1.
Ilkhanate
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The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate, was established as a khanate that formed the southwestern sector of the Mongol Empire, ruled by the Mongol House of Hulagu. It was founded in the 13th century and was based primarily in Iran as well as neighboring territories, such as present-day Azerbaijan and the central and eastern parts of present-day Turkey. The Ilkhanate was originally based on the campaigns of Genghis Khan in the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219–24 and was founded by Hulagu Khan, with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate. At its greatest extent, the state expanded into territories that comprise most of Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Turkey, western Afghanistan. Later Ilkhanate rulers, beginning with Ghazan in 1295, would convert to Islam, according to the historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, Kublai Khan granted Hulagu the title of Ilkhan after his defeat of Ariq Böke. The term il-Khan means subordinate khan and refers to their initial deference to Möngke Khan, the title Ilkhan, borne by the descendants of Hulagu and later other Borjigin princes in Persia, does not materialize in the sources until after 1260. When Muhammad II of Khwarezm executed a contingent of merchants dispatched by the Mongols, the Mongols overran the empire, occupying the major cities and population centers between 1219 and 1221. Persian Iraq was ravaged by the Mongol detachment under Jebe and Subedei, Transoxiana also came under Mongol control after the invasion. The undivided area west of the Transoxiana was the inheritance of Genghis Khans Borjigin family, thus, the families of the latters four sons appointed their officials under the Great Khans governors, Chin-Temür, Nussal, and Korguz, in that region. Muhammads son Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu returned to Iran in c.1224 after his exile in India, the rival Turkic states, which were all that remained of his fathers empire, quickly declared their allegiance to Jalal. He repulsed the first Mongol attempt to take Central Persia, however, Jalal ad-Din was overwhelmed and crushed by Chormaqans army sent by the Great Khan Ögedei in 1231. During the Mongol expedition, Azerbaijan and the southern Persian dynasties in Fars and Kerman voluntarily submitted to the Mongols, to the west, Hamadan and the rest of Persia was secured by Chormaqan. The Mongols invaded Armenia and Georgia in 1234 or 1236, completing the conquest of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1238 and they began to attack the western parts of Greater Armenia, which was under the Seljuks, the following year. In 1236 Ögedei was commanded to raise up Khorassan and proceeded to populate Herat, the Mongol military governors mostly made camp in the Mughan plain in what is now Azerbaijan. Realizing the danger posed by the Mongols, the rulers of Mosul, Chormaqan divided the Transcaucasia region into three districts based on the Mongol military hierarchy. In Georgia, the population was divided into eight tumens. By 1237 the Mongol Empire had subjugated most of Persia, Armenia, Georgia, as well as all of Afghanistan and Kashmir. After the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, the Mongols under Baiju occupied Anatolia, while the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm and the Empire of Trebizond became vassals of the Mongols
2.
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani
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Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb, also known as Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī, was a statesman, historian and physician in Ilkhanate-ruled Iran. He was born into a Persian Jewish family from Hamadan, having converted to Islam by the age of 30, Rashid al-Din became the powerful vizier of the Ilkhan, Ghazan. Later he was commissioned by Ghazan to write the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh, now considered the most important single source for the history of the Ilkhanate period and he retained his position as a vizier until 1316. After being charged with poisoning the Ilkhanid king Öljaitü, he was executed in 1318, historian Morris Rossabi calls Rashid-al-Din arguably the most distinguished figure in Persia during Mongolian rule. He was an author and established the Rab-e Rashidi academic foundation in Tabriz. Rashid al-Din was born into a Persian Jewish family in Hamadan and his grandfather had been a courtier to the founder Ilkhanate ruler Hulagu Khan, and Rashid al-Dins father was an apothecary at the court. He converted to Islam around the age of thirty, Rashid was trained as a physician and started service under Hulagus son, Abaqa Khan. He rose to become the Grand Vizier of the Ilkhanid court at Soltaniyeh and his son, Ghiyas al-Din ibn Rashid al-Din, briefly served as vizier after him. Rashid was assisted by Bolad, a Mongol nobleman who was the emissary of the Great Khan to the Ilkhanid court, Bolad provided him with much background about Mongol history, especially about the Borjigin clan. The Compendium was completed between 1307 and 1316, during the reign of Öljaitü, the work was executed at the elaborate scriptorium Rab-e Rashidi at Qazvin, where a large team of calligraphers and illustrators were employed to produce lavishly illustrated books. These books could also be copied, while preserving accuracy, using a printing process imported from China, the work was at the time of completion, c. Several sections have not survived or been discovered, volumes I and II of the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh have survived and are of great importance for the study of the Ilkhanate. In his narration down to the reign of Möngke Khan, Ata-Malik Juvayni was Rashid al-Dins main source, however, he also utilized numerous now-lost Far Eastern, the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh is perhaps the single most comprehensive Persian source on the Mongol period. For the period of Genghis Khan, his sources included the now lost Altan Debter Golden Book and his treatment of the Ilkhanid period seems to be biased, as he himself was a high official, yet it is still seen as the most valuable written source for the dynasty. The third volume is either lost or was never completed, its topic was historical geography and this was the product of the geographical extension of the Mongol Empire, and is most clearly reflected in this work by Rashid al-Din. The text describes the different peoples with whom the Mongols came into contact and is one of the first attempts to transcend a single cultural perspective, the Jāmiʿ attempted to provide a history of the whole world of that era, though many parts are sadly lost. Rashid al-Din also collected all of his compositions into a volume, entitled Jami al-Tasanif al-Rashidi, complete with maps. He even had some of his works, on medicine and government
3.
Abaqa Khan
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Abaqa Khan, was the second Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate. The son of Hulagu Khan and Lady Yesünčin, he reigned from 1265 to 1282 and was succeeded by his brother Tekuder, much of Abaqas reign was consumed with civil wars in the Mongol Empire, such as those between the Ilkhanate and the northern khanate of the Golden Horde. Abaqa also engaged in attempts at military invasion of Syria. Abaqa was born in Mongolia in February 1234, son of Ilkhanate founder Hulagu Khan and his stepmother was Hulagus Keraite princess bride, Doquz Khatun. Doquz, a devout Nestorian Christian, was regarded as a leader of the Mongols. Abaqa himself was marginally Buddhist, though he was very sympathetic to Christianity due to his mothers influence. A favored son of Hulagu, he was governor of Turkestan. Hulagu died from illness in 1265, before his death, he had been negotiating with the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to add a daughter of the Byzantine imperial family to Hulagus number of wives. Michael VIII had selected his illegitimate daughter Maria Palaiologina, who was dispatched in 1265, escorted by the abbot of Pantokrator monastery, historian Steven Runciman relates how she was accompanied by the Patriarch Euthymius of Antioch. Since Hulagu died before she arrived, she was married to Hulagus son. He received her hand in marriage when he was installed as Ilkhan, when Hulagus wife Doquz Khatun died in 1265 as well, the role of spiritual leader transferred to Maria, who was called Despina Khatun by the Mongols. It was Abaqa who decided on the permanent location for the Ilkhanate capital, Tabriz, Abaqa took power four months after the death of his father, and then spent the next several months redistributing fiefs and governorships. Some of the coins from Abaqas era display the Christian cross, and bear in Arabic the Christian inscription In the name of the Father, the Son, since Hulagus reign, the Mongols of the Ilkhanate had been at war with the Mongols of the Golden Horde. This continued into Abaqas reign, and the Golden Horde invaded the Ilkhanate in the Spring after his accession, the hostilities continued until the death of the Golden Hordes khan Berke, in 1267. The Great Khan Kublai attempted to intervene, to civil war, and due to his influence. However, Möngke Temür still established an alliance with the Egyptian Mamluk sultan Baibars promising that he would attack Abagha, however, at the same time, Möngke Temür also sent envoys to congratulate Abagha when the Ilkhan defeated Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq. In 1270, he allowed Mengu-Timur to collect his revenues from workshops in Iran, Ögedeis grandson Kaidu, Batus grandson Mengu-Timur and Baraq of the Chagatai Khanate formed an alliance against Kublai Khan and Abagha in Talas. They appointed Kaidu a ruler of Central Asia, the Kaidu–Kublai war lasted for a few decades
4.
