The Chagatai Khanate was a khanate of the Mongol Empire that comprised the lands controlled by Chagatai Khan (alternative spellings Chagata, Chugta, Chagta, Djagatai, Jagatai), second son of the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan. Chagatai's ulus, or hereditary territory, consisted of the part of the Mongol Empire which extended from the Ili River (today in eastern Kazakhstan) and Kashgaria (in the western Tarim Basin) to Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). He inherited most of what are now the five Central Asian states and northern Iran after the death of his father, which lands he ruled until his death in 1242. The lands later came to be known as the Chagatai Khanate, part of the Mongol Empire. These territories would later become the Turco-Mongol states.

By 1369, the Chagatai Khanate had been conquered by Tamerlane, in his attempt to reconstruct the Mongol Empire.

Mongol successor states

History of Mongolia

Before Genghis Khan

Mongol Empire

Khanates

- Chagatai Khanate

- Golden Horde

- Ilkhanate

- Yuan Dynasty

- Timurid Empire

- Mughal Empire

Crimean Khanate

Khanate of Sibir

Dzungar

Qing Dynasty (Outer Mongolia)

Mongolian People's Republic

Modern Mongolia

Inner Mongolia

Buryat Mongolia

Kalmyk Mongolia

Hazara Mongols

Aimak Mongols

Timeline

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Genghis Khan's empire was inherited by his third son, Ögedei, the designated Great Khan who personally controlled the lands east of Lake Balkash as far as Mongolia. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was accorded the northern Mongolian homeland. Chagatai, the second son, received Kashgaria, with his capitals at Almalik (near Kulja in the modern Xinjiang region of western China), and Transoxania between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in modern Uzbekistan. Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire was endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Turkic subjects.

When Ögedei died before achieving his dream of conquering all of China, there was a rough transition to his son Güyük (1241) overseen by Ögedei's wife Töregene who had assumed the regency for the five years following Ögedei's death. The transition had to be ratified in a kurultai, which was duly celebrated, but without the presence of Batu, the independent-minded khan of the Golden Horde. After Güyük's death, Batu sent Berke, who maneuvered with Tolui's widow, and, in the next kurultai (1253), the Ögedite line was passed over for Möngke, Tolui's son, who was said to be favourable to Nestorian Christianity. The Ögedites did not immediately go into opposition, and they retained their Mongolian domains.

The Chagatai Khanate after Chagatai

Chagatai died shortly after Ögedei. The Chagataites, who had previously accepted Guyuk, consented to the succession to Möngke as Great Khan with some reluctance, and, on the whole, the Mongol Empire did not disgregate. Möngke died during his campaign against Song China. Kublai (Qubilai) succeeded him as Great Khan in 1260, but faced a succession crisis. His younger brother, Arigboka (Arigboqa), claimed the great khanate. Kublai brought him to heel with the help of Alghu, the Chagatai Khan. However, Alghu began to act independently of Kublai.

Alghu was succeeded as khan by Baraq (Barak), who was based in Transoxiana. Baraq was at odds with Abaqa, the Ilkhan, or Lesser Khan, who ruled in Persia. The Ögedite Kaidu (Qaidu) saw in these troubles an opportunity to re-assert the imperial claim of his own line. He made an alliance with the Ilkhanids to make war on Baraq. Baraq attacked first, but was defeated, and became a vassal of Kaidu. The wars between Baraq and Persia continued until Baraq was finally defeated and killed by Abaqa.

Kaidu joined forces with the Chagatai prince and pretender Duwa, who recognized the suzerainty of Kaidu, and together they invaded the Tarim, whose Uyghur inhabitants had remained loyal to the line of Genghis Khan, now represented by Kublai, who in 1279 had conquered China. Kaidu and Duwa's invasion was tantamount to a declaration of war, and Kublai had to repel their attack. The result of these wars was the independence of the Chagatai Khanate, as well as the separation of the Ilkhanate from Mongolia.

When Kublai Khan died in 1294, the former Mongol Empire was divided into independent khanates: Kublai's imperial state continued in Mongolia and China; the Golden Horde ruled the western steppes; Ilkhanid Persia dominated the Middle East; and the Chagatai Khanate covered Central Asia. The Golden Horde contested Azerbaijan with Ilkhanid Persia, but was at peace with the Chaghataites, whose independence it had actively encouraged. Ilkhanid Persia faced growing Mamluk power in Syria, which, following the death of Baraq, was no longer threatened from Transoxiana. Persia and the Golden Horde were Islamic, as were the Chagatai domains in Transoxiana and Uyghuria, but the Chagatai Mongols of the steppes clung tenaciously to their traditional customs. The Chagatai Khanate was turbulent and unsafe because of the efforts of Kaidu and his vassal Duwa to integrate the original ulus (dynasties) of Ögedei and Chagatai.

