During the mid- and late fourteenth century, Eurasian courts shared a key reference point, the Mongol legacy. Even as the empire collapsed and a new world slowly emerged, remnants of the Mongol empire – from its bureaucratic and military institutions, ideas of legitimacy, and political culture to its physical manifestations such as architectural monuments, even seals of office and administrative papers – survived for decades, sometimes even longer.Footnote 1 People too were an invaluable asset. In the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape of the fourteenth century, aristocratic lineages and military units from the Mongol empire retained a recognizable coherence. They were potential allies that could provide military support and political legitimacy. The Mongol empire’s remains coexisted with the emerging new order. In fact, they often made up its basic building blocks.
As individuals, families, and communities attempted to make sense of their worlds in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Mongol empire’s legacy was never far from view or mind. The Mongols figure prominently in the genesis stories of many Eurasian courts established at that time. To these courts, their subjects, allies, and rivals, the Mongols and their empire formed an essential, often central, feature of identity. Courts from Nanjing to Samarqand to Sarai often found it difficult to explain their origins, legitimacy, and standing at home and abroad without extensive reference to Chinggis and his descendants. Rulers like Zhu Yuanzhang, Tamerlane, and Toqtamïsh (Tokhtamish) of the Blue Horde (1342–1406) tried their best to turn the Mongol legacy to their advantage. Writing in a different context, the South Asian historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam observes, “ideas and mental constructs, too, flowed across political boundaries in that world, and – even if they found specific local expression – enable us to see that what we are dealing with are not separate and comparable, but connected histories.”Footnote 2
Since all major contemporary rivals claimed some connection to the Mongol legacy, any court that ignored the Chinggisids was conceding a valuable form of political legitimacy. Further, they all knew that their version of the past and its relation to the present would be contested at home and abroad. Put slightly differently, telling the tale of the Mongols’ rise and fall was a competitive event. Some versions would triumph; others would fail. This is the broader context of the Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative.
This chapter is organized into two sections. The first section sketches the Mongolian diaspora across Eurasia. It briefly traces, how as a result of the imperial enterprise, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Mongols left the steppe and settled in distant lands. Rather than attempt a comprehensive treatment of a two-century pan-Eurasian development, it focuses on the Mongolian diaspora in the Delhi and Mamluk sultanates and the travels of one group, the Oirats. It then outlines relocated Mongols’ fate as the major Chinggisid houses collapsed in the fourteenth century. Courts that emerged in the wake of the Mongol empire’s collapse actively recruited former imperial personnel. The second section reviews the ways the Timurid and Moghul courts told the story of the Mongol empire to enhance their legitimacy, attract supporters, and command obedience.
My objective in this chapter is threefold. The first is to show that the Ming court was part of a wider historical moment in Eurasia. To appreciate what was distinctive and what was common to the strategies of Zhu Yuanzhang and his advisors, it is necessary to first examine how his contemporaries navigated such challenges. The second is to make clear that reception of the Ming dynasty’s Chinggisid narrative was shaped by other courts’ stories of the Mongols. My final and overarching goal is to foreground Chinggisid influence’s pervasive nature in east Eurasia in the late fourteenth century. Only when we see east Eurasia really as a Chinggisid world can we appreciate why Zhu Yuanzhang talked about the Mongols so much. The Chinggisid world in which he and his contemporaries lived presented both opportunity and constraint in the pursuit of power and legitimacy.
The Mongolian Diaspora
A defining characteristic of the Mongol empire is movement.Footnote 3 To conquer and then to run their huge empire, the Mongols mobilized subjugated and allied populations, relocating them across the length and width of Eurasia. Chinese siege experts were deployed to West Asia, and Samarqand households settled north of today’s Beijing.Footnote 4 One leading scholar, Thomas Allsen, calls the Mongols’ collection of men of talent “a central theme in their imperial history.”Footnote 5 Diplomatic and commercial agents of the empire traversed Eurasia. The Chinggisid state invested in an ambitious transportation infrastructure of relay stations, organized personnel to staff such hubs, and structured revenue streams for their maintenance.Footnote 6 It also worked to consolidate control of trading networks across the seas to pursue diverse diplomatic, military, and economic interests.
Less appreciated is the Mongolian diaspora. Continent-spanning campaigns propelled tens of thousands of men and women from the Mongolian steppe to North India, Eastern Europe, and West Asia. Between 1200 and 1300 (and beyond), Mongols were spread through much of Eurasia, from the Korean capital in Kaegyŏng to the Mamluk court in Egypt, from the courts of Dehli Sultanate and Gujarat in India to Golden Horde court of Sarai in Russia and nearly everywhere in between. Even the Song court recruited Mongols into its military forces.Footnote 7 Chinggis accelerated the diaspora with his famous division of conquered territories among his sons, who were to take up residence in their new and distant lands.Footnote 8 In fact, Mongols migrated even beyond the empire’s expansive borders.
