Definition, time, and space

The Miriam Webster dictionary defines crisis as ‘an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending, especially one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome’.Footnote ² In the Mongols’ case, this crucial time was rather long: we are speaking about the second half of the fourteenth century or, more precisely, the 1330s to 1390s. In terms of space, we are looking at the whole Mongol Commonwealth. Obviously, there were regional and temporal variations along this period, both among and within the khanates. In the mid-1330s, when the Ilkhanate collapsed, the Golden Horde was at its height under Özbeg Khan (r. 1313–1341) and, while north and south China suffered a huge amount of natural disasters in the 1340s and the Black Death spread from Mongol Central Asia to Europe and the Middle East, Mongolia saw a building spree as part of the Yuan attempt to restore its waning legitimacy; archaeologically, there was no evidence of a crisis, which arrived in the following decades.Footnote ³ The period of the 1330s to 1390s thus covers the Crisis in all four khanates.

Before delving into the processes that created the Crisis, one thing should be made clear: the Crisis was not caused by any external threat or conquest; it was mainly an internal crisis. If there were exogenous forces, then they were natural, not human.

Environmental crisis: climate change and its impact

The relationship between broader climatic as well as ecological phenomena and political change is intricate and a contentious politicised issue on its own. While it is seldom questioned that this cluster of factors did play a role, its scope, impact range and the chains of cause and effect are mostly still a matter of debate. The part that climate played in the rise of Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–1227), whose conquests took place in Mongolia's wettest period in the second millennium, has attracted considerable scholarly attention,Footnote ⁴ while warm weather in Mongolia and cold summers in China in the 1210s and the 1270s, respectively, might have facilitated the Mongol conquest of both the north and the south of the Middle Kingdom.Footnote ⁵ Yet, the role of climate in the Chinggisid Crisis of the fourteenth century has only recently begun to attract scholarly attention and is hampered due to the uneven quality and dispersion of the sources.

The study of climate change combines two main kinds of sources: ‘the archives of nature’, namely climatic proxies; and literary and archaeological sources, or ‘historical archives’. The ‘archives of nature’ include, among others, proxies that derive from the chemical and structural signatures of rocks, fossils, and crystals; ocean and lake sediments; fossilised reefs; tree rings; ice cores; and solar radiation, which enable scientists to infer past temperatures and precipitation. The usage of the ‘archives of nature’, especially in the last two decades, has significantly expanded our understanding of the climate changes of the fourteenth century.Footnote ⁶ However, while paleoclimatology can be extremely helpful for sketching broader trends and developments, it rarely allows scientists to ‘zoom in’ on shorter time frames, and so it provides little information on specific years or even decades. Moreover, the data are often specific to a certain location and its extrapolation can be problematic. Additionally, by combining the data from both the climatic proxies and the ‘traditional’ primary sources, one is often tempted to fall into the determination trap, either assuming that, if a political crisis occurred, then a climatic one should be present, or vice versa.

As for the ‘historical archive’, as is well known, the primary sources for Mongol Eurasia are not evenly divided. Thus, obviously, we have far more indigenous literary sources for Mongol China and Iran, although, even there, the sources on the decades of the Crisis are usually meagre as opposed to those of earlier periods. Moreover, the coverage of climatic events is also uneven: whereas the Chinese sources, similarly to their European counterparts,Footnote ⁷ provide detailed information—though not necessarily accurateFootnote ⁸—on various (usually extreme) events such as droughts, hail, and floods, the sources that are compiled in Arabic, Persian, and Old East SlavicFootnote ⁹ are much less specific or complete. Often, especially in the Ilkhanid case, they focus on military and political occurrences, almost ignoring extreme weather conditions.Footnote ¹⁰

The Chinggisid Crisis coincided with the early stages of the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA, circa 1300–1850)—an era of cooler and quite unstable climate that followed the so-called ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ (MCA, circa 900–1300), which was a period of relative stability and warm temperatures that allowed stable harvests, and thus encouraged and supported demographic growth all around the Old World.Footnote ¹¹ In the last decades of the MCA, during the second half of the thirteenth century, the climate had already become more and more unstable all across Eurasia. This was manifested by an increase in winter extremes and unusually high precipitation. Moreover, the Wolf Grand Solar Minimum, which was a period of comparatively low solar activity, was set in motion. Starting in 1282 and continuing until 1342, it is often correlated with the beginning of the LIA and the decrease in the planetary surface temperatures.Footnote ¹² The cooling of the planet was also strengthened by a range of massive volcano eruptions in 1257 (i.e. the famous Samalas volcano in the Indonesian island of Lombok) and later in 1269, 1276, and 1286 (the specific locations are still unspecified).Footnote ¹³ The incoming LIA started to exert its full power in the early decades of the fourteenth century.Footnote ¹⁴ In this regard, the well-known ‘Great Famine’ of 1315–1317, which was part of the cold anomaly in Europe that lasted from 1315 to 1321, can be paralleled with the extremely cold and very snowy winter of 1308 that allegedly forced 868,000 nomadic households from the northern steppe areas of the Yuan Dynasty to flee southward, asking the imperial authorities for help and relief.Footnote ¹⁵

