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The Mongols
The Last Great Nomadic Challenges - From Chinggis Khan To Timur
Author: Robert Guisepi
Date:
1992
Introduction
From the first explosion of Mongol military might from the steppes of
central Asia in the early decades of the 13th century to the death of Timur in
1405, the nomads of central Asia made a last, stunning return to center stage
in world history. Mongol invasions ended or interrupted many of the great
empires of the postclassical period, while also extending the world network
that had increasingly defined the period. Under Chinggis Khan - who united his
own Mongol tribesmen and numerous nomadic neighbors into the mightiest war
machine the world had seen to that time - central Asia, northern China, and
eastern Persia were brought under Mongol rule. Under Chinggis Khan's sons and
grandsons, the rest of China, Tibet, Persia, Iraq, much of Asia Minor, and all
of southern Russia were added to the vast Mongol imperium. Though the empire
was divided between Chinggis Khan's sons after his death in 1227, the four
khanates or kingdoms -which emerged in the struggles for succession -dominated
most of Asia for the next one and one-half centuries. The Mongol conquests and
the empires they produced represented the most formidable nomadic challenge to
the growing global dominance of the sedentary peoples of the civilized cores
since the great nomadic migrations in the first centuries A.D. Except for
Timur's devastating but short-lived grab for power at the end of the 14th
century, nomadic peoples would never again mount a challenge as massive and
sweeping as that of the Mongols.
In most histories, the Mongol conquests have been depicted as a savage
assault by backward and barbaric peoples on many of the most ancient and
developed centers of human civilization. Much is made of the ferocity of
Mongol warriors in battle, their destruction of great cities, such as Baghdad,
in reprisal for resistance to Mongol armies, and their mass slaughters of
defeated enemies. Depending on the civilization from whose city walls a
historian recorded the coming of the Mongol "hordes," they were depicted as
the scourge of Islam, devils bent on the destruction of Christianity,
persecutors of the Buddhists, or defilers of the Confucian traditions of
China. Though they were indeed fierce fighters and capable of terrible acts of
retribution against those who dared to defy them, the Mongols' conquests
brought much more than death and devastation.
At the peak of their power, the domains of the Mongol khans, or rulers,
made up a vast realm in which once-hostile peoples lived together in peace and
virtually all religions were tolerated. From the Khanate of Persia in the west
to the empire of the fabled Kubilai Khan in the east, the law code first
promulgated by Chinggis Khan ordered human interaction. The result was an
important new stage in international contact. From eastern Europe to southern
China, merchants and travelers could move across the well-policed Mongol
domains without fear for their lives or property. The great swath of Mongol
territory that covered or connected most of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East
served as a bridge between the civilizations of the Eastern Hemisphere. The
caravans and embassies that crossed the Mongol lands transmitted new foods,
inventions, and ideas from one civilized pool to the others and from civilized
pools to the nomadic peoples who served as intermediaries. Like the Islamic
expansion that preceded it, the Mongol explosion did much to lay the
foundations for more human interaction on a global scale, extending and
intensifying the world network that had been building since the classical age.
This section will explore the sources of the Mongol drive for a world
empire and the course of Mongol expansion. Particular attention will be given
to the nomadic basis of the Mongol war machine and the long-standing patterns
of nomadic-sedentary interaction that shaped the character, direction, and
impact of Mongol expansion. After a discussion of the career and campaigns of
Chinggis Khan, separate sections of this chapter will deal with Mongol
conquest and rule in Russia and eastern Europe, the Middle East, and China.
The chapter will conclude with an assessment of the meaning of the Mongol
interlude for the development of civilization and the growth of cross-cultural
interaction on a global scale. In both their destructive and constructive
roles, the Mongols generated major changes within the framework of global
history.
The Mongol Empire Of Chinggis Khan
Mongol legends suggest that the ancient ancestors of the Mongols were
forest-dwelling hunters, and the hunt persisted as a central element in Mongol
culture. By the time the Mongols are first mentioned in the accounts of the
sedentary peoples, who traded with them and periodically felt the fury of
their lightning raids, most of them had adopted the life-style of the herding,
horse-riding nomads of the central Asian steppes. In fact, in most ways the
Mongols epitomized nomadic society and culture. Their survival depended on the
well-being of the herds of goats and sheep they drove from one pasture area to
another according to the cycle of the seasons. Their staple foods were the
meat and milk products provided by their herds, supplemented in most cases by
grain and vegetables gained through trade with sedentary farming peoples. They
also traded hides and dairy products for jewelry, weapons, and cloth
manufactured in urban centers. They dressed in sheepskins, made boots from
tanned sheep hides, and lived in round felt tents that were processed from
wool sheared from their animals. The tough little ponies they rode to round up
their herds, hunt wild animals, and make war, were equally essential to their
way of life. Both male and female Mongol children could ride as soon as they
were able to walk. Mongol warriors could literally ride for days on end,
sleeping and eating in the saddle. Ponies were the Mongols' most prized
possessions. Deprived of their horses on the harsh and vast steppes,
tribespeople could not survive long. Thus, horse stealing became a major
object of interclan and tribal raids and an offense that brought instant death
if the original owners caught up with the thieves.
Like the Arabs and other nomadic peoples we have encountered, the basic
unit of Mongol society was the tribe, which was divided into kin-related clans
whose members camped and herded together on a regular basis. When threatened
by external enemies or in preparation for raids on other nomads or invasions
of sedentary areas, clans and tribes could be combined in great
confederations. Depending on the skills of their leaders, these confederations
could be held together for months or even years. But when the threat had
passed or the raiding was done, clans and tribes invariably drifted back to
their own pasturelands and campsites. At all organizational levels leaders
were elected by the free males of the group. Though women exercised
considerable influence within the family and had the right to be heard in
tribal councils, males dominated positions of leadership. The elected leaders
normally exhibited the qualities and skills that were essential to survival in
the steppe environment where rash action or timid hesitation could lead to the
destruction of a leader's kinsmen and dependents.
Courage in battle, usually evidenced from youth by bravery in the hunt,
and the capacity to forge alliances and attract dependents were vital
leadership skills. A strong leader could quickly build up a large following of
chiefs from other clans and tribal groups. Some of these subordinates might be
defeated rivals who had been enslaved by the victorious chief, though often
the life-style of master and slave differed little. Should the leader grow old
and feeble or suffer severe reverses, his once-loyal subordinates would
quickly abandon him. He expected this to happen, and the subordinates felt no
remorse. Their survival and that of their dependents hinged on attaching
themselves to a strong tribal leader.
The Making Of A Great Warrior: The Early Career Of Chinggis Khan
Indo-European and then Turkic-speaking nomads had dominated the steppes
and posed the principal threat to Asian and European sedentary civilizations
in the early millennia of recorded history. But peoples speaking Mongolian
languages had enjoyed moments of power and actually carved out regional
kingdoms in north China in the 4th and 10th centuries A.D. In fact, in the
early 12th century, Chinggis Khan's great-grandfather, Kabul Khan, had led a
Mongol alliance that had won glory by defeating an army sent against them by
the Qin kingdom of north China. Soon after this victory, Kabul Khan became ill
and died, and his successors could neither defeat their nomadic enemies nor
hold the Mongol alliance together. Divided and beaten, the Mongols fell on
hard times.
Chinggis Khan, who as a youth was named Temujin, was born in the 1170s
into one of the splinter clans that fought for survival in the decades after
the death of Kabul Khan. Temujin's father was an able leader, who managed to
build up a decent following and negotiate a promise of marriage between his
eldest son and the daughter of a stronger Mongol chief. Just when the family
fortunes seemed to be on the upswing, Temujin's father was poisoned by the
agents of a rival nomadic group, according to Mongol accounts. Suddenly,
Temujin, who was still a teenager, was thrust into a position of leadership.
But most of the chiefs who had attached themselves to his father refused to
follow a mere boy, whose prospects of survival appeared to be slim.
In the months that followed, his much-reduced encampment was threatened
and finally attacked by a rival tribe. Temujin was taken prisoner in 1182,
locked into a wooden collar, and led in humiliation to the camp of his
enemies. After a daring midnight escape, Temujin rejoined his mother and
brothers and found refuge for his tiny band of followers deep in the
mountains. Facing extermination, Temujin did what any sensible nomad leader
would have done: he and his people joined the camp of a more powerful Mongol
chieftain, who had once been aided by Temujin's father. With the support of
this powerful leader, Temujin revenged the insults of the clan that had
enslaved him and another that had taken advantage of his weakness to raid his
camp for horses and women. These successes and Temujin's growing reputation as
a warrior and military commander soon won him allies and clan chiefs eager to
attach themselves to a leader with a promising future. Within a decade, the
youthful Temujin had defeated his Mongol rivals and routed the forces sent to
crush him by the Tartars and other nomadic peoples. In 1206, at a kuriltai, or
meeting of all of the Mongol chieftains, Temujin -renamed Chinggis Khan -was
elected the khaghan, or supreme ruler, of the Mongol tribes. United under a
strong leader, the Mongols prepared to launch a massive assault on an
unsuspecting world.
Building The Mongol War Machine
The men of the Mongol tribes that had elevated Chinggis Khan to
leadership were in many ways natural warriors. Trained from youth not only to
ride but also to hunt and fight, they were physically tough, mobile, and
accustomed to killing and death. They wielded a variety of weapons, including
lances, hatchets, and iron maces. None of their weapons was as demoralizing
for enemy forces as their powerful short bows. A Mongol warrior could fire a
quiver of arrows with stunning accuracy without breaking the stride of his
horse. He could hit enemy soldiers as distant as 400 yards (compared to a
range of 250 yards for the English longbow) while charging straight ahead,
ducking under the belly of his pony, or leaning over the horse's rump while
retreating from superior forces. The fact that the Mongol armies were entirely
cavalry meant that they possessed speed and a mobility that were demoralizing
to enemy forces. Leading two or three horses to use as remounts, Mongol
warriors could spend more than one week in the saddle and, when pressed, cover
80 or 90 miles per day. They could strike before their enemies had prepared
their defenses, hit unanticipated targets, retreat back to the steppes after
suffering temporary reverses, and then suddenly reappear in force.
To a people whose very life-style bred mobility, physical courage, and a
love of combat, Chinggis Khan and his many able subordinate commanders brought
organization, discipline, and unity of command. The old quarrels and vendettas
between clans and tribes were overridden by loyalty to the khaghan, and
energies once devoted to infighting were now directed toward conquest and
looting in the civilized centers that fringed the steppes on all sides. The
Mongol forces were divided into armies made up of basic fighting units called
tumens, consisting of 10,000 cavalrymen. Each tumen was further divided into
units of 1000, 100, and 10 warriors. Commanders at each level were responsible
for the training, arming, and discipline of the cavalrymen under their charge.
The tumens were also divided into heavy cavalry, which carried lances and wore
some metal armor, and light cavalry, which relied primarily on the bow and
arrow and leather helmets and body covering. Even more lightly armed and
protected were the scouting parties that rode ahead of Mongol armies and,
using flags and special signal fires, kept the main force apprised of the
enemy's movements.
Chinggis Khan also created a separate messenger force, whose bodies were
tightly bandaged to allow them to remain in the saddle for days, switching
from horse to horse to carry urgent messages between the khaghan and his
commanders. Military discipline had long been secured by personal ties between
commanders and ordinary soldiers. Mongol values, which made courage in battle
a prerequisite for male self-esteem, were also buttressed by a formal code
that dictated the immediate execution of a warrior who deserted his unit.
Chinggis Khan's swift executions left little doubt about the fate of traitors
to his own cause or turncoats who abandoned enemy commanders in his favor. His
generosity to brave foes was also legendary. The most famous of the latter, a
man named Jebe, nicknamed "the arrow," won the khaghan's affection and high
posts in the Mongol armies by standing his ground after his troops had been
routed and fearlessly shooting Chinggis Khan's horse out from under him.
A special unit supplied Mongol armies with excellent maps of the areas
they were to invade, based largely on information supplied by Chinggis Khan's
extensive network of spies and informers. New weapons, including a variety of
flaming and exploding arrows, gunpowder projectiles, and later bronze cannons,
were also devised for the Mongol forces. By the time his armies rode east and
west in search of plunder and conquest in the 2d decade of the 13th century,
Chinggis Khan's warriors were among the best armed and trained and the most
experienced, disciplined, and mobile soldiers in the world.
Conquest: The Mongol Empire Under Chinggis Khan
When he was proclaimed the khaghan in 1206, Temujin was probably not yet
40 years old. At that point, he was the supreme ruler of nearly one-half
million Mongol tribesmen and the overlord of one to two million more nomadic
tribesmen who had been defeated by his armies or had voluntarily allied
themselves with this promising young commander. But Chinggis Khan had much
greater ambitions. He once remarked that his greatest pleasure in life was
making war, defeating enemies, forcing ". . . their beloved [to] weep, riding
on their horses, embracing their wives and daughters." He came to see himself
and his sons as men marked for a special destiny; warriors born to conquer the
known world. In 1207, he set out to fulfill this ambition. His first campaigns
humbled the Tangut kingdom of Xi-Xia in northwest China, whose ruler was
forced to declare himself a vassal of the khaghan and pay a hefty tribute.
