Genghis Khan and the Mongols

Genghis Khan The knights at their tournaments, in their finery, armor and emblems of ancestry, believed they were the foremost warriors in the world, while Mongol warriors thought otherwise. Mongol horses were small, but their riders were lightly clad and they moved with greater speed. These were hardy men who grew up on horses and hunting, making them better warriors than those who grew up in agricultural societies and cities. Their main weapon was the bow and arrow. And the Mongols of the early 1200s were highly disciplined, superbly coordinated and brilliant in tactics. The Mongols were illiterate, religiously shamanistic and sparsely populated, perhaps no more than around 700,000 in number. Their language today is described as Altaic -- derived from the Altay mountain range in western Mongolia -- a language unrelated to Chinese. They were herdsmen on the grassy plains north of the Gobi Desert and south of Siberian forests. Before the year 1200, the Mongols were fragmented, moving about in small bands headed by a chief, or khan, and living in portable felt dwellings -- gers. The Mongols endured frequent deprivations and sparse grazing. They frequently fought over turf, and during hard times they occasionally raided, interested in goods rather than bloodshed. They did not collect heads or scalps as trophies and did not notch wood to record their kills. From his late teens to age thirty-eight in 1200, a Mongol named Temujin (Temüjin) rose as khan over various families. He was a good manager, collecting people of talent. He was vassal to Ong Khan, titular head of a confederacy better organized than other Mongol clans. Temujin joined Ong Khan in a military campaign against Tatars to their east, and following the success of this campaign Ong Khan declared Temujin his adoptive son and heir. Ong Khan's natural son, Senggum (Senggüm), had been expecting to succeed his father and plotted to assassinate Temujin. Temujin learned of this, and those loyal to Temujin defeated those loyal to Senggum. Temujin was now established as the head of what had been Ong Khan's coalition. And in 1206, at the age of 42, Temujin took the title Universal Ruler, which translates to Genghis Khan, and he addressed his joyous supporters thanking them for their help and their loyalty. Like others, Genghis Khan's subjects saw themselves at the center of the universe, the greatest of people and favored by the gods. They justified Genghis Khan's success in warfare by claiming that he was the rightful master not only over the "peoples of the felt tent" but the entire world. Genghis Khan continued organizing. He improved his military organization, which was also to serve as a mobile political bureaucracy, and he broke up what was left of old enemy tribes, leaving as ethnically homogeneous only those tribes that had demonstrated loyalty to him. He created a body of law that he was to work on throughout his life. The kidnapping of women had caused feuding among the Mongols, and, as a teenager, Temujin had suffered from the kidnapping of his young wife, Borte, whom he had devoted himself to rescuing, and he made it law that there was to be no kidnapping of women. He declared all children legitimate, whomever the mother. He made it law that no woman would be sold into marriage. The stealing of animals had caused dissention among the Mongols, and Genghis made it a capital offense. A lost animal was to be returned to its owner, and taking lost property as one's own was to be considered thievery and a capital offense. Genghis regulated hunting -- a winter activity -- improving the availability of meat for everyone. He introduced record keeping, taking advantage of his move years before to have his native language put into writing. He created official seals. He created a supreme officer of the law, who was to collect and preserve all judicial decisions, to oversee the trials of all those charged with wrongdoing and to have the power to issue death sentences. He created order in his realm that strengthened it and his ability to expand. Conquests in Northern China Genghis Khan moved to secure his borders. To his south he made an alliance with the Uighurs, who were closer than the Mongols were to the Silk Road and to wealth. Genghis married his daughter to the Uighur Khan, and the Uighur Khan brought to the wedding party a caravan laden with gold, silver, pearls, brocaded fabrics, silks and satins. The Mongols had only leather, fur and felt -- a humiliation for a master of the entire world. Genghis needed booty to pay troops securing his northern border and subduing an old enemy there, the Merkits. Genghis acted on his mandate as the rightful ruler of the entire world and attacked the rulers of farmers and herders in northwestern China, the Tangut, who had much in goods like the Uighur Khan. In warriors the Mongols were outnumbered two to one, and they had to learn a new kind of warfare, against fortified