Lake Urmia
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Lake Urmia is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan in Iran, and west of the portion of the Caspian Sea. At its full size, it was the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth with an area of approximately 5,200 km2,140 km length,55 km width. The lake has shrunk to 10% of its size due to damming of the rivers that flow into it. Urmia Lake, along with its once approximately 102 islands, are protected as a park by the Iranian Department of Environment. Currently, the lake is named after the capital city of Urmia. However, in the early 1930s, it was called Lake Rezaiyeh after Reza Shah Pahlavi, after the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s the lake was renamed Urmia. Its Old Persian name was Chichast, in medieval times it came to be known as Lake Kabuda, from the word for azure in Persian, or կապույտ in Armenian. Its Latin name was Lacus Matianus so it is referred to in texts as Lake Matianus or Lake Matiene. Locally, the lake is referred to in Persian as دریاچه ارومیه, Daryāche-ye Orūmiye, in Azerbaijani as Urmu gölü, ﺍﻭﺭﻣﻮ ﮔﺆﻟﻮ, the traditional Armenian name is Կապուտան ծով, Kaputan tsov, literally blue sea. One of the mentions of Urmia Lake is from the Assyrian records from 9th century BC. There, in the records of Shalmaneser III, two names are mentioned in the area of Urmia Lake, Parsuwash and Matai and it is not completely clear whether these referred to places or tribes or what their relationship was to the subsequent list of personal names and kings. But Matais were Medes and linguistically the name Parsuwash matches the Old Persian word pārsa, the lake was the center of the Mannaean Kingdom. A potential Mannaean settlement, represented by the mound of Hasanlu, was on the south side of the lake. Mannae was overrun by the people who were called Matiani or Matieni and it is not clear whether the lake took its name from the people or the people from the lake, but the country came to be called Matiene or Matiane, and gave the lake its Latin name. The main cations in the water include Na+, K+, Ca2+, Li+ and Mg2+, while Cl−, SO2−4. The Na+ and Cl− concentration is roughly four times the concentration of natural seawater, sodium ions are at slightly higher concentration in the south compared to the north of the lake, which could result from the shallower depth in the south, and a higher net evaporation rate. The lake is divided north and south, separated by a causeway in which a 1. 5-kilometre gap provides little exchange of water between the two parts
5.
Doquz Khatun
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Doquz Khatun was a 13th-century princess of the Keraites who was married to Hulagu Khan, founder of the Ilkhanate. Their son, Abaqa Khan, succeeded Hulagu upon his death and she was known to accompany Hulagu on campaigns. At the Siege of Baghdad, the Mongols massacred tens of thousands of inhabitants, but through the influence of Doquz, Doquz Khatun was a Christian in the Church of the East, and is often mentioned as a great benefactor of the Christian faith. She died in 1265, the year as her husband. Christianity among the Mongols Runciman, Steven, the Mongols and the West, 1221-1410
6.
Tekuder
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Ahmed Tekuder, also known as Sultan Ahmad, was the sultan of the Persian-based Ilkhanate, son of Hulegu and brother of Abaqa. He was eventually succeeded by his nephew Arghun Khan, Tekuder was born Nikola Tekuder Khan, and was baptized in his childhood as a Nestorian Christian. However, Tekuder later converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmed, when Tekuder assumed the throne in 1282, he turned the Ilkhanate into a sultanate. Tekuder zealously propagated his new faith and sternly required his ranking officers to do the same. However, his nephew Arghun, the governor of Khorasan, was a Buddhist, and asked Kublai Khan, the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, for help. Although, Kublai was angry with the situation, Arghun had to overthrow Tekuder himself given that the Great Khans empire was far away from Persia, Tekuder sent a friendly letter to the Mamluk sultan and wished for peace. His conversion to Islam and good ties with the Mamluks were not viewed well by Mongol nobles, when Arghun received no reply, he declared war against Tekuder. Tekuder requested help from the Mamluk Sultan but the Mamluks did not fully co-operate with Tekuder, having a small and inferior army, Tekuder was defeated by Arghuns larger army, and he was eventually executed on August 10,1284. The Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire
7.
Dynasty
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A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
8.
Borjigin
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Borjigin, is the last name of the imperial clan of Genghis Khan and his successors. The senior Borjigids provided ruling princes for Mongolia and Inner Mongolia until the 20th century, the clan formed the ruling class among the Mongols and some other peoples of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Today, the Borjigid are found in most of Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, the patrilineage began with Blu-grey Wolf and Fallow Doe. As in The Secret History of the Mongols, their 11th generation descendant Dobu Mergens widow Alan Gua the Fair was impregnated by a ray of light and her youngest son became the ancestor of the later Borjigid. He was Bodonchar Munkhag, who along with his brothers sired the entire Mongol nation, according to Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, many of the older Mongolian clans were founded by members of the Borjigin — Barlas, Urud, Manghud, Taichiut, Chonos, Kiyat, etc. The first Khan of the Mongol was Bodonchar Munkhags great-great-grandson Khaidu Khan, khaidus grandsons Khabul Khan and Ambaghai Khan succeeded him. Thereafter, Qabuls sons, Hotula Khan and Yesugei, and great-grandson Temujin ruled the Khamag Mongol, by the unification of the Mongols in 1206, virtually all of Temujins uncles and first cousins died, and from then on only the descendants of Yesugei Baghatur formed the Borjigid. The Borjigin family ruled over the Mongol Empire from the 13th to 14th century, the rise of Genghis narrowed the scope of the Borjigid-Kiyad clans sharply. This separation was emphasized by the intermarriage of Genghiss descendants with the Barlas, Baarin, Manghud, in the western regions of the Empire, the Jurkin and perhaps other lineages near to Genghiss lineage used the clan name Kiyad but did not share in the privileges of the Genghisids. The Borjigit clan had dominated large lands stretching from Java to Iran. In 1335, with the disintegration of the Ilkhanate in Iran, descendants of Genghis Khans brothers, Hasar and Belgutei, surrendered to the Ming in the 1380s. By 1470 the Borjigin lines were weakened, and Mongolia was almost in chaos. After the breakup of the Golden Horde, the Khiyat continued to rule the Crimea and they were annexed by the Russian Empire and the Chinese. In Mongolia, the Kublaids reigned as Khagan of the Mongols, however, descendants of Ögedei, under Dayan Khan a broad Borjigid revival reestablished Borjigid supremacy among the Mongols proper. His descendants proliferated to become a new ruling class, the Borjigin clan was the strongest of the 49 Mongol banners from which the Bontoi clan proper supported and fought for their Khan and for their honor. The eastern Khorchins were under the Hasarids, and the Ongnigud, Abagha Mongols were under the Belguteids, a fragment of the Hasarids deported to Western Mongolia became the Khoshuts. The Qing dynasty respected the Borjigin family and the early emperors married the Hasarid Borjigids of the Khorchin, even among the pro-Qing Mongols, traces of the alternative tradition survived. Aci Lomi, a general, wrote his History of the Borjigid Clan in 1732–35
9.
Tolui
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Tolui, was the fourth son of Genghis Khan by his chief khatun Börte. He is an ancestor of most of the Emperors of Mongolia. Tolui never used the title of Khagan himself, neither Genghis Khan nor his three successors ever use any reigning titles unlike the neighboring Chinese dynasties in the south. Tolui was awarded the title of Khagan by his son Möngke and was given a name by his other son Kublai. During the rise of Genghis Khan, Tolui was too young to be involved in the battles, Tolui was almost killed by a Tatar when he was about five years of age. He was saved by his sister Altani and two companions of Genghis, in 1203, His father bestowed on Tolui his wife Sorghaghtani, the niece of Ong Khan. Their first son Möngke was born in 1209 and he first entered combat against the Jin dynasty in 1213, scaling the walls of Dexing with his brother-in-law Chiqu. In 1221, Genghis Khan dispatched him to Khorasan in Iran, the cities in this area had revolted several times. The defenders of Nishapur killed Toquchar, the brother-in-law of Tolui in November 1220, Toluis army evacuated Nishapur onto the plains. He ordered the total massacres of Nishapur and Merv, when Genghis Khan was deciding who should succeed him, he had trouble choosing between his four sons. Tolui had amazing military skills and was successful as a general, but Genghis Khan chose Ögodei. Genghis Khan felt that Tolui would be too cautious to be an effective leader, Tolui was with his father on campaign against Xi Xia in 1227. After Genghis Khans death, Tolui generally supervised the Mongol Empire for two years, Tolui supported the choice of the next Khagan by election, and Ögedei was chosen, fulfilling his fathers wishes. Tolui campaigned with Ögedei in north China, serving as strategist, two armies had been dispatched to besiege Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin. After most of the Jins defences were breached, they returned north, according to The Secret History of the Mongols, Tolui sacrificed himself in order to cure Ögödei from a very severe illness during a campaign in China. The shamans had determined that the root of Ögödeis illness were Chinas spirits of earth and water, offering land, animals, and people had only led to an aggravation of Ögödeis illness, but when they offered to sacrifice a family member, Ögödei got better immediately. Tolui volunteered and died directly after consuming a cursed drink, however, Ata-Malik Juvayni says he died from alcoholism. Perhaps more important than himself was the role of his family, through his Nestorian Christian wife Sorghaghtani Beki, Tolui fathered Möngke, Kublai, Ariq Böke, and Hulagu
10.