Next the Mongol armies attacked the much more powerful Qin Empire, which the
Manchu-related Jurchens had established a century earlier in north China.
In these campaigns, the Mongol armies were confronted for the first time
with large, fortified cities their adversaries assumed could easily withstand
the assaults of these uncouth tribesmen from the steppes. Indeed, at first the
Mongol invaders were thwarted by the intricate defensive works that the
Chinese had perfected over the centuries to deter nomadic incursions. But the
adaptive Mongols, with the help of captured Chinese artisans and military
commanders, soon devised a whole arsenal of siege weapons. These included
battering rams, catapults that hurled rocks and explosive balls, and bamboo
rockets that spread fire and fear in besieged towns.
Chinggis Khan and the early Mongol commanders had little regard for these
towns, whose inhabitants they regarded as soft and effete. Therefore, when
resistance was encountered, the Mongols adopted a policy of terrifying
retribution. Though the Mongols often spared the lives of famed scholars -whom
they employed as advisors -and artisans with particularly useful skills, towns
that fought back were usually sacked once they had been taken. The townspeople
were slaughtered or sold into slavery; their homes, palaces, mosques, and
temples were reduced to rubble. Towns that surrendered without a fight were
usually spared this fate, though they were required to pay tribute to their
Mongol conquerors as the price of their deliverance.
First Assault On The Islamic World; Conquest In China
Having established a foothold in north China and solidified his empire in
the steppes, Chinggis Khan sent his armies westward against the Kara-Khitai
Empire established by a Mongolian-speaking people a century earlier. Having
overwhelmed and annexed the Kara-Khitai, in 1219 Chinggis Khan sent envoys to
demand the submission of Muhammad Shah II, the Turkic ruler of the Khwarazm
Empire to the west. Outraged by the audacity of the still little-known Mongol
commander, one of Muhammad's subordinates had some of Chinggis Khan's later
envoys killed and sent the rest with shaved heads back to the khaghan. These
insults, of course, meant war, a war in which the Khwarazm were overwhelmed.
Their great cities fell to the new siege weapons and tactics the Mongols had
perfected in their north China campaigns. Their armies were repeatedly routed
in battles with the Mongol cavalry. Again and again, the Mongols used their
favorite battle tactic in these encounters. Cavalry was sent to attack the
enemy's main force. Feigning defeat, the cavalry retreated, drawing the
opposing forces out of formation in the hopes of a chance to slaughter the
fleeing Mongols. Once the enemy's pursuing horsemen had spread themselves over
the countryside, the main force of Mongol heavy cavalry, until then concealed,
attacked them in a devastating pincers formation.
Like the Russians, Hungarians, Chinese, and numerous other adversaries,
the Khwarazm never seemed to catch on to these well-executed ruses, and many a
proud and much larger army was destroyed in the Mongol trap. Within two years,
his once flourishing cities in ruin, his kingdom in Mongol hands, Muhammad
Shah II, having retreated across his empire, died on a desolate island near
the Caspian Sea. In addition to greatly enlarging his domains, Chinggis Khan's
victories meant that he could incorporate tens of thousands of Turkic horsemen
into his armies. With his forces greatly enlarged by these new recruits, he
once again turned eastward, where in the last years of his life his armies
destroyed the Xi-Xia kingdom and overran the Qin Empire of north China. By
1227, the year of his death, the Mongols ruled an empire that stretched from
eastern Persia to the North China Sea.
Life Under The Mongol Yoke
Despite their fury as warriors and the horrible destruction they could
unleash on those who resisted their demands for submission and tribute, the
Mongols proved remarkably astute and tolerant rulers. Chinggis Khan himself
set the standards in this regard, and most of these were followed by his more
able successors. He was a complex man. He was capable, as we have seen, of
gloating over the ruin of his enemies, but was also open to new ideas and
committed to building a world where the diverse peoples of his empire could
live together in peace. Though illiterate, Chinggis Khan was neither the
ignorant savage nor the cultureless vandal often depicted in the accounts of
civilized writers - usually those who had never met him. Once the conquered
peoples had been subdued, he took a keen interest in their arts and learning,
though he refused to live in their cities. Instead he established a new
capital at Karakorum on the steppes and summoned the wise and clever from all
parts of the empire to the lavish palace of tents with gilded pillars where he
lived with his wives, closest advisors, and personal bodyguards that now
numbered over a thousand of the best and most loyal troops.
At Karakorum, Chinggis Khan consulted with Confucian scholars about how
to rule China; with Muslim engineers about how to build siege weapons and
improve trade with the lands farther west; and with Daoist holy men, whom he
hoped could provide him with an elixir that would make him immortal. Though he
himself followed the shamanistic (focused on the propitiation of nature
spirits) beliefs of his ancestors, all religions were tolerated in his empire.
He was visited by Muslim mullahs, Buddhist and Daoist monks, and Christian
missionaries. The followers of these faiths, as well as smaller religious
communities, such as the Jews and Zoroastrians, worshipped without fear of
persecution throughout his empire.
Chinggis Khan and his advisors sought to establish the basis for lasting
peace and prosperity in his domains. Drawing on the advice and talents of both
Muslim and Chinese bureaucrats, an administrative framework was created. A
script was devised for the Mongolian language in order to facilitate record
keeping and the standardization of laws. Chinggis Khan promulgated a legal
code that was enforced by a special police force. Much of the code was aimed
at putting an end to the divisions and quarrels that had so long occupied the
Mongols. Grazing lands were systematically allotted to different tribes, and
harsh penalties were established for rustling livestock or stealing horses. On
the advice of his Chinese counselors, Chinggis Khan resisted the temptation to
turn the cultivated lands of north China into a vast grazing area, which of
course would have meant the destruction of tens of millions of peasants.
Instead he ordered that the farmers be regularly taxed to support his courts
and future military expeditions.
Above all, the Mongol conquests brought a peace to much of Asia that in
some areas persisted for generations. In the towns of the empire, handicraft
production and scholarship flourished and artistic creativity was allowed free
expression. Chinggis Khan and his successors actively promoted the growth of
trade and travelers by protecting the caravans that made their way across the
ancient Asian silk routes and by establishing rest stations for weary
merchants and fortified outposts for those harassed by bandits. One Muslim
historian wrote of the peoples within the domains of the khaghan that they
"enjoyed such a peace that a man might have journeyed from the land of sunrise
to the land of sunset with a golden platter upon his head without suffering
the least violence from anyone." Secure trade routes made for prosperous
merchants and wealthy, cosmopolitan cities. They also facilitated the spread
of foods such as sorghum, sugar, citrus fruits, and grapes; inventions such as
firearms, printing, and windmills; and techniques ranging from those involving
papermaking to those for improving irrigation from one civilization to
another. Paradoxically, Mongol expansion, which began as a "barbarian" orgy of
violence and destruction, had become a major force for economic and social
development and the enhancement of civilized life.
The Death Of Chinggis Khan And The Division Of The Empire
When the Mongols had moved west to attack Kara Khitai in 1219, support
was demanded from the vassal king of Xi-Xia. The Tangut ruler had impudently
responded that if the Mongols were not strong enough to win wars on their own,
they were best advised to refrain from attacking others. In 1226, his wars in
the west won, Chinggis Khan turned east with an army of 180,000 warriors to
punish the Tanguts and complete a conquest that he regretted having left
unfinished over a decade earlier. After routing a much larger Tangut army in a
battle fought on the frozen waters of the Yellow River, the Mongol armies
overran Xi-Xia, plundering and burning and mercilessly hunting down any Tangut
survivors. As his forces closed in on the Tangut capital and last refuge,
Chinggis Khan, who had been injured in a skirmish some months earlier, fell
grievously ill. After impressing upon his sons the dangers of quarreling among
themselves for the spoils of the empire, the khaghan died in August of 1227.
With one last outburst of Mongol wrath, this time directed against death
itself, his body was carried back to Mongolia for burial. The Mongol forces
escorting the funeral procession hunted down and killed every human and animal
in its path. As Chinggis Khan had instructed, his armies also treacherously
slaughtered the unarmed inhabitants of the Tangut capital after a truce and
surrender had been arranged.
The vast pasturelands the Mongols now controlled were divided between
Chinggis Khan's three remaining sons and Batu, a grandson and heir of the
khaghan's recently deceased son Jochi. Towns and cultivated areas like those
in north China and parts of Persia were considered the common property of the
Mongol ruling family. A kuriltai was convened at Karakorum, the Mongol
capital, to select a successor to the great conqueror. In accordance with
Chinggis Khan's preference, Ogedei, his third son, was elected grand khan.
Though not as capable a military leader as his brothers or nephews, Ogedei was
a crafty diplomat and deft manipulator, skills much needed if the ambitious
heads of the vast provinces of the empire were to be kept from each others'
throats.
For nearly a decade, Ogedei directed Mongol energies into further
campaigns and conquests. The areas that were targeted by this new round of
Mongol expansion paid the price for peace within the Mongol Empire. The fate
of the most important victims -Russia and eastern Europe, the Islamic
heartlands, and China -will be the focus of much of the rest of this chapter.
As we shall see, the Mongols were by no means finished with their efforts to
build a world empire and to alter the course of global history.
The Mongol Drive To The West
While in pursuit of the Khwarazm ruler, Muhammad Shah II, the Mongols had
made their first contacts with the rich kingdoms to the west of the steppe
heartlands of Chinggis Khan's empire. Raids of reconnaissance into Georgia and
across the Russian steppe convinced the Mongol commanders that the Christian
lands to the west were theirs for the taking. Russia and Europe were added to
their agenda for world conquest. The subjugation of these regions became the
project of the armies of the Golden Horde, which was named after the golden
tent of the early khans of the western sector of the Mongol Empire. The
territories of the Golden Horde, which covered much of what is today
south-central Russia, made up the four great khanates into which the Mongol
Empire had been divided at the time of Chinggis Khan's death. The khanate to
the south, called the Ilkhan Empire, claimed the task of completing the
conquest of the Muslim world that had begun with the invasion of the Khwarazm
domains. Though neither Europe nor the Islamic heartlands were ultimately
subdued, Mongol successes on the battlefield and the fury of their assaults
affected the history of the regions that came under attack, particularly
Russia and the Islamic world.
The Invasion Of Russia
In a very real sense the Mongol assault on Russia was a side campaign, a
chance to fine-tune the war machine and win a little booty while en route to
the real prize, western Europe. As we saw in Chapter 15, in the first half of
the 13th century when the Mongol warriors first descended, a more united
Russia had been divided into numerous petty kingdoms, centered on trading
cities such as Novgorod and Kiev. By this time Kiev, which had originally
dominated much of central Russia, had been in decline for some time. As a
result there was no paramount power to rally Russian forces against the
invaders. Despite the dire warnings spread by those who had witnessed the
crushing defeats suffered by the Georgians in the early 1220s, the princes of
Russia refused to cooperate. They preferred to fight alone and be routed
individually.
In 1236, Chinggis Khan's grandson Batu led a Mongol force of upwards of
120,000 cavalrymen into the Russian heartlands. From 1237 to 1238 and later in
1240, these "Tartars," as the Russian peoples called them, carried out the
only successful winter invasions in Russian history. In fact, the Mongols
preferred to fight in the winter. The frozen earth provided good footing for
their horses and frozen rivers gave them access rather than blocking the way
to their enemies. One after another, the Mongol armies defeated the often much
larger forces of local nomadic groups and the Russian princes. Cities such as
Rizan, Moscow, and Vladimir, which resisted the Mongol command to surrender,
were razed to the ground; their inhabitants were slaughtered or led into
slavery. As a contemporary Russian chronicler observed, "no eye remained to
weep for the dead." Just as it appeared that all of Russia would be ravaged by
the Mongols, whom the Russians compared to locusts, Batu's armies withdrew.
The largest cities, Novgorod and Kiev, appeared to have been spared. Russian
priesti thanked God; the Mongol commanders blamed the spring thaw, which
slowed the Mongol horsemen and raised the risk of defeat in the treacherous
mud.
Salvation yielded to further disasters when the Mongols returned in force
in the winter of 1240. In this second campaign, even the great walled city of
Kiev, which had reached a population of over 100,000 by the end of the 12th
century, fell. Enraged by Kievan resistance -its ruler had ordered the Mongol
envoys thrown from the city walls -the Mongols reduced the greatest city in
Russia to a smoldering ruin. The cathedral of Saint Sophia was spared, but the
rest of the city was systematically looted and destroyed, its inhabitants
smoked out and slaughtered. Novgorod again braced itself for the Mongol
onslaught. Again it was, according to the Russian chroniclers, "miraculously"
spared. In fact it was saved largely due to the willingness of its prince,
Alexander Nevskii, to submit, at least temporarily, to Mongol demands. In
addition, the Mongol armies were eager to move on to the main event, the
invasion of western Europe.