cities, including cutting supply lines and diverting rivers. Genghis Khan and his army were victorious, and in 1210 Genghis won from the Tangut recognition as overlord. Also in 1210, the Ruzhen, who ruled that part of northern China that included Beijing, sent a delegation to Genghis Khan demanding Mongol submission as vassals. The Ruzhen (Jin) controlled the flow of goods along the Silk Road, and defying them meant a lack of access to those goods. Genghis Khan and the Mongols discussed the matter and chose war. Genghis, according to the scholar Jack Weatherford, prayed alone on a mountain, bowing down and stating his case to "his supernatural guardians," describing the grievances, the tortures and killings that generations of his people had suffered at the hands of the Ruzhen. And he pleaded that he had not sought war against the Ruzhen and had not initiated the quarrel. NOTE In 1211, Genghis Khan and his army attacked. The Ruzhen had a large and effective army but they were hard pressed by both the Mongols and by a border war with the Tangut. They were also under attacked by Chinese from south of the Yangzi River, the Southern Song emperor wishing to take advantage of the Ruzhen-Mongol conflict to liberate northern China. But the Ruzhen drove the Chinese armies into retreat. The Mongols were benefiting from China having failed during the previous century to make itself a strong military power. They benefited too from the Ruzhen ruling conquered people. The Mongols used divide and conquer tactics, using benevolence toward those who sided with them and terror and bloodshed against those who did not. They ravaged the countryside, gathering information and booty and driving populations in front of them, clogging the roads and trapping the Ruzhen within their cities, where the Ruzhen were subject to revolts. They used conscripted labor in attacking cities and in operating their newly acquired Chinese siege engines. The Mongols had an advantage in diet, which included a lot of meat, milk and yogurt, and they could miss a day or two of eating better than Ruzhen soldiers, who ate grains. Genghis Khan and his army overran Beijing and pushed into the heartland of northern China. Military success helped as people acquired the impression that Genghis Khan had the Mandate of Heaven and that fighting against him was fighting heaven itself. The Ruzhen emperor recognized Mongol authority and agreed to pay tribute, and, after six years of fighting, Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia, leaving one of his best generals in charge of Mongol positions opposite the Ruzhen. Returning with Genghis Khan and his Mongols were engineers who had become a permanent part of their army, and there were captive musicians, translators, doctors and scribes, camels and wagonloads of goods. Among the goods were silk, including silken rope, cushions, blankets, robes, rugs, wall hangings, porcelain, iron kettles, armor, perfumes, jewelry, wine, honey, medicines, bronze, silver and gold, and much else. And goods from China would now come in a steady flow. The Mongols were happy to be back from China, their homeland higher in elevation, less humid and cooler. They had looked down on the peoples of northern China, seeing them as eating grain like cattle and closely packed together as were herds. But they liked what China had to offer, and at home there was change. The continuing flow of goods from China had to be administered and properly distributed, and buildings had to be built to store the goods. Success in war was changing the Mongols -- as it had the Romans and the Arabs. Into Afghanistan and Persia Genghis Khan wanted trade and goods, including new weapons, for his nation. A Mongol caravan of several hundred merchants approached a recently formed empire between Persia to Central Asia. The sultan of this kingdom claimed that spies were in the caravan. Genghis Khan sent envoys, and the sultan had the chief of the envoys killed and the beards of the others burned, and these others he sent back to Genghis Khan. And Genghis retaliated, sending his army westward. In the coldest of months the Mongols rode across the desert to Transoxiana with no baggage, slowing to the pace of merchants before appearing as warriors before the smaller towns of the sultan's empire. Their strategy was to frighten their opponents into surrendering without battle, benefiting his own troops, whose lives he valued. Those frightened into surrender were spared violence, those who resisted were slaughtered as an example for others, which sent many fleeing and spreading panic from the first towns to the city of Bukhara. People in Bukhara opened the city's gates to the Mongols and surrendered. Genghis Khan told them that they, the common people, were not at fault, that high-ranking people among them had committed great sins that inspired God to send him and his army as punishment. The sultan's capital city, Samarkand, surrendered. His army