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The Mongols
Mongol Origins
The Rise of the Mongol
Empire
The Decline and Fall
Mongol Origins
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Nomadic horse people
N. China Grasslands
Raised horses, tended sheep
Felt tents: Yerts
Language: Altaic (Rel. To Turkic,
Manchurian)
• Practiced transhumance
Organization
• Families-->Clans-->Tribes-->
• Tribes gathered during annual migration
• Chiefs elected. Based on nobility, military
ability, wisdom, leadership skills
• Religion: Shamanism
• Nature deities, but key god is the Sky God
• Sacred color: blue
Temujin: Ghengis Khan
• b. 1167, son of tribal chief
• Father poisoned…fled as youth
• Returned as adult, avenged father,
Eventually chief
– By age forty had unified all Mongol
tribes
– Battles, alliances, ability to survive
– Elected as the Great Khan
– Amazing talents along with sons and
grandsons
Mongol Army Tactics
• Organized army in “Myriads” (10,000’s)
• Units within each of 1000, 100, and 10
• Elaborate signals: every part can move
in concert in battle. Flags, hand signals
• Tactics: retreat, turn, flank, destroy
– Armaments: horsemanship,
compound bow
– Reputation created paralyzing fear
– By 1241: reached Poland and
Hungary
Conquest
• Every man carried their own supplies and
had 2 horses. Ate horse blood and milk
• Thousands of vassals took loyalty oaths:
became commanders, ran army, ran
government
– Took walled cities by using Chinese siege
technology
– Brought Chinese engineers with them
– Conquered most of Asia, Middle East,
Russia
Two forms of ladders for scaling walls
Catapult
Folding Bridge
Flame Thrower
Flying Cloud Thunderclap Eruptor
Kiev as it would have looked when conquered by the Mongols
Genghis Khan
• “Man’s highest joy is victory: to
conqueror one’s enemies, to
pursue them, to deprive them of
their possessions, to make their
beloved weep, and to embrace
their wives and daughters.”
The Conquest of China
• Genghis Khan wanted the riches of
China
• First secured his back: conquered
Tibetan State of NW China, Manchu
State (N)
• Took land all the way to Peking by 1227
• Ghengis Khan died 1227
• Successors reached the Yellow River
1234
• Took all of China by 1241
Divisions at Genghis Khan’s
Death
• Four Khanates
• Kipchak Khanate (Golden Hoarde):
Russia
• IlKhanate: Persia
• Chagatai Khanate: Mongolia
• Great Khanate: China, Outer Mongolia,
Border States, to which the others
owed allegiance. Later became the
Yuan Dynasty
Territory of the Mongols
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan
• Grandson of Genghis Khan
• Moved capital to Peking 1261
• N. enough to stay in contact with other
Khanates
• S. enough to control most of China
• Conquered the S. Sung by 1279
Building Projects
• Too far from prosperous south to easily
collect taxes
– Built the Grand Canal to Peking
– Palace of the Khan: designed by Arab
architects.
– Summer palace: Shangtu (Xanadu)
– Where a Mongol can be a Mongol
– Developed hereditary succession
Mongol Rule of China: Yuan
Dynasty
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Originally, plundered and robbed
Learned the art of taxation
Mongols ruling elite: Highly centralized
Emperor-->Secretariat--> Roving
Secretariat
• Ruling minority segregated
• Majority ranked according to ethnicity
Ethnic Ranking
• Mongols: Top military, civilian posts
• Persians, Turks, Non-Chinese nomad
stock: High civil posts
• N. Chinese, border people,
Manchurians: Next highest posts
• S. Chinese: Lowest civil posts
• All records and proceedings in Uighur
Turkic, than translated word by word
into Chinese (sounded barbaric)
Foreign Contact
– Large, multi-ethnic empire facilitated
diffusion
– Subject states: Persian, Arab,
Russian, Turkic
– Goods, art, technology and ideas
spread
– Chinese communities found as far
west as Moscow
– Printing, gunpowder, medicine
diffuse west
– Marco Polo
Religion: Christianity
• Policy of toleration
• Kublai Khan’s mother was a Nestorian
Christian
• Papal Mission created Peking
Archbishop and cathedral, complete
with Mongol and Turkic sermon and
Mongol choir boys
• Wanted 100 learned Catholics to be
sent by the Pope
Buddhism and Islam
– Tibetan Buddhism gained 500,000
converts
– Islam gained many converts. A mosque
was built in a new Islamic quarter of
Peking and others built in SW China
– Confucianism survived… Considered a tax
free religion. No real influence at court
– Most of China in the South remained
unchanged
Decline and Fall
• Yuan Dynasty: Shortest lived major
Chinese dynasty (1264-1368)
• By the death of Kublai Khan’s son,
series of weak rulers
• The Khanates lose cohesion due to
religious and cultural differences
• Yuan Dynasty becomes more isolated
The End
• Chinese never really accepted as
legitimate
• Succession wars between heirs and
generals
– High Taxes, Corrupt officials
– Paper money controversy
– Yellow River changed course and flooded
Grand Canal among other natural
disasters
– Decentralization: Rise of Warlords
– Last Khan fled to Mongolia in 1368