History of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire

I'm so glad you've joined me on Lights Out Library tonight. If you'd like to listen ad-free and unlock bonus episodes, then please consider joining our Patreon. There is a link for it in the episode description. Now a quick word from our sponsors before tonight's story begins. British Gas have this thing. We call it home care. We'll fix all sorts and its unlimited repairs. Expert engineers will solve the upset of boilers not boilering or taps that won't wet. Electric's playing tricks or a pipe that's broke. We're there for everyone. Even blue furry folk. Your home won't feel booby trapped. It'll feel just like new. British Gas taking care of things and looking after you. T-sensees apply excess options available per repair. Tonight I'd like to transport you to Night Falls, a mystical place where luminescent waterfall glimmers in a starlit clearing amongst ancient pines. You can join me here every Sunday and Tuesday with a podcast of bedtime stories created to help you fall asleep easily. There's truly nothing more relaxing than a story told by Firelight. Just search Night Falls Bedtime Stories on your favourite podcast player and gather around the fire for a soothing tale tonight. Hello everyone, I'm Olympia. Thank you for being here with me in this wonderful place called Lights Out Library and I have a great story to tell you. We are going to travel across the steps tonight and explore one of the largest land empires that ever existed. Everybody has heard of Genghis Khan, but who was he and why does the world remember his name and who were the Mongols? Why and how, 800 years ago, did they suddenly start to project their power, coming from a land-locked region in Asia that most people on earth had never heard of? We have a lot to discover tonight and in this story we will go from Korea and China to Persia and Eastern Europe. We will travel through time over hundreds of years. We will cover history, culture, war, art, discoveries and more. But everything is going to be very easy and it's going to fall into place. The only thing you need to do is sit or lie down comfortably and let me do the rest. But first I would like to let you know that we have a Patreon page for those of you who wish to and can support this project, get more from it and listen ad-free on your favorite podcast app. Patreon is a platform that allows you to contribute directly to our work financially. Our least expensive tier is $3.50 per month, but it doesn't mean you get less. We let people contribute what they wish or can and everyone gets everything that is on our page because the world is a better place when the sun shines for everyone. You will gain access to 22 exclusive episodes and we add a new one every month. You can listen and download all the episodes with and without background sounds and as a token of gratitude we offer advance releases to our patrons. We have added links to Patreon as well as links to different streaming options which may be better suited for you. You will find them in the description of the episode. But now, before we begin, allow yourself to forget about any worries. If you wish to, you may close your eyes and immerse yourself in the story. Assume a comfortable position. Maybe move a bit to settle. Take a long, deep relaxing breath and when you slowly exhale, feel your shoulders drop. Release the tension in your neck. Let your face soften and your jaw relax. Make sure your fingers are not clenched and that your legs are relaxed too and allow the sound of my voice to guide you through this journey. And now it's time to explore. We don't hear much about Mongolia nowadays. Mongolia is a large but very scarcely populated country, landlocked between China and Russia. It has been under the influence of its much larger neighbors for centuries already. It became a communist country in the 20th century before opening up in the past three decades and adopting a more market-oriented economy. Mongolia today has only about 3.5 million inhabitants, yet many Mongols live beyond its frontiers in Russia and especially in China. In fact, nearly 60% of people of Mongol origin now reside within China's borders. This distribution beyond Mongolia's frontiers is a lasting remnant of a time when this land was part of something far greater, before Genghis Khan transformed it into a vast empire. The Kamag Mongol was a confederation of tribes that existed from the 10th to the 12th centuries. This state spread over an area that was already two to three times bigger than modern Mongolia, about as large as the United States today. But its frontiers were not precisely defined and it was only populated by a few million people. But who were these Mongols and where did they come from? For several thousand years, peoples and tribes lived in a manic lifestyle mingled across Central Asia. This far-reaching region stretches from Manchuria and the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Caspian Sea in the west. It is also one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions in the world outside Africa. There are traces of human occupation in Central Asia that are several hundred thousand years old and prehistoric records in modern Mongolia indicate the presence of Homo sapiens thousands and thousands of years ago. Even though these people may not be the direct ancestors of the Mongols, what we know with a bit more certainty is that in the first centuries