Genghis Khan, who had founded the Mongol…
1252 CE
Genghis Khan, who had founded the Mongol Empire in 1206, had dealt with the problem of succession before he died in 1227.
Each of his four sons by his favorite wife, Börte, was to hold a vassal kingdom.
Jöchi, the eldest, had been given the land from the Yenisey River and the Aral Sea westward “as far as the hooves of Mongol horses have reached”—a wording attributed to Genghis Khan himself.
The second son, Chagatai, had received Kashgaria (now the southern part of Xinjiang) and most of Mavrannakhar between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya.
The third son, Ögödei, had received western Mongolia and the region of Tarbagatai (now the northwestern corner of Xinkjang); the youngest, Tolui, inherited the ancient Mongol homeland of eastern Mongolia.
Tolui, who had served with distinction in the campaigns against the Jin Dynasty and the Khwarezmid Empire, where he was instrumental in the capture and massacre at Merv, had served as civil administrator during the two years before a great Mongol assembly in 1229 had confirmed the succession of Ögödei as the second great khan (khagan).
Through his wife Sorghaghtani Beki, Tolui had fathered Möngke, Kublai, Ariq Böke, and Hulagu, and thus was the progenitor of the last of the great Khans, the Yuan Dynasty of China, and of the Il Khans.
Rivalry between the Toluids and the sons of Ögedei and Jochi had caused stagnation and infighting during the regency periods after the deaths of Ögedei and his son Güyük.
Guyuk had wanted to turn the Mongol conquests against Europe, but due to his early death in 1251, Mongol family politics have caused the Mongol efforts to be directed against South China, which will soon be conquered in the time of Kublai Khan.
Möngke finds himself the champion of the factions of Genghis' descendants who aim to supplant the branch of Ögedei.
Jöchi’s second son Batu, the senior male of the family, had almost come to open warfare with Güyük in 1248, the khan's early death precluding this.
Batu had then joined forces with Tolui's widow to outmaneuver the regent, Ögedei's widow Oghul Ghaimish.
Batu had called a kurultai in Siberia in 1250, which was protested as not being in Mongolia proper.
Ignoring the opposition, Batu had had his brother Berke call a kurultai within Mongolia, and in 1251 had elected Möngke khan.
The Ögedeiid faction, realizing they had been outmaneuvered, had then attempted to overthrow Möngke under the pretext of paying him homage, but their conspiracy had been clumsy and easily avoided.
Oghul Ghaimish had been sewn up into a sack and drowned.
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East Asia
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