Borjigin Toghon Temür

Biography

Imperial family and exile Toghon Temür's father Kusala was a son of Khaishan, Emperor Wuzong, and his mother was Mailaidi. Khaishan and his brother Ayurbarwada had agreed that the throne would pass from elder to younger brother and then to a son of Khaishan, but Ayurbarwada instead designated his own son Shidibala. Kusala fled west while being sent to a regional appointment. Toghon Temür was born during this period of exile. Kusala became Emperor Mingzong in 1329（second year of Yuan Tianli） but soon died at Wanghuchadu. His brother Tugh Temür resumed the throne. the source recounts the historical allegation that Mingzong was poisoned; the planning of his death remains a judgment in the sources, not an event witnessed by the young Toghon Temür. Toghon Temür was sent to Daecheong Island in Goryeo in 1330（first year of Yuan Zhishun）, and Wenzong's court also asserted that he was not Mingzong's biological son. In 1331（second year of Yuan Zhishun）, he was moved to Jingjiang in Guangxi and stayed at Dayuan Monastery. Its abbot Chengshi taught him the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, and calligraphy. A later tale in the Gengshen Waishi claimed he was a son of Emperor Gong of Song. Historians have challenged it; both principal encyclopedia sources identify Kusala as his father. The story is not treated here as a proven genealogy. ### Accession and Bayan's domination After Wenzong's death, Mingzong's younger son Irinjibal briefly succeeded as Emperor Ningzong and then died. Empress Budashiri proposed that Toghon Temür succeed, but El Temür delayed the accession. After El Temür's death in 1333（fourth year of Yuan Zhishun）, Toghon Temür became emperor at Shangdu. Tangqishi and other relatives of El Temür then struggled with the right grand councilor Bayan. Tangqishi's coup failed in 1335（third year of Yuan Yuantong）, and Empress Danashiri was also killed. Bayan increased his control of the central government, excluded Han and southern Chinese from some official opportunities, and suspended the examinations. Toghon Temür occupied the throne but had little control over decisions. In 1340（sixth year of Yuan Zhiyuan）, Toghon Temür worked with Bayan's nephew Toghto to dismiss Bayan while the latter was away hunting and send him out of the capital. He removed Budashiri and rescinded the Wenzong court's claim that he was not Mingzong's son, while also revising ancestral rites. The court restored civil examinations after Bayan's dismissal. It adopted the Zhizheng era name the following year and appointed Toghto right grand councilor. Toghon Temür could now direct government, though he, Toghto, and other central officials jointly carried out specific measures. ### Early Zhizheng reforms and later crises From 1341（first year of Yuan Zhizheng）, the court revised appointments, labor obligations, and rites, restored examinations, and commissioned histories of Liao, Song, and Jin. After Toghto resigned in 1344（fourth year of Yuan Zhizheng）, Toghon Temür continued to employ officials such as Alutu and He Weiyi. The court issued Zhizheng Tiaoge and discussed recommendations for county and prefectural officials. Its promulgation in 1346（sixth year of Yuan Zhizheng） demonstrated a move toward common legal rules, though emissaries sent to supervise local administration sometimes demanded bribes, limiting the reforms' effect. Yellow River breaches, famine, and epidemics in the mid-1340s damaged grain transport and salt-tax income. Toghto returned as grand councilor in 1349（ninth year of Yuan Zhizheng）. The court changed the paper-currency system to raise resources and appointed Jia Lu to repair the river. The works succeeded in restoring the channel for a time, but currency changes accelerated depreciation. Corvée, local exactions, and mobilization by religious networks converged as the Red Turbans rose in 1351（eleventh year of Yuan Zhizheng）. The History of Yuan, quoted also points to a longer deterioration in government; the disorder cannot be explained by the river project alone. ### Court conflict, northern withdrawal, and death Toghto led a campaign against Zhang Shicheng at Gaoyou. In 1354（fourteenth year of Yuan Zhizheng）, Toghon Temür accepted accusations from Hama and others and dismissed Toghto during the siege. The army broke apart. The court depended increasingly on regional forces under Chaghan Temür, Köke-Temür, and Bolod Temür. Relations between the emperor and Crown Prince Ayushiridara also became strained. In 1364 and 1365（twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth years of Yuan Zhizheng）, Bolod Temür entered Dadu and the prince fled; Bolod Temür was later killed. The dispute subsided temporarily, but the court did not regain unified command over regional armies. After Zhu Yuanzhang gained the advantage in the south, he ordered Xu Da to advance north. On September 10, 1368（twenty-eighth day of the intercalary seventh lunar month, twenty-eighth year of Yuan Zhizheng）, Toghon Temür left Dadu with the crown prince, consorts, and some ministers. Ming troops occupied the city days later, ending Yuan government of the Central Plains. He resided first at Shangdu and then moved to Yingchang as Ming troops approached, while continuing to seek a counteroffensive. He died there on May 23, 1370（twenty-eighth day of the fourth lunar month, thirtieth year of Yuan Zhizheng）. Ayushiridara succeeded as khan, and the Yuan court continued in the north, conventionally known as Northern Yuan.

