Guyuk Khan

Guyuk, also written Goyuk or Kuyuk, was a Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. He was the eldest son of Ogedei, the second Great Khan, and succeeded him after a long interregnum. ^{2 3} The Encyclopaedia of Islam has no article under his name. What follows is gathered from passages in several of its articles, mainly those on Batu, the Mongols, Toregene Khatun and the Caghatay Khanate, and it is correspondingly short. The Encyclopaedia dates his reign to 1246-48 in most places; one article gives 1241-48, which appears to count the years of the regency. ^{3 4}

When Ogedei died in 1241 a long interregnum followed, and the article on Mongke says that Guyuk was recognised as successor only in 1246. ¹ The article on his mother, Toregene Khatun, explains the delay. She governed as regent for the whole empire, and her main aim was to see her eldest son elected rather than Ogedei's grandson Shiremun, whom Ogedei had wished to succeed him. Batu, the Jochid ruler of the Golden Horde, was able to hold off her plan for four and a half years. ³ In 1246, in spite of Batu's foot-dragging, she was able to convene an assembly with representatives of all branches of the family, and Guyuk was acclaimed ruler. She received the papal envoy John of Plano Carpini at that time, and seems to have died some months after her son's accession. ³ The article on the Mongol assembly, the kuriltay, adds that Plano Carpini was present at the meeting in the Khangay mountains where Guyuk was elected and enthroned. ⁵

The Encyclopaedia also notes that the earliest known use of the phrase "great Mongol nation", jeke mongghol ulus, is on Guyuk's seal of 1246, although it says the word ulus there is understood differently by scholars. ⁶

The articles agree that Guyuk and Batu had been enemies since the Russian campaign, and that open conflict between them was averted only by Guyuk's sudden death in 1248. ¹ The article on Batu calls Guyuk a personal enemy of his and records that Batu excused his absence from the accession of 1246, according to Rashid al-Din, on grounds of ill health, sending five of his brothers in his place. ²

According to the same article, Guyuk left Qara-Qorum in early 1248 and went west, saying that he was going to his own lands on the Emil for reasons of health. Tolui's widow suspected that he really meant to attack Batu, and sent a warning. Guyuk died suddenly on the way, at Kum-Sengir on the upper Urungu; the Yuan shih places his death in the third month of 1248, between 27 March and 24 April. Juwayni and Rashid al-Din differ on where Batu was at the time, as the article on Batu sets out. ² His death opened a further interregnum, which ended in 1251 with the coup of Batu and Mongke. ¹

Guyuk was the son of Ogedei. The article on the Caghatay Khanate names his reign as lasting from 644/1246 to 646/1248 and says that, like his father's widow, his own widow, Oghul Qaymish, acted as regent, in her case in 646-649/1248-51, until the line of Ogedei was set aside in favour of Tolui's. ⁷ Another article lists his chief wife with Toregene among the Mongol women who served as regents. ⁸ One article names a nephew of his, Qaydu, who held his own in Ogedei's territory on the Imil after the Great Khanate passed to the Toluids. ⁷

The sources show Guyuk acting on Persian and Central Asian affairs from Mongolia. He deposed Kara-Hulegu from the Chaghatayid succession in favour of Yesu-Mongke, a son of Chaghatay with whom he was on terms of personal friendship; Mongke reversed this in 1251. ⁴ Around 644/1246 an atabeg named Nusrat al-Din obtained a document from him, an al-tamgha, giving him the governorship of Tabriz and Azerbaijan. ⁹ The article on Tabriz says that from Guyuk's time the effective rule of Arran and Azerbaijan lay in the hands of Malik Sadr al-Din, described as a Persian ally of the Mongols. ¹⁰ In the same year the Nizari Ismaili imam Muhammad III made a last peace overture to him, but the Nizari envoys to Mongolia were dismissed with contempt, after which relations were beyond repair. ¹¹ Georgian princes are also reported among those present at his assembly. The article on the Georgians dates it to 643/1245, a year earlier than the other articles. ¹²

His birth date is not given in the passages read. The articles differ on the year of the assembly that raised him, 1245 in one place and 1246 in the rest, and on whether his reign began in 1241 or 1246. Faith is not recorded for him in the museum: one article, in a passage on the Alans, calls him "the Christian Great Khan", but that is a single passing description and the museum records faith only with a documented basis. ¹³