The LIA showed itself in many areas and at different periods, including the fourteenth century, by increasing the frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, as well as by sharp variations in annual temperatures and a general downward cooling trend. Notably, these phenomena were not uniformly distributed nor readily apparent everywhere. As Hao Zhixin and his team have shown in their recent reconstruction of the temperature anomalies for China, the application of a regional approach and a look into smaller regional units (such as Northeast China, Northwest China, or the Eastern Tibetan Plateau) can provide a more nuanced way to look at climatic changes and limit extrapolations.Footnote ¹⁶ Similarly, the sometimes enormous differences in the precipitation levels both during the various phases of the fourteenth century as well as in different locations across Eurasia prevent us from making any general statement. This is visible even when the compared locations are relatively close together. Thus, although the tree-ring analysis that was conducted on trees located in the western Pamir-Alay mountains in Central Asia shows a significantly increasing precipitation level throughout the fourteenth century, an analysis that was based on the ratio of the stable isotope oxygen-18 (δ¹⁸O) extracted from tree-ring cellulose in the Karakorum mountain range, less than 1,000 kilometres away, did not show any significant anomalies for the whole century.Footnote ¹⁷ At the same time, the palynological analysis of the Aral basin as well as the dendrochronological records from the Sarydzhaz Range in the central Tian Shan and the stalagmite analysis from the Alay indicate a dry and warm phase during the opening decades of the fourteenth century.Footnote ¹⁸ Similarly, recent analysis of pollen sediments from the Xiyaohu peat bog, located to the south of the middle Yangtze in today's north-western Jiangxi Province, suggests that the period of 1300–1340 (the ‘early-LIA’) had a strong tendency for low precipitation levels, whereas the increase in precipitation started only from 1340 onwards.Footnote ¹⁹ Even more complicated is the situation in Iran—specifically in its northern parts that adjoin the Caspian Sea—not least because much less analysis has been performed in those areas.Footnote ²⁰ Thus, the tree-ring analysis that was conducted with species located around the Alborz Mountain Range indicates a slight cold anomaly during the first circa 60 years of the fourteenth century, and the analysis of the bat guano sediments in the Kolatarika Cave in Iranian Kurdistan seems to support the slow cold trend at this time.Footnote ²¹ Importantly, these proxies do not indicate an abrupt cold incursion during the first half of the fourteenth century, even though such developments are visible in other parts of Eurasia, as mentioned above.Footnote ²² The application of a regional approach to the study of various areas across Chinggisid Eurasia could be extremely helpful for understanding the variability of climate change in the fourteenth century but, for now, it remains a desideratum.

In most of China, however, the early stages of the LIA were primarily characterised by a row of significant weather occurrences that moved from one extreme to another. Intensive rainfall and floods were interchanging with prolonged periods of heavy droughts, and cold periods followed by warm peaks that were again followed by cold incursions.Footnote ²³ These climatic changes obviously affected the yields, as is evident from the Yuan record. The locusts, whose appearance was supported by climatic instability, similarly impacted the yields (even though the increased activity of the locusts had already been recorded in the Chinese chronicles since the late thirteenth century).Footnote ²⁴ The reduced yields, in turn, led to hunger waves, and sometimes sever famines.Footnote ²⁵ In the Yuan case, this encouraged the rise of popular rebellions that gathered momentum from the connection (typical of the Chinese political culture) between the increase in natural catastrophes and a decline in political legitimacy.Footnote ²⁶ Fully aware of this connection, the Mongol authorities invested 20 to 30 per cent of the state budget in relief for the millions in need—both nomads and sedentary people.Footnote ²⁷ Yet, the significant cold spells that are recorded in the Chinese sources, as well as most of the famines, locust attacks, and floods, occurred mostly from 1300 to the 1340s—notably in the late 1320s to early 1330s and the 1340s. The famines of the 1340s that hit the family of the future Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang (r. 1368–1398), among others, seemed to have been harsher than those of earlier periods: cannibalism was reported almost every year across north China.Footnote ²⁸ The dynasty survived these challenges, although they not only tempered its legitimation, but also emptied its treasury, leading to severe inflation in its last decades. A relief in paper money that was sent in the 1350s lost its value by the time it reached its destination.Footnote ²⁹ While climatic exceptionalist determinism is misguided in the Yuan case, natural disasters certainly played a role in the collapse of Mongol rule in China, side by side with other political, economic, and social developments.

Our knowledge on the other parts of Mongol Eurasia is much less detailed in terms of both paleoclimatic research and historical narratives. Moreover, the existing pieces of information are sometimes hard to put together. For example, while we are aware of severe famines that impacted Syria, Iraq, and southern Anatolia during the late 1310s and an extreme flood that occurred in Baghdad in 1325, the records that were left by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa circa 10 years later stress the flourishing agriculture and trade that were visible all around the southern Ilkhanate.Footnote ³⁰ As for the Chaghadaid khanate, paleoclimatic studies of Kyrgyzstan, where one of the Chaghadaids’ summer pastures was located, reveal a period of instability in 1326–1348, when drought and hot periods (notably in 1337–1339) alternated with damp and cold years.Footnote ³¹ The situation in Transoxania, where the fourteenth century was much wetter than the thirteenth,Footnote ³² seemed to have been less extreme in the 1330s when Ibn Baṭṭūṭa visitedFootnote ³³ but, later on, cold spells that resulted in considerable livestock mortality (dzuds) were reported there and are directly connected to the political affairs: an intense cold winter in 1346, in which the Chaghadaid khan Qazan (r. 1343–1347) lost most of his animals, contributed to his deposition the following year by amir Qazaqan (r. 1347–1358, and see below), who took over the khanate's western part.Footnote ³⁴ In 1365, an epidemic that might have also originated in a cold spell badly inflicted the horses of the Eastern Chaghadaids who were trying to regain Transoxania. The outbreak forced the invaders to return to Moghulistan, thereby putting an end to the last reunification of the Chaghadaid khanate and facilitating the rise of Temür (Tamerlane, r. 1370–1405).Footnote ³⁵

The Jochid territories pose the greatest challenge for evaluating the effects of the LIA on both urban and nomadic populations. While much has been written on the collapse of the intercontinental trade routes during the mid-fourteenth century, amid both the political and social upheavals in the other Chinggisid domains, recent archaeological excavations depict a major decline in the urban trade hubs at the Volga only since the late 1360s to 1370s, which is later that one would have expected.Footnote ³⁶ Moreover, it seems that, at least in the western parts of the Khanate, the final blow was delivered by Temür in the 1390s.Footnote ³⁷ The role of climatic factors in these events remains undocumented and unclear. The Rus' Old East Slavic sources—usually of crucial importance for climatic records in the Rus’ territories—provide little information on climate extremes along the Volga or in the ‘Horde’ in general. Recently, Shakhmatov has suggested that there were dzud occurrences in the Golden Horde domains in 1361, but the scope of these events remains unverified.Footnote ³⁸ In addition to the obvious role of the Black Death, to be discussed below, the significant rise in the Caspian and Aral sea levels might have played a significant role in the decline of the trade hubs around the Caspian and Aral seas during the fourteenth century but, here again, the lack of primary textual sources prevents the accurate correlation of scientific and historical data.Footnote ³⁹ The Rus’ chronicles report an extreme frequency of heatwaves in their domains during the mid-fourteenth century (especially in 1342, 1363–1368, 1371, and 1374), but the impact on the Jochid population is unclear, as is the question of whether this phenomenon also hit the areas of the Horde.Footnote ⁴⁰

To wrap up, the fourteenth century was characterised by an increased frequency of extreme weather events in Eurasia. The exact distribution of these phenomena across the continent remains unclear; most of the available information concerns Europe and China. It is highly plausible that these events both elicited various social and economic calamities in the Chinggisid khanates and, in parallel, significantly impaired the ability of the Chinggisid governments to handle those. This was certainly true in China but, in most cases, the exact chains of cause and effect remain hard to specify. The climatic instability in turn also contributed to another facet of the Crisis—the epidemiological one.

