Short History Of... - The Mongol Empire

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

In the late Middle Ages, the Mongol Empire became the largest the world had ever seen. At its peak, maybe 100 million people lived under its banner, led by the Great Khans of the Asian steppe. But wha...t unified the first disparate, nomadic clans? Who was the real Genghis Khan, and how did his empire fair after his death? And what caused the downfall of this once seemingly unstoppable civilisation?  This is a Short History of the Mongol Empire. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Professor Timothy May of the University of North Georgia. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 It is early morning on the 21st of December 1237 in the city of Ryazan in what is now central Russia. A young archer jogs through the city streets, pulling his heavy tunic tight around his shoulders to keep the chill wind out. He reaches the perimeter and climbs the city's great stone walls, to where he's been summoned by his general. As the soldier reaches his post, a knot of dread tightens in his stomach. It is five days since the city felt the earth rumble beneath the thunderous clatter of hooves, a stampeding Mongol force under the dreaded Batu Khan. They swiftly surrounded the
Starting point is 00:00:47 city and have been showering it with arrows ever since. But this fifth day under siege, the soldier sees now, might well be the last. Since it started, he and his comrades have been powerless to do anything but watch as the Mongols chopped down trees from a nearby forest. Now the huge fence they've been building around Rizan is finished. The Mongols have changed the terms of the engagement. The archer and his fellow defenders are sealed within the city by both wall and fence. They can't escape, and they can barely fight back. and fence. They can't escape, and they can barely fight back. Right now, no arrows fly, and an awful silence gathers. It's the surest sign that an attack is coming. There's an uneasy hush among his compatriots as they listen hard for movement
Starting point is 00:01:41 behind the fence. The archer draws his bow, his fingers quivering on the string, as he awaits the inevitable. And then it begins. A cloud of arrows emerges from behind the new wooden wall. The defenders return fire, but as they do, huge boulders arc into the air, launched from unseen catapults. They smash holes into the walls as if the city's defenses were made from paper. And now, even worse, are pots of burning oil, sailing towards them, then cascading down the battlements.
Starting point is 00:02:21 It seems possible that the Mongols not only have their fabled horses, but they've brought dragons too. The screams of the people the archer is meant to protect rise behind him as he fires arrow after arrow, but it's useless. Soon he's not only choked by the plumes of acrid smoke, but blinded too, and the heat of the flames is unbearable. There is a shout from his general. They are to abandon their positions. The archer gathers what is left of his arrows and staggers back down the steep stone steps to find safety. There is panic in the streets as the city burns. He's swept along by a crowd of terrified city folk heading towards the church. Desperate men, women, and children scatter in every direction in search of safety.
Starting point is 00:03:14 Just then, the ground begins to tremble once more. Hooves and the roar of men, a horde thousands strong. Moving with the crowd, he speeds up, jostling towards the place he is sure will offer safety. But as he turns the corner, a dreadful cry of fear goes up. The holy building is ablaze. It seems not even God can save you from the Mongols' wrath. Though it lasted less than two centuries, the Mongols created the largest empire the world had ever seen. At its peak, maybe 100 million people lived under its banner, led by the great Khans of the Asian steppe. Their legacy is dominated by the popular image of Genghis Khan commanding a barbarian army, leaving countless people dead
Starting point is 00:04:11 in its wake. But while their story is, in part, one of conquest and military might, of ruthless efficiency and terror, it was also the quest for unity and the pioneering connection between East and West. So what was it that brought together these disparate, quarrelsome clans from Central Asia eight centuries ago? Who was the man behind the legend of Genghis Khan, and how did his empire thrive and expand after his death? And what caused the downfall of this once seemingly unstoppable
Starting point is 00:04:47 civilization? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of the Mongol Empire. The Mongols first appear in historical records in the second half of the first millennium AD. They begin not as a single people, but as competing clans of the Central Asian steppe, a vast area of generally dry, grassy plains encompassing what is now Mongolia and northeastern China. Timothy May, Professor of Central Eurasian History and Associate Dean of Arts and Letters at the University of North Georgia, explains. The Mongols emerge, or at least they first appear in recorded history during the Tang Empire in China. The Tang period was 618 to 907. They probably come out of Siberia sometime in that era and transition from a
Starting point is 00:05:49 semi-nomadic society to a pastoral nomadic society. The details on them are very vague. We just know they kind of appear. Their own history is rather mythical. For their everyday needs, they rely on animal husbandry. Though their horsemanship will become famous the world over, they also keep sheep, goats, oxen and camels. Pastures are essential in the spring and summer, but come the long winter months, forests provide shelter and opportunities to hunt. The mountains meanwhile offer defense and a natural boundary and hold great spiritual value.
Starting point is 00:06:29 The people of the steppe have a belief system all of their own. The Mongol spiritual world is, in the 13th century and late 12th, is very complex. There's the shamanistic element, and this is a belief system. You can't really call it a religion. The term that scholars tend to use is like a primal religion, meaning it does not have a user's manual, a Bible, Quran, and so forth. It does not come with a guidebook. Basically, what they believe is that there are spirits everywhere, in the water, in the mountains. There's a sky god. There's an earth mother, there's a bunch of other minor gods.
