Borjigin Yesun Temur

Biography

The Jin prince and the coup at Nanpo Gammala, Yesun Temur's father, was a son of Zhenjin and had been enfeoffed as Prince of Jin. He oversaw the four principal ordo associated with Genghis Khan and troops of the northern territories. When Gammala died in 1302（the sixth year of Yuan's Dade era）, Yesun Temur inherited his position. His courtier Dawlat Shah and others maintained links with the Yuan court. In 1323（the third year of Yuan's Zhizhi era）, conflict grew between Emperor Yingzong and Tegshi, a senior censorial official. Tegshi secretly sent a messenger to the Jin prince, announcing a plan to kill the emperor and his minister Baiju and to enthrone the prince. The Yuan Shi records that Yesun Temur detained the messenger and sent men toward Shangdu to report the plot. The report did not arrive before Yingzong was murdered at Nanpo. This account of a warning must be distinguished from later allegations of prior complicity. After the murder, Tegshi's faction brought the imperial seal north. Yesun Temur became emperor at Longju River in 1323（the ninth lunar month of the third year of Yuan's Zhizhi era）. He brought Dawlat Shah and other former Jin princely officers into central office; Tegshi also initially received a senior military appointment. The new government later addressed participants in the coup. Neither these appointments nor later punishments alone establish what Yesun Temur intended before the murder. The issue remained contested in later political struggles. ### The Taiding and Zhihe eras In 1324（the first year of Yuan's Taiding era）, Yesun Temur inaugurated the Taiding era, appointed Babukhan empress, and made Ragibagh Khan crown prince, identifying the succession within his line. He retained the Yuan Secretariat and provincial institutions. His court handled local famines, droughts, and fiscal expenditure. The Yuan Shi records grants of grain or money, tax remissions for particular disaster areas, and orders concerning officials. It also records costs associated with temples, Buddhist rites, and princely rewards. one account discusses the strengths and limits of these policies. Isolated relief orders should not be turned into a claim that the whole empire enjoyed permanent tax remission. Yesun Temur adopted the Zhihe era in 1328（its first year）. The Yuan Shi records an order to circulate older agricultural regulations and relief measures for several hungry regions, as well as a censor's warning that a hunt could disturb people already affected by shortages. Yesun Temur died later that year. His son Ragibagh Khan took the throne at Shangdu, while a faction in Dadu supported another branch of the family. The ensuing War of the Two Capitals quickly ended Ragibagh's reign. The victors did not give Yesun Temur a formal temple or posthumous name. “Emperor Taiding” is a conventional designation drawn from one of his era names, not a temple name.

Family, the Princedom of Jin, and the Coup at Nanpo

According to the Mongolian sources and the several histories taken together, Yesun Temür was born on the twenty-ninth day of the tenth month of 1293 in the princely residence of Jin in the north; his father Gammala was a son of the late crown prince Zhenjin, and in the year before his birth was made prince of Jin and sent to hold the north, in command of (Genghis Khan's four great ordos). After Kublai's death Gammala, as eldest son of the late crown prince Zhenjin, (did not take the throne); and in the first month of 1302 Gammala died in the north and Yesun Temür inherited the princedom of Jin. As a great-grandson of Kublai by the principal line he was much favoured, "receiving many gifts in the reigns of Wuzong, Renzong and Yingzong."

The coup at Nanpo in 1323 brought him from a northern prince to the threshold of the throne. After the Yingzong emperor was murdered by Tegshi and his confederates, Tegshi sent his follower Oros to tell Yesun Temür of the regicide and of the plan to raise the prince of Jin as emperor. Yesun Temür was then hunting at a place in the north called Tula, and "on hearing Oros set out his treason he had him imprisoned and sent Bilimishi to Shangdu to give warning of the plot"; Bilimishi did not arrive in time, and two days later the Yingzong emperor was murdered. After Wenzong (Tugh Temür) seized the throne he accused Yesun Temür of complicity in the murder: the edict in the Record of Yuan's annals of Wenzong declares that "as for the Jin household, though it had a covenant and was willing to keep to its fief, it secretly conspired with the traitorous ministers Tegshi and Esen Temür and laid impious hands on the throne, so that Yingzong suffered his great fate." On whether he was in the plot, later writers point out that Yingzong's reforms, which stopped the annual grants to princes, "undoubtedly did great harm to Yesun Temür's interests," that Tegshi and his like "could not have acted rashly without a powerful backer," and that Yesun Temür, being of Kublai's principal line, "very likely harboured ambitions to usurp"; so that the story of his binding the envoy and sending warning "was perhaps written in after his accession by Yesun Temür to clear himself of the charge." In any case, among the princes of the day "the prince of Jin, Yesun Temür, as eldest great-grandson of the senior line, was the best qualified to inherit the throne," and on the fourth day of the ninth month of 1323, a full month after Yingzong's death, he took the throne on the Longju river in the north.

