| Mongol invasions and conquests | |||||
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 The Mongol Empire at its greatest extent (1206–1294) | |||||
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TheMongol invasions and conquests took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, creating history's largest contiguous empire, theMongol Empire (1206–1368), which by 1260 covered large parts ofEurasia. Historians regard theMongol devastation as one of the deadliest episodes in history.[1][2]
At its height, the Mongol Empire included modern-dayMongolia,China,North Korea,South Korea,Myanmar,Iran,Iraq,Afghanistan,Pakistan,Central Asia,Siberia,Georgia,Armenia,Azerbaijan,Turkey,Belarus,Ukraine, and most ofEuropean Russia.[3]
The Mongol Empire developed in the course of the 13th century through a series of victorious campaigns throughout Eurasia. At its height, it stretched from thePacific toCentral Europe. It was later known as the largest contiguous land empire, aside from the British Empire. In contrast with later"empires of the sea" such as theEuropean colonial powers, the Mongol Empire was aland power, fueled by the grass-foraging Mongol cavalry and cattle.[a] Thus most Mongol conquest and plundering took place during the warmer seasons, when there was sufficient grazing for their herds.[4] The rise of the Mongols was preceded by 15 years of wet and warm weather conditions from 1211 to 1225 that allowed favourable conditions for the breeding of horses, which greatly assisted their expansion.[5]
As the Mongol Empire began tofragment from 1260,conflict between the Mongols and Eastern European polities continued for centuries. Mongols continued to ruleChina into the 14th century under theYuan dynasty, while Mongol rule inPersia persisted into the 15th century under theTimurid Empire. In theIndian subcontinent, the laterMughal Empire survived into the 19th century.
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Genghis Khan forged the initialMongol Empire inCentral Asia, starting with the unification of the nomadic tribes of theMerkits,Tatars,Keraites,Turks,Naimans andMongols. The BuddhistUighurs ofQocho surrendered and joined the empire. He then continued expansion viaconquest of the Qara Khitai[6] andof the Khwarazmian Empire.
Large areas ofIslamic Central Asia andnortheastern Persia were seriously depopulated,[7] as every city or town that resisted the Mongols was destroyed. Each soldier was given a quota of enemies to execute according to circumstances. For example, after the conquest ofUrgench, each Mongol warrior – in an army of perhaps twotumens (20,000 troops) – was required to execute 24 people, or nearly half a million people per said army.[8]
Against theAlans and theCumans (Kipchaks), the Mongols used divide-and-conquer tactics by first warning the Cumans to end their support of the Alans, whom they then defeated,[9] before rounding on the Cumans.[10] The Alans were recruited into the Mongol forces and known as theAsud, with one unit called "Right Alan Guard" that was combined with "recently surrendered" soldiers. Mongols and Chinese soldiers stationed in the area of the former state of Qocho and in Besh Balikh established a Chinese military colony led byChinese general Qi Kongzhi.[11]
During theMongol attack on the Middle East ruled by theMamluk Sultanate, most of the Mamluk military was composed of Kipchaks and the Golden Horde's supply of Kipchak fighters replenished the Mamluk armies and helped them fight off the Mongols.[9]
Hungary became a refuge for fleeing Cumans.[12]
The decentralized, stateless Kipchaks only converted to Islam after the Mongol conquest, unlike the centralized Karakhanid entity comprising the Yaghma, Qarluqs, and Oghuz who converted earlier to world religions.[13]
The Mongol conquest of the Kipchaks led to a merged society with a Mongol ruling class over a Kipchak-speaking populace which came to be known as Tatar, and which eventually absorbedArmenians,Italians,Greeks, andCrimean Goths inCrimea, the origin of the currentCrimean Tatars.[14]
The Mongols conquered, by battle or voluntary surrender, the areas of present-day Iran, Iraq, theCaucasus, and parts ofSyria andTurkey, with further Mongol raids reaching southwards intoPalestine as far asGaza in 1260 and 1300. The major battles were thesiege of Baghdad, when the Mongols sacked the city which had been the center of Islamic power for 500 years, and theBattle of Ain Jalut in 1260 in south-easternGalilee, when the MuslimBahri Mamluks were able to defeat the Mongols and decisively halt their advance for the first time. One thousand northern Chinese engineer squads accompanied the MongolHulagu Khan during his conquest of the Middle East.[b]
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Genghis Khan and his descendants launched progressiveinvasions of China, subjugating theWestern Xia in 1209 before destroying them in 1227, defeating theJin dynasty in 1234 and defeating theSong dynasty in 1279. They made theKingdom of Dali into a vassal state in 1253 after the Dali King Duan Xingzhi defected to the Mongols and helped them conquer the rest of Yunnan, forced Korea to capitulate through nineinvasions, but failed in their attempts toinvade Japan, their fleets scattered bykamikaze storms.
The Mongols' greatest triumph was whenKublai Khan established theYuan dynasty in China in 1271. The dynasty created a "Han Army" (漢軍) out of defected Jin troops and an army of defected Song troops called the "Newly Submitted Army" (新附軍).[16]
The Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force they sent to invade the Middle East in 1256.[17]
The Yuan dynasty established the top-level government agencyBureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs to governTibet, which wasconquered by the Mongols andput under Yuan rule. The Mongols alsoinvaded Sakhalin Island between 1264 and 1308. Likewise, Korea (Goryeo) became asemi-autonomous vassal state of the Yuan dynasty for about 80 years.
By 1206,Genghis Khan had conquered all Mongol and Turkic tribes inMongolia and southern Siberia. In 1207 his eldest sonJochi subjugated the Siberian forest people, the Uriankhai, theOirats, Barga,Khakas,Buryats,Tuvans,Khori-Tumed [ru], andYenisei Kyrgyz.[18] He then organized the Siberians into threetumens. Genghis Khan gave theTelengit andTolos along theIrtysh River to an old companion, Qorchi. While the Barga, Tumed, Buriats, Khori, Keshmiti, andBashkirs were organized in separate thousands, the Telengit, Tolos, Oirats and Yenisei Kirghiz were numbered into the regular tumens[19] Genghis created a settlement of Chinese craftsmen and farmers at Kem-kemchik after the first phase of theMongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. TheGreat Khans favoredgyrfalcons, furs, women, and Kyrgyz horses for tribute.
Western Siberia came under theGolden Horde.[20] The descendants ofOrda Khan, the eldest son of Jochi, directly ruled the area. In the swamps of western Siberia,dog sledYam stations were set up to facilitate collection of tribute.
In 1270,Kublai Khan sent a Chinese official, with a new batch of settlers, to serve as judge of the Kyrgyz and Tuvan basin areas (益蘭州 and謙州).[21] Ogedei's grandsonKaidu occupied portions of Central Siberia from 1275 on. TheYuan dynasty army under Kublai'sKipchak general Tutugh reoccupied the Kyrgyz lands in 1293. From then on the Yuan dynasty controlled large portions of Central and Eastern Siberia.[22]
The Mongols invaded and destroyedVolga Bulgaria andKievan Rus', beforeinvading Poland,Hungary,Bulgaria, and other territories. Over the course of three years (1237–1240), the Mongols razed all the major cities of Russia with the exceptions ofNovgorod andPskov.[23]
Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, the Pope's envoy to the Mongol Great Khan, traveled throughKiev in February 1246 and wrote:
They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery.[24]
The Mongol invasions displaced populations on a scale never seen before in central Asia or eastern Europe. Word of the Mongol hordes' approach spread terror and panic.[25] The violent character of the invasions acted as a catalyst for further violence between Europe's elites and sparked additional conflicts. The increase in violence in the affected eastern European regions correlates with a decrease in the elite'snumerical skills, and has been postulated as a root of theGreat Divergence.[26]
From 1221 to 1327, the Mongol Empire launched several invasions into theIndian subcontinent. The Mongols occupied parts ofnorthwestern South Asia for decades. However, they failed to penetrate past the outskirts of Delhi and were repelled from the interior of India. Centuries later, theMughals, whose founderBabur had Mongol roots, established their own empire in India.
Kublai Khan's Yuan dynastyinvaded Burma between 1277 and 1287, resulting in the capitulation and disintegration of thePagan Kingdom. However,the invasion of 1301 was repulsed by the BurmeseMyinsaing Kingdom. TheMongol invasions of Vietnam (Đại Việt) andJava resulted in defeat for the Mongols, although much ofSoutheast Asia agreed to pay tribute to avoid further bloodshed.[27][28][29][30][31][32]
The Mongol invasions played an indirect role in the establishment of major Tai states in the region by recently migrated Tais, who originally came from Southern China, in the early centuries of the second millennium.[33] Major Tai states such asLan Na,Sukhothai, andLan Xang appeared around this time.
Due to the lack of contemporary records, estimates of the violence associated with the Mongol conquests vary considerably.[34] Not including the mortality fromthe Plague in Europe, West Asia, or China[35] it is possible that between 20 and 60 million people were killed between 1206 and 1405 during the various campaigns of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, and Timur.[36][37] However, the book from which the figures originate has been criticized for its methodology[38] and the Chinese censuses on which the estimates are based are considered unreliable.[39] Nevertheless, the campaigns killed a large number of people and involved battles, sieges,[40] earlybiological warfare,[41] and massacres.[42][43]
