A Short History of the Mongols

George Lane

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781780766058
• eBook ISBN: 9781786723390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: History

The Mongol Empire was the mightiest land empire the world has ever seen. At its height it was twice the size of its Roman equivalent. For a remarkable century and a half it commanded a population of 100 million people, while the rule of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan marched undefeated from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea. George Lane argues that the Mongols were not only subjugators who swept all before them but one of the great organising forces of world history. His book traces the rise of the Great Khan in 1206 to the dissolution of the empire in 1368 by the Ming Dynasty. He discusses the unification of the Turko-Mongol tribes under Chinggis' leadership; the establishment of a vigorous imperium whose Pax Mongolica held mastery over the Central Asian steppes; imaginative policies of religious pluralism; and the rich legacy of the Toluid Empire of Yuan China and Ilkhanate Iran. Offering a bold and sympathetic understanding of Mongol history, the author shows that commercial expansion, cultural assimilation and dynamic political growth were as crucial to Mongol success as desire for conquest.

1

THE STEPPE AND THE SOWN

The Turk has two pairs of eyes, one at the front and the other at the back of his head [… and] spends more time in the saddle than on the ground. Uninterested in craftsmanship or commerce, medicine, geometry, fruit-farming, building, digging canals or collecting taxes, they care only about raiding, hunting, horsemanship, skirmishing with rival chieftains, taking booty and invading other countries. Their efforts are all directed towards these activities, and they devote all their energies to these occupations. In this way, they have acquired a mastery of these skills, which for them take the place of craftsmanship and commerce and constitute their only pleasure, their glory and the subject of all their conversation. Thus, they have become in warfare what the Greeks are in philosophy, the Chinese in craftsmanship.¹

This description of the Turks by al-Jahiz (d.869) recommending their qualities as warriors and defending their inclusion as mamluks (military slaves) in the caliph’s armies could quite as easily have been a description of the Turco-Mongol tribesmen of the twelfth and thirteenth century Eurasian steppe on the eve of their irruption into the sedentary world under the banner of Chinggis Khan. They were all denizens of the vast steppe lands that stretched from Eastern Europe right across the northern hemisphere, brushing the arid deserts of Turkestan, lapping the slopes of the Urals and disappearing into the wastes of Siberia while encompassing much of valleys, highlands and plateaus of Inner Asia. For Iranians, the horsemen of Turan were their legendary rivals while for the Chinese they were the barbarians forever howling at their gates.

Away from these colourful theatrics, the nomadic people of the steppe had always managed a solid working if symbiotic relationship with their urbanised and agricultural neighbours, the people of the sown. The nomad might profess horror at the restrictions that cultivated and farmed land imposed on his wandering flocks, but he was happy to barter with the ‘dust scratchers’ for the fruit of those sown fields and to enjoy the pleasures and clever produce of those despised cities. The sophisticated urbanites had equal disdain for these rude savages with ‘faces like leather-covered shields’² and their crude ways, but they were happy to buy from them their crafts and fine meat and dairy products. A Song dynasty envoy to the Jin court who encountered the Tatars firsthand described them as

‘very poor, crude and incompetent’ whose only talent was mounting their horses and following along with the rest. They lived further out in the steppe and northern forests and were untroubled by the refinements of Chinese civilisation.³

He witnessed the yearly raids called ‘thinning the ranks’ that the Jin troops and their allies launched between 1160 and 1190 to replenish their slave markets of northern China with Tatar captives. In fact, Chinggis Khan only stopped paying the annual tribute to the Jin emperors (1115–1234) in 1210, though it was another ten years before the Jin courtiers, at the Great Khan’s insistence, ceased to refer to the Mongols as ‘Tatars’, a wholly inappropriate term since that tribe had been annihilated and ceased to exist.⁴

THE TATARS

The name ‘Tatars’ had become the generic term for the Eurasian steppe tribes by the late twelfth century. Its first recorded usage was in the Turkic Kul-tegin inscription of 731 referring to the enmity between the ‘30 Tatars’ and the ‘nine Tatars’ and the Turks, and then later the appellation specifically refers to the nomadic tribes in the Hulun Buir⁵ area of north-east Inner Mongolia who Rashid al-Din claims numbered 70,000 divided into numerous clans. Ibn al-Athir, the historian of Mosul, claims that like the Khitans the Tatars remained infidels, and Mahmud Kashghari, the eleventh-century lexicographer, inferred that they spoke Mongolian as well as Turkish.

