Mongol Empire
▶ Explore on the mapThe Mongol empire, founded by Genghis Khan in 1206, became the largest contiguous land empire in history, stretching from Korea to Hungary at its height. Temujin united the steppe tribes after years of feud, was proclaimed Genghis Khan at a kurultai in 1206, and organised the army in units of ten, a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand drawn from every tribe, so that loyalty ran to the state rather than to a clan. He conquered northern China and the Khwarezmian empire, using terror deliberately and offering cities that surrendered terms. His successors expanded further: Europe was invaded in 1237 to 1241 under Batu, whose armies destroyed Kiev and killed the Hungarian and Polish kings, while Hulegu sacked Baghdad in 1258 and ended the Abbasid caliphate; a grandson of Kublai founded the Yuan dynasty in China in 1271. The empire was held together by the yam relay post system, a written script and a legal code, the yasa, while merchants travelled under safe conducts in the Pax Mongolica. After 1260 the empire divided into four khanates, and Chinese rule ended with the expulsion of the Yuan in 1368, but the trading world the Mongols opened shaped Asia for centuries. The Mongols never rebuilt the Han bureaucracy in full, and much of the countryside was left to princes and military governors.