of strategic gains, the efforts to meet these costs required imaginative efforts on the part of Khubilai's finance ministers- the topic of our previous episode, looking at the so-called Three Villianous ministers, Ahmad, Lu Shih-jung and Sangha, and the animosity they inspired from the top levels of Khubilai's government to the subject population. For Khubilai, the successive defeats were not just a shock in comparison to the overwhelming victories over the previous decades, but were more alarming in a personal manner. In both the Mongolian and Chinese imperial traditions, the right to rule rested on the support of Heaven. Heaven's support always manifested itself in bountiful harvests, good climates, good governance and military victories. For the Mongols, the many amazing conquests of the thirteenth century had demonstrated Eternal Blue Heaven's desire for the Mongols to rule the whole of the world. Khubilai had firmly believed that the ultimate destiny of the Mongols, and his destiny, was that his rule would include everything beneath the blue sky. There simply could not have been an alternative to this. So to be met with the alternative; that is, successive rounds of wasteful defeats in foreign countries from the late 1270s through the 1290s, must have come not just as an immense shock, but a blow to Khubilai's own psyche. Coupled with the knowledge of his loss of control over the Khanates in the west of the empire, and the rebellion he faced within and along his borders, Khubilai would have struggled with a sense of failure; his failure to complete the mission begun by his grandfather, great Chinggis Khan. Aside from defeats and failure in his foreign policy, the internal matters of Khubilai's realm also saw the failure of many of his efforts to actually run his empire, and failures in his personal life. After 1276, the seizure of the Song Dynasty's capital at Hangzhou, and especially after 1279, with the final defeat of the Song holdouts on the island of Yaishan, Khubilai Khan began to steadily reduce his role in the governance of his empire. By the end of the 1270s, Khubilai was already in his sixties. His efforts over the 1260s and 70s had been physically draining on him, having thrown himself in military campaigns, restructuring government and administration. By the end of the 1270s, a largely successful decade marred only by the failure of the first invasion of Japan, Khubilai was in essence high on his accomplishments, but burned out from the pressures of ruling. From the turn of 1280 onwards marked a significant change in Khubilai's method of rulership. The hands-on monarch in weekly and daily discussions with his advisers on the running of the empire making sweeping plans turned into a man steadily withdrawing and becoming disinterested with the actual running of the government. The causes of this were multi-fa

"You must know that, as we shall tell you later on, the Great Kaan has entrusted to twelve men the task of attending, as seems best to them, to all territories, governments, and everything else. Among these twelve men, there was a Saracen, [Ahmad] by name, a shrewd and capable man, who above all others enjoyed great power and influence with the Great [Khan], who loved him so much that he gave him every liberty, for, as was found after his death, this [Ahmad] laid such a spell over the Kaan with his sorceries that the latter placed absolute faith in his words, paying them the closest attention. Thus he was able to do all that he wished. He it was who distributed all governments and offices, and punished all offenders. And every time he wished to encompass the death of someone he hated, whether justly or unjustly, he would go to the [Khan], and say, "Sire, such a man is worthy of death, for he has offended your Majesty in such a way." Then the [Khan] would say, "Do what thou thinkest most fitting." And straightway he would have the man put to death. Hence, seeing the complete liberty he enjoyed, and that the Lord placed absolute trust in his words, no one dared cross [Ahmad] in anything whatsoever." So the Venetian traveller Marco Polo, in the Benedetto translation, introduces Ahmad Fanakati, the famous "evil finance minister" of Khubilai Khan. Ahmad, the first of Khubilai's "Three Villianous Ministers," as they're termed in the Chinese sources, is often used to symbolize the decay and corruption of Khubilai Khan's final years. Where Khubilai had once been a vigourous monarch attending to every detail of state, by the 1280s his interest and energy for governing declined with every year. Having taken you through the inconclusive, expensive and disastrous foreign miltiary expeditions of Khubilai's last years, we shall now take you to the political and personal failings of Khubilai's twilight, beginning with the Three Villianous ministers- Ahmad Fanakati, Lu Shih-Jing and Sangha. