Division of the Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire was divided when Mongke Khan died in the siege of Diaoyu Castle in 1259, leaving no declared successor. This sparked infighting among members of the Tolui family line over the title of khagan, which erupted into the Toluid Civil War. This domestic conflict and the Berke considerably damaged the great khan's influence over the Mongol Empire–Hulagu fight and the ensuing Kaidu–Kublai battle. As a result, the empire was divided into independent khanates, including the Golden Horde in Easterly Europe and the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Ilkhanate in South-western Asia, and the Yuan dynasty in East Asia, which was located in modern-day Beijing. Each of the four divisions pursued its interests and goals, and each fell at a separate period.

Hulagu Khan, Mongke Khan's brother, halted his successful military march into Syria, retreating the majority of his forces to Mughan and left only a small group under his officer Kitbuqa. Recognizing that the Mongols were the greater threat, the rival groups in the region, the Christian Crusaders and Muslim Mamluks, took advantage of the Mongol army's weakened state and entered into an uncommon passive truce with each other. The Mamluks advanced from Egypt in 1260, with permission to camp and replenish near the Christian stronghold of Acre, and engaged Kitbuqa's soldiers at the Battle of Ain Jalut, just north of Galilee. Kitbuqa was executed after the Mongols were beaten. This decisive fight marked the western boundary of Mongol expansion, as the Mongols could never make any significant military advances beyond Syria again. Another brother of Hulagu and Mongke, Kublai Khan, heard of the great khan's death at the Huai River in China from a different region of the realm. He extended his march into China's Wuchang region, along the Yangtze River, rather than returning to the capital. Ariqboke, their younger brother, took advantage of Hulagu and Kublai's absence by claiming the title of great khan (khagan) for himself at the kurultai in the Karakorum representatives from all of the family branches recognizing him as the leader. When Kublai learnt of this, he convened his kurultai in Kaiping, where nearly all senior princes and great noyans from North China and Manchuria backed him against Ariqboke.

Battles erupted between Kublai's soldiers and his brother Ariq Boke's, which included forces loyal to Mongke's former regime. Kublai's troops dispatched Ariqboke's allies with ease and seized control of the civil administration in southern Mongolia. However, the Chagataids, their cousins, presented them with new obstacles. Kublai appointed Abishka, a Chagataid prince who was devoted to him, to rule Chagatai's empire. Ariqboke, on the other hand, caught and executed Abishka instead of crowning his own man Alghu. Kublai's new administration cut off food supplies to Ariqboke in Mongolia, triggering a famine. Kublai captured the Karakorum fast, but Ariqboke rallied and retook the capital in 1261. Hulagu was loyal to his brother Kublai in the southern Ilkhanate, but hostilities with their cousin Berke, ruler of the Golden Horde in the northwestern part of the empire, began in 1262. Berke was enraged by the mysterious murders of Jochid princes in Hulagu's service, unfair division of war spoils, and Hulagu's killings of Muslims, and he pondered backing a Georgian Kingdom insurrection against Hulagu's authority in 1259–1260. Berke also allied with the Egyptian Mamluks against Hulagu and backed Ariqboke, Kublai's rival claimant. On February 8, 1264, Hulagu died. Berke tried to take advantage of the situation and conquer Hulagu's domain, but he died in the process, and Alghu Khan of the Chagatai Khanate died a few months later. Hulagu's son Abaqa was designated ilkhan by Kublai, and Abaqa explored foreign alliances, including attempting to build a Franco-Mongol alliance with the Europeans against the Egyptian Mamluks. Mongke Temur, Batu's grandson, was chosen by Kublai to lead the Golden Horde. On August 21, 1264, Ariqboqe surrendered to Kublai at Shangdu.

Disintegration into Four Khanates

Kublai Khan's founding of the Yuan dynasty in China (from 1271 to 1368) hastened the Mongol Empire's disintegration. Four khanates emerged from the Mongol Empire. The Tolui line ruled over two of these, the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate. The line of Jochi built the Golden Horde, whereas Chagatai founded the Chagatai Khanate. A peace contract between the khanates in 1304 cemented the Yuan dynasty's formal authority over the western khanates. This dominance, however, was not built on the same grounds as that of the earlier khagans. Border confrontations, for example, continued to occur. The Esen Buqa Ayurbarwada war, which took place in the 1310s, is an example. The four khanates remained independent entities that fell at different times.

