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Founding of the Mongol Empire by: Henry Howorth
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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 othe |