Epidemiological crisis: the Black Death

The recent COVID-19 crisis—a powerful manifestation of the ability of epidemics to leave their mark on human history—gave a boost to the study of historical pandemics, not least the lethal Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century that struck Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, killing circa 50 per cent of the population and, in some places, even more.Footnote ⁴¹ Long before the twenty-first century, however, the geographical origin of the Black Death and its connection to the Mongols had been hotly debated, while, recently, the chronology of the plague also became a contested issue. While the story of how the Mongols brought the plague to Europe by catapulting infected corpses into Caffa on the Crimea in the 1340s was recently proven to be far from historical truth,Footnote ⁴² the integrated Old World that was created by the Chinggisids, which, among others, increased the connections between diverse ecological zones and the interactions of human and animals, certainly contributed to the rapid spread of the plague. It also affected Mongol polities, although the scope of its impact and the exact course of its dissemination are still matters of conjecture. Similarly to the case of the climate, the study of the plague was recently invigorated by combining scientific data, this time from the field of paleogenetics, namely the study of ancient DNA (aDNA), with literary and epigraphic sources. Similar to our historical sources, however, this ‘biological archive’ of aDNA can be unevenly distributed and is often of partial or less credible nature.

The paleogenetic study of the Black Death has made enormous strides in the last two decades. In 2011, an analysis of the aDNA of Black Death victims from a cemetery in London who had died in 1348–1349 established definitively that Yersinia pestis was the causal agent of the Black Death in Europe.Footnote ⁴³ Two years later, a seminal study by Cui et al. identified, also on the basis of the London aDNA, a so-called ‘polytomy’ or ‘Big Bang’—a multifurcation event that preceded the Black Death whereby the main plague lineage (Branch 0) split into four new plague lineages (Branches 1, 2, and another short branch, which soon would split into two branches—Branches 3 and 4). Branch 1 was responsible for the Black Death in Europe. The ‘Big Bang’ was dated to the period of 1142–1339 and geographical origin to the Qinghai–Tibet region.Footnote ⁴⁴ In 2018, the date was amended by Spyrou et al. to 1170 or 1196 ± circa 200 years.Footnote ⁴⁵ This new dating also made the chronology of the Black Death a matter of controversy, as scholars, notably Monica H. Green and Robert Hymes, tried to locate its origins in the early thirteenth century, connecting its dissemination to the Mongol sieges and campaigns, especially in Baghdad (1258) and North China (1234), and looking for textual proof of this connection in the literary sources, placing the geographical origin of the plague in the Tianshan mountains in the China–Kyrgyzstan border and in the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau, respectively.Footnote ⁴⁶ Yet, in the absence of paleogenetic analysis of aDNA from any late medieval Central Asian context, all the above theories remained hypothetical. The ‘game changer’ was the recent publication in the Nature journal of another study by Spyrou et al. that, for the first time, analysed the aDNA of three specimens from a late medieval East Syriac cemetery at Kara-Djigach in the Chuy Valley, northern Kyrgyzstan (about 11 kilometres south-east of the capital, Bishkek) that was associated with a 1338–1339 outbreak in the region. This graveyard had been known from the nineteenth century. It contained more than 600 tombstones, of which 456 are dated (1248–1345). Among these headstones, 114 (25%) are dated to 1337/1338 to 1338/1339 and, in ten of them, the cause of death is mentioned as pestilence (mawtānā in Syriac). The study revealed that: first, the ‘pestilence’ noted on the tombstones from 1338 to 1339 was indeed caused by the plague bacterial agent Yersinia pestis; second, the phylogenetic position of the Kara-Djigach genomes is situated right on the node (the ‘Great Polytomy Node’), which just preceded the ‘Big Bang’, representing its direct progenitor; and third, the Great Polytomy itself followed shortly after the Kara-Djigach outbreak.Footnote ⁴⁷ Thus, we now know the geographical origin of the Black Death—north Kyrgyzstan, within the Tianshan mountain range or close by—and its chronological origin, which is firmly dated to the fourteenth, not the thirteenth, century, soon after 1338–1339. On the basis of epigraphical and historical sources, scholars estimated that the lethal eruption that created the ‘Big Bang’ might have started in 1341–1342.Footnote ⁴⁸

Despite this great advance in our knowledge about the plague, however, quite a few questions remain open, notably: How, when and to where did the plague expand from the Tianshan to the Crimea? Did it also expand in other directions? And how did it impact the various Mongol khanates? Unfortunately, our sources are meagre and deficient, and we have nothing similar to the extensive writing on the Black Death in Europe or the Middle East.Footnote ⁴⁹ In a seminal study that combines historical, archaeological, numismatic, epigraphical, and climatological data, Philip Slavin, who is one of the corresponding authors of the 2022 Nature article, tried to reconstruct the route of the plague from Kyrgyzstan to the Crimea via Urgench (in Khwārazm, in modern north Uzbekistan), where it is attested by Timurid chronicles in late 1345. From Urgench, it had reached Tana by spring 1346 and Caffa later that year, spreading to Constantinople by late April, to Sicily by June, and to continental Europe and the Arab Middle East in around 1347. Slavin explained the slow expansion of the bacteria in 1341–1345 by the decline of the Chaghadaid trade routes in the early 1340s, which is attested in the literary and numismatic sources, and was exacerbated by the growing instability in the Chaghadaid khanate and by the dry weather, which did not encourage the reproduction of fleas, who were the agents of the disease (though one can wonder about the chicken-and-egg causation here).Footnote ⁵⁰ The plague advanced faster after reaching the more populated and better-connected Jochid realm in 1345, where trade was not interrupted and the wetter weather was also more appealing for fleas.Footnote ⁵¹

