Mongol Empire What is referred to in English as the Mongol Empire was called the "Ikh Mongol Uls" ("ikh": "great", "uls": "state"; Great Mongolian State). In the 1240s, one of Genghis's descendants, Güyük Khan, wrote a letter to Pope Innocent IV which used the preamble "Dalai (great/oceanic) Khagan of the great Mongolian state (ulus)". After the succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke, Ariq limited Kublai's power to the eastern part of the empire. Kublai officially issued an imperial edict on 18 December 1271 to name the country Great Yuan ("Dai Yuan", or "Dai Ön Ulus") to establish the
Kaidu–Kublai war Kaidu–Kublai war The Kaidu–Kublai war was a war between Kaidu, the leader of the House of Ögedei and the "de facto" khan of the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, and Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty in China and his successor Temür Khan that lasted a few decades from 1268 to 1301. It followed the Toluid Civil War (1260–1264) and resulted in the permanent division of the Mongol Empire. By the time of Kublai's death in 1294, the Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires: the Golden Horde khanate in the northwest, the Chagatai Khanate