The History of China - #187 - Yuan 9: Blessed Iron Khan

Episode Date: March 8, 2020

Olziyet Temur - the Blessed Iron Khan - takes the throne as the Yuan Dynasty's second emperor, Changzong "The Preserver." He has taken it upon himself to uphold and protect his grandfather Khubilai's glorious legacy... but granddad sure left a bit of a mess for him to try to clear up. Time Period Covered: 1294-1307 CE Major Historical Figures: Olziyet Temur Khan (Emperor Changzong of Yuan) [r. 1294-1307 CE] Empress Bulukhan Crown Prince Deshou [d. 1306] Empress-Dowager Kököchin Gammala, Prince of Jin Öljei, Grand Councilor of the Right [d. 1303] Sayyid Boyan al-Dīn, Finance Minister Khaidu Khan of House Ögedei [d. 1301] Du'a Khan of House Chagatai  Öljeitu, Ilkhan of House Hülegü General Bayan of the Barin, "Hundred Eyes" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 187. Blessed Iron Khan.

Last time, we finished off our look into the life, exploits, and legacy of the great Khan, Kublai, from its towering heights to its lowest lows. And so today, as time marches on, so shall we. We are entering the period known as the Mid-Yuan Dynasty, a period which covers the four short decades between the death of Kublai in 1294 to the accession of the final Yuan Emperor, Pohang Temur, in 1333. And oh, what a time it is. In just 40 years, we'll be plowing through no fewer than nine Emperor Khans in quick succession, several who reigned for fewer than three years, and a

couple who didn't even make it to one. Suffice it to say, we've finally reached the crest of that first ascent on the Yen rollercoaster, and like any rollercoaster, it's all gravity-powered from here on out. Kublai had left to his heir a great and powerful dynastic empire to rule over and govern, a feat for which he was rightly revered by his successors. But as you'll doubtless recall from our suite on him, by the end of his life and reign, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for the great Yuan Empire. At its very core, the Yuan and its imperial family lived, and ultimately died, in the space that Kublai had carved out for himself, that liminal space somewhere between the steppes of Mongolia and the farms and rivers of China. Politically, philosophically, linguistically, legally, and even physically, it existed as a hybrid of two markedly dissimilar cultures and traditions. How could, for instance,

Kublai's successors be the emperors of China and the great Khan of the Mongols at the same time? Was such a thing even possible? Feasible? Advisable? Kublai had never solved that riddle, and so it would be left to those who came after. Politically, the Mongols enjoyed, no, demanded, a position of inherited privilege and power. Yet they now lorded over, and were at least partially subject to, the long-standing Chinese political condition of bureaucratic officialdom of a distinctly non-patrimonial type. In his life, Kublai had served as the bridge between these two vastly different worlds, yet even he had done so only imperfectly. As the late professor Xiao Cheqing of the Academia Sinica in Taipei put it,

quote, the Mongol aristocrats continue to enjoy much influence and advantages in every sphere of public life, which proved to be a much larger share of power than had their predecessors in the pre-Kublai era. much at the moment, but it will, in due time, prove to be the basis for bitter feuding between the imperial princes and aristocrats, the bureaucratic officialdom, and even the throne itself over which was truly supreme. Socioculturally, as well, there remained a near impenetrable divide between the Central and Western Asian ruling classes, that is, the Mongols and their Samudran lieutenants, and that of the wider Chinese society living under them. In short, the ruling classes saw very little reason to blend together, or even much learn about, the Chinese society they lorded over. With the abolition of the Confucian-style examinations for high office,

in favor of selection based off of knowing the right people, there was little need to learn about the classical texts or Chinese culture at all. Moreover, Chinese scholars were themselves virtually locked out of positions of real prestige or power, on account of their racial strata in society. This led to a calcification of that divide, both in government and in wider society. A viewing the ruling class as the eternal alien who could not speak the language nor understand the minds of the people they ruled over, nor really appeared to have much cared or tried. In any effect, it led to the Chinese themselves feeling as though they had been colonized within their own empire. The foreign policy outlook did not help things either,

