Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty The Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty under Kublai Khan (r. 1260–1294) was the final step for the Mongols to rule the whole of China under the Yuan dynasty. It is also considered the Mongol Empire's last great military achievement. Before the Mongol–Jin War escalated, an envoy from the Song dynasty arrived at the court of the Mongols, perhaps to negotiate a united offensive against the Jin dynasty, who the Song had previously fought during the Jin–Song Wars. Although Genghis Khan refused, on his death in 1227 he bequeathed a plan to attack the
Society of the Mongol Empire cultural and economic aspects of its unity. Turkic tribes seized the western end of the Silk Road from the decaying Byzantine Empire, and sowed the seeds of a Turkic culture that would later crystallize into the Ottoman Empire under the Sunni faith. Turkic–Mongol military bands in Iran, after some years of chaos were united under the Saffavid tribe, under whom the modern Iranian nation took shape under the Shiite faith. Meanwhile, Mongol princes in Central Asia were content with Sunni orthodoxy with decentralized princedoms of the Chagatai, Timurid and Uzbek houses. In the Kypchak–Tatar zone, Mongol khanates all but crumbled