Russia In Bondage
The crushing victories of Batu's armies initiated nearly two and one-half
centuries of Mongol dominance in Russia. Russian princes were forced to submit
as vassals of the khan of the Golden Horde and to pay tribute or risk the
ravages of Mongol raiders. Mongol exactions fell particularly heavily on the
Russian peasantry, who had to yield up their crops and labor to both their own
princes and the Mongol overlords. Impoverished and ever fearful of the
lightning raids of Mongol marauders, the peasants fled to remote areas or
became, in effect, the serfs (see Chapter 16) of the Russian ruling class in
return for protection.
The decision on the part of many peasants to become the lifetime laborers
of the nobility resulted in a major change in the rural social structure of
Russia. Until the mid-19th century, the great majority of the population of
Russia would be tied to the lands they worked and bound to the tiny minority
of nobles who owned these great estates. Some Russian towns made profits on
the increased trade Mongol links made possible, and sometimes the gains
exceeded the tribute they paid to the Golden Horde. No town benefited from the
Mongol presence more than Moscow. Badly plundered and partially burned in the
early Mongol assaults, the city was gradually rebuilt and its ruling princes
steadily swallowed up nearby towns and surrounding villages. After 1328,
Moscow also profited from its status as the tribute collector for the Mongol
khans. Its princes not only used their position to fill their own coffers,
they annexed further towns as punishment for falling behind on the payment of
their tribute.
As Moscow grew in strength, the power of the Golden Horde declined.
Mongol religious toleration benefited both the Orthodox church and Moscow. The
Metropolitan, or head of the Orthodox church, was made the representative of
all the clergy in Russia, which did much to enhance the church's standing. The
choice of Moscow as the seat of the Orthodox leaders brought new sources of
wealth to its princes and buttressed Muscovite claims to be Russia's leading
city. In 1380, those claims received an additional boost when the princes of
Moscow shifted from being tribute collectors to being the defenders of Russia.
In alliance with other Russian vassals, they raised an army that defeated the
forces of the Golden Horde at the battle of Kulikova. Their victory and the
devastating blows Timur's attacks dealt the Golden Horde two decades later
effectively broke the Mongol hold over Russia. Mongol forces raided as late as
the 1450s, and the princes of Muscovy did not formally renounce their vassal
status until 1480. But from the end of the 14th century, Moscow was the center
of political power in Russia, and it was armies from Poland and Lithuania that
posed the main threat to Russian peace and prosperity.
Though much of the Mongolnimpact was negative, their conquest proved in a
number of ways a decisive turning point in Russian history. In addition to
their meaning for Moscow and the Orthodox church, Mongol contacts led to
changes in Russian military organization and tactics and the political style
of Russian rulers. Claims that the Tartars were responsible for Russian
despotism, either Tsarist or Stalinist, are clearly overstated. Still, the
Mongol example may have influenced the desire of Russian princes to centralize
their control and minimize the limitations placed on their power by the landed
nobility, the clergy, and wealthy merchants. By far the greatest effects of
Mongol rule, however, were those resulting from Russia's relative isolation
from Christian lands farther west. On the one hand, the Mongols protected a
divided and weak Russia from the attacks of much more powerful kingdoms such
as Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary as well as the "crusades" of militant
Christian orders like the Teutonic Knights, which were determined to stamp out
the Orthodox heresy. On the other hand, Mongol overlordship cut Russia off
from key transformations in western Europe that were inspired by the
Renaissance and led ultimately to the Reformation. The Orthodox clergy, of
course, would have had little use for these influences, but their absence
severely reduced the options available for Russian political, economic, and
intellectual development.
Mongol Incursions And The Retreat From Europe
Until news of the Mongol campaigns in Russia reached European peoples
such as the Germans and Hungarians farther west, Christian leaders had been
quite pleased by the rise of a new military power in central Asia. Rumors and
reports from Nestorian Christians, chafing under what they perceived as the
persecution of their Muslim overlords, convinced many in western Europe that
the Mongol Khan was none other than Prester John. Prester John was the name
given to a mythical, rich and powerful Christian monarch whose kingdom had
supposedly been cut off from Europe by the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th
centuries. Sometimes located in Africa, sometimes in central Asia, Prester
John loomed large in the European imagination as a potential ally who could
strike the Muslim enemy from the rear and join up with European Christians to
destroy their common adversary. The Mongol assault on the Muslim Khwarazm
Empire appeared to confirm the speculation that Chinggis Khan was indeed
Prester John.
The assault on Christian, though Orthodox, Russia made it clear that the
Mongol armies were neither the legions of Prester John nor more partial to the
Christians than any other people who stood in their way. The rulers of Europe
were nevertheless slow to realize the magnitude of the threat the Mongols
posed to western Christendom. When Mongol envoys, one of whom was an
Englishman, arrived at the court of King Bela of Hungary demanding that he
surrender a group of nomads who had fled to his domains after being beaten by
the Mongols in Russia, he contemptuously dismissed them and Batu's demand that
he submit to Mongol overlordship. Bela reasoned that he was the ruler of a
powerful kingdom, while the Mongols were just another ragtag band of nomads in
search of easy plunder. As had so often been the case in the past, his foolish
refusal to negotiate provided the Mongols with a pretext to invade. Their
ambition remained the conquest and pillage of all western Europe. That this
goal was clearly attainable was demonstrated by the sound drubbing they gave
to first the Hungarians in 1240 and then to a mixed force of Christian knights
led by the German ruler, King Henry of Silesia. In both battles, the Mongols
used the time-tested tactic of retreat and envelopment. In the first
engagement 70,000 Christian soldiers perished; in the second, 40,000 Europeans
died, many of them the elite of eastern European knighthood.
These victories left the Mongols free to raid and pillage from the
Adriatic Sea region in the south to Poland and the German states of the north.
It also left the rest of Europe open to Mongol conquest. Just as the kings and
clergy of the western portions of Christendom were beginning to fear the
worst, the Mongol forces disappeared. The death of the Khaghan Ogedei, in the
distant Mongol capital at Karakorum, forced Batu to withdraw in preparation
for the struggle for succession that was under way. The campaign for the
conquest of Europe was never resumed. Perhaps Batu was satisfied with the huge
empire of the Golden Horde that he ruled from his splendid new capital at
Sarai; most certainly the Mongols had found richer lands to plunder in the
following decades in the Muslim empires of the Middle East. Whatever the
reason, Europe was spared the full fury of the Mongol assault. Of the
civilizations that fringed the steppe homelands of the Mongols, only India
would be as fortunate.
The Mongol Assault On The Islamic Heartlands
After the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazm Empire, it was only a matter of
time before they struck westward against the far wealthier Muslim empires of
Mesopotamia and North Africa. The conquest of these areas became the main
project of Hulegu, another grandson of Chinggis Khan and the ruler of the
Ilkhan portions of the Mongol Empire. As we saw in Chapter 12, one of the key
results of Hulegu's assaults on the Muslim heartlands was the capture and
destruction of Baghdad in 1258. The murder of the Abbasid caliph, one of some
800,000 people who were reported to have been killed in Mongol retribution for
the city's resistance, brought an end to the dynasty that had ruled the core
regions of the Islamic world since the middle of the 8th century. A major
Mongol victory over the Seljuk Turks in 1243 also proved critical to the
future history of the region, because it opened up Asia Minor to conquest by a
different Turkic people, the Ottomans, who would be the next great power in
the Islamic heartlands.
The opening sieges of Hulegu's campaigns had also destroyed the
Assassins, who had posed a major threat to Sunni Muslims for centuries. The
hundreds of mountain fortresses of the sect were captured and destroyed. One
of these, Alamut, held out for three years despite the Mongol siege engines.
Finally, the leader of the sect was taken prisoner and sent to the khaghan at
Karakorum. Refused an audience, the last of the Assassins' commanders was
murdered by his captors.
Despite the removal of the Assassin menace, it is understandable that
Muslim historians treated the coming of the Mongols as one of the great
catastrophes in the history of Islam. The murder of the caliph and his family
left the faithful without a central authority; the sack of Baghdad and
numerous other cities from central Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean
devastated the focal points of Islamic civilization. The Mongols had also
severely crippled Muslim military strength, much to the delight of the
Christians, especially those like the Nestorians who lived in the Middle East.
Some Christians offered assistance in the form of information; others,
especially the Nestorians from inner Asia, served as commanders in Hulegu's
armies. One contemporary Muslim chronicler, Ibn al-Athir, found the
tribulations the Mongols had visited on his people so horrific that he
apologized to his readers for recounting them and wished that he had not been
born to witness them. He lamented that:
. . . in just one year they seized the most populous, the most beautiful,
and the best cultivated part of the earth whose inhabitants excelled in
character and urbanity. In the countries that have not yet been overrun
by them, everyone spends the night afraid that they may yet appear there,
too. . . . Thus, Islam and the Muslims were struck, at that time, by a
disaster such as no people had experienced before.
Given these reverses, one can imagine the relief the peoples of the
Muslim world felt when the Mongols were finally defeated in 1260 by the armies
of the Mameluk, or slave, dynasty of Egypt at Ain Jalut. Ironically, Baibars,
the commander of the Egyptian forces, and many of his lieutenants had been
enslaved by the Mongols some years earlier and sold in Egypt, where they rose
to power through military service. The Muslim victory was won with the rare
cooperation of the Christians, who allowed Baibars's forces to cross upopposed
through their much diminished, crusader territories in Palestine. Hulegu was
in central Asia, engaged in yet another succession struggle, when the battle
occurred. Upon his return, he was forced to reconsider his plans for conquest
of the entire Muslim world. The Mameluks were deeply entrenched and growing
stronger; Hulegu was threatened by his cousin Berke, the new khan of the
Golden Horde to the north, who had converted to Islam. After openly clashing
with Berke and learning of Baibars's overtures for an alliance with the Golden
Horde, Hulegu decided to settle for the sizeable kingdom he already ruled,
which stretched from the frontiers of Byzantium to the Oxus River in central
Asia.
The Mongol Impact On Europe And The Islamic World
Though much of what the Mongols wrought on their westward march was
destructive, some benefits were reaped from their forays into Europe and
conquests in Muslim areas. By example, they taught new ways of making war and
impressed on their Turkic and European enemies the effectiveness of gunpowder.
As we have seen, Mongol conquests facilitated trade between the civilizations
at each end of Eurasia, making possible the exchange of foods, tools, and
ideas on an unprecedented scale. The revived trade routes brought great wealth
to traders such as those from north Italy, who set up outposts in the eastern
Mediterranean, along the Black Sea coast, and as far east as the Caspian Sea.
Because the establishment of these trading empires by the Venetians and
Genoese provided precedents for the later drives for overseas expansion by
peoples such as the Portuguese and English, they are of special significance
in global history.
Perhaps the greatest long-term impact of the Mongol drive to the west was
indirect and unintended. In recent years a growing number of historians have
become convinced that the Mongol conquests played a key role in transmitting
the fleas that carried bubonic plague from central Asia to Europe and the
Middle East. The fleas may have hitched a ride on the livestock the Mongols
drove into the new pasturelands won by their conquests or on the rats who
nibbled the grain transported by merchants along the trading routes the Mongol
rulers fostered between east and west. Whatever the exact connection, the
Mongol armies unknowingly paved the way for the spread of the dreaded Black
Death across the steppes to the Islamic heartlands and from there to most of
Europe in the mid-14th century. In so doing, they unleashed possibly the most
fatal epidemic in all human history. From mortality rates higher than half the
population in some areas of Europe and the Middle East to the economic and
social adjustments that the plague forced wherever it spread, this accidental,
but devastating, side effect of the Mongol conquests influenced the course of
civilized development in Eurasia for centuries to come.
The Mongol Interlude In Chinese History
Soon after Ogedei was elected as the great khan, the Mongol advance into
China was resumed. Having conquered Xi-Xia, the Mongol commanders now turned
to the Qin Empire to the east, which had proven the most resistant of all the
kingdoms assaulted under the leadership of Chinggis Khan. During the Mongol
campaign, the Chinese Song ruler to the south, seeing a chance to weaken the
long-standing "barbarian" threat from the northeast, made the mistake of
allowing Mongol armies to pass through his lands to attack the Qin and even
sent troops to help with the siege of the Qin capital. By 1234 the Qin had
been overwhelmed, and the buffer between the Song and the Mongols had been all
but destroyed. But the Mongols still did not occupy most of the Qin domains or
attempt to govern them directly. The Song rulers then betrayed the Mongol
alliance by attempting to garrison some of the cities they had jointly
besieged. The Mongols returned in force, making short work of the rump state
of Qin and sweeping onward into the Song-ruled south.
