Möngke Khan (Мөнх хаан), also transliterated as Mongke, Mongka, Möngka, Mangu or Mangku (c. 1208–1259), was the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1251 to 1259. He was the son of Tolui and Sorghaghtani Beki, brother of Hulagu and Kublai Khan, and a grandson of Genghis Khan.
Möngke is noted as participating in the European campaign of 1236-1242. He led Mongol corps against the Kypchaks and Alans and beheaded their leader Bachman, then destroyed the Alani capital Maghas, before sacking the Italian ports in Crimea in 1239. Circassians and Alans, who would become Asud guard, submitted to him. Mongke was impressed by the splendour of Kiev and demanded their submission in order to save the city. But Kievans, who had killed mongol envoys before, refused to surrender again and the Mongols ocuppied Kiev. Mongke fought against Hungarians at the assault with Batu. In the summer of 1241, before the premature end of the campaign, Möngke returned home.
After the death of the third Great Khan, Güyük, Möngke found himself the champion of the factions of Genghis' descendants who aimed to supplant the branch of Ögedei. Batu, the senior male of the family, had almost come to open warfare with Güyük in 1248, the khan's early death precluding this. Batu joined forces with Tolui's widow to outmaneuver the regent, Ögedei's widow Oghul Qaimish. Batu called a kurultai in Siberia in 1250, which was protested as not being in Mongolia proper. However, Batu ignored the opposition, had his brother Berke call a kurultai within Mongolia, and elected Möngke khan in 1251.
Realizing they had been outmaneuvered, the Ögedeiid faction attempted to overthrow Möngke under the pretext of paying him homage, but their conspiracy was clumsy and easily avoided. Oghul Qaimish was sewn up into a sack and drowned. Great Khan punished more than 75 mongol nobles with their companions for the plot against him.
In 1252-1259, Möngke conducted a census of the Mongol Empire including Persia, Georgia, Armenia, Russia and North China. There was an uprising in Novgorod against Mongol rule in 1257, but Alexander Nevsky forced the city to submit to Mongol census and taxation.
As khan, Möngke seemed to take the legacy of world conquest he had inherited much more seriously than did Güyük. Möngke concerned himself more with the war in China, outflanking the Song Dynasty through the conquest of Yunnan in 1254 and an invasion of Indochina, which allowed the Mongols to invade from north, west, and south. Taking personal command late in the decade, he captured many of the fortified cities along the northern front. These actions made conquest inevitable. Möngke dispatched his brother Hulagu to the southwest, an act which was to expand the Mongol Empire to the gates of Egypt. European conquest was neglected due to the primacy of the other two theaters, but Möngke's friendliness with Batu ensured the unity of the empire.
While conducting the war in China at Fishing Town in modern-day Chongqing, Möngke died near the site of the siege on August 11, 1259.
There are several different accounts as to how he perished. Generally recorded as killed in action by a stone launched from a Song Chinese trebuchet, he's also reported to have been killed by an arrow shot from a Chinese archer during the siege. Other accounts claim that he died of dysentery or even a cholera epidemic.
In popular fiction, famous Chinese novelist Jin Yong dramatized the death of Mongke Khan in his famous Condor Trilogy series (The Return of the Condor Heroes, 1959), which describes a melancholy Southern Song warrior and martial artist by the name of Yang Guo as the unwilling hero who fired the shot that killed the Khan.
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