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals, Ages of Conquest. Ahmad, the first of the "Three Villianous Ministers," was a Muslim from Central Asia who had been a favourite of Khubilai's wife Chabi. Appointed to Khubilai's Central Secretariat in 1262, Ahmad's power and influence rapidly rose through his canny ability. For a refresher on the secretariats and government structure of Khubilai, you can check back to episode 37, "Kublai Khan's Reign." By 1264, Ahmad was Vice-Chancellor of the Central Secretariat, and in 1271 was even briefly appointed as head of the newly made Supreme Secretariat. His primary responsibility in Khubilai's service was as a finance minister, tasked with providing the Great Khan more and more revenues. In this position he promoted trade, particularly with Central Asia and sought to increase the number of taxable households in the empire- usually by tracking down those who had escaped prior registration. Ahmad also oversaw further progress on implemention of regular land taxation, one of those ever-present problems of the Mongol administration in China, as well as new taxes on merchants. One of his most noteworthy efforts was the expansion of government monopolies; iron producing regions would have to provide yearly quotas of iron to the government, which would be turned into tools and farm implements to be sold back to farmers. After 1276 Ahmad forbade the private production of copper tools, making it a privilege of the government to produce and sell these, usually in exchange for grain. The yearly revenue from the strictly enforced salt monopoly increased dramatically over the 1270s and early 1280s, and monopolies on tea, liquor, vinegar, gold, silver - all traditional monopolies of the Chinese state- were enforced under Ahmad's supervision. None of Ahmad's financial policies in and of themselves indicated an expectional cruelty on his part or hatred towards the Chinese. Rather, he was enacting the will of Khubilai, who was making ever increasing demands for income. Ahmad had to choose between more state revenues or looking to fail the Great Khan, and judged, rather wisely, it was better to come up with more revenue. Ahmad carried out his mandate thoroughly, and for this earned as much love as any thorough tax collector will- i.e, not very much. If we are to believe the sources, the Chinese at large hated and cursed him for his policies, and the fact that he was a foreignor. Khubilai, as Ahmad's backer, thus found his own standing harmed in their eyes. However, whatever "public opinion" was regarding Ahmad does not particularly matter: the Mongols never showed themselves really concerned with how the masses viewed their ministers. The fact that Ahmad was bringing in the revenue streams and trying to handle the tricky task of incorporating the former Song territories into the Yuan Empire mattered more to Khubilai than the cursings of merchants. The reason that Ahmad has become so infamous comes not from

Qaidu was raised in Chinggis Khan's camp, and after Ogedai Khaan he served in Mongke Khaan's retinue. After him, he was with Ariq Boke, conspiring and amking efforts to elevate him to the khanate. When Ariq Boke went before Kublai Khaan and submitted to him, Qaidu was wary of Kublai Khaan because it was the law that no creature should change the Khaan's command or decree, and any who did would be branded as criminals. He had transgressed the law and rebelled, and from that time until present, ona account of his rebellion, many Mongols and Tajiks have been annhilated, and flourishing land has been devastated." So our oft-cited friend Rashid al-Din describes, rather negatively, his contemporary Qaidu, Khan of the house of Ogedai and master of Central Asia in the late thirteenth century. Qaidu is best known for his daughter Qutulun, the wrestler-princess, his long resistance against his cousin Kublai, Great Khan of the Yuan Dynasty, and enjoys a popular image as a spirited defender of traditional Mongolian culture- or, for writers like Rashid al-Din, an image of little more than a brigand harassing settled regions. To explore Kublai's failed attempts to exert power over the western half of the Mongol Empire, we will look at the long life of Qaidu, master of the uluses of Ogedai and Chagatai. