Free A Short History of the World by Christopher Lascelles Page B

against them was a divided China, no single leader to rally the armies of central Asia, a declining Abbasid Caliphate and a series of fragmented city-states that would eventually become Russia. In essence, the world was open for the taking. With the help of their lightning mobility, their spectacular horsemanship, and the discipline of their military machine, the Mongols were hugely successful. By the time of Kublai Khan, half a century or so later, they had managed to bring almost the entire Asian landmass under their control.
    Genghis Khan died in 1227 around the age of 65. Under the rule of his descendants, the Mongols occupied all of northern China and overran much of Kievan Rus, destroying most of the major cities in the process. They then overcame the Seljuk Turks 43 before heading westwards into Poland and Hungary.  
    As the Mongols were crossing the Danube and approaching Vienna in December 1241, they quite mysteriously retreated. To the Europeans this was a miracle, but the Mongol withdrawal did not come about as a result of divine intervention. Rather they retreated in response to the death of Genghis Khan’s son, Ogedei, who had taken over from Genghis Khan upon his death. It was required of Mongol nobles that they return home in the case of the death of their ruler to confirm their leader’s successor. Following a short reign by one of Ogedei’s sons in 1251, the position of Great Khan went to Mongke, another of Genghis Khan’s grandsons. Mongke continued the invasion of China while simultaneously sending his brother, Hulegu, westwards to bring the Abbasid Caliphate into submission.  
    In 1258, Hulegu rode into Baghdad, until then dominated by the Seljuk Turks, and unleashed his hordes upon the city. According to some estimates, up to 800,000 Muslims were massacred, including the last reigning Abbasid caliph – albeit one of vastly reduced power – who was rolled up in a carpet and trampled to death by horses. In an orgy of destruction, all the intellectual and literary treasures accumulated by the Muslims throughout the centuries were burnt or thrown into the river Tigris. The time of Iraq as a centre of power and culture was finally over and Cairo would now become the centre of the Islamic world until Christian Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453.  
    Miraculously, the West was once again saved from assured destruction, this time by the death of the Great Khan Mongke, who died invading a Chinese province in 1259. Hulegu was forced to retreat home to take part in the leadership struggle and what remained of his forces in the west was decisively beaten by the Mamluks.

    Kublai Khan (AD 1215–1294)
    The Mongol leader chosen to succeed Mongke was Kublai Khan. While in theory he ruled the largest land empire in history, by this time the Mongolian Empire had been bequeathed to Genghis’ four sons in the form of four territories. These had become de facto independent empires or ‘khanates’, each ruled by a separate khan and each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives.
    The greatest khanate – that of Mongolia, Korea, Tibet and parts of China – was ruled by Kublai, who completed the subjugation of China, effectively ending the ruling Sung Dynasty there. The second khanate, the Chagatai Khanate, comprised much of Central Asia. The third khanate in south-west Asia, known as the Il-Khanate, and created by Hulegu, ruled over Persia and the Middle East. 44   The fourth and longest lasting khanate was the Kipchak Khanate, or ‘Golden Horde’, which eventually included most of Russia, Poland and Hungary.

    Kublai Khan relocated the imperial capital of the Mongolian Empire from Karakorum, in Mongolia, to Beijing, in northern China. Having conquered all of southern China, Kublai Khan added Emperor of China to his long list of titles, even adopting a Chinese dynastic name, the Yuan, which became the ruling dynasty in China for about a hundred years.  
    Wishing to extend his lands further, in