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 the Levant Syria a vassal state of the Mongol Empire. In 1255 Hulagu sought to further expand the Empire into the Middle East under orders from his older brother, the Great Khan Möngke. Hulagu's forces subjugated multiple peoples along the way, most notably the center of the Islamic Empire, Baghdad, which was completely sacked in 1258, destroying the Abbasid Caliphate. From there, the Mongol forces proceeded into Syria. In 1260, Egypt was under the control of the Bahri Mamluks, while most of the Levant (aside from the Crusader states) was still under the control of Ayyubid princes. The Mongols, for their part,