Let’s start at West Asia’s far edge. The Mamluk Sultanate (1215–1517) controlled today’s Egypt, Syria, and west Saudi Arabia. Its military is famous for defeating Mongol armies on several occasions in the late thirteenth century. The Mamluk Sultanate developed into an important rival to the Ilkhanate, the Chinggisid house that ruled much of today’s Iran, Azerbaijan, and eastern Turkey. Despite acute tension with the Ilkhanate, waves of immigrant Mongols sought shelter with Mamluk Sultanate.Footnote 9 Some Mongols had found themselves on the losing side in intra-Chinggisid house intrigue; some were victims of inter-Chinggisid house clashes. In other cases, the motive for flight is unclear.Footnote 10
These newly arrived Mongols performed a variety of functions. Most served in the Mamluk military, which was the “main road to joining the upper caste.”Footnote 11 The most famous instance was the 10,000 or 18,000 Oirats under the command of Turghay (son-in-law of Hülegü, the man who had founded the Ilkhanate). They arrived in 1296 and were welcomed by Sultan Kitbugha, himself an Oirat.Footnote 12 Others played a role in diplomacy, serving in embassies to the Ilkhanate, translating Mongolian documents into Arabic, and providing intelligence.Footnote 13 Treatment of these Mongolian immigrants varied. Early on, some received the esteemed rank of amīr or commander and were made cupbearers, armor bearers, and masters of the robe, that is, they gained direct and highly prestigious access to the person of the reigning Mamluk sultan Baybars (r. 1260–77). Further, they were initially settled in the capital rather than sent to the Syro-Palestinian coast, where non-Mongol immigrants had been relocated.Footnote 14 The daughters of elite Mongol immigrants were attractive marriage partners for local families of standing.Footnote 15 The activities of more humble Mongols, however, are poorly documented and little known. One Mamluk specialist concludes, “With so many Mongols on hand and such expertise among them, therefore, the Mamluks surely knew as much about the Mongols as did those regions that were actually under Mongol control.”Footnote 16
Let us now turn to South Asia. From the mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth century, military conflict and political instability within the Mongol empire produced refugees who sought safety in India, home of the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526).Footnote 17 “A whole quarter of the old city was assigned to asylum-seeking Mongol nobles in Delhi.”Footnote 18 Some came to exercise influence over the young ruler Muqizz al-Dīn Kayqubād (r. 1287–90).Footnote 19 Scholars have suggested that a later ruler, Sultan Tughluq (r. 1320–24), was an immigrant of Turco-Mongol origin who rose to supreme power through the support of officers who had previously served under him in Afghanistan.Footnote 20 In 1334, the son of Chaghadaid Khan, Darmashirin, took refuge with yet another sultan, Muḥammad b. Tughluq (r. 1324–52), after his father was overthrown in Central Asia.Footnote 21 Darmashirin’s son was part of a wave of people who fled to India at the time. Another influx arrived in the mid-1340s.Footnote 22
The Chaghadaid nobility’s presence became a prominent feature of court life under Sultan Muḥammad. The sultan’s long-term companion, Ẓiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī (1285–1357) writes:
The second occupation of Sultan Muḥammand during those few years in which he stayed in Delhi consisted in favoring and rewarding the Mongols. Year after year at the onset of winter, numbers of amirs of tümens and thousands, and princesses and princes of the blood kept arriving … For two or three months (each year) the sultan was engaged in nothing but granting favors and rewards.Footnote 23
Muḥammad insisted that his distinguished Chaghadaid guests first show homage to his decree of investiture from the Caliph and then agree to “written undertakings” and offer acts of fealty.Footnote 24 Ẓiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī doesn’t explain the Mongolian word tümen, presumably because his readers, educated elites in the Dehlhi Sultanate, knew its meaning. Tümen is a unit of ten thousand men, a standard element of Mongol governance that served both military and administrative functions. Ẓiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī does not tell his audience whether these Mongol commanders traveled with large contingents of armed men, but his description shows that the Dehli Sultanate knew and respected the status of Chinggisid nobles and senior Mongol military commanders. Further, Ẓiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī makes clear the sultan’s desire to secure Mongol allegiance on mutually acceptable terms.