there were inhabitants in Mongolia who had formed large clans. They had diplomatic relations because they could ally sometimes and they had connections to other regions in the world such as China as evidenced by their knowledge of metallurgy or references to them in Chinese records from the first millennium. It seems the people that would be known as the Mongols came from the east, the region of Manchuria and they settled in Mongolia or more exactly they claimed this land as theirs because they had a nomadic lifestyle. As the Mongol population grew it separated into various tribes or clans that shared a similar culture and variants of the same language. The heart of this confederation of tribes is separated into what nowadays is the state of Mongolia also known as outer Mongolia and there is a region in China, Inner Mongolia. Parts of Mongolia fell under foreign influence several times before Mongol tribes managed to unify. From the west came the threat of Turkic people. From the 6th to the 8th centuries AD Mongolia was under the influence of the Turkic caganate. What was the Turkic caganate? A canate or caganate is the term used for a political entity ruled by a can. A can is a ruler often also a military leader and the roles of can and cagan were sometimes used interchangeably though cagan more properly means great can or supreme ruler. These titles originated on the Eurasian steppe, the vast region stretching from Eastern Europe to Mongolia. In that context a can can be understood as a king or chief and a canate as a kingdom or realm. The Turkic caganate for example was a political entity ruled by cagons of Turkic origin. Turkic peoples lived in Central Asia, west of Mongolia and they shared close languages and a common ethnic origin. They migrated and mixed with local people in various regions of the world. For example in Turkey the modern Turks have Central Asian ancestors. They mixed with the inhabitants of Anatolia of what is known as Turkey today. Turkic peoples are the ancestors of many of today's inhabitants of Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. They're as like the Uyghurs live in China. Over centuries of intermixing, language shifts and cultural change these groups can look and sound quite different yet they share a common origin. Across history Turkic peoples played a central role in the formation of many states including the Ottoman Empire. So this caganate subjugated the Mongols for three centuries and after the Turkics the Mongols fell under the influence of the Chinese from the Tang dynasty. China had a very eventful history with periods of unification and other periods of fragmentation or civil war. Sometimes the Tangs unified a large part of China and are generally considered a high point in Chinese civilization. For almost 300 years from the 7th to the 10th centuries China was relatively at peace internally. Culture and trade flourished, wealth accumulated and the capital of the Tangs. Chang'an, also known as Xi'an today, was the most populous city in the world but this golden age for China ended in the 10th century. These influence declined and Mongol tribes recovered some of their independence. For China the steps north and west of their land were a source of recurring invasions, raids and problems in general which led them to start building the Great Wall of China. I made a story about the Great Wall which you can find in my library so I'm not going to elaborate too much. So the one thing we can be sure of is that from the 10th century AD the Mongols were no longer under the influence of foreign powers and they progressively formed a confederation of tribes that turned into a canate. The first known can of the Mongols was the great grandfather of Cengiz Khan. His name was Kabul Khan and he reigned over this confederation called the Kamak Mongol. The Kamak Mongol is the predecessor state to the Mongol Empire founded by Cengiz Khan. The function of Khan was elective. Various clans were part of the confederation and their chief selected him. What was hereditary was the position of chief of clan but cans by tradition were chosen by the various tribes that were part of the confederation. The clan or tribe could be made of several groups living in the same nomadic lifestyle. This lifestyle explains why the Mongol Empire never left giant architectural remains like the Romans or the Chinese did. The Mongols could have cities with a population that fluctuated greatly as people moved but they built very little in stone and during this period 10th to 12th centuries their state barely had any central administration. The Kamak Mongol was a relatively unstable confederation. Its clans often fought among themselves and it could also be at war with neighboring powers such as the Tatar confederation a rival coalition of tribes. It is in this context that Timujin the future Cengiz Khan was born in 1162 into a family that had a prominent role in this confederation. Among his ancestors were the first Khan Kabul Khan and his father Yisuge. Also claimed the title of Khan of the Mongols. Yisuge was poisoned when his son Timujin was only nine and with his death the Kamak Mongol began to unravel. The tribes soon turned against one another as often happened when a confederation lost a strong leader. Just before dying this father had had time to arrange a marriage for Timujin. There was a complex diplomatic and political game between tribes and marriages were a way of bonding families