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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 other parts of the empire. A decade later in 1271, on the recommendation of Chinese advisors, he changed the name of the Mongol dynasty to the Sinicized Yuan. Though he was still nearly a decade away from fully defeating the last-ditch efforts of Confucian advisors and Chinese generals to save the Song dynasty, Kubilai ruled most of China, and he now set about the task of establishing Mongol control on a more permanent basis.
Kubilai Khan And The Mongol Presence In China
Kubilai had long been fascinated by Chinese civilization. Even before he had begun the conquest of the Song Empire, Kubilai had surrounded himself with Chinese advisors, some Buddhist, others Daoist or Confucian. His capital at Tatu in the north (present-day Beijing) was built on the site occupied by earlier dynasties, and he introduced Chinese rituals and classical music into his own court. But he did not then, nor later when he had conquered the south, listen to the pleas of his Confucian advisors to reestablish the civil service exams, which had been discontinued by the Qin rulers. Thus, from the outset, Kubilai was ambivalent in his attitude toward the ancient civilization that was slipping piecemeal under Mongol control. He was determined to preserve Mongol separateness and to keep the scholar-gentry from gaining too much power -hence the refusal to reintroduce the exams. But he also adopted a Chinese life-style, was anxious to follow Chinese precedents, and became a major patron of the arts and a promoter of Chinese culture in general. Despite his efforts to preserve Mongol identity, Kubilai's choice of China as the site of his capital and his deep involvement in Chinese affairs signaled, in effect, the passing of an overarching command of the far-flung Mongol Empire. From the late 13th century onward, the main divisions of the empire were ruled and governed as virtually independent realms.
The Mongol Elite
Kubilai promulgated many laws to preserve the distinction between Mongol and Chinese. He forbade Chinese scholars to learn the Mongol script, which was used for records and correspondence at the upper levels of the imperial government. Mongols were forbidden to marry ethnic Chinese, and only women from nomadic families were selected for the imperial harem. Even friendships between the two peoples were discouraged. Mongol religious ceremonies and customs were retained, and a tent encampment in the traditional Mongol style was set up in the imperial city, even though Kubilai usually resided in a Chinese-style palace. Kubilai and his successors continued to enjoy key Mongol pastimes such as the hunt, and Mongol military forces remained separate from Chinese.
In the Yuan era, a new social structure was established in China with the Mongols on top and their central Asian nomadic and Muslim allies right below them in the hierarchy. These two groups occupied most of the offices at the highest levels of the bureaucracy. Beneath them came the north Chinese and below them the ethnic Chinese and the minority peoples of the south. Though ethnic Chinese from both north and south ran the Yuan bureaucracy at the regional and local levels, they could ordinarily exercise power at the top only as advisors to the Mongols or other nomadic officials. At all levels, their activities were scrutinized by Mongol functionaries from an enlarged and much-strengthened censors' bureau.
Gender And The Cultural Barriers
Mongol women in particular remained aloof from Chinese culture, at least Chinese culture in its Confucian guise. Like their counterparts in the Tang era, some of the wives of the emperors exercised considerable political power at the court. Perhaps the most notable in this regard was Kubilai's wife, Chabi, who not only gave him critical advice on how to counter the schemes of his ambitious brother but also promoted the interests of the Buddhists in the highest circles of government. At one point, she intervened to frustrate a plan to turn cultivated lands near the capital into pasturelands for the Mongols' ponies. After the conquest of the Qin, Chabi convinced Kubilai that lenient treatment of the survivors of the defeated royal family was the best way to reconcile the peoples of north China to Mongol rule.
It was not just the imperial consorts who enjoyed a remarkable degree of influence and freedom compared to their Chinese counterparts. Mongol women refused to adopt the practice of foot-binding that so constricted the activities of Chinese women. They retained their rights to property and control within the household and the capacity to move freely about town and countryside. No more striking evidence can be found than accounts that describe Mongol women riding to the hunt, both with their husbands and at the head of their own hunting parties. The daughter of one of Kubilai's cousins even went to war, and she refused to marry until one of her many suitors proved able to throw her in a wrestling match. Unfortunately, the Mongol era was too brief to reverse the trends that were lowering the position of Chinese women. As neo- Confucianism gained ground under Kubilai's successors, the arguments for the confinement of women multiplied.
