The Mongolian Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was one of the largest empires that
ever existed; it covered the second-largest territory ever controlled, only being surpassed
by the British Empire.
The Mongolic peoples originated on the plateau of Mongolia in Central Asia, and their ancestry
is often traced to the Xiongnu people, who created a great tribal confederacy, at the
same time as China was unified as an imperial state.
The Xiongnu were fierce horseback warriors whose repeated intrusions into China prompted
the construction of the Great Wall.
In the Medieval period, these nomadic tribes were made up of five major confederations
known as ‘Khanligs’ which were nothing more than rival clans.
The Mongol social structure, economy, and culture showed little change over history;they
have always been nomads of the Asian steppe who herded horses, sheep and other animals.
These tribes moved according to the seasons and lived in temporary camps.
Women, Having rather more rights than in contemporary cultures, could own and inherit property,
were involved in religious ceremonies and could be shamans, and the wives of senior
tribal leaders could voice their opinions at tribal meetings.
The earliest belief system in Mongolia was a form of shamanism based on the reverence
of nature and revolved around the worship of Ancestor spirits and devotion to Father
sky.
The Mongol Empire was founded in 1206 by a young man named Temujin, who was fighting
for territory in the Asian steppes.
Because his victories enabled him to unite the nomadic Mongol and Turkic tribes of the
Asian steppe for the first time, he was given the name Genghis Khan, meaning universal ruler.
He reformed his people's laws and ushered in a military-feudal form of government, embracing
trade and religious freedom in the process.
He further united his empire by using the Uighur Turk script to turn the Mongol language
into a written one.
The united Mongol tribes boasted a very effective army with fast and highly coordinated cavalry
for many reasons, including their very nature as they were trained from childhood to ride
horses and shoot bows, as well as their adoption of advanced military techniques and tactics,
often taken from conquered peoples, such as gunpowder, arrow storms and repeated hit-and-run
barrages.
Also, the Mongols had gained a reputation for destroying their enemies, which “spread
fear and panic among their adversaries as news of the cities they had razed preceded
them.
Despite its reputation for brutal warfare, the Mongol empire brought a period of peace,
stability, and prosperity across Eurasia and the silk road, called Pax Mongolica.
Notable victories by Genghis Khan include the Battle of Yehuling in Northern China as
well as the invasion of the Khwarezm Empire, one city after another.
Over the next few decades, the Mongols would invade the Middle East, Syria, Turkey, the
Caucasus region, and sack the Muslim Abbasid capital Baghdad as they expanded in all directions
reaching Palestine by the end of the 13th century.
After Genghis Khan's death, he left the empire to his heir Ogedeid, which caused internal
rife within the empire as others disputed whether the royal line should follow through
one of his other sons (such as Tolui, Chagatai, or Jochi).
The split was further disputed over whether the Mongol Empire would become sedentary and
cosmopolitan or if it would stay true to the Mongol nomadic and steppe based lifestyle.
The Toluids, after a bloody purge of rival dynasties who claimed descent from Genghis
Khan, prevailed as leaders of the Mongol Empire.
Then, the Toluid civil war between Kublai Khan and his brother (Ariq Boke) marked the
end of a unified empire in the 13th century, resulting in the formation of four Khanates.
As Great Khan, Kublai set his sights on unifying all of China.
In 1271, he established his capital at modern-day Beijing and formed the Yuan Dynasty in a traditional
Chinese style, which was one of several efforts to win over his Chinese subjects.
In 1279, after years of resistance from the Song dynasty of China, Kublai became the first
foreigner to rule over all of China.
He would later launch 2 failed invasions into Japan while also going on multiple incursions
into South East Asia.
Following Kublai’s death, the Mongols disintegrated into competing Khanates and lost influence,
in part due to the outbreak of the Black Death.
Eventually, they became sedentary societies with many converting from traditional shamanism
to Buddhism or Islam.
By 1368, the Chinese Ming dynasty took over the Yuan capital, marking the collapse of
the Yuan dynasty in China proper.
Another Mongol Khanate, The Golden Horde, had broken up into competing khanates by the
end of the 15th century and was defeated and thrown out of Russia, while the Chagatai Khanate
fell not long after.
Although the Mongols’ conquests caused destruction on a massive scale across huge territories,
they left behind great legacies such as the reformed and stabilized Silk trade network
and the first serious connections between the East and West with the potential for a
modern era characterized by the unity of disparate peoples.