Borjigin

The Borjigin were the Mongols' imperial clan, descended from the legendary Alan Gua. Her descendant Khabul Khan built a Mongol confederation about 1131; his great-grandson Temüjin united the steppe and became Genghis Khan in 1206.

Genghis and his sons built the largest continuous land empire, and after 1259 his heirs divided it into appanages: the great khans and then Kublai's Yuan dynasty in China, the Golden Horde on the Volga, and the Chagatai khanate. In 1368 the Ming drove the last Yuan emperor beyond the Great Wall, but the house continued as the Northern Yuan. Oirat strongmen usurped the khanate briefly in the 1450s, before Dayan Khan restored Borjigid supremacy from 1480 to 1517, dividing the steppe among his sons.

Borjigid princes ruled Kazan and Crimea until Russian conquests from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, while Babur, the Mughal founder, claimed Chinggisid blood through his mother. The senior line ended with Ligden Khan, who died fighting the Qing in 1634, the Khalkha khanates submitting in 1691.