though they couldn't have known it at the time. By the time of Kublai's death, the Yuan Empire had well and truly ceased expansion and sat at its maximum territorial limit. Still, many already had an inkling that it might well be the case. Kublai had, after all, spent the final 15 years of his reign ceaselessly trying to further expand and conquer in the old Mongol style. Yet for all his efforts and the realm's expenses, it had been for naught. As such, the rumblings of a seismic shift in policy decision and focus was beginning to stir within the upper crust of the Yuan government. Perhaps it was time for them to stop their expansionism above all pursuits, and instead turn to internal consolidation and reform. Finally, there was the chronic financial death spiral that had gripped the Yuan treasury by the end of Kublai's life. The founding emperor's single-minded obsession with further conquests had strained

the imperial economy far beyond its comfort zone. But that hadn't been the only source of financial troubles. The ever-mounting costs of the Mongol princes, who all regularly demanded lavish imperial grants and gifts and threatened rebellion if they were not satisfied, tied up a mounting percentage of the empire's tax revenues year after year. Under Kublai's watch, the government had turned to non-Chinese tax collectors, who used exploitative practices to maximize revenues. That was well and good for the Khan and his coffers, but it put him at odds with both the Confucian officials, who valued above all frugality and low taxes, as well as the common people who felt the squeeze of the pitiless Semu tax collectors harder every year. A drastic decrease in such government spending might have been enough to turn things around,

but was, as I mentioned before, deemed a political impossibility. We start today, then, with the accession and enthronement of Kublai's chosen successor, his grandson by Prince Zhenjin and his wife Princess Kokachin, Prince Olzyat Timur. Let's start with a name. Like most Mongols, he in fact only had one name, Timur, meaning iron. The issue with having a single name, though, is that it tends to get pretty confusing when there's more than one Timur, and believe me when I say that there is definitely more than one Timur. Given its close association with Genghis Khan's own given name, Tamajin,

the Iron Man, naming a Mongol boy Timur at the time was a bit like a fray of the Riverlands naming a son Walder. As such, it was common that a second name or quasi-title be given or taken oneself based on some distinguishing characteristic or practice. Examples of this include Buri Boko, or Buri the Strong, Arik Boka, meaning Arik the Wrestler, or even Zhirhoadai, being renamed by Genghis as Jebe, meaning simply, but significantly, the Arrow. As for Prince Timur, I'm not exactly clear as to when he received the moniker we come to know him by. Was it early in life, upon his coronation? Perhaps it was a posthumous name. In any case, he would be bestowed with the second name or moniker of Olzyet, meaning blessed or holy. As such, in Mongolian, he would be known as Temur the Blessed, or even more literally,

the Blessed Iron Khan. His Chinese regal title, given as usual posthumously, was Changzong, which can be translated as the achiever or the completer, but given the nature of his brief reign, as we'll see more in a little bit, I'd say it's more accurate to call him Chengzong the Preserver. In any case, just as I've been doing up until now in calling Kublai Kublai instead of Yuan Shizu, I'm going to call Timur Timur instead of Chengzong. It can't really have come to a shock to anyone that Timur's accession would not go smoothly. After all, exactly when was the last time that one of these things had proceeded

without a goodly dose of fratricidal violence again? And to be sure, Temur not only had brothers, he had two older brothers. The eldest, named Gamala, the prince of Jin, was 31, that is, two years Temur's senior. Gamala's claim to the throne was, in spite of Kublai's clear preference, at least as strong as his younger brothers. He had the backing of a powerful army to rival even that of his brother, the army of the four Ordos of Genghis Khan and the land of the Tartars. Nevertheless, Temur had his own advantages in the Karaltai to come.

