Tolui Khan

Tolui (拖雷, 1191–1232) was the youngest of the four sons of Genghis Khan and his principal wife, Börte. After his father's death he governed the Mongol Empire as regent from 1227 to 1229, until his elder brother Ögedei was confirmed as Great Khan.

Tolui never took the title of khagan himself. His importance for Chinese history lies above all in his sons: Möngke and Kublai both became Great Khan, and Kublai, founder of the Yuan dynasty, honoured his father with the temple name Ruizong (睿宗).

The Early Life of Tolui Khan

Tolui was born in 1191, while his father was still fighting to unite the Mongol tribes, and he was too young to take part in those early wars. The Secret History of the Mongols tells how, as a boy of about five, he was seized by a Tatar and rescued in time by members of his father's household.

In 1203 Genghis Khan arranged Tolui's marriage to Sorghaghtani Beki, a niece of the Kereit ruler Ong Khan, who had been the sworn ally of Genghis Khan's father. Their eldest son, Möngke, was born in 1209. Sorghaghtani became one of the most capable figures of her age and later did much to bring her sons to power.

Genghis Khan valued Tolui highly as a soldier, but he chose his third son, Ögedei, as his successor, judging him better suited to govern.

By Mongol custom the youngest son was the "keeper of the hearth", who inherited his father's home territory. When the empire was divided among Genghis Khan's sons, Tolui received the Mongol heartland and the greater part of the army.

Tolui Khan as Regent and Commander

From 1227 to 1229 Tolui governed the empire as regent. The nobles accepted this partly because of the custom favouring the youngest son, and partly because Tolui commanded the largest army in the empire.

In 1229 Tolui supported the assembly of princes, the kurultai, that confirmed Ögedei as the second Great Khan, as their father had wished.

Conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire

Tolui had already made his name in his father's campaigns. The Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire in Central Asia and Iran (1219–1221) opened the way for later Mongol expansion into Iran, Iraq, Syria and eastern Europe. In the final stage of that war Tolui led an army into Khorasan.

Merv surrendered to him in 1221 on a promise that the citizens would be spared; almost all of them were then killed. At Nishapur, where Genghis Khan's son-in-law Toquchar had been killed in an earlier assault, the city was stormed and its people slaughtered, reportedly at the direction of Toquchar's widow. Herat also surrendered to Tolui and was at first spared.

Conquest of the Jin Dynasty

After Ögedei's accession the Mongols renewed their war on the Jurchen Jin dynasty of northern China. The Jin, under Emperor Aizong, had held off several Mongol offensives and won notable victories, among them the Battle of Dachangyuan. In 1230 the Jin general Wanyan Heda threw back a Mongol attack on the Tong Pass, forcing Subutai to withdraw.

In 1231 the Mongols returned in force and took Fengxiang. While Ögedei advanced from the north, Tolui led a western army from Fengxiang that bypassed the fortified Tong Pass altogether, marching through Song territory along the Han River and emerging south of Kaifeng, the Jin capital, to the surprise of the Jin.

After an indecisive clash near Mount Yu, Tolui burned the supplies across the country between Dengzhou and Kaifeng to starve Wanyan Heda's army. In early 1232 he destroyed the main Jin army at the Battle of Sanfengshan, the Three-Peaked Mountain, while Ögedei's forces crossed the Yellow River to join him.

Ögedei then returned north, leaving his generals to finish the war. Kaifeng was besieged, Emperor Aizong fled the city, and the Jin dynasty came to an end in 1234.

Death of Tolui Khan

Tolui died in 1232, soon after the Jin campaign. The Secret History of the Mongols tells that Ögedei fell gravely ill, and the shamans blamed the spirits of the land and waters of China. Offerings of land, animals and people only made him worse, but when a member of the family was offered in his place, he recovered. Tolui volunteered, drank the cup the shamans had cursed, and died.

The Persian historian Ata-Malik Juvaini gives a plainer cause: heavy drinking.

Tolui's line did not stay long out of power. His son Möngke became Great Khan in 1251. Another son, Kublai, took the throne in 1260, founded the Yuan dynasty in 1271 and completed the conquest of the Southern Song in 1279, reuniting China under Mongol rule.

Ceramics of the Reign

Tolui never ruled China, and no ceramics are associated with him. The wares of his lifetime are those of the Jin dynasty in the north and of the Southern Song beyond the Huai River. In Jin territory the kilns of Henan, Hebei and Shanxi carried on the traditions of the Northern Song: Jun ware with its thick, opaque blue glaze, sometimes splashed with purple; Cizhou stonewares painted in black on a white slip; and the white porcelain of the Ding kilns in Hebei.

The Mongol campaigns against the Jin, from 1211 to 1234, brought great destruction to northern China, yet most of these kiln traditions survived, and Jun and Cizhou wares were still made in large numbers under the Yuan.