DAILY LIFE IN THE MONGOL EMPIRE

Mongol life in the time of Chinggis Khan focused on the herd. Farming was almost impossible on the steppes,  since there was harsh weather and little rain. A family, tribe, or clan depended on its animals for the necessities of life. Herds needed to be moved around the steppes to ensure there was enough for them to graze on. This is why the Mongols were nomads.

The Mongols’ most important animals were sheep and horses. Sheep provided food (both meat and milk), wool for cloth, and fuel—their waste was dried and burned. The Mongols used the food and clothing that came from their sheep for themselves and as goods to trade with sedentary communities. The Mongols traded with farmers and merchants for grains, cloth, and luxury goods.

Horses were the main source of Mongol transportation and played a large role in the success of the Mongol army. Horses also provided milk. When fermented (mixing yeast with a drink to create alcohol),  this milk became a mildly alcoholic drink called kumiss. With the riches of their empire, the khans also bought huge quantities of strong alcoholic drinks, such as wine made from grapes or rice. The Mongols drank them often. In fact, some historians suggest that certain Mongol rulers died at an early age because of alcoholism.

In their original homelands, the Mongols spent their summers on the wide-open steppes, then moved into mountain valleys for the winter.

The trip from one pasture to another might cover about 100 miles. If a pasture no longer provided enough grass for their grazing animals, the Mongols might attack other tribes or foreigners to take over their land.

On the steppes, the Mongols lived in tents called gers. (Europeans called them yurts.) Felt cloth made from sheep’s wool was draped over a wooden frame. The gers were round, with a hole in the center that let in light and served as a chimney. The floor was covered with animal skins. The room inside was split into two halves, one for men and one for women. Gers were easy to set up and take down quickly, so they could be moved without much trouble. 

Carpini noted (in The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars) that “whenever [Mongols] travel, whether to war or other  places, they always take their homes with them.” During the period of the empire, the Mongols also had larger gers that were set up on large wagons and moved intact. Some Mongols who lived closer to the Gobi Desert also used tents called maikhans. A maikhan was more rectangular than a ger, and used poles to hold up the felt covering. These tents were never used as living spaces. Instead, they were places for entertainment and other special functions.

Food and Clothing

Mongolian men and women wore similar clothes, starting with a robe called a de’el. The robe might be lined with fur for warmth. It was closed with a belt. The outer part of the robe was usually covered in silk. Poorer people lined their clothing with wool or cotton. Underneath the de’el, Mongols wore pants and some kind of an undershirt. During cold weather, they wore overcoats made of felt or fur. On their feet they wore thick stockings and boots made of leather. In very cold weather, they wore felt boots. The one main difference between male and female clothing was headgear. Men usually wore fur hats with flaps that covered the ears.

Wealthy women wore tall, fancy hats called boqtas. They were covered with feathers and pearls—hard-to-get items that could only be had by trading for them. Carpini wrote (in The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars) that only married women wore boqtas. This made it difficult to tell an unmarried woman from a man, because she would not wear a boqta and the rest of her clothing was just like a man’s.

The basic Mongol food was dairy products and meat, either from their herd or animals such as rabbits and fowl killed during their hunts. Men also sometimes fished. Some meat was dried in the sun, which preserved it and made it easy to eat while on horseback. Bones, with some meat still attached, were boiled in a broth called shülen. Later this term was used to describe a stew of broth and meat thickened with grains or beans. Plant foods included seeds, berries, fruit, and mushrooms.

Before the Mongol conquests, a typical meal was usually limited to boiled meat and dairy products. But as the Empire grew, new foods were introduced, such as roasted meats and dishes made with grain products. Many of these foods came from the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. The Mongols also developed a taste for dishes from China and Persia. During the time of the khanates, the common people provided food for the royal family and other leaders. The commoners ate whatever crops they grew that they did not give to the Mongol nobles. 

They also ate foods they got from trading animals or furs. As for slaves, William of Rubruck, in his book The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–1255, as Narrated by Himself, wrote that they “fill their bellies with dirty water, and with this they are content.” The slaves also caught rats or mice for their meals.

