Genghis Khan's second son founded a dynasty that lasted until 1930
When Genghis Khan died in 1227, his son Chagatai inherited the heart of Central Asia. His descendants would lose most of it to Tamerlane's heirs, then to the Dzungars. Yet a branch of the family still governed a small autonomous khanate in western China until the Republic of China abolished it in 1930.
Chagatai's share covered lands once ruled by the Qara Khitai: the Ili, Chu and Talas river valleys, Transoxiana and the Tarim Basin. At its late 13th-century peak its territory ran all the way from the Amu Darya river to the Altai range on the edge of Mongolia. Contemporary sources called it the Middle Empire; the traveller Ibn Battuta placed its ruler between the great kings of Mongolia, India, Iraq and the Golden Horde, right at the centre of Eurasia. Its capital was Almaliq.
At first it was hardly independent. Chagatai took orders from Karakorum, and when he dismissed Transoxiana's governor, Mahmud Yalavach, the Great Khan Ögedei put him back. Rival Mongol leaders repeatedly installed and removed its khans. After the empire split following 1259, the khanate went its own way, and under Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq it openly defied Kublai Khan, meeting a force of 6,000 horsemen with 30,000 of its own. Later khans such as Duwa fought the Yuan dynasty and raided the Delhi Sultanate, with little lasting success.
Over time the Mongol rulers became Turkic-speaking and Muslim, though unevenly. Mubarak Shah was the first khan to convert. Tarmashirin, a Muslim who raided as far as Delhi, was overthrown by an anti-Muslim revolt among eastern tribes. Christianity had a foothold too: the pope sent a Franciscan bishop to Almaliq in 1339, the year a later khan, 'Ali-Sultan, had six Franciscans killed. Mongolian stayed in official use into the 14th century.
By the 1340s the khanate had split. In the west, tribal chiefs ran Transoxiana through puppet khans, and from 1363 the Timurids steadily took it over, keeping Chagatayid princes as powerless figureheads in Samarkand. The eastern remnant, Moghulistan, survived until the late 15th century before breaking into the Yarkent and Turpan khanates. In 1680 the Dzungars ended their independence, and the Qing later set up the Kumul Khanate under Chagatai's descendants in 1696, which lasted until 1930.
Source: Chagatai Khanate
