Ögedei Khan

Ögedei Khan, the third son of Genghis Khan and his chief wife Börte, ruled the Mongol Empire as its second great khan from 1229 to 1241. Born in 1186, he was designated heir by his father, who reportedly valued his generosity and ability to mediate among his quarrelsome brothers, particularly the long-standing feud between Jochi and Chagatai. After an interregnum following Genghis Khan's death in 1227, a kurultai confirmed Ögedei's election in 1229.

His reign consolidated and extended the conquests of his father. Mongol armies completed the destruction of the Jin dynasty in northern China in 1234, acting in temporary alliance with the Song dynasty, and campaigns continued in Korea, Persia, and the Caucasus. The most far-reaching enterprise of the reign was the great western campaign launched in 1236 under his nephew Batu, son of Jochi, with the veteran general Subutai. This army subjugated Volga Bulgaria and the Rus principalities, sacking Kiev in 1240, and in 1241 defeated Polish and Hungarian forces at Legnica and Mohi.

As an administrator, Ögedei gave the empire a fixed center. He built the capital of Karakorum in the Orkhon valley, expanded the yam postal relay network, standardized taxation with the help of advisers such as the Khitan statesman Yelü Chucai, and supported trade along the routes linking China with Central Asia and the West. Contemporary sources also record his heavy drinking, which his courtiers attempted without success to restrain and which likely contributed to his death.

Ögedei died in December 1241, an event with consequences across Eurasia: Batu's forces, then in Hungary, withdrew eastward as Mongol leaders turned to the question of succession, and Western Europe was never again invaded. The succession itself proved divisive. Ögedei's widow Töregene governed as regent until the election of their son Güyük in 1246, but Güyük's early death reopened the contest. In 1251 the throne passed from Ögedei's descendants to the line of his brother Tolui, when Möngke was elected with Batu's backing. From the Toluid line came Kublai, founder of the Yuan dynasty, and Hulagu, founder of the Ilkhanate, while Ögedei's own descendants, notably Kaidu, contested Toluid supremacy in Central Asia for decades.