December 11, 1241

Ögedei Khan

Ögedei Khan dies and a succession interregnum begins

The emergency election that supposedly called the Mongols home did not produce a new Great Khan for five years.

11 December 1241

Ögedei, Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died on 11 December 1241 after returning from a hunting expedition and consuming an excessive quantity of wine. Persian and Chinese traditions converge on the date and the drinking episode.

Juvayni's account says he died in his sleep. Accusations of poisoning circulated, and the sources differ over the final gathering and its attendants.

The evidence supports alcohol excess as central to the episode, but “died of alcohol poisoning” is a modern diagnosis it cannot prove.

No successor for five years

The death left no newly elected Great Khan and opened a succession crisis that became a five-year interregnum.

Ögedei had preferred his grandson Shiremun as successor. His widow Töregene assumed the regency instead, and ultimately secured the election of her own son Güyük in 1246.

It did not stop the campaign

Mongol forces continued operations west of the Danube in early 1242, and Rashid al-Din says news of the death had not yet reached the western princes when Kadan left Dalmatia that April.

The story that every prince rushed back to Mongolia is wrong in Batu's case: he did not immediately return or take part in a prompt election. The papal envoy Carpine later needed about three and a half months just to travel from the Volga to the Great Khan's camp.

No Mongol source gives a reason for the withdrawal; political, military, strategic, logistical, environmental and climatic explanations continue to be debated.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited

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What the sources leave uncertain

The date is unusually well supported for a thirteenth-century Mongol event: Persian and Chinese traditions converge on 11 December 1241.
Sources differ over the final gathering and attendants, and accusations of poisoning circulated. Modern scholarship generally treats excessive drinking as central while rejecting certainty about a specific medical mechanism.
The causal relationship between Ögedei’s death and the 1242 Mongol withdrawal from Hungary remains disputed. Rashid al-Din says news had not yet reached the western princes when Kadan left Dalmatia in April 1242.
No Mongol source gives a reason for the withdrawal. Political, military, strategic, logistical, environmental, and climatic explanations continue to be debated.