THE MONGOL EMPIRE dissolving in 48 CE The Khitan ruled in Manchuria and North China where they established the Liao dynasty 907 1125 and formed an alliance with a little known tribal confederacy known as All the Mongols After the fall of the Liao the Tatars a Mongol people but not members of the league appeared as allies of the Juchen the Khitan's successors During this time Genghis Khan came to power within the All the Mongols league and was proclaimed EUROPE RUSSIA MONGOLIA Black Sea Caspian Sea a Beijing KOREA Kaesong JAPAN Mediterranean Sea PERSIA HIMAL TIBET CHINA Huang TALAYAS East China Sea Chang liar AFRICA INDIA PACIFIC OCEAN Arabian Sea Bay of Bengal South China Sea Mongol Empire at the death of Genghis Khan 1227 Mongol Empire at the death of Kublai Khan 1294 Boundary of the Yuan Dynasty under Kublai Khan Great Wall now 0 0 500 1 000 miles 500 1 000 kilometers INDIAN OCEAN 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica Inc The Mongol Empire grew to cover a vast territory
khan in 1206 He skillfully gained control over the Mongols outside the league Under the leadership of Genghis Khan and his successors the Mongols established an empire that reached from what are now China and Korea in the east to eastern Europe and the shores of the Persian Gulf in the west At the height of their power they overthrew the rulers of northern and southern China and reunited China under Mongol Mongol rule as the Yuan dynasty The Mongols were the first foreigners to rule all of China The western part of their empire in Russia and eastern Europe was known as the Golden Horde The power of the Mongol Empire declined greatly in the fourteenth century 7 introduCtion
GENGHIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS In 1206 Genghis Khan was elected head of the All the Mongols league a confederation of Mongol tribes and founded the Mongol dynasty Between 1206 and 1227 when Genghis Khan died the Mongols conquered a dominion that stretched from the China Sea to the Caspian On the north it bordered the forest belt of Siberia and on the south it touched the Kunlun Mountains Tibet and the central plains of China The Mongols impressive military conquests were largely due to their armies of archers mounted on horseback who possessed great speed and mobility CALCULATED ADVANCES The first attack by the Mongols under Genghis Khan was launched against the Xi Xia who occupied a border state in northwestern China They next began to fight the Jin dynasty which controlled the rest of northern 8 Chapter 1
Genghis Khan is depicted in ink on silk in a painting in the National Palace Museum in Taipei Taiwan China By 1215 the Mongols had taken the Jin capital of Yanjing now Beijing They eventually conquered all of northern China By 1225 they had taken Turkistan Turkistan in Central Asia Advance troops penetrated into southern Russia and raided cities in Crimea The Mongol Empire created by Genghis Khan was not a unified state but a vast collection of territories territories held together by military force Because it was controlled by so many military leaders all theoretically theoretically responsible to a leader known as the great 9