and clans. Timujin's parents were both of noble descent from different tribes within the Mongol world a background that would later serve him well. As Timujin was still a child he was supposed to stay with his future in-laws until he would be old enough to get married but when he knew of his father's death that prompted the disintegration of the Kamak Mongol. Timujin abandoned his new family or maybe he was expelled because with his father dead he was no longer as valuable as a child and he returned with his mother and his siblings. His family had lost almost everything with the death of Yisuge and they lived in poverty for several years surviving on wild fruits and hunting. During these years from 1172 to 1180 there was no longer any unifying power capable of pacifying the tribes. Raids warfare and theft became widespread across the Kamak Mongol making it dangerous to cross paths with anyone. At some point Timujin was even captured and enslaved by his father's allies but he managed to escape and return to his family. Having lost everything material the only thing Timujin really inherited was ambition. Because he knew he was from a lineage of Kens and also had an understanding of the political game between tribes. Even though Timujin did not stay with the family of the young woman he had been promised to he married her. Soon after their official marriage his wife was captured by a rival tribe but Timujin rescued her and this woman Borte would remain as his main wife until the end of his life. Man could have several wives and the tradition for Kens was to have a main spouse who carried their heirs and eventually several minor morganatic wives. A morganatic marriage is a marriage between people of unequal ranks that prevents the passage of titles or privileges to the spouse and their children. It existed in many different cultures including without polygamy. For example once he was a widower French King Louis XIV took his favorite as morganatic wife for the rest of his life. In the Mongol world morganatic marriage was not practiced merely for pleasure or to increase offspring. It also served diplomatic purposes. Noble children especially young girls were often used as bargaining tools in the complex negotiations between tribes. So the future Genghis Khan had only one empress and she gave birth to Genghis Khan's successors who would administrate and enlarge his empire. He also had many other children from morganatic marriages but these children did not inherit anything titles or birth rights. Temujin began his ascent to power in his 20s offering himself as an ally to his uncle who was a Genghis Khan of a tribe. It is the help from this uncle that made it possible to free his captured wife and his ascension to the head of Mongol tribes was absolutely not in a straight line and it even ended in a disaster at first. Temujin had a rival called Jamuka and both tried to consolidate their power and influence lobbying or threatening the tribes and their people. Jamuka targeted the traditional Mongol aristocracy families who had had influence in their tribe for generations. Temujin appealed especially to followers from the lower ranks of society. In fact, despite the distance in culture and time, a parallel can be drawn between the rise of Julius Caesar and that of Genghis Khan. Like Genghis Khan, Caesar was from an aristocratic family. He lost everything and then rose again, appealing to the lower classes of the population. Caesar was an aristocrat in the Roman system. Being from the Gengs Julia, a patrician family, he was born with wealth and privilege. He lost all of this just like Temujin did when his father was killed and then they both came back years later climbing to the top with the support of a social class that they didn't come from. They didn't inherit their father's titles and wealth before they lost them early, but still they received from their birth a degree of political culture and confidence that explained their later rise. But Temujin's rise was not without setbacks. In 1186 he was elected Khan of the Mongols at a time when the confederation was still fractured by internal conflict. His ambition was to make meaningful by subduing and uniting all the tribes. But the following year his rival, Chamukha, attacked him with a large army, 30,000 troops according to some records, and defeated him severely. Temujin lost everything again and he had to disappear for 10 years. He went into hiding only to reemerge around 1196. Now about 35 years old, commanding troops sent by the Jin dynasty of China against the Tatars. He was victorious this time and the Jin, so foreigners to the Mongols, restored him to a position of power. Temujin used his position to try again, unifying the Mongols under him, and this second attempt was finally successful. It took several years of warfare and diplomacy, but by 1206 Temujin had united or subdued all the tribes living in and around modern Mongolia. They were not all Mongols ethnically, they were also Tatars or Uyghurs. This was the moment in 1206 when he changed his name and became Jengus Khan, a great Khan or Grand Khan who reigned over the nomadic tribes of Eastern Asia. These tribes obviously shared many cultural traits beginning with their lifestyle, but they had different ethnicities, languages, and traditions. So from the start, the Mongol Empire was a collection of different people and cultures. What differentiated Jengus Khan from his predecessors is how he