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. While Kublai Khan overcame his brother Ariq Boke to become Khan of Khans in 1264, that was not the end of his troubles from his Mongolian kinsmen. Many refused to recognize Kublai's authority, or actively took up arms against him, most famously Qaidu, a grandson of Ogedai Khan who led a 40 year campaign of resistance against Kublai Khan. While most famous for stories of his warrior daughter Qutulun and for his own personal sternness and military ability, Qaidu's reign has often been misportrayed as an effort to seize the title of the Great Khan. His main focus however, was securing the position of the descendants of Ogedai within a fragmenting Mongol Empire. Chinggis Khan had granted parts of eastern Kazakhstan, Xinjiang and western Mongolia as personal ulus, or territory, to his son Ogedai, serving as a base for Ogedai's family until the 1250s. The Toluid Revolution, which by now you should know very well, saw the seizure of the throne by the sons of Tolui, away from the line of Ogedai following the death of the final Ogedeid Great Khan, Guyuk, in 1248. After Tolui's eldest son Mongke became Khan in 1251, he discovered an alleged conspiracy against him by Ogedai's family. This served as pretext for a purge of the Ogedaids, killing many and confiscating their lands and armies, effectively dissolving the Ogedaid ulus, as explained back in episode 21 of this series. Those few who survived, such as the young Qaidu, were granted distant lands to appease them but which were too poor to serve as a base for resistance. Born only around 1235 or 6, Qaidu was only just entering manhood when Mongke carried out his purges, deemed too young to be a threat. In proper Ogedeid fashion Qaidu's father, Ogedai's fifth son Qashi, drank himself to an early death shortly before Qaidu's birth, leaving Qaidu's early years to quietly rule over what little people, herds, pastures and towns Mongke Khaan had allotted him around Qayaliq, in what is now southern Kazakhstan. We can only imagine Qaidu's frustration and anger, a sense that everything that was his by right had been taken from him, anger at the theft by the house of Tolui- not of the Great Khanate, which Qaidu was unlikely to have ever inherited, but of the ulus of Ogedai itself, the personal territory Chinggis Khan had granted that line of the family. One tradition from Qaidu's earliest youth that survives, recorded by Jamal al-Qarshi, is that Ogedai Khaan once held the young boy and was so impressed with the 5 year old, that he stated Qaidu would one day succeed him and ordered his every need to be provided for. Even if the story were true, it must be remembered that Ogedai indicated about half of his sons and grandsons should have succeeded him at various points, and anyways, Qaidu was no mroe than six years old at the time of Ogedai's death. No, the young Qaidu was not ever destined, nor likely ever considered himself to be, for the throne of the Great Khan. Qayaliq was too poor to offer a base of resistance on its own, but it did not stop Qaidu from pushing his boundaries. In 1256, Mongke Khaan sent a judge to Qaidu's territory as an official imperial representative- the exact mission unclear in the sources- and the 20 year old Qaidu promptly captured him, holding him captive for the next two decades. No reaction is recorded from Mongke, who may have been preoccupied with his forthcoming assault on the Song Dynasty to divert attention to an annoying Ogedeid boy. Perhaps Mongke had been planning to deal with him upon his return from campaign, but as we know, he never got the opprotunity: Mongke died on campaign in Au

The Mongols were far from the only nomadic peoples to interact with Europe, even in the thirteenth century. Of these, the Cumans are perhaps the most well-known and have left us a considerable legacy in the archaeological record. Today, our series researcher Jack Wilson talks with Dr. Michal Holeščák regarding the archaeological presence of the Cumans and Mongols in 12th and 13th century Eastern Europe. Michal Holeščák is an archaeologist dealing with the material culture of late nomadic peoples, namely the Mongols and Cumans, from Mongolia to the westernmost fringes of the Great Eurasian Steppe in Hungary.

The Mongols were far from the only nomadic peoples to interact with Europe, even in the thirteenth century. Of these, the Cumans are perhaps the most well-known and have left us a considerable legacy in the archaeological record. Today, our series researcher Jack Wilson talks with Dr. Michal Holeščák regarding the archaeological presence of the Cumans and Mongols in 12th and 13th century Eastern Europe. Michal Holeščák is an archaeologist dealing with the material culture of late nomadic peoples, namely the Mongols and Cumans, from Mongolia to the westernmost fringes of the Great Eurasian Steppe in Hungary.

