A 1206 kurultai crowned a world-empire that later ate itself
Unifying Mongol tribes, a council proclaimed Temüjin as Genghis Khan in 1206; at its height the realm stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe. Succession wars among his grandsons—especially after Möngke's 1259 death—split Toluid, Ögedeid, and other factions into warring states.
Rapid expansion under Genghis and his descendants invaded Southeast Asia and beyond Siberia and India. After bloody purges, Toluids prevailed; then Ariq Böke and Kublai fought the Toluid Civil War (1260–1264). Kublai won China as Yuan while distant khanates drifted.
The Ilkhanate disintegrated between 1335 and 1353; Yuan lost Tibet in 1354 and China proper in 1368 when Ming took Dadu. Northern Yuan remnants lingered. English sometimes says Mongolian Empire or Mongol World Empire for the same span.
The realm called itself the Great Mongol Nation, yeke mongɣol ulus. At the 1206 kurultai the shaman Teb Tenggeri proclaimed Temüjin its khan, and he took the title Genghis Khan, whose meaning is uncertain. He issued a law code, the Yassa, named his stepbrother Shikhikhutug supreme judge with orders to keep records, decreed religious freedom and backed trade. Before dying he made the empire the joint property of the whole imperial family. When he died on 18 August 1227 it reached from the Pacific to the Caspian, twice the size of the Roman Empire or the Umayyad Caliphate at their peaks. His successor Ögedei sent armies against the Bashkirs and Bulgars of the Kipchak steppe and restored Mongol control in Manchuria. After beating Ariq Böke, Kublai held power mainly in the east, and on 18 December 1271 he gave his state a Chinese-style dynastic name by imperial edict.
Source: Mongol Empire