Men, Women, and Children

In daily life, Mongol men and women shared many duties, although each also had some specific chores. For example, women set up and took down the tents, sewed clothes, and turned milk into other dairy products, such as cheese and butter. When not at war, the men’s most important duties were making tools and hunting. The men had to make their own military equipment, including saddles and stirrups, and they took care of the horses.

Mongol men often had many wives, sometimes capturing women from neighboring tribes. Chinggis Khan was said to have had hundreds of wives, although he always remained very close to his first wife, Ö’elün. Families arranged marriages between their young children.

Parents from the ruling class did this to create political bonds that would last for generations. The young Chinggis acquired his first wife this way when he was only nine years old, although the actual marriage ceremony took place about six years later. Following a Mongolian custom, Chinggis—still known as Temüjin at this time—was left with the parents of his future wife. Before the empire was built, Mongol children did not go to school. The Mongols did not have a written language until Chinggis introduced one much later, so they did not need to learn how to read or write. Sons and daughters learned the skills they needed from their parents. For sons, the most important skills were hunting and archery. 

Daughters watched their mothers carrying out the typical women’s chores.

Education changed as the Mongol rulers interacted with the cultures of Persia and China. Wealthy families hired tutors to teach their children how to read and speak the local languages. The poor continued to just teach their children the skills they needed for adulthood.

Life in the Conquered Lands

Conditions for Europeans and Asians who came under Mongol rule depended on many things. People who had skills the khans needed were generally treated well. The poor and unskilled faced the same kind of difficult conditions they endured under their local emperors and princes. Throughout the world in the 13th and 14th centuries, most rulers saw the peasant class as a source of taxes and resources, not as citizens with rights. It was a time when most people in Europe and Asia lived in poverty and kings and princes dominated society.

In China, Khubilai Khan set up four classes of citizens. The Mongols were clearly the ruling class, though they made up just a small percentage of the population. Khubilai drew most of his advisors from the second class, the foreigners. The bottom two classes, the  northern and southern Chinese, provided most of the money and labor the Great Khan needed for his government.

Khubilai forced Chinese peasants to build his palaces and projects such as the Grand Canal. Yet he also tried to help the Chinese farmers. After the Mongol wars of conquest, the peasant farmers’ lands had been destroyed. Khubilai forbid the Mongols from grazing their animals on the farmland that remained, so the peasants could survive and help feed the empire. Khubilai helped other farmers by lowering taxes, and he gave grain to poor Chinese who could not afford to buy food. In rural areas, the Mongols preserved the traditional Chinese she, a system that united 50 farming families into one group. The government believed that if the farmers worked together, they could more quickly reclaim damaged land and increase their crop production. Southern farmers focused on rice and tea, while northern farmers raised barley, wheat, and cotton. Chinese farmers also raised fruits and vegetables. Some grew mulberry trees, which were used to feed the worms that produce silk. The she also gave rural dwellers some of their first schools, where young boys learned farming skills and the basics of reading Chinese.

Khubilai Khan also needed the skilled workers and merchants in the cities. Artisans, such as jewelers and weavers, received food and clothing from the government and could sell some of their goods on the open market. Merchants benefited because the Mongols welcomed trade. Traditional Chinese rulers considered buying and selling goods to be an unworthy profession and saw merchants as greedy. The Mongols helped merchants by freely loaning them money and removing an old Chinese restriction on how much profit they could make. Under Mongol rule, cities bustled with economic activity. Marco Polo often described the number of merchants, foods sellers, and artisans he saw at work. Of the city of Quinsai (modern Hangzhou, on the east coast of China), he wrote (in The Description of the World), “ . . . on every market day all the . . . squares are covered and filled with people and merchants who bring [goods] on carts and on boats, and all is disposed of.”

Life in the Ilkhanate

The early decades of Mongol rule in Persia and neighboring lands brought great changes to the local people—most of them bad. The region was mostly sedentary, though some nomadic Turks had already ruled there before the Mongols. Warfare and the Mongol policy of trying to convert farmlands to pastures destroyed the agricultural economy.

As in China, the local population greatly decreased during the early years of Mongol rule. Many people were forced into slavery. One historical account says that after the conquests, the survivors in the region of Balkh in northern Afghanistan could only find dogs, cats, and human flesh for food.

