Introduction

This paper is a highly detailed analysis of the fall of the Mongol Empire, which describes the aspects and events that had as consequence the fragmentation of a stable and authoritarian government. This essay makes a description of the historical background that led to the decline of the empire and analyzes the structure that the government had, according to the empire and the territories that were conquered and with the analysis of the most relevant and important characters of the Mongolian culture, such as Genghis Khan.

It is important to point out that the Mongol Empire was one of the most outstanding empires of the Asian continent, due to the conquest of several territories ranging from northern China to the Persian territory. Something that must be taken into account is that the empire was formed through the conquest of small tribes; at the same time, military rule was crucial to demonstrate the power and influence they had upon the rest of the territories.

The Mongol Empire stood out for its big military influence and its ability to create various war strategies to achieve the conquest of territories. The empire also showed great mobility and dexterity played in vast areas of poor accessibility. The Mongolian military system was remarkable for innovating and using technological elements and for getting resources that helped them visualize the diverse territories they could conquer.

The political system was really important for their vision of conquest, because of the aristocratic way of thinking their emperor had; he preferred to have power over many territories to avoid opposition towards his power, and have the support from the leaders of the smaller regions. It has to be mentioned that if a town doesn’t have a perfectly structured political system, it cannot have the support from its own people; this might have as consequence several inner conflicts that can bring down the government, as it happened to the Mongol Empire.

Commerce and religion had a great importance for the Mongol Empire, since through their trade route they achieved their goal of conquering diverse territories that would be part of the empire. In the religious aspect it’s noteworthy to say there was religious freedom, because of the great interest the emperor Genghis Khan had towards different religions or religious expressions that took place in their trade route.

Throughout this paper the aspects that took to the decadence of the empire will be described, the consequences that were generated after the splendor of the Mongol Empire through its leader, the emperor Genghis Khan. Despite the ruptures that were generated in the Mongol Empire, the various sectors of their domains, the reign of the Mongols will remain being a key aspect of Asian world history.

Causes of decline

The arrival of the Mamluks.

The Mamluks were a group of muslim warriors that ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517, when the Ottomans eliminated their legacy. They are well known for destroying the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer and for saving Syria and Egypt of being occupied by the Mongols.

The Mamluks and the Mongols had similar ways of living (Waterson, 2006), since both were from the steppe. The fact of having a wide knowledge of their enemy helped the Mamluks on their attempt to get a victory over Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260.

In 1258, the Mongol armies led by Hulegu, Genghis Khan’s grandson, took the city of Baghdad. The battle to take the city resulted in more than 250,000 deaths and the end of the last Abbasid caliph. Some time after, Aleppo was taken as well. The Mongols completed their conquest of Syria and attempted to conquer Egypt, which was under the control of sultan Qutuz. Hulegu decided to send envoys to sultan Qutuz requesting his surrender. The envoys were killed by Qutuz and he made an alliance with the Baybars, eliminating the possibilities of the Mongols of conquering Egypt.

After the death of the Great Khan, Hulegu returned to Karakorum and left part of his army in Palestine and encountered the Mamluk army at Ayn Jalut, where the Mongols were defeated, as it was stated previously.

Despite the fact the Mongols were the biggest military force of the time, the Mamluks were stronger in the battlefield. The weaponry used by the Mongols was undeveloped in comparison to the one the Mamluks counted with; In addition to the previous statement, the Mongols lacked organizational training, while the Mamluks were dedicated to train.

            After the death of Genghis Kahn, the empire was divided between the remaining sons of Genghis Khan and his grandson Batu. The result of this measure was the division of the empire in four sectors. This division soon led to conflicts between leaders and civil war. The first segment, ruled by Kublai Khan, and the second sector, located in Central Asia, had conflicts since 1269. There was also an emerging conflict between the third sector, known as The Ilkhanids, led by Hulagu, and the Golden Horde, led by Berke. The conflict was caused by disputes over trading routes and grazing rights over the area of Azerbaijan (Fletcher, 1986); this conflict is known as the Berke-Hulagu War.

            These conflicts were caused partially by the fact that Mongols were a tribal society, in which loyalty was not an established value and because of the influence of foreign ideology.

“As the Mongols expanded into the sedentary world, some were influenced by sedentary cultural values and realized that, if the Mongols were to rule the territories that they had subjugated, they would need to adopt some of the institutions and practices of the sedentary groups” (Fletcher, 1986).

            The ideas presented above could be an explanation of the disappearance of the Mongol empire; it lost cohesion, due to its division in four sectors, which could not be kept in control as a whole, because of the differences between their leaders. The legacy of the empire was forced to disappear because of the need of established Mongols to start new costumes; this means there was not just a territorial division, but also a division among Mongols.

Kublai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty

            Kublai Khan was the head of the Mongol empire and had control over the Chinese possessions of the empire. In order to get the trust of the Chinese, Kublai decided to become a Buddhist and to move the capital from Shangdu to Dadu (today Beijing). He also abandoned the Mongol heritage by establishing Yuan dynasty (Szczepanski, 2013).

            Kublai’s strategies were successful, and finally the Song imperial family surrendered and he became Yuan Emperor. The beginning of the Yuan Dynasty was characterized by the construction of projects and a new political organization that took some characteristics of the organization of the Mongol Empire, but also adopting features of the Chinese administration, which led to the destruction of the Yuan dynasty.