Mongol Adoption Of Chinese Ways
Though Kubilai Khan was much more taken with Chinese culture and eager to adopt Chinese ways than most of his Mongol followers, those who settled down in China invariably became Sinified to varying degrees. This was perhaps inevitable when one considers that at most there were only a few hundred thousand Mongols residing in the midst of a Chinese population of perhaps 90 million. Much to the dismay of Mongol purists fresh from the steppes, Kubilai modeled much at his capital and court at Tatu after Chinese precedents. His palace was laid out like those of Chinese emperors and made up primarily of Chinese-style buildings, despite the tents in the parklands and altars for sacrifices to the Mongol deities. The upper levels of the bureaucracy were organized and run, minus the civil service exams, along Tang-Song lines. Kubilai put the empire on the Chinese calendar, listened to Chinese music, and offered sacrifices to his ancestors at a special temple in the imperial city. He also summoned the best Confucian scholars to give his son a proper Chinese education, a move that perhaps more than any other demonstrated his determination to civilize his Mongol followers.
Mongol Tolerance And Foreign Cultural Influences
Like Chinggis Khan and a number of other Mongol overlords, Kubilai had an unbounded curiosity and very cosmopolitan tastes. His generous patronage drew to his splendid court scholars, artists, artisans, and office seekers from many lands. Some of the most favored came from regional Muslim kingdoms to the east that had also come under Mongol rule. Muslims were included in the second highest social grouping, just beneath the Mongols themselves. Persians and Turks were admitted to the inner circle of Kubilai's administrators and advisors. Muslims designed and supervised the building of his Chinese-style imperial city and proposed new systems for the more efficient collection of taxes. Persian astronomers imported more advanced Middle Eastern instruments for celestial observations, corrected the Chinese calendar, and made some of the most accurate maps that the Chinese had ever seen. Muslim doctors ran the imperial hospitals and added translations of 36 volumes on Muslim medicine to the imperial library. Though some of Kubilai's most powerful advisors were infamous for their corrupt ways, most served him well and did much to advance Chinese learning and technology through the transmission of texts, instruments, and weapons from throughout the Muslim world.
In addition to the Muslims, Kubilai welcomed travelers and emissaries from many foreign lands to his court. Like his grandfather, Kubilai displayed a strong interest in all religions and insisted on toleration in his domains. Buddhists, Nestorian Christians, Daoists and Latin Christians made their way to his court. The most renowned of the latter were members of the Polo family from Venice in northern Italy, who traveled extensively in the Mongol Empire in the middle of the 13th century. Marco Polo's account of Kubilai Khan's court and empire is perhaps the most famous travel account written by a European. Marco accepted fantastic tales of grotesques and strange customs, and he may have cribbed parts of his account from other sources. Still, his descriptions of the palaces, cities, and wealth of Kubilai's empire enhanced European interest in the "Indies" and helped to inspire efforts by navigators like Columbus to find a water route to these fabled lands.
Social Policies And Scholar-Gentry Resistance
Kubilai's efforts to promote Mongol adaptation to Chinese culture were overshadowed in the long run by countervailing measures to preserve Mongol separateness. The ethnic Chinese, particularly in the south, who made up the vast majority of his subjects were never really reconciled to Mongsl rule. Despite Kubilai's cultivation of Confucian rituals and his extensive employment of Chinese bureaucrats, most of the scholar-gentry regarded the Mongol overlord and his successors as uncouthhbarbarians whose policies endangered Chinese traditions. As it was intended to do, Kubilai's refusal to reinstate the examination route to administrative office prevented Confucian scholars from dominating politics. The favoritism he showed Mongol and other foreign officials further alienated the scholar-gentry.
To add insult to injury, Kubilai went to great lengths to bolster the position of the artisan classes, who had never enjoyed high standing, and the merchants, whom the Confucian thinkers had long dismissed as parasites. The Mongols had from the outset shown great regard for artisans, often sparing them the slaughter meted out to their fellow city dwellers because of their useful skills. During the Yuan period in China, merchants also prospered and commerce boomed, partly owing to Mongol efforts to improve transportation and expand the supply of paper money. The Mongols developed -with amazing speed for a people who had no prior experience with seafaring -a substantial navy that played a major role in the conquest of the Song Empire. After the conquest of China was completed, the great Mongol war fleets were used to put down pirates, who threatened river and overseas commerce, and, toward the end of Kubilai's reign, for overseas expeditions of conquest and exploration. Thus, during the Yuan period, artisans and traders enjoyed a level of government backing and social status that was never again equaled in Chinese civilization.
