Chagatai Khanate

The Chagatai Khanate, also known as the Chagatai Ulus, was a Turco-Mongol khanate formed from the lands allotted to Chagatai Khan, the second son of Genghis Khan, and ruled by his descendants after the division of the Mongol Empire following 1259. At its greatest extent in the late thirteenth century the khanate stretched from the Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea eastward to the Altai Mountains on the borders of modern Mongolia and China, encompassing territory that had earlier been ruled by the Qara Khitai. Over the generations that followed, its Mongol ruling elite gradually underwent Turkification and conversion to Islam, even as Mongolian administrative and political traditions persisted, and Mongolian remained in use for official documents into the fourteenth century. The khanate eventually split into western and eastern halves, the eastern portion becoming known as Moghulistan, while the western Chagatayid domains were absorbed in the later fourteenth century into the rising empire of Timur.