# Manduhai becomes regent for the boy khan (c. 1479)

URL: https://allhistories.com/mongolia/timeline/1479-manduhai-becomes-regent-for-the-boy-khan
Location: Mongolian Plateau, Mongolia
Themes: main-event

Around 1479, after Manduul Khan died, his widow Manduhai took the seven-year-old Batumunkh out of hiding and had him proclaimed Dayan Khan. Wikipedia dates Manduul's death to about 1478 or 1479. She rejected a marriage offer from the noble Unubold, who stayed loyal, and held real authority over the Mongols during the boy's youth. Manduhai was born about 1449 and married Manduul in 1464; she gained precedence over his childless first wife. Several princes were competing for power at the time. Batumunkh was the son of Bayan Mongke Jonon and a descendant of Genghis Khan. The year of her later marriage to him, said to follow his nineteenth birthday, is not given. She defeated the Oirats and, in the page's words, reunited Mongolia for the first time in more than a century. She also repelled Ming attacks, and tradition says she fought while pregnant and gave birth to twins during a battle. Jack Weatherford doubts the knife prohibition in the Yellow Chronicle's laws against the Oirats was a real law. Her grave has never been found. At this point in the timeline (c. 1479), Dayan Khan (1478 – 1517) reigned as khan of the Northern Yuan, the Mongol court that continued on the steppe after 1368. Reign dates for this ruler are disputed between sources.

## Why it matters
Manduhai's regency restored Chinggisid rule after the Oirat era and prepared the reforms of Dayan Khan, who reunited the Eastern Mongols.

Ruler at the Time: [Dayan Khan](https://allhistories.com/mongolia/rulers/dayan-khan)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Manduhai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduhai)
- [Wikipedia — Dayan Khan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayan_Khan)
- [Wikipedia — Northern Yuan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Yuan)