Did the plague also advance eastwards? Chinese sources certainly report plenty of epidemics during the fourteenth century before and after the 1340s—some of them allegedly rather lethal. Yet, as Atwood recently concluded, these epidemics seem to have been regional and mainly by-products of other calamities, notably famines. There is no concrete evidence (e.g. description of typical plague symptoms) that connects these pandemics to the Black Death or suggests that China was inflicted in a way that was similar to Europe or the Middle East.Footnote ⁵² That the plague did not expand eastward might have to do with the above-mentioned collapse of the Chaghadaid trade routes in the 1340s, for which, in sharp contrast to other decades of the fourteenth century, we have no evidence of trade, diplomatic, or pilgrimage connections between the Yuan and the Chaghadaid realm. Other factors might have been: the dry climate in eastern Turkestan, through which the roads that led from the Tianshan to mainland China passed; the less-populated state of the roads that led from Kyrgyzstan to China in comparison with the routes that led to the Golden Horde; as well as the use therein of mainly equids (donkeys and horses, which are not plague-carriers) for transportation as opposed to the extensive use of camels (which are plague-carriers) in caravans that went to the Golden Horde.Footnote ⁵³

How did the plague impact the Mongol polities? Again, specific information is meagre and therefore there is a big room for speculation. Obviously, the plague exerted considerable pressure on Mongol resources—both human and material—thereby intensifying internal rivalries. Yet, at this stage of our knowledge, a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the plague and the political and economic developments in the various khanates is often a matter of (minimal or maximal) interpretation. It is unclear, for example, how much the Mongols themselves were infected by the plague, though they certainly felt the repercussions of the havoc that the plague wreaked among their commercial partners in Europe and the Middle East. It is sometimes suggested that the plague spread less rapidly and had a lesser impact among dispersed nomads than within the dense ranks of urban dwellers.Footnote ⁵⁴ Jackson calls for a qualification of this view, which does not take into account the concentration of people in the Mongol mobile courts (ordos), described as vast city-tents that comprised, in addition to the Chinggisids, courtiers, servants, and the accompanying traders, scholars, entertainers, etc.Footnote ⁵⁵ Yet, the description of the Chobanid ruler of post-Ilkhanid Azerbaijan al-Malik al-Ashraf (r. 1343–1357), who, in 1347, was quick to escape the plague-inflicted city of Tabriz first for the less-populated pastures in the areas of Qarabagh (north of the city), where he spent the winter and later—in spring 1348—to Kurdistan (south),Footnote ⁵⁶ may suggest that even royal nomads still enjoyed considerable advantages over non-mobile court and city dwellers (who had also tried to escape the plague), as their mobility enabled them to move quickly away from contagious locations (and perhaps also to space in their court). However, given the lower population density among nomads, even a lower demographic decline than in the densely populated cities—or, for that matter, in the crowded nomadic ordos—could potentially harm nomadic manpower and threaten the political and even economic stability.

In addition, it seems that the harm that the plague caused in the western khanates was not overall nor evenly divided, and hence people from regions that were less inflicted enjoyed a relative advantage. Thus, for example, in the post-Ilkhanid realm, the plague hurt northern Iran badly—Azerbaijan and the Caspian provinces—as well as Iraq, but there is no evidence that it struck southern Iran and the regions near the Persian Gulf. This might have given some breathing space to the polities in southern Iran, on the one hand, but undermined the chance of further unification on the other, as all the major contenders from the north were badly struck (even if less than their counterparts in Europe or Egypt).Footnote ⁵⁷ Recurring waves of plague also hit Azerbaijan and Iraq in the late fourteenth century and throughout the fifteenth. Interestingly, in 1369–1370, while describing a death toll that reached 300,000 a day (a clear exaggeration but an indication of the high human mortality), the Iranian historian Zayn al-Dīn Qazvīnī stated that the population and prosperity of the city were such that the effect of the plague was hardly felt,Footnote ⁵⁸ perhaps implying that the ruling elite was less affected.

We know extremely little about the plague in the Chaghadaid khanate—the realm in which the plague originated. Apart from developments in the North Tian Shan region of today's Kyrgyzstan in 1338–1339, which severely harmed the Christian community near the Issyk Köl, Mamluk and Iranian sources report a plague in Transoxania, notably Samarqand.Footnote ⁵⁹ Yet, here too, there is no evidence that the plague attacked the khanate's south-western parts, notably south Khurasan—today's Afghanistan—that had been the power base of the Qara'unas (military commanders who originated in a United Empire garrison) or that it inflicted the Tarim Basin and the eastern parts.Footnote ⁶⁰ If not a result of the dearth of sources, this uneven distribution of the plague that inflicted the power base of the reigning khan Qazan (r. 1343–1346) might have facilitated Qazan's deposition by the Qara'unas in 1347 and the separation of the eastern khanate that, in the same year, enthroned another khan, Tughluq Temür (r. 1347–1363), thereby cementing the khanate's division. Samarqand, however, remained an important city under the Qara'unas following the early 1350s, thereby attesting that the damage was reversible.Footnote ⁶¹

The Golden Horde was the Mongol polity that was mostly affected by the plague, even though the exact scope is difficult to specify. Mamluk sources noted that the plague struck the ‘land of Özbeg’ (Golden Horde khan, r. 1313–1341), while Western writers believed that the mortality among the ‘Tartars’ was especially heavy: thus, for example, the Franciscan János (Ioannis) of Eger reported about 300,000 (trecentena millia) ‘Tatars’ who died of the plague.Footnote ⁶² It appears that the military capacity of the Jochid ulus was impaired, at least in the short term (1347–1349), as indicated by the declaration of the King of Hungary in 1347 that he could leave his country to attack Naples without fearing a Golden Horde reaction, or in the taking-over of Galicia-Volhynia, formerly a Jochid tributary, by Casimir III the Great (r. 1333–1370), the king of Poland, in 1349, again without any reaction.Footnote ⁶³ However, in 1356, the Golden Horde khan Janibeg (r. 1342–1357) was able to take (formerly plague-inflicted) Tabriz—a coveted goal of the Golden Horde since the 1260s and a former Ilkhanid capital—thereby attesting to the recovery of the Jochid military. Janibeg, however, passed away on his way back from Tabriz, so this achievement remained ephemeral.Footnote ⁶⁴ Subsequent plague waves that hit the Jochid western troops following the early 1360s might have also affected Jochid politics.Footnote ⁶⁵ Notably, in 1374, the troops of the amir and kingmaker Mamai were badly inflicted, thereby impairing his capacity to withstand the invasion by khan Toqtamïsh a few years later.Footnote ⁶⁶ Such plague visits might have also exerted a longer-term effect on Jochid strength in the face of Temür's attacks, thereby contributing to the future dissolution of the ulus. Schamiloglu suggested that the interference of princes of the more sparsely populated eastern Jochid realm in the khanate's politics after 1360 was related to the fact that they were less severely inflicted by the plague.Footnote ⁶⁷ In general, the main effect of the plague in the Jochid ulus and elsewhere in the Mongol realm was economic: in the case of the Golden Horde, the provincial suspension of the military campaigns, the deterioration of tribute from the plague-inflicted Rus’ territories, as well as the decline of the Horde's cities such as Bulghar must have harmed the Jochid revenues that were also damaged by the effect of the plague on their main trading partners in Europe and Egypt.Footnote ⁶⁸ This, in turn, encouraged internal rivalries that came to the fore in the times of troubles (1360s to 1380s).Footnote ⁶⁹ The deterioration of the Eurasian trade routes that became plague routes, combined with the effects of the climate change on Eurasian agriculture, meant that Mongol khans had less to distribute among their supporters. This was certainly an accelerator of the political aspect of the Crisis, to which we now turn.

