The Chagatai Khanate was the Central Asian khanate of the Mongol Empire, founded by Chagatai, the second son of Genghis Khan, in 1226. The khanate was the smallest and most politically unstable of the four major khanates, and it was eventually absorbed by the empire of Timur in the late fourteenth century.
The Chagatai Khanate was the khanate of the steppe heartland, the part of the Mongol world that was closest to the original homeland of the Mongol people. The khanate included most of Central Asia, from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya in the west to the Tarim Basin in the east, and it was the only one of the four khanates to retain a substantial Mongol population in its territory.
The Founding of the Chagatai Khanate
The Chagatai Khanate was established by Genghis Khan in 1226, when he allocated the territories of Central Asia to his second son Chagatai. The territory included the lands between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, including the major cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as the territories of the Tarim Basin in the east. The territory was originally part of the Khwarezmian Empire that had been conquered by Genghis Khan in 1219-1221, and the population was a mixture of Turks, Persians, Sogdians, and a small number of Mongols.
Chagatai himself was a traditionalist and a conservative. He was reportedly opposed to the adoption of sedentary customs by the Mongol ruling class, and he enforced the traditional Mongol way of life in his territories with considerable rigor. He was also, however, a man of considerable learning, with a strong interest in Islamic law and culture, and his court was known for its cosmopolitanism. Chagatai ruled his khanate from 1226 until his death in 1242, and the institutions that he established remained largely intact for the next century.
The Internal Divisions
The Chagatai Khanate was riven by internal divisions from the start. The most fundamental division was between the eastern part of the khanate, centered on the Ili Valley and the Tarim Basin, and the western part, centered on Transoxiana. The eastern part was the heartland of the Mongol ruling class, and it was ruled by a line of Chagatai khans; the western part was increasingly settled and Islamicized, and it was ruled by a line of military commanders who were nominally subordinate to the khans but who in practice often acted independently.
The division between the two parts of the khanate was sharpened by the Toluid Civil War of 1260-1264, in which the two halves of the khanate supported opposite sides. The khanate split formally into eastern and western halves in the mid-thirteenth century, and the two halves were often at war with each other for the next century. The eastern Chagatai Khanate, sometimes called the Moghulistan, survived until the seventeenth century, when it was absorbed by the Dzungar Khanate.
The Conversion to Islam
The Chagatai Khanate was originally a polytheistic and shamanist state, with a small Buddhist and Nestorian Christian minority. The conversion of the khan and the ruling class to Islam was a gradual process that took place over the course of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The first Muslim khan of the Chagatai Khanate was Mubarak Shah, who converted in 1266; the conversion of the mass of the population was a much slower process, and large parts of the khanate remained non-Muslim until the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The conversion of the Chagatai Khanate to Islam had important cultural and political effects. The khanate became a major patron of Islamic culture, particularly of Sufi orders, and the major cities of the khanate — Samarkand, Bukhara, and others — became important centers of Islamic learning. The khanate also became a major center of Persian literary culture, with a number of major Persian poets and scholars at work in the cities of the khanate.
The Timurid Conquest
The Chagatai Khanate was eventually absorbed by the empire of Timur in the late fourteenth century. Timur, also known as Tamerlane, was a Barlas Turk who claimed descent from Chagatai, and he used his claim to legitimate his conquest of the western part of the khanate in the 1360s. Timur went on to build a vast empire that, at its height, stretched from Delhi to Anatolia, and his conquest marked the end of the Chagatai Khanate as a political entity.
The Timurid Empire was the last great Central Asian empire of the medieval period, and it was a major patron of Islamic culture, particularly in the fields of architecture, literature, and the visual arts. The Timurid court at Samarkand and Herat was a major center of Persian and Turkic literary culture, and the city of Samarkand was rebuilt by Timur and his successors into one of the most magnificent cities of the medieval world.
The Legacy of the Chagatai Khanate
The Chagatai Khanate left a deep imprint on the cultural and political life of Central Asia. The Chagatai Turkic language, which developed in the khanate, became the literary language of Central Asia and is the ancestor of the modern Uzbek language. The Timurid cultural renaissance, which built on the institutions of the Chagatai Khanate, was one of the most brilliant periods in the history of Central Asian culture, and its influence can still be seen in the architecture, literature, and visual arts of modern Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The political legacy of the Chagatai Khanate is also visible in the modern states of Central Asia, which all bear the imprint of the Mongol period.
Sources
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford, 2007).
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (London, 2005).
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012).