Toghon Temür

Toghon Temür (妥懽帖睦爾, 1320–1370) was the last emperor of the Yuan dynasty to rule China. He reigned from 1333 to 1368, longer than any other Yuan emperor, under three era names: Yuantong (元統, 1333–1335), Zhiyuan (至元, 1335–1340) and Zhizheng (至正, 1341–1368). His temple name is Huizong (惠宗), and the Ming, who drove him from the throne, called him Emperor Shun.

He was the eldest son of Khutughtu Khan Kusala. He came to the throne as a boy, began his personal rule with serious reforms, and spent his last decades presiding over a state that rebellion was tearing apart. For collectors his reign matters more than any other in the Yuan: the finest Yuan blue and white, the type named after the Zhizheng era, was made at Jingdezhen in these years.

Exile and Accession

As a boy Toghon Temür was caught up in the succession struggles that followed his father's sudden death in 1329. He was sent into exile, first to an island off the coast of Korea and then to Guilin in the south, where he studied Confucian texts and classical Chinese literature.

His uncle Tugh Temür died in 1332, and his younger brother Rinchinbal reigned for only a few weeks before dying in the same year. Toghon Temür was recalled to the capital, but the powerful minister El Temür, who had dominated the court for years, opposed his accession. Only after El Temür's death was he enthroned, in 1333, at the age of thirteen.

The Chancellor Bayan

Real power now lay with the chancellor Bayan, who destroyed El Temür's family and his other rivals and amassed great personal wealth. Bayan abolished the civil service examinations in 1335 and imposed harsher restrictions on the Han Chinese, measures that deepened resentment across the empire.

Toqto'a's Reforms

In 1340 the emperor removed Bayan with the help of Bayan's own nephew, Toqto'a, who became the leading minister. Toqto'a restored the examinations, reversed many of Bayan's purges and brought back Chinese scholars who had retired or been sent away. He also directed the compilation of the official histories of the Liao, Jin and Song dynasties, completed by 1345. Toqto'a resigned in 1344 with the emperor's approval, ending this first period of reform. In the same years the emperor's Korean consort, Empress Ki, mother of his heir Ayushiridara, became a powerful figure at court.

Rebellion and Decline

The reforms did not cure the deeper problems of the state. Official corruption, poverty and a run of natural disasters, including devastating floods of the Yellow River, left the government unable to hold the loyalty of the population. In 1348 a revolt led by salt smugglers broke out along the south-eastern coast, a sign of how far the state's salt monopoly had alienated those it squeezed.

Toqto'a was recalled in 1349. In 1351 he began a vast project to return the Yellow River to its old course, and the huge labour force conscripted for the work helped to spread the Red Turban rebellion, which broke out that year. Within a few years uprisings had spread across much of southern and central China. In 1354 Toqto'a was besieging the rebel Zhang Shicheng at Gaoyou when rivals at court persuaded the emperor to dismiss him; his army broke up, and he died in exile the following year. From then until 1368 rebel leaders fought the Yuan and each other for control of the country.

Zhizheng Porcelain

The Zhizheng era gives its name to the most celebrated Yuan ceramics: fully developed blue and white porcelain from Jingdezhen, painted in cobalt imported from Persia in dense bands of lotus panels, peony and chrysanthemum scrolls, waves, fish among water weeds and figure scenes from plays. The name comes from the date on a pair of temple vases now in the British Museum, the David Vases. Their inscription records that Zhang Wenjin, a man from Yushan county in Jiangxi, dedicated them to a temple in 1351, the eleventh year of Zhizheng. They are the most important dated pieces of Yuan blue and white, and fourteenth-century wares are still classified by comparison with them.

Much of this porcelain was made for export. Large dishes and jars, suited to communal dining in the Islamic world, travelled by sea and overland to the Middle East. The two greatest surviving groups are in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul and in the collection given by Shah Abbas I to the shrine at Ardabil in Iran, now in Tehran. It was the study of these two collections by John Alexander Pope in the 1950s that established Yuan blue and white as a recognised group.

The vases carry a dated dedication, not a reign mark, and Yuan porcelain was not marked with reign titles in the way Ming imperial wares later were. No piece can therefore be shown to have been made for Toghon Temür or his court. Our guide to Yuan blue and white porcelain explains how the type is recognised. Our Yuan dynasty porcelain collection includes pieces in this tradition.

The Fall of the Yuan and the Rise of the Ming

From the chaos of the rebellions, Zhu Yuanzhang emerged as the strongest of the rebel leaders. In 1368 he proclaimed the Ming dynasty and took the reign name Hongwu. As his armies approached the capital, Dadu (modern Beijing), Toghon Temür abandoned the city without a fight and withdrew north with his family and court, against the advice of several of his officials.

He died in 1370 at Yingchang, north of the Great Wall, and was succeeded by Ayushiridara. His successors continued to rule the Mongolian Plateau, a regime known to historians as the Northern Yuan, but Mongol rule over China had ended. The Ming title Shun, meaning compliant, presented him as a ruler who had yielded to the will of Heaven by leaving.

His reign is covered alongside those of his predecessors on our Yuan Dynasty Emperors page, and the history continues with the Hongwu Emperor. Among the pieces in our collection is a late Yuan blue and white meiping vase with a mounted warrior.