Daily Medieval

In the lead up to the Toluid Civil War , Kublai Khan had the upper hand. He controlled most of the supply lines that would have helped his ...

When Kublai found out that his younger brother Ariq Böke was making plans to become Grand Khan while Kublai was off subduing the Song Dynas...

Probably the best-known Khan to modern audiences after Genghis Khan is Kublai Khan, the one we hear about because of Marco Polo. Kublai was ...

Genghis Khan had many, many children. There were four sons (Jochi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui) from whom the future rulers of the Mongol Em...

After the death of Güyük Khan,  Batu Khan saw an opportunity to take the overlordship away from the Ögedei clan and bring it to his own lin...

History tells stories of Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes and Kublai Khan meeting Marco Polo, but Batu Khan is a name that is less-known b...

The youngest son of Geghis Khan, Tolui, married a Christian woman named Sorghaghtani Beki. They had similarly noble backgrounds. Sorghaghtan...

When Queen Rusudan of Georgia died in 1245, Georgia looked for a new ruler. Her son, David, had been sent to Karakoram to be recognized as ...

Yesterday's post on the hoped-for Mongol alliance with the West mentioned a Georgian queen who saved her people from the Mongols. That ...

Although little is known of his personal life, and he was not famous in his own lifetime, the Sufi poet known as Attar of Nishapur (c.1145 –...

Marco Polo is known for traveling to the Far East from Europe and observing things unknown to Europeans, but there were many travelers from ...

Henry II the Pious was born in Poland to Henry the Bearded and Hedwig of Andechs . Henry the Bearded had worked hard to unite several differ...

In the same decades that Batu Khan (c. 1207–1255) and another grandson of Genghis Khan, Kadan, were establishing the Golden Horde and conso...

The name "Golden Horde" for the northwestern section of the Mongolian Empire is the English translation of a borrowed phrase from ...

The death of Möngke Khan in 1259 led to the Toluid Civil War, a fight between two of the remaining sons of Toluid over who would succeed Mön...

The House of Wisdom was a marvelous repository of knowledge from all over the world. It also functioned as an informal university long befo...

In 1271, Edward, Duke of Gascony, went on a continuation of the Eighth Crusade that is sometimes called the Ninth Crusade and sometimes Lord...

Möngke Khan (11 January 1209 - 11 August 1259) was the son of Tolui (c.1190 - c.1232), the youngest son of Genghis Khan. Möngke had been suc...

After Hassan i-Sabbah took over Alamut Castle from the Justanids, he went about making it a place that his followers would be willing to die...

King Louis IX of France could not convince any of the rulers of Europe to accompany him on a Crusade to free Jerusalem, which had been reca...