Mongol Empire

Succession of rulers

1. 1.Genghis Khanr. 1206 – 1227
2. 2.Chagatai Khanr. 1226 – 1242
3. 3.Ögedei Khanr. 1229 – 1241
4. 4.Töregene Khatunr. 1241 – 1246
5. 5.Güyük Khanr. 1246 – 1248
6. 6.Möngke Khanr. 1251 – 1259
7. 7.Kublai Khanr. 1260 – 1294
8. 8.Toghon Temürr. 1333 – 1368

Rulers of the Mongol Empire in order of accession.

All figures

• Borte1161 – 1230
• Genghis Khan1162 – 1227
• Jochi1182 – 1227
• Chagatai Khan1183 – 1242
• Töregene Khatun1185 – 1246
• Ögedei Khan1186 – 1241
• Sorghaghtani Beki1190 – 1252
• Tolui1191 – 1232
• Güyük Khan1206 – 1248
• Batu Khan1207 – 1255
• Möngke Khan1209 – 1259
• Kublai Khan1215 – 1294
• Hulagu Khan1218 – 1265
• Toghon Temür1320 – 1370

See who ruled alongside the Mongol Empire →

Related events

• Conflict

  Sack of Baghdad

  1258· this dynasty: victor

  After a twelve-day siege, the Mongol army of Hulagu Khan stormed Baghdad on 10 February 1258. They sacked the city for a week, butchering perhaps two hundred thousand inhabitants and throwing the books of the great libraries into the Tigris until, the chronicles say, the river ran black with ink. The last Abbasid caliph, al-Musta'sim, was rolled in a carpet and trampled to death by horses, ending the caliphate that had ruled the Islamic east for half a millennium.

  Also involved: Abbasid Caliphate (destroyed)

• Conflict

  Battle of Ain Jalut

  1260· this dynasty: Defeated; its westward expansion was checked

  The campaign that ended at Ain Jalut began with the westward offensive of Hulagu Khan, brother of the great khan Möngke, who had been charged with subduing the Islamic lands. In 1258 his army sacked Baghdad and put the last reigning Abbasid caliph, al-Musta'sim, to death, extinguishing a caliphate that had stood for five centuries. In early 1260 the Mongols took Aleppo by storm and received the surrender of Damascus. The Ayyubid ruler of Syria, an-Nasir Yusuf, abandoned his capital without a battle, fled south, and was captured; he was later killed in Mongol custody. Ayyubid Syria had ceased to exist as a power. Hulagu then withdrew the bulk of his army eastward, a movement usually connected to the death of Möngke in 1259 and the succession struggle that followed, though logistical limits on pasturing a large cavalry army in Syria may have weighed as heavily. He left a force of perhaps ten to twenty thousand under the Naiman commander Kitbuqa and sent envoys to Cairo demanding submission. The Mamluk sultan Qutuz executed the envoys and marched into Palestine, joined by the émigré commander Baybars. The armies met on 3 September 1260 at Ain Jalut, the "Spring of Goliath," in the Jezreel Valley of Galilee. The Mamluks, fielding numbers at least equal to the Mongol force, drew Kitbuqa's troops forward with a feigned retreat and enveloped them; Kitbuqa was captured and executed. The defeat was modest in scale but large in consequence: it was the first major battlefield reverse of the Mongol westward expansion not soon avenged, it fixed the Euphrates as the rough frontier between the Mamluk sultanate and Hulagu's Ilkhanate, and it delivered Muslim Syria to the Mamluks. Qutuz was assassinated on the homeward march, and Baybars took the throne.

  Also involved: Ayyubid Dynasty (Syrian branch destroyed in the preceding Mongol invasion), Abbasid Caliphate (Extinguished at Baghdad in 1258, during the same Mongol offensive)

• Succession

  Founding of the Yuan Dynasty

  1271· this dynasty: parent regime

  Kublai Khan proclaimed the Yuan dynasty on 18 December 1271, adopting a Chinese-style reign name and presenting his Mongol regime to his subjects as the legitimate successor to the Chinese imperial tradition. The Southern Song dynasty held out for another eight years before its final collapse at Yamen, completing the first foreign conquest of all China.

  Also involved: Yuan (founded)

See also