The Mongol Empire’s Chagatai Khanate comprises the…

The Mongol Empire’s Chagatai Khanate comprises the lands controlled by Genghis Khan’s second son, the late Chagatai Khan.

Chagatai's ulus, or hereditary territory, consists of the part of the Empire that extends from the Ili River (today in eastern Kazakhstan) and Kashgaria (in the western Tarim Basin) to Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). (These territories will later become the Turco-Mongol states.

Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire will continue to be endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Turkic subjects; the Chagatai Khanate will by 1369 be conquered by Timur, aka Tamerlane, in his attempt to reconstruct the Mongol Empire.)

Chagatai’s grandson Qara Hülëgü, head of the ulus of the Chagatai Khanate, had in 1246 been deposed by the Grand Khan Güyük Khan and replaced with one of Qara Hulagu's uncles, Yesü Möngke.

Qara Hülëgü has gained the Great Khan's favor, however, by supporting him in his purges of the family of the late Ögedei Khan.

Restored in 1252 to his position of Chagatai Khan, Qara Hülëgü dies before returning to his realm and is succeeded by his son Mubarak Shah, with his mother, Orghana Khatun, acting as regent.

Both she and Mubarak Shah rule as Muslims.