Nayan (Mongol prince)

[2] The close male relatives of Genghis Khan were given control of large appanage domains located in Mongolia and neighbouring lands such as Manchuria.

[4] In addition, Nayan was also the foremost leader of the Eastern uluses (tribal groupings and districts ruled by Mongol appanage princes) dominated by the descendants of the brothers of Genghis Khan.

[5] Whatever the precise extent of Nayan's appanage, he certainly held sufficient lands within and around Manchuria to give him a power-base from which to launch a rebellion against his kinsman Kublai Khan.

[7] More prosaically Kublai Khan was, possibly based on the models of Chinese principles of governance, consolidating power in his own hands and the semi-independent appanage princes were beginning to feel threatened.

The speed and scale of Kublai's response meant that the various rebels were given very limited opportunities to co-ordinate their movements and concentrate their forces, and left them open to being defeated individually.

Nayan's army was less disciplined than that of Kublai's, and it is alleged that it was momentarily panicked before the battle began by the discharge, by some of the khagan's troops, of an early variety of explosive device.

Kublai chose not to regard Nayan's Nestorian Christian co-religionists as guilty by association, and refused to allow them to suffer any level of persecution within his lands.

[17] In the wake of the suppression of Nayan's rebellion, Kublai Khan was able to begin to fully incorporate the lands and peoples previously dominated by the appanage princes into his domain.