The Tatars owed their ascendancy over the other Turco-Mongol Eurasian tribes to the Jurchen who employed them as juyin to enforce Jin control over the steppe, its trade routes and resources. It is said that the children of Tatar chiefs enjoyed silver cradles, gold nose rings, pearl encrusted quilts and gold embroidered silk garments, while Mongol chiefs were reduced to employing wooden stirrups and bone arrows. The Tatars’ fate was eventually sealed when they scornfully poisoned a traveller who had stopped at their camp to claim hospitality, as was his right according to the yasa. That traveller, Yesugei Bahadur, was returning from his son Temujin’s betrothal in marriage. No doubt fatefully, Temujin had himself been named after a Tatar warrior whom his father had killed in battle, and now as son he had inherited not only a name but a bloody feud, which he finally terminated in 1196 with the complete obliteration of the Tatar leadership and their status as a powerful tribe. However, their legacy continued in Europe, Persia, Russia, India and among the Arabs, who all continued to use the term ‘Tatar’ in preference to ‘Mongol’. It was particularly appropriate for the Europeans since the designation ‘Tatars’ suggested that they were indeed denizens of Tartarus or Hell.

Though the Tatars suffered physical annihilation, all the Turco-Mongol Eurasian tribes present at the Great Quriltai of 1206, other than the Mongols, were disbanded and subsumed into the greater supratribal group which then came to be known as the Mongols, the ‘people of nine tongues’,⁶ the people of the Yeke Monggol Ulus (Great Mongol State). The state included the peoples of the Kereit, Merkits, Naiman, Tatars, Mongols, Onggirats, Oirats, Tayichi’ut, Buriat, Borjigid, Barghu, Onggut, Kiyat, Jalayrids and a host of subdivisions all of whom had united under one ruler and one law, the yasa. This unprecedented event that united all the nomadic steppe tribes, the ‘people of the felt-walled tents’,⁷ who had been fighting and warring among each other for countless generations, was followed by an equally remarkable development when within a decade most of the neighbouring semi-nomadic tribes and even sedentary people and countries willingly abandoned their ethnic appellations and identities and dissolved themselves within the tidal sweep of the Chinggisid revolution and, united, called themselves Mongols.

Now it has come about that the people of the Khitai, Jurchen, Nankiyas (South China), Uighur, Qipchaq, Turkoman, Qarluq, Qalaj, and all the prisoners and Tajik races that have been brought up among the Mongols, are also called Mongols. All the assemblage takes pride in calling itself Mongol.⁸

THE STEPPE

The steppe, the lands dominated by nomadic pastoralists, had united with the sown, those lands dominated by farmers and urbanists. Although Chinggis Khan had forged a revolution and led the united peoples of the steppe in a series of culminating raids into the lands of the sown, within his lifetime and increasingly after his death many of the lands that were conquered welcomed the globalised empire into which they were being absorbed.

The Turco-Mongol nomadic tribes grazed their flocks over a vast area that is commonly referred to as the Eurasian steppe. The Eurasian steppe covers a wide zone stretching from Eastern Europe to Manchuria and passes through the south Russian steppe, Kazakhstan, Zungharia, Qinghai province and Mongolia. South of this region the steppe transforms into desert, a vast arid zone punctuated with islands of urban and sedentary settlements. In contrast, the prairies, grasslands and gentle mountain slopes of the steppe were devoid of farming settlements or towns. Those who would dwell on the steppe were pastoral nomads and hunters, and life necessitated their seasonal migration in constant search of water and grass.