Sorghaghtani Beki
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Sorghaghtani Beki or Bekhi, also written Sorkaktani, Sorkhokhtani, Sorkhogtani, Siyurkuktiti was a Keraite princess and daughter-in-law of Genghis Khan. Married to Tolui, Genghis youngest son, Sorghaghtani Beki became one of the most powerful, Sorghaghtani Beki was a Christian, specifically a member of the Church of the East. Sorghaghtani was the daughter of Jakha Gambhu, the brother of the powerful Keraite leader Toghrul. However, Toghrul refused this alliance, and later attempted to kill the increasingly powerful Temüjin through an invitation to discuss this proposal, however, Temüjin discovered this plan and they escaped at the last moment. Eventually, the Keraites were routed in the war and Toghrul was killed. Unlike his brother, Jakha usually supported Temüjin and gave his two daughters to him and one daughter to Genghis Khans oldest son Jochi. Genghis married the elder of the daughters, and gave young Sorghaghtani, Sorghaghtanis father Jakha was probably killed when the Keraites revolted against Genghis Khan in 1204. Like most Mongol women of the time, Sorghaghtani wielded great authority at home, Mongol women had far more rights than in many other cultures at the time, especially since the men were often away and they were the ones responsible for the home. Although she herself was illiterate, she recognized the value of literacy in running such a far-flung empire, each of her sons learned a different language for different regions. Sorghaghtani, a Nestorian Christian, respected other religions and her sons, like Genghis, were all very liberal-minded in matters of religion, and the Mongol Empire promulgated the notion of state above religion while supporting all major religions of the time. Sorghaghtani also financed the construction of a madrasa in Bukhara and gave alms to both Christians and Muslims, soghoghtanis husband Tolui, whose appanages included eastern Mongolia, parts of Iran and North China, died at the age of 40 in 1232. Ögedei Khan, Genghiss third son who had succeeded his father, the Secret History suggests that Ögedei may have consulted Sorghaghtani on various matters, and he always held her in high regard. Ögedei sought to link her realm to his and proposed marriage, which she declined, he proposed that she marry his son Güyük. This decision later turned out to be one of the most important ones in the formation of the Mongol Empire, as all four of Sorghaghtanis sons became leaders in their own right. When Sorghaghtani asked for part of Hebei province as her appanage in 1236 after the end of the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty, Ögedei hesitated and she shunned him into compliance by pointing out that the place was hers by right anyway, because her husband had conquered it. However, Ögedei also expanded his personal appanage, seizing some territories of Tolui, after Ögedei Khans death in 1241, his wife Töregene Khatun ruled as regent until 1246, when she managed to get her son Güyük elected as the Khagan at a large kurultai. However, he set out to undermine his mothers power as well as that of Sorghaghtani, Alaqai Beki. Meanwhile, the ambitious Sorghaghtani had secretly teamed up with Güyüks cousin Batu Khan, after Güyüks death, Sorghaghtani sent her eldest son Möngke to Batu Khan
11.
Nestorianism
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Nestorianism is a Christological doctrine that emphasizes a distinction between the human and divine persons of Jesus. It was advanced by Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, following that, many of Nestoriuss supporters relocated to the Sasanian Empire, where they affiliated with the local Christian community, known as the Church of the East. Over the next decades the Church of the East became increasingly Nestorian in doctrine, Nestorianism is a form of dyophysitism. It can be seen as the antithesis to monophysitism, which emerged in reaction to Nestorianism, where Nestorianism holds that Christ had two loosely united natures, divine and human, monophysitism holds that he had but a single nature, his human nature being absorbed into his divinity. Both Nestorianism and monophysitism were condemned as heretical at the Council of Chalcedon, monophysitism survived and developed into the Miaphysitism of the Oriental Orthodoxy. Nestorianism never again became prominent in the Roman Empire or later Europe, though the diffusion of the Church of the East in and after the seventh century, despite this initial Eastern expansion, the Nestorians missionary success was eventually deterred. Isolated pockets of Christianity survived only in India, Nestorius took his Antiochene leanings with him when he was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople by Byzantine emperor Theodosius II in 428. Nestoriuss teachings became the root of controversy when he challenged the long-used title Theotokos for Mary. He suggested that the title denied Christs full humanity, arguing instead that Jesus had two persons, the divine Logos and the human Jesus, as a result of this duality, he proposed Christotokos as a more suitable title for Mary. Nestorius opponents found his teaching too close to the heresy of adoptionism – the idea that Christ had been born a man who had later been adopted as Gods son. Nestorius was especially criticized by Cyril of Alexandria, Patriarch of Alexandria, a more elaborate Nestorian theology developed from there, which came to see Christ as having two natures united, or hypostases, the divine Logos and the human Christ. However, this formulation was never adopted by all churches termed Nestorian, indeed, the modern Assyrian Church of the East, which reveres Nestorius, does not fully subscribe to Nestorian doctrine, though it does not employ the title Theotokos. Nestorianism became a distinct sect following the Nestorian Schism, beginning in the 430s, Nestorius had come under fire from Western theologians, most notably Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril and Nestorius asked Pope Celestine I to weigh in on the matter, Celestine found that the title Theotokos was orthodox, and authorized Cyril to ask Nestorius to recant. Cyril, however, used the opportunity to further attack Nestorius, in 431 Theodosius called the Council of Ephesus. However, the council sided with Cyril, who, being a monophysite. The council accused Nestorius of heresy, and deposed him as patriarch, Nestorianism was officially anathematized, a ruling reiterated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. However, a number of churches, particularly associated with the School of Edessa, supported Nestorius – though not necessarily his doctrine –
12.
Buddhism
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Buddhism is a religion and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars, Theravada and Mahayana. Buddhism is the worlds fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices. In Theravada the ultimate goal is the attainment of the state of Nirvana, achieved by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, thus escaping what is seen as a cycle of suffering. Theravada has a following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon, rather than Nirvana, Mahayana instead aspires to Buddhahood via the bodhisattva path, a state wherein one remains in the cycle of rebirth to help other beings reach awakening. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian siddhas, may be viewed as a branch or merely a part of Mahayana. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth century India, is practiced in regions surrounding the Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhism aspires to Buddhahood or rainbow body. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of Buddha, the details of Buddhas life are mentioned in many early Buddhist texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother queen Maya, and he was born in Lumbini gardens. Some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, Buddha was moved by the innate suffering of humanity. He meditated on this alone for a period of time, in various ways including asceticism, on the nature of suffering. He famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He reached enlightenment, discovering what Buddhists call the Middle Way, as an enlightened being, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his teaching the Dharma he had discovered. Dukkha is a concept of Buddhism and part of its Four Noble Truths doctrine. It can be translated as incapable of satisfying, the unsatisfactory nature, the Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism, we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, incapable of satisfying and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha
13.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
14.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
15.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
16.
Mongols
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The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and Chinas Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China, as well as in Russia, Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia. The Mongols are bound together by a heritage and ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are known as the Mongolian language. The ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols, broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper, Buryats, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols. The latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohans, Baarins, Gorlos Mongols, Jalaids, Jaruud, Khishigten, Khuuchid, Muumyangan, the designation Mongol briefly appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei. It resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty, after the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau. However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them, in the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan. In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. The identity of the Xiongnu is still debated today, although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more likely a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes. It has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü, the Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu and the Classic of Mountains, the Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people, the Zhukaigou Xianbei had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian wrote in his commentary Jixie that Shanrong, againm in Inner Mongolia another closely connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture where the Donghu confederation was centered. After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei, tadun Khan of the Wuhuan was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi. The Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the New Book of Tang says that in 209 BCE, the Xianbei, however, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, the Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state. Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories, the Rouran, the Khitan people, besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong, Duan and Tuoba
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Western Asia
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Western Asia, West Asia, Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost subregion of Asia. The concept is in limited use, as it overlaps with the Middle East. The term is used for the purposes of grouping countries in statistics. The total population of Western Asia is an estimated 300 million as of 2015, in an unrelated context, the term is also used in ancient history and archaeology to divide the Fertile Crescent into the Asiatic or Western Asian cultures as opposed to ancient Egypt. As a geographic concept, Western Asia almost always includes the Levant, Mesopotamia, the term is used pragmatically and has no correct or generally agreed-upon definition. In contrast to this definition, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation in its 2015 yearbook also includes Armenia and Azerbaijan, unlike the UNIDO, the United Nations Statistics Division excludes Iran from Western Asia and include Turkey, Georgia, and Cyprus in the region. These four countries are listed in the European category of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, the Olympic Council of Asias multi-sport event West Asian Games are contested by athletes representing these thirteen countries. Among the regions sports organisations are the West Asia Basketball Association, West Asian Billiards and Snooker Federation, West Asian Football Federation, Western Asia was in use as a geographical term in the early 19th century, even before Near East became current as a geopolitical concept. Use of the term in the context of contemporary geopolitics or world economy appears to date from the 1960s, Western Asia is located directly south of Eastern Europe. The region is surrounded by seven major seas, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. The Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut deserts in eastern Iran naturally delimit the region somewhat from Asia itself, three major tectonic plates converge on Western Asia, including the African, Eurasian, and Arabian plates. The boundaries between the plates make up the Azores-Gibraltar Ridge, extending across North Africa, the Red Sea. The Arabian Plate is moving northward into the Anatolian plate at the East Anatolian Fault, several major aquifers provide water to large portions of Western Asia. In Saudi Arabia, two large aquifers of Palaeozoic and Triassic origins are located beneath the Jabal Tuwayq mountains and areas west to the Red Sea. Cretaceous and Eocene-origin aquifers are located beneath large portions of central and eastern Saudi Arabia, including Wasia, flood or furrow irrigation, as well as sprinkler methods, are extensively used for irrigation, covering nearly 90,000 km² across Western Asia for agriculture. Western Asia is primarily arid and semi-arid, and can be subject to drought, the region consists of grasslands, rangelands, deserts, and mountains. Water shortages are a problem in parts of West Asia, with rapidly growing populations increasing demands for water. Major rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, provide sources for water to support agriculture
18.