Before the invasions, the people of Persia had a healthy economy. Farmers produced corn, rice and other grains, fruits, and vegetables, as well as cotton and silk. Under the Mongols, farmers struggled to make their fields productive again.

This changed under the rule of Ghazan at the end of the 13^th century. His tax relief and other programs helped the farmers. Still, agricultural output did not return to the levels it had reached before the Mongols arrived. Peasant farmers did not have the freedom to live and work where they chose. The government forced them to stay on the land where their families had always lived. And, as in China, peasants might be forced to do construction work at no pay, which further harmed their efforts to farm the land.

By the mid 14th century, the local people were once again growing a variety of crops. Melons were grown everywhere, with many sent abroad. Fruits were a major part of agriculture. The fruits included figs, lemons, peaches, pears, and oranges. Vegetables were mostly grown near larger cities.

City life in Persia felt the same harsh effects of the Mongol conquest.

The early Mongol policy of heavily taxing trade slowed the rebuilding of some cities. Other cities, however, managed to do well, especially after Ghazan cut some of the taxes on trade. A typical city dweller might do craft work, such as making clothes, ceramics, or carpets.

Artisans who worked in the same craft often lived and worked together in a particular section of a city. Other city residents helped transport or store goods that were traded with foreign cities. Local residents also earned money working for the Mongols, who had several camps throughout the khanate.

The most powerful local people in Persia were the landlords and officials. They usually owned land outside the cities, and they began to take a more active interest in trade during Mongol rule. The landowners and the wealthy merchants formed the upper class, with artisans and peasants at the bottom. 

The influence of Islam on Persian society endured under Mongol rule. Schools called madrasas taught both religion and Islamic law, usually just to boys. Still, under the khans, non-Muslims found they had greater social and political influence than they had in the past.

Life in the Golden Horde

The rulers of the Golden Horde did not play a role in the everyday affairs of their Russian lands. Their most direct contact was with the Russian officials who collected taxes and the princes who ruled local areas. The Mongols’ greatest contact was with the Turkic people who had moved into Russia before the Mongol conquests.

The Russians in the towns of the east were Slavs and were related to other Slavic people of Eastern Europe. For the average people of Slavic Russia, life did not change much under Mongol rule—unless they were forced into the military. Farming was never easy in the forests around the upper end of the Volga River. Peasants cleared away the trees, then had to deal with short summers and bad soil. Families hunted and fished to make sure they had enough food. They lived in log cabins made from the trees they cut. In a typical rural home, the grandparents, their adult children, and the adults’ children all lived together.

Farther south along the river, the farming was better. The area where the Volga meets the Oka River, near Suzdal and Vladimir, drew many Russian settlers. That area remained a main source of wheat under Mongol rule. Land was the main source of wealth in the isolated regions of Russia. Families with large farms used slaves or peasants to work the land for them. In general, the peasants were not required to work just one plot of land. They could move on and work for a different landowner if they chose. If they owed a landowner money, however, the peasants could not leave. 

Therefore, the landowners tried to make sure the peasants were always in debt.

Novgorod, Russia’s only large city at the time, was a thriving trade center. At the city’s peak in the 13th century, its merchants traded furs and hemp (a plant fiber used to make rope) in Europe for wine and cloth. The Mongol capital of Saray also developed a strong economy. Many city residents worked smelting iron (separating pure

iron from iron ore) and turning it into finished products. 

Archaeologists have also found remains of clothing shops and jewelers on the site of the city.

In some ways, Russians benefited under the Golden Horde. Foreign trade increased as Russia joined the international trade network the Mongols supported. The Mongol presence also helped unite the Russians and create a sense of being Russian, of having a national identity, and not merely being the subject of the local prince.

The Russian Orthodox Church played a part in creating this nationalism. It was the only native, central power in the land. 

The people looked to church leaders and their own faith for the strength to endure the foreign invaders. Recent historians have also questioned the idea, held by earlier historians, that the Mongol conquests totally disrupted life across Russia. In The Crisis of Medieval Russia, John Fennell writes, “things returned to normal, or near-normal, in a remarkably short time.”