In the campaigns against the Song, the Mongol forces were directed by
Kubilai Khan, one of the grandsons of Chinggis Khan and a man who would play a
pivotal role in Chinese history for the next half century. Even under a
decadent dynasty that had long neglected its defenses, south China proved one
of the toughest areas for the Mongols to conquer. From 1235 to 1279, the
Mongols were continually on the march; they fought battle after battle and
besieged seemingly innumerable, well-fortified Chinese cities. In 1260,
Kubilai assumed the title of the great khan, much to the chagrin of his
cousins who ruled other parts of the empire. A decade later in 1271, on the
recommendation of Chinese advisors, he changed the name of the Mongol dynasty
to the Sinicized Yuan. Though he was still nearly a decade away from fully
defeating the last-ditch efforts of Confucian advisors and Chinese generals to
save the Song dynasty, Kubilai ruled most of China, and he now set about the
task of establishing Mongol control on a more permanent basis.
Kubilai Khan And The Mongol Presence In China
Kubilai had long been fascinated by Chinese civilization. Even before he
had begun the conquest of the Song Empire, Kubilai had surrounded himself with
Chinese advisors, some Buddhist, others Daoist or Confucian. His capital at
Tatu in the north (present-day Beijing) was built on the site occupied by
earlier dynasties, and he introduced Chinese rituals and classical music into
his own court. But he did not then, nor later when he had conquered the south,
listen to the pleas of his Confucian advisors to reestablish the civil service
exams, which had been discontinued by the Qin rulers. Thus, from the outset,
Kubilai was ambivalent in his attitude toward the ancient civilization that
was slipping piecemeal under Mongol control. He was determined to preserve
Mongol separateness and to keep the scholar-gentry from gaining too much power
-hence the refusal to reintroduce the exams. But he also adopted a Chinese
life-style, was anxious to follow Chinese precedents, and became a major
patron of the arts and a promoter of Chinese culture in general. Despite his
efforts to preserve Mongol identity, Kubilai's choice of China as the site of
his capital and his deep involvement in Chinese affairs signaled, in effect,
the passing of an overarching command of the far-flung Mongol Empire. From the
late 13th century onward, the main divisions of the empire were ruled and
governed as virtually independent realms.
The Mongol Elite
Kubilai promulgated many laws to preserve the distinction between Mongol
and Chinese. He forbade Chinese scholars to learn the Mongol script, which was
used for records and correspondence at the upper levels of the imperial
government. Mongols were forbidden to marry ethnic Chinese, and only women
from nomadic families were selected for the imperial harem. Even friendships
between the two peoples were discouraged. Mongol religious ceremonies and
customs were retained, and a tent encampment in the traditional Mongol style
was set up in the imperial city, even though Kubilai usually resided in a
Chinese-style palace. Kubilai and his successors continued to enjoy key Mongol
pastimes such as the hunt, and Mongol military forces remained separate from
Chinese.
In the Yuan era, a new social structure was established in China with the
Mongols on top and their central Asian nomadic and Muslim allies right below
them in the hierarchy. These two groups occupied most of the offices at the
highest levels of the bureaucracy. Beneath them came the north Chinese and
below them the ethnic Chinese and the minority peoples of the south. Though
ethnic Chinese from both north and south ran the Yuan bureaucracy at the
regional and local levels, they could ordinarily exercise power at the top
only as advisors to the Mongols or other nomadic officials. At all levels,
their activities were scrutinized by Mongol functionaries from an enlarged and
much-strengthened censors' bureau.
Gender And The Cultural Barriers
Mongol women in particular remained aloof from Chinese culture, at least
Chinese culture in its Confucian guise. Like their counterparts in the Tang
era, some of the wives of the emperors exercised considerable political power
at the court. Perhaps the most notable in this regard was Kubilai's wife,
Chabi, who not only gave him critical advice on how to counter the schemes of
his ambitious brother but also promoted the interests of the Buddhists in the
highest circles of government. At one point, she intervened to frustrate a
plan to turn cultivated lands near the capital into pasturelands for the
Mongols' ponies. After the conquest of the Qin, Chabi convinced Kubilai that
lenient treatment of the survivors of the defeated royal family was the best
way to reconcile the peoples of north China to Mongol rule.
It was not just the imperial consorts who enjoyed a remarkable degree of
influence and freedom compared to their Chinese counterparts. Mongol women
refused to adopt the practice of foot-binding that so constricted the
activities of Chinese women. They retained their rights to property and
control within the household and the capacity to move freely about town and
countryside. No more striking evidence can be found than accounts that
describe Mongol women riding to the hunt, both with their husbands and at the
head of their own hunting parties. The daughter of one of Kubilai's cousins
even went to war, and she refused to marry until one of her many suitors
proved able to throw her in a wrestling match. Unfortunately, the Mongol era
was too brief to reverse the trends that were lowering the position of Chinese
women. As neo- Confucianism gained ground under Kubilai's successors, the
arguments for the confinement of women multiplied.
Mongol Adoption Of Chinese Ways
Though Kubilai Khan was much more taken with Chinese culture and eager to
adopt Chinese ways than most of his Mongol followers, those who settled down
in China invariably became Sinified to varying degrees. This was perhaps
inevitable when one considers that at most there were only a few hundred
thousand Mongols residing in the midst of a Chinese population of perhaps 90
million. Much to the dismay of Mongol purists fresh from the steppes, Kubilai
modeled much at his capital and court at Tatu after Chinese precedents. His
palace was laid out like those of Chinese emperors and made up primarily of
Chinese-style buildings, despite the tents in the parklands and altars for
sacrifices to the Mongol deities. The upper levels of the bureaucracy were
organized and run, minus the civil service exams, along Tang-Song lines.
Kubilai put the empire on the Chinese calendar, listened to Chinese music, and
offered sacrifices to his ancestors at a special temple in the imperial city.
He also summoned the best Confucian scholars to give his son a proper Chinese
education, a move that perhaps more than any other demonstrated his
determination to civilize his Mongol followers.
READING 2
Mongol Tolerance And Foreign Cultural Influences
Like Chinggis Khan and a number of other Mongol overlords, Kubilai had an
unbounded curiosity and very cosmopolitan tastes. His generous patronage drew
to his splendid court scholars, artists, artisans, and office seekers from
many lands. Some of the most favored came from regional Muslim kingdoms to the
east that had also come under Mongol rule. Muslims were included in the second
highest social grouping, just beneath the Mongols themselves. Persians and
Turks were admitted to the inner circle of Kubilai's administrators and
advisors. Muslims designed and supervised the building of his Chinese-style
imperial city and proposed new systems for the more efficient collection of
taxes. Persian astronomers imported more advanced Middle Eastern instruments
for celestial observations, corrected the Chinese calendar, and made some of
the most accurate maps that the Chinese had ever seen. Muslim doctors ran the
imperial hospitals and added translations of 36 volumes on Muslim medicine to
the imperial library. Though some of Kubilai's most powerful advisors were
infamous for their corrupt ways, most served him well and did much to advance
Chinese learning and technology through the transmission of texts,
instruments, and weapons from throughout the Muslim world.
In addition to the Muslims, Kubilai welcomed travelers and emissaries
from many foreign lands to his court. Like his grandfather, Kubilai displayed
a strong interest in all religions and insisted on toleration in his domains.
Buddhists, Nestorian Christians, Daoists and Latin Christians made their way
to his court. The most renowned of the latter were members of the Polo family
from Venice in northern Italy, who traveled extensively in the Mongol Empire
in the middle of the 13th century. Marco Polo's account of Kubilai Khan's
court and empire is perhaps the most famous travel account written by a
European. Marco accepted fantastic tales of grotesques and strange customs,
and he may have cribbed parts of his account from other sources. Still, his
descriptions of the palaces, cities, and wealth of Kubilai's empire enhanced
European interest in the "Indies" and helped to inspire efforts by navigators
like Columbus to find a water route to these fabled lands.
Social Policies And Scholar-Gentry Resistance
Kubilai's efforts to promote Mongol adaptation to Chinese culture were
overshadowed in the long run by countervailing measures to preserve Mongol
separateness. The ethnic Chinese, particularly in the south, who made up the
vast majority of his subjects were never really reconciled to Mongsl rule.
Despite Kubilai's cultivation of Confucian rituals and his extensive
employment of Chinese bureaucrats, most of the scholar-gentry regarded the
Mongol overlord and his successors as uncouthhbarbarians whose policies
endangered Chinese traditions. As it was intended to do, Kubilai's refusal to
reinstate the examination route to administrative office prevented Confucian
scholars from dominating politics. The favoritism he showed Mongol and other
foreign officials further alienated the scholar-gentry.
To add insult to injury, Kubilai went to great lengths to bolster the
position of the artisan classes, who had never enjoyed high standing, and the
merchants, whom the Confucian thinkers had long dismissed as parasites. The
Mongols had from the outset shown great regard for artisans, often sparing
them the slaughter meted out to their fellow city dwellers because of their
useful skills. During the Yuan period in China, merchants also prospered and
commerce boomed, partly owing to Mongol efforts to improve transportation and
expand the supply of paper money. The Mongols developed -with amazing speed
for a people who had no prior experience with seafaring -a substantial navy
that played a major role in the conquest of the Song Empire. After the
conquest of China was completed, the great Mongol war fleets were used to put
down pirates, who threatened river and overseas commerce, and, toward the end
of Kubilai's reign, for overseas expeditions of conquest and exploration.
Thus, during the Yuan period, artisans and traders enjoyed a level of
government backing and social status that was never again equaled in Chinese
civilization.
Ironically, despite the Mongol's ingrained suspicion of cities and
sedentary life-styles, both flourished in the Yuan era. The urban expansion
begun under the Tang and Song dynasties continued, and the Mongol elite soon
became addicted to the diversions of urban life. Though traditional Chinese
artistic endeavors, such as poetry and essay writing, languished under the
Mongols in comparison with their flowering in the Tang-Song eras, popular
entertainments, particularly musical dramas, flourished. Perhaps the most
famous of Chinese dramatic works, The Romance of the West Chamber, was written
in the Yuan period, and dozens of major playwrights wrote for the court, the
rising merchant classes, and the well-heeled Mongol elite. Actors and
actresses, who had long been relegated by the Confucian scholars to the
despised status of "mean people," achieved celebrity and some measure of
social esteem. All of this rankled the scholar-gentry, who bided their time,
waiting for the chance to restore Confucian decorum and what they believed to
be the proper social hierarchy for a civilized people like the Chinese.
Initially at least, Kubilai Khan pursued policies toward one social
group, the peasants, that the scholarly class would have heartily approved. He
issued edicts forbidding Mongol cavalrymen from turning croplands into pasture
and restored the granary system for famine relief that had been badly
neglected in the late Song. Kubilai also sought to reduce peasant tax and
corvee-labor burdens, partly by redirecting peasant payments from local
non-official tax farmers directly to government officials. He and his advisors
also formulated a revolutionary plan to establish elementary education at the
village level. Though the level of learning they envisioned was rudimentary,
such a project - if it had been enacted - would have provided a major
challenge to the elite-centric educational system that hitherto had dominated
Chinese civilization.
If the scholar-gentry were upset over reports of the impending
educational reforms, the peasants grew disgruntled about a further rural
project that was put into effect. All peasant households were organized into
50-unit clusters that were intended to enhance peasant cooperation, improve
farming techniques, and increase productivity. Because each cluster was
supervised by state officials and each household was responsible for reporting
misdeeds by members of the others, the scheme was also clearly a device for
asserting state control. Because in practice its control functions were
favored at the expense of its potential for agrarian improvement, the
reorganization was increasingly resented by the peasants, whose discontent had
much to do with the rapid demise of the Yuan dynasty.
The Fall Of The House Of Yuan
Historians often remark on the seeming contradiction between the military
prowess of the Mongol conquerors and the short life of the dynasty they
established in China. Kubilai Khan's long reign encompassed a good portion of
the nine decades that the Mongols ruled all of China. Already by the end of
his reign, the dynasty was showing signs of weakening. Song loyalists raised
the standard of revolt in the south, and popular hostility toward the foreign
overlords was expressed more and more openly. The Mongol aura of military
invincibility was badly tarnished by Kubilai's rebuffs at the hands of the
military lords of Japan and the failure of the expeditions that he sent to
punish them, first in 1274 and a much larger effort that was mounted in 1280.
The defeats suffered by Mongol forces engaged in similar expeditions to
Vietnam and Java in this same period further undermined the Mongols' standing.