Keraites
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The Keraites were one of the five dominant Turkic or Turco-Mongol tribal confederations in the Altai-Sayan region during the 12th century. They had converted to the Church of the East in the early 11th century and are one of the sources of the European Prester John legend. Their original territory was expansive, corresponding to much of what is now Mongolia, vasily Bartold located them along the upper Onon and Kherlen rivers and along the Tuul river. They were defeated by Genghis Khan in 1203 and became influential in the rise of the Mongol Empire, in modern Mongolian, the confederation is spelled Хэрэйд. In English, the name is adopted as Keraites, alternatively Kerait, or Kereyit. One common theory sees the name as a cognate with the Mongolian хар/khar and Turcic qarā for black, there have been various other Mongol and Turcic tribes with names involving the term, which are often conflated. According to the early 14th-century work Jami al-tawarikh by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, Mongol legend traced the back to eight brothers with unusually dark faces. Kerait was the name of the leading clan, while the clans of his brothers are recorded as Jirkin, Konkant, Sakait, Tumaut. Other researchers also suggested that the Mongolian name Khereid may be an ancient totem name derived from the root Kheree for raven and it is unclear whether the Keraites should be classified as Turkic or Mongol in origin. They are first noted in Syriac Church records which mention them being absorbed into the Church of the East around AD1000 by Metropolitan Abdisho of Merv. After the Zubu confederacy broke up, the Keraites retained their dominance on the right up until they were absorbed into Genghis Khans Mongolian state. At the height of its power, the Keraites khanate was organized along the lines as the Naimans. A section is dedicated to the Keraites by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, the historian of the Genghisid court in Persia. The people was divided into a faction and an outer faction. The central faction served as the personal army and was composed of warriors from many different tribes with no loyalties to anyone. This made the central faction more of a quasi-feudal state than a genuine tribe, the outer faction was composed of tribes that pledged obedience to the khan, but lived on their own tribal pastures and functioned semi-autonomously. The capital of the Keraite khanate was a place called Orta Balagasun, Markus Buyruk Khan, was a Keraite leader who also led the Zubu confederacy. In 1100, he was killed by the Liao Dynasty, Kurchakus Buyruk Khan was a son and successor of Bayruk Markus, among whose wives was Toreqaimish Khatun, daughter of Korchi Buiruk Khan of the Naiman
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Genghis Khan
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Genghis Khan, born Temüjin, was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the tribes of Northeast Asia. After founding the Empire and being proclaimed Genghis Khan, he started the Mongol invasions that conquered most of Eurasia, campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Caucasus, and Khwarazmian, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations – especially in the Khwarazmian. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a portion of Central Asia. Before Genghis Khan died, he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor and he died in 1227 after defeating the Western Xia. He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia, many of these invasions repeated the earlier large-scale slaughters of local populations. As a result, Genghis Khan and his empire have a reputation in local histories. Beyond his military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways and he decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empires writing system. He also practiced meritocracy and encouraged religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, present-day Mongolians regard him as the founding father of Mongolia. This brought communication and trade from Northeast Asia into Muslim Southwest Asia and Christian Europe, Temüjin was related on his fathers side to Khabul Khan, Ambaghai, and Hotula Khan, who had headed the Khamag Mongol confederation and were descendants of Bodonchar Munkhag. When the Jurchen Jin dynasty switched support from the Mongols to the Tatars in 1161, Temüjins father, Yesügei, emerged as the head of the ruling Mongol clan. This position was contested by the rival Tayichiud clan, who descended directly from Ambaghai, when the Tatars grew too powerful after 1161, the Jin switched their support from the Tatars to the Keraites. Little is known about Temüjins early life, due to the lack of written records. The few sources that give insight into this period often contradict, Temüjins name was derived from the Mongol word temür meaning of iron, while jin denotes agency thus temüjin means blacksmith. Temüjin was probably born in 1162 in Delüün Boldog, near the mountain Burkhan Khaldun, the Secret History of the Mongols reports that Temüjin was born grasping a blood clot in his fist, a traditional sign that he was destined to become a great leader. He was the son of his father Yesügei who was a Kiyad chief prominent in the Khamag Mongol confederation. Temüjin was the first son of his mother Hoelun, according to the Secret History, Temüjin was named after the Tatar chief Temüjin-üge whom his father had just captured
20.
Kublai Khan
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Kublai Khan, born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu, was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, reigning from 1260 to 1294. He also founded the Yuan dynasty in China as a conquest dynasty in 1271, Kublai was the fourth son of Tolui and a grandson of Genghis Khan. He succeeded his older brother Möngke as Khagan in 1260, but had to defeat his younger brother Ariq Böke in the Toluid Civil War lasting until 1264 and this episode marked the beginning of disunity in the empire. Kublais real power was limited to China and Mongolia, though as Khagan he still had influence in the Ilkhanate and, to a lesser degree. In 1271, Kublai established the Yuan dynasty, which ruled over present-day Mongolia, China, Korea, and some adjacent areas, by 1279, the Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty was completed and Kublai became the first non-native emperor to conquer all of China. Kublai Khan was the son of Tolui, and his second son with Sorghaghtani Beki. As his grandfather Genghis Khan advised, Sorghaghtani chose a Buddhist Tangut woman as her sons nurse, on his way home after the Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia, Genghis Khan performed a ceremony on his grandsons Möngke and Kublai after their first hunt in 1224 near the Ili River. Kublai was nine years old and with his eldest brother killed a rabbit and his grandfather smeared fat from killed animals onto Kublais middle finger in accordance with a Mongol tradition. After the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty, in 1236, Ögedei gave Hebei to the family of Tolui, Kublai received an estate of his own, which included 10,000 households. Because he was inexperienced, Kublai allowed local officials free rein, corruption amongst his officials and aggressive taxation caused large numbers of Chinese peasants to flee, which led to a decline in tax revenues. Kublai quickly came to his appanage in Hebei and ordered reforms, Sorghaghtani sent new officials to help him and tax laws were revised. Thanks to those efforts, many of the people who fled returned, the most prominent, and arguably most influential, component of Kublai Khans early life was his study and strong attraction to contemporary Chinese culture. Kublai invited Haiyun, the leading Buddhist monk in North China, when he met Haiyun in Karakorum in 1242, Kublai asked him about the philosophy of Buddhism. Haiyun named Kublais son, who was born in 1243, Zhenjin, Haiyun also introduced Kublai to the formerly Daoist and now Buddhist monk, Liu Bingzhong. Liu was a painter, calligrapher, poet, and mathematician, Kublai soon added the Shanxi scholar Zhao Bi to his entourage. Kublai employed people of other nationalities as well, for he was keen to balance local and imperial interests, Mongol, in 1251, Kublais eldest brother Möngke became Khan of the Mongol Empire, and Khwarizmian Mahmud Yalavach and Kublai were sent to China. Kublai received the viceroyalty over North China and moved his ordo to central Inner Mongolia, during his years as viceroy, Kublai managed his territory well, boosted the agricultural output of Henan, and increased social welfare spendings after receiving Xian. These acts received great acclaim from the Chinese warlords and were essential to the building of the Yuan Dynasty, Möngke dismissed Mahmud Yalavach, which met with resistance from Chinese Confucian-trained officials
21.
Mongol Empire
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The Mongol Empire existed during the 13th and 14th centuries and was the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of tribes in the Mongol homeland under the leadership of Genghis Khan. The empire grew rapidly under the rule of him and his descendants, the Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued even among the descendants of Tolui. Kublai successfully took power, but civil war ensued as Kublai sought unsuccessfully to control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. The Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 marked the point of the Mongol conquests and was the first time a Mongol advance had ever been beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield. In 1304, the three western khanates briefly accepted the suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty, but it was later taken by the Han Chinese Ming dynasty in 1368. What is referred to in English as the Mongol Empire was called the Ikh Mongol Uls, in the 1240s, one of Genghiss descendants, Güyük Khan, wrote a letter to Pope Innocent IV which used the preamble Dalai Khagan of the great Mongolian state. After the succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke, Ariq limited Kublais power to the part of the empire. Kublai officially issued an edict on December 18,1271 to name the country Great Yuan to establish the Yuan dynasty. Some sources state that the full Mongolian name was Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus, the area around Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of North China had been controlled by the Liao dynasty since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty, in the 1130s the Jin dynasty rulers, known as the Golden Kings, successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation, ruled at the time by Khabul Khan, great-grandfather of Temujin. The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations, Keraites, Khamag Mongol, Naiman, Mergid, khabuls successor was Ambaghai Khan, who was betrayed by the Tatars, handed over to the Jurchen, and executed. The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier, resulting in a failed Jurchen counter-attack in 1143, in 1147, the Jin somewhat changed their policy, signing a peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts. The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan, the Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161. During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century and it is thought that as a result, a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock significantly enhanced Mongol military strength. Known during his childhood as Temujin, Genghis Khan was the son of a Mongol chieftain, when he was young he was from one of Yesugis orphaned and deserted families, he rose very rapidly by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait. Kurtait was the most powerful Mongol leader during this time and was given the Chinese title Wang which means Prince, Temujin went to war with Wang Khan. After Temujin defeated Wang Khan he gave himself the name Genghis Khan and he then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin
22.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
23.