Bayan's Dominance and Anti-Han Policy

After the Tang Qishi coup was crushed in 1335 (first year of Zhiyuan), Bayan, as Prince of Qin, overshadowed all others, so that "the whole realm knew only of Bayan". He drove out rivals and even killed his former lord Chechetu, Prince of Tan; he amassed wealth, lived extravagantly, and frequented the palace of the Grand Empress Dowager Budashiri, so that the people sang that "above he cheats the sovereign, below he oppresses the people, and the Grand Empress Dowager leans on him". Most condemned was his anti-Han policy: Mongols and Central Asians who struck Han or southerners were not to be struck back; Han and southerners were forbidden to learn Mongol or Central Asian scripts; the ban on their bearing arms was reaffirmed; and their access to office was tightly restricted. Under Bayan only a very few Han, such as He Weiyi and Fu Yan, held the offices of left assistant director or assistant administrator; locally, even Han iron farm tools were confiscated. In the eleventh month of 1335 he abolished the examinations, and when Han resistance arose he proposed exterminating the Han of the five surnames Zhang, Wang, Liu, Li and Zhao, which Toghon Temür refused to follow. Bayan's misrule sharpened existing tensions, and risings broke out in Guangxi, Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Hebei and Henan, such as Pang Hu's rising in 1338, kindling the fire of a nationwide upheaval more than a decade later. In 1339 a farce in Henan, in which Fan Meng forged an imperial edict and killed the Henan provincial administrator Yuelu Temür and other officials, showed how far discipline had decayed. Toghon Temür watched all this and had long plotted with Bayan's nephew Toghto to remove him; Bayan in turn schemed with Budashiri to install another. In the second month of 1340 Toghon Temür and Toghto launched a coup while Bayan was hunting, demoting him to left chancellor of Henan and then exiling him to Yangchun county in Ngenzhou, ending the Bayan era. During the coup Toghon Temür sat in the Yude Hall, controlling tallies and issuing orders; when the drafters before the throne wrote in the decree that "each shall lead his own troops and, on receipt of the edict, return to his own guard", he directed that "from morning to evening is all one day, so change it to 'hour'", a sign of his decisiveness and shrewdness. In the sixth month, to avenge his father, he ordered the Wenzong shrine in the ancestral temple destroyed, deposed and put to death the Grand Empress Dowager Budashiri, exiled Yantiegusi, and revoked the decree by which Wenzong's court had declared him no son of Mingzong, then sacrificed to his father and bestowed his posthumous title.