Yuan Dynasty

Many Mongols objected to Kublai Khan's move of the Mongol Empire's capital to Khanbaliq (Dadu, modern-day Beijing) in 1264. As a result, Ariq Boke's challenge was to preserve the empire's heartland in the Mongol motherland. Kaidu, a grandson of Ogedei Khan and Lord Nayan, continued the war after Ariq Boke's death. Kublai Khan finished the conquest of China by destroying the Song dynasty. The Yuan dynasty attempted to invade Japan twice, in 1274 and 1281, but both invasions failed, and a great number of their ships were lost in sea storms known as kamikazes. During the Yuan period, regular people faced hardships. As a result, in 1289, Mongol warriors rose against Kublai. After Kublai Khan died in 1294, Temur Khan took on the war against Kaidu, which lasted until Kaidu died in 1301. In 1312, Ayurbarwada Buyantu Khan ascended to the throne. In 1313, the Yuan dynasty established a civil service examination system. The Red Turban Rebellion broke out in China in the 1350s, and the Yuan dynasty was replaced in 1368 by the Ming dynasty. Toghon Temur, the last Yuan emperor, went north to Yingchang and died there in 1370. The Northern Yuan dynasty, which had withdrawn to the Mongolian steppe, continued to oppose the Ming dynasty until 1635 when it was captured by the Jurchen-led Later Jin dynasty (ancestor of the Qing dynasty).

Golden Horde

Batu, Jochi's son, formed the Golden Horde in 1243. The Volga area, Ural Mountains, Northern Black Sea Steppes, Fore-Caucasus, Western Siberia, Aral Sea, and Irtysh Bassin were all part of the Golden Horde principalities of Rus in tributary relations. Sarai Batu was the first capital, and Sarai Berke was the second. During the 15th century, this vast empire deteriorated due to conflict among Batu's heirs. As a result, it was divided into the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, Crimea, Siberia, Great Horde, Nogai Horde, and White Horde. In 1552, the Russian Empire acquired the Khanate of Kazan, the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556, the Siberian Khanate in 1582, and the Crimean Khanate in 1783.

Chagatai Khanate

Central Asia, Lake Balkhash, Kashgaria, Afghanistan, and Zhetysu were all part of the Chagatai Khanate, split in 1266. Transoxania (Ma Wara'un-Nahr) in the west and nomadic Moghulistan in the east were divided. According to legend, some of them spoke Mongolian till the late 16th century. Timur (1395–1405), a warlord from the Barlas tribe, ruled Moghulistan from 1395 to 1405. In 1395, Timur defeated Tokhtamysh Khan of the Golden Horde, depriving him of the Fore-Caucasus. He defeated the Ottoman sultan's army in Ankara, delaying the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire for half a century. Shortly after his death, the Timurid Empire disintegrated. Ulugh Beg, Timur's grandson, governed Transoxania from 1409 to 1449, and during his reign, Transoxania's the trade and economy flourished. In 1429, Ulugh Beg erected an astronomical observatory in Samarkand and produced Zij-i-Sultani. This treatise includes astronomical ideas and a catalogue of nearly 1000 stars with their precise positions on the celestial sphere. Moghulistan's lengthy rivalry with the Oirats for trade routes ended in 1530 when the Oirats defeated it. In 1526, Babur, a Timurid monarch of Kabul, conquered India and established the Mughal Empire. In the 18th and 19th eras, the Mughal Kingdom was splintered into various smaller states, and the British Empire later took the old empire's capital in 1858.

Ilkhanate

Iran, Iraq, Transcaucasus, eastern Asia Minor, and western Turkestan were all part of the Ilkhanate, which was founded in 1256 and controlled by the Toluid House of Hulagu. While the khanate's early monarchs gradually accepted Tibetan Buddhism, after Ilkhan Ghazan, the Mongol emperors converted to Islam (from 1295 to 1304). Under Ghazan's orders, Rashid-al-Din Hamadani began publishing Jami al-Tawarikh (Sudur un Chigulgan, Compendium of Chronicles) in 1300 with the help of Mongol historians. During the reign of Ilkhan Oljeitu, the work was completed in 1311. (from 1304 to 1316). Jami al-Tawarikh was based on the book Altan Debter, authored by a Mongol historian named Bolad Chinsan. The Ilkhanate collapsed quickly after Abu Sa'id's death (from 1316 to 1335) and various states. The Jalayrid dynasty, which descendants of Mukhali of Jalair ruled, was the most prominent.