Ilkhanate in the context of "Division of the Mongol Empire"

Mongol invasions of Anatolia occurred at various times, starting with the campaign of 1241–1243 that culminated in the Battle of Köse Dağ. Real power over Anatolia was exercised by the Mongols after the Seljuks surrendered in 1243 until the fall of the Ilkhanate in 1335. Because the Seljuk sultan rebelled several times, in 1255, the Mongols swept through central and eastern Anatolia. An Ilkhanate garrison was stationed near Ankara. Remains of the Mongol cultural heritage still can be seen in Turkey, including tombs of a Mongol governor and a son of Hulagu.

By the end of the 14th century, most of Anatolia was controlled by various Anatolian beyliks due to the collapse of the Seljuk dynasty in Rum. The Turkmen beyliks were under the control of the Mongols through declining Seljuk sultans. The Beyliks did not mint coins in the names of their own leaders while they remained under the suzerainty of the Ilkhanids. The Ottoman ruler Osman I was the first Turkish ruler who minted coins in his own name in the 1320s. Since the minting of coins was a prerogative accorded in Islamic practice only to be a sovereign, it can be considered that the Ottomans became independent of the Mongol Khans.

The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus (lit. 'Great State' in Turkic), was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century, originating from the northwestern part of the Mongol Empire. After the division of the Mongol Empire in 1259, it became a functionally independent khanate. It is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or the Ulus of Jochi, and replaced the earlier, less organized Cuman–Kipchak confederation.

It originally consisted of the lands bequeathed to Jochi (d. 1225). It greatly grew in size under Batu Khan, the founder of the Blue Horde. After Batu's death in 1255, his dynasty flourished for a full century, until 1359, though the intrigues of Nogai instigated a partial civil war in the late 1290s. The Horde's military power peaked during the reign of Özbeg Khan (1312–1341), who adopted Islam. The territory of the Golden Horde at its peak extended from Siberia and Central Asia to parts of Eastern Europe from the Urals to the Danube in the west, and from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea in the south, while bordering the Caucasus Mountains and the territories of the Mongol dynasty known as the Ilkhanate.

The Mongol conquest of Persia and Mesopotamia comprised three Mongol campaigns against Islamic states in the Middle East and Central Asia between 1219 and 1258. These campaigns led to the termination of the Khwarazmian Empire, the Nizari Ismaili state, and the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, and the establishment of the Mongol Ilkhanate government in their place in Persia.

Genghis Khan had unified the Mongolic peoples and conquered the Western Xia state in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. After a series of diplomatic provocations on the part of Muhammad II, the ruler of the neighbouring Khwarazmian Empire, the Mongols launched an invasion in 1219. The invaders laid waste to the Transoxianan cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Gurganj in turn, before obliterating the region of Khorasan, slaughtering the inhabitants of Herat, Nishapur, and Merv, three of the largest cities in the world. Muhammad died destitute on an island in the Caspian Sea. His son and successor, Jalal al-Din, tried to resist the Mongols, but was defeated and forced into exile. Genghis returned to his campaign against the Jin dynasty in 1223, only retaining governance of the northern Khwarazmian regions.

The Battle of Köse Dağ took place in eastern Anatolia on 26 June 1243 when an army of the Sultanate of Rum, led by Sultan Kaykhusraw II, confronted an invading Mongol army under the general Baiju and was decisively defeated. The battle was the pivotal event of the Mongol conquest of Anatolia: Rum, previously a significant independent power in the eastern Mediterranean, was reduced to the status of a client kingdom, and its territories were later absorbed into the Mongol Ilkhanate.

The Mongol Empire first achieved territorial contact with Rum in the early 1230s by conquering a large swathe of western Iran, but largely left it alone over the next decade. Instead, under their general Chormaqan, Mongol armies subjugated Transcaucasia and reduced the Kingdom of Georgia to a vassal state. Relations deteriorated after the accession of Kaykhusraw II to the Rum throne in 1237, and Mongol raids on Rum territory began in 1240. Two years later, Baiju, who had replaced Chormaqan after the latter became disabled, captured and pillaged the city of Erzurum, escalating hostilities into open war. He again invaded Rum in 1243, with an army of 30,000 Mongol troops accompanied by Georgian and Armenian auxiliaries.