The aforementioned suggests that Mongol elites commanded respect beyond the Mongol empire, in fact even among enemies. Although their influence may have been disruptive, elite members of the Mongolian diaspora won some measure of acceptance. Sultan Muḥammad’s high profile patronage was likely predicated on the belief that public recognition by Mongol elites, even when they were seeking asylum, generated valuable political capital. The arrival of outlanders of such elevated status challenged established notions of proper order and hierarchy in some quarters.Footnote 25 Scholars debate Mongol asylum seekers’ status in Mamluk sultanate. One authority concludes they “were on the whole far from seats of power … [they] did not have entrée into the higher circles of the sultanate.”Footnote 26 In contrast, one study highlights the incorporation of Mongols into the sultan’s prestigious military units and examples of migrant officers who “reached the highest rank in the Mamluk military.”Footnote 27 As later chapters will show, Mongols and other Great Yuan personnel were incorporated into the Ming military. Some received prestigious titles and preferential treatment such as housing and gifts from the throne. They did not control the levers of supreme power, but then again few in the Ming polity did. At the risk of oversimplification, one can say that a few former Chinggisid personnel secured exceptional patronage and standing from their new lords. A larger proportion served as officers, who were in the middle to upper echelons of the military. The majority, and the least well documented, provided welcomed military expertise, especially as mounted archers.
More common than relocation to places like the Mamluk or Delhi Sultanate, however, was internal migration within the greater Mongol empire. The courts and armies of Chinggisid great houses and lesser nobles throughout Europe were composed of relocated men and women from the Ikires, Oirat, Qongirat, Kereyit, Merkid, Naiman, Kipchak and other lineages from the Mongolian steppe. They served as soldiers, commanders, translators, political advisors, envoys, religious specialists, and administrators. When interactions among the great Chinggisid houses were extensive, men like Arghun Aqa and Bolad did serial service at several courts from Persia to China.Footnote 28 In time, Mongolian migrants became more firmly settled within the sphere of a single great house, even while preserving varying degrees of ancestral identities as men and women of the Oirat, Önggüt, Qongirat, Kereyit and other communities.
One relatively well-studied example is the Oirat.Footnote 29 After forming an alliance with the Chinggisids in 1207, men and women from leading Oirat lineages were incorporated into the upper echelons of the expanding empire.Footnote 30 They married into the Chinggisid imperial family, served in the Great Khan’s guard, and commanded military forces in campaigns throughout Eurasia. As a consequence, elite Oirat lineages ended up in China, Mongolia, the Ilkhanate, and the Mamluk Sultanate. Although in the long-term these Oirat lineages (and other less well-documented groups) assimilated into local society, in the short- and mid-term, they retained a clear sense of lineage identity and interests. One study concludes that preservation of Oirat identity depended on ties to the Ilkhanate ruling house, whose “support secured the high status of the Oirats and united them.”Footnote 31 As the Ilkhanate disintegrated in the 1330s, Oirat power networks became more fragmented and narrowly regional. Some offered their allegiance to the Timurid dynasty. Their new status there may have been more modest than what it had previously been in the Ilkhanate. However, “their presence is unmistakable and clearly points to the preservation of their tribal identity (even if only in terms of their tribal name) at least until the early-fifteenth century.”Footnote 32 Elite Oirat lineages in some places seem to have maintained control over Oirat housemen well into the fourteenth century.
If we take a step back, we can see that the Oirats were part of a broader Mongolian diaspora across Eurasia.Footnote 33 These groups, whose self-identity varied widely and is seldom known in any detail, had left the Mongolian steppe and its environs as a result of the Chinggisid imperial enterprise.Footnote 34 By the early fourteenth century and sometimes earlier, many of these Mongolian communities in West and Central Asia had adopted Islam and had intermarried with local families. When Chinggisid houses collapsed in the early and mid-fourteenth centuries, members of the Mongolian diaspora faced questions about their allegiances and interests. Especially for elite clans, identity was rooted in relations with the local Chinggisid ruling house, such as the Ilkhanate, the Chaghadaid khanate, the Golden Horde, and the Great Yuan, which in turn provided ties to the broader Mongol empire. Yet, as the previous sections on the Mongol diaspora in the Mamluk and Delhi sultanates suggest, individuals (and often entire communities) were open to new patrons and new sources of power.Footnote 35
For men like Tamerlane, leaders of the Moghul khanate, and Zhu Yuan-zhang, the diaspora was another facet of the Mongol empire’s inheritance. As living ties to a glorious past, “Mongols abroad” might be vilified as enemies, treasured as allies, or absorbed as the building blocks of new empires. They could not, however, be ignored. Polities that emerged as Chinggisid rule collapsed actively courted the Mongolian diaspora’s support. If skillfully exploited, Mongol elites could improve new regimes’ military and political standing. If they were ignored or pushed away, their talents could well end up in rivals’ hands. The diaspora and its incorporation into local regimes’ key political and military organs contributed to the further transmission of knowledge regarding the Mongol empire’s institutions and the special charisma of the Chinggisid line throughout Eurasia. The diaspora helped build and sustain the Chinggisid world.