Around 40 episodes ago, we discussed Chinggis Khan fighting for control of the Mongolian steppe. Now, some 90 years later in our chronology, we will discuss his grandson sending Mongol armies across the sea to lands beyond Chinggis' imagination. While Japan, Vietnam and Burma were all subjects of invasions towards the end of Kublai Khan's life, all of these were regions relatively close to Yuan China, directly bordering its subject territories. Our discussion today focuses on a much less obvious target: the island of Java in modern Indonesia. The expedition against Java was one of the last military campaigns ordered by Kublai in his long life, and like many of these later invasions, cost the Yuan heavily in men and resources for little gain. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. In the 13th century, Eastern Java and parts of the neighbouring islands of Sumatra and Borneo came under the influence of the Kingdom of Tumapel, named for the city of the same name on the island of Java- or atleast it was the same name until the reign of King Jaya Wisnuhardhana, who changed it to Singhasari. You'll find this state therefore referred either as the Kingdom of Tumapel, or Singahsari.The Tumapel kings were not absolute rulers, with much of their kingdom made up of loosely controlled vassal kings and chiefs. Rather, their significance for our purposes came from their place on a lucrative position along the maritime trade routes going through Indonesia and across the southern coastline of the Eurasian landmass. By the 12th century, the island of Java was one of China's chief suppliers of pepper and safflower dye, along with Bali. The island exported rice, and held trade contacts from China to India. In turn, they imported gold, silver, lacquerware, iron goods and ceramics from China. The southeast Asian sea trade was a valuable market which had been expanding considerably since the ninth century- and one which now attracted the attention of a man hungry for conquest and with less and less patience for, well, patience. By the 1280s, Kublai Khan had completed his conquest of China proper, but good, overwhelming victories were frustraingly eluding him in Central Asia, Japan, Vietnam and Myanmar, and as he advanced in years, the knowledge that he was failing to bring the world under Mongol authority must have weighed heavily on him. Now in his seventies, with his poor health, depression, deaths of his friends and family, increasing removal from affairs of state and awareness of his own impending mortality, Kublai must have been desperate for victories to console his aching spirit. In addition, the economic aspects must not be overlooked -though they were not separate, from Kublai's point of view, but merely a component of universal rule. Kublai's Yuan dynasty, while obviously influenced by China's Confucian norms and traditions, felt no need to bind themselves to it, and kept for instance, the Mongolian practicality regarding merchants. Rather than treat them as inherently lower class, they were invited and rewarded, and trade as a whole encouraged. This took a notable form on the recent completion of the conquest of the southern Chinese coastline. Soon after the imposition of Mongol rule at the end of the 1270s, a new Bureau of Maritime Trade was established as the major port of Quanzhou. The Bureau not only oversaw and taxed the trade in and out of Quanzhou, but sought to actively encourage it as well as the settlement of foreign traders there. Contacts were made across the region- the Southeast Asian coastline of course, but also the Phillipines, Indonesia including Java and Sumatra and to India and Iran's southern coastline. We, have for instance, south Indian style Hindu temples with Tamil transcriptions in Quanzhou from this period, and knowledge of a significant Muslim population and resettled Persian. To the Islamic world Quanzhou was known as Zayton, by which Marco Polo recorded the name. The Yuan Dynasty had a keen interest in trade, and sought to extend their control over it throughout the region- at the same time extending the Mongols' heavenly Mandate to rule the whole of the world. On these considerations, Kublai Khan increased diplomatic missions across the seas of southern Asia, from Malabar to Sri Lanka, ordering the monarchs and peoples across the sea to submit to the Great Khan, as per the wish of Eternal Blue Heaven- something it should be noted, many of these states did do. In fact, for the privilege of trading with China, most regional states already undertook a sort of yearly tribute to whichever Chinese dynasty ruled the requisite ports they wanted access to. The Chinese dynasties were generally content to accept the trade and maintain the image of themselves as the Sons of Heavens, the centre of the world in name even if it wasn't quite so in practice, and the Son of Heaven did not exercise actual authority in these states. The Mongols, as many a state in eastern Asia

