Throughout the thirteenth century, the Mongols of Central Asia marched across much of Eurasia, bringing ruin and chaos in their wake. The Mongols’ reputation for killing spread far beyond their actual conquest. As he wrote from the safety of a Benedictine convent in England, Matthew Paris had no direct knowledge of the Mongols. Most writers of the time, including those in Paris, focused on Mongol atrocities. In their desire for blood and riches, the Mongols launched an era of interregional connection and interchange unprecedented in a thousand years.
In the twelfth century, the Mongols were a nomadic pastoralist living north of East Asia’s Gobi Desert. Mongols expected all men and women to become competent horse riders, and they placed a high value on bravery in both hunting and battle. In northern China, the Mongols were surrounded by other tribes such as the Tatars, Naimans, Markits, and the formidable Jurchen. The Mongols envied the relative prosperity of tribes and kingdoms near the Silk Roads, which had better access to luxury commodities like silk clothes and gold jewelry (Jackson, 2004). These early Mongols wore simple pelt-covered garments and had few goods aside from a yurt, a circular, felt-covered tent; horses; and a few rudimentary hunting and herding gear.
Genghis Khan’s dominion was made feasible by the talented and terrifying soldiers under his command. Mongolian troops were skilled horse riders and short-bow specialists. They were well-behaved, and Khan established an effective command system. Ten warriors worked together as a unit, with one soldier in charge of the rest. These ten-man units were later grouped into bigger groups, up to ten tumen, each with 1,000 warriors (Thomson, 2001). Furthermore, cavalry regiments were split into heavy and light cavalry, with heavy cavalry wearing greater armor and carrying more weaponry.
Hulegu, another grandson of Genghis Khan, seized command of the southwest region while Batu led the western army. Hulegu led the Mongols into Abbasid territory in 1258, where they sacked Baghdad and slaughtered the caliph and probably 200,000 city people. Hulegu’s Mongolian army pushed westward, posing a threat to the Middle East (Jackson, 2004). However, in 1260, they were defeated in Palestine due to a short coalition between the Muslim Mamluks, led by Baibars, and Christian Crusaders (Jackson, 2004). The Mongols were seen as a severe threat by both religious communities. Hulegu’s Il-khanate dominion in Central Asia stretched from Byzantium to the Oxus River, which is today known as the Amu Darya, at the time of this loss. Persians served as ministers and provincial and municipal officials. The Mongols discovered that this structure allowed them to collect the most taxes. After this period, Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, introduced the Yuan dynasty, which expanded the Mongolian empire.
Despite Kublai Khan’s embrace of many Chinese customs, Mongolian authorities alienated a large number of Chinese. They employed foreigners to work for the government instead of native Chinese. The Mongols upset the Chinese scholar-gentry class, who were often Confucians, encouraging Buddhists and Daoists and abolishing the civil service exam system (Jackson, 2004). Despite the official tolerance policy, Mongolians preferred to keep their distance from the Chinese and forbade non-Mongols from speaking Mongolian.
The Mongolian rulers of China failed to extend beyond China just as Batu had reached the western limit of the Mongol expansion. The Yuan Dynasty attempted and failed to conquer Japan, Indochina, Burma, and the island of Java beginning in 1274. These defeats implied to disgruntled Chinese people that the Mongols were no longer as terrifying as they once were. The secret White Lotus Society began discreetly organizing in the 1350s to bring the Yuan Dynasty to an end (Jackson, 2004). In 1368, a Buddhist monk from a humble peasant family named Zhu Yuanzhang launched an uprising that toppled the Yuan Dynasty and established the Ming Dynasty.
References
Jackson, P. (2004). ‘The Mongols and the faith of the conquered in Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran (eds), Mongols, Turk’s, and others.’ Cambridge University Press, 245-90.
Thomson, T. (2001). ‘Allsen, culture, and conquest in Mongol Eurasia.’ Cambridge University Press.