Nomadic Life in the Ulus Chaghatai

Daily life in the khanate of Chaghatai most resembled the life the Mongols knew in their homeland. Most of the conquered people were nomadic Turks, so they shared many cultural similarities with the Mongols. Over time, the Mongols completely blended in with the Turks. This lead to the creation of a new language, called Chaghatai Turk. Their nomadic culture remained basically unchanged. The one exception is that the Mongols adopted Islam as their major faith in the mid-14th century. Not all the natives of Central Asia were strictly nomads. Some were semi-nomads. 

That means they kept a base camp or village but moved out to farther pastures during part of the year. At their permanent homes, the semi-nomads farmed, and women wove colorful bags and carpets. The bags could be used to carry items or decorate the walls of a ger. Since the Mongols of Central Asia remained true to their nomadic roots, they largely ignored the cities in their midst. But in such places as Samarkand and Bukhara, the local people lived typical urban lives of the time. The cities, although heavily damaged during the Mongol conquests, slowly rebuilt their schools and marketplaces.

Religion in the Mongol Empire

Across Europe and Asia, religion played a huge role in political and daily life throughout the medieval period. The various parts of the Mongol Empire were dominated by Christianity (in Russia), Islam (in Persia), and Buddhism (in China). The different religions shaped the Mongol khans’ personal lives and their political decisions. The local khan’s faith sometimes determined what laws were enforced and who was considered an enemy. And some religious leaders labeled anyone who did not follow their faith “heathens” (people lacking a proper religion and morality). They sometimes used religious difference as a reason to wage wars.

The Mongols’ original religious beliefs centered on worship of their ancestors (the people from whom you are descended). They kept images of their deceased relatives and prayed to their spirits. They believed that ancestors could become spirits of mountains and water. 

Above all these spirits was Eternal Heaven (Teb Tenggeri). Earth was seen as an ancient grandmother. In the time of Chinggis, the Mongol religion was shamanistic, which means the people looked to religious leaders, called Shamans, to offer religious guidance. The Shamans were mostly men, but some were women. The Mongols believed Shamans had the power to communicate with gods and spirits.

The Shamans were the link between the world of humans and the spirit world. They could drive out evil spirits and seek help from good ones. They usually performed their duties, such as praying, on hills or mountains, so they would be closer to heaven.

The Mongols believed Shamans could also use their skills to cure disease and to predict the future. When Chinggis was named Great Khan, a Mongol Shaman said (as reported by Juvaini and quoted in Paul Ratchnevsky’s Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy), “God spoke to me, saying: ‘I have given the whole Earth to Temüjin and his sons. . . . See that he rules justly!’”

At times, the Mongols sacrificed animals to the gods and spirits. To keep evil spirits out of their homes, they made strangers walk between two fires. The fires were thought to drive out any spirits occupying their guests. They were also used to purify relatives who were inside a ger when a family member died. Carpini reported a rumor (in The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars) that a Russian prince who refused to walk between the fires and then bow to a statue of Chinggis Khan was trampled to death.

Modern historians now suggest that the Russian prince was killed because of a political disagreement with the Mongols, not for rejecting a practice of their religion. The truth is that when it came to religious beliefs, the Mongols were perhaps the most tolerant people in the medieval world. In general, they accepted other peoples’ gods, while often still following their shamanistic traditions.

Christianity

Even before Chinggis united the Mongol tribes, the Mongols had some contact with other faiths, primarily Christianity and Buddhism. The Christians in Mongolia belonged to the Church of the East, formed by the Assyrian people in what is now Iraq. European Christians called them Nestorians. The Assyrian Christians had a different view of the nature of Jesus as both a god and human than other Christians did. In church, they used the Syriac language, which is closely related to Aramaic, the language Christ spoke. 

During medieval times, the Church of the East spread across Asia. It was the first form of Christianity to reach India and China. Some Mongol tribes embraced it. Some later members of Chinggis’s own family were Christians, including the wives of Hülegü and Tolui. When the European missionary William of Rubruck reached Karakorum in 1254, he met with these Nestorians and noted that they had their own church in the capital city. During the 1280s, the head of the Assyrian Church was based in the Ilkhanate, and the Mongol leaders sometimes turned to him for advice. The growth of the Church of the East and reports from Assyrian priests led some Europeans to believe the Mongol khans had become Christians, or were at least considering it.

