Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of the Mongol Empire

Starting point is 00:00:00 In the year 1162 in the Kenti Mountains of what is today northeastern Mongolia, a baby by the name of Temogen was born. He would go on to become the world's single greatest conqueror and established the largest contiguous empire in history. His empire would reverberate throughout history and is still being felt today both politically and genetically. Learn more about Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:25 What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. The impetus for this episode comes from the fact that I have a whole bunch of episode ideas that deal with the Mongol Empire. But I've never really done an episode explicitly about the Mongol Empire. So I figured it was time to give an overview of the Mongol Empire, so I have a reference point for future shows.

Starting point is 00:01:21 The Mongol Empire was not like any other empire in world history, before, or since. What made this empire different started off with the Mongols themselves. The Eurasian Steps were home to many different tribes of nomadic herdsmen. The Eurasian Steps are a massive grassland that stretches from northeast China and Mongolia through Central Asia all the way to Eastern Europe. These steps are great for growing grass and pretty much nothing else. The people who lived there weren't engaged in agriculture but raising livestock. Horses, goats, sheep, cattle, and camels were central to the lives of these people. Their diets were almost exclusively dairy and meat, with most of the meat coming from hunting game.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Their livestock produced milk for food, wool to make tents and clothing, leather for saddles, and even dung which was used as fuel for their fires. The number of horses and livestock that someone had was a reflection of their wealth. Because their lives were centered on their herds, they had no permanent settlements. They lived in felt tents and would move seasonally so their animals could have fresh pasture. What I've just described is antithetical to every other civilization which created a great empire. The Chinese, Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Incas, and Aztecs were all based on cities and agriculture. These tribes from the Eurasian steps mostly spent their time fighting with each other, but occasionally they raided more settled locations.

Starting point is 00:02:46 If you remember back to my episode on the Great Wall of China, it was built specifically to stop these raids. The Chinese actually took advantage of their constant infighting. They would bribe one tribe to attack another to keep them occupied fighting themselves so they wouldn't come into China. It was in this environment that the aforementioned boy named Temogen was born in 1162. According to legend, he was born holding a blood clot in his fist, which was a sign that he was destined for greatness. He was the father of a chief in the Mongol Federation and came from a noble family. He basically spent 22 years, from the age of 22 to 44, uniting all of the Mongol tribes. And I'm really skipping a lot here because his rise to power was pretty much half of his career as a leader.

Starting point is 00:03:30 He managed to achieve this feat through a combination of brilliant generalship, cunning diplomacy, and a support. superior intelligence network. He was eventually named the supreme ruler of the Mongols in 1206 and was given the title of Jingas Khan. Khan is the title given to the ruler of a tribe and Jingis Khan simply means the universal Khan. And it's also sometimes pronounced Chingus Khan, but I'm going to continue with the anglicized Jingas Khan for the rest of this episode.

Starting point is 00:03:57 I can't help but think of a comparison with another empire. The Macedonian Empire united all the Greek city states under Philip II. Uniting all the disparate groups domestically was necessary before going out to conquer Persia. Philip II did the dirty work that allowed his son Alexander the Great to engage in foreign conquests. The difference between the Mongols and the Macedonians is that Gingas Khan did all of this on his own. Once the tribes were united, Genghis Khan began a series of conquests, which were unlike anything else seen in history. He started by going south into China. China at the time was actually three different kingdoms, the Shire.

Starting point is 00:04:36 dynasty, the Jin dynasty, and the Song dynasty. The closest to the Mongols was the Shah dynasty in the North. They began the invasion in 1207. In 1209, they began invading the Jin dynasty, which was a little further to the east in what is today Manchuria. Subduing the Shah and Jin dynasties took over a decade, but while that was happening, they also expanded into Central Asia in 1211. This took them into modern eight countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. They went into northern Iran and invaded the power. powerful Quarismian Empire. From there, he went around the Caspian Sea, went north through the Caucasus and into Ukraine and Russia. Genghis died in 1227, and by that time he had created one of

Starting point is 00:05:17 the largest empires in world history. However, this wasn't even close to being a one-man operation. Genghis was clearly the leader, but he was graced with several very talented generals. And it wasn't just talented people in charge. They had tactics that their opponents had hard time countering. For starters, the Mongols were extremely pragmatic. When they invaded China, they encountered walled cities, which required siege warfare. The Mongols were used to fighting on the open plains. They had absolutely no experience in siege warfare. So they learned. This would have stopped most armies cold, but not the Mongols. They simply captured experts in building siege engines, and then adapted these new techniques, and they conquered cities. They recognized talent and

Starting point is 00:06:00 skills that they didn't possess. When they captured a city, they went out of their way to protect and gather up everyone who had some technical skill. Blacksmiths, weavers, engineers, or anyone who had a unique skill set was valued. They were often taken back to Mongol camps where they could ply their trade. And they were also brutal. Before Hitler and the Nazis became the universal example people referred to of something bad, most people use the Mongols and Genghis Khan. They would not hesitate to kill everyone in a city who didn't surrender and put up resistance. There were many cases of cities, with tens of thousands of people all being put to the sword. And this made it very easy to conquer other cities that learned of what happened to the cities

