50 Fun Facts About The Mongol Empire

What record does the Mongol Empire hold in world history?

At its height it stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe; the British Empire was larger overall but scattered across oceans.

What was Genghis Khan's birth name?

He was born around 1162; his father Yesugei was poisoned by Tatars and the family was abandoned on the steppe.

In what year did a kurultai proclaim Temüjin ruler of all the Mongols?

The shaman Teb Tenggeri proclaimed him khan of the Great Mongol Nation; the meaning of the title Genghis is still uncertain.

What is a kurultai?

All princes of Genghis's line had to attend one to choose a successor, which is why armies withdrew when a great khan died.

Genghis Khan reorganised the army and society on what numerical system?

Favoured followers, some of low birth, were given command of ninety-five minqad, units of a thousand.

What was the name of the law code Genghis Khan proclaimed?

It forbade selling women, theft, fighting among Mongols and hunting animals in the breeding season.

Which people's writing system did Genghis Khan adopt for Mongolian?

The Uyghur scribe Tata-tonga was ordered to teach his sons, and the resulting Mongolian script is still used in Mongolia.

Which two groups did Genghis exempt from taxation?

He also decreed religious freedom for his subjects, though he was a shamanist himself.

Which Central Asian state did Genghis invade after its ruler executed his envoys?

The campaign devastated Transoxiana and Khorasan, and Jebe and Subutai rode on as far as Georgia and Kievan Rus'.

What happened to Genghis Khan's body after his death in 1227?

He died while subduing the rebellious Western Xia; his empire already stretched from the Pacific to the Caspian.

Which son did Genghis Khan name as his heir?

His third son took the throne in 1229 after Tolui's two-year regency.

Why was the paternity of Genghis's eldest son Jochi in doubt?

The raid was revenge for Yesugei's abduction of Hö'elün; Jochi's line later ruled the Golden Horde.

Which city did the Mongols establish as their capital in 1235?

It stayed the capital until 1260; its ruins lie beside the Erdene Zuu monastery in the Orkhon Valley.

What did the Parisian goldsmith Guillaume Boucher build in the Mongol capital for Möngke Khan?

Its pipes poured various drinks and it was topped by a triumphant angel.

Which Chinese dynasty did Ögedei's armies destroy in 1234, capturing Kaifeng?

The Song helped finish off the Jin, then became the Mongols' next target for forty years.

Which Rus' principality was the first the Mongols attacked in 1237?

After a three-day siege they massacred the inhabitants; by 1240 nearly all Kievan Rus' had fallen.

Which grandson of Genghis Khan led the invasion of Rus' and Europe?

His territories became the Golden Horde, ruled by the descendants of Jochi.

At the Battle of the Kalka River in 1223, how were the defeated Rus' princes killed?

Jebe and Subutai's reconnaissance in force had reached Ukraine after circling the Caspian.

Which Hungarian king was defeated by the Mongols at Mohi on the Sajó river in April 1241?

Two days earlier a Polish-Moravian force under Henry the Pious had been crushed at Legnica in Silesia.

What news halted the Mongol advance on Vienna in 1241?

All princes had to return for a kurultai, though historians now think climate and Europe's castles also played a part.

Who ruled the empire as regent after Ögedei's death, securing the election of her son Güyük?

She persecuted her husband's Khitan and Muslim officials and built palaces and cathedrals on an imperial scale.

Which Christian princess raised all four of her sons, including Möngke and Kublai, to rule?

A Keraite member of the Church of the East, she secretly warned Batu when Güyük marched west in 1248.

Möngke's 1251 election shifted power from Ögedei's line to descendants of which son of Genghis?

A purge followed; estimates of executed Mongol elites range from 77 to 300.

Which brother of Möngke sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid Caliphate?

Hulagu later put the death toll at around 200,000; the sack is ranked among the great catastrophes of Islamic history.

How was the last Abbasid caliph, al-Musta'sim, executed by the Mongols?

Spilling royal blood was a great taboo for the Mongols, hence the carpet.

Which battle of 1260 marked the western limit of Mongol expansion in the Middle East?

