Mongol Empire History - Past Events (PDF)

1167 and the tribes of the steppe, roughly here, are ghting. Con ict here was limited in scale and waged between small groups of nomadic warriors who were ghting for the region's limited resources. There were many tribes but the most important ones were the Tatars, the Kereids and of course the Mong...

1167 and the tribes of the steppe, roughly here, are ghting. Con ict here was limited in scale and waged between small groups of nomadic warriors who were ghting for the region's limited resources. There were many tribes but the most important ones were the Tatars, the Kereids and of course the Mongols. These tribes had no formal written languages or complex hierarchy simply because they didn't need them. They were run by chieftains whose position was inherited and it was their role to keep the peace and lead the warriors into battle. The tribes of the steppe had many di erent religions ranging from Christianity to Buddhism but the Mongols were Tengriists. Tengriism was very much linked with the nomadic nature of Mongol life. For example there were no xed religious buildings like in China or Europe in which Mongols would worship the supreme god, Tengri, who was the god of the sky. The Mongol religious leaders were shamans called Bekhi who would communicate with the dead on behalf of the living and also cure ailments, or at least they would attempt to because medicine back then was frankly pants. So the late 12th century was a period of great change for the people of the steppe. For a start the climate was much milder meaning that there was more food for their livestock and thus for them. You'd think that more food would mean that there'd be less raiding but fun fact, no. It actually meant that herding duties could be left to the women and thus more men could be spared for other things, like war. The winner of these inter-nomadic ghts would absorb the losing tribe which made governing more complicated but importantly saw the power of individual chieftains grow considerably up until the turn of the 13th century. Of course no chief would grow as great as a certain Chinggis, better known in the west as Genghis although his birth name was Temujin. Temujin was the son of a Mongol noble who was poisoned by the Tatars and whose followers promptly abandoned him. Over many years he built up a reputation as a skilled leader and built many enduring friendships. After later rescuing his kidnapped wife, Genghis and the Mongols teamed up with the Kherids to destroy the Tatars. After his victory Temujin then took the title Khan, meaning ruler. So now the Mongols and the Kherids were the dominant powers in the region and as a result they immediately became enemies and so those other guys had to die. Temujin and his Mongols were victorious and destroyed the Kherids before mopping up and assimilating the other nomadic groups in the area. This was all done by 1206 when the leaders of the now quite large Mongols met at what is called a Kurultai. Here Temujin was elected as the Khagan, meaning the Great Khan or the Khan of Khans. He also took the title Chinggis Khan, meaning erce ruler and so began the Mongol Empire. Sidenote we're going to call him Genghis instead of Chinggis in this episode because most people in the west know him as that. So now that Genghis and the Mongols were dominant in the region there were two options. Settle and live the rest of their lives in peace or conquer literally everything. Shockingly Genghis opted for the latter and turned his gaze south to China. It used to be entirely ruled by the Song Dynasty but at this point it was split into three states. The Song still ruled in the south, the north was ruled by the Jin and in the northwest lay the kingdom of Western Xia whom Genghis chose as his rst target. By 1209 Western Xia had submitted to Genghis after he ooded the elds around its capital and ruined its crops. It was now time to take on the Jin who were a much more powerful foe and they even had some large walls to keep the Mongols out. They were disconnected though and the Mongols could simply go around them but that was the point. It was supposed to slow invaders down and give the Chinese time to mobilize. Genghis invaded the Jin in 1211 and by 1214 after a long siege of the Jin capital Zhongdu nowadays called Beijing, the Jin emperor submitted. He then promptly moved his capital south to Kaifeng which Genghis saw as a challenge and so back to war it was. Genghis captured and then sacked Zhongdu with the help of some Jin deserters who taught the Mongols how to siege a city before conquering this territory by 1216. The Mongols were unable to destroy the Jin however and so Genghis left the force there and turned his attention to other lands. fl fi ff fi fi fi fi fi fl fi  Genghis conquered many of the nomads to the east and then looked to this land called Khwarezm to which he sent a trade delegation in 1218 which the Khwarezmian leader promptly put to death. This was not a clever thing to do. Genghis, now a bit angry, decided that a lot of people had to die for this. By 1227 the Khwarezmian lands were decimated and a chunk of it was absorbed into the Mongol empire. Not all of it though since Genghis didn't want to overstretch his forces. This is just one demonstration of how Genghis was a pragmatist, another one being that he promoted generals based upon their talents, not their birth, with Subodai the son of a blacksmith being the best example. Genghis would die in 1227 and was succeeded as Khagan by his son Ogedai. He didn't simply become Khagan like a monarch did and had to be selected by the nobles of the empire in another Kurultai in 1229. The only people who were eligible to be made Khagan were the descendants of Genghis and whilst Ogedai was selected without much issue the seeds were sown for future division. Ogedai sought the construction of a permanent capital of the Mongol empire which was completed in 1235 called Karakorum. So Ogedai, much like his father, expanded the borders of the empire. In 1234 he, with the help of the Song dynasty, oversaw the nal destruction of the Jin before subduing Korea. Sort of. It kept resisting. Forever. Ogedai then sent his nephew Batu under the command of Subodai to conquer lands in Europe. They did pretty well at this, conquering all of this land by 1241 and raiding Hungary and Poland. The road to Central and Western Europe lay wide open but the Mongols didn't advance any further. One of the reasons may have been the death of Ogedai in 1241 meaning that the Mongol nobles in Europe needed to return to