Duwa was active in Afghanistan, and attempted to extend Mongol rule to India, but there he was defeated by a formidable foe, Ala-ud-Din of the Delhi Sultanate in 1296. The Mongols thereafter repeatedly invaded northern India. On at least two occasions, they came in strength. The second time around, they took Delhi but could not keep their hold on the Sultanate. Kaidu persisted in trying to conquer Mongolia, the key to China, but he died fighting the Kublaids, in 1301.

The Mongol Invasions
Central Asia – Georgia and Armenia – Kalka River – Volga Bulgaria – Ryazan – Rus' – Sit River – Kse Dag – Legnica – Mohi – Baghdad – Ain Jalut – Korea – Japan (Bun'ei – Kōan) – Vietnam – Xiangyang – Ngasaunggyan – Yamen – Pagan – Bạch Đằng – Syria – Kulikovo – Vorskla – Ugra River

Tamerlane

Duwa tried to carry on where Kaidu left off, but he had to suppress a challenge by Kaidu's son, Chapar. When he tried to make war on the Ilkhanids he was repulsed and killed. After the death of Qazan Khan in 1346, the Chagatai Khanate was divided into western (Transoxiana) and eastern (Moghulistan) halves. Power in the western half devolved into the hands of several tribal leaders, most notably the Qara'unas. Khans appointed by the tribal rulers were mere puppets. In the east, Tughlugh Timur (1347–1363), an obscure Chaghataite adventurer, gained ascendancy over the nomadic Mongols, and converted to Islam. In 1360, and again in 1361, he invaded the western half in the hope that he could reunify the khanate. At their height, the Chaghataite domains extended from the Irtysh River in Siberia down to Ghazni in Afghanistan, and from Transoxiana to the Tarim Basin.

Tughlugh Timur was unable to completely subjugate the tribal rulers, and, after his death in 1363, the Moghuls left Transoxiana, whereupon the Qara'unas leader Amir Husayn took control of Transoxiana. Tīmur-e Lang (Timur the lame), or Tamerlane, a Muslim native of Transoxania who claimed descent from Genghis Khan, desired control of the khanate for himself and opposed Amir Husayn. He took Samarkand in 1366, and was recognized as emir in 1370, although he continued to officially act in the name of the Chagatai khans. For over three decades, Timur used the Chagatai lands as the base for extensive conquests, conquering the rulers of Herat in Afghanistan, Shiraz in Persia, Baghdad in Iraq, Delhi in India, and Damascus in Syria. After defeating the Ottoman Turks at Angora, Timur died in 1405 while marching on China. The Timurid Dynasty continued under his son, Shah Rukh, who ruled from Herat until his death in 1447.

Successors of the Chagataites

The Chagatai Khanate flourished again during the 15th century, when it took Tashkent in 1484, although by then its Mongol component had been diluted and it was a mainly Turkic empire with Mongol overlords, for the name of Genghis Khan still drummed legitimacy. The Chagatai Khanate did not have uncontested domain over the steppes, for the Kyrgyz and the Oirats (Western Mongols) roamed in Dzungar (east of Lake Balkash) without major opposition.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the area of the Chagatai Khanate came under the control of the Shaybanids, a branch of the Golden Horde, who were also called Uzbeks. They moved east to the central steppes in 1431 and south to the Syr Darya in 1446 to make contact with the settled peoples of Transoxania. The nomads who remained in the north revolted in 1456 and became the Kazakhs. The Mongolian Oirat nomads seceded the following year. The Uzbeks under Muhammad Shaybani captured Samarkand in 1501 and Khiva in 1505. Tashkent fell in 1509, and the Chagatai dynasty gradually petered out in the Ili region (in modern northwest China) through internal decomposition and attrition from attacks by the Kazakhs, the Oirats, and other hordes that were roaming Central Asia. Meanwhile, the Uzbeks founded the Khanate of Bukhara in 1582, which endured until the Russian conquest of the 19th century.

Kashgaria was ruled by descendants of the Moghul side of the Chaghataites until 1678, when a Sufi cleric (a Khoja) took the throne with the help of the Oirat (Dzungar) Mongols. When the Oirats were driven by the Khalkhas, or eastern Mongols, out of Kobdo (east of Lake Balkash), a branch of the Oirats held out in the Tarbagatai Range (south-east of Balkash). Another branch went south and occupied Lhasa in Tibet, where it founded an independent khanate in 1616. In 1677, the Oirats of Tarbagatai had established suzerainty over Kashgaria and the Khojas. It is this branch of the Oirats which recaptured Kobdo in 1690 from the divided Khalkhas. It proceeded to invade Mongolia to the Kerulen River (eastern Mongolia), but were quickly ejected by the Khalkhas with the help of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which at that point made Mongolia its vassal (1691). The territories of the Oirats west of Mongolia became the Khanate of Junggar, which in 1717 annexed Lhasa. It was a distant reconstitution of the Mongol Chagatai Khanate, but totally separated from the Turks of Transoxiana, and also, unlike the Chagatai Khanate, in a world where nomadic power was obsolescent.

References

• "The Chagatai Khanate". The Islamic World to 1600. The Applied History Research Group, University of Calgary. 1998. Retrieved May 19, 2005.

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