# Mongol Empire The **Mongol Empire** (1206-1368) was the largest contiguous land empire in history, and the only political formation ever to hold the entire overland Silk Road under a single authority. Founded by [[Genghis Khan]], it fragmented after 1260 into four successor khanates — the Yuan in China, the Ilkhanate in Persia, the Chagatai in Central Asia, and the Golden Horde in the Russian steppe — which remained loosely coordinated for roughly a century. Its significance to the trade network is double-edged and both edges are extreme. The conquests of 1219-1221 depopulated the great Central Asian commercial cities; the settlement that followed produced the [[Pax Mongolica]], under which the route operated with unprecedented security and technologies, ideas, and people moved across Eurasia at speeds never previously achieved. It also unified the Old World epidemiologically, and the [[Black Death]] travelled the network the empire had made safe. > [!note] Stub > Spine stub. Expand: the conquests and military system, the four khanates and their divergence, administration and religious policy, the Yuan in China, and the collapse.