Small wonder, then, that the widow of Togoontomor Khan flatly rejected having her beloved son Yantogs installed as Emperor at the suggestion of an influential official named Yan’tomor. No sooner had a member of the golden lineage ascended the throne, that he would fall victim to the struggle unleashed by groups of power-hungry courtiers. Following the death of Emperor Buyant, the imperial throne of the Yuan became a sort of transit station for men whose days were already numbered. The period following the death of Kublai Khan was marked by constant revolts in Mongolia against the royal court in Baidu. 1370-1378: Ayuushridar (Bilegt) becomes emperor in the Karakorum.Īlthough many factors contributed to the downfall of the Yuan Dynasty, central was the tendency of the nomads to fight between themselves to the death in the absence of an undisputed leader.1368: The fall of the Yuan Dynasty The Ming Dynasty established.1331-1345: Togtoh and other historians finish writing the History of the Ilao, Jin-an Song dynasties.During this time, Mongol, Korean and Chinese soldiers started a revolt. 1312-1320: Buyant Khan becomes emperor.1308-1311: Haisanhuleg succeeds in the Yuan throne.1295-1307: Olziitomor succeeds in the Yuan throne.A Chinese who killed a Mongol was put to death, while a Mongol who killed a Chinese was sent to war. These four groups enjoyed descending degrees of rights and powers in political, military, economic and cultural fields, with the Nanren, of course, considered inferior to the other three groups. The third was the Henren or the Northern Chinese, as well as Kitans, Jurchers, and Koreans, while the fourth was Hanren, the Han of South China. First in priority were the Mongols, followed by the so-called Semu ren or “the colored-eyes” (Western and Central Asians such as Uighurs, Turks, Arabs, Persians, and Tunguts, etc.). Kublai Khan divided the population into three, and later four, groups. This attitude may have provoked the rebellion and, furthermore, saved the Mongols from complete absorption into Chinese society.Īfter Kublai, his descendants Olziitomor (1295-1307), Haisanhuleg (1308-11), Buyant (1312-20), Gegeen (1321-24), Yesuntomor (1324-28) Huslen (1329), Tovtomor (1329-31), Renchinbal (1332), Rajibag (1333) and Togoontomor (1333-70) ruled China until the Han people began a rebellion in 1368 to reclaim their country and subsequently establish the Ming Dynasty, the Mongol Khans and princes were expelled back to the lands of their ancestors. Toghon Temur, the last Yuan emperor, had no regard for the Chinese civilization and was even hostile toward it. Due to a difference in language and culture, the Chinese translations of the decrees unsophisticated and primitive. State and court decisions were first made in Mongolian and later translated into Chinese. Since the ruling Mongols and the subordinate Chinese were frequently unable to understand each other’s languages, they used Mongolian and Chinese simultaneously.Īfter one hundred years, when the Yuan Dynasty was nearing its end, there were very few Mongols who spoke Chinese or knew the Chinese script and even fewer Chinese who spoke Mongolian. While major Yuan laws were admixtures of Jin and traditional Chinese laws, other legislation, particularly the criminal code, were reflections of the Genghis Khan’s yasaq. Chinese lived side by side the Mongols, Koreans, Tibetans, Miao, Uighurs, and people of many other languages. Not only a region but everything else mixed in the land of the Yuan. This time there were sixty million Chinese while their Mongol rulers numbered a mere few hundred thousand. This major institution within his government was staffed entirely by Chinese, apart from a handful of “dismounted” Mongols, who held the few executive posts. He successfully established centralized government machinery (Zhongshusheng) devised by Ye Lu Chucai. While using the ancient Chinese traditions of state administration in running the affairs of the United China, he was a statemen who introduced numerous new reforms. In 1280, he finally achieved victory over the Southern Song, ending a highly protracted war and creating a unified China. He was, first of all, the one who had brought the disunited country under one rule. Kublai played a tremendous role in China’s history in fact, he may have been one of the nation’s greatest emperors. In 1271, Kublai Khan proudly gave his dynasty the name “Great Origin” which, for the first time in Chinese history, had no geographic reference. Even the non-Chinese Kitans named their dynasty Liao, after Liao province, and the Jurchid named their dynasty after the Jin river. The names of all Chinese dynasties originated from Chinese feudal province or geographical locations. Later they called their empire, ruled by a Mongol king, Da Yuan or Great Origin. The Chinese called the Great Mongol Empire Da Chao, a direct translation of the Great Empire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |