One of the most enduring images of the Mongol Empire is that it was a model of religious
tolerance, one where each of the Khan’s subjects were free to worship as they pleased. In the
18th century, Edward Gibbon presented Chinggis Khan as a forerunner of the enlightenment, and
for modern audiences the notion was repopularized with Jack Weatherford’s book Genghis Khan and the
Making of the Modern World. Some go as far as to present the Mongols as the inspiration for modern
liberal religious toleration. But is that true? We will try to answer this question in this video.
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Even before the founding of the empire, Chinggis Khan interacted with a variety of religions.
During his war to unify Mongolia, he was supported by men of various religious
backgrounds: Mongolian shamanist-animists, Nestorian Christians, Buddhists and Muslims,
one of whom called Jafar Khoja was supposedly a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
The most prominent tribes in the Mongolian steppe in the 12th century were Nestorian
Christians such as the Kereyid and Naiman, and on the declaration of the Mongol Empire in 1206
Chinggis Khan’s army and administration were quite mixed. Chinggis Khan himself was an animist:
in Mongolian belief, all things in the world were inhabited by spirits which had to be consulted and
placated. It was the job of shamans to intercede with these spirits on the Mongols’ behalf.
Generally, shamanism is not an exclusive religion; one can consult a shaman and still practice other
faiths. The persuasion and power of religion in the Mongol steppe came from the charisma of
specific holy men - such as shamans - and their power to convene with spirits and Heaven on the
Khan’s behalf in order to secure his victory. This seems to have been the guiding principle
for how Chinggis Khan, and most of his successors, approached religion. Some Mongols viewed the major
religions they encountered - Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam - as all praying to the
same God via different methods. This was more or less the statement that in the 1250s, Chinggis’
grandson Mongke Khan provided to the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck during an interview,
stating that “We Mongols believe that there is only one God through whom we have life and through
whom we die, and towards him we direct our hearts [...] But just as God has given the hand several
fingers, so he has given mankind several paths.” Usually for the Khans, it did not matter who was
right, as basically all of the major religions were. What mattered was that these religions
should pray to God on behalf of the Chinggisids to ensure divine favour for their rule. Heaven’s
will was manifested through victories and rulership, while defeats and anarchy symbolised
its displeasure. Much like the concept of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule
provided by heaven could be rescinded, and thus the Mongols hoped to continually appease Heaven.
But the Mongols’ views on religion were not static and took years to develop into their political
theology- and nor were they inherently tolerant, and favours were allotted more on a personal
basis. For example, in 1214 Chinggis Khan, or one of his sons, had an encounter with a Buddhist monk
named Haiyun. Haiyun, with his head shaved bare in accordance with his role as a monk,
was told by the Khan to grow his hair out and braid it in Mongolian fashion- for at that time,
the Mongols were attempting to order the general population of north China to do so as a sign of
their political subordination. Religions in China dictated how one should maintain their hair;
Buddhist monks had to shave their heads, Daoist monks could keep their hair long, while the
general Chinese population, on Confucian teaching, could not cut their hair in adulthood, as it was
a gift from the parents, and thus was kept in topknots. Demanding that the general population
adopt the unique, partly shaved Mongolian hairstyle, was therefore a decree against all
of China’s major religions, and the Mongols soon abandoned the policy for their sedentary subjects.
The Buddhist monk told Chinggis that he could not adopt the Mongol hairstyle,
as growing his hair out violated his duty as a monk. Learning this, Chinggis Khan allowed Haiyun
to maintain his baldness, then in time extended this allowance to all Buddhist and Daoist clergy.
Even with this first privilege, Haiyun and his master did not receive coveted tax-exempt status
until 1219. This is the earliest indication of Chinggis Khan granting of such a favour,
followed soon by the extensive privileges granted to the Daoist master Qiu Chuji. Chinggis’ edict
was directed personally at Qiu Chuji and his disciples, rather than Daoism as a whole.
The value Qiu Chuji had to Chinggis was on his individual religious charisma and ability to
intercede with the heavens on the Khan’s behalf, as well as his many followers who could be induced
to accept Mongol rule. In Chinggis’ view, the fact that Qiu Chuji was a Daoist leader did
not entitle him to privileges. Neither did the Mongols initially differentiate between
Buddhism and Daoism. In part due to the vaguely worded nature of Chinggis’ edicts, Qiu Chuji’s
Daoist followers used these decrees to exert authority over Buddhists as well,
seizing Buddhist temples and forcing Buddhist monks to become Daoists,
beginning a Buddhist-Daoist conflict that lasted the rest of the 13th century.