The political crisis

The Chinggisid political crisis was multifaceted. It included a genealogical aspect that originated in the extinction of the ruling lineages in several khanates; and a complicated ideological facet that stemmed from the dilution of the Chinggisid charisma due to the halt of expansion and a certain accommodation, notably the adoption of competing ideological concepts, religious and/or local by the members of the Mongol Commonwealth. The main manifestation of the Crisis was the rise of the amirs (military commanders) on the expanse of the Chinggisids, among whom a central role was reserved for the Chinggisids sons-in-laws (güregens), who could claim a certain amount of Chinggisid charisma. Another main outcome of the Crisis was the fragmentation of the various khanates.

The political crisis reflects the problems that were inherent in nomadic rule and originated in the principle of collective sovereignty and the lack of an orderly succession system. According to the political culture of the steppe, Tengri (Heaven), the sky god of the steppes, bestows the right to rule on Earth (i.e. the heavenly mandate) and the charisma or good fortune (suu) required for holding it successfully upon a single clan, each of whose members—but only they—could theoretically be elevated to the position of a khan (or Qa'an, Great Khan). This meant not only that succession struggles were endemic, but also that the empire was conceived as the joint property of the whole royal clan, so the ruler was therefore expected to share its wealth and territory with his kin. This redistribution in turn contributed both to the dissolution of the empire to various polities and to the ongoing connections among the members of the Mongol Commonwealth, as well as placed a heavy economic burden on Mongol rulers.Footnote ⁷⁰ In an attempt to secure power and limit potential struggles, however, each khanate centred the succession upon a leading lineage: among the Ilkhanids, these were the descendants of Hülegü's son Abaqa (r. 1265–1282); at the Golden Horde, the offspring of Jochi's son Batu (r. 1227–1255) ruled following the 1260s; the ruling lineage of the Yuan was that of the descendants of Qubilai's son Chinggim (d. 1286); and, among the Chaghadaids, it was the princes who originated in Du'a khan (r. 1282–1307). The tension between the ruling lineages and their Chinggisid competitors, as well as inside these lineages, often resulted in purges of potential rivals. In the mid-fourteenth century, however, two such lineages died out, while the two others were on the verge of annihilation. In 1335, the last Ilkhan Abū Saʿīd (r. 1316–1335) died without an heir and this also happened to the Golden Horde khan Berdibeg (r. 1358–1360), who, upon his accession, killed 12 of his brothers and one son, thereby exterminating the Batuid line. When Toghon Temür (r. 1333–1370) rose to the Yuan throne, he was the only living male descendant of Chinggim. As for the Chaghadaid khanate, in 1334, after several decades during which Du'a's sons ruled one after another, tension between lateral and lineal successors led to depositions, purges, short reigns, and challenge of the Du'aids by other lineages. When the Eastern Chaghadaids split from the western khanate in 1347, they were having a hard time in finding a prestigious candidate but eventually enthroned an alleged grandson of Du'a with a highly questionable genealogy. The selected heir, Tughluq Temür khan, however, managed to take power into his hands and became the ancestor of all future Moghul khans.Footnote ⁷¹ This extinction of the ruling lineages was not only due to frequent purges, but also amid the premature death of many Mongol khans and their low rate of reproduction, both better attested in (albeit much better documented) Iran and China. Thus, as shown by Melville, the reproductive power of the Ilkhans’ ruling family deteriorated as time went by, despite marriages to several wives and the enjoyment of many concubines,Footnote ⁷² while only one Yuan emperor between Qubilai (1215–1294) and Toghon Temur (1320–1370) lived to be over 35 years old, thereby limiting the emperors’ ability to leave mature heirs.Footnote ⁷³ Indeed, both Abū Saʿīd, the last Ilkhan, and Toghon Temür, the last Yuan emperor, rose to power as minors who were backed by powerful ministers and were often manipulated by competing court factions—a phenomenon that was typical of sedentary rather than nomadic rulership. Whether this short life expectancy and low fertility rate resulted from the acculturation to a different environment and diet, notably increased consumption of distilled alcohol,Footnote ⁷⁴ or—in the Yuan and Ilkhanid cases—also from a high number of relative marriages, namely several generations of marriages among the Chinggisids and specific families (known as the sons-in-law, güregens, and see below), they certainly hindered Mongol effective rule.

The end of the leading lineages, however, did not mean that there were no available Chinggisids of other lineages or branches. Yet, towards the mid-fourteenth century, the pretenders to the throne were not mobilising their supporters to compete for the throne, but mostly plucked from obscurity and elevated military commanders as puppet khans. Those were usually completely meaningless in the Ilkhanid case, while some of their counterparts in the western Chaghadaid realm fared better and even excelled on the field.Footnote ⁷⁵ This attested both to the continuing relevance of the Chinggisid principle, according to which the khan's position was limited only to offspring of the Golden lineage, but even more to the erosion of the Chinggisid charisma.