surrendered, and he fled. Genghis Khan and his army pushed more deeply into the sultan's empire -- into Afghanistan and then Persia. It is said that the caliph in Baghdad was hostile toward the sultan and supported Genghis Khan, sending him a regiment of European crusaders who had been his prisoners. Genghis, having no need for infantry, freed them, with those making it to Europe spreading the first news of the Mongol conquests. Genghis Khan had 100,000 to 125,000 horsemen, with Uighur and Turkic allies, engineers and Chinese doctors -- a total of from 150,000 to 200,000 men. To show their submission, some offered food to the Mongols, and Genghis Khan's force guaranteed them protection. Some cities surrendered without fighting. In cities the Mongols were forced to conquer, after killing its fighting men, Genghis divided the survivors by profession. He drafted the few who were literate and anyone who could speak various languages. Those who had been the city's most rich and powerful he wasted no time in killing, remembering that the rulers he had left behind after conquering the Tangut and Ruzhen had betrayed him soon after his army had withdrawn. The Mongols did not torture, mutilate or maim, but their enemies did. Captured Mongols were dragged through streets and killed for sport and to entertain city residents. The Mongols did not partake in the gruesome displays that European rulers often resorted to elicit fear and discourage potential enemies -- none of the stretching, emasculating, belly cutting and hacking to pieces that, for example, was soon to happen to William Wallace at the hands of the English. The Mongols merely slaughtered, preferring to do so at a distance. The city of Nishapur revolted against Mongol rule. The husband of Genghis Khan's daughter was killed, and, it is said, she asked that everyone in the city be put to death, and, according to the story, they were. Into Azerbaijan, Armenia and Eastern Europe While Genghis Khan was consolidating his conquests in Persia and Afghanistan, a force of 40,000 Mongol horsemen pushed through Azerbaijan and Armenia. They defeated Georgian crusaders, captured a Genoese trade-fortress in the Crimea and spent the winter along the coast of the Black Sea. As they were headed back home they met 80,000 warriors led by Prince Mstitslav of Kiev. The battle of Kalka River (1223) commenced. Staying out of range of the crude weapons of peasant infantry, and with better bows than opposing archers, they devastated the prince's standing army. Facing the prince's cavalry, they faked a retreat, drawing the armored cavalry forward, taking advantage of the vanity and over-confidence of the mounted aristocrats. Lighter and more mobile, they strung out and tired the pursuers and then attacked, killed and routed them. In 1225, Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia. He now ruled everything between the Caspian Sea and Beijing. He looked forward to the Mongols benefits of caravan trade and drawing tribute from agricultural peoples in the west and east. He created an efficient pony express system. Wanting no divisions rising from religion, he declared freedom of religion throughout his empire. Favoring order and tax producing prosperity, he forbade troops and local officials to abuse people. Soon again, Genghis Khan was at war. He believed that the Tangut were not living up to their obligations to his empire. In 1227, around the age of sixty-five, while leading the fighting against the Tangut, Genghis Khan, it is said, fell off his horse and died. In terms of square miles conquered, Genghis Khan had been the greatest conqueror of all time -- his empire four times larger than the empire of Alexander the Great. The Mongol nation believed that he had been the greatest man of all time and a man sent from heaven. Among the Mongols he was known as the Holy Warrior, and not unlike the Jews, who continued to see hope in a conquering king (messiah) like David, Mongols were to continue to believe that one day Genghis Khan would rise again and lead his people to new victories. Mongols to the Gates of Vienna Late in the life of Genghis Khan, members of his family fought over who was to be his heir. To end the dispute, Genghis Khan chose his third son, Ogodei (pronounced oh-go-day). And in 1229, after Genghis Khan's death, a great Mongol assembly confirmed the succession of Ogodei as the Great Khan. Ogodei began his rule aiming to live up to his mandate as ruler of the world. In earnest he began drafting conquered people into his armies. Around one in ten young men from agricultural societies went into the Mongol infantry or to assist in siege warfare against fortified cities. And tent dwellers (nomadic herdsmen) joined the Mongol cavalry. In 1231, Ogodei sent an army to police Korean defiance of an agreement made in 1218 to pay annual tribute. In 1232, the Koreans rebelled and a struggle ensued that was to last for decades. Ogodei also sent his armies against