The point of these anecdotes is to demonstrate that the conquests did not begin with a specific
policy of general religious tolerance or support for local religious institutions. Governmental
support and privilege was provided on an ad hoc basis, especially when a group or individual
was seen as influential with the almighty. Toleration itself was also advertised as a tool;
for example in the case of Jebe Noyan’s famous promulgation to the Muslims in the Tarim Basin
suffering at the hands of the Naiman prince Kuchlug, a militant convert to Buddhism.
The announcement worked well, as the region quickly turned over to the Mongols and the
renegade prince was killed. This announcement did not come with privileges or tax exemptions
at large for the Islamic religious leaders, and was aimed solely to ease the Mongol conquest,
rather any specific high-mindedness for the treatment of religion.
By the reign of Chinggis’ son Ogedai, the Mongol stance towards religions became more solidified.
A major advancement, on the insistence of advisers like the Buddhist scholar Yelu Chucai, was that
privileges were to be granted on religious communities and institutions rather than based
on individual charisma, which made them easier to regulate and manage. Chucai also impressed upon
the Mongols that Buddhism and Daoism were distinct beliefs, and became alongside Christianity and
Islam the four main “foreign religions” which the Mongols would issue edicts regarding privileges.
It was not an evenly applied thing. With Islam, for instance, it can be said the Mongols often had
the greatest difficulties. For one thing, the rapid annihilation of the Khwarezmian empire,
the world’s single most powerful Islamic state at the time, resulted in the deaths of perhaps
millions of Muslims as well as the belief that the Mongols were a punishment sent by God-
an idea the Mongols encouraged. The reduction of Islam from “the state religion” to “just
another religion of the Khan’s subjects,” was a difficult one for many an imam and qadi to accept.
For a universalist religion like Islam, subjugation to a pagan entity was a difficult
pill to swallow, and the destruction of cities, mosques, agriculture and vast swathes of the
population would not have been eased by statements of how tolerant the Mongols supposedly were.
Further, it is apparent that the Mongols' rule for the first decade or two of their interaction with
the Islamic world was not tolerant. Part of this comes to an inherent conflict between the sharia
law of Islam, and the yassa of Chinggis Khan. The yassa and yosun of Chinggis Khan were his laws and
customs set out to provide a framework for Mongol life, which regulated interactions for the state,
individuals, the environment, the spirits and the heavenly. As a part of this,
it was decreed that animals had to be slaughtered in the Mongolian fashion; the animal usually
knocked unconscious, turned onto its back, an incision made in the chest and its heart crushed.
Spilling its blood was forbidden and punishable by death. The problem was that this is inherently
conflicting with halal slaughter, which entailed slitting the throat and draining the blood.
At various times over the thirteenth century, this was used as an excuse to punish and lead reprisals
against Muslims. A number of Persian language sources assert that Ogedai Khan’s brother Chagatai
was a harsh enforcer of the yassa on the empire’s Muslim population. In the 1250s ‘Ala al-Din
Juvaini asserted that Muslims in Central Asia were unable to make any halal killings due to Chagatai,
and were forced to eat carrion from the side of the road. The Khwarezmian refugee Juzjani
meanwhile said Chagatai planned a genocide of the Muslims. While these sources like to depict
Chagatai as a foil to Ogedai’s more ‘friendly to islam’ image, it remains clear that for many
Muslims, it was felt that the Mongol government had a particular hatred for them. But Chagatai
was not the only one to enforce this. Ogedai himself briefly sought to enforce this rule,
and the famous Khubilai Khan grew increasingly unfriendly to religion in his old age, and in
the 1280s launched anti-muslim policies, banning halal slaughter and circumcision on pain of death.
Even Daoism, favoured early by the Mongols thanks to the meeting of Qiu Chuji and Chinggis Khan,
suffered stiff reprisals from the Mongol government. As the conflict between the Daoists
and Buddhists escalated, in the 1250s on the behest of his brother Mongke Khan, prince Khubilai
headed a debate between representatives of the two orders. Khubilai, inclined to Buddhism on the
influence of his wife and personal conversion, chose the Buddhists as the winners. Declaring a
number of Daoist texts forgeries, Khubilai ordered many to be destroyed and banned from circulation,
while also reducing their privileges. This failed to abate the tensions, and in the 1280s an older,
less patient Khubilai responded with the destruction of all but one Daoist text,
with murder, mutilation and exile for the offending Daoists.