Kubilai's dissolute life-style in his later years, partly brought on by
the death of his favorite wife Chabi and, five years later, the death of his
favorite son, set the tone for a general softening of the Mongol ruling class
as a whole. Kubilai's successors lacked his capacity for leadership and cared
little for the tedium of day-to-day administrative tasks. Many of the Muslim
and Chinese functionaries to whom they entrusted the finances of the empire
enriched themselves through flagrant graft and corruption. This greatly
angered the hard-pressed peasantry who had to bear the burden of rising taxes
and demands for forced labor. The scholar-gentry played on this discontent by
calling on the people to rise up and overthrow the "barbarian" usurpers.
By the 1350s, the signs of dynastic decline were apparent. Banditry and
piracy were widespread, and the government's forces were too feeble to curb
them. Famines hit many regions and spawned local uprisings that grew to engulf
large portions of the empire. Secret religious sects, such as the White Lotus
Society, were formed that were dedicated to the overthrow of the dynasty.
Their leaders' claims that they had magical powers to heal their followers and
to confound their enemies helped prompt further peasant resistance against the
Mongols. As had been the case in the past, rebel leaders quarreled and fought
with each other. For a time chaos reigned as the Yuan regime dissolved, and
those Mongols who could escape the fury ofpthe mob retreated back into central
Asia. The restoration of peace and order came from an unexpected quarter.
Rather than a regional military commander or aristocratic lord, a man from an
impoverished peasant family, Ju Yuanzhang, emerged to found the Ming dynasty
that would rule China for most of the next three centuries.
Analysis And Conclusion
Analysis: The Eclipse Of The Nomadic War Machine
As the shock waves of the Mongol and Timurid explosions amply
demonstrated, nomadic incursions into the civilized cores have had an impact
on global history that far exceeds what one would expect, given the relatively
small numbers of nomadic peoples and the limited resources of the regions they
inhabited. From the time of the great Indo-European migrations in the
formative epoch of civilized development in the 3d and 2d millennia b.c. (see
Chapters 2, 3 and 4) through the classical and postclassical eras, nomadic
peoples periodically emerged from their steppe, prairie, and desert fringe
homelands to invade, often build empires, and settle in the sedentary zones of
Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. Their intrusions have significantly altered
political history by destroying existing polities and even -as in the case of
Assyria and Harappa -whole civilizations. They have also generated major
population movements, sparked social upheavals, and facilitated critical
cultural and economic exchanges across civilizations. As the Mongols' stunning
successes in the 13th century illustrate, the capacity of nomadic peoples to
break through the defenses of the much more populous civilized zones and to
establish control over much richer and more sophisticated peoples arose
primarily from the advantages the nomads possessed in waging war.
A reservoir of battle-ready warriors and mobility have from ancient times
proven the key to success for expansion-minded nomads. Harsh environments and
ongoing intertribal and interclan conflicts for survival within them produced
tough, resourceful fighters who could live off the land on the march and who
regarded combat as an integral part of their lives. The horses and camels on
which pastoral peoples in Eurasia and Sudanic Africa relied gave them a degree
of mobility that confounded the sedentary peoples who sought to ward off their
incursions. The mounted warriors of nomadic armies possessed the advantages of
speed, surprise, and superior intelligence, which was gathered by mounted
reconnaissance patrols. The most successful nomadic invaders, such as the
Mongols, also proved willing to experiment with and adapt to technological
innovations with military applications. Some of these, such as the stirrup and
various sorts of harnesses, were devised by the nomads themselves. Others,
such as gunpowder and the siege engines -both Muslim and Chinese -that the
Mongols used to smash the defenses of walled towns, were borrowed from
sedentary peoples and adapted to the nomads' fighting machines.
Aside from the considerable military advantages that accrued from nomadic
life-styles and social organization, their successes in war owed much to the
weaknesses of their adversaries in the sedentary, civilized zones. The great
empires that provided the main defense for agricultural peoples against
nomadic incursions were even in the best circumstances diverse and
overextended polities, in which imperial control -and protection -diminished
steadily as one moved away from the capital and core provinces. Imperial
boundaries were usually fluid, and the outer provinces were consistently
vulnerable to nomadic raids, if not conquest.
Classical and postclassical empires, such as the Egyptian and Han and the
Abbasid, Byzantine, and Song enjoyed great advantages over the nomads in terms
of the populations and resources they controlled. But their armies were,
almost without exception, too slow, too low on firepower, and too poorly
trained to resist large and well-organized forces of nomadic intruders. In
times of dynastic strength in the sedentary zones, well-defended fortress
systems and ingenious weapons -such as the cross bow, which could be fairly
easily mastered by the peasant conscripts -proved quite effective against
nomadic incursions. Nonetheless, even the strongest dynasties depended heavily
on "protection" payments to nomad leaders and the divisions among the nomadic
peoples on their borders for their security. And even the strongest sedentary
empires were periodically shaken by nomadic raids into the outer provinces.
When the empires weakened or when large numbers of nomads were united under
able leaders, such as Muhammad and his successors or Chinggis Khan, nomadic
assaults made a shambles of sedentary armies and fortifications.
In the centuries after the Mongol and Timurid explosions, which in many
ways represented the apex of nomadic power and influence on world history,
this age-old pattern of interaction between nomads and farming town-dwelling
peoples was fundamentally transformed. This transformation resulted in the
growing ability of sedentary peoples to first resist and then dominate nomadic
peoples, and it marks a major watershed in the history of the human community.
Some of the causes of the shift were immediate and specific. The most critical
of these was the devastation wrought by the Black Death on the nomads of
Central Asia in the 14th century. Though the epidemic proved catastrophic for
large portions of the civilized zones as well, it dealt the relatively sparse
nomadic populations a blow from which they took centuries to recover. The more
rapid demographic -relating to population trends -resurgence of the sedentary
peoples greatly increased their already considerable numerical advantage over
the nomadic peoples in the following centuries. The combination of this
growing numerical advantage, which in earlier epochs the nomads had often been
able to overcome, with key political and economic shifts and technological
innovations proved critical in bringing about the decline of the nomadic war
machine.
In the centuries after the Mongol conquests, the rulers of sedentary
states found increasingly effective ways of centralizing their political power
and mobilizing the manpower and resources of their domains for war. Some
improvements in this regard were made by the rulers of China and the empires
of the Islamic belt. But the sovereigns of the nascent states of western
Europe surpassed all other potentates in advances in these spheres. Stronger
control and better organization allowed a growing share of steadily increasing
national wealth to be channeled toward military ends. The competing rulers of
Europe also invested heavily in technological innovations with military
applications, from improved metalworking techniques to the development of ever
more potent gunpowder and firearms. From the 15th and 16th centuries, the
discipline and training of European armies also improved markedly. With pikes,
muskets, fire drill, and trained commanders, European armies were more than a
match for the massed nomad cavalry that had so long terrorized sedentary
peoples.
With the introduction early in the 17th century of light, mobile field
artillery into European armies, the nomads' retreat began. States such as
Russia, which had centralized power on the western European model, as well as
the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Qing in China, which
had shared many of the armament advances of the Europeans, moved steadily into
the steppe and desert heartlands of the horse and camel nomads. Each followed
a conscious policy of settling part of its rapidly growing peasant population
in the areas taken from the nomads. Thus, nomadic populations were not only
brought under the direct rule of sedentary empires, their pasturelands were
plowed and planted wherever the soil and water supply permitted.
These trends suggest that the nomadic war machine had been in decline
long before the new wave of innovation that ushered in the Industrial
Revolution in the 18th century. But that process sealed its fate. Railways and
repeating rifles allowed sedentary peoples to penetrate even the most wild and
remote of the nomadic refuges and subdue even the most determined and fierce
of nomadic warriors, from the Plains Indians of North America to the bedouin
of the Sahara and Arabia. The periodic nomadic incursions into the sedentary
zones, which had reoccurred sporadically for millennia, had come to an end.
Conclusion: The Mongol Legacy and an Aftershock: The Brief Ride of Timur
[See Timur The Lame: In 1398 Timur-i Lang's central Asian armies left Delhi
completely destroyed and India politically fragmented.]
As we have seen, the Mongol impact on the many areas where they raided
and conquered varied considerably. The sedentary peoples on the farms and in
the cities, who experienced the fury of their assaults and the burden of their
tribute exactions, understandably emphasized the destructive side of the
Mongol legacy. But the Mongol campaigns also decisively influenced the course
of human history in the ways they altered warfare and the political
repercussions they generated in invaded areas. Mongol armies, for example,
provided openings for the rise of Moscow as the central force in the creation
of a Russian state, they put an end to Abbasid and Seljuk power, and they
opened the way for the Mameluks and the Ottomans. The Mongol Empire promoted
trade and important exchanges among civilizations, though, as the spread of
the black death illustrates, the latter were not always beneficial. Mongol
rule also brought stable, at times quite effective, government and religious
toleration to peoples over much of Asia. On balance, it can be argued that the
cost of these by-products of Mongol expansion was far too high. However high
the price, there can be little doubt that the Mongol interlude changed the
course of human history in major ways. It represented the most significant
involvement of nomadic peoples in the development of civilization since the
transition to sedentary agriculture in the Neolithic epoch.
Just as the peoples of Eurasia had begun to recover from the upheavals
caused by Mongol expansion, a second nomadic explosion from central Asia
plunged them again into fear and despair. This time the nomads in question
were Turks, not Mongols, and their leader, Timur-i Lang or Timur the Lame, was
from a noble landowning clan, not a tribal, herding background. Timur's was a
decidedly divided personality. On the one hand, he was a highly cultured
individual who delighted in the fine arts, lush gardens, and splendid
architecture, and who could spend days conversing with great scholars such as
the Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. On the other, he was a ruthless conqueror,
apparently indifferent to human suffering and capable of commanding his troops
to commit atrocities on a scale that would not be matched in the human
experience until the 20th century. Beginning in the 1360s, his armies moved
out from his base at Samarkand to conquests in Persia, the Fertile Crescent,
India, and southern Russia.
If his empire did not begin to compare with that of the Mongols in size,
he outdid them in the ferocity of his campaigns. In fact, Timur is remembered
for little more than truly barbaric destruction -for the pyramids of skulls he
built with the heads of the tens of thousands of people slaughtered after the
city of Aleppo in Asia Minor was taken, or the thousands of prisoners he had
massacred as a warning to the citizens of Delhi in north India not to resist
his armies. In the face of this wanton slcughter, the fact that he spared
artisans and scientists to embellish his capital city at Samarkand counts for
little. Unlike the Mongols, his rule brought neither increased trade and
significant cross-cultural exchanges nor internal peace. Mercifully, his reign
was as brief as it was violent. After his death in 1405, his empire was pulled
apart by his warring commanders and old enemies anxious for revenge. With his
passing, the last great challenge of the steppe nomads to the civilizations of
Eurasia came to an end.
Reading 3
The Mongols
Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
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Rise of Mongol Power
About 1162, there was born to a noble clan of the Mongols a child named Temuchin. He
grew in prestige and power the way any charismatic individual did in that society, by
success in raiding and clan warfare. It was common for charismatic leaders among
Asiatic nomads to assemble short-lived confederations as large in area as the United
States, only to have them disintegrate when the ruler died or lost his power. By 1206
Temuchin had done what no other tribal leader had ever done before: assemble all the
Mongol tribes under a single ruler. At a ceremony in that year he was given the title Khan
of Khans and the honorific name by which he is better known to history - Genghis Khan.
What separates Genghis Khan (1162-1227) from all his predecessors is that Genghis
extended his authority over a vast region and created institutions to perpetuate Mongol
power.
China has historically existed in one of three patterns: a unified whole when the central
government was powerful, at other times division into northern and southern kingdoms,
and occasional periods of disintegration and civil war, called Warring States periods.
When Genghis Khan came to power, China was divided into a northern Kin Dynasty and
the southern Sung Dynasty. The Mongols invaded the Kin realm and raided it and Korea
from 1211 to 1214 before the Kin surrendered and agreed to pay tribute.
In 1218, the event took place that would change Genghis' realm from just another
nomadic confederation to a world empire. A caravan traveling from Mongol lands to the
Persian Empire was stopped by the governor of a Persian frontier province in modern
Uzbekistan. Suspecting, probably correctly, that the caravan included Mongol spies (the
Mongols were voracious intelligence gatherers), he ordered the caravan massacred and its
goods seized. To the Mongols, ambassadors and caravans under safe-conduct were
inviolate, and this violation was unforgivable. Genghis sent ambassadors to the Shah of
Persia demanding that the offending governor be turned over. To the Shah, ruler of a
populous empire of a million square miles, this request seemed as preposterous as it
would seem to us for the President of Haiti to demand that the President of the United
States turn over the governor of Florida. The Shah humiliated the Mongol emissaries and
put them to death, another unforgivable offense to the Mongols.