Not only was he undoubtedly Kublai's own hand-picked choice for the throne, but he also had the backing of his mother, the widely loved and highly influential widow of Junjin, Princess Kokachin. Notably here, although Gamala's mother is not known, given this clear preference by Kokachin toward Temur, it seems likely that Gamala was not Kokachin's son. Temur also had the backing of the bureaucrats and officials within the capital, who had already begun to assert themselves far more forcefully into the selection of the new emperor than they ever had dared or been allowed to in previous Kuril Tais. Finally, though Gamala did have the army of the four Oros at his command, it remained stationed in faraway Mongolia. Meanwhile, Timur's own army was much closer at hand. As the princes

and officials gathered for the Kuril Tai, they couldn't have forgotten that unstated, but very clear fact. And indeed, it was a fact that wouldn't remain unstated for very long. The ceremony convened in mid-April at the summer capital, Shangdu, with rousing speeches for both candidates by their respective cohorts and supporters. And then Bayan of the Bahrain, the great war hero of the south, who Marco Polo had called Bayan Hundred Eyes since he mistook the Mongol name for the Chinese phrase baiyan, took to the stage. Bayan began his speech, addressing all from the steps of the great audience hall, sword in hand, he recited Kublai's will, word for word, that it was Prince Timur who'd been

chosen by the great Khan to succeed him, and who could dare unmake the will of a Khan? And then, sword very much in hand, Bayan urged the princes to make the right choice. The Book of Yan concludes the story, quote, The princes of the blood, trembling, hurried into the hall to make obeisance, end quote. Professor Xiao writes, trembling, hurried into the hall to make obeisance, end quote. Professor Xiao writes, quote, The decisive role played by these leading bureaucrats in deciding who should be the new kaiyan was unprecedented, portending the many bureaucratic kingmakers in the future, end quote.

When the selection and accession of Temur as a new great khan, and then of course the subsequent days of feasting, toasting, and all-around merriment and celebration, finally concluded, it was time to get to work. His enthronement was proclaimed in a public edict on May 10th, stating that Emperor Timur intended to be the conservator and preserver of the established pattern of his grandfather's reign. He wasn't there to set a new course for the UN ship of state, merely to maintain its current speed and heading. This would come to be the defining characteristic of his 13 years on the throne. Like Kublai before him, Timur surrounded himself with a panoply of senior statesmen and officials from all corners of the empire, Mongol, Simu, Chinese, and Muslim alike.

His effectual right hand, Olcay of the influential Orinnaar clan, the Grand Counselor of the Right, was a holdover from Kublai's court, and would serve as Temur's sole Grand Chancellor for the first four years of his reign. In 1298, he would be joined by a second, Hargason, as the Grand Chancellor of the Left. But Olcay would continue in his own position until his death in 1303. Another extremely influential figure in Temur's early court was Bukhumu, who held the distinction of being one of the very few, and certainly most influential, ethnically Mongol Confucian scholars in the entire history of Yuan. This made him nearly

the perfect vessel to fiercely advocate for Confucianism to the emperor, as well as to protest or even rebuke the great Khan when he did something that the Confucians deemed unacceptable. Timur could stand to hear from a fellow Mongol words and remonstrations that no Chinese would ever have gotten away with. The empire's economics and bookkeeping were likewise once again largely handled and overseen by Muslim financiers. The most influential of this was Sa'id Boyan al-Din, the grandson of Sa'id Ajal al-Din, a Persian Khwarizmian who had personally submitted to Genghis Khan during that kingdom's destruction, and thereafter served directly under Genghis, Mongke, and Kublai in turn. He was also the ancestor of perhaps China's most famous seafarer, the Muslim eunuch admiral