Starting point is 00:07:07 But the spirit world can interact with the mundane world. The desert, meanwhile, is crisscrossed with the trade routes that are also essential to the Mongol way of life. Their animals might provide most of what they need, but they cannot give them everything. provide most of what they need, but they cannot give them everything. We often get this idealized light that they're completely self-sufficient, but as the great anthropologist Anatoly Hasnov once said, the pure nomad is a poor nomad, simply because they cannot create everything they need for a decent existence. There are blacksmiths out on the steppe, but they're few and far in between. You're going to trade with the neighboring cities. Each of them view the other as having
Starting point is 00:07:48 kind of a weird lifestyle, but they kind of get it. While those settled societies build their grand cities, the Mongols return at the end of a hard day's toil to their movable camps of gurs. These are domed tents constructed from felt blankets draped over lattice frameworks and form the center of community life. Nomadic life is hard and dangerous.
Starting point is 00:08:13 Rival clans are caught in a never-ending cycle of raiding and counter-raiding, stealing animals and goods from one another, and sometimes people too. Many a marriage has been forced upon a kidnapped bride. and sometimes people too. Many a marriage has been forced upon a kidnapped bride. As a loose confederation of tribes subdivided into clans, for many centuries the Mongols are bit-part players in a region dominated by the Liao dynasty from northern China. But while each clan has its own chief, or khan, the Mongols don't yet have a centralized, unified administration to challenge the strength of the Liao. In the early 12th century, the sands shift. The Liao give way to a new power, the mighty Jin Dynasty.
Starting point is 00:09:01 With the collapse of Liao authority in Mongolia, this changes the dynamics. It creates a power vacuum, and several different groups emerge as significant players. The Mongols were one of those groups that began to emerge as a potential threat. The Jin addressed this threat by playing rival tribes off against one another. The Jinn address this threat by playing rival tribes off against one another. They align with the Tatars, another powerful group of ethnic Turkic tribes who all but destroy the Mongols as an emerging power. In 1148, an influential alliance of Mongol tribes known as the Kamag Mongol elect a new Khan called Ambege who attempts to reach a peace with the Tatars.
Starting point is 00:09:46 But his enemies along the Jin border have other ideas. They take Ambige Khan captive and they bring him to the Jin Empire who then executes him in a particularly undignified way. They nail him to a wooden donkey. Now, obviously, nailing them to a wooden donkey is going to be very painful, but there's some symbology there. A donkey is not something that a nomadic warrior would ride. This is a creature that peasants would have, a farmer, not proud nomadic warriors. So basically, he's not only torturing them and executing them, but also humiliating them to his core in the process. But Amagé is able to slip a message out and basically tells the Mongols of his fate and also to fight to the bitter end until you no longer have fingers
Starting point is 00:10:39 to draw the bow. So begins a drawn-out period of conflict between the Mongols against both the Tatars and the Jin, a battle for survival as they compete for dominance over natural resources and trading routes. For many decades, the Mongols struggle. But on a bright summer's day, around 1162, a 16-year-old girl gives birth to a baby boy at Delianne Bulldog in the north of Mongolian steppe. Her husband, the man who kidnapped her from the upper ranks of a rival clan, names the boy Temujin. It means something like impulsive drive.
Starting point is 00:11:21 But even that is not the most impressive title he will receive. Because TemĂĽjin will one day be known as Chinggis Khan, or Genghis according to an 18th century academic misunderstanding. And this honorary title means nothing less than universal leader. For now though, TemĂĽjin does all the things a normal Mongol boy should do. He is taught how to ride a horse almost as soon as he is strong enough to sit up. But though he learns wrestling and how to shoot a bow and arrow, his father doubts his warrior spirit. He cries easily and is frightened of dogs.
Starting point is 00:12:02 When he is about nine, Temujin's father takes him to find a bride. As is tradition, once a suitable match is found, the boy is left with her family to prove himself a worthy suitor. But on his father's way home, disaster strikes. The journey is long, and when he comes across a Tatar encampment, he seeks hospitality, despite the rivalry. This is, after all, the way of the world. The steppe can be a very harsh and unforgiving place. And when you're traveling, you are offered hospitality, and everyone does that. If you come across the camp, you can expect food, you can expect shelter.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Everyone at some point will find themselves in that situation. So it's sort of an unspoken thing. If that breaks down, then society itself will begin to completely break down. Unfortunately for Temujin's father, this clan happened to be relatives of a man he killed in battle a few years previously. Rather than break the rules of etiquette and attack him there and then, they poison him. By the time he makes it back to his own people, he's fatally ill. His death throws Temujin's world upside down.
