Ragibagh Khan

天順

Reign facts

Reigned: 1328 (1 year)
Lived: 1320–1328
Personal name: Ragibagh 阿剌吉八
Era name: Tianshun 天順 1328

Ragibagh (1320–1328) was the son of Yesün Temür. He was enthroned at Shangdu, the Yuan summer capital, in 1328, while still a young child, and reigned under the era name Tianshun for a matter of weeks. His court was then defeated in the War of the Two Capitals, and he disappeared soon afterwards.

He is counted as the seventh emperor of the Yuan dynasty and, in the traditional sequence, the eleventh Great Khan of the Mongols, although by his time the western khanates recognised the Yuan court's supremacy in name only. His was one of the shortest reigns in Mongol history.

No porcelain can be tied to so brief a reign. His short life did, however, fall in the years when potters at Jingdezhen were developing blue and white decoration painted in imported cobalt, a style fully formed by the middle of the century. Pieces of the period are in our Yuan dynasty porcelain collection.

Before Ruling the Yuan Dynasty

Ragibagh was Yesün Temür's eldest son. His mother, Babukhan, came from the Khongirad clan, which traditionally supplied the principal wives of Mongol emperors.

He was named crown prince in 1324. When Yesün Temür died at Shangdu in 1328, power there lay with his leading minister, the Muslim official Dawlat Shah, who had served Yesün Temür since his years as a prince in Mongolia. After a delay of several weeks, Dawlat Shah placed Ragibagh on the throne.

Yesün Temür's sudden death gave an opening to those who resented the hold his circle had on power. In Dadu, the Qipchaq commander El Temür staged a coup in favour of the sons of Khayishan, the emperor Külüg Khan. Khayishan's younger son, Tugh Temür, was brought to Dadu and enthroned there in the same weeks that Ragibagh was enthroned at Shangdu.

War of the Two Capitals

The movement in Dadu, also known as Khanbaliq, aimed to restore the line of Khayishan, whose sons were Kusala and Tugh Temür. Its success owed much to the political skill of El Temür, whose Qipchaq family had risen to prominence under Khayishan.

A small lobed qingbai jar with two loop handles at the shoulder, its bluish-white crackled glaze splashed with iron-brown spots, the unglazed base fired orange. — Museum exampleA small lobed qingbai jar with iron-brown spots, dated by the museum to the first half of the 14th century, the decades in which Ragibagh's brief reign fell.Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.272. Public domain.

Control of Dadu gave El Temür and his allies important economic and strategic advantages over the loyalists at Shangdu. Because Kusala, the elder brother, was far away in Central Asia, El Temür installed Tugh Temür as emperor, on the understanding that he would later give way to Kusala.

The War

The war that followed in the autumn of 1328 was a succession struggle between the Yuan forces at Dadu and those at Shangdu.

The Shangdu armies broke through several passes in the Great Wall and advanced on Dadu, but El Temür's forces defeated them. While most of Ragibagh's troops were still fighting on the Great Wall front, other forces loyal to Dadu surrounded Shangdu, and the court there surrendered.

Dawlat Shah and the other leading loyalists were taken prisoner and later executed by the Dadu faction. Ragibagh disappeared, and he is generally assumed to have been killed. Loyalist resistance continued in some provinces, and the last holdouts did not submit until 1332.

The war was among the most destructive in the history of the Yuan dynasty. It was fought less over ideas than over family interests, and it left El Temür the dominant figure at court. Tugh Temür stepped aside for Kusala in 1329, but Kusala died within months and Tugh Temür returned to the throne as Jayaatu Khan.