“Lacking experience in the administration of a complex empire, the Mongols gradually adopted Chinese political and cultural models. Ruling from their capital in Dadu, the Mongol Khans increasingly assumed the role of Chinese emperors. During the 1340s and 1350s, however, internal political cohesion disintegrated as growing factionalism at court, rampant corruption, and a succession of natural calamities led to rebellion and, finally, dynastic collapse.” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001).

            The adoption of features of the Chinese culture also led to rumors which said Mongols counted with the participation of native Chinese within the government; as a result of this rumor, some Chinese scholars felt segregated and decided not to pay obedience to the Yuan Emperor.

As it was stated before, when Kublai Khan’s conquest of China was completed, he established the Yuan Dynasty, until his death 1294; Temur Khan was his successor. The struggle for power was harder because Islam started spreading within the empire, at the southwestern region of the empire, the Ilkanate (Persia). In 1295, the Ilkanate formally accepted Islam as the official religion, and all Persia adopted Islam as their religion, but they still remain loyal to Temur Khan, because he protected Ilkhanate from the region of the Golden Horde in Russia which claimed the Caucasus, establishing its northern border at Dange.

Although the region of the Ilkhanate was Islamic, they fought wars with other Islamic nations, like Egyptians, because they still Mongolians, even though they practiced a different religion.

Finally, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ilkhanate and Golden Horde made an alliance against the White horde, and after a bloody war, they won. But the integration of empire was even further than before.

Temur had taken as tributary states to the south; the last military incursion took place in Thailand because the advisers to the courts believed that the empire was so big to have a real control over it, and the constant state of war had kill a lot of Mongols, making the nation conquered majority in a lot of places of the empire.

By 1313, the Yuan Dynasty started to be unable to be the mediator between other hordes; this caused the emergence of wars within hordes, specially Golden Horde versus the Ilkhanate, and Yuan versus White Khanate.

Because of the internal conflicts, external invasions had decreased and Yuan Dynasty went through a new civil war at 1328, because of the Temur succession. The son of Temur Khan, Tugh Temur, got the victory.

Tugh Temur, was more concerned on administrating the empire than of expanding it, so he had a very good knowledge of Chinese language and history. He was a poet, calligrapher, and painter and he wanted peace among the Mongol states. He also tried to make an alliance with the Pope John XXII against Muslims in Holly Lands, in order to be recognized as the Mongol supreme lord. All of this brought stability from Far East to the Holly Land and developed cultural exchange and commerce of textiles and spices of all parts of the empire.

After the Ilkhanate succession in 1335, Persia fell in anarchy and all the pretenders started killing each other, so the tributary states, as Georgians, took advantage and got its independence from the Mongol Empire; other stable states preferred to split up from all the Ilkhanate to maintain the stability, like happened in Anatolia. This caused the dissolution of the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persia. At the same time, Mongol rulers in China and the White Horde had problems because of the black death, which actually started in its territory and spread to Europe; this increased the political chaos all over the Mongol khanates.

The power of the Mongols declined, so leaders of the conquered nations started to rise, looking for independence. In East Europe, Poland took Belarus and Ukraine from the Golden Horde. In central Asia, Muslims and non-Muslims dissolved the white horde and created the Transoxiana and Moghulistan.

The Yuan Dynasty was too weak to have any jurisdiction over other Mongol states and the empire was close to its end. The last emperor had to face a court against him, and the worst economic state in the history of the Mongol Empire. He also had to face a riot in Tibet, where all the Mongol Ruler family was killed. The Mongols lost the support of the Ming forces in 1368 and they were forced to return to Mongolia.

After the overthrow of the Yuan Dynasty in China, the only stable khanate, the Golden Horde, lost touch with Mongolia and China and the former parts of White and Ilkhanate were conquered by Timurids. Few years later the Golden Horde was divided into smaller hordes that lost power progressively through four centuries. Yuan Dynasty continued ruling Manchuria until 1635, when the Manchus overthrew them. In 1691, Qing Dynasty conquered Mongolia, and in 1755 Russian empire conquered Crimean Khanate.

Conclusion

            After analyzing the main characteristics of the Mongol Empire as well as the historical events that caused the gradual disappearance of the Mongol Empire, it can be said that the Mongol Empire was forced to disappear due to the modernization of the world and by its own ambition.

            After the conquest of a vast area of territories, not only in Asia, but also in regions of Europe and Russia, the empire was unable to maintain control over these territories and eventually lost cohesion due to the division process the empire went through. Even though the divided territories were ruled by Mongol leaders, the conflicts between them could not be avoided, causing internal wars that left chaos and instability.

            The establishment of the Yuan Dynasty by Kublai Khan should be considered as an event that caused the decline of the Mongol Empire as well; the creation of Yuan Dynasty forced Mongols to go from being a steppe society to be a new kind of society that had to impose institutions to rule a territory in which they were considered as foreigners and as a minority. This meant the loss of the Mongol legacy, caused by the implementation of new ideologies and costumes among Mongols; this loss also led to the disappearance of the sense of unity. There were also political issues that made the Yuan Emperor’s authority to become weak; this led to rebellion movements and dissatisfaction that finally put an end to Yuan Dynasty and to the control of the Mongols over Chinese territory (Princeton University Art Museum, 2004).

Although military power was the strength of the Mongols, they were not able to keep it for long. The constant growth of the empire changed priorities. Mongols started to focus on a better way of organizing and controlling their vast empire and stopped improving their military forces, which gave conquered territories a chance to get independence and also gave other states the opportunity of become the new military hegemons; Mongols stop being a threat, they lost unity and finally they were not able to survive.

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