Stories of the Mongols
With the exception of the Golden Horde, which controlled Russia and the Kipchak steppe, all great Chinggisid houses across Eurasia collapsed in the fourteenth century. Later chapters will explore the Great Yuan’s fall and the Great Ming’s rise. This section looks briefly at developments in West and Central Asia. The objective is to show how the Chinggisid legacy figured in new polities’ emergence across Eurasia in the fourteenth century. Comprehensive consideration of the Mongols’ impact would include everything from military institutions, transportation infrastructure, tax regimes, and diplomatic protocol to political ideology, religious patronage, ethnogenesis, and gender. The coverage here is more focused. It looks at how the Timurid and Moghul polities, which took shape in the second half of the fourteenth century, turned the Mongol legacy to their advantage in the wake of the collapse of the great Chinggisid houses. That in turn helps contextualize the Great Ming’s efforts to come to terms with the Great Yuan.
During the fourteenth century, three great Mongol houses that ruled much of West and Central Asia fell into sharp decline. The survivors emerged transformed. In 1301, the House of Ögödei (Chinggis Khan’s second son and first successor), centered in today’s northeast Xinjiang and South Kazakhstan, fell. It had experienced vigorous expansion under Qaidu (1236–1301), but his death opened the way to renewed dominance of the House of Chaghadai, which had been both his ally and rival.Footnote 36 The House of Chaghadai (Chinggis’ third son), which at its height ruled much of today’s Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and parts of southern Kazakhstan and south Xinjiang, fell into a period of extended instability beginning in 1334, following Darmashirin’s deposition.Footnote 37 In 1335, the sultan of the Ilkhanate, Abū Saʿīd, died without an heir. In retrospect, we may say that this ended the Ilkhanate’s effective control of its territory. However, at the time, “many people in Persia … were convinced that Mongol rule would survive, for there was plainly no lack of influential Mongol leaders and politicians, nor of princes belonging to the most diverse lines of descent from Chinggis Khan.”Footnote 38
In this twilight of empire, the Mongol legacy loomed large. Many leading military commanders had formerly served the Houses of Chaghadai or Hülegü. Some wars were depicted as efforts to restore the Ilkhanate or Chaghadaid khanate.Footnote 39 Chinggisid nobles were selected as puppet rulers to legitimate what usually proved to be short-lived regimes. A few sought to rule as well as reign. To bolster their standing, some polities seized control of places closely associated with Mongol rule. One scholar describes Tabriz, which had been an Ilkhanate capital, as “a locus of Ilkhanid political charisma, and thus … the primary goal for members of the fourteenth century post-Ilkhanid military elite.”Footnote 40 Even those with no interest in restoring Chinggisid houses still found the Mongol legacy useful. For instance, the Sarbadārs, who had no legitimist claims, recognized (albeit intermittently) the authority of a prominent Chinggisid aspirant. They also used military institutions such as the “little thousand,” previously a building block for political identity and organization in the Mongol empire.Footnote 41 In 1351, one Chaghadaid commander skewered what he perceived as the ridiculous posing of the ruler of Herat. He wrote, “Of what descent is he that is making pretensions to the sultanate? … How can a Tāzīk (Tajik) pretend to be a king (pādeshāh)?”Footnote 42 His point was that the ruler of Herat lacked Chinggisid descent and was therefore utterly unqualified to be a king.
Rather than attempt to trace the emergence of the dozens of regimes from the wreckage of the great Chinggisid houses in Central Asia, the following section explores two particularly influential instances, both of which developed ties to the Great Ming. These are the Timurid and Moghul polities, which came to control much of the territory of the three great Mongol houses noted earlier. As ambitious men capitalized on the collapse of Chinggisid houses, they pursued strategies closely associated with the Mongol empire. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mongol rulers were renowned and notorious for their brutal campaigns of conquest and ostentatious displays of patronage. Tamerlane used similar methods. His military campaigns secured new sources of food, wealth, and labor, which demonstrated his fitness as a ruler. They also kept his armies occupied. His dramatic use of terror – the sack of Khwārazm, the massacre at Isfahan, minarets built of severed heads – discouraged local resistance and foregrounded his singular determination.Footnote 43 At the same time, Tamerlane’s lavish architectural projects advertised his commitment to high culture and his prodigious wealth.Footnote 44 Mongols held no monopoly on terror and patronage, but they had pursued both strategies most recently and most spectacularly in Central Asia. One authority argues that Tamerlane deliberately emulated their example.Footnote 45