Privileges only extended to religions the Mongols saw as useful, or offered evidence
that they had support from heaven. Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Manicheism and Hinduism were
usually totally ignored by the Mongols and did not receive the same privileges as the Christian,
Buddhist, Daoist and Islamic clergy. Judaism may have received tax exemption status in the
Ilkhanate for a brief period in the 1280s and 90s due to the influence of a Jewish vizier,
while in the Yuan Dynasty it took until 1330 for Judaism to earn such a status.
As these religions lacked states which interacted with the Mongols, the Mongols saw these religions
as having no power from heaven, and were therefore useless to them. Without any political clout, and
of small representation within the Empire, these groups largely escaped the notice of the Khans.
The Mongols were also not above ordering the annihilation of a religion or religious groups
when they defied them. The most well known case was a Shi’ite sect, the Nizari Ismailis, better
known as the Assassins. Due to their resistance against the Mongol advance, the sect was singled
out for destruction not just politically, but religiously, as Mongke Khan had become convinced
of this necessity by his more orthodox Islamic advisers. This task fell to his brother Hulegu,
who enacted his brother’s will thoroughly. A few years later, Hulegu famously sacked Baghdad
and killed the Caliph in 1258. This attack on Baghdad was not religiously motivated;
the Caliph had refused to accept Mongol authority. As a seemingly powerful head of a religion,
his independence could not be abided. It was not a specifically anti-Islamic sentiment here,
but a political one. Had the Mongols marched on Rome and the Pope also refused their mandate,
such a fate would have awaited him as well. When the Mongols did convert to the local
religions, they were not above carrying out assaults on other religious communities in
their empire with zeal. Such was the case for Khans like Ozbeg in the Golden Horde
or Ghazan in the Ilkhanate, who converted to Islam and struck against Christian, Buddhist
and shamanic elements in their realms. These were as a rule very brief rounds of zealousness,
as the economic usage of these groups and the uneven conversion of their followers to Islam
made it politically and economically more useful to abandon these measures.
This is not to say of course, that there is no basis for the idea of Mongol religious tolerance,
especially when compared to some contemporary states: just that when the favours, privileges
and state support were granted, they were usually done to the four main religious groups the Mongols
designated: again, Muslims, Christians, Daoists and Buddhists. Not without reason
was Ogedai Khan portrayed as friendly in many Islamic sources, and he regularly gave the most
powerful positions in the administration of North China to Muslims. Sorqaqtani Beki, the mother of
Mongke and Khubilai, was a Nestorian Christian famous for patronizing and supporting mosques
and madrassas. Mongke Khan held feasts to mark the end of Ramadan where he would distribute alms and
at least one such feast was held in Qaraqorum, where he listened to a qadi deliver a sermon.
He show respect to his Muslim cousin Berke, and for him had halal meat at one imperial banquet.
If the yassa of Chinggis Khan was upheld thoroughly, then the Khans and all princes present
would have been executed. In the four level racial hierarchy Khubilai Khan instituted in China,
Muslims and Central Asians were second only to Mongols and nomads, and ranked above all Chinese
peoples. Religious men visiting the Khans usually left with the belief that the Khan was about to
convert to their religion, so favourably had they been received. Khubilai Khan asked Marco
Polo’s father and uncle to bring him back 100 Catholic priests and holy oil from Jerusalem,
and likely sent the Nestorian Rabban bar Sauma to Jerusalem for similar purposes.
Qaraqorum, the Mongol imperial capital, held Daoist and Buddhist temples across the street
from Mosques and Churches. Khubilai's capital of Dadu and the Ilkhanid capital of Sultaniyya
had Catholic archbishoprics by the early 14th century. Such religious syncretism survived
well into the century, when claimants to the fragmenting successor Khanates in western Asia,
in order to define their legitimacy amongst the largely converted Mongol armies and stand out
amongst the many Chinggisids, latched onto Islamic identities. Eager to prove their sincerity,
they pushed back violently against even traditional Mongol shamanism. Despite it’s early
difficulties, in the end Islam largely won amongst the Mongols and their descendants, overcoming the
brief revitalization Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism had enjoyed thanks to Mongol patronage.
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