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
Mongol invasions of Tibet provinces. The Mongols granted the Sakya lama a degree political authority, but retained control over the administration and military of the region. As efforts to rule both territories while preserving Mongol identity, Kublai Khan prohibited Mongols from marrying Chinese, but left both the Chinese and Tibetan legal and administrative systems intact. Though most government institutions established by Kublai Khan in his court resembled the ones in earlier Chinese dynasties, Tibet never adopted the imperial examinations or Neo-Confucian policies. Buddhist monks from Tibet were popular and well respected in Mongol-ruled Iran (the Ilkhanate), Mongolia, China (the Yuan) and Central Asia (the