In conjunction with military campaigns and flamboyant display, Tamerlane and others appealed more directly to the Mongol legacy to demonstrate their superiority as sovereigns. These campaigns of persuasion seldom told a single story, because their audiences were diverse, which owed much to the consequences of Mongol rule in Eurasia. As noted, the Mongols’ rise and rule had accelerated social and physical mobility. Their fall in the fourteenth century generated the dangers and opportunities. It also increased mobility. Rulers wooed diverse allies and oversaw complex populations.Footnote 46 Armies of fourteenth-century Iranian dynasties, such as the Karts of Herat and the Mozaffarids of Fars, incorporated Tajiks, Khalaj Turks, Baluch, Ghurids, Mongols, dervishes from the Sarbadārs, and Khorasanians among others.Footnote 47 Many ruling houses, including the Jalayirids in northwestern Iran and Iraq, the Injurid dynasty of Fars, the Mozaffarids, the Shabankara (based in a peripheral region of Fars), the Karts as well as families with bureaucratic traditions, were tied to Mongol rule through previous military alliances, administrative service, and marriage allegiances to the Ilkhans.Footnote 48 Manz observes, “In the society of 14th–15th century Iran and Central Asia, Turkic and Iranian alike, the events that had shaped the present most immediately were those of Mongol conquest and rule. The drama of the Mongol invasion, the administration of the great khans, and the rivalries of the Chinggisid uluses mattered to many people beyond the Chinggisid dynasty itself.”Footnote 49
Thus, leaders needed to explain their connections to the Chinggisids. Written between 1357 and 1362, the verse chronicle Tale of Ghāzan (Ghāzan-nāma), was dedicated to Sultan Shaikh Uvais, the Jalayirid ruler (1356–74). In it, the author speaks of “the daulut-i Ghāzan Khāni,” or Ghāzan Khan’s charismatic good fortune. Ghāzan (1271–1304) had reigned over the Ilkhanate from 1295 to 1304. According to Tale of Ghāzan, Shaikh Uvais was direct heir to Ghāzan’s special fortune.Footnote 50 In other words, Shaikh Uvais and his dynasty were legitimate successors to Ghāzan and the Ilkhanate; they deserved the respect and obedience the Mongols had commanded.
Tamerlane and his court forged ties to Chinggis Khan’s charismatic legitimacy with even greater energy. He encouraged stories of his youth that resembled those of Chinggis Khan.Footnote 51 He periodically used a title, “Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction,” which was associated with Chinggis and Alexander the Great.Footnote 52 Tamerlane married a Chinggisid princess and thus acquired the title Imperial Son-in-law (M. güregen; P. kūrkān/gūrgān).Footnote 53 He established a Chinggisid ruler (from the Ögödeid line), in whose name and authority, he ostensibly ruled.Footnote 54 Tamerlane issued coins inscribed with his titles (either amīr or Imperial Son-in-law) and his Chinggisid ruler’s name.Footnote 55 He acted as patron to several Chinggisid nobles. He first offered refuge to a claimant to the Blue Horde, Toqtamïsh (who became khan of the Golden Horde) and later to a refugee from the Great Yuan court (who eventually became Great Khan in eastern Mongolia).Footnote 56 Tamerlane stood as a staunch defender of Mongol customary law.Footnote 57 Court-commissioned illuminated manuscripts from the early Timurid dynasty portray court members as Mongols.Footnote 58 Tamerlane’s court-sponsored genealogies purported to show a shared a common ancestry with Chinggis.Footnote 59
Genealogy and history often walked hand in hand. The Muʿizz al-ansāb fī shajarat al-ansāb is an anonymous Timuro-Chinggisid genealogical history compiled circa 1426–27 by order of Shāhrukh (1377–1447), one of Tamerlane’s early successors. It is another example of keen early Timurid interest in Chinggisid nobility. History was personalized rather than abstract. Timurid chroniclers stressed that Tamerlane’s ancestor, Qarachar Barlas, was both an influential commander in Chaghadai’s army and his lord’s personal advisor.Footnote 60 In different terms, the Chaghadai khanate and other Mongol groups originated in the Chinggisid imperial structure and drew on its imperial ideology after the empire’s fall.Footnote 61 Tamerlane’s forefathers in the Barlas family had served the Chinggisid state since the early thirteenth century, holding posts in the imperial guard, the keshig. Generation after generation, the Barlas family maintained an enduring alignment with the imperial guard, the general staff of the military, and key administrative posts in the palace and central government in Daidu.Footnote 62 Even when Mongol power failed, imperial Chinggisid institutions remained as important as family memory and established normative expectations. It functioned as a link to the past and a guide for the future. Tamerlane adopted the keshig structure to organize his military resources, expand his political control, and showcase his commitment to shared values and memories of his supporters, who came “of age within the web of Chinggisid sovereignty and Mongol political culture.”Footnote 63 Tamerlane’s standing army leaned heavily on Turco-Mongolian Chaghataid soldiers, “who had originated as the nomad population of the Ulus Chaghatay.”Footnote 64