Ironically, despite the Mongol's ingrained suspicion of cities and sedentary life-styles, both flourished in the Yuan era. The urban expansion begun under the Tang and Song dynasties continued, and the Mongol elite soon became addicted to the diversions of urban life. Though traditional Chinese artistic endeavors, such as poetry and essay writing, languished under the Mongols in comparison with their flowering in the Tang-Song eras, popular entertainments, particularly musical dramas, flourished. Perhaps the most famous of Chinese dramatic works, The Romance of the West Chamber, was written in the Yuan period, and dozens of major playwrights wrote for the court, the rising merchant classes, and the well-heeled Mongol elite. Actors and actresses, who had long been relegated by the Confucian scholars to the despised status of "mean people," achieved celebrity and some measure of social esteem. All of this rankled the scholar-gentry, who bided their time, waiting for the chance to restore Confucian decorum and what they believed to be the proper social hierarchy for a civilized people like the Chinese.
Initially at least, Kubilai Khan pursued policies toward one social group, the peasants, that the scholarly class would have heartily approved. He issued edicts forbidding Mongol cavalrymen from turning croplands into pasture and restored the granary system for famine relief that had been badly neglected in the late Song. Kubilai also sought to reduce peasant tax and corvee-labor burdens, partly by redirecting peasant payments from local non-official tax farmers directly to government officials. He and his advisors also formulated a revolutionary plan to establish elementary education at the village level. Though the level of learning they envisioned was rudimentary, such a project - if it had been enacted - would have provided a major challenge to the elite-centric educational system that hitherto had dominated Chinese civilization.
If the scholar-gentry were upset over reports of the impending educational reforms, the peasants grew disgruntled about a further rural project that was put into effect. All peasant households were organized into 50-unit clusters that were intended to enhance peasant cooperation, improve farming techniques, and increase productivity. Because each cluster was supervised by state officials and each household was responsible for reporting misdeeds by members of the others, the scheme was also clearly a device for asserting state control. Because in practice its control functions were favored at the expense of its potential for agrarian improvement, the reorganization was increasingly resented by the peasants, whose discontent had much to do with the rapid demise of the Yuan dynasty.
The Fall Of The House Of Yuan
Historians often remark on the seeming contradiction between the military prowess of the Mongol conquerors and the short life of the dynasty they established in China. Kubilai Khan's long reign encompassed a good portion of the nine decades that the Mongols ruled all of China. Already by the end of his reign, the dynasty was showing signs of weakening. Song loyalists raised the standard of revolt in the south, and popular hostility toward the foreign overlords was expressed more and more openly. The Mongol aura of military invincibility was badly tarnished by Kubilai's rebuffs at the hands of the military lords of Japan and the failure of the expeditions that he sent to punish them, first in 1274 and a much larger effort that was mounted in 1280. The defeats suffered by Mongol forces engaged in similar expeditions to Vietnam and Java in this same period further undermined the Mongols' standing.
Kubilai's dissolute life-style in his later years, partly brought on by the death of his favorite wife Chabi and, five years later, the death of his favorite son, set the tone for a general softening of the Mongol ruling class as a whole. Kubilai's successors lacked his capacity for leadership and cared little for the tedium of day-to-day administrative tasks. Many of the Muslim and Chinese functionaries to whom they entrusted the finances of the empire enriched themselves through flagrant graft and corruption. This greatly angered the hard-pressed peasantry who had to bear the burden of rising taxes and demands for forced labor. The scholar-gentry played on this discontent by calling on the people to rise up and overthrow the "barbarian" usurpers.
By the 1350s, the signs of dynastic decline were apparent. Banditry and piracy were widespread, and the government's forces were too feeble to curb them. Famines hit many regions and spawned local uprisings that grew to engulf large portions of the empire. Secret religious sects, such as the White Lotus Society, were formed that were dedicated to the overthrow of the dynasty. Their leaders' claims that they had magical powers to heal their followers and to confound their enemies helped prompt further peasant resistance against the Mongols. As had been the case in the past, rebel leaders quarreled and fought with each other. For a time chaos reigned as the Yuan regime dissolved, and those Mongols who could escape the fury ofpthe mob retreated back into central Asia. The restoration of peace and order came from an unexpected quarter. Rather than a regional military commander or aristocratic lord, a man from an impoverished peasant family, Ju Yuanzhang, emerged to found the Ming dynasty that would rule China for most of the next three centuries.