Zheng He. Suffice it to say, stability and continuity were the watchwords of the era. For all that stressing of continuity and the preservation of the high highs of Kublai's great Yuan empire, the cracks beneath that fresh coat of imperial paint quickly began to show through. Kublai had, as we've pretty thoroughly gone over, made rather a mess of things in his last decade and a half. The Yuan had been founded upon and held together primarily by his own personal charisma and force of will, and by the end, even that had begun to flag, marked by a string of costly failed military adventures abroad

and rebellions along the realm's periphery. That was the realm Timur had inherited with his curl tie at Chengdu, and though Timur was by no means considered a bad emperor, as such things go, he quite simply was no Kublai Khan. Xiao puts it, The Kayan himself lacked his grandfather's kind of intellectual and physical vigor that was necessary to provide adequate imperial leadership, nor was his minister, Olje, strong enough to provide substitute leadership. The government seems to have lost both administrative vigor and fiscal health under the two men's excessively indulgent and procrastinating administration." For instance, though Timur was loathed to increase taxes by even one cash coin—in fact, he time and again issued cancellations of outstanding tax debts held over from his grandfather's final years in office—he did, however, oversee a vast expansion of the imperial court's official staff. The legal quota for the court and capital combined was set

at 2,600 officials, yet the censorette reported that in 1294 there were more than 10,000 such officials in the capital alone and many more out in the provinces. This vast increase to the costs of running the government didn't even help to speed things up, as one might think it might. Though legally, officials were required to settle minor cases in five days, and important cases in seven to ten days. In practice, even minor cases frequently took more than half a year to be decided, and cases of major importance a year or even more. Graft and corruption became endemic to the government. The greatest such scandal broke in 1303, with a case involving two former pirates and salt

smugglers, Tu Ting and Zhang Xuan, who had, upon submitting to Yuan, been given oversight of the maritime transportation of grain for the government. They had not only amassed an enormous, and illegal, fortune in doing so, but had also been conducting their own tax-free overseas trading operations on the side. Ultimately, the law caught up with them, and they were found guilty. Their property and estates were confiscated, and they, along with both of their entire families, were imprisoned. As new evidence came to light in the course of the investigation, however, the case grew even larger. It turned out that the Chu and Zhang families had been paying massive bribes to key figures in the central government to, you know, go take a nap while we unload this ship.

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Many of the top-level imperial financiers, including Minister Saeed Boyan al-Din, were summarily fired from their posts for having accepted such bribes. Even Grand Counselor Olcay was impeached on similar charges, though he was apparently to finagle his way out of it and kept his job. Enraged that such corruption had penetrated so high up into his own court, Temur promulgated twelve new laws on corruption, and then, in late 1303, sent out scores of officials to investigate and root it out in seven key regions of the empire. The results were staggering. Some 18,473 officials and clerks were subsequently convicted for having engaged in illegal trade, profiteering, and receiving bribes. All to the tune of almost 46,000 yin ding, or silver ingots,

worth of unreported goods and profits. Just as a quick aside here, the Yuan had carried over the standard currency unit of the silver by weight as one of their go-to metrics of both weight and currency. This was because there was no central single mint. Since just about anyone could melt down and recast bronze, silver, or gold, it was simply easier and safer to simply weigh the thing rather than try to implement some sort of anti-counterfeiting measure. A full ingot weighed roughly 2 kilograms, and though its actual weight varied significantly, it was understood to be evaluated at 50 liangs, or tails, which were themselves understood

to be 40 grams of silver each. The monetary value of tails and ingots remained de facto common across the empire, even as the Yuan government had attempted to minimize the actual use of and circulation of hard currency in favor of their paper Yuanbao bills. Even this massive haul, and seriously, it was massive, for instance, reports from the secretariat just two months after Temur's enthronement in 1294 informed the throne that the imperial treasury had a grand total of 270,000 silver ingots worth of paper currency in its reserve. So the seizure of 46,000 more was just

about 17% of the total treasury at that time. For comparison's sake only, the US treasury, as of this show in March 2020, reports a gold billion reserve of a little more than $11 billion. So that'd be like an investigation turning up an additional $1.9 billion, or about 30 tons of gold bars. And that was apparently a rather significant underreporting of what the investigators actually found, since, wouldn't you know it, the officials charged with investigating corruption and skimming off the top were, get your feigning couch ready, themselves skimming off the top.

