Why did the Mongol Empire collapse?
The Mongol Empire fragmented due to succession disputes among Genghis Khan's descendants, the difficulty of governing vastly different cultures from a single center, assimilation of Mongol rulers into local cultures, and devastating outbreaks of plague. By the mid-14th century, the unified empire had split into four separate and often rival khanates.
The Mongol Empire's disintegration was not a single event but a gradual process of fragmentation driven by several interconnected factors. By the time of Genghis Khan's death in 1227, the empire was already so vast that it was divided among his sons and grandsons — a decision that contained the seeds of future conflict.
Succession disputes were the most immediate cause. Unlike centralized empires with clear rules of succession, Mongol tradition allowed any descendant of Genghis Khan to claim leadership, provided they could command support at a great assembly (kurultai). This repeatedly produced civil wars between competing branches of the family. The conflict between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke in the 1260s effectively ended unified Mongol governance.
The empire's diversity made it fundamentally ungovernable as a single state. The Mongols ruled Chinese peasants, Persian scholars, Russian princes, and Central Asian nomads — populations with radically different languages, religions, economic systems, and political traditions. Inevitably, Mongol rulers in each region adapted to local cultures: the Yuan Dynasty adopted Chinese customs, the Ilkhanate converted to Islam, and the Golden Horde became increasingly Turkified.
The Black Death, which devastated the Mongol territories in the 1340s, further weakened all four khanates. In China, peasant rebellions driven by famine and disease overthrew the Yuan Dynasty in 1368. The Ilkhanate had already collapsed in 1335. The Chagatai Khanate fragmented into rival factions. The Golden Horde survived longest but steadily lost territory. By 1400, the great Mongol Empire existed only as a memory — though an extraordinarily powerful one.