The Zhizheng Reform and Its Working

In the following first month the era was changed to Zhizheng and Toghto made right chancellor, with a proclamation of "a new beginning with the realm". Toghon Temür was "most earnest in his desire to govern", and Toghto carried out a series of reforms known as the Zhizheng reform: restoring the examinations, rectifying the bureaucracy, summoning recluses, remitting taxes, lifting the horse ban, reducing the salt quota, compiling the histories of Liao, Song and Jin, and opening the classics colloquium to promote Confucian governance. Under their efforts the Yuan of the early Zhizheng years briefly showed a revival, and Han scholars long suppressed took heart, Ouyang Xuan writing that "in Zhizheng the worthy of the commanderies were raised, and the old majesty was seen again". In 1344 Toghto, pleading illness and a shaman's warning about his year, submitted seventeen successive requests to retire, which Toghon Temür at last granted. Over the next five years he employed Arughtu, Bieqie Buhua, Duo'erzhi and He Weiyi (Taiping) as chancellors, men who were not wicked but were less able than Toghto. He continued reforms centred on clean government, such as issuing the Xiantai Tongji, fixing the law on recommending prefects, and sending twenty-four officials on tours of pacification. Valuing the appointment of local prefects, he reviewed them himself to judge their worth and admonished them that "your office is like herding sheep: when they hunger give grass, when they thirst give water; if you miss no season of hunger, thirst, toil and rest, the flock will thrive" — so too a good shepherd of the people keeps them from losing their place and from hunger and thirst. In the tenth month of 1345, sending officials on pacification tours, he charged them to "spread my kindness, inquire into the people's hardships, wash away wrongs and clear away vexatious exactions", with those of the fourth rank and above suspended pending report and those of the fifth and below dealt with on the spot; yet apart from a few with real achievements the envoys only worsened corruption, and in Jiangxi and Fujian songs spread that "when the envoys come, heaven and earth are shaken; when they go, all is black".

Disasters, the Currency Change and River Work

What struck Toghon Temür hardest were the rare natural disasters of the age. From 1344 the Yuan entered a period of frequent calamity, with the Yellow River bursting its banks, famine recurring and epidemics spreading, and the people displaced. A Korean resident of the capital wrote that "famine-stricken people gather in the capital; within and without the walls, wailing beggars lie dead in heaps". He ordered relief and issued an edict of self-reproach, and in 1349 again appointed Toghto right chancellor in hope of recovery. By then the river disaster had caused a grave fiscal crisis, with transport and salt revenues falling sharply and the treasury emptying; unrest grew, small risings were frequent, and in 1348 the brothers Fang Guozhen gathered at sea and threatened the sea route for grain, so that the court, unable to suppress them, offered them amnesty. Toghto on his second appointment sought to save the situation but adopted two policies, the currency change and the river work. The currency change overprinted the old Zhongtong notes with the seal of "Zhizheng notes", each new string worth a thousand copper cash or two strings of Zhiyuan notes, the two circulating together, with the new notes valued at twice the old; copper coins were also issued, so that cash and notes circulated together, notes as mother and cash as child, and cash was meant to give the notes substance. In effect it was "buying notes with notes", using new notes to strip the people of old ones, while the copper coin had no silver backing and could not be redeemed. Before long prices soared more than tenfold, and as the Baiquan bureau printed ever more for military needs the Zhizheng notes fell further, until "ten ingots of the capital's notes could not buy a peck of millet" and trade reverted to goods. On the river, Toghto overrode his ministers and employed Jia Lu on the breach. Later ages often blamed the fall of the Yuan on this river work, yet Jia Lu's work itself succeeded and no labourers rose in response; it was the White Lotus sect that used it to launch rebellion, and as the History of the Yuan observes, the dynasty's fall "rested on habitual slackness, indulgence in ease, decayed discipline and debased custom", not on a single season's work.

The Red Turbans and Toghto's Dismissal

When the Red Turbans rose in 1351, the court sent the vice director of the Privy Council Hesi and Tuchi with six thousand Mongol Asu troops and Han forces to suppress them, but at the sight of the Red Turbans' numbers they cried "Abu! Abu!" — run! — and could do nothing. It was recorded that "in 1351 bandits rose south of the Huai, and wherever a city wall was not whole, in Zhexi, Jiangnan, Huguang, Fujian and Shu, it fell", and in many places the organs of government collapsed. Toghon Temür demanded of Toghto, "you once said the realm was at peace; now the Red Army holds half the world — what is your plan, Chancellor?" and Toghto broke into a sweat. He tightened measures against the Han, keeping military secrets from them, and relied on the contributions of landlords and their "righteous armies", producing the warlord conflicts of the dynasty's end; in the eighth month of 1352 he went south in person to direct operations, taking Xuzhou in the ninth month and slaughtering its people. By the end of 1353 the Red Turbans had fallen into a lull and the court built him a shrine at Xuzhou and set up a stele of victory. In the ninth month of 1354, because Zhang Shicheng had founded the Great Zhou at Gaoyou, Toghon Temür again sent Toghto out with Mongol and Han troops and forces from the western regions and Korea, said to number a million. As Zhang Shicheng held Gaoyou, Hama, exploiting Toghto's absence from court, slandered him and his brother, and the emperor believed it and stripped him of command, posting him to Huai'an. Toghto handed over his troops at once, his great army dispersed, the Red Turbans grew strong, and the government armies could never again organise suppression, relying only on landlord forces; his family was exiled and he was posted from Huai'an to Yijinai, until in the twelfth month of 1355 he was killed on the road to exile in Yunnan under a forged order of Hama.