Though the nomads generally renounced fixed settlements and fixed dwellings, their migration routes were often rigid. As a result, cultivation on a limited scale was practised by these steppe migrants, who would sow suitable crops that they would be able to harvest later on their return migration. Constantly on the move, constantly alert to the environmental, climatic and human changes around them, and constantly prepared for danger and threats, the pastoral nomads were a natural martial force, and war was everyone’s business. Every herdsman doubled as a fighter and raider, and the culture of the steppe resounded with tales and songs of their warrior heroes. These nomads were pastoral armies.

Temujin came from the Turco-Mongol heartlands. The further from these remote valleys and rivers, such as the Orkhan valley and the River Onon, the more interaction there was between the wholly nomadic tribes and those tribes who were assuming sedentary lives. Turco-Mongol people such as the Khitans or Liao had become semi-nomadic, and many among them had even adopted or had certainly adapted the trappings of Chinese culture. Other Turkic people like the Uyghurs, many of whom were merchants, had accepted urban lives, but for those living on the Mongolian plateau their nomadic lives progressed as they had for centuries without need of urban permanence or the limitations of fences and stone walls. What is so remarkable about the rise of Temujin is that he emerged out of the heart of this extremely remote region, secluded and inaccessible even today, from a small dispossessed family group abandoned even by their own extended family and tribe. From total obscurity, ‘a people emerged from the confines of China and made for the cities of Transoxania [Transoxiana]’.⁹ led by Temujin who had acquired his knowledge of the outside world, his aspirations and his inspiration from the heartlands of Mongolia.

The Mongolian plateau is a distinct geographical and topo-graphical region which encompasses modern-day Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and Transbaikalia. Mongolia has traditionally been said to lie between the Altai Mountains in the west and the Khingan range in the east, while being bordered by the Tianshan Mountains to the south and Lake Baikal in the north. These permanently snow-capped peaks reach over 4,000 metres while the plains, generally at around 1,000 metres in the south-west, slope down to 500 metres above sea level in the north-east. The 2,210 square kilometres of Hulun Nuur (Lake Hulun) and the 615 square kilometres of Buir Nuur (Lake Buir) drain the appropriately named Hulun Buir steppe region, while the great River Selenga drains into the world’s deepest lake, Lake Baikal, whose drainage basin covers north-central Mongolia and western Transbaikalia. The Onon and Kherlen rivers both receive their waters from the Hulun Buir steppe and eventually wash into the Pacific Ocean. In the south, the vast Gobi desert formed a natural barrier to the lands of the Mongols, while in the north thick Siberian forests similarly isolated the region. Within this enclosed area fir, cedar and beech trees thrived on the moist slopes and deep valleys that alternated with steppe lands, mountain meadows and woodlands, which thinned out nearer the hot, dry winds of the inhospitable Gobi. July and August brought scorching heat, which transformed the sweeping, undulating carpet of green scattered with a rich blossom of flowers that had appeared with the spring and struggled into early summer. October saw the landscape gradually turn white as winter snows began the annual blanketing of the whole region and rivers and streams froze over in the bitter cold. These harsh conditions continued until the April thaw, forcing both man and beast to adapt to this unforgiving cycle of extremes. The Vatican spy John of Plano Carpini witnessed snow in June 1246,¹⁰ admittedly highly unusual for a region where temperatures reached in excess of 38 degrees. Violent squalls, thunder and lightning, desert storms driving burning sands and biting gusts of Siberian cold, along with its unremittingly hostile landscape, sculptured and nurtured some very hard men and women for whom the struggle to survive in this merciless milieu was innate.

The tribes

Greater Mongolia, or historical Mongolia, occupied the most easterly part of the great Eurasian steppe, and it has been inhabited by Turks, Mongols and the Tungus tribes since ancient times. These Altaic tribes were united linguistically and ethnically, and they shared similar social traits and customs, but their fierce independence of spirit precluded any sense of political concord until the appearance of Temujin in the later twelfth century. The genius of Chinggis Khan was his achievement in unifying the Turco-Mongol tribes whose custom hitherto had been self-destructive and directed inward in hostile rivalry, leaving themselves open to the blatant manipulation of the Jin kings to the east.