Through conquest and diplomacy, the Mongols made their first contact with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, two other forms of Christianity in the medieval era. Roman Catholicism, led by the pope in Rome, dominated Western and Central Europe. The Eastern Church was centered in Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Its focus was on Eastern Europe, including Russia, and parts of the Middle East. Differences between the religions sometimes led to political conflicts between rulers of these two faiths.

These conflicts increased during the Crusades, which began in the 11th century and lasted for several hundred years. During this series of wars, Catholic soldiers and their leaders fought for control of lands in the Middle East. These lands were controlled by Muslims, but they bordered the major Orthodox nation, the Byzantine Empire. Political and religious differences kept the Catholics and the Orthodox Christians from uniting to fight their common enemy, the Muslims. 

The first Christians the Mongols fought were in Georgia, during Chinggis’s western campaign of the early 1220s. The Europeans regarded the Mongols as heathens seeking to dominate the world. By the time the Mongol Empire was firmly established across Asia, the Roman Catholics of Europe began sending ambassadors and missionaries to Karakorum and other parts of the empire.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254) sent the Italian priest Giovanni Diplano Carpini to Mongolia on a  diplomatic mission. The monk met both Batu and Küyük. Neither was interested in converting to Catholicism. However, these and other khans welcomed the Christians who came to their lands as both diplomats and missionaries. By about 1275, the Catholic leaders of Western Europe had become friendlier toward the Mongols. They knew that Asian armies with Christian (that is, Nestorian) troops were advancing westward. They hoped these forces were led by someone who would help them fight the Muslims. 

The Golden Horde dealt primarily with the Russian Orthodox Church, a branch of Eastern Orthodoxy. The Russian church did not have to pay taxes under Mongol rule. In return, the priests were expected to pray for the Mongol leaders and their families. Still, the Mongol leaders never embraced Orthodox Christianity (or Roman  Catholicism) the way they did other faiths they encountered during their conquests. In their first years in Russia, the Mongols remained separate from the Russians and their church, choosing to follow their traditional beliefs.

Buddhism

Buddhism was developed in India more than 2,500 years ago. It is based on the teachings of the Buddha “enlightened one”, a prince who gave up his wealth to try to understand the meaning of life and death. The Buddha’s beliefs were based on Indian religious teachings, which stressed reincarnation. When a living being dies, according to Buddhism, its essence lives on and is reborn in another person or animal.

The Buddha went beyond this, setting down what he called the Four Noble Truths:

1. All existence is suffering.

2. The cause of suffering is desire, which is made worse because we do not understand the true nature of the world.

 3. There is a way to end ignorance and suffering, by ending our attachments to objects and feelings.

 4. The way to end desire is to follow the Buddha’s eight rules for right living.

The goal of Buddhism is to help people stop the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. When Buddhists end this cycle, they say they are enlightened, just like the Buddha, and they have reached a state of existence called nirvana. There are many forms of Buddhism, but they all have the same core beliefs. Buddhism existed in China for hundreds of years before the Mongols arrived. At some times, it was the country’s official religion. The first form of Buddhism to spread among the Mongols was Chan, which is the Chinese version of the Zen Buddhism still practiced in Japan and other nations. Under Khubilai Khan, Buddhism received strong royal support. Still, following Mongol custom, the Great Khan did not proclaim it the state religion Khubilai’s Buddhism, however, was not Chan or other forms commonly practiced in China. He turned to Tibet for religious inspiration. Tibetan Buddhism is sometimes called Lamaism from the word lama, which means “teacher” in Tibetan. In China, the Buddhists battled for influence at Khubilai’s court with the followers of a native Chinese religion, Daoism. Daoism is based on the teachings of the philosopher Laozi, and also has some elements of magic and fortune telling. In the end, the Buddhists won, and one of Khubilai’s most important advisors was the Phagspa Lama (1235–1280). The lama helped Khubilai win favor among China’s Buddhists by associating the Great Khan with Buddhist holy figures. Khubilai then banned the practice of Daoism. During the peak years of their empire, the Mongols helped spread Buddhism to other parts of Asia. The Ilkhanate’s first rulers, particularly Arghun, supported Lamaism and built Buddhist temples. But Buddhism was never an official religion, since the Ilkhans followed the Mongol policy of tolerating all faiths—that is, until Ghazan banned Buddhism.