Timur, however, seems to have quickly grown tired of further pressing his anti-corruption mandate, and instead let any potential follow-through slip through the cracks. Within two years of the Great Purge and Crackdown of 1303, not only had the Grand Counselor Olcay been acquitted of his charges, but even the majority of the ministers who'd been drummed out of the imperial court were actually reinstated. Yet the glut of useless officials and the systemic bureaucratic corruption accounted for only part of the ongoing money problems that faced Timur Khan. As I mentioned before, yet another frequent cost were the grants and gifts paid out at regular intervals to the Mongol nobility and princes. Kublai had been obliged

to pay these grants as well, but he had at least remained firm in his policy of fixing their value at a stable rate, to the point that he was actually considered miserly by many of the princes. Under Temur's watch, however, the gifts immediately spiraled upward. From Xiao, quote, On Temur's enthronement in 1294, the imperial relatives were given 400% more gold and 200% more silver than the sums they'd previously received as annual gifts. In addition, Temur frequently made enormous special grants to individual imperial relatives for one reason or another. Grants given to three imperial sons-in-law in 1294, for example, amounted to more than 120,000 tails of silver,

end quote. So that was almost 1% of the imperial treasury right then and there, and there was still a whole long list of other Mongol relatives to pay out. It didn't take too terribly long at all before the treasury was scraping the bottom, and given that Timur's one overriding line-in-the-sand policy was that there was absolutely no way he was going to raise taxes, that meant that his government could do pretty much nothing to dig itself out of this ever-deepening financial pit. By the dawn of the 14th century, the situation had further deteriorated, to the point that about half of all annual expenses had to be covered by the bullion reserve. This, in turn, caused the paper currency in wider circulation to drop precipitously in value in an inflationary cycle even worse than the run-on paper money of the

1280s. One area of policy that Temar Khan did significantly differ with his grandfather on was that of foreign policy. Kublai, of course, had been ever the Mongol in that regard, and had spent the majority of his life and reign building his empire piece by bloody piece from the conquests of other states, including that unfortunate ice-cold streak there at the end that wound up leaving his successor in the financial lurch. Timur, on the other hand, and quite possibly in large part thanks to the dire economic situation he'd inherited, would oversee the UN's shift from aggressive expansionism to a policy footing of general peace with its neighbors. Immediately following his enthronement, Timur cancelled his grandfather's

long-planned re-re-invasion of Vietnam, and instead accepted the Viet Emperor's nominal submission and readmittance as a vassal state. In 1298, Temur rejected his advisor's recommendation that he re-re-invade Japan, and instead sent a monk to the island kingdom the following year as a goodwill ambassador. In fact, in the course of his 13-year stint on the throne, Temur only actually launched two military campaigns, both of which were very limited in scope, and neither of which were overt attempts at conquest or domination. The first was against the kingdom of Pagan in 1300, after the Burmese had overthrown the king that had submitted to the Yuan. The second campaign was against the kingdom of Lan Na in modern northern Thailand,

and which the Book of Yuan refers to as Ba Bai Shi Fu, meaning the Land of the 800 Concubines, apparently a reference to the number of, well, concubines that its king Mangarai possessed. Lan Na was a newly founded state, and as such had been pushing into territories along the Yuan southern border. Thus, Timur was compelled to mount a punitive response to enforce his borders against this expansionism. In any event, both the Burmese and the Lan Na campaigns proved to be failures. In fact, the greatest and pretty close to only military accomplishment under Temur's reign was a successful conclusion to the long-running border war against the lords of the Ogeded and Chagatid Khanates, Kaidu and Dua Khans.