the Jurzhen, and in 1234 his armies completed the conquest of northern China. In the mid-thirties Ogodei sent armies against Slavic principalities in Eastern Europe, but resistance by the Asiatic tribes between the Volga and Ural rivers was greater than he had expected, delaying his plans of conquest west of the Ural Mountains. Finally, in 1237, his army pushed against the Russians, conquering the cities of Vladimir, Kolmna and Moscow in 1238. In 1240, his army destroyed the city of Kiev. At Liegnitz (in what is now Poland), although outnumbered, his army destroyed a German army of heavily armored knights. His army pushed through Hungary, and in 1241 it reached the outskirts of Vienna. Then, mysteriously to Europeans, the Mongols pulled back from Vienna To the Europeans it seemed as though they were saved by a miracle. To the Mongols it was something different. The Mongol retreat from central Europe was in response to Ogodei's death. High ranking army leaders believed they had to return to confirm the selecting of a new ruler. From Ogodei to Mongke the Reformer Ogodei had been like some other sons of great men -- something less than his father. He had been a profligate spender of money, burdening his conquered subjects with unpredictable increases in taxes for his sudden needs of money. And torn between duty and his having tired of it, Ogodei had been drinking so heavily that a functionary had been assigned to count the number of wine goblets that he emptied daily. He had died at the age of fifty-six after a binge of drinking during a hunting trip. However burdensome the position, there was no shortage of young men from Genghis Khan's extended family eager to become the next Great Khan. Ogodei's widow, Toregene, began administering Ogodei's estate, ruling her late husband's realm in his name and acting as regent for her eldest son. Military operations slowed, including a reprieve of the fighting in Korea. Fighting began among men in the extended family. In 1246, one of them, Guyug, was able to buy support and win selection as Ogodei's successor. He showered gifts on people whose support he continued to seek, from princes to lowly scribes, as if money was in endless supply. Pope Innocent IV sent an envoy to the Mongols, and a letter carried by the envoy ordered the Mongols to “desist” from their invasion of Europe. The pope offered a synopsis of the life of Jesus and Christianity's tenets, hoping to convert the great khan, and he described himself as having been delegated by God as having all earthly power and as the only person authorized by God to speak for Him. Guyug Khan replied that God had given the Mongols, not the pope, control of the world, from the rising sun to the setting sun. God, he claimed, intended the Mongols to spread His commandments in the form of Genghis Khan’s Great Laws. And he sent back to the pope the demand that he, the pope, submit. The Mongol Empire, heavenly inspired or not, was subject to the same succession problems as other empires. Guyug's short reign, from 1246 to 1247, ended with Guyug dying mysteriously amid royal family squabbling. The selection of the new Great Khan went in 1251 to another of Genghis Khan's grandsons: Mongke. A plot by rivals to assassinate him at his coronation was uncovered, and this was followed by torture, purges, trials, confessions and much letting of blood -- purges within the royal family as well as among government officials. Mongke attempted to establish efficiency in governing all of his subjects. The postal relay system was freed of being jammed by elites using it for their personal benefit. He established predictable taxation that permitted planning by growers. He demanded that local rule not interfere with productive work. The death penalty was to apply to officers who seized vegetables from the gardens of Chinese peasants. Princes were forbidden to issue orders without approval from the imperial court. Officials, civil and military, were forbidden to enter areas where they had no jurisdiction. Military campaigning was to be done without devastating agricultural land or devastating cities, actions seen as reducing potential tax revenues for the imperial treasury. Private property was to be respected. Theft and brigandage were to be punished, with death the punishment even for minor offenses. In Mongol society, meanwhile, women had more independence than those in Islamic and western societies. Mongol women could own property and pursue litigation. And they served as auxiliaries in the military, remaining hidden in the encampment during combat but joining the fight if an emergency made that necessary. Under Mongke's rule, clergymen and monks were exempted from labor on community projects. Under Mongke as under Genghis Khan, people were allowed to worship as they chose. Buddhism, Islam and Christianity flourished. And, in 1252, Mongke's regime made official the worship of Genghis Khan. Baghdad and the Limits of Empire In the 