Safavid dynasty
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The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder empires, the Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by spreading Shia Islam in Iran, as well as parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia. The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries not only Turkified Azerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty, by the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized, and some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines, Safavid history begins with the establishment of the Safaviyya by its eponymous founder Safi-ad-din Ardabili. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, after Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khwādja Ali, when Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Savory, Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power, Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassans sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi, Haydar married Martha Alamshah Begom, Uzun Hassans daughter, who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Marthas mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess and she had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans. After Uzun Hassans death, his son Yaqub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence, Yaqub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor, the Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power. After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, according to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya. After the decline of the Timurid Empire, Persia was politically splintered, the demise of Tamerlanes political authority created a space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis, of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Isma’il I gained political prominence in 1501
24.
Siege of Baghdad (1258)
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The Mongols were under the command of Hulagu Khan, brother of the khagan Möngke Khan, who had intended to further extend his rule into Mesopotamia but not to directly overthrow the Caliphate. Hulagu began his campaign in Iran with several offensives against Nizari groups, including the Assassins and he then marched on Baghdad, demanding that Al-Mustasim accede to the terms imposed by Möngke on the Abbasids. Although the Abbasids had failed to prepare for the invasion, the Caliph believed that Baghdad could not fall to invading forces, Hulagu subsequently besieged the city, which surrendered after 12 days. During the next week, the Mongols sacked Baghdad, committing atrocities and destroyed the Abbasids vast libraries. The Mongols executed Al-Mustasim and massacred residents of the city. Baghdad had for centuries been the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, the third caliphate whose rulers were descendants of Abbas, in 751, the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads and moved the Caliphs seat from Damascus to Baghdad. At the citys peak, it was populated by one million people and was defended by an army of 60,000 soldiers. By the middle of the 13th century, however, the power of the Abbasids had declined and Turkic, Baghdad still retained much symbolic significance, however, and it remained a rich and cultured city. The Caliphs of the 12th and 13th centuries had begun to develop links with the expanding Mongol Empire in the east, Caliph an-Nasir li-dinillah, who reigned from 1180–1225, may have attempted an alliance with Genghis Khan when Muhammad II of Khwarezm threatened to attack the Abbasids. It has been rumored that some Crusader captives were sent as tribute to the Mongol khagan, according to The Secret History of the Mongols, Genghis and his successor, Ögedei Khan, ordered their general Chormaqan to attack Baghdad. In 1236, Chormaqan led a division of the Mongol army to Irbil, further raids on Irbil and other regions of the caliphate became nearly annual occurrences. Some raids were alleged to have reached Baghdad itself, but these Mongol incursions were not always successful, despite their successes, the Abbasids hoped to come to terms with the Mongols and by 1241 had adopted the practice of sending an annual tribute to the court of the khagan. Envoys from the Caliph were present at the coronation of Güyük Khan as khagan in 1246, during his brief reign, Güyük insisted that the Caliph Al-Mustasim fully submit to Mongol rule and come personally to Karakorum. In 1257, Möngke resolved to establish authority over Mesopotamia, Syria. The khagan gave his brother, Hulagu, authority over a subordinate khanate and army, the Ilkhanate, generals of the army included the Oirat administrator Arghun Agha, Baiju, Buqa Temür, Guo Kan, and Kitbuqa, as well as Hulagus brother Sunitai and various other warlords. About 1,000 Chinese artillery experts accompanied the army, as did Persian and Turkic auxiliaries, according to Ata-Malik Juvayni, Hulagu led his army first to Iran, where he successfully campaigned against the Lurs, the Bukhara, and the remnants of the Khwarezm-Shah dynasty. Though Assassins failed in attempts, Hulagu marched his army to their stronghold of Alamut, which he captured. The Mongols later executed the Assassins Grand Master, Imam Rukn al-Dun Khurshah, after defeating the Assassins, Hulagu sent word to Al-Mustasim, demanding his acquiescence to the terms imposed by Möngke
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Damascus
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Damascus is the capital and likely the largest city of Syria, following the decline in population of Aleppo due to the ongoing battle for the city. It is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed as the City of Jasmine, in addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious centre of the Levant. The city has an population of 1,711,000 as of 2009. Located in south-western Syria, Damascus is the centre of a metropolitan area of 2.6 million people. The Barada River flows through Damascus, first settled in the second millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad, Damascus saw a political decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Today, it is the seat of the government and all of the government ministries. The name of Damascus first appeared in the geographical list of Thutmose III as T-m-ś-q in the 15th century BC, the etymology of the ancient name T-m-ś-q is uncertain, but it is suspected to be pre-Semitic. It is attested as Dimašqa in Akkadian, T-ms-ḳw in Egyptian, Dammaśq in Old Aramaic, the Akkadian spelling is found in the Amarna letters, from the 14th century BC. Later Aramaic spellings of the name include a intrusive resh, perhaps influenced by the root dr. Thus, the English and Latin name of the city is Damascus which was imported from originated from the Qumranic Darmeśeq, and Darmsûq in Syriac, meaning a well-watered land. In Arabic, the city is called Dimašqu š-Šāmi, although this is shortened to either Dimašq or aš-Šām by the citizens of Damascus, of Syria and other Arab neighbours. Aš-Šām is an Arabic term for Levant and for Syria, the latter, the Anti-Lebanon mountains mark the border between Syria and Lebanon. The range has peaks of over 10,000 ft. and blocks precipitation from the Mediterranean sea, however, in ancient times this was mitigated by the Barada River, which originates from mountain streams fed by melting snow. Damascus is surrounded by the Ghouta, irrigated farmland where many vegetables, cereals, maps of Roman Syria indicate that the Barada river emptied into a lake of some size east of Damascus. Today it is called Bahira Atayba, the hesitant lake, because in years of severe drought it does not even exist, the modern city has an area of 105 km2, out of which 77 km2 is urban, while Jabal Qasioun occupies the rest. The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, to the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages, Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These neighbourhoods originally arose on roads leading out of the city and these new neighbourhoods were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule
26.
Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo)
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The Mamluk Sultanate was a medieval realm spanning Egypt, the Levant, and Hejaz. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid Dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, historians have traditionally broken the era of Mamlūk rule into two periods—one covering 1250–1382, the other, 1382–1517. Western historians call the former the Baḥrī period and the latter the Burjī due to the dominance of the regimes known by these names during the respective eras. Contemporary Muslim historians refer to the divisions as the Turkish. The Mamlūk state reached its height under Turkic rule with Arabic culture, the sultanates ruling caste was composed of Mamluks, soldiers of predominantly Cuman-Kipchaks, Circassian, Abkhazian, Oghuz Turks and Georgian slave origin. While Mamluks were purchased, their status was above ordinary slaves, Mamluks were considered to be true lords, with social status above citizens of Egypt. Though it declined towards the end of its existence, at its height the sultanate represented the zenith of medieval Egyptian and Levantine political, economic, the term Mamluk Sultanate is a modern historiographical term. The Arabic sources for the period of the Bahri Mamluks refer to the dynasty as the State/Realm of the Turks, other official names used were State of the Circassians. A variant thereof emphasized the fact that the Circassians were Turkish-speaking, the term Mongol State was used during Sultan al-Adil Kitbughas rule, who was of Mongol extraction. Dawlatāl Qalāwūn or Dawlat Banī Qalāwūn which means Qalāwūnī State/Dynasty which have ruled for hundred years between 1279 and 1382, al-dawla al-Ẓāhiriyya which meant Ẓāhirī state/dynasty which is the dynasty of Baibars and his two sons al-Said Barakah and Solamish. This dynasty have ruled consecutively for 19 years, Mamluk was a term defined as owned slave, distinguishing the mamluk from the garya and ghulam, which referred to household slaves. After thorough training in fields such as martial arts, court etiquette and Islamic sciences. However, they were expected to remain loyal to their master. Mamluks had formed a part of the state or military apparatus in Syria and Egypt since at least the 9th century, each Ayyubid sultan and high-ranking emir had a private mamluk corps. Most of the mamluks in the Ayyubids service were ethnic Kipchak Turks from Central Asia and they were highly committed to their masters, who they often referred to as father, and were in turn treated more as kinsmen than as slaves by their masters. These mamluks became known as the Salihiyyah, to provision his mamluks, as-Salih forcibly seized the iqtaʿat of his predecessors emirs. Despite his close relationship with his mamluks, tensions existed between as-Salih and the Salihiyyah, and a number of Salihi mamluks were imprisoned or exiled throughout as-Salihs reign. Tensions between as-Salih and his mamluks came to a later in 1249 when Louis IX of Frances forces captured Damietta in their bid to conquer Egypt during the Seventh Crusade
27.
