Topic 2.2 The Mongol Empire and the Making of the Modern World

THE MONGOL KHANATES

The Mongols built the largest land empire in the world, a remarkable feat considering they were pastoral nomads. Like the Muslims, Mongols had to overcome deep tribal divisions before they could be integrated into a large empire. In the culture of the Central Asian steppes, loyalties of kinship were so strong that they prevented any broad cooperation between people of different bloodlines. Like the

Bedouins of Arabia, Central Asia nomads seemed locked into constant tribal rivalries and warfare. Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was the man responsible for uniting these warring tribes into an empire. One of his tactics was to blur the lines between tribes by intermarriage. For example, after his defeat of the Tartars Genghis took two daughters of prominent Tartar aristocrats as his wives, and encouraged other Mongols to do the same. He thus blended the Tartar bloodline with his own making tribal distinctions less relevant. So widespread was his practice of cross-contaminating tribal purity through marriage and fathering children across bloodlines that recent DNA research suggests that 16 million people today are descended from Genghis Khan.

A more important method of breaking tribal loyalties was through military organization. The most basic unit of the Mongol army was a unit of 10 men called an arban. To break the power of tribal identity, the men in each arban were purposely chosen from different bloodlines. They lived together, trained together, and fought together. In battle, members of an arban could never leave one of their own behind as missing or a captive. Seniority in the arban was determined by age, just as it was in tribes; indeed, the strong bonds of loyalty that formed among members of the arban rendered the military unit a surrogate for one's tribe, the identity of which became increasingly irrelevant.

The

organization of the arban was projected across the entire army in multiples of 10. A group of ten arbans formed an unit of 100 called a zagun, and ten of these formed mingan, or battalion, of one thousand troops; ten of these was a tumen of ten thousand soldiers. Promotion up the ranks was based on loyalty and performance with no consideration of the prestige of one's tribe. Communication across the empire depended on a postal service made up of arrow messengers. These fast riders delivered communications between stations set up approximately 20 miles apart, at which point another rider would take the message to the next station until it reached its intended destination.

An efficient communication network was not the only thing that benefited from the Mongols' mastery of their horses. Their equestrian skills were most effective on the battle field. The Mongol army, which could travel up to 100 miles in a day, had a level of mobility unparalleled until modern times. A Mongol soldier spent much of his day on his horse, trained on his horse, used it for food, and could deliver arrows with deadly accuracy from the horse.

Genghis Khan's armies first united the Mongol people, then began to incorporate other Asian tribes and Turks into his empire. He imposed law, called the Yassa, which codified most aspects of politics and the daily life of the empire. This law granted religious toleration and protected trade. The breadth of the Empire encompassed the Silk Roads and trade began to flow again. The Mongols sacked Baghdad and ended the Islamic Caliphate. They destroyed the Seljuk Turks and paved the way for the rise of the Ottomans. They ruled Russia as a tributary state. After taking the Song Dynasty, Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty and ruled China directly. The Mongol Empire had a profound impact of the development of world history.

The Mongol Empire was the largest land-based empire in history and brought together the breadth of most of Eurasia under a single rule. This facilitated substantial technological and cultural exchange through the medium of trade. Through the Mongols, Islamic mathematics and astronomy spread from the Dar la Islam into China where they found a receptive audience. Kublai Khan was very interested in mathematics, such as algebra, which the Muslims had developed in Baghdad. Accurate readings of the heavens were very important to Daoism and Shamanism, both of which depended on astrological readings to plan weddings, feasts and agriculture. The Chinese made advanced calculations in these areas which then made their way back to the Muslim world. Other areas of exchange were knowledge of geography and cartography. Most instrumental in this exchange was Rashid al-Din, the scholarly connection between the great Mongol courts in Iran and China. Scholars combined geographic information from China to the Middle East into the most accurate maps in the world at that time thus enabling the later Ming Dynasty to initiate its famous explorations (Zeng He and Ma Huan).

In the world of food and agriculture, the Pax Mongolia allowed for the transfer of grapes and fruit trees to China. In return, luxury items of Chinese cuisine, such as pepper, cinnamon and tea, were introduced into the Muslim world. Perhaps the most important technological transfers during the Pax Mongolia were block printing and gunpowder. Through the Mongols, block printing, which had developed during China's Song Dynasty, was transferred to the Muslim world. Copying the Song Dynasty, the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persia even issued paper money for a brief time. The best known technological exchange facilitated by the Mongols was gunpowder. Developed in China as early as the Han Dynasty, gunpowder would transform warfare and realign the centers of power in the world. With it Europeans would develop advanced firearms and dominate the Americas, the Byzantine Empire would fall to the Ottoman Turks, and Mongol rule over China, ironically, would come to an end.