Genghis declared war, and although the Mongols took many rich cities with frightful
bloodshed, they had barely touched the frontiers of the vast Persian Empire. However,
Genghis made good use of the Mongol passion for accurate intelligence; he knew that the
Shah's Empire was fragmented and filled with ethnic and religious groups who were held
in check only by force. If the demand to turn over the offending governor was bold, what
followed next was all but incredible: Genghis ordered two of his generals to hunt down
the Shah in his own empire. To use the modern analogy above, imagine that the President
of Haiti, having been refused, sends troops to fight their way across the United States to
capture the President of the United States. Imagine further that they actually do it. The
Mongols obliterated resistance when they encountered it but bypassed areas that offered
none. The word soon got out that the Shah was the target, and that interfering with the
pursuit was certain death. The Shah was soon in full flight for his life and barely made
the Caspian Sea ahead of the Mongols. There, on an island, he died with only a few loyal
followers, so poor they could not even afford a burial shroud. Mopping up operations
continued until 1223. Intrigued by stories of the Caspian being landlocked, the Mongols
sent a reconnaissance in force around the sea on a two-year journey (1222-1224). The
Mongols carved a bloody track across Armenia and Georgia, and for the first time Europe
learned of the Mongols.
The Mongol conquest of Persia had an interesting effect on Europe. There had long been
a rumor of a great Christian King of the East, Prester John. The attack on Persia was
thought to be the start of Prester John's campaign to help Europe destroy Islam. The
rumors, interestingly enough, had a slender basis in fact. About 500 A.D. an aberrant
Christian sect called Nestorianism was suppressed in the Byzantine Empire. (Orthodox
Christianity holds that Christ was simultaneously human and divine; Nestorians believed
Christ had two distinct personalities. If this seems subtle and irrelevant, welcome to the
Middle Ages. It mattered to them.) Many Nestorians took refuge in Persia and from there
diffused far across Asia. Many of the Mongols were technically Nestorian Christians,
although their Christian beliefs were heavily mingled with other belief systems, and
many Mongols saw no contradiction in being both Nestorians and adherents of other
religions.
The Mongols were sometimes called the Tatars, which is actually a corruption of the
Chinese term for one of the Mongol peoples. In Roman mythology, however, Tartarus
was the Roman equivalent of Hell. Thus it's not surprising that Europeans equated the
two and soon began calling the Mongols Tartars, the people from Tartarus. (The tartar on
your teeth and the cream of tartar in your cupboard come from an Arabic word for a type
of resin and have no connection, in case you were wondering.)
Why the Mongols Succeeded
Mongol battle tactics were an outgrowth of their natural lifestyle. Between their
nomadism and their traditional clan warfare, they received constant practice in riding and
archery. Unlike the cumbersome European armies of the time, the Mongols traveled very
light and demonstrated extraordinary endurance, living off the land and often spending
several days at a time in the saddle.
Once they launched their conquests, they demonstrated remarkable ability to coordinate
armies separated by great distances, using dispatch riders to communicate across
hundreds of miles of unfamiliar terrain. Their mobility - up to 100 miles a day - was
unheard of by armies of the time. The Mongol combination of mobility and
communication was probably not equaled again until World War II. Time and again we
read of the Mongols performing feats that would not be matched until the Twentieth
Century; it's as if Erwin Rommel and George Patton fell through a crack in space-time
and came out in the Thirteenth Century.
Mongol tactics were innovative. A favorite ruse was to open a hole in their lines and
allow panicked enemy soldiers to flee. After wiping out the disciplined troops who
remained, the Mongols hunted down the stragglers. A similar ruse was to put up a stiff
fight, then retreat and lead pursuers into an ambush. The Mongols were extremely
ruthless in battle but displayed extraordinary military discipline. When a Mongol general
violated orders and sacked a city promised to another chief, Genghis Khan ordered him to
step down and serve as a common soldier in his own army, which he did, falling soon
afterward in battle. Almost alone of the world's armies of the time, the Mongols could be
ordered not to pillage a city and would obey; contrast the Crusader sack of Jerusalem in
1099. Although originally nomads, the Mongols were very pragmatic about adopting
useful innovations and readily assimilated advanced siege technology. And they were
superb and voracious gatherers and users of military intelligence.
Mongol rule in conquered territories had two faces. Resistance and rebellion was
countered by ruthless annihilation, but Mongol rule was remarkably benevolent when the
populace was cooperative. Conquered areas were generally left under native governors
(China was the exception; there the Mongols tended to use outsiders whenever possible).
Religious tolerance was important in consolidating rule and gaining the support of
minorities oppressed by Moslems. The administration was commonly more benign than
pre-Mongol government. In the conquest of Persia, these strategies amounted to "Resist,
and you die; cooperate, and you will be better off." This attitude wasn't entirely restricted
to the Mongols; the prevailing rule of war was that a besieged city could obtain surrender
terms, but if the city resisted and forced the issue to the bitter end, it would bear the
consequences.
Mongol Values
Genghis Khan's value statement
Some of the Mongol tribes were literate, so we have written collections of the history and
traditions of the Mongols, as well as accounts by Persian and Chinese chroniclers. One of
the most telling is Genghis Khan's purported value statement. During a respite from his
campaigns, he once asked some friends what the greatest pleasure was. After they
variously answered hunting, falconry, or archery, Genghis is reputed to have said:
"The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him.
To ride their horses and take away their possessions. To see the faces of those who were
dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters in his arms"
Or to paraphrase it in the bluntest possible modern terms: "To kill people, take their
property, see and enjoy the pain you have caused their families, and rape their women as
a final gesture of power."
These remarks have significance far beyond Mongol history. We often suppose war or
crime could be eliminated through social reform and forget (more often deny) that some
people enjoy subjugating others, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Leona
Helmsley, the "Queen of Mean", once fired an employee on Christmas Eve. Did she
forget it was Christmas? Not likely. She enjoyed causing the man and his family extra
pain by firing him on Christmas Eve. Saddam Hussein once forced an officer, under
threat of death, to divorce his wife so Saddam could marry her. Did he really want the
woman? Only temporarily at most - his real thrill was in humiliating the officer and his
wife. The idea that people enjoy hurting others is horrifying, even more so the idea that
some people freely choose it without the usual modern rationalizations of abuse or
poverty.
Many people deal with these issues by simple denial, by believing that with enough
equality, no violent cartoons or spanking, and perhaps a vegan diet, we can eliminate
cruelty from the world. Genghis' value statement suggests, however, that there will
always be those who enjoy hurting others; that we will always need police and armies.
And it does no good to say that normal, healthy people don't have such values. Hitler,
Stalin, and Idi Amin weren't normal or healthy; until we can guarantee that nobody has
such values, we will need to protect ourselves against such people.
Positive qualities of the Mongols
One of the fascinating paradoxes of the Mongols is that they combined appalling
disregard for human life with steadfast adherence to noble values. Even their harshest
detractors commented on their physical courage, endurance, discipline and obedience to
their own laws. Women in Mongol society enjoyed a high status and rights that were rare
for that time and much later.
One of the most salient characteristics of the Mongols was a strict sense of honor and
loyalty, and respect for these qualities in others, even opponents. When Temuchin was
still struggling for power, and at a low point in his fortunes, he was wounded in a
skirmish. While riding away, he and his band were overtaken by a lone horseman, who
rode up and announced that he had fired the arrow that had wounded Temuchin.
Temuchin could kill him if he chose, but if not, he would become Temuchin's loyal
follower. Temuchin commented on the man's courage and integrity, accepted the offer,
and conferred on him the name Jebei, The Arrow. It was a good choice. Jebei became one
of Genghis Khan's greatest generals, led the invasion of Persia, and led the great
exploratory raid around the Caspian Sea.
In another example, Ye-Leiu Chu-Tsai was a court official in Peking and was captured
when the Mongols conquered the city in 1213. His family was part of the Liao Dynasty,
which had only recently been overthrown by the Kin Dynasty. Genghis Khan remarked
that he should be glad the Mongols had avenged his family, to which Ye-Leiu Chu-Tsai
replied that he could not rejoice in the defeat of the Emperor he had pledged to serve.
Genghis Kahn, impressed by this loyalty to a defeated Emperor, made him an adviser.
Ye-Leiu Chu-Tsai dissuaded Genghis Khan from invading India in 1218 (one can only
imagine the carnage had the Mongols invaded India). He also dissuaded Genghis'
successor Mongke from a genocidal plan to massacre much of the population of China.
Author Michael Prawdin remarks "If we reckon the importance of a statesman by the
number of human lives he saves from destruction, Ye-Leiu Chu-Tsai was certainly one of
the greatest statesmen the world has ever known." He acquired enemies, but his
association with Genghis Khan made him untouchable, even after Genghis' death. Only
after Ye-Leiu Chu-Tsai died about 1240 did his enemies dare to act. He was accused of
embezzlement. A search of his effects showed that in years in the center of Mongol
power, with daily access to the most powerful conquerers on the planet, he had amassed
no personal wealth.
Consider the moral dilemmas of a good man in the service of a brutal conqueror. Ye-Leiu
Chu-Tsai must certainly have seen and heard of many things that repelled him to the core.
Outright opposition would be suicide - worse yet, it would have been ineffective. On the
other hand, preserving our own lives to be able to help others can very easily degenerate
into a rationalization for cowardice. Navigating between the two extremes requires both
physical courage to stand up in the face of overwhelming power, and moral courage to
face relentlessly our own tendency to rationalize and to question our own motives
constantly.
The Mongols in Europe
Following the conquest of Persia, Genghis turned his attention to some not-yet-conquered
lands closer to home, and to the final subjugation of Kin China. When Genghis died in
1227 his son Ogadai was chosen Khan. The Mongols invaded Russia in 1236, eventually
conquering all but the northern forest fringes. In the process, a tribe called the Kumans
fled west into Hungary. The Hungarians allowed them to stay if they accepted baptism, a
requirement the desperate Kumans willingly accepted. The Mongols considered all
nomadic peoples their rightful subjects and demanded that King Bela return the Kumans
to Mongol control. When he refused, the Mongols attacked in 1241.
Bela prepared as well as any European ruler could, but he was no match for the Mongols.
He blocked the mountain passes in the Carpathians with his best troops and hurried back
to Buda (In those days Budapest was two cities, Buda west of the Danube and Pest to the
east) to convene parliament. He was hardly there when a messenger arrived with the
news that the mountain passes had been overrun; three days later Mongol raiders were
outside Buda, having covered 300 miles through hostile territory in three days. In a few
months the Mongols had smashed all military opposition in Poland and the Balkans and
were regrouping to push west. Given this pace and their performance in Persia, they
could probably have overrun Europe in a year. But just as they were regrouping, a
messenger came with the news of the death of the Khan. Genghis Khan had made a law,
to ensure the permanence of his dynasty, that all his descendants, wherever they may be,
must return to Karakoram to elect a new Khan. The Mongols broke off the invasion,
never to return. This is surely one of the most important but least-known turning points in
history.
In What If?, a collection of essays on alternative military history, Cecilia Holland pictures
the likely result of a Mongol thrust into Western Europe. She pictures a massive raid
rather than a complete occupation; nevertheless, the picture she paints is chilling. Driving
across the North German plain, the same route Cold War planners pictured for a Soviet
invasion, the Mongols would have made use of expert reconnaissance to target plunder
and grazing land. They would have sacked Belgium and Holland, destroying the
embryonic financial centers of Europe. They would have turned south into France,
destroying Paris and with it the revival of ancient philosophy that it would have hosted a
few decades later. Perhaps they would have crossed the Alps and ravaged Italy,
destroying the other birthplaces of the Renaissance. In his foreword to the piece, editor
Robert Cowley says "The Dark Ages were pure light compared to what could have
happened..."
Mongols in the Middle East
By about 1250 the Mongol empire had split into three semi-independent realms: China
and Mongolia, Persia and Russia (the Khanate of the Golden Horde). Although in theory
they were subject to the Khan in Mongolia, in practice they were fully independent. In
1255 the Mongol rulers of Persia went to war against the Caliph, invading Syria and
Palestine. In 1258 they captured Baghdad, destroyed the city and killed the Caliph.
Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by a
canal network thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual
centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from
which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more
suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of
Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of
Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of
the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to
restore them.
The westward advance of the Mongols was halted at one of the decisive battlefields of
history, Ayn Jalut, near Nazareth in Israel, in 1260. Here Turkish and Egyptian forces
routed the Mongols, preventing an attack on Egypt and North Africa. Significantly, the
Golden Horde Mongols of Russia, allied with the Turks, supported the Egyptians as well.
For the first time since Genghis Khan, one Mongol group opposed another in war.
Final Mongol Expansion
Between 1267 and 1279 the Mongols completed the final conquest of China. The
amazing element of the conquest is that the Mongols first invaded Yunnan and Sichuan in
southwestern China, outflanking China to the west. In 1279 and again in 1281 they made
attempts to invade Japan. Both times they found themselves up against a foe as
determined as they were. Both times the Mongols were unable to expand their beachhead
and the Japanese were unable to drive them out. And both times the issue was decided
when a typhoon wrecked the Mongol fleets. These miraculous events gave rise to the
notion of "Kamikaze" or "divine wind", the term applied 650 years later to the suicide
bombers who attempted to stem the U.S. advance across the Pacific in World War II. The
Mongols made a number of forays against Southeast Asia and Indonesia, but, thwarted by
unsuitable terrain, distance, and waning energy, these expeditions were unsuccessful.