The dilution of the Chinggisid charisma was the ideological facet of the political crisis. This was more of a process and less an abrupt change, such as the extinction of the lineages. The root of this process was the halt of imperial expansion. Military expansion not only provided employment, booty, and new territories for the Mongol nomadic troops, but also served as the main demonstration of the rulers’ charisma.Footnote ⁷⁶ However, after the conquest of Song China in 1276–1279 (and, in the other khanates, following the late 1250s), there was no major military victory that expanded the Chinggisid realm. That, by then, the empire had already reached the ecological borders of the steppe belt in all its fronts meant that further military expansion was costly and not easily gained. The Golden Horde and the Chaghadaids reverted to raids—in eastern Europe and north India, respectively—while the Yuan and the Ilkhanate used ‘soft power’ means, describing the flocking of people of various origins (including those outside the Chinggisid space) to their courts or their taking part in the Chinggisid commercial networks, as proof of accepting Chinggisid superiority. The Ilkhanids, however, still occasionally fought—without much success—with the neighbouring Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517).Footnote ⁷⁷ Moreover, inter-Mongol conflicts forced the Mongol polities to keep significant troops on the internal borders of the Chinggisid space, thereby reducing their ability to expand further. In 1304, an inter-Mongol peace was concluded, but it soon led to a long and bitter conflict in Central Asia that also impacted the other Mongol states. By 1323, the Central Asian Chaghadaids were the last Chinggisids to acknowledge the nominal superiority of the Yuan Qa'an, while the mostly cold war between the Jochids and the Ilkhanids still lingered.Footnote ⁷⁸ Moreover, in the same year (1323), the Ilkhanids signed a peace treaty with their erstwhile rivals, the Mamluks. This peace agreement with a non-Chinggisid power represented an explicit renunciation on the ideal of world conquest that had been an integral part of Mongol ideology and legitimation since the time of Chinggis Khan.Footnote ⁷⁹ Moreover, the end of expansion also had economic repercussions, as it diminished the booty—one of the major sources of redistribution—and obliged the government to give priority to other channels (e.g. taxation) that were more complicated to handle. The lack of military activity also reduced the armies’ readiness for battle and weakened the solidarity between the rank and file and their Chinggisid overlords. In many cases, the soldiers’ loyalty shifted to their direct commanders, often non-Chinggisids, while less-well-rewarded soldiers, mainly in China, chose to defect from their units. The fast replacement of short-lived khans, especially among the Yuan in the 1310s to early 1330s and the Chaghadaids in the first half of the fourteenth century, also diminished the khans’ authority and enabled the military commanders to challenge it.

Was part of the ideological crisis derived from accommodation to the local conditions in each khanate? David Morgan argued that Mongols fell faster in China and Iran due to accommodation to the sedentary environment that contributed to their military collapse.Footnote ⁸⁰ While Mongol identity was certainly transformed by ruling sedentary realms, as noted above, we doubt whether the change to a sedentary lifestyle played a major part in the Chinggisid collapse and how widespread it was among the Mongols, both elites and rank and file. Both Reuven Amitai and Yiming Ha convincingly argued for the continuous nomadic character of Ilkhanid and Yuan armies, respectively, and both contended that, even when Mongols were assigned land grants, few actually toiled the field, but merely employed farmers to do it for them while retaining the nomadic way of life.Footnote ⁸¹ This does not mean that there was no tension between nomads and sedentary people, or even between nomads who lived closer to the sedentary populations and those residing in the more open steppe (note e.g. the Transoxanian Ulus Chaghatay under Temür who referred to the Eastern Chaghadaids as jete, i.e. bandits).Footnote ⁸² Yet, no less important than the nomad–sedentary divide was the challenge that originated in the growing importance of non-Chinggisid ideologies in the Chinggisid realms: after the dissolution of the United Empire in 1260 and as part of their accommodation to their new environments, the Chinggisids adopted religious and local legitimations either to co-opt their subjects or to manifest their ideological independence. Thus, the three western khanates embraced Islam, following their rank and file, mostly before the Crisis, but in the Chaghadaid case during it, while Yuan China adopted Tibetan Buddhism mainly as court religion long before the Crisis. In addition, Yuan emperors followed the local Confucian trapping of rulership (although one of the most important Confucian institutions, the examination system, was adapted only in 1313 and in a very partial mode), while the Ilkhans—or their Iranian elites—revived the idea of Iran as a political unit that was separated from the rest of the Muslim world, thereby resuscitating the pre-Islamic local tradition.Footnote ⁸³ The Chinggisid tradition was therefore only one part of the rulers’ legitimation. Moreover, the new ideologies could distance the Mongol khanates from one another and, in some cases, also cement closer relations between Mongol khans and (at least some of) their subjects. Notably, in the case of Islam, the new ideology could serve as common ground among non-Chinggisid elites, the rank and file Mongols, and the non-Mongol subjects, and a tool that could challenge the Chinggisid principle.Footnote ⁸⁴

Indeed, in the three Muslim khanates, one of the manifestations of the Crisis was the challenge of Chinggisid rulers by non-Chinggisid Mongols. Michael Hope, followed by Timothy May, called this group ‘qarachu’. Qarachu in Mongolian means ‘commoner’ (i.e. non-Chinggisid), yet Hope and May use it as a more specific denotation to non-Chinggisid members of the Mongol elite who rose to power due to their forefathers’ early joining to Chinggis Khan's ranks or their excellence in battle during the early conquests, which conferred hereditary privileges upon them.Footnote ⁸⁵ However, as Ishayahu Landa convincingly argued, the challenge for the Chinggisids did not come from every qarachu, but from a specific segment of the Chinggisid elite—the güregens, the imperial sons-in-law. The Chinggisid güregens were of two main kinds. First, and most relevant here, were tribal leaders, who were allowed to retain some of their original troops (as opposed to the nöker army, led by qarachus, that was composed of sundry tribes). The other kind of Chinggisid sons-in-law were heads of specific vassal countries (e.g. Uyghuristan, Korea, the Rus’ knjazes, and the Armenian kings), who also had their own armies, yet they never challenged the Chinggisid throne. In the Chinggisid hierarchy, the güregens were located just below the Chinggisid princes, namely above the non-Chinggisid commanders (qarachu).Footnote ⁸⁶ In the Yuan and the Ilkhanate, marriage alliances with the same families (e.g. lineages of the Qonggirad, Oyirad, Jalayir; Korean kings) for several generations were quite common, although new families could enter the güregens’ circles when the need arose. These multigenerational relations meant that many of the Crisis period's güregens in the Ilkhanate and the Yuan would have a certain amount of Chinggisid blood, albeit mostly originating from their maternal side, and hence could claim a part in the Chinggisid charisma.Footnote ⁸⁷