The Later Court and Tantric Buddhism

After Toghto's expulsion and death, Toghon Temür, seduced by Hama, gave himself to pleasure and Tantric practice. Hama, the commissioner of the Buddhist and Tibetan affairs commission, and his brother-in-law Tulu Temür introduced Tibetan Tantra, recommending the Indian monk and the Tibetan lama Senggalingzhen, and brought in ten others, called the "ten companions", who taught him the "yanxie'er" rite, meaning "great bliss", a sexual yoga. Using noble and common women as their informants, they brought them into the palace for his practice; in a chamber called "xielangwugai", meaning "all things without hindrance", built beside the Xuanwen Pavilion, men and women lived naked together, and a Muqing Pavilion of several hundred rooms was filled with women. It was recorded that "monks came and went within the palace without hindrance and the foulness of their conduct was known abroad". He also established the dance of the Sixteen Heavenly Demons, in which palace women wore ivory crowns and beaded ornaments, sang the "Golden-Character Sutra" and danced the "Swallow Dance", performed at Buddhist ceremonies; the dance even spread beyond the palace. He built the Qingning Hall, encircled by the Hundred Flowers Palace, and moved palaces every fifth day. In 1356 Hama tried to have him abdicate to the crown prince, but Tulu Temür informed on him, and the emperor, furious that "my head is not white nor my teeth fallen, and yet you call me old", dismissed Hama. It was recorded that then "abroad campaigns multiplied and territory shrank daily; at home the treasury was empty and expenditure insufficient, yet the emperor gave himself to pleasure and neglected government". Thereafter Empress Qi and the crown prince grew disloyal and plotted abdication, killing the left chancellor who opposed it, driving out the outspoken Cheng Zun and Li Guofeng and controlling the court through Puhuahua and Suosijian. From 1363 to 1365 Bolot Temür twice attacked the capital, first forcing the emperor to surrender Puhuahua and Suosijian, who were killed, then forcing him to appoint him right chancellor and driving out the crown prince, who fled to Köke Temür at Taiyuan, so that there were briefly two courts. Bolot Temür at first removed the wicked ministers, drove out the Tibetan monks, cut the eunuchs and reduced expenditure, but later debauched the palace and killed men in drink. On the twenty-ninth day of the seventh month of 1365 he was assassinated beneath a plum tree at the Yanchun Pavilion as he entered the palace; Toghon Temür hid in a secret chamber and, agreeing that a pigeon's bell should signal success, came out at the sound, ordered the massacre of Bolot Temür's troops, and had his head boxed and sent to the crown prince at Taiyuan. In the ninth month Köke Temür escorted the crown prince back to the capital, an old minister became right chancellor and Köke Temür left chancellor, and the court strife paused.

