Khutughtu Khan Kusala

Kusala (和世㻋), who reigned as Khutughtu Khan and is known by the temple name Mingzong, ruled the Yuan Dynasty for a few months in 1329. He was the eldest son of Khayishan, the Külüg Khan, who reigned from 1307 to 1311.

As well as emperor of China, he was the thirteenth Great Khan of the Mongols, although by his time the title carried little authority over the other Mongol khanates. His reign ended with his sudden death, very probably by poison, only days after he met his younger brother Tugh Temür.

Early Life and Exile

Kusala was born in 1300. His mother was a woman of the Ikires clan. When his father, Khayishan, took the throne in 1307, he shared power with his younger brother Ayurbarwada and their mother, Dagi of the Khongirad.

Khayishan made Ayurbarwada his heir on one condition: that Ayurbarwada would in turn name one of Khayishan's sons as his own successor. Ayurbarwada succeeded in 1311 as the Buyantu Khan, but he broke the agreement and named his own son, Shidebala, as heir.

To clear the way for Shidebala, Kusala was made Prince of Zhou and sent to Yunnan. On the way, supporters of his father's line rose in Shaanxi in his name. The rising failed, and Kusala fled west to the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia.

There he was welcomed by the Chagatai khan, Esen Buqa, and won the backing of the Chagatayid princes. In exile he married Mailaiti, a woman of the Qarluq people, and in 1320 she bore him a son, Toghon Temür, who would become the last Yuan emperor to rule China.

The Brief Reign of Mingzong

In 1323 Shidebala, the Gegeen Khan, was murdered and Yesün Temür took the throne. Kusala remained in Central Asia, building up his following at his base on the western side of the Altai Mountains.

When Yesün Temür died in 1328, a civil war known as the War of the Two Capitals broke out. One side supported Yesün Temür's young son Ragibagh, proclaimed at Shangdu by the old court faction led by Dawlat Shah. The other supported Kusala's younger brother, Tugh Temür, proclaimed at Dadu (modern Beijing) by the partisans of Khayishan's line under the Qipchaq commander El Temür, with the help of the Merkid commander Bayan in Henan.

Tugh Temür's side won by the end of 1328, having gained the support of most of the princes and commanders south of the Gobi. Tugh Temür then declared that the throne belonged to his elder brother and invited Kusala to come to the capital.

Meanwhile Kusala, backed by the Chagatayid princes, had entered Mongolia and won over many of the Mongol princes and generals there. On 27 February 1329 he was enthroned north of Karakorum.

Death of Khutughtu Khan Kusala

In April 1329 Tugh Temür formally gave up the throne, and El Temür carried the imperial seal north to Kusala in Mongolia. Kusala named Tugh Temür his heir and began placing his own followers in key posts in the Secretariat, the Censorate and the Bureau of Military Affairs.

He then travelled south with his court. In August he met Tugh Temür at Ongghuchad, the site of Zhongdu, the city his father Khayishan had founded. Four days after a banquet with his brother, on 30 August 1329, Kusala died suddenly.

The official history, the Yuan shi, records only a sudden death, but historians widely suspect that El Temür had him poisoned, to keep power out of the hands of Kusala's followers from Mongolia and Central Asia. Tugh Temür returned to the throne in September as the Jayaatu Khan.

These were also the years in which blue and white porcelain was taking shape at Jingdezhen; within two decades the style was fully formed, as the dated David Vases of 1351 show. Our Yuan dynasty porcelain collection includes pieces from the period.