Cairo
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Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt. Cairo has long been a center of the political and cultural life. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab world, as well as the worlds second-oldest institution of higher learning, Al-Azhar University. Many international media, businesses, and organizations have regional headquarters in the city, with a population of 6.76 million spread over 453 square kilometers, Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt. An additional 9.5 million inhabitants live in proximity to the city. Cairo, like many other mega-cities, suffers from high levels of pollution, Cairos metro, one of only two in Africa, ranks among the fifteen busiest in the world, with over 1 billion annual passenger rides. The economy of Cairo was ranked first in the Middle East in 2005, Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maṣr, the Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt itself, emphasizing the citys importance for the country. In Coptic the city is known as Kahire, meaning Place of the Sun, possibly referring to the ancient city of Heliopolis, the location of the ancient city is the suburb of Ain Shams. The ancient Egyptian name for the area is thought to be Khere-Ohe, The Place of Combat, sometimes the city is informally referred to as Kayro. The area around present-day Cairo, especially Memphis, had long been a point of Ancient Egypt due to its strategic location just upstream from the Nile Delta. However, the origins of the city are generally traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium. Around the turn of the 4th century, as Memphis was continuing to decline in importance and this fortress, known as Babylon, remained the nucleus of the Roman, and, later, the Byzantine, city and is the oldest structure in the city today. It is also situated at the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, many of Cairos oldest Coptic churches, including the Hanging Church, are located along the fortress walls in a section of the city known as Coptic Cairo. Following the Muslim conquest in 640 AD the conqueror Amr ibn As settled to the north of the Babylon in an area became known as al-Fustat. Originally a tented camp Fustat became a permanent settlement and the first capital of Islamic Egypt, in 750, following the overthrow of the Ummayad caliphate by the Abbasids, the new rulers created their own settlement to the northeast of Fustat which became their capital. This was known as al-Askar as it was laid out like a military camp, a rebellion in 869 by Ahmad ibn Tulun led to the abandonment of Al Askar and the building of another settlement, which became the seat of government. This was al-Qattai, to the north of Fustat and closer to the river, Al Qattai was centred around a palace and ceremonial mosque, now known as the Mosque of ibn Tulun. In 905 the Abbasids re-asserted control of the country and their returned to Fustat
28.
Mongol invasions and conquests
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Mongol invasions and conquests took place throughout the 13th century, resulting in the vast Mongol Empire, which by 1300 covered much of Asia and Eastern Europe. Historians regard the destruction under the Mongol Empire as results of some of the deadliest conflicts in human history. In addition, Mongol expeditions brought the plague along with them, spreading it across much of Asia and Europe. The Mongol Empire developed in the course of the 13th century through a series of conquests and invasions throughout Asia, thus most Mongol conquering and plundering took place during the warmer seasons, when there was sufficient grass for the herds. Tartar and Mongol raids against Russian states continued well beyond the start of the Mongol Empires fragmentation around 1260, elsewhere, the Mongols territorial gains in China continued into the 14th century under the Yuan dynasty, while those in Persia persisted into the 15th century under the Timurid Empire. In India, a Mongol state survived into the 19th century in the form of the Mughal Empire, genghis Khan forged the initial Mongol Empire in Central Asia, starting with the unification of the Mongol and Turkic confederations such as Merkits, Tartars, and Mongols. The Uighur Buddhist Qocho Kingdom surrendered and joined the empire and he then continued expansion of the empire via conquest of the Qara Khitai and the Khwarazmian dynasty. Large areas of Islamic Central Asia and northeastern Iran were seriously depopulated, each soldier was required to execute a certain number of persons, with the number varying according to circumstances. For example, after the conquest of Urgench, each Mongol warrior – in an group that might have consisted of two tumens – was required to execute 24 people. Hungary became a refuge after the Mongol invasions for fleeing Cumans, one thousand northern Chinese engineer squads accompanied the Mongol Khan Hulagu during his conquest of the Middle East. The Yuan dynasty created a Han Army out of defected Jin troops, the Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force they sent to invade the Middle East in 1256. The Mongols greatest triumph was when Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty in China in 1271, the top-level government agency Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs was established to govern Tibet, which was conquered by the Mongols and put under Yuan rule. The Mongols also invaded Sakhalin between 1264 and 1308, likewise, Korea became a semi-autonomous vassal state and compulsory ally of the Yuan dynasty for about 80 years. The Yuan dynasty was overthrown during the Red Turban Rebellion in 1368 by the Han Chinese who gained independence. Kublai Khans Yuan dynasty invaded Burma between 1277 and 1287, resulting in the capitulation and disintegration of the Pagan Kingdom, however, the invasion in 1301 was repulsed by the Burmese Myinsaing Kingdom. The Mongol invasions of Vietnam and Java resulted in defeat for the Mongols, the Mongols invaded and destroyed Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus, before invading Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, and others. Over the course of three years, the Mongols destroyed and annihilated all of the cities of Russia with the exceptions of Novgorod. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls, the Mongol invasions induced population displacement on a scale never seen before in central Asia as well as eastern Europe
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First Mongol invasion of Burma
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The first Mongol invasions of Burma were a series of military conflicts between Kublai Khans Yuan dynasty, division of the Mongol Empire, and the Pagan Empire that took place between 1277 and 1287. The invasions toppled the 250-year-old Pagan Empire, and the Mongol army seized Pagan territories in present-day Dehong, Yunnan, the invasions ushered in 250 years of political fragmentation in Burma and the rise of Tai-Shan states throughout mainland Southeast Asia. The Mongols first demanded tribute from Pagan in 1271–72, as part of their drive to encircle the Song dynasty of China, when King Narathihapate refused, Emperor Kublai Khan himself sent another mission in 1273, again demanding tribute. In 1275, the emperor ordered the Yunnan government to secure the borderlands in order to block a path for the Song. Pagan did contest but its army was back at the frontier by the Mongol Army in 1277–78. After a brief lull, Kublai Khan in 1281 turned his attention to Southeast Asia, demanding tribute from Pagan, when the Burmese king again refused, the emperor ordered an invasion of northern Burma. Two dry season campaigns later, the Mongols had occupied down to Tagaung and Hanlin, the Mongols organized northern Burma as the province of Zhengmian. Ceasefire negotiations began in 1285, and ended with Narathihapate finally agreeing to submit in June 1286, but the treaty never really took effect as Narathihapate was assassinated in July 1287, and no authority who could honor the treaty emerged. The Mongol command at Yunnan now deemed the imperial order to withdraw void and they may not have reached Pagan, and even if they did, after having suffered heavy casualties, they returned to Tagaung. The Pagan Empire disintegrated and anarchy ensued, the Mongols, who probably preferred the situation, did nothing to restore order in the next ten years. In March 1297, they accepted the submission of King Kyawswa of Pagan although he controlled little beyond the capital city of Pagan. But Kyawswa was overthrown nine months later, and the Mongols were forced to intervene, Marco Polo reported the first invasions in his travelogue, Il Milione. The Burmese referred to the invaders as the Taruk, today, King Narathihapate is unkindly remembered in Burmese history as Taruk-Pye Min. In the 13th century, the Pagan Empire, along with the Khmer Empire, was one of the two empires in mainland Southeast Asia. For much of its history, Pagans neighbor to the northeast was not China but the independent Dali Kingdom and its predecessor Nanzhao, both with Dali as their capital city. Dali-based kingdoms were a power in their own right, at times allying themselves with the Tibetan Empire to their west and at other times with Chinas Tang and Song dynasties. Indeed, Nanzhaos mounted armies ventured deep into what is today Burma and may have been behind the founding of the city of Pagan. Then as now, the borderlands mostly consist of forbidding terrains of high mountain ranges, the Mongol Empire first arrived at the doorstep of the Pagan Empire in 1252 by invading the Dali Kingdom in its attempt to outflank Song China
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Mongol conquest of the Qara Khitai
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The Mongol Empire conquered the Qara Khitai in the years 1216–1218 AD. Prior to the invasion, war with the Khwarazmian dynasty and the usurpation of power by the Naiman prince Kuchlug had weakened the Qara Khitai. When Kuchlug besieged Almaliq, a city belonging to the Karluks, vassals of the Mongol Empire, the hunters turned Kuchlug over to the Mongols, who beheaded him. Upon defeating the Qara Khitai, the Mongols now had a border with the Khwarazmian Empire. After Genghis Khan defeated the Naimans in 1204, Naiman prince Kuchlug fled his homeland to take refuge among the Qara Khitai, the Gurkhan Yelü Zhilugu welcomed Kuchlug into his empire, and Kuchlug became an advisor and military commander, eventually marrying one of the daughters of Zhilugu. However, during a war with the bordering Khawarzmian dynasty, Kuchlug initiated a coup détat against Zhilegu, after Kuchlug took power, he allowed Zhilegu to rule the Qara Khitai in name only. When the Gurkhan died in 1213, Kuchlug took direct control of the khanate, when Kuchlug besieged the Karluk city of Almaliq, the Karluks, vassals of the Mongol Empire, requested aid from Genghis Khan. The two armies traveled alongside each other through the Altai and Tarbagatai Mountains until arriving at Almaliq, at that point, Subutai turned southwest, destroying the Merkits and protecting Jebes flank against any sudden attacks from Khwarazm. Jebe relieved Almaliq, then moved south of Lake Balkash into the lands of the Qara Khitai, there, Jebe defeated an army of 30,000 troops and Kuchlug fled to Kashgar. Taking advantage of the unrest fomenting under Kuchlugs rule, Jebe gained support from the Muslim populace by announcing that Kuchlugs policy of persecution had ended. When Jebes army arrived at Kashgar in 1217, the populace revolted and turned on Kuchlug, Jebe pursued Kuchlug across the Pamir Mountains into Badakhshan in modern Afghanistan. According to Ata-Malik Juvayni, a group of hunters caught Kuchlug and handed him over to the Mongols, with the death of Kuchlug, the Mongol Empire secured control over the Qara Khitai. The Mongols now had a firm outpost in Central Asia directly bordering the Khwarazm Empire, relations with the Khwarazms would quickly break down, leading to the Mongol invasion of that territory. Empires of the Silk Road, A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press. The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History, Between China, the Khyber Pass, A History of Empire and Invasion. New York City, Union Square Press, gabriel, Richard A. Genghis Khans Greatest General, Subotai the Valiant. New York City, Oxford University Press, United States, the History of The World Conqueror. Translated by John Andrew Boyle from Tarīkh-i Jahān-gushā, ed. Mohammad Ghazvini, Genghis Khan, Historys Greatest Empire Builder
31.
Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia
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The Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia from 1219 to 1221 marked the beginning of the Mongol conquest of the Islamic states. The Mongol expansion would ultimately culminate in the conquest of all of Asia save for Japan. It was not originally the intention of the Mongol Empire to invade the Khwarezmid Empire, let us conclude a firm treaty of friendship and peace. The Mongol wars with the Jurchens however had shown how cruel the Mongols could be, Shah Muhammad reluctantly agreed to this peace treaty, but it was not to last. The war started less than a later, when a Mongol caravan. In the ensuing war, lasting less than two years, the Khwarezmid Empire was destroyed, after the defeat of the Kara-Khitans, Genghis Khans Mongol Empire gained a border with the Khwarezmid Empire, governed by Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad. The Shah had only recently taken some of the territory under his control, the Shah had refused to make the obligatory homage to the caliph as titular leader of Islam, and demanded recognition as Shah of his empire, without any of the usual bribes or pretenses. This alone had created problems for him along his southern border and it was at this junction the rapidly expanding Mongol Empire made contact. Mongol historians are adamant that the great khan at that time had no intention of invading the Khwarezmid Empire, of further interest is that the caliph of Baghdad had attempted to instigate a war between the Mongols and the Shah some years before the Mongol invasion actually occurred. However, it is known that Genghis rejected the notion of war as he was engaged in war with the Jin Dynasty and was gaining much wealth from trading with the Khwarezmid Empire, Genghis then sent a 500-man caravan of Muslims to establish official trade ties with Khwarezmia. However Inalchuq, the governor of the Khwarezmian city of Otrar, had the members of the caravan that came from Mongolia arrested and it seems unlikely, however, that any members of the trade delegation were spies. Genghis Khan then sent a group of three ambassadors to meet the shah himself and demand the caravan at Otrar be set free. The shah had both of the Mongols shaved and had the Muslim beheaded before sending them back to Genghis Khan, Muhammad also ordered the personnel of the caravan to be executed. This was seen as an affront to the Khan himself. This led Genghis Khan to attack the Khwarezmian Dynasty, the Mongols crossed the Tien Shan mountains, coming into the Shahs empire in 1219. The changes had come in adding supporting units to his dreaded cavalry, while still relying on the traditional advantages of his mobile nomadic cavalry, Genghis incorporated many aspects of warfare from China, particularly in siege warfare. His baggage train included such siege equipment as battering rams, gunpowder, also, the Mongol intelligence network was formidable. The Mongols never invaded an opponent whose military and economic will, for instance, Subutai and Batu Khan spent a year scouting central Europe, before destroying the armies of Hungary and Poland in two separate battles, two days apart
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Mongol conquest of China
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The Mongol invasion of China was a series of major military efforts by the Mongols to invade China proper. It spanned six decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the Jin dynasty, Western Xia, the Dali Kingdom, the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan started the conquest with small-scale raids into Western Xia in 1205 and 1207. By 1279, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan had established the Yuan dynasty in China and crushed the last Song resistance and this was the first time in history that the whole of China was conquered and subsequently ruled by a foreign or non-native ruler. In the early 1200s, Temujin, soon to be Genghis Khan, began consolidating his power in Mongolia. Following the death of the Kerait leader Ong Khan to Temujins emerging Mongol Empire in 1203, Keriat leader Nilqa Senggum led a band of followers into Western Xia. However, after his adherents took to plundering the locals, Nilqa Senggum was expelled from Western Xia territory, using his rival Nilga Senggums temporary refuge in Western Xia as a pretext, Temujin launched a raid against the state in 1205 in the Edsin region. The Mongols plundered border settlements and one local Western Xia noble accepted Mongol supremacy, the next year,1206, Temujin was formally proclaimed Genghis Khan, ruler of all the Mongols, marking the official start of the Mongol Empire. In 1207, Genghis led another raid into Western Xia, invading the Ordo region and sacking Wuhai, in 1209, the Genghis undertook a larger campaign to secure the submission of Western Xia. The Mongols, at this point inexperienced at siege warfare, attempted to out the city by diverting the Yellow River. After their defeat in 1210, Western Xia served as vassals to the Mongol Empire for almost a decade. In 1219, Genghis Khan launched his campaign against the Khwarazmian dynasty in Central Asia, and requested military aid from Western Xia. However, the emperor and his military commander Asha refused to part in the campaign, stating that if Genghis had too few troops to attack Khwarazm. Infuriated, Genghis swore vengeance and left to invade Khwarazm, while Western Xia attempted alliances with the Jin, after defeating Khwarazm in 1221, Genghis prepared his armies to punish Western Xia for their betrayal, and in 1225 he attacked with a force of approximately 180,000. After taking Khara-Khoto, the Mongols began a steady advance southward, enraged by Western Xias fierce resistance, Genghis engaged the countryside in annihilative warfare and ordered his generals to systematically destroy cities and garrisons as they went. In August 1226, Mongol troops approached Wuwei, the second-largest city of the Western Xia empire, in Autumn 1226, Genghis took Liangchow, crossed the Helan Shan desert, and in November lay siege to Lingwu, a mere 30 kilometers from Yinchuan. Here, in the Battle of Yellow River, the Mongols destroyed a force of 300,000 Western Xia that launched a counter-attack against them, Yinchuan lay besieged for about six months, after which Genghis opened up peace negotiations while secretly planning to kill the emperor. However, in August 1227, Genghis died of an uncertain cause. In September 1227, Emperor Mozhu surrendered to the Mongols and was promptly executed, the Mongols then mercilessly pillaged Yinchuan, slaughtered the citys population, plundered the imperial tombs west of the city, and completed the effective annihilation the Western Xia state
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Mongol conquest of Western Xia
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The Mongol conquest of Western Xia was a series of conflicts between the Mongol Empire and the Western Xia dynasty, also known as the Tangut Empire, or Minya. Hoping to gain both plunder and a vassal state, Mongol leader Genghis Khan commanded some initial raids against Western Xia before launching a full-scale invasion in 1209. This invasion marked both the first major invasion conducted by Genghis and the beginning of the Mongol invasion of China, angered by this betrayal, in 1225 Genghis Khan sent a second, punitive expedition into Western Xia. Near the end of the siege, in August 1227, Genghis Khan died from an uncertain cause, after his death, Yinchuan fell to the Mongols and most of its population was massacred. A fairly small state, Western Xia struggled for dominance with its larger and more neighbors, the Liao dynasty to the east and northeast. When the Jin dynasty emerged in 1115 and displaced the Liao, aiding Jin in their wars against the Song, Western Xia gained thousands of square miles of former Song territory. However, over many years the relations between Western Xia and Jin gradually declined, upon the death of its fourth ruler, Emperor Renzong, Emperor Huanzong took the throne and Western Xias power began to fail. Though militarily inferior to the neighboring Jin, the Western Xia still exerted a significant influence upon the northern steppes, the state often welcomed deposed Kerait leaders because of close trade connections to the steppes and because of the possibility of using the refugees as pawns in the Mongolian Plateau. In the late 1190s and early 1200s, Temujin, soon to be Genghis Khan, began consolidating his power in Mongolia. Following the death of the Keraites leader Ong Khan to Temujins emerging Mongol Empire in 1203, however, after his adherents took to plundering the locals, Nilqa Senggum was expelled from Western Xia territory. Using his rival Nilga Senggums temporary refuge in Western Xia as a pretext, the Mongols plundered border settlements and one local Western Xia noble accepted Mongol supremacy. During a raid on Ganzhou, the Mongols captured the son of the citys commander and this young boy joined Mongol service and took a Mongol name, Chagaan, and eventually rose through the ranks to become commander of Temujins personal guard. In 1207, Genghis led another raid into Western Xia, invading the Ordo region and sacking Wuhai, Genghis then began preparing for a full-scale invasion. By invading Western Xia, he would gain a tribute-paying vassal, furthermore, from Western Xia he could launch raids into the even more wealthy Jin dynasty. In 1209, Genghis undertook his campaign to actually conquer Western Xia, Li Anquan requested aid from the Jin dynasty, but the new Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji refused to send aid, stating that It is to our advantage when our enemies attack each other. Wherein lies the danger to us and his path now open, Genghis advanced to the capital. Well fortified, Yinchuan held about 150,000 soldiers, nearly twice the size of the Mongol army, one of their first endeavors at siege warfare, the Mongols lacked the proper equipment and experience to take the city. They arrived at the city in May, but by October were still unsuccessful at breaking through, Genghis attempted to flood the capital by diverting the river and its network of irrigation canals into the city, and by January 1210 the walls of Yinchuan were nearly breached
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Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty
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The Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty, also known as the Mongol–Jin War, was fought between the Mongol Empire and the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in Manchuria and north China. The war, which started in 1211, lasted over 23 years, the Jurchen rulers of the Jin dynasty collected tribute from some of the nomadic tribes living on the Mongol steppes and encouraged rivalries among them. When the Mongols were unified under Khabul in the 12th century, the Jurchens encouraged the Tatars to destroy them, the Tatars eventually captured Khabuls successor, Ambaghai, and handed him over to the Jin imperial court. Emperor Xizong of the Jin dynasty ordered had Ambaghai executed by crucifixion, the Jin dynasty also conducted regular punitive expeditions against the Mongol nomads, either enslaving or killing them. In 1210, a delegation arrived at the court of Genghis Khan to proclaim the ascension of Wanyan Yongji to the Jin throne, because the Jurchens defeated the powerful steppe nomads and allied with the Keraites and the Tatars, they claimed sovereignty over all the tribes of the steppe. High court officials in the Jin government defected to the Mongols, but fearful of a trap or some other nefarious scheme, Genghis Khan refused. His defiance of the Jin envoys was tantamount to a declaration of war between the Mongols and Jurchens, after Genghis Khan returned to the Kherlen River, in the spring of 1211, he summoned a kurultai. By organising a long discussion, everyone in the community was included in the process, the Khan prayed privately on a nearby mountain. He removed his hat and belt, bowed down before the Eternal Sky and he explained that he had not sought this war against the Jurchens. At the dawn on the day, Genghis Khan emerged with the verdict, The Eternal Blue Sky has promised us victory. Wanyan Yongji, angry on hearing how Genghis Khan behaved, sent the message to the Khan that Our Empire is like the sea, yours is, when the conquest of the Tangut-led Western Xia empire started, there were multiple raids between 1207-1209. When the Mongols invaded Jin territory in 1211, Ala Qush, the first important battle between the Mongol Empire and the Jin dynasty was the Battle of Yehuling at a mountain pass in Zhangjiakou which took place in 1211. There, Wanyan Jiujin, the Jin field commander, made a mistake in not attacking the Mongols at the first opportunity. Instead, he sent a messenger to the Mongol side, Shimo Mingan, at this engagement, fought at Yehuling, the Mongols massacred thousands of Jin troops. The Mongols learnt at an age to always fight on the move. They would pass through towns to draw their opponent away from their animals, when they fell for the Mongol armys trap, the Mongols would kill them and take their animals. While Genghis Khan headed southward, his general Jebe travelled even further east into Manchuria, however, Genghis Khan was wounded by an arrow in his knee in 1212 after the Mongols returned from their relaxation in the borderlands between grass and the Gobi Desert. The Khitan leader Liu-ke had declared his allegiance to Genghis in 1212, the Mongols smashed the Jin armies, each numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and broke through Juyong Pass and Zijing Gap by November 1213
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Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty
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The Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty under Kublai Khan was the final step for the Mongols to rule the whole of China under the Yuan dynasty. It is also considered the Mongol Empires last great military achievement, although Genghis Khan refused, on his death in 1227 he bequeathed a plan to attack the Jin capital by passing through Song territory. Subsequently, a Mongol ambassador was killed by the Song governor in uncertain circumstances, before receiving any explanation, the Mongols marched through Song territory to enter the Jins redoubt in Henan. In 1233 the Song dynasty finally became an ally of the Mongols, Song general Meng Gong defeated the Jin general Wu Xian and directed his troops to besiege the city of Caizhou, to which the last emperor of the Jurchen had fled. With the help of the Mongols, the Song armies were able to extinguish the Jin dynasty that had occupied northern China for more than a century. Thus the Mongol troops, headed by sons of the Ögedei Khan, started their slow and this combination resulted in one of the most difficult and prolonged wars of the Mongol conquests. A greater amount of resistance was put up by Korea. The Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force sent to invade the Middle East in 1256. Many Han Chinese defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin, two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze, Liu Heima, and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded three Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan, Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols. There were 4 Han Tumens, with each Tumen consisting of 10,000 troops, the four Han Generals Zhang Rou, Yan Shi, Shi Tianze, and Liu Heima commanded the four Han tumens under Ogödei Khan. Shi Tianze was a Han Chinese who lived in the Jin dynasty, interethnic marriage between Han and Jurchen became common at this time. Shi Bingzhi was married to a Jurchen woman and a Han Chinese woman, Shi Tianze was married to two Jurchen women, a Han Chinese woman, and a Korean woman, and his son Shi Gang was born to one of his Jurchen wives. His Jurchen wives surnames were Mo-nien and Na-ho, his Korean wifes surname was Li, Shi Tianze defected to the Mongol Empires forces upon their invasion of the Jin dynasty. His son Shi Gang married a Kerait woman, the Kerait were Mongolified Turkic people and considered as part of the Mongol nation. Shi Tianze, Zhang Rou, and Yan Shi and other high ranking Chinese who served in the Jin dynasty, Chagaan and Zhang Rou jointly launched an attack on the Song dynasty ordered by Töregene Khatun. The Yuan dynasty created a Han Army out of defected Jin troops, in the early spring of 1227, Genghis Khan ordered a small fraction of the army to advance into Songs Circuit of Lizhou, in the name of attacking Jīn and W. Xia. The five zhous of Jie（階）, Feng （鳳）, Cheng（成）, He （和）, then the Mongols moved southward and seized Wénzhou（文州）
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Dali Kingdom
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King Duan Siping established its capital at Dali in 937 and 22 kings of his dynasty ruled it until 1253, when it was conquered during the Mongol invasion of the area. The invaders received help from the dynasty itself, which continued to rule the area afterwards as Mongol vassals, the Dali Kingdom was preceded by the Nanzhao dynasty, which was overthrown in 902. Three dynasties followed in succession before Duan Siping seized power in 937. Gao Shengtai forced the puppet king Duan Zhengming to abdicate and become a monk in 1095 and he returned the power to Duan Zhengchun and his family upon his death, after which it is also known as the Later Dali. Han Chinese ancestry was professed by the Duan clan and their Han ancestors originated from Wuwei in Gansu province 武威段氏. In 825 the monk Pulituoke came from India calling himself the holy Acuoye Guanyin from the western Lotus land, meng Longshun, the 11th king of Nanzhao, established Buddhism as the state religion. Ten of the 22 kings of Dali gave up the throne and it is said that the Mongols found a traitor who led them over the Cang Mountains along a secret path, and only in this way were they able to penetrate and overrun the Bai defenders. Thus ended three centuries of independence, in 1274 the Province of Yunnan was created by the Mongol Empire at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty. The Dali King Duan Xingzhi himself defected to the Mongols, the Duan family reigned in Dali while the Governors served in Kunming. After the Ming dynasty conquered Yunnan from the Yuan, The Duan royals were scattered in various distant areas of China by the Hongwu Emperor, media related to Kingdom of Dali at Wikimedia Commons
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Mongol invasions of Japan
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The Mongol invasions of Japan, which took place in 1274 and 1281, were major military efforts undertaken by Kublai Khan to conquer the Japanese archipelago after the submission of Goryeo to vassaldom. Ultimately a failure, the attempts are of macro-historical importance because they set a limit on Mongol expansion. The Mongol invasions are considered a precursor to modern warfare. One of the most notable innovations during the war was the use of explosive. After a series of Mongol invasions of Korea between 1231 and 1281, Goryeo signed a treaty in favor of the Mongols and became a vassal state, Kublai was declared Khagan of the Mongol Empire in 1260 and established his capital at Khanbaliq in 1264. The Mongols also made attempts to subjugate the peoples of Sakhalin—the Ainu, Orok. In 1266, Kublai Khan dispatched emissaries to Japan with a saying, Cherished by the Mandate of Heaven. The sovereigns of small countries, sharing borders with other, have for a long time been concerned to communicate with each other. Especially since my ancestor governed at heavens command, innumerable countries from afar disputed our power, Goryeo rendered thanks for my ceasefire and for restoring their land and people when I ascended the throne. Our relation is feudatory like a father and son and we think you already know this. Japan was allied with Goryeo and sometimes with China since the founding of your country, however and we are afraid that the Kingdom is yet to know this. Hence we dispatched a mission with our letter particularly expressing our wishes, enter into friendly relations with each other from now on. We think all countries belong to one family, how are we in the right, unless we comprehend this. Nobody would wish to resort to arms, Kublai essentially demanded that Japan become a vassal and send tribute under a threat of conflict. A second set of emissaries were sent in 1268, returning empty-handed like the first, after discussing the letters with his inner circle, there was much debate, but the Shikken had his mind made up, he had the emissaries sent back with no answer. The Mongols continued to send demands, some through Korean emissaries and some through Mongol ambassadors on March 7,1269, September 17,1269, September 1271, however, each time, the bearers were not permitted to land in Kyushu. The Imperial Court suggested compromise, but really had little effect in the matter, after acknowledging its importance, the Imperial Court led great prayer services, and much government business was put off to deal with this crisis. The Khan was willing to go to war as early as 1268 after having been rebuffed twice, Kublai Khan founded the Yuan dynasty in 1271
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