The 13th century Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan… or, JENG-is Khan, if you want to sound
fancy about it, was notorious for his brutal subjugation of enemies - and pretty much the
entire world was his enemy.
Yet though he also treated the women in his personal life terribly, his reign was actually
surprisingly progressive in many ways.
Here's a look at what life was like for women under Genghis Khan.
Mongolian women were respected, often served as leaders, and were highly valued members
of society, so there's at least one way in which they were way ahead of us.
In fact according to Amonbe, the Mongols believed that a man ought to marry an older woman,
because an older woman would have more wisdom than her husband, and would therefore be able
to guide him in not making stupid life decisions.
In fact, no one respected a dude who didn't listen to his wife - it was a sign of immaturity
and unmanliness.
So just in case you thought that a fierce Mongol warrior must also be a brute to the
women in his life, well, you're mistaken.
Throughout history, an awful lot of women got abused by an awful lot of men, and the
laws of society were often set up to allow and condone it.
But relationships were actually a bit different under Mongolian law.
How different?
According to Amonbe, Mongol women had a lot of control in the home - and in the bedroom,
too, where Mongol women traditionally took the lead.
In fact, if you were a Mongol woman and your husband wasn't up to performing his husbandly
bedroom duties - and we don't mean dusting and making the bed - you could actually petition
the government to intervene.
In one case, Genghis Khan's son ordered a wrestler to give up the sport and use his
energy, um, on a completely different kind of wrestling.
Case closed!
Just south of the Mongol Empire, China outlined strict rules for female behavior, turning
women and girls into second class citizens, and even intentionally crippling them with
cruel foot binding as a symbol of subservience.
In Mongolia, though, women were not having any of that.
Women fought in battle, raced horses, and competed in archery competitions.
They were expected to be strong, fierce, and hard-working.
They also were literal masters of the household - in the nomadic Mongol culture, the women
were in charge of driving and managing the carts that carried all the family's belongings,
to the point where the men weren't even allowed to ride in the carts unless they were sick.
Women would also raise and lower the tents, herd the livestock, and do all sorts of other
physically demanding tasks.
It's really not surprising, then, that Mongolian men had so much respect for women.
Genghis Khan's own mother was forced to raise her children on game and wild roots because
they'd been abandoned by her tribe after the death of her husband.
That upbringing probably had a lot to do with his progressive ideas about the rights of
Mongolian women - even if that attitude didn't extend to women from other cultures.
There was no such thing as male monogamy in Genghis Khan's Mongolia.
Men could have multiple wives, but each one would have her own tent where she'd live with
her own children, so it's not like the wives had to hang out and pretend to like each other
or anything.
According to History on the Net, the whole family usually got along pretty well.
It was an especially sweet deal if you were the first wife and the husband died.
Sound weird?
Well, in Mongolian society, the first wife was the legal wife, and unlike in most cultures
at the time, she would actually inherit the husband's property on his death.
Not only that, but she wasn't expected to remarry, as staying single was seen as a sign
of respect for the departed - meaning the widow could live a fully independent and autonomous
life.
That wasn't a luxury afforded many women in the world at the time - in China, for instance,
widows were expected to move in with their husband's family and act as a servant for
the rest of their lives.
After he was done conquering most of Asia, Genghis Khan decided he needed to write some
laws to govern his massive and culturally diverse empire.
With the help of his advisors, he crafted a document called Yasak - and in many ways
it was apparently quite progressive.
We say apparently, because according to Duhaime.org, there are no surviving copies of the Yasak.
But what we know suggests that it outlawed stuff like the kidnapping of wives, or the
selling of women into slavery - things that had still been occuring despite the society's
otheriwse healthy attitude towards Mongol women.
It also forbade child soliders, enslaving other Mongols, and even specifically prohibited
discrimination based on religion, making it one of the first known legal codes in the
world allowing citizens religious freedom.
Of course, to become part of the Mongol empire meant you had to be conquered in a brutal
genocidal war, and non-Mongols weren't treated with the same courtesy as full citizens, so
let's just say the Yasak came with some real downsides to it.
But for Mongol women, at least, life under Genghis Khan was - in theory - surprisingly
progressive in ways that we're still trying to live up to today.
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