Jochi

The eldest of Genghis Khan's sons by his chief wife Börte, Jochi (c. 1182-1227) became the ancestor of the Golden Horde, the Mongol state that dominated the western steppe and the Russian principalities for more than two centuries. His birth followed closely upon Börte's rescue from captivity among the Merkits, and the resulting doubt about his paternity, voiced most sharply by his brother Chagatai, ran through the family's politics. Genghis Khan acknowledged him without reservation, but the dispute contributed to the choice of the third son, Ögedei, as imperial heir.

Jochi's military career began with the campaigns that consolidated Mongol rule over the peoples of the Siberian forest zone, whose submission he received in 1207. He later commanded forces in the war against the Jin dynasty in north China and played a major part in the conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire from 1219, operating along the Syr Darya and sharing in the long and bitter siege of Urgench with his brothers Chagatai and Ögedei. The quarrels between Jochi and Chagatai during that siege became notorious, and Genghis Khan placed Ögedei in overall command to keep peace between them.

In the distribution of the empire among his sons, Genghis Khan assigned Jochi the westernmost territories — the steppes of the Kipchaks and the lands beyond, extending, in the chroniclers' phrase, as far as Mongol horses had trodden. In his final years Jochi remained in these western pastures, and the sources hint at an estrangement from his father, who reportedly suspected him of withholding himself from campaigns. Whatever the truth of those reports, Jochi died in early 1227, some months before Genghis Khan himself, forestalling any open breach.

His enormous appanage passed to his sons, chief among them Batu, who led the great invasion of eastern Europe in 1236-1242 and forged the Jochid lands into the Golden Horde, and Orda, whose descendants ruled its eastern wing. The Jochid khans became one of the four great branches of the Chinggisid dynasty, alongside the Chagataids of Central Asia, the Yuan emperors descended from Tolui's son Kublai, and the Ilkhans of Persia descended from Tolui's son Hulagu — with whom Jochi's descendant Berke fought the first great war between branches of the family. Later rulers from the khans of Kazan and Crimea to the founders of the Kazakh khanate claimed descent from Jochi.