Islam

As the Mongols moved westward across Asia, the dominant faith they encountered was Islam. The Middle East and parts of Central Asia were ruled by Islamic leaders. The religion had developed during the seventh century under its founder, Muhammad. Muslims believed he was the last prophet sent by God, and his teachings became both religious and civil law. The Muslims believed in the same god of the Jews and Christians. But Muhammad said only people who accepted his own teachings regarding God’s word were true followers of Allah (the Arabic word for God). Muhammad and his followers won a series of wars that helped Islam spread from its starting point in Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. In the lands they conquered, Muslims allowed Christians and Jews to practice their faith, but they did not tolerate any other religions. The coming of the Mongols marked the first time large Islamic populations were not governed by fellow Muslims. The Muslims believed they had a holy mission to place the entire world under Islamic rule. Their conquests, however, had largely stopped by the time the Mongols rose to power in Asia.

The khans of the Golden Horde were the first to convert to Islam, even though the religion was not particularly strong in Russia. Eventually, all the khanates except Yuan China were mostly Islamic. As the Mongols converted, they also continued their shamanist practice. However, over time the traditional beliefs died out outside the Mongol homelands. In Persia, the Mongols eventually saw value in sharing the same religion as the largest part of the population.

They kept the traditional Muslim tolerance of Christians and Jews. But believers of other faiths, such as Buddhism, lost their freedom of religion. Almost all traces of Buddhism in Persia were destroyed once the Ilkhans converted to Islam. Ahmad Tegüder was the first Ilkhan to convert. Since him, every ruler in Persia (and now Iran) has been a Muslim. Öljeitü, the next Mongol Ilkhan after Ghazan, embraced the Shiite branch of Islam, leading to its spread in Persia. Today, Iran’s rulers and most of its citizens still follow Shiism. The Mongol conversion in Persia and elsewhere led many Mongols to embrace the native Islamic cultures and lose their distinct Mongol traditions.

The khans of the Ulus Chaghatai were the last to convert to Islam.

The first one to do so, Tarmashirin (d. 1334), angered other Mongols who still practiced shamanism. At a quriltai, the Mongol princes forced him from power, saying he should not have replaced Mongol laws with Islamic laws. By the end of the 14th century, however, the khans of Central Asia had accepted Islam.

CONNECTIONS

No Barbecues

If the Mongols lacked fuel for a fire, they ate their meat raw, chopping it up and mixing it with garlic. the Mongol taste for raw meat led European chefs to name a dish for them, steak tartare, which uses raw beef that is finely chopped and mixed with spices. For many meals, the Mongols roasted meat over an open flame. they continued that tradition even as they mixed with Asia’s sedentary cultures. But the Mongols did not introduce the so-called Mongolian barbecue, which is found in some U.S. restaurants today. In these restaurants, diners choose from a variety of meats and vegetables, which are then cooked in oil in a large pan. This style of cooking is actually a Chinese invention and has nothing to do with the Mongols. In China, the meat and vegetables are cooked in a special pot with a cone in the center that holds burning charcoal. the pot has a ring around the outside filled with boiling flavored broth. the food is dipped in this broth to cook it.

Ice Cream and Cake

In the lands they conquered, the Mongols were introduced to new foods. the fruity dessert we call sherbet was first made by Christians living in China under Khubilai Khan’s rule. the emperor loved the frozen treat so much, he created the position of official sherbet maker. sherbet then spread to the Ilkhanate, where it also became popular. Today, it is enjoyed all over the world. One Turko-Mongol dish for the lands of Central Asia was a rich pastry similar to baklava, which features layers of nuts, spices, and sugar. the word baklava seems to come from the mongol word bakla, which means “pile up in layers.” Mongols may have introduced this sweet treat to the Middle East and other lands they conquered.