On a thickly humid day, flanked by dense forest of a deep green, rows of archers astride skittish horses struggle to control their mounts. Their local allies, armed with bows and tightly clutched spears, have their eyes focusing on a mass of men surging forward towards them. Infront comes a vanguard of the beast terrifying the Mongol horses; elephants, adorned in gold, armour and broacde, their tusks spiked and decorated, tall towers on their backs housing archers and spear throwers. The Mongol commander is afraid but refuses to show it; it would do no good to show fear before the men and the vassal troops. As calm as he can, he orders the cavalry to retreat to the treeline and dismount; they would stand before the oncoming host of the King of Pagan, modern Myanmar onfoot, armed with nothing but their bows and the will of Eternal Blue Heaven. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Of all the foreign ventures ordered by Kublai Khan in his later years, it was the invasions of Burma, or rather,, Myanmar, which are among the most poorly known in the west. While not as overtly disastrous as the more famous campaigns against Japan or Vietnam, which we have previously covered, the fighting in Myanmar still showcased the limits of the Mongol military, where tactical victories could not always translate into strategic success. By the 13th Century, the Kingdom of Pagan [pronounced somewhere between Bagan, Pakam, Pokam] had dominated Myanmar since the mid 9th century. Considered a golden age, from its strategic position on the Irrawadday River, the city of Pagan was the capital of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-linguistic kingdom straddling both upper and lower Myanmar. Military conquests backed by expanding infrastructure, irrigation and administrative systems laid the groundwork for a stable and regionally dominating empire. Population growth and infrastructure led to the increased development of Lower Myanmar, coupled with the expansion of arable lands to support it. To legitimize themselves, the Kings of Pagans patronized Thereavdic Buddhism and built monumental architecture to celebrate themselves. Huge donations of arable land to the Buddhist monasteries gradually put more and more of the kingdom's wealth and resources in the hands of the monks; by the thirteenth century, the Pagan kings found themselves in a more and more desperate economic situation, struggling to reclaim lands from the entrenched powers but continually needing to build monuments to legitimize themselves and maintain Buddhist support for their power. Skillful kings like Kalancacsa, reigning 1084-1111 were able to balance all the elements of the Pagan kingdom, its various ethnic groups and traditions and the Buddhist clergy, but the kings of the thirteenth century lacked this ability- particularly Narathihapade, who took the throne in 1254. By then, long held tensions were bubbling beneath the surface, and the once un-developed Lower Myanmar was becoming a major population and political centre that the king in Pagan struggled to control. And with so many kingdoms of the thirteenth century, this crockpot of troubles was aggravated by the addition of an extremely potent ingredient; the Mongol Empire. Pagan, separated from China and the Song Dynasty by the Kingdom of Dali in Yunnan and Dai Viet in Northern Vietnam, had escaped the attention of the Mongols during their first forays into these kingdoms in the 1250s, as we have covered in previous episodes. With the initial submission of these regions in that decade, the Mongol Empire now shared a border uncomfortably close to Pagan's northeastern-most outposts. It was in 1271 that the Great Khan Kublai's first envoys reached the Kingdom of Pagan, requesting the submission of its monarch, King Narathihapade, as well as the necessary trade and tribute demanded upon all subjects of the Mongol Emperor. History has not been kind to Narathihpate, often presented as a vain and greedy ruler. Usually, you'll be pointed to this incrisiption he place on the Mingalar Zedi Pagoda in 1274, "King Narathiha Pati, supreme commander of 36 million soldiers and who is the consumer of 300 dishes of curry daily, enshrined fifty-one gold and silver figurines of kings, queens, nobles and maids of honour, and over these a solid silver image of Lord Buddha Gautama one cubic high, on Thursday the Full Moon of Kason of the year 636." Of course, Narathihapade did not command 36 million soldiers, though his ability to consume curry in prodigious amounts is outside the realm of our discussion today. This is however an example of the earlier mentioned needed for Narathihapade and the Burmese kings to legitimize themselves through large monuments and inscriptions. His kingdom facing an economic problem undermining the very power of its monarchy and his own ancestry and position on shaky ground, Narathihapade had to shore up his position with boasts and monuments, wasting valuable resources

"In the West there is a province called Kafje-Guh, in which there are forests and other places of difficult access. It adjoins Qara-Jang and parts of India and the coast. There are two towns there, Lochak and Hainam and it has its own ruler, who is in rebellion against [Kublai Khaan]. Toghan, the son of the [Khaan], who is stationed with an army in Lukin-fu in the [south of China], is defending [China] and also keeping an eye on those rebels. On one occasion, he penetrated with an army to those towns on the coast, captured them, and sat for a week upon the throne there. Then all at once their army sprang out from ambush in the sea[shore], the forest, and the mountains and attacked Toghan's army while they were busy plundering. Toghan got away safely and is still in the Lukin-fu area." So the Ilkhanid historian and vizier Rashid al-Din, writing in the first years of the 1300s, describes events less than twenty years prior but very far away. Rashid al-Din transcribed a very brief, but recognizable sketch, of the Mongol invasions of Vietnam in the 1280s. Having covered for you the first half of Kublai's reign up until the end of the 1270s and his conquest of China, we will now take you to the beginnings of his failures. Back in July we already presented the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281, so now we'll turn our gaze southwards, to the efforts to extend Mongol suzerainty over the kingdoms of what is now Vietnam. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest. Before we discuss the military operations, it's useful to set the scene and establish Vietnam's 13th century status. As has been so often over this series, for context we must go back to the fall of China's Tang Dynasty in 907. For roughly a thousand years, starting from the Han Dynasty in 111 BCE, the northern half of what is now Vietnam was under Chinese dominion, broken up by a few decades of revolts and brief independence here and there. Of course, the Chinese Dynasties were not dominating a 'Vietnam' in any modern sense. Rather, they were exerting control or tributary relationships with the Viet, or Kinh, peoples around the Red River, or Hong River, Delta. This delta is usually described as the cradle of Vietnamese civilization, the most densely populated and fertile part of the country even today. Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, sits in this region. The long period of Chinese rule and influence left an undeniable mark upon Vietnamese conceptions of state, and every succeeding Viet dynasty has born obvious echoes of it. With the collapse of the Tang in 907, the Chinese presence in the north of Vietnam weakened, and local groups began to exert independence. Some of the Tang's successors in Southern China invaded and briefly brought the Red River Delta back under Chinese rule. But by the middle of the tenth century, the first fully independent Vietnamese Dynasty in centuries, the Ngô Dynasty, was established… and collapsed into feuding warlords by 965. It was not until the Lý Dynasty, founded in 1009, was stability reached. Under the Lý Emperors- though only Kings, if you asked the Chinese- the recognizable aspects of medieval northern Vietnam were built. The capital was moved to Thăng Long, modern day Hanoi. Buddhism was adopted as the state religion, and in 1054 a new emperor declared a new name for their state; Đại Việt,, meaning 'great Viet,' by which we most commonly know the medieval and early modern state. Administrative and military reforms made it the most stable and powerful Vietnamese kingdom yet, and the state expanded both north and south. Agricultural expansion and land reclamation fueled population growth and a steady Viet colonization southwards. Good times for the Lý Kings did not last. By the start of the thirteenth century their rule had weakened, local warlords exerted their independence and the monarchs were generally inept with few heirs. In a series of political alliances and marriages, the Trần family gathered power and began to try to force the Lý Kings to be their puppets. Warfare broke out. The Lý Kings maintaned the throne, but with the Trầns the power behind it. The final ailing Lý King abdicated the throne in 1224 with only two daughters. His 7 year old daughter, Lý Chiêu Thánh, was enthroned as the only queen-regent in Vietnam's history. Throught the machinations of the Trần "mayor of the palace," Trần Thủ Độ married the young queen to his nephew, Trần Cảnh. The queen soon abdicated the throne, making Trần Cảnh the reigning monarch- the first ruler of Vietnam's prestigious Trần Dynasty, known by his temple name Thái Tông, the Vietnamese rendition of that classic Chinese temple name, Taizong. His father was posthumously made Taizu, and the scheming uncle Thủ Độ became the chancellor and the major powerbroker within Đại Việt until his death in 1264. The powerful new Trần Dynasty of Đại Việt centralized power and continued the expansion begun the Lý Dynasty. Further reclamation efforts and dykes to