The Vernacular Accession Edict and the Swift Destruction of Tegshi's Party

His accession edict is a peculiar document in Yuan history: it is entirely in the vernacular, and in a style translated directly from Mongolian, which "shows that at his accession he had no Chinese minister or (Chinese) scholar about him"; in the Qianlong period the editors of the Four Treasuries were ordered to render it into literary Chinese. In it he recounts in the first person his lineage and his position, calling himself "the pitied great-grandson of the Xian emperor, the eldest son of the Yuzong emperor, and of my kind grandfather Gammala, made prince of Jin and given command of the four great ordos of Genghis Khan, with the troops, horses and the Tatar lands entrusted to him," saying that he "raised up my two elder brothers, the Qulü emperor and the Puyantu emperor, and my nephew the Shidibala emperor," and that "toward the emperors of successive reigns I have harboured no disloyalty and sought no place, but have done my duty and given my strength to the state"; and he concludes that "since I alone am of the direct line of the Xian emperor and the eldest grandson of the Yuzong emperor, there is precedent for my sitting in the great place, and among the other contending brothers there is none," announcing that "on the fourth day of the ninth month I sat in the great place in the great ordo of Genghis Khan," and proclaiming an amnesty.

His measures after taking the throne had several layers: in the amnesty he first expressly pardoned (Tegshi) and the whole treasonable party, "and afterwards advanced Tegshi and the others in rank," and then "a month later he had Tegshi, Esen Temür and the rest of the traitorous party all put to death," executed and dismissed a number of Tegshi's confederates, and exiled the five princes implicated in the plot. Of this reward-then-kill there is a view that it came of the counsels of a leading Chinese minister. His power then consolidated, he changed the era to Taiding, honoured his father Gammala as the Xianzong emperor and his mother Puyan Kelimishi as empress dowager, and gave titles to the consort of Jin. The historians note that his government "took stability and the maintenance of order as its basic aim," which is visible from the two era names he used, Taiding and Zhihe.

Calamity, the Chinese Ministers' Proposals, and Finance and Sea Transport

The Taiding reign was a time of troubles for Yuan. Disasters followed one another and famine broke out in many places: in the winter of 1323 "there was great cold and snow in Mongolia and many beasts died of hunger"; in the seventh month of 1324 there was (an earthquake), and Jiang and Huai suffered severe flood and drought; in the twelfth month of 1327 there was a violent earthquake (in Ningxia), another in Ningxia in the ninth month, and another in the seventh month of 1328. Though he called the ministers together for remedies, the senior Chinese minister of the day, (Zhang Gui), president of the secretariat, put forward more than ten proposals — (to purge the remnants of Tegshi's party, to restrict the Buddhists and Daoists, to cut redundant officials, to stop the buying of pearls) — and "the Taiding emperor would not adopt them." Meanwhile the peoples of Yunnan, Sichuan and other provinces rose in revolt many times, and in the sixth month of 1325 Zhao Chousi and Guo Pusa of Xizhou in Henan rose (under the slogan that the Buddha Maitreya should have the empire); "though these risings came to nothing, it may be said that Yuan had entered a time of many troubles in the Taiding years."

In the face of the disasters there were nevertheless some creditable results in finance and grain transport: the transport of southern grain northward to steady prices and the popular market continued, and in 1326 "the total sea-transported grain was three million three hundred and seventy thousand shi, of which three million three hundred and fifty thousand arrived, the highest record of sea-transported grain reaching the capital in the Yuan." As for the paper currency, from 1316 the government had kept the note issue low to tighten credit and check rising prices; at the end of the Yanyou era, in financial difficulty, it increased the issue to cover the deficit and brought on another fall in the notes, the rise continuing to the end of Yingzong's reign, whereas the Taiding court went on markedly reducing the number of notes printed, so that prices gradually fell back to the level of (the end of Yanyou) and some goods even below the level before the rise. To increase revenue the system of "office for grain" was also introduced.

