The vast transcontinental empire connected the East with the West, and the Pacific to the Mediterranean, in an enforced Pax Mongolica, allowing the exchange of trade, technologies, commodities, and ideologies across Eurasia.

In addition to laws regarding family, food, and the army, Genghis also decreed religious freedom[citation needed] and supported domestic and international trade.

[29] Genghis Khan arranged for the Chinese Taoist master Qiu Chuji to visit him in Afghanistan, and also gave his subjects the right to religious freedom,[citation needed] despite his own shamanistic beliefs.

Ögedei continued with offensives into the Indian subcontinent, temporarily investing Uchch, Lahore, and Multan of the Delhi Sultanate and stationing a Mongol overseer in Kashmir,[45] though the invasions into India eventually failed and were forced to retreat.

He was duly elected at a ceremony attended by Mongols and foreign dignitaries from both within and without the empire — leaders of vassal nations, representatives from Rome, and other entities who came to the kurultai to show their respects and conduct diplomacy.

Güyük appointed his best friend's father Eljigidei as chief commander of the troops in Persia and gave them the task of both reducing the strongholds of the Nizari Ismailis and conquering the Abbasids at the center of the Islamic world, Iran and Iraq.

Some sources wrote that he sought to recuperate at his personal estate, Emyl; others suggested that he might have been moving to join Eljigidei to conduct a full-scale conquest of the Middle East, or possibly to make a surprise attack on his rival cousin Batu Khan in Kievan Rus.

[60] Güyük's widow Oghul Qaimish stepped forward to take control of the empire, but she lacked the skills of her mother-in-law Töregene, and her young sons Khoja and Naku and other princes challenged her authority.

After the bloody purge, Möngke ordered a general amnesty for prisoners and captives, but thereafter the power of the great khan's throne remained firmly with the descendants of Tolui.

He was tolerant of outside religions and artistic styles, leading to the building of foreign merchants' quarters, Buddhist monasteries, mosques, and Christian churches in the Mongol capital.

[63] Although he had a strong Chinese contingent, Möngke relied heavily on Muslim and Mongol administrators and launched a series of economic reforms to make government expenses more predictable.

Subutai's son Uryankhadai reduced the neighboring peoples of Yunnan to submission and went to war with the kingdom of Đại Việt under the Trần dynasty in northern Vietnam in 1258, but they had to draw back.

When Hulagu headed further west, the Armenians from Cilicia, the Seljuks from Rum and the Christian realms of Antioch and Tripoli submitted to Mongol authority, joining them in their assault against the Muslims.

[68] Möngke's brother Hulagu broke off his successful military advance into Syria, withdrawing the bulk of his forces to Mughan and leaving only a small contingent under his general Kitbuqa.

[69] In 1260, the Mamluks advanced from Egypt, being allowed to camp and resupply near the Christian stronghold of Acre, and engaged Kitbuqa's forces just north of Galilee at the Battle of Ain Jalut.

Their younger brother Ariqboke took advantage of the absence of Hulagu and Kublai, and used his position at the capital to win the title of great khan for himself, with representatives of all the family branches proclaiming him as the leader at the kurultai in Karakorum.

Nearly a century of conquest and civil war was followed by relative stability, the Pax Mongolica, and international trade and cultural exchanges flourished between Asia and Europe.

[90] Pope John XXII was presented a memorandum from the eastern church describing the Pax Mongolica: "... Khagan is one of the greatest monarchs and all lords of the state, e.g., the king of Almaligh (Chagatai Khanate), emperor Abu Said and Uzbek Khan, are his subjects, saluting his holiness to pay their respects.

[92] In spite of his conflicts with Kaidu and Duwa, Yuan emperor Temür established a tributary relationship with the war-like Shan people after his series of military operations against Thailand from 1297 to 1303.

He defeated the Mamluk army at the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, but he was only briefly able to occupy Syria, due to distracting raids from the Chagatai Khanate under its de facto ruler Kaidu, who was at war with both the Ilkhans and the Yuan dynasty.

Bayan, after receiving military support from the Mongols in Rus, requested assistance from both Temür Khan and the Ilkhanate to organize a unified attack against Kaidu's forces.

[citation needed] In the Chagatai Khanate, Esen Buqa I (r. 1309–1318) was enthroned as khan after suppressing a sudden rebellion by Ögedei's descendants and driving Chapar into exile.

After the overthrow of the Yuan dynasty the Golden Horde lost touch with Mongolia and China, while the two main parts of the Chagatai Khanate were defeated by Timur (Tamerlane) (1336–1405), who founded the Timurid Empire.

The Mongols were adept at river-work, crossing the river Sajó in spring flood conditions with thirty thousand cavalry soldiers in a single night during the Battle of Mohi (April 1241) to defeat the Hungarian king Béla IV.

The empire was governed by a non-democratic, parliamentary-style central assembly, called kurultai, in which the Mongol chiefs met with the great khan to discuss domestic and foreign policies.

[116][117][118] The oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolian language is The Secret History of the Mongols, which was written for the royal family some time after Genghis Khan's death in 1227.

It was commissioned in the early 14th century by the Ilkhan Ghazan Khan as a way of documenting the entire world's history, to help establish the Mongols' own cultural legacy.

[125] A messenger would typically travel 40 kilometres (25 miles) from one station to the next, either receiving a fresh, rested horse, or relaying the mail to the next rider to ensure the speediest possible delivery.

Western explorer Marco Polo traveled east along the Silk Road, and the Chinese Mongol monk Rabban Bar Sauma made a comparably epic journey along the route, venturing from his home of Khanbaliq (Beijing) as far as Europe.

To these simple practitioners of the open-air life the settled populations seemed corrupt, crowded, vicious, effeminate, dangerous, and incomprehensible; a detestable human efflorescence upon what would otherwise have been good pasture.