broke with tradition sometimes. He delegated authority based on loyalty in merit rather than family ties. He also fostered loyalty by offering defeated tribes his protection instead of abandoning them or seeking revenge. He himself adopted orphans from other tribes into his own family, building an entity that was attractive to other tribes. By 1206 he was already 44, which was a respectable age in the 13th century, but what he had achieved, recreating this Mongol Confederation or Khanate, was already extraordinary, but it was just a start. Before taking a look at Jengus Khan's conquests and how he laid the foundations of the Mongol Empire, let's take a look at some aspects of Mongol culture. As the Mongol Empire expanded in the 13th century, it absorbed a wide range of influences. At times, the Mongols themselves were absorbed into the local cultures they ruled. We will see that in China, but before all of this differentiation appeared, what they had in common mainly was their lifestyle. They knew of agriculture, even though they did not practice it much. What they excelled at was breeding. They had large herds of animals and they moved with them across the steppe. Bertilan was sought after not to cultivate it, but as meadows for their flocks. Animals and animal products were very important in their lives, more than for sedentary civilizations. It was not only meat and milk for food, clothes and tents. The yurts or traditional homes were made of wool and felt. Felt is a textile material that is obtained by pressing fibers together, wool or fur. It is a kind of textile that is not woven. Horses were central to movement and transport. Many tools were fashioned from animal products like bone, while wood was used to make bows and other implements. They also had knowledge of metallurgy. The Mongols had towns. Just not of the kind we are accustomed to. Rather than towns, they were sites where a large number of yurts could be erected for a few weeks or months. These places of gathering had very few fixed buildings, sometimes just a few stone or wood monuments. From time to time, tribes would settle in these places. Taking the opportunity to trade and learn was happening beyond their own lands. Later with the development of the empire, solid fixed buildings were constructed, like the Karakorum. We will talk about it, but they never tried to build things that could rival in size with what other civilizations had done in the past or were doing during the same time period. When the Mongol Empire was beginning to take off, the Arabs were building great places and gardens. Western Europeans were beginning to build giant Gothic cathedrals. At the same time, the Mongols were just not interested in remodeling the surface of the earth and projecting their status, their ambition, or their dreams into huge monuments. To understand this way of life, we must consider what it reveals about their worldview and how it deferred. From that of sedentary societies, their sense of belonging was rooted in family, including their ancestors and in the group to which they belonged. The place itself mattered far less, and even the concept that the land could belong to an individual would have sounded absurd to them, because the land was just the place where people lived, not something that could be appropriated by someone, just like we don't claim ownership of the air we breathe. Another concept that existed long ago in antiquity already, but didn't make sense for nomadic people, was the accumulation of material wealth. Someone's wealth was their relations to others, the family, the status, the position of power or influence, but not belongings. When you have to travel with all you have, accumulation is a problem, not something desirable. There was individual property in Mongol society of a few everyday objects, of a yurt, of tools, and of course animals, but nothing else. As a consequence of their way of life, the Mongols and other nomadic peoples developed a very different worldview and set of priorities. This did not make them more or less free than sedentary societies, but it did shape a distinct mental outlook and a different relationship to the world. What did the Mongols believe in? As the empire grew, some of them converted to all sorts of religions, but at the time of Genghis Khan, the dominant form of religion was Tengrism. It is the worship of a pantheon, including Tengri, the chief deity. Tengrism is not a unified religion, but rather a set of beliefs from Central Asia. It includes shamanism, totemism, animism, and the worship of ancestors. So what are each of these? Shamanism is not a particular belief, it is a practice. It is the search for altered states of consciousness in order to perceive or interact with a spiritual world, or to establish a link between the physical world and other spiritual dimensions. This kind of practice is not particularly Asian. It had existed in many parts of the world, like in Africa, South and North America. The trance that the practitioners go into can involve the ingestion of psychoactive substances. Animism is not a practice, it is a kind of belief that also appeared in many places around the world. It is the belief that we live surrounded by things that are animated and have a spiritual essence. It can be animals, plants, places, or even man-made objects, natural phenomena, like rain or sunshine, rivers, lakes, rocks. Animism can have very different forms. It is often used to describe the