The Egyptian Mamluks defeated Kitbuqa's force just north of Galilee after Hulagu had withdrawn most of his army.

Who defeated the Mongols at Ain Jalut?

Sultan Qutuz had answered Hulagu's envoys by killing them and displaying their heads on a Cairo gate.

Which two brothers fought the Toluid Civil War of 1260 to 1264 after rival kurultais elected them both?

Ariq Böke surrendered at Xanadu in August 1264, but the empire never fully reunited.

Into which four khanates had the empire fractured by Kublai's death in 1294?

In 1304 the three western khanates accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Yuan.

What Han-style dynastic name did Kublai proclaim by edict in December 1271?

By 1279 he had finished off the Song and become the first non-Han emperor to rule all of China proper.

What was Kublai's summer capital, immortalised in Coleridge's poem?

His main capital was Khanbaliq, also called Dadu, on the site of modern Beijing.

What was the Jiaochao that Kublai created in August 1260?

Bills had no expiry date, were convertible into silver and gold, and taxes could be paid in them.

What destroyed Kublai's invasion fleets against Japan in 1274 and 1281?

The Japanese called the storms kamikaze, "divine wind".

Which Southeast Asian kingdom defeated Mongol invasions in 1258, 1285 and 1287?

The Trần dynasty repelled Uryankhadai and later Kublai's armies, though it accepted vassal status.

What was the Yam?

Riders changed horses every 40 km at posts called örtöö and could cover 200 km a day, faster than the Pony Express six centuries later.

What tablet allowed a traveller to claim horses and rations at the relay stations?

News of a great khan's death in Karakorum reached Batu's army in Central Europe within four to six weeks.

What was the ortoq system?

Mongol investors even partnered with Italian merchant families such as the Polos.

What is the oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolian language?

Written for the royal family after 1227, it covers Genghis's origins through the reign of Ögedei.

Which Ilkhan commissioned the Jami' al-tawarikh, a "Universal History", in the early 14th century?

Ghazan converted the Ilkhanate to Islam in 1295, understood four languages including Latin, and built the Tabriz Observatory.

Which was the first of the four khanates to fall, disintegrating between 1335 and 1353?

The Yuan lost China in 1368, the Golden Horde's grip on Russia ended in 1480 and the Chagatai lasted until 1687.

Which event of 1480 traditionally marks the end of Mongol rule over Russia?

The Grand Duchy of Moscow, which had grown rich collecting Mongol tribute, faced down the Great Horde and won its independence.

Which Chinese dynasty drove the Yuan out of Dadu in 1368?

The Genghisid rulers retreated to the Mongolian Plateau as the Northern Yuan, surviving until the 1630s.

What was the normal range of the Mongol composite bow?

In favourable conditions it could reach 530 metres; the feigned retreat was the Mongols' most famous tactic.

At the 1347 siege of Caffa, what did the Mongol army reportedly catapult over the walls?

Fleeing Genoese ships are thought to have carried the Black Death into southern Europe.

Which Franciscan missionary travelled to Möngke's court in Mongolia, leaving a famous account?

The Uyghur monk Rabban Bar Sauma made the reverse journey, from Beijing to Europe.

A 2003 genetic study suggested what share of men worldwide directly descend from Genghis Khan?

In Mongolia itself the figure was put at 8 percent of men.

Which boyhood friend of Temüjin, later a rival chieftain, decisively defeated him in 1187?

Temüjin took refuge in China and returned in 1196 with Jin backing; Jamukha was finally executed after the Naimans' defeat.

Which Uyghur scribe did Genghis Khan order to teach his sons the script adopted for Mongolian?

Tata-tonga had previously served the khan of the Naimans before the Mongols absorbed that tribe.

Which ruler of the Golden Horde allied with the Mamluks and went to war with his cousin Hulagu from 1262?

A Muslim convert, he was angered by Hulagu's massacres of Muslims and the suspicious deaths of Jochid princes in Hulagu's service.

Which Uyghur monk travelled the Silk Road from Khanbaliq as far as Europe in the Mongol era?

His journey westward mirrored Marco Polo's eastward one, though few travellers ever covered the route's full length.