Mongolia to attend a Kurultai and select a new leader. Ogedai had Noghla's successor lined up and after a ve year regency he was succeeded by his son Goyuk whose two year reign did see gains in Anatolia. This time the succession was contested and it was Mongke, Goyuk's cousin, who won out and in 1251 he was made Great Khan. Mongke cracked down on those who had opposed him and then tasked his brother Helegu with conquering the realms to the south west. He did this with great enthusiasm and in 1258 Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic world was taken and looted. Mongke also conquered these territories in China surrounding the Song dynasty and also invaded Deyviut but they failed. By 1259 the Mongol empire looked like this and it was in this same year that Mongke died during a campaign against the Song. Mongke hadn't named an heir and so two of his brothers emerged as rival claimants. The rst was Kublai who was proclaimed Khagan in Kaifeng with only the nobles who supported him being there. The other was Urig Bukur who was named Great Khan in Karakorum. Naturally this meant civil war and the empire was divided in its allegiance. Kublai held the immense resources and wealth of China as well as having an ally in Helegu who controlled this territory known as the Ilkhanate. Urig Bukur had aid from this land called the Chagadai Khanate and also from the European lands of the empire known as the Golden Horde. By 1264 Kublai had won and Urig Bukur was imprisoned and died but after this the Mongol empire would never truly be united again. The Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde were almost permanently at war and even after this the lesser Khans of the empire only really paid lip service to Kublai. So being a Mongol in charge of what was a predominantly Chinese empire meant that Kublai had to adopt a combined means of rule. The Mongols were too outnumbered to simply ght everything plus they weren't really ones for administration. Kublai thus expanded the Chinese bureaucracy although ethnic Chinese subjects were barred from high ranking positions. Most high ranking o ces like those in the army were lled by Mongols whereas those in the bureaucracy were lled by skilled foreigners who had been moved from across the empire. Kublai also sought to improve the Chinese economy. The rst thing he did was promise the Chinese that they wouldn't be mistreated which to be fair to him he did keep his word. To supplement this he reformed the law codes which despite the reputation of the Mongols as harsh fi ffi fi fi fi fi fi fi rulers were actually much more lenient than the Song down south. Kublai's religious policies can largely be summed up as eh because he was a Tengriist and had no interest in non-Mongols following his religion which was tied to the land from which he came. He allowed Buddhists, Muslims, Nestorian Christians and Taoists freedom of worship and places at his court which for the time was basically unheard of. So Kublai began to take on the characteristics more akin to the preceding Chinese emperors than any of the great Khans that came before him. He relocated the capital twice, rst from Karakorum to Shangdu before constructing a new capital called Dadu or Kanbalik next to the ruins of the old city of Zhongdu. He also made his claim to legitimacy by creating a brand new Chinese imperial dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty. Despite all of this Kublai was still a Mongol Khan and so his mind was interested in one thing, sweet sweet conquest. He rst demanded that the Japanese submit to him, they said no and so he invaded. It went poorly. Also Korea nally submitted which was nice. Of course Kublai's main target was obviously the Southern Song Dynasty since he wanted to be the emperor of all of China. Progress here was much slower since the Song were formidable wealthy opponents. Kublai was ultimately successful though and by 1279 the Song Dynasty was no more and the Yuan Dynasty was in control of the entirety of China. It was during the height of Kublai's power that he was visited by a man from the West, a certain Venetian called Marco Polo. Polo could travel across the Mongol Empire due to what is called the Pax Mongolica, the Mongol Peace. The Mongol Empire was for the most part extremely safe to travel across and this facilitated massive amounts of trade across what is known as the Silk Road. This same route would later allow the bubonic plague to travel from China to Europe but during the late 13th century it was a positive. The Silk Road allowed for artisans, merchants and intellectuals to move across the world and gave Kublai access to the greatest minds of the age with which to run his empire. He made more attempts to invade Japan in the 1280s which all met with typhoon related disaster. He also tried to nish o Devya but once again the Mongols failed. Kublai also tried to conquer India as his predecessors had but again, like his predecessors, he failed. Kublai had other struggles, the most notable being his capacity to exert in uence over the other Mongol Khans. Kaidu, the leader of the Chagadai Khanate was in open rebellion against Kublai and the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde were doing their own thing meaning the Mongol Empire was well and truly fractured at this point. Kublai would continue his rule until his death in 1294 after which the Mongol Empire would only ever decline. So what was the legacy of the Mongol Empire? Genghis and his descendants had built the largest contiguous empire in human history and waged wars of unimaginable destruction. Many regions were ravaged and depopulated and the death toll of the conquest was in the many millions which in the 13th century was a sizable percentage of the human population. The Mongols destroyed centres of commerce and learning but also built an empire which in the end facilitated them. Genghis is remembered as history's greatest conqueror and Kublai is remembered for his religious tolerance and competent rule. The four Khanates would soon come to resemble those they had conquered and would abandon the Mongol traditions and religion. The Yuan Dynasty became fundamentally Chinese, the Ilkhanate Persian and in the end they left little trace that they had descended from nomads who'd conquered a world. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching and a special thanks to James Bizonette, Thomas Gestrich, Adam Harvey and Winston Cawood. If you'd like to learn more about the Mongol Empire there are some book recommendations in the description below. fi ff fi fi fi fl