Chagatai Khanate - Formation

Formation

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 Transoxania, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in modern Uzbekistan, and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almaliq near what is now Yining in northwestern China. 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 an unsettled 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 favorable to Nestorian Christianity. The Ögedite ulus was dismembered; only the Ögedites who not immediately go into opposition were given minor fiefs.