Seizure of key Ilkhanid sites strengthened Tamerlane’s claims on Chinggisid authority. In 1384, Tamerlane seized Sulṭāniyya, the location of the mausoleum of Öljeitü (r. 1305–16), an Ilkhnate ruler. Later Ilkhanids were enthroned there. One Timurid specialist suggests, “from this time on, Tamerlane implicitly laid claim to the Ilkhanid inheritance.”Footnote 65 Early Timurid historians themselves were often embedded within a Chinggisid world, depending on Mongolian commanders for details of military institutions or gleaning information when serving as tutors to Chinggisid princes.Footnote 66
Tamerlane’s extensive ties to the Chinggisid legacy struck non-Timurid visitors to his court. In his explanation of the background of Tamerlane and “the Tatars,” the Arab historian and career official, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), rehearses the genealogy of Chinggis and his descendants (including Qubilai) through the mid-fourteenth century. He identifies Tamerlane as “an emir of the house of the Banū Jaghaṭāi,” noting that that he “was the guardian of a boy who was also related to him by descent from Jaghaṭāi through male ancestors, all of them kings, and this one Tīmūr ibn Ṭūghān, was their cousin on the father’s side. He became guardian of one them, the heir to the throne named Maḥmūd, whose mother Ṣurghatmish he married.”Footnote 67 Jaghaṭāi is the Persianized version of Chaghadai, one of Chinggis khan’s sons and founder of the Chaghadai House noted previously. Likewise Ibn ʿArabshāh (1389–1450) writes that he has seen a genealogy of Tamerlane “traced without a break to Chinggis Khan through females.”Footnote 68 He further notes, “after conquering Transoxiana and rising above his companions, he married princesses and therefore they gave him the surname Kurkan, which in the Mongol language means son-in-law, since he had gained affinity with kings and enjoyed the highest authority in their courts.Footnote 69 A bitter critic of Tamerlane, Ibn ʿArabshāh begrudgingly acknowledges Tamerlane’s skill in exploiting Chinggisid connections to forge alliances. Through a marriage tie to the Moghul king,” Tamerlane “gained their friendship and brought them to peace and tranquility … and became safe from their onslaughts and attacks.”Footnote 70 Through his observation of yasa, “the law of Chinggis Khan,” Tamerlane again “was safe from their enmity and repelled their wiles and power to injure.”Footnote 71 Among the non-Timurid observers just noted, Ibn ʿArabshah was the most critical of Tamerlane but also the most diligent in gathering information, even if many were second-hand accounts.Footnote 72 He grasped Tamerlane’s use of the Chinggisid legacy to advance his interests.
Tamerlane and his court historians repeatedly turned to the Chinggisid past to justify Tamerlane’s actions and ambitions abroad. Whatever traction these appeals gained grew from the fact that neighbors were often just as much a product of the Mongol empire as was Tamerlane. He legitimated his claims to control over revenue from Khwārazm cities by saying that Chinggis had granted the territory to the House of Chaghadai, whose rights Tamerlane was now restoring. Similar justification was offered for seizure of former Ilkanate lands such as Khurasan in 1381.Footnote 73 In communications with the Ottoman sultan Yildirim and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria al-Malik al-Zahir Barquq (r. 1382–99), Tamerlane denounced one Chinggisid house (the Toluids) for their abuse of authority and betrayal of Chinggis’ wishes. Tamerlane was trying to explain why his seizure of lands outside Chaghadaid territory was right and necessary.Footnote 74
Tamerlane’s Chinggisid-inflected rulership traveled well. Early Ottoman leaders were familiar with Chinggis Khan’s political legacy, which had figured prominently in their own formation.Footnote 75 In a letter to one of Tamerlane’s immediate successors (Shāhrukh), the early fifteenth century Ottoman sultan Meḥmed (r. 1413–21) repeatedly refers to the Ilkhanids, mentions Ilkhanid-Mongol terms like quriltai (lineage conclave), yarligh (decree), and uses Tamerlane’s title güregen (Chinggisid son-in-law).Footnote 76 Previously, when Tamerlane campaigned in Ottoman territory, he sought local Turco-Mongol groups’ allegiance. He appealed to recent history, writing: “We have the same ancestors … you are therefore truly a shoot from my stock … your last king was Artana who died in the Faith [that is, Islam] and the greatest king in the realms of Rum was your servant … why should you be slaves of a man who is a son of slaves set free by Al-i Saljuk.”Footnote 77 The Ilkhanate had appointed the king of Artana (or Eretna) as governor. In the wake of the Ilkhanate’s collapse, he declared himself sultan and ruled his own principality in central and eastern Anatolia until his death in 1352. Here Tamerlane invokes recent historical memory of Mongol rule to undermine Ottoman legitimacy and forge a bond of common descent.