Hulegu Khan, also known as Hülegü or Hulagu (c. 1217 – 8 February 1265), was a Mongol ruler who conquered much of Western Asia. As a son of Tolui and the Keraite princess Sorghaghtani Beki, he was a grandson of Genghis Khan and brother of Ariq Böke, Möngke Khan, and Kublai Khan.

Hulegu's army greatly expanded the southwestern portion of the Mongol Empire, founding the Ilkhanate in Persia. Under Hulegu's leadership, the Mongols sacked and destroyed Baghdad, ending the Islamic Golden Age and the Abbasid dynasty. They also weakened Damascus, causing a shift of Islamic influence to the Mamluk Sultanate in Cairo.

Kublai Khan (23 September 1215 – 18 February 1294), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu of Yuan and his regnal name Setsen Khan, was the founder and first emperor of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. He proclaimed the dynastic name "Great Yuan" in 1271, and ruled Yuan China until his death in 1294.

Kublai was the second son of Tolui by his chief wife Sorghaghtani Beki, and a grandson of Genghis Khan. He was almost 12 when Genghis Khan died in 1227. He had succeeded his older brother Möngke as Khagan in 1260, but had to defeat his younger brother Ariq Böke in the Toluid Civil War lasting until 1264. This episode marked the beginning of the division of the Mongol Empire. Kublai's real power was limited to the Yuan Empire, even though as Khagan he still influenced the Ilkhanate and, to a significantly lesser degree, the Golden Horde.

The Pax Mongolica (Latin for "Mongol Peace"), less often known as Pax Tatarica ("Tatar Peace"), is a historiographical term modeled after the original phrase Pax Romana which describes the stabilizing effects of the conquests of the Mongol Empire on the social, cultural and economic life of the inhabitants of the vast Eurasian territory that the Mongols conquered in the 13th and 14th centuries. The term is used to describe the eased communication and commerce that the unified administration helped to create and the period of relative peace that followed the Mongols' vast and violent conquests.

The conquests of Genghis Khan (r. 1206–1227) and his successors, spanning from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe, effectively took over the Eastern world with the Western world. The Silk Road, connecting trade centres across Asia and Europe, came under the sole rule of the Mongol Empire. It was commonly said that "a maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm". Despite the political fragmentation of the Mongol Empire into four khanates (Yuan dynasty, Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and Ilkhanate), nearly a century of conquest and civil war was followed by relative stability in the early 14th century. The end of the Pax Mongolica was marked by the disintegration of the khanates and the outbreak of the Black Death in Asia which spread along trade routes to much of the world in the mid-14th century.

The Battle of Ain Jalut (Arabic: معركة عين جالوت, romanized: Ma'rakat ‘Ayn Jālūt), also spelled Ayn Jalut, was fought between the Bahri Mamluks of Egypt and the Ilkhanate on 3 September 1260 (25 Ramadan 658 AH) near the spring of Ain Jalut in southeastern Galilee in the Jezreel Valley. It marks as the first major loss of the Mongolian advances and halted their expansion into Arabia and Europe.

Continuing the westward expansion of the Ilkhanate, the armies of Hulegu Khan captured and sacked Baghdad in 1258, along with the Ayyubid capital of Damascus sometime later. Hulegu sent envoys to Cairo demanding Qutuz surrender Egypt, to which Qutuz responded by killing the envoys and displaying their heads on the Bab Zuweila gate of Cairo. Shortly after this, Möngke Khan was slain in battle against the Southern Song. Hulegu returned to Mongolia with the bulk of his army to attend the kurultai in accordance with Mongol customs, leaving approximately 10,000 troops west of the Euphrates under the command of Kitbuqa.