belief system of many indigenous people who don't call themselves animists. The term was coined by ethnologists. But what these people have in common, and it applies to Tengrism and Mongols, is that they didn't or don't distinguish a physical or material dimension from a spiritual dimension. They see it as a continuum. Monotheistic religions and more broadly, modernity in western societies, tend to keep these two dimensions separate. Most people no longer believe that natural phenomena possess agency, or that the world is inhabited by spirits animating every object or concept. Such beliefs are often even considered heretical within organized religions. In an animist world view, however, every natural phenomenon, from rain and earthquakes to the shape of a plant or a rock, can be seen as a manifestation of the spirit world. I suppose most of us don't call ourselves animists, but there is a little something of it in what we would call magical thought. When we like to carry a particular object as a lucky charm, or when we see an event as an omen, or just when we feel reassured because we follow a little ritual before an exam, or before an interview, these are traces of such a belief system that tends to connect different things without a cause and a consequence that can be logically and rationally explained. And another aspect of Tengrism I mentioned was totemism. Like animism, totemism is a term made up by ethnologists. It is not how people call their belief. In this case, the word totem comes from the Ojibwe, the Native American tribe. Totemism describes the worship of an object or a symbol, or an invisible being represented by an object that serves as an emblem for a group of people. It can be a clan, a family, an entire tribe. This emblem may be at the same time a representation of the group and a protective entity. So, Tengrism, which is sometimes called a religion, is this set of beliefs and practices that dominated in Central Asia for hundreds of years and still exist today among Native groups. It is not unified and could easily mix with other elements, such as the belief in one or several other gods and with different philosophies too, like Buddhism, that spread a lot among the Mongols. All of this is important for the sake of understanding them too. They had a life that, to us, can look very monotonous, living with very few belongings and harsh conditions, moving from birth till death on a flat giant plateau. And even though it has a diversity of landscapes, but their world was full of wonders too. They were surrounded by what we would call magic. They were in the company of their ancestors' spirits. They lived in a society with a wealth of traditions and personal relations. In any case, their mental world was at odds with ours, and also with the people they encountered when their empire grew. And the Mongols who followed their leaders were certainly not prepared to discover regions that were so different from where they were born. So, let's return to Jengis Khan. We were in 1206 when he took his title with all tribes now following his lead. Jengis was ready to look outwards and begin to conquer. For centuries, Mongol tribes had regularly been in conflict with the Chinese, and China had many times played one tribe against another, like the Romans did at their frontiers. This time, the Mongols were united, and China was comparatively weak and fragmented. In the northwest of China was an empire that was 200 years old, called the Western Shia or Shishaya. To the west was another empire, Kara Kitai, a canate strongly influenced by Chinese culture. And the Mongols also had a border to their east and south with the Jin Dynasty that ruled over northern China and Manchuria. Jengis Khan organized his army to go to war with Western Shia or Shia first, which was isolated, and he conquered the state and forced its emperor to submit to Vessel status. Only five years later, in 1211, he attacked the Jin Dynasty, and the military campaign was also a brilliant success. In 1215, he besieged the Jin capital, which corresponds to the site where Beijing is today. This forced the Jin ruler to move the capital south and abandon the northern half of his kingdom to the Mongols. In the west, an attack on Kara Kitai in 1218 also ended in the subjugation of this kingdom, and Jengis Khan then stopped there. West of Kara Kitai was a large Muslim empire called Koreshmiy. It controlled the west side of the Caspian Sea and the north of Persia. In 1220, Koreshmiy was also overwhelmed and subdued. These invasions were really very brutal, even for the standards of the time. Cities were looted and burnt, civilians could sometimes be killed and, in any case, abandoned to their fate. This is why the image of Jengis Khan can be controversial in many countries that had to endure his conquests. In Mongolia, he is a hero. In the west, he is regarded as a successful conqueror and eventually admired for this. In many parts of Asia, he is just seen as a bloodthirsty and merciless invader, maybe a bit like Attila is remembered in Europe. But why was the Mongol army so successful? The first explanation is that its opponents were relatively weak, and it is true that when the Mongols started to venture out of their land, they found many entities that were already in trouble or unable to defend themselves effectively. For example, China was divided into several states. The two main ones were the Jeng dynasty in the north and the Song dynasty