Many of them were punitive expeditions or intended to suppress piracy rather than
serious invasion attempts.
Pax Tartarica
Intelligence Gatherers
In the aftermath of the Mongol blitzkrieg through the Balkans, the first priority of Eastern
Europe was to find out who these people were, where they came from, and what they
were going to do next. The Pope selected two envoys. One was John of Plano Carpini,
selected because he was familiar with the trade routes to Russia. At sixty years old, fat,
and in poor health, he seems an unlikely candidate for one of the most heroic diplomatic
missions ever carried out. In 1245, he traveled to Kiev, thence to the Mongol camp on the
Volga. Upon leaving Kiev, he wrote that he literally did not know if he was going to life
or death. When the Mongols discovered he was an emissary, they dispatched him to
Mongolia on a journey taking five months, often spending days at a time in the saddle.
He traveled 5000 miles through territory totally unknown to Europeans. He earned the
respect of the Mongols and completed his mission successfully. His report was accurate
and detailed, and correctly diagnosed the Mongol military threat. After 700 years, it is
still one of our most valuable historical insights into this era. One could hardly ask more
of an agent.
Carpini stands in stark contrast to another papal envoy, Ezzelino, whose arrogance made
his mission a complete failure. Ezzelino was dispatched to the Middle East, where it
would seem the well-established trade routes would make his mission easier. But
Ezzelino's plan was simply to find the first Mongol official he could, deliver a message
from the Pope, and get back to Rome. When asked what tribute he was bringing, Ezzelino
haughtily replied that the Pope did not give tribute, he received. This was a complete joke
to the Mongols, who had superbly accurate intelligence about Europe and who knew
perfectly well that the Pope's domains were insignificant compared to the vastnesses the
Mongols ruled. They seriously considered killing the entire party on the grounds that they
were too preposterous to be real emissaries, but finally yielded to Mongol discipline and
sent them onward. So Ezzelino, to his horror, found himself being packed off to
Mongolia, from whence he finally returned having impressed nobody, accomplished
nothing, and learned nothing.
Marco Polo
On the heels of these first emissaries came other missionaries like William of Rubruck
(1253-55), and traders like brothers Maffeo and Niccolo Polo (1266). On their return to
Venice, they invited eighteen-year old Marco to join them. Marco was bright and on the
two-year journey learned the four official languages of the Mongol realm. In keeping
with the Mongol tactic of using outsiders for sensitive duties in China, Marco and his
father and uncle traveled all over China on missions for the Khan. In the process they
acquired enemies, and, sensing that the Khan was soon to die, began looking for a means
of leaving. It finally came when they were dispatched to escort a Chinese princess to
marry an Indian prince. Upon arriving in India, they learned that the Khan had died.
The Polos arrived back in Venice in 1291. According to legend, they were initially denied
entrance to their own home, since nobody recognized them. In an incident that, if it's not
true, ought to be, the Polos were said to have celebrated their return with a gala banquet.
At each course they took off progressively more costly clothes and gave them to the
servants. At the final course they reappeared in the tattered rags they wore on their return
to Venice, slit the linings, and a flood of gems poured out.
There matters might have ended, if Venice had not gone to war with Genoa. Marco was
captured in 1298, and, while waiting to be ransomed, passed the time by telling traveler's
tales to his fellow POW's. One of them, a bookseller named Rusticiano of Pisa,
recognized a best-seller when he heard it and wrote the stories down, publishing them as
Livre des Diversites et Marveilles du Monde (Book of Diversities and Marvels of the
World). Rusticiano, of course, had to have scribes write the book by hand - this is before
printing.
The book was an instant sensation, too fabulous to believe and too beguiling not to. On
his deathbed in 1323, Marco was urged to recant his tales for the good of his soul and
retorted that he had not told half of what he actually saw. And if he described fantastic
things like the roc, that could carry off an elephant in its talons, he described many things
we now know are accurate. One of the things that was widely cited as a disproof of his
tales was his story of seeing the Sun on his right as he sailed from China to India, yet
that's exactly what he would see in the tropics in Northern Hemisphere summer. (Marco
is probably the first recorded European to cross the Equator.) He describes stones used
for fuel (coal) and cloth that will not burn (asbestos). He describes tribes in the far north
that see months of darkness in the winter - an accurate account of life above the Arctic
Circle.
From Europe to China
Interestingly enough, it wasn't the fables that aroused suspicions of lying, but the ordinary
things. Europeans could believe in rocs and tribes of one-eyed men; they couldn't believe
in the endless list of country after country, full of ordinary people, with China at the far
end, bigger than Europe, with larger and cleaner cities, ships larger than anything in
Europe, and money made of paper.
But the stakes were too high to ignore the possibility that Marco's tales might be true, and
people went to see. The Mongol pacification and unification of a vast area had made it
possible for the first time to travel safely from Europe to China. By 1340 trade between
Europe and China was so continuous that Francesco Pegolotti wrote La Practica della
Mercatura (The Practice of Trade), one of the first travel guidebooks. Pegolotti describes
what to buy and sell on each leg of the journey, where to find guides, translators and
housekeepers, and hammers away on the still-incredible fact that travelers can get a piece
of paper for their goods in Persia and redeem it for something valuable in China. In the
early 1300's there were two dozen recorded diplomatic missions between Europe and
China in both directions, and Roman Catholic archbishops presiding over congregations
on the East China Sea. Mongol ambassadors came to Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Valencia,
and London.
This incredible window of trans-Eurasian contact lasted only a few decades but its impact
was profound. Gunpowder, the compass, a siege machine called the trebuchet, possibly
the concept of the clock escapement, and the concept of printing came to Europe. Even
more important, perhaps, was the broadening of European horizons. Even the earliest
visitors to Mongolia found Europeans already there, caught up and swept along in the
tides of war. Nobody ever wrote their amazing stories down, but below the level of the
Marco Polos were huge numbers of Europeans for whom China was no longer a myth but
a place.
Aftermath of the Mongol Invasions
Kublai Khan was the last great Mongol Khan. After him came a succession of weak and
increasingly assimilated rulers. Peasant revolts broke out and eventually became
widespread enough to topple the government. The Mongols reverted to their traditional
role on the periphery of China with one exception: now the Chinese army knew how to
fight Mongol style. This time the Chinese pursued them into Mongolia and destroyed the
Mongol capital at Karakoram. Also the Chinese introduced Tibetan Lamaism, with its
emphasis on celibacy and pacifism, as a means of subduing the Mongols. Never again
would the Mongols threaten China. The Mongol, or Yuan Dynasty was over; the Ming
Dynasty had begun. The Ming Dynasty was a golden age of Chinese culture but also an
isolationist period. The Chinese expelled foreigners and the land route to China closed in
1368.
Successor kingdoms of the Mongols played a role in Asian history for centuries after. If
China was no longer Mongol, Central Asia, Russia and Persia still were. Timur the Lame,
or Tamerlane (1336-1405) briefly created a huge Mongol empire from the Middle East to
India. In 1526, the Mongol Babar founded an empire, the Mogul (Mongol) Empire, that
covered much of present Afghanistan and Pakistan. His successor Akbar (ruled 15561605) conquered India. Mogul rule in India lasted until 1857. The term "mogul" has
come to mean any extremely powerful person.
The Mongol subjugation of Russia was brutal and humiliating and contributed greatly to
that sense of tragedy that so deeply imbues Russian culture and art. Finally, though, the
Russian czars, by marriage and conquest, eventually assumed some of the Mongol titles.
The amazingly rapid and uneventful Russian expansion to the Pacific in the 1600's may
have been facilitated by the Russian czars being seen as the legitimate successors of the
khans. In Mongol society, subordination to a powerful chief was not seen as subjection
but as sharing in his power. The last surviving remnant of the once vast Khanate of the
Golden Horde lingered in the Crimea until 1783, when it was absorbed by Russia.
However, the Crimean Tartars remained a distinct ethnic group until many of them were
deported to Siberia by Stalin during the 1930's and 1940's.
References
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Chambers, James. 1985; The Devil's horsemen : the Mongol invasion of Europe
New York : Atheneum, 190 p.
Prawdin, Michael, 1967, The Mongol Empire, MacMillan, Free Press, 582 p.
Edwards, Mike, 1996; Genghis Khan, National Geographic, v. 190, no. 6,
December 1996, p. 2-37.
Edwards, Mike, 1997; The Great Khans, National Geographic, v. 191, no. 2,
February 1997, p. 2-35. This and the above are generally good articles marred by
a couple of inclusions of revisionist junk scholarship. For example, Genghis didn't
massacre cities because a modern historian "doesn't think he'd waste the time",
etc.
Cowley, Robert, ed., 1999, What If?, Putnam, 395 p. Cecelia Holland's essay, The
Death That Saved Europe, is on pages 93-106. An otherwise excellent essay is
marred by two inexplicable errors. She says that after the Caliph was killed by the
Mongols in 1258, the caliphate was never restored (not true - it endured until
1920), and places the battle of Ayn Jalut in 1284, 25 years late.
Rachewiltz, Igor de. 1971. Papal envoys to the great khans, Stanford, Calif.,
Stanford University Press, 230 p.
Howorth, Henry Hoyle, Sir, 1876. History of the Mongols, from the 9th to the
19th century. 4 vols. London, Longmans, Green, and Co.
Rubruquis, William de, The journey of William of Rubruck to the eastern parts of
the world, 1253-55, as narrated by himself, with two accounts of the earlier
journey of John of Pian de Carpine. Nendeln, Liechtenstein, Kraus Reprint, 1967.
304 p.
Genghis Khan's Value Statement
The original source of this quote is hard to track. Howorth (1876, p. 404) quotes it and
attributes it to an early 19th century history in French by Baron d'Ohsson. The possibility
it's a fabrication can't be wholly ruled out. The actions and values of Leona Helmsley,
Saddam Hussein, etc., can't be dismissed quite so casually.
Reading 4
“Women of the Mongol Court” by Morris Rossabi
These edited notes were taken from a lecture by Morris Rossabi,
presented as part of the lecture series in conjunction with Mongolia:
The Legacy of Chinggis Khan, an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum.
This material includes reasons for successful Mongol expansion, the role of Mongol
women during the conquest, and the significance of the Mongol conquest in world
history. It is good to keep in mind that modern Mongolia is three times the size of France
and has a population of 2.2 million people. Professor Rossabi teaches at Queens College
and Columbia University and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of World History.
He reads thirteen langauges and does research in nine of them. These notes were
transcribed by Heidi Roupp from his lecture. Inaccuracies are hers, not Professor
Rossabi's.
The most important accomplishment of Chinggis Khan was uniting the Mongols not
so much by conquest but by bringing together Mongols who were scattered throughout
the country in the desert of the south, in the steppe lands of Central Mongolia, and in the
forested and mountainous regions along the northern frontier.
How were the Mongols able to establish the largest contiguous land
empire in world history?
The Mongol Empire stretched from Korea and the Pacific all the way over to Georgia,
Armenia, and Hungry. How were the Mongols able to establish such an empire with a
population of 200,000 when China alone had a population of 100 million? The Mongols
united at a time when disunity prevailed throughout Asia. As Chinggis Khan started his
invasions, China was disunited, fragmented, and relatively weak. Similarly Central Asia
was fragmented into a series of khanates and city states. In the Middle East, the Abbasid
dynasty that ruled from Baghdad for five centuries was also declining. Southern Russia
was a series of city states. There was no central government controlling the area. In a
sense the Mongols were successful because there was a power vacuum in most of these
regions.
The Mongols had other advantages. The Mongols had a powerful military force based
on the horse. They had the mobility to initiate full scale attacks, invasions, and hit and
run raids. If they met a formidable enemy, they could retreat quickly. Another factor that
led to their success was that the Mongols never had any intention of creating an empire.
Each one of Chinggis Khan's discrete attacks was based on specific circumstances such
as trade disputes or the treatment of Mongols or Mongol merchants. One of his first
campaigns was directed at Yanjing (modern Beijing) in northern China. It was one of his
greatest successes. In 1215 he laid siege to Yanjing, the capital of the Jin Dynasty, and
succeeded in taking it. But instead of capitalizing on that victory to control northern
China, when he got what he wanted, he simply went back to Mongolia. He barreled
through Central Asia in a period of five or six years because of a dispute over trade.
When he had conquered the whole territory, instead of going further west, he returned to
Mongolia. Chinggis Khan did not have any vision of becoming a world khan.
Why did the Mongols leave Mongolia in the first place and head both
south and west if they had no conception of world domination?