Major Activities

Succession from the northern branch Yesun Temur moved from the northern Jin princely household to the imperial throne, altering the political balance established under Emperor Yingzong. He appointed Dawlat Shah and other former household officers while continuing to use the Yuan central institutions. Some conspirators in the Coup d'état at Nanpo helped bring him to power, but their support does not itself prove he had conspired beforehand. The warning sequence in the Yuan Shi and accusations in later factional struggles must be kept distinct. ### Relief and state spending The Yuan Shi documents drought, locusts, floods, and relief in several places in 1328（the first year of Yuan's Zhihe era）. These records show the simultaneous need for assistance and pressure on the treasury. Assessment should remain tied to specific documented orders and regions, rather than broad unsupported labels such as uniformly benevolent or wholly ineffective rule.

A Balance among Princes, the Semu and the Chinese Ministers

After his accession the Taiding emperor "adopted a policy of leniency in appointments, seeking as far as possible to reconcile the contradictions within the ruling group." He relied chiefly on those who had followed him from his northern residence at Jin, (Duoladashi) and others becoming (chief officers) of the secretariat in succession, (Duoladashi) being the most powerful figure of the reign, "under whose direction many Hui came into court office, so that the Hui attained a height of honour in the Taiding reign unprecedented and never repeated." Toward the old cases of the previous reign he did not root out Tegshi's party but "returned the confiscated property and ceased hunting the remnant"; he recalled to the capital the twenty-four "princes' officials" exiled or sent home in Yingzong's reign, and many censors unjustly killed or exiled in the former court were cleared, "the living recalled and employed and the dead given posthumous honours," while the exiled princes were pardoned and sent back to their tribes. The prince (Chechetü), who in Yingzong's last years had forged an order and killed more than a hundred of the imperial kin including Buhua Jili, was in the end pardoned and sent back to Liaodong with rich gifts. He enfeoffed many princes — "twenty-four princes in his reign, where Yingzong had made seven" — and restored the annual grants to princes that Yingzong had stopped; this generosity to the imperial kin and the Semu went together with the "Taiding" order he proclaimed.

By contrast, the position of the Chinese ministers "fell from the high spirit of the Ren and Ying reigns to a lower place": Zhang Gui was the only high official left from the former court and the only Chinese able to play a significant part in the new one, "but his influence was evidently limited, for his proposals were often not adopted," and the other Chinese officials held low posts. Yet the emperor "still gave the Chinese ministers full respect in appearance": when Zhang Gui was ill he ordered that he "need not kneel at ordinary audiences" and gave him a small carriage that could come to the palace gate; and (the retired ministers) "continued to be honoured as the Three Elders in the Taiding years, receiving edicts to deliberate the affairs of the secretariat." On the whole the political character of the reign was an extremely unequal balance among three forces — the princes, the Semu and the Chinese: the princes and the Semu gained substance, the Chinese gained courtesy without power, and while the wrongs of the former reign were redressed the pursuit of the conspiracy stopped with the execution of its chiefs. On the emperor's death in 1328, Duoladashi at Shangdu set up the crown prince Asujiba as emperor, "aged nine, with the era name Tianshun," but Wenzong's party prevailed in the end, "and the Tianshun emperor and Duoladashi were both killed," and the Taiding line came to an end with them.

Personal Relations

• Gammala, Kublai Khan, and Zhenjin: Gammala was his father; Kublai and Zhenjin were respectively his great-grandfather and grandfather. An older relations file incorrectly identified Zhenjin as his father.
• Babukhan and Ragibagh Khan: His empress and son. The Chinese forms Asujibag and Alajibag refer to the same successor, whose formal V80 English name is Ragibagh Khan.
• Shidibala and Tegshi: The murdered predecessor and a principal leader of the coup. Whether Yesun Temur conspired with Tegshi in advance is disputed.
• Dawlat Shah: A former officer of the Jin princely household who became a leading minister after the accession.
• Tugh Temür and El Temür: Figures in the Dadu succession movement after Yesun Temur's death; they should not be described retroactively as his direct personal enemies during his reign.

Historical Assessment

The Yuan Shi preserves a continuous account of the warning before the coup, the accession, relief orders, and expenditure. Yesun Temur's responsibility for the Coup d'état at Nanpo remains disputed. His government retained Yuan institutions and issued relief orders, yet court, princely, and temple spending continued. His son's inability to secure succession demonstrates the limits of this branch's political base against rival family factions. This assessment follows documented events and does not reduce the later war to one personal decision.