Flight North and Death at Yingchang

In the tenth month of 1367 Zhu Yuanzhang launched the northern expedition to "drive out the Hu and restore China", and in the first month of the next year took the imperial title as Ming. In the intercalary seventh month of 1368 the Ming armies approached the capital. On the twenty-sixth the privy councillor Buyan Temür went out to fight and was captured and killed; on the twenty-eighth Toghon Temür held court in the Qingning Hall, summoned his ministers, the three palaces, the consorts and the crown prince, and declared that he would flee to Shangdu. The privy councillor Yesü, son of Toghto, argued strongly against it, and he replied that "Yesü is already beaten and Köke Temür is far off at Taiyuan — what relief army can we await?"; the eunuch Zhao Buyan Buhua knelt weeping and begged him to hold the capital with the troops and people, and he sighed that "today we cannot be another Huizong and Qinzong". That night he left for Shangdu with the crown prince, consorts and more than a hundred ministers, frightened at every step. On the second day of the eighth month the capital was taken by the Ming, and on the fifteenth he reached Shangdu, where he exclaimed that "had I not left the capital, how could I have known that affairs were like this". At Shangdu he "toiled day and night, summoning ministers until midnight", with some appearance of revival; in the tenth month Köke Temür won a fine victory over the Ming at Handian, and the emperor, elated, made him Prince of Qi and ordered him to recover the capital, but the Ming attacked while he marched south and Köke Temür was routed, escaping with only eighteen riders. He then sank again, his health failing, absenting himself through illness from the New Year audience of 1369 and abandoning Shangdu on the thirteenth day of the sixth month for Yingchang, despite ministers who urged him to go at once to Karakorum. In 1370, gravely ill, he left military and civil affairs to the crown prince Ayushiridara; on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month (23 May 1370) he died of dysentery at Yingchang at fifty-one, and the grand commandant Wanzhe and the commissioner Guanyinnu escorted his coffin north for burial. The ministers gave him the temple name Huizong and the Mongol title Uqahatu Khan, while the Ming founder, for his "knowing the mandate of Heaven and withdrawing", gave him the posthumous name Shundi, the Obedient Emperor.

Major Activities

Examinations and compilation of laws After Bayan's suspension of examinations, Toghon Temür removed him in 1340（sixth year of Yuan Zhiyuan）. The court resumed provincial examinations in 1341（first year of Yuan Zhizheng） and metropolitan and palace examinations in 1342（second year of Yuan Zhizheng）. Zhizheng Tiaoge was compiled during his reign and issued in 1346（sixth year of Yuan Zhizheng）, collecting edicts, regulations, and case decisions. The examinations and code were specific attempts to restore administrative order, not evidence that corruption and fiscal problems had been solved. ### Finance, river works, and military command Toghto's second ministry changed the currency system and repaired the Yellow River in response to financial distress and flooding. Jia Lu's works temporarily controlled the river, but their labor demands and disordered money supply added to social pressure. The court sent repeated campaigns against the Red Turbans. Dismissing Toghto during the Gaoyou siege in 1354（fourteenth year of Yuan Zhizheng） was a direct imperial intervention in command; the army's dissolution left regional generals more independent. ### Rule in the north After Ming forces took Dadu in 1368（twenty-eighth year of Yuan Zhizheng）, Toghon Temür did not immediately cease to be khan. He moved the Yuan court to Shangdu and then Yingchang, continuing opposition to Ming. The fall of Dadu, the end of Yuan rule in the Central Plains, and the end of his own reign were therefore distinct events.

Compiling the Histories of Liao, Song and Jin

China had long had the custom of compiling the history of the preceding dynasty, but because of disputes over legitimacy the histories of Liao, Song and Jin had never been formally written under the Yuan. In the third month of 1343 Toghon Temür ordered their compilation, with Toghto as chief director-general. Toghto decided that all three should be treated as legitimate and organised Han and Mongol historians to work together, the first instance of historians of different peoples collaborating. When the work was presented, the procession went from the history office to the Xuanwen Pavilion and Toghon Temür received it in full ceremonial dress, onlookers saying there had been nothing like it in modern times. After Toghto left office the work was led by chancellors and was finished in the tenth month of 1345; receiving Arughtu and the others at the Xuanwen Pavilion, and hearing Arughtu say he did not read Chinese and did not understand it, the emperor replied that the histories were of great weight, for "when a ruler of one of those states did good his state flourished, and I as ruler should take that as a model; when a dynasty did evil its state perished, and I should take that as a warning", adding that they also concerned chancellors, who should imitate the good and be warned by the evil — a sign of how seriously he took the enterprise.