Blood Brothers

The young Chinggis Khan had a “blood brother.” When he was 11, Temüjin and a friend exchanged gifts, marking their commitment to one another. Nomadic blood brothers also mixed a few drops of their blood in a glass and drank from it, although there is no record Temüjin did this. These choices were made by the young men themselves. But for the Mongols, choosing a blood brother was not merely child’s play. Taking a blood brother created an anda, a relationship that united two men as political and military allies through their adulthood.

An International Society

Under Khubilai Khan, Chinese society took on an international flavor—probably more so than in any other nation at that time. The Mongol conquests had touched many countries and peoples, and Khubilai welcomed to China anyone who could help him develop his empire.

Most numerous were Turkic peoples and Muslims from Persia and Central Asia. his army also included Alans, who were steppe dwellers from southern Russia who belonged to the orthodox Church. Marco Polo was the only European known to serve Khubilai, but under earlier great Khans, Europeans artisans worked in Central Asia. These included William Boucher, a goldsmith from France. He is best known for designing a fountain in the palace of Karakorum. Shaped liked a tree, the fountain poured out wine and kumiss.

Bad Table Manners

Many of the first reports of Mongol customs and daily life came from people who feared or disliked the Mongols. Simon of Saint Quentin was a French monk who visited Mongol-controlled lands during the 1240s. His description of their eating habits was not kind.

‘They are the most unclean and filthy in their eating . . . they lick their greasy fingers and wipe them dry on their boots. . . . They do not wash their hands before eating, nor their dishes afterward. . . . They eat human meat like lions; devouring it roasted on the fire and soaked with grease. And whenever they take someone contrary or hostile to themselves, they come together in one place to eat him . . . for the rebellion raised against them. They avidly suck his blood just like hellish vampires’.

Simon was not an accurate historian, because the Mongols did not eat human flesh or drink human blood. Stories such as this created an unfair image of the Mongols throughout much of Europe. (Source: Lane, George. Daily Life in the Mongol Empire. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,2006).

Civil Wars

Although the Russians may have had some sense of nationalism under Mongol rule, the Russian princes continued to fight among themselves for power. During the 1280s and 1290s, princes from the same family sometimes battled each other, trying to win control of larger regions. At one time, Mongol forces fought against each other during these Russian wars, because Noghai and Tode Möngke backed rival princes.

  

Shamans Today

Shamanism developed across Central Asia and Siberia. The “medicine men” of North and South American native peoples are also Shamans. Shamanism is still practiced around the world today, including in Mongolia, although Tibetan style Buddhism is now the dominant religion. A shaman’s powers are thought to pass from parents to their children. Stanley Stewart, in ‘In the Empire of Genghis Khan: A Journey Among Nomad’s, described a session with a shaman who entered a trance and made predictions about the future. The Shaman told Stewart that contacting the spirits is not easy: “I am often afraid. The way to the spirits is littered with the souls of fallen shamans.”

The Myth of Prester John

The presence of Christians in China and Central Asia gave rise to a powerful myth in medieval Europe. Many Europeans believed that a great Asian king named Prester John was a Christian who would come to the Middle East and help the Crusaders defeat the Muslims.

There was no real Prester John. Marco Polo associated the mythical Prester John with Toghril, a real Christian prince of the Church of the East from Mongolia. In his Travels, Polo spent several chapters describing a war between Toghril and Chinggis. Pester John was also

associated with an earlier Central Asian ruler, Yelu Dashi (1087–1143), who founded the Kara-Khitay Empire during the 12th century.

Judaism in the Mongol Empire

Mongols came into contact with Judaism through their conquest of Islamic lands. Jews had lived in such cities as Baghdad for generations, and sometimes held important positions. Jews (and Christians) who converted to Islam had the greatest chance of success under the Islamic Empire, and later under the Mongols. One prominent Jew during Mongol times was Rashid al-Din, a convert to Islam. he was trained as a doctor, as were many Jews in Islamic lands, but served the Ilkhanate as an advisor. He is best known today as a historian, and his books on Mongol history are still read.

By Michael Burgan in ‘ Great Empires of the Past; Empire of the Mongols’, Chelsea House, (an imprint of Infobase Publishing), New York, 2004, Chapter 5 p.97-113 . Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa