The Mongol Empire

Conquest of China, Russia, Central Asia, and the Near East 11/16/2010
I. The Founder: Genghis Khan (Temüjin was his given name)

A. son of a clan leader

B. Mongols lived in extended family clan groupings; clans relationships involved

warfare and intermarriage
C. Genghis Khan’s father fell victim
D. Genghis Khan = Chinggis Khan (same person)
i. honorific title; means great king or ruler to the four oceans

E. lived c. 1167-1227 CE

i. 1206 CE—named Genghis Khan (“universal leader”)

F. nomadic peoples and fearsome warriors, but not equipped to keep lands/administrate
till later
G. Chinggis Khan very good at uniting
i. very good at persuading, etc. and telling leaders that if they joined him, it
would be for the benefit of their entire culture (which was hard b/c this was a
culture in which honor and power were held very highly)
ii. he was also interested tech and other things of other cultures, so Chinggis
Khan very open to new ideas and even religion; interested in minimizing
warfare in order to increase trade
iii. Mongols start as warriors, but b/c they’re so flexible in their outlook, become
one of the most prosperous/unprecedented
H. new capital = Karakorum

i. invited scholars from all over Eurasia

a. interested in ideas, religions, technology/toys

b. invited Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, etc. religious leaders to

come into his tent and speak with him
1. obsessed with death/figured if he accepted all, at least one of
them must be right
2. but also wanted to bridge differences
 I. fearsome warriors

i. hardy people

ii. accustomed to living outdoors under extreme conditions; expert horse people

II. Why did the Mongols succeed?

A. not as many Mongols compared to the people they attacked

B. very good at adapting to new circumstances, which included adopting war

technology/tactics of opponents
i. i.e. when they first encountered a wall, they kidnapped ____ to teach them
how to breach the walls, etc.
C. reorganized it so that it was hierarchal based on how good of a soldier you were and
teamwork and such (before was all family connections)
D. Good intelligence

i. extensive use of networks of spies to figure out weakest places, etc.

ii. lots of info before attack

E. good at psychological warfare

i. Assyrians, etc. made use of terror psychology

ii. Mongols knew that they couldn’t fight every single city or settlement they
came across and subdue them
iii. chose targets carefully

a. sent emissary to negotiate/tell them that if they didn’t resist, everyone

would live
b. if they refused to let the Mongols rule, the Mongols slaughtered
everyone but one man, who they had go on to the next town to tell
them that they better listen to the Mongols
c. but realized that they couldn’t get revenue if they killed everyone, so
tried to destroy as little as possible to maximize revenue (but if you
crossed them, they would without a doubt destroy you)
 F. internal weaknesses of enemies

i. attacked places that were already breaking down

a. Abbasids

b. Byzantine Empire in bad shape

c. Russia is ridden by internal conflict

1. diff princes too busy fighting each other to realize Mongols

were greater threat
d. Song dynasty (have fled all the way south to this point)

e. Mongols swept away last remnants of empires and allowed for new
empires to rise (i.e. Ottoman in Turkey and the Ming Dynasty in China
and the kingdom of Moscow in Russia)
III. The Relentless Path of Conquest

Goal = tribute!

A. Qin 1209-1215 CE

B. 1219 CE: Central Asia; then west to Central Asia; Chenggis Khan dies at this point,
but at this point he is succeeded briefly by his son, but eventually Chenggis Khan’s
empire is garmented into different pieces b/c there are rivals to the great Khan and a
number of Chenggis’s grandons want to rule (and one remaining son)—broken into 4
C. 1236-1240 CE: Russia; make it was far as Hungary (eastern Europe

D. 1241: Eastern Europe

E. 1258: Baghdad (end of Abbasid (?))

F. 1235-1279: southern China

G. 1274-1281 CE: Japan and Java

i. not successful

ii. not seafarers and many were ill by the time they got to Japan and Japan during
the medieval period had their samurai waiting to fight the Mongols
 iii. never conquers Japan or Java (an island in Indonesia) b/c can’t do sea

IV.Successors To Genghis Khan

At death, empire divided among 4 heirs
A. originally passed on to Ogedai, but after Ogedai’s death empire is divided into
separate Khanates; ultimately run differently and competing with each other; one of
them is supposed to have superiority (the one that controls China—Kublai Khan)
B. Il-Khanate—Persia/Near East
i. Leader = Hulegu (grandson)
ii. Adopted Islam
iii. incredibly fearsome warriors
a. only thing that kept from going further into northern Africa was b/c of
the Egyptian Mamluks; advance halted by Egyptian Mamluks
iv. settled eventually in the lands that they conquered; when they did, they often
adopted the practices there—converted to Islam
a. but didn’t assimilate/intermarry fully (didn’t want to)
b. ill-equipped to administer, so hired guys from old gov to work for
them, so actually had a pretty good bureaucratic system
v. Mongols were open/accepting of all faiths and kept some of their own old
practices with Islam, so more traditional Muslims in Cairo (center of Islamic
thought at the time) rejected Mongols
vi. economically tried to print paper money—turned out bad b/c didn’t realize
you had to back up that money with something
vii. intricate/invaluable system (called the qanat) was destroyed; was used to
get land to farms, etc.—very bad!
viii. alienated population/bankrupted gov
ix. addicted to luxury
x. remained in power until 1349 (so about 100 years)
xi.
C. Golden Horde/Tatars—Russia
i. Sometimes called the Tatars in Russia
ii. Leader = Batu (grandson)
iii. Adopted Islam
 iv. Mongols had little interest in Russia, though; cold, many not good pasture
areas; Mongols preferred to hang out in southern region and chose to rule
through intermediaries; designated diff princes from Russia to collect taxes on
their behalf; all old princes had to come to Serai to bid on being the principle
tax collector; you had a quota of money that you had to collect, and anything
more you could keep (called tax farming); Mongols retained official control in
Russia to around 1480 CE
v. ruled 1240-1480 CE

vi. eventually, Ivind Moneybags prince from Moscow (people didn’t want to go

b/c it was so cold, etc.) gets himself as chief tax collector and is very good at
it; uses his wealth to weaken his rivals/other Russian princes and keeps money
chest to raise money for an army; secretly kept much money to amass own
power/army, and finally in 1480 one of these princes officially kicks Mongols
out
a. princes of Moscow very sneaky/defeated rivals/took over

D. Khanate of Jagatai—Central Asia (mostly plains and pastureland)

i. Jagatai was the son, not grandson
ii. eventually spawned Tamerlane—active in 1370-1405 CE
a. relative of the Mongols that spread a new wave of destruction from
1370-1405
GET NOTES

V. Life under the Mongols

A. Pax Mongolica

i. describes life under the Mongols/different Khanates

ii. for vast majority of those under the Mongols, there was
trade/commerce/higher standard of living (not super harsh)
iii. one of the ways they did was through religious toleration

a. discussed religious issues

b. in some cases, less toleration, but overall Mongols were quite happy to
allow people to practice own faiths
 c. in some cases used intermediaries to rule

iv. relative local autonomy if tribute paid

a. used intermediaries

1. sometimes locals

 Russia and Persia

2. sometimes foreigners

 EX: Marco Polo from China worked as tax

administrator for Kublai Khan
 this had some consequences for China/people who used
to be administrators in china—scholar bureaucrats
o some allowed to have lower level jobs, but not
as much prestige; Confucian scholar exams
abolished; Chinese not allowed to learn
Mongolian/no intermarriage; scholar
bureaucrats felt very devalued
v. trade flourished

a. demand for goods increased

b. silk roads

c. world’s first passport!

1. Mongols issued medal-like thing to traders that allowed them

free/safe passage to different Khanates
2. gives sense of how much they were interested in promoting
trade
d. trade in ideas between cultures too

1. monks to China

2. diplomats, missionaries, scholars all helping to create a new

hybrid culture throughout Eurasia
 e. also brought disease!  the plague to Western Europe and Middle
East
VI.Consequences

A. spread of disease—Plague!

i. began in southern China and carried to the west through trading routes with
devastating consequences in China, Europe, and the Middle East
B. Mongols swept away last vestiges of declining empires (Abbasid Caliphate, warring
principalities in Russia, southern Song)
i. allowed for a new wave/generation of empires to emerge

ii. Middle East had Ottoman Empire; eventually have Saphavid Empire in Persia;
Ming in China; rise of Moscow in Russia (first centralized Russian state)
a. prince of Moscow eventually got post of chief tax collectors

C. Mongols encouraged resettlement of peoples across Eurasia

i. fleeing invasions—Thais (into Thailand)

a. Thais not from Thailand, actually from Southern China, but they fled
into Thailand in the Mongol invasion
b. Same thing happened in other places, too
ii. people moved around because of jobs/trade as well

iii. assimilation into Mongolian bureaucracy

VII. Yuan Dynasty—Last of the four Khanates (1271-1368)***important

A. founded by Kubilai Khan (1260-1294 CE), one of Genggis Khan’s grandson’s

i. only ruled for 34 years

ii. moved capital to Beijing (even today!)

iii. Kuilai Khan created cosmopolitan court

a. people from all over as diplomats, missionaries, visitors

iv. married someone from western China called Chabi

 a. Chabi was a Christian

b. Kubilai Khan into Buddhism and promoted it; he didn’t like

Confucianism (scholar-bureaucracy de-emphasized)
v. prosperous place; everyone wanted to be at palace of Kubilai Khan

vi. Shangri-La became place of beauty, etc.

B. But little Mongol assimilation

i. forbade Chinese from learning Mongol; preferred to promote nomads as

opposed to indigenous Chinese
a. resentment, esp by scholar-gentry
ii. many of their attempt to help peasants back fired b/c they didn’t know what
they were doing
a. wanted paper money (Chinese had tried that before and it didn’t work),

but didn’t back it up and it created a lot of inflation

iii. wanted to limit scholar-gentry to power b/c they didn’t want them to use
ties/powers to better themselves
a. Mongols figured that if people came from far away, there wouldn’t be
as many family ties and motives to be corrupt
C. Rise of merchant class

i. Mongols actively promoted trade/merchant class

a. some of the most wealthy merchants ended up being scholar-

bureaucrats b/c couldn’t get in gov
1. trading went against their Confucian principles, but they got
over that
2. merchants traveling far and wide and helped integrate China
into wider world
ii.
VIII. Decline of Yuan Dynasty
A. Wanted to get into Java, but failed
i. Mongols didn’t succeed in Japan so people began to question Mongol’s
“invincibility”
B. Kubilai Khan very good administrator, but he had very weak successors
i. Lots of fighting in court and no one could rise above
C. Rampant corruption at court
i. Foreign administrators corrupt (opposite of why they were there in the first
place)
D. Plague (1330s)
i. Rapid decline/drop in population

ii. negative effect on econ

E. oppressive trades of peasantry

i. some abandoned farms

ii. some joined rebel groups

F. inflation (paper money)

i. both Mongols and Chinese did this

G. Breakdown in law and order

i. people began to think Mongols could no longer protect them

H. all led to peasant rebellions in 1340s

i. one of the leaders, Ju Yuanzhang went on to found the Ming Dynasty

ii. White Lotus sect; popular Daoism (version that is less about meditation/being
a hermit and more about using knowledge about workings of nature to prolong
your life
a. could be protected from harm by incantations/spells

b. gives sense of how much things were falling apart by end of Yuan
11/16/2010
11/16/2010