in the south. It would have been another story if the Mongols had had to face the Tangs a few centuries earlier, when China was united, wealthier and more powerful. It was the same when they reached the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the 13th century. Byzantium was near the end, and the Islamic world was very fragmented. So the circumstances helped, certainly, but so did the characteristics of their army. They were very well organized. Jenghis Khan reorganized the army in units of 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000 soldiers. They were also very fast. They probably had more horses than any other army in the world. There is a theory that the Mongols were helped a lot by a temporary warming of the climate in Central Asia in the 13th century. This warming would have helped multiply the size of the herds. So that was a time of relative abundance for them, and they could have maintained thousands and thousands of horses. And finally, there was their equipment. In the 13th century, China was still relatively advanced technologically. The Mongols were adept at incorporating foreign knowledge and technology into their weaponry. They were very good riders, very good bowmen, and they also used the famous Chinese invention, black powder. They had an early type of artillery and sorts of rockets, more like a military version of fireworks, in fact. But it was extremely impressive and intimidating for their enemies, because they obviously never had seen such a thing on a battlefield. After the conquest of the Choresmion Empire, Genghis didn't stop and pushed further. He split his invasion army into two groups. One went through the north of Persia, then the Caucasus, and reached the Black Sea, whereas he returned to Mongolia with the other half, invading the north of Afghanistan. Genghis Khan arrived back to Mongolia in 1226, after a journey of thousands and thousands of miles, just in time to crush a revolt in the north of China that he had previously conquered. He died in 1227, aged 65. The circumstances of his death are unclear. Maybe he was wounded while hunting, or during a fight, or he fell from a horse. But by August 1227, he was dead. He left a recently and quickly conquered empire that went from China to the Caspian Sea, basically crossing almost all of Asia from east to west. It was the end for him. But for the Mongol Empire, this was just the beginning, and the main question was his succession. Reaching 60 was very respectable in the 13th century, and he had had time to think about his succession in order to avoid a crisis and infighting between his sons. He had four legal heirs. He decided each of them would be a Khan for a region of his empire. For a region of his empire, and they would all pledge allegiance to one of them, Ogudai, who would be the great Khan. This system allowed the empire to resist Genghis Khan's death, and the new ruler of the Mongol empire became Ogudai Khan, who also ruled directly over eastern Asia, including China. His empire would thrive after Genghis Khan's death, thanks to the organization he had put in place and the capabilities of his successors. When Genghis died in 1227, the empire already had an area of 5.2 million square miles. For comparison, the contiguous United States occupy an area of 3.1 million square miles, so the modern United States are about 60 percent of the surface of Genghis Khan's empire at its peak in size in 1309. The very beginning of the 14th century, and 80 years after the death of Genghis Khan, the area would be 9.3 million square miles, three times the contiguous USA. And still more than Russia today, Russia being obviously the biggest country in the world by land area. The biggest challenges to administrate such an empire were the distances and the variety of cultures, languages, and religions. We saw earlier that Genghis Khan was a brutal conqueror, but he was more, and he understood the need for administration and the difficulty it could represent for nomadic invaders, like the Mongols, to manage an empire where most people were sedentary. So he devised a code of laws, and he imposed a system based at least as much on merit as it was on birth, which was quite progressive, if not revolutionary, given that all the countries he conquered, and even the traditional Mongol society, were based a lot on birthrights and privileges associated with social rank. It doesn't mean it was democratic by any means, quite the opposite actually, but any leader and administrator had to endure the same hardships as a general population and obey the same rules. It was also an assembly of chiefs where they could meet the great Khan to discuss policies. Genghis also encouraged the use of a written alphabet in Mongolia, and he tried to favor lawyers and teachers by exempting them from taxes to try and give cohesion to an empire with such different populations. And administrators were sent from China to Muslim provinces to the west, or vice versa, and communication and trade were also encouraged. A mail system was created covering the empire. There were relay posts, typically every 25 miles, where messengers could change horses or pass their messages to another fresh rider. This way, messages could cover about 135 miles per day, close to 200 kilometers, and a message could travel the entire empire in four or five weeks. It sounds like a lot, maybe, but it was remarkable for the time, because traveling from Europe to China typically