This book’s focus is use of the Chinggisid legacy, thus the previous description has hewed to Tamerlane’s efforts to create ties to Chinggis Khan, the house of Chaghatai, and their descendant to advance his interests. However, Tamerlane strove to “build an imperial image and character from a widely disparate set of sources and models across the region of his conquests.”Footnote 78 The next section considers another example of how an important Central Asian ruling elite put its multifaceted inheritance to work.
Moghul Khanate or Ulus-i Moghul
Although far from unified in a political sense, the lineages that comprised the Moghul Khanate considered themselves to be part of the Chaghatai Khanate. Many lineages were part of the extended Mongolian diaspora with long histories of service to the Chinggisids.Footnote 79 Centered in the Ili region, the lineages of what scholars sometimes identify as the Moghul Khanate were active in much of the area that today includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang of the People’s Republic of China.Footnote 80 In the first half of the fourteenth century, the Chaghadaid khanate included a mix of urban and rural sedentary Iranian populations with various Turco-Mongolian communities.Footnote 81 Long after the Chaghadaid khanate politically imploded in the mid-fourteenth century, the Moghul khanate retained key features of Mongol governance. It issued written documents in the Mongolian language. It valued Chinggisid law (yasa). Its members called themselves the Mongol Empire (Mongghol ulus). Members of the Moghul khanate sometimes expressed disdain for their Timurid rivals. Tamerlane, in their eyes, was a usurper, who, lacking proper qualifications to rule, had been forced to put a Chinggisid puppet on the throne to provide an appearance of legitimacy. Tamerlane’s people were dismissed as Qara’unas, people of mixed ancestry, lacking a proper Chaghadaid pedigree.Footnote 82
The importance of Chaghadaid descent was violently revealed in 1365. That year, the head of one Moghul lineage, Qamar al-Dīn, seized power and arrogated the title of khan. It sparked immediate resistance among the khanate’s lineages, in large part because he was not of Chinggisid descent. The ensuing succession weakened the Moghul khanate and opened the door to Tamerlane, who sensed an opportunity to expand his realm. The struggle between the Moghul Khanate and Tamerlane was also a competition for the Mongol empire’s mantle. One historian suggests, “the war between the Timurids and the Moghuls in the latter half of the fourteenth century was waged not simply for booty or conquest but for the unification of the Chaghatai Khanate.”Footnote 83 Put differently, despite political upheaval and the lack of a single dominant khan, the Chaghatai khanate remained a broadly accepted political, military, and social entity of unquestioned legitimacy. Modern historians regularly speak of the Chaghatai khanate’s collapse in the mid-fourteenth century, but as we saw with the Ilkhanate’s fall, contemporaries did not perceive a clear rupture.Footnote 84 Restoration remained within reach.Footnote 85
Haydar Dūghlāt’s sixteenth century chronicle Tārīkh-i rashīdī provides one of the only surviving narrative sources for the Moghul khanate. It offers several clues about the place of the Chinggisid legacy in the fourteenth century. He provides a brief genealogy of Tughlugh-Temür Khan, the first ruler to appear in his history of the Moghuls. It traces Tughlugh-Temür’s ancestry to Chaghatai, son of Chinggis, and back to Alan Qoa or Alan the Fair.Footnote 86 Mongols traced their ancestry back to Alan the Fair, the woman whose five sons were believed to be ancestors of the major Mongol aristocratic lineages. Dūghlāt refers several times to a letter of patent issued by Tughlugh-Temür Khan to Amir Bolaji. The patent renewed nine privileges originally granted by Chinggis Khan to Amir Bolaji’s forbear.Footnote 87 The patent was a valuable artifact and legal instrument that was passed down in Dūghlāt’s family. He notes that it was “written in the Mongol language.”Footnote 88 These details show the Chinggisid legacy’s importance within the Moghul khanate after the Mongol empire’s collapse.
In contrast to early Timurid chronicles and genealogies that systematically linked Tamerlane to Chinggis, Haydar Dūghlāt’s account of the fourteenth century does not foreground the Mongol legacy. In part this may result from the extreme paucity of sources available for his use.Footnote 89 He went so far as to supplement his history with materials created at the rival Timurid court. Another factor may be Dūghlāt’s understanding of sovereignty, which he links to Tughlugh-Temür’s conversion to Islam and God’s will.Footnote 90 Nonetheless, evidence of Turco-Mongolian political culture appears throughout his account. Archery, hunting, and falconry are listed among things important to administrative affairs and running the kingdom.Footnote 91 In the face of a larger Timurid army, Moghul forces resort to use of the rain stone.Footnote 92 Mongols believed that the rain stone could summon rain, snow, and sleet, whose sudden appearance could dramatically alter the balance of battle. The rain stone, thus, was an important part of Mongol culture and lore. Dūghlāt notes the “ancient Mongol custom” of the khan’s wife’s broad discretionary powers, the use of the tümen as a military/fiscal unit, and “the ancient Mongol” custom of holding a great feast when the new koumiss (fermented mare’s milk) arrived in spring.Footnote 93 Dūghlāt felt all these Mongol practises were important to understand the Moghul khanate’s history, but unlike the Timurid court, he does not invoke the Chinggisid legacy to explain political change or justify seizure of power.