Analysis And Conclusion
Analysis: The Eclipse Of The Nomadic War Machine
As the shock waves of the Mongol and Timurid explosions amply demonstrated, nomadic incursions into the civilized cores have had an impact on global history that far exceeds what one would expect, given the relatively small numbers of nomadic peoples and the limited resources of the regions they inhabited. From the time of the great Indo-European migrations in the formative epoch of civilized development in the 3d and 2d millennia b.c. (see Chapters 2, 3 and 4) through the classical and postclassical eras, nomadic peoples periodically emerged from their steppe, prairie, and desert fringe homelands to invade, often build empires, and settle in the sedentary zones of Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. Their intrusions have significantly altered political history by destroying existing polities and even -as in the case of Assyria and Harappa -whole civilizations. They have also generated major population movements, sparked social upheavals, and facilitated critical cultural and economic exchanges across civilizations. As the Mongols' stunning successes in the 13th century illustrate, the capacity of nomadic peoples to break through the defenses of the much more populous civilized zones and to establish control over much richer and more sophisticated peoples arose primarily from the advantages the nomads possessed in waging war.
A reservoir of battle-ready warriors and mobility have from ancient times proven the key to success for expansion-minded nomads. Harsh environments and ongoing intertribal and interclan conflicts for survival within them produced tough, resourceful fighters who could live off the land on the march and who regarded combat as an integral part of their lives. The horses and camels on which pastoral peoples in Eurasia and Sudanic Africa relied gave them a degree of mobility that confounded the sedentary peoples who sought to ward off their incursions. The mounted warriors of nomadic armies possessed the advantages of speed, surprise, and superior intelligence, which was gathered by mounted reconnaissance patrols. The most successful nomadic invaders, such as the Mongols, also proved willing to experiment with and adapt to technological innovations with military applications. Some of these, such as the stirrup and various sorts of harnesses, were devised by the nomads themselves. Others, such as gunpowder and the siege engines -both Muslim and Chinese -that the Mongols used to smash the defenses of walled towns, were borrowed from sedentary peoples and adapted to the nomads' fighting machines.
Aside from the considerable military advantages that accrued from nomadic life-styles and social organization, their successes in war owed much to the weaknesses of their adversaries in the sedentary, civilized zones. The great empires that provided the main defense for agricultural peoples against nomadic incursions were even in the best circumstances diverse and overextended polities, in which imperial control -and protection -diminished steadily as one moved away from the capital and core provinces. Imperial boundaries were usually fluid, and the outer provinces were consistently vulnerable to nomadic raids, if not conquest.
Classical and postclassical empires, such as the Egyptian and Han and the Abbasid, Byzantine, and Song enjoyed great advantages over the nomads in terms of the populations and resources they controlled. But their armies were, almost without exception, too slow, too low on firepower, and too poorly trained to resist large and well-organized forces of nomadic intruders. In times of dynastic strength in the sedentary zones, well-defended fortress systems and ingenious weapons -such as the cross bow, which could be fairly easily mastered by the peasant conscripts -proved quite effective against nomadic incursions. Nonetheless, even the strongest dynasties depended heavily on "protection" payments to nomad leaders and the divisions among the nomadic peoples on their borders for their security. And even the strongest sedentary empires were periodically shaken by nomadic raids into the outer provinces. When the empires weakened or when large numbers of nomads were united under able leaders, such as Muhammad and his successors or Chinggis Khan, nomadic assaults made a shambles of sedentary armies and fortifications.
In the centuries after the Mongol and Timurid explosions, which in many ways represented the apex of nomadic power and influence on world history, this age-old pattern of interaction between nomads and farming town-dwelling peoples was fundamentally transformed. This transformation resulted in the growing ability of sedentary peoples to first resist and then dominate nomadic peoples, and it marks a major watershed in the history of the human community. Some of the causes of the shift were immediate and specific. The most critical of these was the devastation wrought by the Black Death on the nomads of Central Asia in the 14th century. Though the epidemic proved catastrophic for large portions of the civilized zones as well, it dealt the relatively sparse nomadic populations a blow from which they took centuries to recover. The more rapid demographic -relating to population trends -resurgence of the sedentary peoples greatly increased their already considerable numerical advantage over the nomadic peoples in the following centuries. The combination of this growing numerical advantage, which in earlier epochs the nomads had often been able to overcome, with key political and economic shifts and technological innovations proved critical in bringing about the decline of the nomadic war machine.
