The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire
In 1251 a three years’ interregnum in the headship of the Mongol empire was terminated by the election as Great Khan of Möngke, the eldest son of Chinggis Khan’s fourth son Tolui. That this event represented a political coup of the first order is clear from the reaction which it provoked. Previously the dignity of Great Khan had remained in the family of Chinggis Khan’s third son Ögedei, who had been succeeded, after a long interregnum, by his own eldest son Güyüg. This branch of imperial dynasty now took up arms against the new sovereign, only to be ruthlessly suppressed. By this means Möngke’s supremacy in the eastern half of the empire was assured. In the west the power of the «Golden Horde», ruled by the house of Jochi, Chinggis Khan’s firstborn son, was if anything enhanced: the chief of this branch, Batu, to whose support Möngke owed his election, exercised with the new Qa’an a sort of condominium. Möngke followed the practice of his predecessors in launching a series of fresh military campaigns against those regions of Asia which remained unconquered. He himself devoted his main energies to continuing the subjugation of China; while a vast expedition commanded by a third brother, Hülegü, overthrew the Assassins in their mountain strongholds south of the Caspian, sacked Baghdad and murdered the Caliph, and rolled onwards through Iraq into Syria. For a time it appeared that the entire Islamic world succumb to this threat; then events further east supervened. Within a space of three years, the Mongol empire was torn apart by two major wars between members of the imperial family. Möngke’s death unleashed a struggle for the succession on the part of Qubilai and Tolui’s fourth son, Arigh-böke, of whom the former was victorious only after a five years’ war which spread from Mongolia into Central Asia. At the same time the new Mongol power in Iran clashed with its neighbours beyond the Caucasus, the Golden Horde, now ruled by Batu’s brother, the Muslim convert Berke. The effect of the rivalry of these two westernmost divisions of the empire on the Mongol advance in the Near East, which had already been checked by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt in two engagements, at Ayn Jalut and at Hims, in 1260, was profound. Hülegü had withdrawn eastwards with the bulk of his army in order, presumably, to keep watch on the succession dispute in Mongolia. In view of the threat from the Golden Horde, neither he nor the later monarchs of the dynasty he founded in Iran (the «Ilkhans») were ever able to concentrate their efforts on the overthrow of the Mamluks, with whom Berke soon made an alliance (1263). This study is an attempt to explain the halting of the Mongol advance around 1260-2 in terms of the history of the Mongols over the preceding decades. If we are to seek causes for the loss of momentum in the Mongol assault on the Islamic world, we must look rather at circumstances within the empire than at local military factors such as reverses in Syria. The two civil wars were, each in its own way, decisive events in the history of the Near East and Islam. Yet the exact connection between them, and their own relationship to the previous growth of the Mongol empire, stand in need of some elucidation.