The fratricidal civil war had been ongoing, albeit at a fairly low level of conflict most of the time, for more than a quarter century by the time Timur took the throne. The embers of that protracted war flared back to life, however, in the winter of 1298, when Duakhan launched a surprise attack at a place called Hoarhatu, not to be confused with the modern inner Mongolian city of Hohat, which wouldn't be established for another three centuries at this point. The Yuan forces were decimated, and Temur Khan's son, the prince of Gauteng, Korgus, was taken captive. Spurred to action, Temur replaced the feckless commander who had led his army into the ambush with his own nephew,

Prince Kaishan. With fresh Mongol reinforcements, as well as contingents of Chinese infantry, Kaishan went on the offensive the next campaign season with the intent of rescuing his cousin and bringing the rogue Khans to their long-overdue justice. A string of Yuan victories proved strategically inconclusive, as the wily Kaidu and Dua continued to expertly slip any attempts at their capture, as they'd done for decades. Until, that is, Dua was wounded in battle, and Kaidu as well shortly thereafter outside of Karakorum. Kaidu's wound in particular seems to have taken a turn for the worse, and he died from subsequent illness or sepsis at the age of 70 or 71 in 1301. Kaidu's death opened at last a pathway to peace between the long-irreconcilable factions. Now both of the old lords that had instigated this pointless conflict were dead and buried,

and Duakhan, perhaps sensing his own fragility and mortality thanks to his recent wound, and in any event hoping to turn his attention to consolidating his own holdings in Central Asia rather than continue this pointless, profitless border war until he met the same fate as Kaidu and Kublai, held out an olive branch. Timur responded quickly and favorably. Dua arranged for Kaidu's son, Chapar, to be instated as the new Khan of the Chagatids, and the two made known that they would, at long last, formally recognize the line of Kublai, and Temur in particular, as the rightful great Khan of all Mongols. Though there was initially supposed to have been a curle tie to consecrate the agreement,

it never quite materialized. Even so, the deal was struck and held to by all parties. This was, in the words of a certain former vice president, a big effing deal. A joint mission sent by all three Khans to the court of the Ilkhanate in Tabriz arrived to give the news of the monumental peace accord between the three great houses to the Ilkhan, Oljetu. Oljetu was so pleased that he wrote of it to his pen pal, the king of France, Philippe IV, the Handsome. The letter has got to be one of the nicest letters I've ever read from a Mongol,

and somehow it still reads, in spite of multiple translations, pretty much exactly like you'd expect a happy Mongol letter to sound. It's fantastically preserved by the National French Library, and it reads as follows, quote, The words of Oljetukhan, to the King of France. How could it be forgotten that from ancient times all you kings of the Frank citizens have dealt peacefully with our good great-grandfather, Hulagu Khan, our grandfather, Abaga, father, Argun, and good brother, Ghazan, esteeming us near although you are far, pronouncing your various words and sending your ambassadors and gifts of health-wishing.

Our nation has reached a peace from the land of southern China where the sun rises to the Mediterranean Sea, and our roads have been tied together. It then concludes with an official imperial seal, which translates as Precious Seal of the Emperor Truly Mandated by Heaven to Pacify the Ten Thousand Barbarian Tribes. Happy though the peace was, it, alas, was not to last long. With the mutual foe of the Yuan no longer adhering the two Central Asian Khanates to a common purpose, quickly enough, the Khans of the Chagatids and Ogadids began warring against themselves over their own territorial disputes. This pleased Temur just fine, since he could play one off the other now that they were no longer united against him.

