High Middle Ages · East Asia · War

1288

Mongol attack on Sakhalin indigenous peoples

1288

A Yuan expedition ventured into the Amur estuary and the island of Sakhalin to punish Nivkh and Ainu peoples who had raided Jurchen allies. It was the farthest northeast any Mongol army ever operated, and the campaign left scars in later Ainu oral tradition. The expedition demonstrated the astonishing reach of the Mongol empire, which could project military force from the tropics to the sub-Arctic.