1250s, France's king, Louis IX was concerned about the Holy Land and hoped for an alliance with the Mongols in order to destroy Islam. The Mongols were not interested, but they did begin expanding from Persia toward Mesopotamia. To complete the rule of the world, Mongke sent one of his brothers, Hulegu, westward, and Mongke planned to lead the conquest of the whole of China. As Hulegu and his army were passing through Persia, they destroyed the Muslim sect known in Europe as the Assassin, opening the Mongol's route to Baghdad, the largest and richest city in the Muslim world. Some Christians in Baghdad used the coming of the Mongols as an opportunity to free themselves from Muslim rule or to avenge past wrongs, and Mongol military leaders, as was their habit, used such conflicts to their advantage. Within Hulegu’s army were Christians and Shi’a Muslim, and they are said to have been the most fervent participants in attacking Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim inhabitants. In 1258, Baghdad was destroyed and many Sunni inhabitants butchered, while Christians and Shi’a Muslims were spared. The conquest of Baghdad ended the Abbasid caliphate there and Baghdad as an Islamic spiritual capital. In modern times. In 1259, Hulegu's army entered the great Syrian city of Damascus, Christians there greeting the Mongol army with joy. The Mongol army then headed southward toward Egypt, and they learned that even great empires under God had limits. In 1260, their advance was stopped by the Mamelukes of Egypt, near Nazareth. Taking revenge on the Christians for having allied themselves with the Mongols, the Mamelukes destroyed Crusader strongholds in the Middle East, the beginning of the end of the Crusaders there, leaving them only at the Mediterranean coast, at Acre, Tyre and Tripoli. Khubilai Khan in China and to Japan After two years of preparation, Mongke's army had invaded China's Sichuan province. There, in 1259, Mongke died in battle, and he was to be the last of the great khans ruling from Karakorum and the last to exercise authority over the entire Mongol empire. Another fight ensued over who was to become the Great Khan. Succeeding Mongke was one of his brothers, who would be known as Khubilai Khan -- a 41-year-old grandson of Genghis Khan who had been fighting alongside Mongke in China. Others in the west, wishing to be the Great Khan declared themselves as the great khan and established independent kingdoms, bringing the division that plagued other empires. From his capital, Beijing, Khubilai Khan pursued the subjugation of southern China, attracted by its wealth, including grain surpluses and towns along China's southern coast that were prospering from seaborne trade. China from around the Yangzi River to the south would be the largest area, have the largest population and have the greatest resources of any area yet conquered by the Mongols. Khubilai tried to persuade the Song emperor to subjugate himself peacefully, and when this did not happen he drove his army of various ethnicities (including Chinese and Persians) deeper into China, while his navy, manned by Jurzhen and Koreans, sailed south along China's coast. The drive took sixteen years, the conquest ending around 1276 -- the year after a tradesman from Venice, Marco Polo, arrived at Beijing. Khubilai Khan, interfered little in China's economy, and Confucianists were left without much influence, giving Chinese merchants a temporary break with which to pursue trade. The Mongols assimilated little with the Chinese, Khubilai not wishing to see his army of occupation becoming Chinese. Nevertheless, a little mixing between conquerors and the conquered took place -- mainly Mongol soldiers taking Chinese wives. After consolidating his rule in China, Khubilai Khan sent envoys to demand tribute from Japan and threatened reprisals if they did not. From the palace at Kyoto the Japanese answered, claiming as other rulers did that their nation had divine origins. Therefore, they argued, Japan was not to be subject to anyone, and they began preparing a defense. Khubilai believed that he could not permit the appearance of Japan defying him. In 1274, from southern Korea, he launched an assault -- a Mongol, Chinese and Korean force, with 600 to 900 ships, 23,000 troops, catapults, combustible missiles, bows and arrows. Bad weather compelled the invasion force to return from Japan's southern-most major island: Kyushu. In the summer of 1281, Khubilai Khan tried again, this time sending some 4000 ships. For fifty-three days the Japanese held the invaders to a narrow beachhead on Kyushu. Then a hurricane struck. The Mongols withdrew again, only half of his force making it back to China. The Japanese interpreted the hurricane as a god wind -- kami-kaze. Khubilai was finding the limits that Hulegu had found in the Middle East. It was the last attempt to invade Japan until 1945, at Okinawa, when kamikaze would also be a word of significance. .