Starting point is 00:06:42 before them. They would often just open up their gates and let the Mongols in, and they wouldn't suffer anything worse than having to pay attacks. They would also round up people from outside the city walls and drive them in front of their soldiers at the beginning of a siege. The city defenders would then be put in the position of killing their own just to fend off the Mongols. Of course, there was another really big thing that the Mongols had going for them. Horses. Pretty much every army for the last several thousand years in the old world had some sort of cavalry. However, the cavalry was usually much smaller in number compared to the infantry. Horses were expensive, and they were usually reserved for the rich and powerful. The Mongols, however, were all cavalry. Every soldier literally

Starting point is 00:07:24 had a horse, and more than not, multiple horses. That allowed them to travel faster than almost any other army in history up until that point. Mongol riders could cross deserts by drinking blood from their horses and cooking meat by putting it under their saddle. They also, and this is key, could shoot a bow and arrow from horseback, and this made them incredibly lethal. They could continuously fire arrows into enemies without the enemies ever being able to touch them. The Mongols were the best light cavalry in the world. If heavier armored cavalry attacked, they would retreat firing arrows backwards

Starting point is 00:07:58 the entire time, while the larger attacking horses tired out, and then they would just turn around and go on the attack again. Mongol pragmatism also extended to how they govern their empire. They allowed for complete freedom of religion. They ruled over Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, and didn't particularly

Starting point is 00:08:14 care how people worshipped. When Genghis Khan died, the empire and the conquest didn't end. It was already twice the size of the Roman empire at its peak at this point. He declared his third son, Ogadai, as his heir, and they kept expanding. They made it all the way to Austria and northern Italy. They began an invasion of the Song Dynasty in southern China. Ogadai died in 1241 and was replaced by his son, Guya Khan, who reigned for only two years, who was then replaced by the son of Gingas' eldest son, Monkeh. He saw the Mongols

Starting point is 00:08:47 invade Mesopotamia, the Levant, Persia, Tibet, and Korea. With the death of Monkhan, he was In Sunke, in 1259, the empire started the fracture. It was divided into four different empires. China became the Yuan dynasty under the rule of Kubla Khan. He managed to finally defeat the Song dynasty and unify most of China under Mongol rule. In the West, the Golden Horde ruled what is today Russia and Eastern Europe. The Changotai Khanate ruled Central Asia, putting the regions such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Finally, the Mongols ruling Persia, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Turkey were known as the Ilkhanate. There were several civil wars fought between these groups as they struggled for power and territory.

Starting point is 00:09:26 This was another striking similarity to the Macedonian Empire. After Alexander died, his generals broke up the empire into four parts that also fought with each other. By the end of the 13th century, the unified Mongol Empire was gone, and these successor states became totally independent of each other and followed their own paths and interests. In 1357, the Ilkhanate and Persia in the Middle East fell apart and was broken into many pieces. The Yuan Dynasty in China fell apart in 1368 and was replaced by the Ming Dynasty. The golden horde in Europe was split into the white and blue hordes and it lasted until 1502. Finally, the Chenggatai Khanate was split into eastern and western empires in the 1340s,

Starting point is 00:10:05 with the Western Empire ending in 1370 and the Eastern Empire lasting until 1680. The Mongol Empire was like a supernova. It came out of nowhere and rapidly took over much of the known world. They were the first real empire that united both east and west. They controlled an area from the Pacific Ocean all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. At its largest extent, it controlled 24 million square kilometers and 18% of the world's population. But it wasn't just size, however. Genghis Khan regularly took princesses and queens from the lands he conquered as concubines.

Starting point is 00:10:41 He supposedly had at least 500 concubines in addition to his 12 wives. Only sons from his formal wives were ever mentioned and recorded, but it's estimated that he sired hundreds of children from his concubines. Via genetic analysis of the Y chromosome, which is what is passed along only by men, it's estimated that there are over 16 million direct male descendants of Gingas Khan alive today, which represent one-half of one percent of all the men on Earth. And those are only the direct male descendants which have passed along the Y chromosome. own. If you include everyone, male and female, the total number of descendants of Gingas Khan might be in the hundreds of millions. And those aren't just people in Asia, but people who are now scattered all over the world. The impact of the Mongol Empire can be seen in the borders in the world today, and even right down to the very DNA of a sizable portion of humanity. Everything

Starting point is 00:11:41 Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The Associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Luca S over at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, very interesting. This is the only podcast I enjoy listening to. I love listening to the new episodes and I learn a lot. Thank you. Thanks, Luca.

Starting point is 00:12:03 I am honored to appear at the number one spot on your top podcast list. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of the Mongol Empire

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