Yet, we know from this and other sources that Chinggisid charisma did figure in contemporary perceptions of Moghul khan’s authority. After Esen-Buqa Khan died without a clear successor, “chaos made its way among the nation.” Bolaji (who was Dūghlāt’s ancestor) then “decided to locate a khan so that order might return to the kingdom.” After an arduous search, a potential successor was located. Bolaji then “raised Tughlugh-Temür to the khanate, and he secured all Moghulistan, indeed the entire territory of Chaghadai.”Footnote 94 A similar search for a hidden-away Chinggisid adolescent occurred after the death of Qamar al-Dīn, the non-Chinggisid tribal leader noted earlier whose reign brought Moghul lands into “chaos.”Footnote 95 Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nāma (written at the Timurid court) has Tughlugh-Temür showering “inestimable favor” on Tamerlane, including the governorship of Kish “along with his hereditary tümen and all its appurtenances and privileges.”Footnote 96 The khan relinquished “control of affairs of the realm to the Sahib-Qiran’s good judgment.”Footnote 97 Yazdi’s account was written early in the fifteenth century, and we may hesitate to conclude that it accurately reflects late fourteenth century views. Yet, it strongly suggests that the Chaghadaid khan’s approval mattered enough to have him mouth words of praise for Tamerlane. We do know that marriage alliances to the Moghul khan held appeal for contemporaries. When the late fourteenth-century Moghul khan, Khiżr Khwāja, concluded a truce with Tamerlane, he granted Tamerlane a woman from the khanly harem.Footnote 98 Decades later, the ambitious Oirat leader Esen demanded that the reigning Moghul ruler, Ways Khan (r. 1417–32), turn over his sister as ransom.Footnote 99 She wed Esen’s son, Amāsānji.Footnote 100 Indeed before coming face-to-face with the defeated Ways Khan, Esen (in Dūghlāt’s retelling) reflects to himself, “If he really is a descendant of Chinggis Khan, he will certainly not bow to me but will look upon me as a liege man.”Footnote 101 For the people of the Moghul khanate, there was no doubt that Chinggisid descent was a sine qua non for rulership. They were equally convinced that their political world – indeed their entire culture – was firmly rooted in Chingisid ways.
Concluding Comments
“Having returned to their native steppes after expulsion from China,” observes one scholar, “the Mongols seemed isolated from the external world, having forfeited all links with their kinsmen, who became scattered across Eurasia in the period of military expansionism.”Footnote 102 As noted, the Mongolian diaspora did result in the relocation of men and women from the steppe. Less clear is the degree of isolation after the empire’s fall. First, many – perhaps even the majority – of Mongols did not return to the steppe. Instead, they became influential political and military actors in new lands. Some returned to the steppe, but ties to Daidu, Samarqand, or Baghdad did not vanish. Newly ascendant powers like the Timurids, Moghuls, and Ming dynasty actively sought the allegiance of Mongols on the steppe and beyond. Lineages, clans, and individuals reconsidered their interests in light of new sources of patronage, power, and prestige. Transfers of allegiance might involve physical relocation but did not necessarily sever old ties. Indeed, the ability to exploit such connections, which often transcended dynastic borders, was one reason newly ascendant courts recruited former Chinggisid personnel.Footnote 103 This chapter has also shown that institutions such as military/fiscal units of 100, 1,000, and 10,000 remained in use throughout Central and West Asia. In a word, the Mongol legacy remained a shared reference point across Eurasia.
To secure the loyalty of those tied to the Chinggisid enterprise, all parties crafted tales of the Mongol empire and their relations to it. The early Timurid court strongly appealed to the Chinggisid legacy, linking Tamerlane to Chinggis Khan and his descendants every way it could. Tamerlane incorporated wholesale institutions and lineages from the Mongol empire. The same was even truer for the Moghul khanate. Mongol nobles enjoyed privileged status even beyond the empire in places like Cairo and Delhi. Bearing all this in mind, one can begin to imagine the staggering difficulties confronting Zhu Yuanzhang when he tried to persuade Moghul and Timurid rulers that he – a non-Chingisid, not even a Chinggisid son-in-law – was qualified to tell the story of the Mongol empire, including its irreversible demise. More outrageous still was his claim that he was the Great Yuan’s sole legitimate successor.