The Classics Colloquium and His Chinese Learning

Toghon Temür had a year of Chinese education as a boy at Jingjiang in Guangxi and, after accession, summoned the scholars of the Kuizhang Pavilion to lecture on the Six Classics. Bayan opposed sinicisation, insisting that "one should not let them read Chinese books", and his Chinese studies stalled. After Bayan's fall Toghto urged him to "attend to the learning of the sages", and he opened the classics colloquium, converting Wenzong's old pavilion into the Xuanwen Pavilion as its permanent seat, with a chancellor presiding and below him concurrent lecturers, assisting officials, translators, three translator-scribes, four collators, five copyists and four messengers, perfecting the colloquium system begun under Emperor Taiding. The colloquium met three times a month, and he would "read the Five Classics and the Four Books, write large characters and play the zither to old tunes" with scholars of various peoples, the length of the sessions depending on his interest. He also founded the Duaben Hall for the crown prince's systematic Confucian education. Because of his good Chinese education his cultural attainments were high among Yuan emperors, especially in calligraphy, largely thanks to the monk Chengshi at Guilin; contemporaries judged his writing "severe, correct and closely knit, not to be reached by shallow learning", and one observer said that "when he first took up the brush it was as if long practised; after careful deliberation he would sweep his arm once and not retouch". Many edicts he wrote himself, and ministers prized an autograph decree.

Calligraphy, Painting and Craft

Besides calligraphy Toghon Temür loved painting. The minister Kuikui, when the emperor admired a painting by Huizong, admonished him that Huizong was capable in many things but "in one thing alone incapable" — that of being a ruler — and so brought humiliation on himself and ruin on his state, whereas a ruler is valued for ruling; he was likewise admonished when viewing the "Bi Gan" painting. Surviving specimens of his hand include "Leisurely Watching the Clouds", "Yuancheng Palace", "Mountain Studio", "Nine Heavens" and "Good and Bright", and he distributed rubbings of the thousand-character text in regular and cursive script to ministers; under him calligraphy flourished at court, and the crown prince and favourites also wrote well. In building and mechanics he was closer to a genius: for a palace he drew the plan himself and cut the wooden frame himself for the craftsmen to follow. The water-clock he made was six or seven feet high, with a wooden case holding vessels that raised and lowered water; on the case stood a hall of the Three Western Saints, and at its waist a jade girl held the time-scale, floating up as the hour came; two golden-armoured figures flanked it, one with a bell and one with a gong, striking the watches by night without the least error, while lions and phoenixes danced as they sounded; to east and west were palaces of sun and moon, before which six flying immortals at noon and midnight advanced of themselves across the immortal bridge to the hall — "so exquisite that men said few earlier ages had its like". He also made a five-cloud carriage. Contemporaries called him "the Lu Ban of the Son of Heaven". When the Ming took the capital they captured his water-clock and presented it to Zhu Yuanzhang, who said that to "neglect the myriad affairs and spend one's mind on this is to do what is useless and harm what is useful", and had it destroyed.

Astronomy, Ritual and Foreign Relations

Toghon Temür believed deeply in the mandate of Heaven and understood astronomical omens. It was said that his distrust of Toghto began when the observatory saw "for successive nights the minister star encroach on the imperial seat". When the Red Turbans took Shangdu in 1358 and ministers urged flight, he said calmly, knowing the omens were harmless, "say no more; let him who has fortune come; why should I flee?"; when news came in 1360 that Aluhui Temür, Prince of Yangdi, had rebelled, he said with composure, "the mandate of Heaven rests somewhere; do as you please". In 1362, when a white vapour like a rope rose in the Weixu constellation and the astronomers predicted a great flood in Shandong, he said that "Shandong will lose a good general", and sent urgently to warn Chaghan Temür not to act rashly, though the messenger arrived after Chaghan Temür was murdered. In ritual he followed Han systems of music and rites, twice personally sacrificing to Heaven in the southern suburbs, in the tenth month of 1343 and the eleventh month of 1355, when few Yuan emperors before him had done so. He asked the erudites whether he should bow to the tablet of Emperor Ningzong and was told that since Ningzong had held the imperial office and the emperor had himself been his subject, he should bow. Abroad, in 1336 he sent Andrew, a Frank long resident in China, with fifteen others back to Europe with a letter to the Roman see; the mission of Marignolli, sent in answer, reached the capital in the seventh month of 1342 and was received at the Ciren Hall in Shangdu on the eighteenth, presenting letters and a Frankish horse "eleven feet three inches long and six feet four high, pure black but for two white hooves", to the astonishment of the court, whereupon the emperor had literary attendants write poems and painters make pictures, Zhou Lang producing the "Frankish Tribute Horse" that survives. Japanese pirates also plagued the coast, and in the Zhizheng years one band that landed near Quanzhou was destroyed by the local people when a typhoon wrecked their ships.

