Ögedei Khan

Ögedei, third son of Genghis Khan, was the second Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, ruling from 1229 until his death in 1241. Under him the empire destroyed the Jin dynasty of northern China, completed the conquest of Persia, subdued the Caucasus and sent armies across the Russian principalities into Poland and Hungary. He also began to give the conquests a settled administration and built the Mongol capital at Karakorum.

Ögedei was born around 1186 to Temüjin, the future Genghis Khan, and his chief wife Börte; the year is inferred from his recorded age at death. He fought through his father's wars of unification and was badly wounded in a defeat at the hands of Jamukha. After Temüjin became Genghis Khan in 1206, Ögedei received several clans and pastures along the Emil and Hobok rivers as his own domain. From 1211 he campaigned against the Jin in northern China.

During the invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire from 1219, Ögedei and his brother Chagatai took Otrar after a five-month siege and massacred its people. When Chagatai and their eldest brother Jochi quarrelled at the siege of Urgench, Genghis put Ögedei in sole command, and the city fell in 1221. The rivalry between the two elder brothers had already made Ögedei the agreed heir. Genghis died in 1227. After a two-year regency under the youngest brother, Tolui, an assembly of Mongol nobles proclaimed Ögedei khan on 13 September 1229.

Ögedei continued his father's expansion. In 1230 an army under Chormaqan swept through Khorasan and northern Persia, isolating the Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din, and by 1240 it had forced Armenia and the Georgian nobility into submission. In China, Ögedei and Tolui campaigned in person against the Jin; by 1232 the Jin emperor was besieged at Kaifeng, and with belated help from the Song the dynasty was finished at Caizhou in February 1234. Invasions of Korea began in 1231, and raids against the Song followed from 1235.

In the west, Ögedei's nephew Batu and the general Subutai conquered the steppe peoples and the principalities of Rus', and in 1241 Mongol armies defeated the Poles at Legnica and the Hungarians at Mohi. Early in 1242 the advance halted and the armies withdrew. Most historians, following Mongol sources, link the retreat to Ögedei's death and the need to choose a successor; a minority point instead to the difficulty of taking European fortresses.

Ögedei relied on advisers from several traditions, among them the Khitan statesman Yelü Chucai, who ran northern China for much of the reign, and Muslim officials such as Mahmud Yalavach in Turkestan. He divided northern China into ten administrative routes, set up regional secretariats, regulated taxes, and in 1234 created a network of relay stations, the yam, to carry envoys and messages across the empire. Paper currency circulated alongside silver. Tax collection was often farmed out to merchant partners whose high interest drove many peasants to flee. At Karakorum, built up from 1235, he housed craftsmen from China and the Islamic world and allowed temples, mosques and churches for different faiths.

Contemporaries describe Ögedei as big, good-humoured and persuasive, content to trust capable generals, but he was also a heavy drinker. The Persian historian Juvayni reports that he ordered a mass rape of Oirat girls; other sources mention only a forcible requisition of women, and modern scholars question parts of the account. Ögedei died on 11 December 1241 after a night of drinking. His widow Töregene acted as regent for five years until their son Güyük was elected in 1246.

Our 1200 map shows the steppe before the Mongol conquests; by the 1279 map, the empire his campaigns expanded had divided into rival khanates such as the Golden Horde.