Western Chagatai Khanate

Chagatai Khanate
Цагаадайн Хаант Улс Tsagadaina Khaanat Ulus
Nomadic empire Division of the Mongol Empire
1225 – 1340s (Whole) 1340s – 1370 (Western) 1340s–1680s (Eastern)
The Chagatai Khanate (green), c. 1300.
Capital		Almaliq, Qarshi
Languages		Chagatai language
Religion		Shamanism Buddhism Tengrism Christianity (minority) later Naqshbandi Sunni Islam
Government		Semi-elective monarchy, later hereditary monarchy
Khan
•	1225–1242	Chagatai Khan
Legislature		Kurultai
Historical era		Late Middle Ages
•	Chagatai Khan inherited part of Mongol Empire	1225
•	Death of Chagatai	1242
•	Chagatai Khanate split into two parts, Western Chagatai Khanate and Moghulistan	1340s
•	End of the western empire.	1370
•	End of the eastern empire.	1680s
Area
•	1310 or 1350 est.	3,500,000 km² (1,351,358 sq mi)
Currency		Coins (dirhams, Kebek, and pūl coins)
Preceded by Succeeded by Mongol Empire Western Chagatai Khanate Moghulistan Timurid Empire Afaq Khoja Dzungar Khanate
Today part of		Kyrgyzstan  China  Uzbekistan  Tajikistan  Kazakhstan  Afghanistan  Pakistan  Turkmenistan  Mongolia  India

later Naqshbandi Sunni Islam

The Chagatai Khanate (Mongolian: Tsagadaina Khaanat Ulus/Цагаадайн Хаант Улс) was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate that comprised the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, second son of Genghis Khan, and his descendants and successors. Initially it was a part of the Mongol Empire, but it became a functionally separate khanate with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259. The Chagatai Khanate recognized the nominal supremacy of the Yuan dynasty in 1304, but became split into two parts in the mid-14th century: the Western Chagatai Khanate and the Moghulistan Khanate.

At its height in the late 13th century, the Khanate extended from the Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea to the Altai Mountains in the border of modern-day Mongolia and China.

The khanate lasted in one form or another from 1220s until the late 17th century, although the western half of the khanate was lost to Timur's empire by 1370. The eastern half remained under Chagatai khans, who were, at times, allied or at war with Timur's successors, the Timurid dynasty. Finally, in the 17th century, the remaining Chagatai domains fell under the theocratic regime of Afaq Khoja and his descendants, the Khojas, who ruled Xinjiang under Dzungar and Manchu overlordships consecutively.

Genghis Khan's empire was inherited by his third son, Ögedei Khan, the designated Khagan who personally controlled the lands east of Lake Balkhash as far as Mongolia. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was accorded the northern Mongolian homeland. Chagatai Khan, the second son, received Transoxiana, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers (in modern Uzbekistan) and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almaliq near what is now Yining City in northwestern China. Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire was endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Iranian and Turkic subjects.