Empresses, Consorts and Children

Toghon Temür had many consorts. His first empress, Danashiri of the Kipchak, was installed in 1333 and, after her brother Tang Qishi's failed coup in 1335, was expelled from the palace and poisoned by Chancellor Bayan in a common house at Kaiping. His second, Bayan Khutugh of the Khongirad, was installed in the third month of 1337 and died in the eighth month of 1365. His third, the Korean Empress Qi, mother of the crown prince Ayushiridara, was made second empress in 1340 and principal empress in 1365; in 1368 she fled the capital with him to the northern grasslands, her later fate unknown. A third empress of the Khongirad, Munashiri, lived in the Longfu Palace and died in 1347. It was recorded that his palace held about a thousand women, with more than a hundred bearing the seals of consort or noble lady; most of them fled with him and were all captured by the Ming at Yingchang in the fifth month of 1370. Of his children, the History of the Yuan records three sons, the eldest being Ayushiridara, made crown prince in 1353 and enthroned in 1370 as Emperor Zhaozong; his brother Tögüs Temür also reigned. There were besides princes such as Shitou'er, who surrendered to the Ming in the twelfth month of 1370. Because the sources are scattered, the exact number of his children can no longer be determined.

The Legend of His Birth and Its Criticism

A story circulated in the Ming that Toghon Temür was the son of the last Song emperor. It was said that Zhao Xian, the Duke of Ying, after surrendering to the Yuan took monastic vows, and that a prince of Zhao, pitying him in his lonely old age, gave him a woman, Mailaidi, who bore a son in 1320; the then Prince of Zhou, Heshi La, passing by, saw dragon-patterned five-coloured vapour above the temple and took mother and child as his own. Yuan Zhongche further recorded that the Ming Yongle emperor, viewing the portraits of the Song and Yuan emperors, found that Toghon Temür resembled the Song house, confirming the tale. The story spread widely in the Ming as showing that "Heaven took vengeance on the Yuan for destroying the Song", and it probably arose because Wenzong's court had proclaimed Toghon Temür no son of Mingzong; most modern scholars regard it as an unofficial tale, absurd and not to be used to rewrite his descent.

Personal Relations

• Kusala: father, Emperor Mingzong of Yuan.
• Mailaidi: mother; the later story naming Emperor Gong of Song as his father is not accepted as established genealogy.
• Tugh Temür: uncle, Emperor Wenzong of Yuan, whose court exiled Toghon Temür.
• Irinjibal: younger half-brother, Emperor Ningzong of Yuan; Toghon Temür succeeded after his death.
• Danashiri: first empress, killed after Tangqishi's coup failed.
• Lady Gi (Öljei Khutug): empress and mother of Crown Prince Ayushiridara.
• Ayushiridara: son, crown prince, and successor in Northern Yuan.
• Bayan: right grand councilor who dominated the early reign and was dismissed in 1340（sixth year of Yuan Zhiyuan）.
• Toghto: Bayan's nephew and twice right grand councilor, who carried out early Zhizheng reforms.
• Chengshi: monk who taught him Chinese texts during his exile at Jingjiang.
• Köke-Temür and Bolod Temür: late Yuan regional commanders involved in court conflicts and wars against Ming.

Historical Assessment

the quotations from the late Yuan Gengshen Waishi and later historians address Toghon Temür's management of ministers and responsibility for the loss of the Central Plains, but differ in judgment. The History of Yuan emphasizes that the state had accumulated problems over a long period rather than attributing the general uprising only to Jia Lu's river project. Tu Ji, writing later, noted both the emperor's early removal of Bayan and his subsequent problems in appointments and military discipline. Modern studies likewise distinguish early reform from later court conflict. His reign is best assessed through the reforms of the 1340s, the fiscal and military crises of the 1350s, and the withdrawal of 1368, without making stories about his parentage or palace life into causal evidence.