took several months. Roads were built too, and Genghis Khan quickly understood the advantage of controlling the Silk Road. The Silk Road was a network of trade routes. There was not one single route that connected East Asia with the Middle East. On it, various goods transcended for centuries and centuries. It already existed in the times of the Roman Empire. There was not only silk. There were also precious metals and spices, fabrics, anything that was justified the cost of traveling so far. Foreign merchants were welcome inside the Mongol Empire, including the famous Marco Polo, who made the journey all the way to China at the time of one of Genghis's successors, Hu Blaykhan. Again, we'll talk about it in a minute. The Mongol Empire did not exist long enough to create a real sense of unity between its peoples, but this administration allowed it to work and keep growing long after its founder's death. So Genghis Khan, direct successor, was his son, Ogudaykan. He ruled for 12 years until 1241, but he had long experience as a military leader because, like his brothers, he participated in the wars of the era. He continued what his father had started. He crushed what remained of the Jin Dynasty in the north of China, and he kept pushing westward. On the other side of the empire at this time, the Mongols established a reputation for invincibility. They just never lost. Occasionally they could lose a small battle, but in this case they always came back with a bigger army and they crushed their enemies. This lasted for a very long time. From Genghis Khan's control of Mongolia in 1206 to 1260, that's more than 50 years, the Mongols never left the battlefield accepting defeat. During Oguday's reign, the Mongols attacked Russia and they started adventuring into Eastern Europe against Hungary and even Poland. The problems this empire faced were more internal than external. During this period, constant power struggles arose among the sons of Genghis Khan and their descendants. The system established with several cans under a single great can allowed the empire to endure, but it also laid the groundwork for fragmentation. Over time, each can had his own line of successors, multiplying rival claims and divisions. When Oguday died in 1241, he had named his successor, his son, Guyuk. But in the meantime, because Guyuk had not been confirmed by the assembly of cans, there was a regency by Oguday's widow and some of the cans started to play their own game. The can of the Golden Horde, a grandchild of Genghis Khan who had inherited in the west a territory that is now part of Russia, refused to go to the assembly that would confirm Guyuk's ascension. A brother of Genghis Khan saw a great uncle of Guyuk also tried to seize the throne. Luckily for him, Guyuk had acquired the kind of stature necessary to become the great can. He was experienced on the battlefields and he was respected as a military leader. He was finally elected great can in 1246, but he died in 1248 and the power struggle continued until the election of a new great can in 1251, who was not a descendant from Oguday, but from another son of Genghis Khan, Tolu'i. Despite the rivalries between various branches of Genghis Khan's family, conquests continued. The northern part of China was under the Qing dynasty, when the Mongols started their invasion. The Qing dynasty was now gone, but the southern half of China was under the Song's, another competing dynasty. The Mongols resumed their push in the year 1250, which eventually ended with a conquest of all of China and Tibet. Thousands of miles away from China, they pushed in the Middle East in 1258. They besieged and captured Baghdad. This event, the capture of Baghdad by the Mongols, had an enormous impact in the Islamic world. Baghdad had been one of the most important political centers in the Muslim world since the beginning of Muslim expansion. Many events had happened since then, including political fragmentation and a stop to the expansion of Islam. But this setback came as a huge shock in the Islamic world and was seen as one of the most catastrophic events ever. Mongkukhan died in 1259 and things went downhill from there, in fighting between clans resumed to seize the throne. And for the first time, the Mongols were less successful militarily. Their expansion in the Middle East came to a halt in 1260, at a very important battle, the Battle of Ayun Jalut, against the Mamluks, the rulers of Egypt back then. But the worst was internal still. The civil war between pretenders, the capital of the empire, had been placed in Karakorum, a site which is now in the center of the modern state of Mongolia. It was a new capital which had quickly turned into a major center of world politics, being the capital of the largest and most populated empire ever. The city went into decline after 1260 and was raised in the 14th century, which is why only ruins remain today. One of the pretenders, Kublai, took control of Karakorum and Mongolia. And he proclaimed his right to the throne. It took several years, but he could finally subdu every province and became the effective ruler of the Mongol Empire. The reign of Kublai Khan is almost as famous as Jengis Khan's, because he brought a long period of peace and like a second golden age for the Mongol Empire. It is the time when many more European travelers reached China by land, including Marcapolo, and even though expansion had slowed down, Kublai effectively kept the empire