<P> After Genghis, the merchant partner business continued to flourish under his successors Ögedei and Güyük . Merchants brought clothing, food, information, and other provisions to the imperial palaces, and in return the great khans gave the merchants tax exemptions and allowed them to use the official relay stations of the Mongol Empire . Merchants also served as tax farmers in China, Russia and Iran . If the merchants were attacked by bandits, losses were made up from the imperial treasury . </P> <P> Policies changed under the Great Khan Möngke . Because of money laundering and overtaxing, he attempted to limit abuses and sent imperial investigators to supervise the ortoq businesses . He decreed that all merchants must pay commercial and property taxes, and he paid off all drafts drawn by high - ranking Mongol elites from the merchants . This policy continued under the Yuan dynasty . </P> <P> The fall of the Mongol Empire in the 14th century led to the collapse of the political, cultural, and economic unity along the Silk Road . Turkic tribes seized the western end of the route from the Byzantine Empire, sowing the seeds of a Turkic culture that would later crystallize into the Ottoman Empire under the Sunni faith . In the East, the native Chinese overthrew the Yuan dynasty in 1368, launching their own Ming dynasty and pursuing a policy of economic isolationism . </P> <P> The Mongol Empire--at its height the largest contiguous empire in history--had a lasting impact, unifying large regions . Some of these (such as eastern and western Russia and the western parts of China) remain unified today . Mongols might have been assimilated into local populations after the fall of the empire, and some of these descendants adopted local religions--for example, the eastern khanate largely adopted Buddhism, and the three western khanates adopted Islam, largely under Sufi influence . </P>

When did the mongols control the silk road
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