The best-attested and earliest case of the güregens’ claim for leadership was during the Ilkhanid realm, in which, after Abū Saʿīd's demise, competing new dynasties were established by multigenerational in-laws—Oyirad, Chobanids, Jalayirids. Despite their connection to the Chinggisid ‘Golden’ family, each of them needed—at least in the beginning—a Chinggisid puppet khan to justify their rule.Footnote ⁸⁸ The Ilkhanid case served as a precedent for the other western khanates who experienced the Crisis later on, although, in their case, the acquisition of a güregen position was part of their legitimation process, not a precondition of usurpation. Thus, in the Chaghadaid khanate, both amir Qazaqan and, famously, amir Temür married Chinggisid princesses after seizing the throne, thereby making themselves güregens (although this did not replace their need for a puppet khan). The Jochid main kingmakers Mamai and Edigü also allegedly married Chinggisid princesses.Footnote ⁸⁹

But what about the Yuan case? Despite the existence of güregen dynasties in China, the pattern of the Yuan fall seems completely different from that of the other khanates. At first glance, it looks, as Atwood argued, like a classic example of the emblematic collapse of a Chinese dynasty: in addition to ineffective emperor and court factionalism, it included ‘increasing banditry, sectarian and millenarian rebellions, roving bands and massacred cities, famine, epidemics, the division of the country into warlord regimes, and finally the emergence of a victorious new emperor to give order to the depopulated country’.Footnote ⁹⁰ The main difference from other Chinese cases was, however, that the Yuan did not actually fall, but escaped back to Mongolia, where it remained known as the Northern Yuan (1368–1636)—a dynasty that, however, soon lost any real authority in Mongolia or elsewhere.Footnote ⁹¹ Although the Crisis was expressed mainly in elite conflicts in the western khanates, in China, popular rebellions that were typical of the Chinese political culture played a decisive part in the Yuan collapse.Footnote ⁹² There are only a few sporadic references to popular uprisings in the other khanates, such as when the future Sarbadarids in Khurasan were recruiting escaping slaves from the IlkhanateFootnote ⁹³ or when the people of Samarqand closed the city gates before the invading Moghuls in 1365.Footnote ⁹⁴ Yet, such incidents do not even begin to come close to the magnitude of the Yuan rebellions.Footnote ⁹⁵

Why were the güregens, the Chinggisid sons-in-law, not major players on the Yuan scene? While Chinese sources provide an extremely detailed (though clearly incomplete) picture of the dynasty's in-laws, including many multigenerational cases, these actors seem to have vanished from the political scene in the Yuan's latter decades. Almost all known in-law families either ceased to appear in the records towards the accession of Toghon Temür or lost their positions, no longer playing major roles in Yuan politics.Footnote ⁹⁶ Indeed, Toghon Temür's rise to power occurred shortly after the bloody War of the Two Capitals (1328), during which, and even more in its aftermath, purges swept the high ranks of the Qubilaid military. Moreover, the güregens and qarachus were not part of the competition, mainly because they did not have an independent legitimation basis: according to the Chinese political theory, when a dynasty loses the Mandate of Heaven, someone else is receiving it; hence, relation to a former dynasty has no legitimating value. Moreover, the Mongol or Semuren (non-Mongols and non-Chinese) commanders did not have common ground with the Chinese population that could enable them to gain legitimation for themselves, like Islam did for the commanders of the western khanates. Thus, sons-in-law took part in the Yuan army, but they did not try to appoint themselves as competing rulers of China.Footnote ⁹⁷

Such differences notwithstanding, when we look at the Northern Yuan 20 years later, after it had suffered a humiliating defeat from the Ming army in 1388, we see a situation that is quite similar to that of the western khanates: namely, the dilution of the Chinggisid charisma due to military defeats (i.e. lack of expansion) and the central role of the Oyirad güregens, whose appanage had been in Mongolia, in deposing the khan.Footnote ⁹⁸ Here, too, we find various lesser Chinggisids, not only Qubilaids, but also Arigh Boqaids and Ögödeids, who are acting as competing or puppet khans. Yet, the failed attempt of the Oyirad leader Esen (1407–1454) to enthrone himself as the Northern Yuan Qa'an in 1453 attested to the continuous importance of the Chinggisid principle.Footnote ⁹⁹ The similarities between the Northern Yuan case and that of the western khanates strongly suggest that the political crisis of the fourteenth century was deeply embedded in steppe politics.

In conclusion, the Chinggisid Crisis of the mid-fourteenth century was basically a political crisis that originated in the dilution of the Chinggisid charisma after 150–200 years of rule, mainly due to the halt of expansion and the practical abandonment of the world conquest ideal, accelerated by the extinction or waning of the leading Chinggisid lineages. This political crisis was escalated considerably by the environmental crisis and the plague. Obviously, the Chinggisid Crisis was part and parcel of a larger Eurasian or even global crisis that took place in the fourteenth century: neither did the plague end at the borders of the Chinggisid domains, nor were climate fluctuations peculiar to the Mongol realm. The current situation of our sources, however, precludes a minute analysis of the intricate interactions between political and social history, and climatic and epidemiological shocks in the various uluses, as Bruce Campbell did for Western Europe.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Evidently, however, the ecological hazards and natural disasters exerted enormous pressure on the Chinggisid resources, thereby deteriorating the khanates’ economic situation that was already burdened by the need to supply redistribution, as well as harming the notion of the Chinggisids as enjoying Heaven's favour. Nevertheless, the Chinggisid principle, while certainly manipulated, retained its importance throughout the Crisis years, notably in the steppe.

Was the Crisis the end of the Mongol empire? The Crisis put an end to the Mongol Moment in world history, but it did not eradicate either Mongol rule or the legacy of the empire. The Golden Horde, the Chaghadaids, and the Yuan all survived the Crisis and they or their splinter groups held power for centuries after it. Yet, they were very different from the pre-Crisis states. The post-Crisis Chinggisid polities were less centralistic and more dependent on their military elite than in the imperial period. Moreover, the Crisis severely disrupted the proto-global economic and cultural exchange that was so typical of the ‘Mongol Moment’. The Mongols lost the connection to the ocean that had been a major part of the Eurasian integration that they had created and, moreover, they lost their rule in the centres of the sedentary civilisations. The Crisis thus brought the Chinggisids back into the steppe. Furthermore, partly due to the different world religions that were adopted by the various Chinggisid branches, after the Crisis, no nomadic leader managed to unite the steppe nomads. The Chinggisid Crisis was therefore the first step in the breaking of nomadic political power by the post-Mongol sedentary (or post-nomadic) empires—a process that culminated in the division of the steppe between Qing China and Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century.