together and at peace internally for years. Now the actual center of the Mongol Empire had become China, even though the empire was way bigger than China alone. The reason is that China was by far the most populated part of the empire, probably more than half the empire population. And it was not just a population, Chinese culture, Chinese culture, administration, its long history, all of these were hard to swallow for a foreign empire. The Mongols had taken over China militarily, but then China somewhat absorbed them, or at least their rulers, culturally. And Kublai accepted it because he needed to win the control of his Chinese subjects. So to integrate his image, he renamed the regime in China the Yuan Dynasty. This dynasty lasted for a century until it was defeated by the Ming's. But for this century, it became the first dynasty of foreign non-Han people. The Han's are the most important ethnic group in China. So the first dynasty of foreigners to rule over all of China. At the same time, Kublai's power over the rest of the empire became more and more nominal. The various Khans administered their regions almost independently. After the death of Kublai in 1294, the empire started to fall apart. It was so big that it had to be decentralized. And once again, various Khans tried to take the throne. Civil war resumed for 10 years until 1309, when the various factions agreed on a peace treaty that would have them recognize the new great Khan, Timur. The center of the empire remained China, as Timur Khan also was a Chinese emperor. Rather than a return to stability, the disagreements between the Khans marked the end of a unified empire. Though they nominally pledged allegiance to the great Khan, they were now effectively independent, ruling their own canades as they saw fit. Four distinct states emerged, still interacting with one another, but no longer combining their resources. In the East, there was the Yuan dynasty with all of China, Korea, Manchuria and Mongolia. There was also the Khanate in Central Asia, Chagatai Khanate, named after Chagatai, one of the Chinese Khans' sons. In the West, the Golden Horde and what is today Ukraine, part of Russia, Eastern Europe and a slice of Central Asia too. And in the Southwest, with Iran and parts of Turkey and the Caucasus, the last state called Ilkhanate. There is no official end date for the Mongol Empire, because it was never conquered or defeated as such by any opponent. It fragmented and disappeared progressively. In the East, the Yuan dynasty lasted a few more decades until the Ming dynasty and the Ming's reversed policy. They opted for isolation for China until the Ming's replaced the Yuan's. In Central Asia, the Chagatai Khanate lasted until 1687, when it was subdued by a new power conquering Central Asia, Russia. Ilkhanate in the Middle East also collapsed rather quickly and was replaced by new states, independent kingdoms like Georgia, the Ottoman Empire or a new dynasty in Persia. And finally, the Golden Horde, which initially was in a position of strength and forced small states to pay tribute, like the Duchy of Moskvy, the embryo of modern Russia. But it declined to in the 15th century and was ultimately absorbed by Russia. Many Mongols who had traveled with the invasions and settled far from Mongolia, gradually adopted local customs, languages and religions, and were ultimately absorbed into the societies around them. The Empire also brought widespread destruction during its conquests, a legacy that endured in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, where it is rarely remembered with nostalgia. Its very existence had consequences in regions it never even reached, like in Western Europe. First, the Mongol Empire is credited or considered responsible for, would be a better term, the quick spread of the Black Death, the plague that killed a third of the European population and the population around the Mediterranean Sea during the Middle Ages. The plague came from Asia and followed routes that were within the Mongol Empire. It probably accelerated the spread of the disease, which in any case would have probably arrived, when the connection that the Mongols achieved between the Far East and Europe also made Europeans aware of how vast the world was. And when the first explorers sailed to the West, it was with the hope of finding a new passage to the mythical land of Cathay, the land of the Great Khan in China. And what about Mongolia? It remained a part of China until 1911, when it declared its independence, when the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, collapsed. The independence was effective in 1921, but almost immediately Mongolia fell under control from recently born Soviet Union. In 1924, it became a socialist state, the Mongolian People's Republic. It remained a communist country until the 1990s, when it made a peaceful revolution, transitioning to a market economy and a multi-party system. Mongolia today has just over three and a half million inhabitants, almost half of them live in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and about a third still have a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle. We have come to the end of our little journey tonight. I hope you enjoyed this adventure, and I invite you to discover and learn more. Now you can let go and sleep, or if you're not sleepy yet, you may pick another story from my ever-growing library. And until we meet again, good night, sleep well.