Chagatai Khanate

The Chagatai Khanate, also known as the Chagatai Ulus, was a Mongol khanate that comprised the lands ruled by Chagatai Khan, second son of Genghis Khan, and his descendants and successors. Over time, its Mongol ruling groups underwent a gradual and uneven process of linguistic and cultural Turkification and Islamization, though Mongolian political and administrative traditions remained important. Mongolian language continued to be used for official documents into the 14th century; Tughlugh Timur and Ilyas Khoja, the first Chaghatayid rulers of Moghulistan, still issued royal edicts in Mongolian. With the division of the Mongol Empire after 1259, it became a functionally separate 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 on the border of modern-day Mongolia and China, roughly corresponding to the area once ruled by the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty).

Initially, the rulers of the Chagatai Khanate recognized the supremacy of the Great Khan, but by the reign of Kublai Khan, Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq no longer obeyed the emperor's orders while recognizing the nominal suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty in 1303. From 1363, the Chagatais progressively lost Transoxiana to the Timurids. The reduced realm came to be known as Moghulistan, which lasted until the late 15th century, when it broke off into the Yarkent Khanate and Turpan Khanate. In 1680, the remaining Chagatai domains lost their independence to the Dzungar Khanate. Finally, the Kumul Khanate, an autonomous division of China established during the Qing dynasty in 1696 and governed by descendants of Chagatai Khan, was abolished during the Republic of China in 1930, ending the dynasty.