Each tribe or two tribes lived separately; they were not united with one another, and there was constant fighting and hostility between them. Some of them regarded robbery and violence, immorality and debauchery (fisq va fujur) as deeds of manliness and excellence. The Khan of Khitai used to demand and seize goods from them. Their clothing was of the skins of dogs and mice, and their food was the flesh, of those animals and other dead things […] The sign of a great emir amongst them was that his stirrups were of iron; from which one can form a picture of their other luxuries. And they continued in this indigence, privation and misfortune until the banner of Chingiz-Khan’s fortune was raised.¹¹

For most of these nomadic people the tribe was the basis of their strength and their identity, and their loyalty to their khan was unquestioned. Temujin understood this and was able to use this sense of loyalty and identity to his advantage. His family’s abandonment by their tribe had allowed him to question the basic premise of the society with unfettered eyes shorn of the emotional crust of generations of unchallenged tradition.

There was little social cohesion above the level of the fiercely independent tribe, and tribal leaders generally resisted the formation of supratribal authority unless the forfeiting of their autonomy promised very great rewards. Wealth was generally measured by the possession of livestock, the protection and amassing of which were the overriding concerns of the tribe. When alliances, confederations and supratribal arrangements were entered into, the motivation behind such moves was the protection or amassing of wealth. Chinggis Khan was remarkable from the outset in that he was able to form so cohesive and unified a supratribal polity out of such a hostile and mutually suspicious collection of warrior tribes.

The tribes of Turco-Mongols in the twelfth century can very generally be divided into the purely pastoralists (cattle and sheep grazers) and the forest hunters/fishers. The less numerous forest hunters could be found around Lake Baikal, the source of the River Yenisey and the upper reaches of the River Irtysh, whereas the pastoralists occupied the lands south of this region, from the foothills of the Altai Mountains to Hulun Nuur and Buir Nuur. However, just as forest hunters raised cattle and tended sheep so too did pastoralists grow crops and cultivate land selectively, and all united in a passion for the hunt. In fact, the hunt, referred to as the nerge, or battue, played an extremely important role in the life of all the Turco-Mongol tribes. The targets of the organised hunts were wild donkeys, antelope, boar, game and even lions, as well as rival tribes and enemies. Lassoes, bows and arrows, and spears were all employed. The nerge served the function of recreation, military training, food gathering and the provisioning of winter food stocks, and it was an event in which the whole tribe partook. Horses, cows, sheep, goats and camels were also reared to provide the tribe’s basic nutritional needs, and cows, goats, camels and horses were used as beasts of burden or draught animals. As well as being a source of food and wool, sheep were also kept for the leather they produced. Animals were slaughtered in early winter and preserved or frozen for the long winter months.

The pastoralists moved from one highland area to another several times each year, the distances travelled limited by the size of their flocks, and they rarely stored fodder. The choice of settlement site had to be carefully considered, especially in winter, so that their different animals’ dietary needs could all be met, often a major problem with the size of their flocks. These nomads were very aware of any infringement to the easy access of their animals to grazing land and reacted with animosity to any limitations placed in their path. They grudgingly accepted the vagaries of the weather and the periodic displays of nature’s displeasure when rivers burst their banks or rock falls or earthquakes destroyed their pastures, but they reacted unanimously with violent contempt when man-made obstacles created problems.

In fact, tales of that violence were often fictitious, and the steppe and the sown maintained a symbiotic working relationship, and neigh...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Timeline
• Introduction: From Dispossession to Imperium: The Fall and Rise of Temujin, Chinggis Khan
• Chapter 1: The Steppe and the Sown
• Chapter 2: The Early Life
• Chapter 3: Out from the Steppe
• Chapter 4: The Tread of Tatar Hoof
• Chapter 5: The Chaghadaids
• Chapter 6: The Mongols in Iran
• Chapter 7: Qubilai Khan: Yuan Emperor of the World
• Chapter 8: Soup for the Qa’ans
• Appendix 1: Glossary
• Appendix 2: Personages
• Further Reading
• Notes