Two years after the Great Khan's death, his son Ogodci had been confirmed in office and the conquests were resumed. The hold on the Chin
Lands was consolidated and Korea was taken; military rule was tightened in Persia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Azerbaijan; and the Sung empire of southern China was given notice that they would be next in line for conquest. In Iran various military governors meant that the country remained unstable and chaotic and the Isma'TlTs, Jalal al-DTn Khwarazmshah, and other local warlords disrupted life and security for the mass of the people. The poet Sa'di left his beloved Shiraz to escape the chaos, returning only when he heard of the advent of Hulegii Khan and a central government in the 125tls. In the 1230s, Batu Khan and his Golden Horde were extending their territory deep into Eastern Europe, and terrifying tales of the Mongols began to enter the nightmares of Europeans. In 1240 Kiev was captured and destroyed. In 1241 the Polish army was defeated at Liegnitz, and the victorious Mongols then continued to devastate Moravia and Silesia before capturing Hungary itself.
In December 1241 all campaigning was abruptly stopped, however. The Qa'an, the Great Khan Ogodei, had died, and all Mongol leaders, princes, and nobles of the Golden family, as the Chinggisids were known, were summoned to the capital at Qaraqorum tor a qiirilfai to elect a new leader. It was from this point that the cracks that had been faintly discernable from the beginning of Ogddei's reign began to become more pronounced. After a long regency when Ogddei's widow presided over the vast empire, his son Giiyiik ruled for a short and tense time until his death in 1248. Batu and his Golden Horde had been opposed to Giiyilk's election, and after his death, Batu was determined not to allow the crown to fall to the house of Ogodei.
Batu himself and, by extension, his progeny were barred from the top position because of rarely expressed but pervasive doubts about his paternity. His mother Bdrte had been kidnapped by the Merkit tribe early in her marriage to Temiijin. Approximately nine months after her rescue she gave birth to Jochi, Batu's father. Chinggis had insisted that Jochi should be awarded all the respect due to an eldest son and would allow no allusions to the circumstances of his birth. Rarely spoken doubts persisted, however, and it seemed an unwritten law that Batu remain kingmaker rather than king and that he he treated with the same deference and respect as that given the actual Qa'an.
World History
