Who is genghis khan and kublai khan

For his relatively benevolent reign, Kublai would eventually earn himself the nickname Wise Khan. However, his ambitions extended well beyond the borders of his existing empire, and in , he renewed his efforts to subdue the Song Dynasty in southern China. The campaign would prove to be a lengthy one, in part due to the strategic difficulties it posed.

The terrain was difficult for the cavalry—on which the might of the Mongolian forces heavily relied—to navigate. In addition, fortifications necessitated new siege tactics, such as the building of catapults and territory best approached by sea required a significant expansion of the navy. Despite these challenges, by ,Kublai Khan had definitively conquered the Song and he became the first Mongol to rule the whole of China. In celebration of his newly expanded empire, Kublai Khan declared a new Yuan Dynasty, of which he was the first and most successful ruler.

Although the dynasty would ultimately prove to be short-lived, lasting only until , it served as a precedent for the later Qing Dynasty.

Though Kaidu was never successful at unseating Kublai Khan, he remained a threat to his authority during his rule. Closer to home for Kublai Khan, the discriminatory nature of his imposed social structure also led to deep resentment among the lower Chinese classes, who were constantly overtaxed to pay for a series of unsuccessful military campaigns, including failed attempts to conquer Japan, Burma and Java. Though he never abandoned his ambitions to further extend his empire, these defeats, coupled with personal losses that included the death of his favorite wife and oldest son and heir, weighed heavily on Kublai Khan.

He began to drink and eat in excess, becoming overweight and developing gout. He died on February 18, , at the age of We strive for accuracy and fairness. The young Temujin came to the realisation that his best chance of reversing his fortunes — and creating a powerbase for himself — lay in establishing alliances. Yet on the violent, febrile Mongolian steppe, even getting married could spell trouble.

So he sought to secure another alliance, this time with a formidable leader named Toghrul. Temujin won over Toghrul by reminding him that he had fought alongside his father, and sugar-coated the offer with a lavish sable coat.

The gambit worked. Someone, however, stood in his way, and it was one of his greatest friends. Temujin had been blood brothers with a fellow warrior named Jamukha, also the son of a Mongolian tribal leader, for a number of years.

In fact, Jamukha had played an instrumental role in the defeat of the Merkit. Yet, as the two had grown older, cracks began to appear in their friendship. Soon, his distrust morphed into outright war. When Jamukha struck, it was with bloodthirsty ferocity. He was good to his word, and when his revenge came, it was total. Then a few months later, Jamukha was captured.

Rather than dish out a fate similar to what befell his generals, though, Temujin showed him mercy… up to a point.

Jamukha asked for a noble death, which meant without the shedding of blood. His former friend granted him that, so had his back broken. Among the first people to feel the force of the newly united Mongol nation was the Western Xia of northwest China, who succumbed to a sustained Mongol invasion. In , Genghis followed that by attacking the Jin, gobbling up land, cities and loot in a spectacular campaign that culminated in the fall of Beijing.

The Mongolians were highly adept at communicating over large distances, something they had honed over centuries of rounding up animals on the steppe. This enabled them to slowly tighten the noose around the enemy. Guile was another key weapon in the Mongol armoury. Genghis Khan relied heavily on spies and was certainly not above using fake news as a tactic. Genghis Khan was also a master of the feigned retreat, luring opponents out of defensive positions before delivering a lethal strike.

Combine all this with his ability to quickly assimilate new technologies into his own army — such as Chinese siege weapons, mortars, gunpowder, not to mention thousands of captured troops — and you had a truly formidable foe.

And then, of course, there was terror. Cities that put up a fight were routinely subjected to an orgy of destruction: their men butchered, women raped and buildings razed. Yet in terms of sheer barbarity, the worst was yet to come. Having subdued the Western Xia and Jin to the east, Genghis Khan looked to establish trade links to his west. He sent emissaries into the Khwarezmid Empire modern-day Afghanistan and Iraq.

Let us conclude a firm treaty of friendship and peace. When he learned of this grisly snub, he flew into a rage that would change the course of history.

Some of the most notorious of all Mongol atrocities were perpetrated during this campaign, visited upon the eastern outposts of Islam. Muslim historians record that, after it succumbed to a five-month siege, 50, Mongol soldiers slaughtered ten men each. Among their other victims was the oasis city of Merv also Turkmenistan , whose libraries, constituting the greatest collection in central Asia, contained , volumes.

Most had their throats slit. The Genghis Khan of popular imagination tends to be a pitiless killer, leading a merciless army across the land and building an empire on the bones of millions. But there was another, often overlooked, side to him, and that was as the enlightened ruler who realised that if his Mongol Empire was to prove sustainable, he would have to work with the peoples he had subjugated.

As a result, his capital of Karakorum bristled with small communities of foreign silversmiths, silk-weavers, artists, architects and the like. And whether they were Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, it appears they were free to worship in peace. The empire made the world a smaller place, in effect serving as a transmission belt for technology, science and goods between areas as diverse as China, Iran and eastern Europe.

Without these Mongol trade routes, Marco Polo could never have made his celebrated journey from Europe to China in the late 13th century. The widereaching network of routes connected by regular staging posts enabled a message to travel miles in a single day. The Japanese offensive proved very costly financially and to pay for it, he over-taxed the people, one of the most critical reasons for a government's demise. The peasants suffered under the burden of increased taxes. There was widespread inflation because the government also printed a great deal of paper money.

To offset the inflation, Kublai Khan ordered the currency devaluated 5 to 1. Supporting his northern capital required extending the Grand Canal, and the people resented the corvee demanded of them to build the mile extension, completed in Economic problems made Kublai Khan less tolerant. He became increasingly distrustful of the merchants, many of whom were Muslim, and in the late 's he began to issue anti-Muslim legislation such as forbidding circumcision or slaughtering animals in the Muslimfashion.

This persecution continued until l At the same time, he was increasingly supportive of Buddhists which led some of the Buddhist priests to take advantage of their positions. Although Kublai Khan tried to rule as a sage emperor, the Mongols did not adjust to Chinese ways. Ideologically and culturally the Mongols resisted assimilation and legally tried to stay isolated from the Chinese. They thought Confucianism was anti-foreign, too dense had too many social restrictions.

The Chinese intellectuals turned away from Buddhism although many Mongols liked it, so Buddhism did not bring them closer to the Chinese, either. Towards the end, Kublai Klan reinstituted the exam and let Chinese serve in lower level government position, perhaps to try and make the people happier, but the Mongols were always foreigners in Chinese eyes. The Mongol rule became increasingly less stable after when Kublai Khan died and succession became a problem.

In the period between there were eight emperors; two were assassinated and all died young. Without an accepted rule of succession, the death of an emperor caused violent conflict among the different would-be rulers. At the very time when the empire needed strong central control to stay in power, the Mongols wasted their efforts battling over succession. Another familiar reason for the demise of an empire was the rise of local landlords.

When the military leaders no longer had a central figure to whom to give their loyalty, they used the troops to farm their land, not to fight, increasing their own power and reducing the morale of the troops. The end of the Yuan rule in China came "by expulsion and not by absorption. The Chinese always resented the foreigners and in the end revolted and drove them out. A Chinese orphan Hongwu, a peasant soldier who gave up banditry to become a Buddhist monk, led the revolt and founded the Ming dynasty in Unsupported Browser Detected.

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