In the centuries after the Mongol conquests, the rulers of sedentary states found increasingly effective ways of centralizing their political power and mobilizing the manpower and resources of their domains for war. Some improvements in this regard were made by the rulers of China and the empires of the Islamic belt. But the sovereigns of the nascent states of western Europe surpassed all other potentates in advances in these spheres. Stronger control and better organization allowed a growing share of steadily increasing national wealth to be channeled toward military ends. The competing rulers of Europe also invested heavily in technological innovations with military applications, from improved metalworking techniques to the development of ever more potent gunpowder and firearms. From the 15th and 16th centuries, the discipline and training of European armies also improved markedly. With pikes, muskets, fire drill, and trained commanders, European armies were more than a match for the massed nomad cavalry that had so long terrorized sedentary peoples.
With the introduction early in the 17th century of light, mobile field artillery into European armies, the nomads' retreat began. States such as Russia, which had centralized power on the western European model, as well as the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Qing in China, which had shared many of the armament advances of the Europeans, moved steadily into the steppe and desert heartlands of the horse and camel nomads. Each followed a conscious policy of settling part of its rapidly growing peasant population in the areas taken from the nomads. Thus, nomadic populations were not only brought under the direct rule of sedentary empires, their pasturelands were plowed and planted wherever the soil and water supply permitted.
These trends suggest that the nomadic war machine had been in decline long before the new wave of innovation that ushered in the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. But that process sealed its fate. Railways and repeating rifles allowed sedentary peoples to penetrate even the most wild and remote of the nomadic refuges and subdue even the most determined and fierce of nomadic warriors, from the Plains Indians of North America to the bedouin of the Sahara and Arabia. The periodic nomadic incursions into the sedentary zones, which had reoccurred sporadically for millennia, had come to an end.
Conclusion: The Mongol Legacy and an Aftershock: The Brief Ride of Timur
[See Timur The Lame: In 1398 Timur-i Lang's central Asian armies left Delhi completely destroyed and India politically fragmented.]
As we have seen, the Mongol impact on the many areas where they raided and conquered varied considerably. The sedentary peoples on the farms and in the cities, who experienced the fury of their assaults and the burden of their tribute exactions, understandably emphasized the destructive side of the Mongol legacy. But the Mongol campaigns also decisively influenced the course of human history in the ways they altered warfare and the political repercussions they generated in invaded areas. Mongol armies, for example, provided openings for the rise of Moscow as the central force in the creation of a Russian state, they put an end to Abbasid and Seljuk power, and they opened the way for the Mameluks and the Ottomans. The Mongol Empire promoted trade and important exchanges among civilizations, though, as the spread of the black death illustrates, the latter were not always beneficial. Mongol rule also brought stable, at times quite effective, government and religious toleration to peoples over much of Asia. On balance, it can be argued that the cost of these by-products of Mongol expansion was far too high. However high the price, there can be little doubt that the Mongol interlude changed the course of human history in major ways. It represented the most significant involvement of nomadic peoples in the development of civilization since the transition to sedentary agriculture in the Neolithic epoch.
Just as the peoples of Eurasia had begun to recover from the upheavals caused by Mongol expansion, a second nomadic explosion from central Asia plunged them again into fear and despair. This time the nomads in question were Turks, not Mongols, and their leader, Timur-i Lang or Timur the Lame, was from a noble landowning clan, not a tribal, herding background. Timur's was a decidedly divided personality. On the one hand, he was a highly cultured individual who delighted in the fine arts, lush gardens, and splendid architecture, and who could spend days conversing with great scholars such as the Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. On the other, he was a ruthless conqueror, apparently indifferent to human suffering and capable of commanding his troops to commit atrocities on a scale that would not be matched in the human experience until the 20th century. Beginning in the 1360s, his armies moved out from his base at Samarkand to conquests in Persia, the Fertile Crescent, India, and southern Russia.
If his empire did not begin to compare with that of the Mongols in size, he outdid them in the ferocity of his campaigns. In fact, Timur is remembered for little more than truly barbaric destruction -for the pyramids of skulls he built with the heads of the tens of thousands of people slaughtered after the city of Aleppo in Asia Minor was taken, or the thousands of prisoners he had massacred as a warning to the citizens of Delhi in north India not to resist his armies. In the face of this wanton slcughter, the fact that he spared artisans and scientists to embellish his capital city at Samarkand counts for little. Unlike the Mongols, his rule brought neither increased trade and significant cross-cultural exchanges nor internal peace. Mercifully, his reign was as brief as it was violent. After his death in 1405, his empire was pulled apart by his warring commanders and old enemies anxious for revenge. With his passing, the last great challenge of the steppe nomads to the civilizations of Eurasia came to an end. |
