Chagatai Khanate

The Chagatai Khanate, also known as the Chagatai Ulus, was a Mongol khanate. It included the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, the second son of Genghis Khan, and by his descendants and successors. Over time, its Mongol rulers gradually adopted the Turkic language and culture (Turkification) and the Islamic religion (Islamization), though Mongol political and administrative traditions remained important.

The Mongolian language was still used for official documents into the 14th century. Tughlugh Timur and Ilyas Khoja, the first Chaghatayid rulers of Moghulistan, still issued royal orders in Mongolian. After the division of the Mongol Empire in 1259, the khanate became a separate realm. At its largest, in the late 13th century, it stretched from the Amu Darya, south of the Aral Sea, to the Altai Mountains on the border of what is now Mongolia and China. This area roughly matched the land once ruled by the Qara Khitai, also called the Western Liao dynasty.

At first, the rulers of the Chagatai Khanate accepted the authority of the Great Khan. By the time of Kublai Khan, however, Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq no longer followed the emperor's orders, although in 1303 he accepted the Yuan dynasty as a symbolic overlord. From 1363, the Chagatais gradually lost Transoxiana to the Timurids. The smaller realm became known as Moghulistan, which lasted until the late 15th century. At that time it split into the Yarkent Khanate and the Turpan Khanate.

In 1680, the remaining Chagatai lands lost their independence to the Dzungar Khanate. The Kumul Khanate was an self-governing part of China that was set up during the Qing dynasty in 1696. It was ruled by descendants of Chagatai Khan. It was abolished during the Republic of China in 1930, which ended the dynasty.

Name

The Chagatai Khanate was also known as the Dumdadu Mongγol Ulus (the Middle Mongolian Empire). Giovanni de' Marignolli, who visited the Yuan dynasty in the 1340s, called Almaliq, the capital of the Chagatai Khanate, "Almalek of the Middle Empire (Imperium Medium)." The Catalan Atlas of 1375 called the same area "Imperium Medorum," which may be another name for "Imperium Medium." Ibn Battuta also wrote in Arabic that the country lay in the middle of four powerful kings of the world. This suggests the land was called the "Middle Empire" because it was located in the middle of Eurasia.

A possible name for the state, Dumdadu Mongγol Ulus ("Middle Mongolian Empire"), has been found in a damaged document written in Uighur script that was dug up at Turfan. Matsui Dai supports this reading, which was first proposed by Ligeti in 1971. Matsui suggests that Du'a or his descendants may have taken this new official state name to show that their state had been renewed, just as Emperor Qubilai did when he adopted the official name Dai Ön Yeke Mongγol Ulus in 1271.

History

See also: Timeline of the Chagatai Khanate

When Genghis Khan died in 1227, his son Chagatai Khan received lands that had belonged to the former Qara Khitai Empire, including Transoxania. Chagatai still took orders from Karakorum, the Mongol capital. Over the following decades, the khanate passed through many rulers, some of them too young to govern alone, and power often shifted between rival family members. Mubarak Shah became the first Chagatai khan to convert to Islam. Later, Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq and Kaidu fought over control of the region, and conflicts with the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan dynasty continued. After the death of Kaidu in 1301, the khanate faced many more wars and disputes among its leaders.

The khanate became unstable in the 1340s and split in two. Transoxania was ruled by a series of puppet khans controlled by powerful local lords. In the east, Tughlugh Timur became khan of Moghulistan in 1347, converted to Islam in 1350, and conquered Transoxania in 1360, restoring the khanate for a time. After his death in 1363, Timur gained control of Transoxania and kept a puppet khan on the throne. Moghulistan later divided into western and eastern parts, and by the early 1500s it had split into the Yarkent Khanate and the Turpan Khanate. In 1705, the Dzungars placed a non-Chagatayid ruler in Yarkent, which ended the rule of Chagatai khans there.

Government

The Chagatai Mongols mostly stayed nomadic in how they governed. They did not settle in cities until the late 15th century. The Mongols of the Chagatai Khanate treated the city people of Transoxiana and the Tarim Basin as dependents.

Family tree