Was the Crisis also an opportunity? It was, mostly for the non-Chinggisid members of the military elite who could use the decline of the khans to assert their rule. The most successful example is that of Temür, who combined Islamic legitimation with Chinggisid concepts (güregen, the use of puppet khans, imitating Chinggis Khan's behaviour), as well as stressing his own personal charisma. By conquering Iran, Iraq, and Transoxania and raiding Muscovy, Damascus, Ankara, Moghulistan, and Delhi, Temür established a dynasty that was famed for its cultural brilliance and eventually became a real competitor to Chinggis Khan as a source of legitimation in Eurasia.Footnote ¹⁰¹ And yet, the regional empires that rose from the debris of the Mongol Crisis—not only the Timurids (1370–1506), but also Ming China (1368–1644), Muscovy (1547–1721), and even the Ottomans (1299–1923)—all acted ‘in the shadow of the Mongol Empire’,Footnote ¹⁰² adapting institutions and elements of the Mongols’ imperial culture, with or without acknowledgement. Yet, these polities were free of, or at least found a better way to handle, collective sovereignty that had been a burden on Chinggisid rule. Nonetheless, the legacy of the Mongol empire, its memory, and institutions continued to affect Eurasia well into the (early) modern period.Footnote ¹⁰³ The post-Crisis Chinggisids themselves, however, never managed to reassert the splendour, magnitude, or kingly authority of the Mongol empire.

The articles in this Special Issue

While our discussion has focused on the general contours of the Crisis, the four successive papers touch upon specific facets of the Crisis in each of the four Mongol khanates. By dealing with both elites (Landa, Hope) and commoners or lesser elites (Vér, Yang), they offer a glimpse into the complexity, variability, and richness that a full discussion of this period requires. Based on a variety of sources—literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological—in multiple languages, they refer to political, military, and institutional developments; physical and social mobility; as well as social, ideological, and cultural changes. Importantly, these articles not only discuss the ‘decline’ or ‘collapse’ elements of the decades of the Crisis, but also highlight both continuities and innovative elements across Eurasia during the last part of the Mongol Moment.

Ishayahu Landa's study highlights the political and military challenges that occurred during the ‘Turmoil’ decades (1360s to 1380s) of the Jochid ulus, analysing the contest for power amid the perishing of the Batuid male lineages in 1359. By combining textual sources with numismatic ones, it maps the multiplicity of political reactions to the post-Batuid challenge, both in the political centre on the Lower Volga and in the various regions across the khanate. It illustrates the ideological and political variables that shaped the actions of the new power actors. The Chinggisid principle is one of these challenges. The other is the tensions between regional policymaking and the broader ambitions of those involved in the power struggles in and around Sarai, the Jochid capital. By deliberately bringing in a large number of case studies, regions, and reaction patterns, the author stresses the durability of the Chinggisid political vision that kept the Jochid ulus as a symbolic whole, long after the breakup of the Batuid power.

Marton Vér's study analyses the interregional overland mobility along the postal and pilgrim routes that connected northern China and eastern Central Asia in a broader time frame, beginning with the pre-Mongol West Uyghur state and continuing deep into the fourteenth century. Based on Uyghur and Middle Mongolian administrative texts and pilgrim inscriptions, it allows the reader to zoom in on the social reality of the trade, postal, and religious networks between the eastern Chaghadaid realm (today's eastern Xinjiang) and the Yuan north-western periphery (today's Gansu province). Vér persuasively not only shows the changes in the overland mobility in the period of the Yuan–Ming transition and the rise of the Moghuls in Eastern Turkestan, but also stresses the durability and the continuation of the postal and the pilgrim networks throughout the fourteenth century, albeit with a (plague-induced?) break in the 1340s. In this regard, Vér's article argues for a relativisation of the ‘collapse’ dimensions of the decades of the Crisis, calling for a more nuanced and regional analysis of the developments on the ground.

Qiao Yang's article also tackles the Yuan–Ming transition, but from a completely different angle. She focuses on the Zhu family—a local divination of school instructors from the city of Suzhou in south-east China—highlighting the strategies that these lesser elite members of the local society adopted for survival during the turbulent decades of dynastic transition. By working mainly with inscriptions on tombstones that were excavated in Suzhou in 2010, Yang's prosopographical study also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the decades of the Crisis as well as the ‘resilience’ of social groups during the political disruption and their quick recovery under the new regime. This bottom-up perspective highlights the differences between the Yuan and the Ming in terms of human mobility, creative local adaptation to political upheavals, and the limits of state intervention in the periods of transition.

Finally, Michael Hope's study discusses the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the Chinggisid Crisis in western Asia, analysing the transition of the Iranian intellectual elites from Ilkhanid to post-Ilkhanid rule. Hope examines the ways in which four Persian verse histories that were based upon Rashīd al-Dīn's Ta'rīkh-i Mubārak-i Ghāzānī and compiled throughout the fourteenth century reacted to the crises and decline of the Hülegüid house. Specifically, he focuses on the ways in which the biography of the famous Oyirad Amir Nawrūz (d. 1297), who was one of the most influential commanders of Ilkhan Ghāzān (r. 1295–1304), has been retold and reproduced by the later authors. For Hope, the retelling of the biography of the famous commander allowed the Crisis-period authors to recreate Nawrūz as an exemplary figure, to be emulated by the heroic personalities of their own time. Hope stresses that Ghāzān's time and his idealised past, incorporated in Nawrūz's biography, continued to be revived by the intellectual elites in Iran and Azerbaijan long after Ghāzān's death and the elimination of the Hülegüids, both as an element of cultural identity, but also as an answer to the challenges of the Crisis period.

Together, these articles highlight the complex nature of the Chinggisid Crisis of the mid-fourteenth century, during which both radical changes and clear continuities were intertwined. While the legacy of the Mongol empire continued to impact Eurasia for centuries after the breakup of the Chinggisid world order in the mid-fourteenth century, the exact process of the Chinggisid collapse and its impact and manifestations in the various realms and across centres and peripheries still deserve careful study. We hope that this Special Issue will be one step in this direction.