First the Mongols as nomadic peoples were dependent on trade with sedentary folk.
The Mongols and other nomadic peoples had a fragile economy. They never accumulated
a surplus because they couldn't carry a surplus. If their animals got diseased or killed or if
the animals couldn't get grass because of a bad winter, the Mongols had no reserves. So
they depended on trade with the Chinese to get grain and other products they needed. The
Mongols didn't have much of an artisan class in thiis initial period. The Mongols needed
trade to acquire the products made by artisans. The Chinese, on the other hand, didn't
need things the Mongols provided so there was an inequitable economic relationship. In
1200 A.D. the dynasty that controlled Northern China reduced trade with the Mongols.
The Mongols had to attack to survive.
The second explanation has to do with the climate. In 1974 a group of historical
climatologists determined that from 1180 to 1290 the mean annual temperature of
Mongols declined, not a lot, but enough that the growing season was reduced. Less grass
forced the Mongols to move. At that point Chinggis Khan began organizing the tribes.
This was probably his greatest accomplishment. It is almost impossible to unite nomads
because the optimal size of nomadic groups is a tribal unit. A tribe is relatively small to
allow groups to find grass for their animals. It is very difficult to persuade tribes to come
into a supratribal group, a confederation, large enough to pose a challenge to a sedentary
civilization. Chinggis Khan was able to do that. In 1206 all of Mongolia was under his
rule. By the end of his life in 1227 he had conquered a limited territory. He was not the
great conqueror but he fostered the Mongol Empire. It is really the second and third
generations who expanded Mongol holdings.
How did women play a role in Mongol invasions and expansion?
In a nomadic society each member of the society was critical to the survival of the
group. Another explanation for Mongol success is that women played a very important
role in the economy, they took care of the animals if need be. The Mongols had total
male mobility for warfare. This made the Mongols a more daunting force than they might
have been. Women also played a role in the military. Many women who actually took
part in battle were mentioned in Mongol, Chinese, and Persian chronicles. Women were
trained for the miliatry. Mongol women had rights and privileges that were not accorded
to most East Asian women. Mongol women had the right to own property and to divorce.
Although we don't know about ordinary Mongol women, we do know about prominent
Mongol women among the elite. They were mentioned repeatedly in Mongol, Chinese,
and European chronicles of the 13th century.
Sorghaghtani Beki
Probably the most famous of these women was Kublai Khan's mother, Chinggis
Khan's daughter-in-law, Sorghaghtani Beki. She is mentioned in so many sources as one
of the great figures of the 13th century that we are assured that she was as remarkable as
she is portrayed. European missionaries who visited the Mongols in the middle of the
13th century remarked that she was the most renowned of the Mongols. Persians wrote
about her. A Middle Eastern physician wrote that "if I were to see among the race of
women another who is so remarkable a woman as this, I would say that the race of
women is superior to the race of men.
She set the stage for all four of her sons to become khans. Although she herself was
illerate, she recognized that her sons had to be educated. Each one learned a different
language that the Mongols needed in administering the vast domain that they had
conquered. Although she was a Nestorian Christian, she recognized that if the Mongols
were to administer this vast empire that they had subjugated, that one of the ways of
doing so was to ingratiate themselves to the clergy of these various religions. So she and
her sons protected and provided support for each of the religions within the Mongol
domains. She supported Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucianists. She introduced her son
Kublai to the ideas of Confucian scholars to help him understand and be prepared to rule
China. Her third contribution to Mongol rule was that she recognized that pure
exploitation of subjected peoples would make no sense. Ravaging the economy of the
conquered territories would ultimately be self defeating. Instead of turning China into one
big pastureland, she supported the Chinese peasantry. If the Mongols bolstered the local
economy, eventually that would lead to increased production and increased tax
collections. Each of her sons followed the same philosophy. Religious toleration, support
of the religions, support of the indigenous economy, and literacy--all proved crucial to
her son Kublai, the man who really bridged the transition form nomadic steppe conquest
to governance of the domains the Mongols had conquered.
Kublai identified with the Chinese. He realized he would have to make concessions to
the Chinese in order to rule China. There was no way for the Mongols to succeed on their
own. 100 million people can't be ruled with a couple of tens of thousands Mongols.
Mongols had no experience collecting taxes. In order to get that support from the
Chinese, he began to act like a typical Chinese emperior. In the 1260's he began to restore
Confucian rituals to the court. He moved the capital from Mongolia into China. He was
responsible for selecting the site of Beijing as the site for the center of the Mongolian
Empire. He patronized painting and painters in the Chinese tradition and supported
Chinese drama. Chinese theatre went through a tremendous cultural efflorescence during
Kublai Khan's era.
Chabi
In all of these efforts he was helped by his wife Chabi who played as important a rule
as his mother had done. Chabi supported Tibetan monks who began converting the
Mongol elite to Tibetan Buddhism. When Kublai conquered southern China, Chabi was
influential in preventing revenge. She took measures to maintin the Song imperial family,
to provide them with funds and a palace, not to enslave them or kill them. She too played
a critical role in Mongol rule.
Khutulun
One other extraordinary woman in Kublai Khan's era was Kublai's niece Khutulun.
She relished the military life and loved combat. She even impressed Marco Polo who
described her as so strong and brave that in all of her father's army no man could out do
her in feats of strength. Her parents were a little concerned when she didn't marry by the
age of 22 or 23. They were constantly beseeching her to enter into a marriage
arrangement. She said she would only consent if a prospective suitor bested her in a
contest of physical strength. She agreed to accept any challenge as long as the young man
gambled 100 horses for the chance to beat her. Within a short time she accumulated about
10,000 horses. Finally a very handsome, confident, skillful young prince arrived at the
court to challenge her. He was so confident of victory that he gambled a thousand horses
rather than just the 100 she demanded. He bet he could beat her in a wrestling match. The
night before the contest, Khutulun's parents implored their daughter to let herself be
vanquished. But she would have none of that. She said that if she were vanquished in a
fair contest, she would gladly be his wife but otherwise she wouldn't do it. So on the day
of the wrestling match, the contestants appeared pretty evenly matched. The combatants
grappled for quite a time. Then in a sudden movement, she flipped the prince over and
won the contest. The prince took off and left the 1000 horses behind. She actually never
did marry. She accompanied her father on all of his compaigns.
While some of the stories may be hyperbolic, what they are telling us is that women in
the elite were confident, were not about to be bowled over by men, and played an
important role in Mongol society. There is so much emphasis on women playing military,
political, and economic roles in this period that we're fairly sure this stretched beyond the
elite woman. It trickled down to the ordinary women as well. Interestingly enough by the
14th century, there are no more Mongol women playing roles as leaders. They become
increasingly acculturated. In the next generation after Kublai Khan, the daughters and
granddaughter of Kublai Khan are no longer as prominent. They began accepting some of
the restraints imposed on Chinese women. In that sense, in that sense alone, the Mongols
were very much influenced by China.
What was the significance of the Mongol Conquest in world history?
The Mongols brought the East and West together. For the first time the Europeans
were in touch with East Asia. Not just Marco Polo but many Genoese and Venetian
merchants as well as Persian astronomers and doctors came to Chna. In fact, four Persian
hospitals were started in Beijing in the 13th century. The exchange of textiles and artisans
influenced the art and culture of all Asia. The tremendous flow of ideas, of products, of
people that occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries is the most important contribution the
Mongols made.
READING 5
The Cause for Mongolia’s Rapid Imperial Expansion
In both its history and its present, the vast stretch of land encompassing the cross-section between
the European and Asian continents may be characterized as infinitely splintered. A history in the Middle
East, in the lands occupied by the former Soviet Union, in Northern and Peninsular Asia and in Central
Asia, of battling tribal factions, regions dominated by warlords and dynasties established by family lineage
is marked with few examples of true unification, and even these would be won by hard-line and oppressive
tactics. In the intercession between the seemingly impossible diplomacy needed to bring a consolidation of
power and the military might required to carry out this consolidation, the Mongolian empire would
establish the most rapid and far reaching centralization of authority seen either to that point or since in
Eurasia. This accomplishment, at the start of the 13th century, would be illustrative of the primacy of strong
Mongolian central leadership with a deeply instilled understanding of the need for strong alliance and the
fast disbandment of threats to authority.
The land known as Mongolia today had historically been a hotbed for tribal conflict. Its regions
and resources had been divided historically along lines maintained by warring clans. More, its relationship
with such regional leaders as China would have a considerable impact on the outlook for many Mongolian
tribes. This, some historians believe, would be a central factor in the collective need which would incline a
fundamental shift by many toward unification. It is not uncommon for the eventual alignment toward
imperial expansion to be attributed to “the attempt by Mongolia's neighbors in north and northwest China
to reduce the amount of trade with the Mongols.” (AFE, 1) For the many groups subsisting in Mongolia,
priorities had previously rested on familial lines of loyalty rather than on any sense of ethnic unity, political
identification or ambition for geographical expansion. Economic imperative would be a considerable
catalyst to a change in the intra-regional diplomatic outlook. “During the early thirteenth century . . .
Chinggiss Khan (Sometimes spelled ‘Genghis Khan’) forged the various Mongol tribes into a powerful
alliance that built the largest empire the world has ever seen.” (Part IV, 4) By adhering to a strategy known
as Steppes Diplomacy, so named as the policy approach believed most likely to yield any sort of chance at
power centralization in the very diffuse Steppes region of Eurasia, Genghis Khan was uniquely successful
at brokering a cooperation between previously segregated Mongolian and Turkic clans.
By orienting these varied warring tribes into a massive force of shared power, Genghis Khan
would not only dissolve many of the conditions which had to that juncture instigated violence amongst
them, but he had also fashioned a power on a scale theretofore unseen in the region.
Another element of the Steppes Diplomacy practices by Khan would be his extremely militaristic
approach to extending the influence of Mongolian rule. It was the defined policy of his dynastic leadership
to behave admirably on the battlefield and to lead his warriors by example. An extension of this policy was
an extremely aggressive stance on contending with political enemies, military opposition, internal dissent
or even disciplinary impropriety. It was this extremity of discipline that would make Khan’s Mongolian
warriors unique in their time and in their ranking to the perspective of history. Their conditioning and
training was believed unparalleled, accounting for their uncommon ability to brave the harsh elements of
the bitter Eurasian winters, to move quickly and effectively, to mount sieges with few carried provisions
and to claim, by the sheer implications of their threat, alliances with countless annexed territories.
These would be among the same conditions though that, while accounting for so remarkable a rate
and extent of expansion, would likewise be culpable in the decline and fall of the great Mongolian empire.
In no small degree, history will suggest that Genghis Khan was an uncommon conqueror. His capacity to
create alliances, his willingness to violate said alliances at his convenience and his might at conquest would
together establish a leader and empire driven by the twin imperatives of consensus and the destruction of
dissent.
As with all empires, the inherent contradiction in these paired approaches would be an inevitable
equation toward gradual decline. The common danger that an empire might spread itself thin was
theoretically addressed in the death of Khan, who distributed the enormous land-mass which he had
conquered to the ruler-ship of his four sons. This would begin a splintering of the empire’s unified
leadership, which would itself be hastened by the accommodation which the unprecedented imperial sweep
had created for the dissemination of disease. “By facilitating trade and communications throughout
Eurasia, the Mongols unwittingly expedited the spread of bubonic plague.” (Ch. 18, 475) This would be a
force complicit in the widespread economic destabilization of Asia and Europe. Resistance movements in
crucial conquered territories such as Persia and China would seize on these colliding opportunities in order
to undermine even further the rule of Mongolian foreign invaders. Thus, where unity had been their
strength in the prior century of expansion, the Mongolians would spend the fourteenth century in a phase of
retraction, returning once again to the splintered decentralization consistent with their region’s historical
proclivities.
Bibliography:
AFE. (2004). The Mongols in World History. Columbia University: Asia Topics in
Ret. 11/20/06 < afe.easia.columbia.edu/mongols/conquests/conquests.htm>.
Chapter 18. Nomadic Empires and Eurasian Integration.
Part IV. An Age of Cross-Cultural Interaction.
World History.
Reading 1 http://history-world.org/mongol_empire.htm
Reading 2 http://history-world.org/mongol_empire.htm
Reading 3 http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/xmongol.htm
Reading 4 http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/world-history/teaching/mongol/women.html
Reading 5 http://www.itchybrainscentral.com/paper%20example%20mongolian%20empire.doc
Reading 6: Preview Chapter 15
Reading 7: Lockard 310-316
Reading 8:Bentley 466-476
Reading 9: Stearns: 302-321
Reading 10: Duiker: 283-287
To Do:
In class,
1. Read the chosen article, take notes, highlight, or absorb the reading…you should be reading
something throughout half the period.
2. Discuss your view of the Mongols with another class member. One person is the question asker,
the other is the question answerer.
At home:
3. Post your notes, your “big pictures”, your understandings on wikispace.