In fact, he wound up supporting Duakhan against Chapar and sending an army to support the Chagatids. This ultimately was enough to turn the tide against the son of Kaidu, who was forced to surrender. He would by 310 be dethroned and replaced as Khan of the Ogededs with Dua's own younger brother, Yangachar, as a puppet Khan, marking an effective end to the House of Ogedei as an independent family line of the Borjigins. By making peace, Temur Khan was able to more effectively and permanently destroy Kaidu's legacy than almost 40 years of war ever had. Moreover, Temur and Dua Khan remained on good terms, and for the most part, the Chagatai Khanate held up its end of the bargain to recognize the Emperor of Yuan as the Great Khan of the Mongols, and to send tribute missions to Dadu at regular

intervals. Xiao concludes here, quote, Thus, by the end of his reign, Temur had established nominal Yuan suzerainty over the whole Mongolian world, thereby succeeding where his grandfather had failed. End quote. So, on the foreign affairs front, things were going pretty swell. Unfortunately for Timur, that era of great peace did not extend to his own home and family life, nor his succession. Timur, like so many of his kinsmen, was a notable drunkard in classic Mongol fashion. He was such a sought that it's given as a possibility why Kublai had hesitated at the end of his life to formally grant Timur the status of crowned prince, remaining unsure right to the very bitter end of whether his grandson would be quite sober enough to do the job. As such, it's not terribly surprising that, even from a young age, Timur had so badly damaged his body with his prodigious binge-drinking

that he spent the rest of his life suffering from chronic and ever-worsening illnesses. Into this relative power vacuum, who should step in but yet another Mongol woman seeking to pick up where her drunkard husband left off? The ambitious, shrewd, and able Princess Bulukhan came from a distinguished line of Mongol nobility, the Bayaud clan. It's unknown when exactly she was married to Timur, but she became Khatun to his Khayan in 1299, shortly after the death of his former empress, Shirandari. When in the following year Timur's mother, the Empress Dowager Kokuchin, died, that suddenly left Empress Bulukhan as virtually the

only influential woman close to the Great Khan, and it was a position that she did not fail to take advantage of. When the salt smugglers turned grain transport overseers turned tax-dodging independent businessmen, Chu Qing and Zhang Xuan, were investigated and prosecuted in 1302, for instance, it was actually at Empress Bulacan's insistence. When they were found guilty and their property confiscated, it didn't wind up in the imperial treasury, but rather into Bulacan's own household services accounts, making her, with a stroke, one of the richest women in the empire,

virtually overnight. This was a woman who knew exactly where the levers of power were, and exactly how to work them to her maximum benefit. She displayed this uncommon level of foresight in planning yet again in 1305, when she engineered the decision to make her son with the emperor, the boy prince Daxiu, the heir apparent. In order to ensure that there would be little other option in the matter, Bulacan arranged to have all other potential contenders for the title, little Daxiu's cousins scattered throughout the palace, nicely sent packing off to other distant regions of the empire. Therefore, when Temur's ever-failing health finally, tragically, reached its inevitable conclusion, whenever that might be, there would be no 15-year-olds or 20-year-olds or 25-year-old princes kicking around thinking that they might

make a better Khan. There would only be the ready-made and pre-selected Da Shou ready to go. It was darn near foolproof. Unfortunately for her, and all the more unfortunate for the young prince, Da Shou unexpectedly died in early 1306, like as not to a sudden illness. Thus, when Temur's body finally gave out on him for good and all, little more than a year later, in early February of 1307, he died without an heir firmly established. He was 41 years old, and he had reigned for 13 years. Bulhukan's ill-fated decision to try to ensure her son's position as the only possible

heir to the empire had spectacularly backfired. And though it wasn't done maliciously or with intent, with the death of Timur, the blessed Iron Khan, Emperor Changzong the Preserver, it would throw the Yuan imperial court into sharp, bloody conflict over who should be its third emperor. And so, next time, we'll be leaving behind this all-too-brief ideal of relative internal peace, and once again pit the princes of the Borgian clan against one another in the contest for absolute power. It will, in the end, fundamentally destabilize the already teetering regime and lead to decades of intrafamilial bloodletting not seen since the dark days following Mongkakhan's attempted assassination at his own Kurultai more than half a century prior.

Thanks for listening. on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast, Pax Britannica, follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.