Starting point is 00:13:16 The boy leaves his wife-to-be, a girl named Borte, and heads back to his grieving family. Back at home, he discovers just how fickle clan loyalty can be. Without their figurehead, his family are composed only of women and children, and deemed to be a drain on the group. They are cast out into the world to fend for themselves. It's a formative experience to the pre-teen Temujin. Set on a fast track to adulthood, he concludes that the clan alliances so highly valued are actually worthless. With tensions already running high, a squabble with an older half-brother over food escalates and Temujin ends up killing him. As punishment for the murder, he serves time as a captive with another clan,
Starting point is 00:14:06 but he is free within a matter of months. At around 16, he returns to make good on his betrothal to Borte. He settles into life as a husband and head of the family, but the peace will not last for long. It is the middle of the night, sometime in the late 1170s. TemĂĽjin lies asleep in his encampment near the bend of a river, in an isolated corner of the Mongolian steppe.
Starting point is 00:14:35 Suddenly, he is shaken awake. For a moment he thinks he hears thunder, but then he realizes that it is the sound of galloping horses. He races outside to see an incoming raiding party. Merkits, members of his mother's old clan, here to exact revenge for her kidnap some 18 years previously. Temujin and the other boys scrabble to put on their boots and sprint off to the horses tied up nearby.
Starting point is 00:15:02 But even before the raiders close in, you can see they're outnumbered. There's no time to lose. He races back to his wife and hurriedly helps her to hide in an ox cart. Then he leaps back on his horse, digs his heels into its side, and flees. Alone, Temujin heads for the mountain that rises majestically out of the steppe. The climb brings him closer to the eternal blue sky, the great spiritual beacon of the Mongolian belief system. As the screams of the raiders disappear behind him, he finds a sheltered place on the slopes, then dismounts and makes camp. From there, he watches the movements of the intruders.
Starting point is 00:15:47 To his despair, he realizes they have discovered Borte's hiding place and taken her away with them. For three days and nights, he survives on water from the sparkling mountainside streams and eats nothing but what he can find growing wild. All the while, TemĂĽjin pleads for the eternal blue sky for help. What is he to do? He could simply accept his loss, as so many others have done, find himself a new wife. But then he remembers the way his own mother was let down
Starting point is 00:16:18 by those she believed would protect her. He makes his decision. He gathers a raiding party of his own and sets out for the Merkit territories. They arrive at the outskirts of the enemy's camp late one night. But they are spotted on the approach, and the Merkits react instantly, sounding the alarm and readying their people and animals to get away. Temujin senses his moment and commands the attack. He and his troops gallop at full pelt, their bows ready. Amid the confusion, he maneuvers between the tents, calling out his wife's name. Just as he is giving up hope, he sees her scramble from a cart.
Starting point is 00:16:59 Racing over, he scoops her onto the back of his horse. His mission accomplished. TemĂĽjin is vindicated. Having proven himself a skilled commander, he starts to make a name for himself, and the path ahead begins to come into focus. After all, the Mongols are still a people in disarray, without a unifying figurehead.
Starting point is 00:17:34 There's still no single Khan. And so there's competition among various Mongol leaders. And into this vacuum, TemĂĽjin slowly begins to make his rise to power. This is not something that appears to be a planned rise to power. It's more or less TemĂĽjin trying to survive life on the steppe. In his early 20s, TemĂĽjin is chosen as Khan of the Borjigins, his native group, and one of the many interlinked clans making up Mongol society. But he has a growing rivalry with another clan, led by a man named Jamukha. Once childhood friends, their ambitions to each bring the various Mongol groups together and rule as their supreme leader sets them on a collision course. They meet in battle in 1187, in what turns out to be a disaster for TemĂĽjin.
Starting point is 00:18:23 It is even said that Jamukha boils dozens of Temujin's followers in cauldrons, which, according to Mongol tradition, destroys their very souls. Another is beheaded, his head tied to a horse's tail, and trailed through the mud and dust. Temujin's shot at the big time seems over. Temujin disappears from history for 10 years. He might have been sold into slavery. He might have just ran away.
Starting point is 00:18:50 We don't know. All we know is in the Mongolian sources, he comes back and it seems like it's the next day. But if you actually look at what's happening, it's 10 years later. Whatever has happened to him, he returns revitalized. Teaming up with another Mongol Khan, later. With an enduring distrust of the loyalty that Mongol societies have been so proud of, he introduces a different approach to leadership, a form of meritocracy.
Starting point is 00:19:32 He promotes on the basis of skill and ability, surrounding himself with the most capable people he can find. He really learns that what is most important is talent. And he has a very good eye for talent. If he wasn't a warlord, if he came back today, he could manage a football team very well. They'd win everything because he can spot the talent and knows how to use them. This is what he does throughout his life. He finds guys who are quite talented. He puts them in a position to succeed, and their success then helps him. Again, he doesn't completely abandon his family, but you can tell he doesn't fully trust them.
Starting point is 00:20:14 It is an approach that sees him notch success after success against rival groups. Now in his 30s, Temujin remains a nomadic leader, without the kind of permanent physical base usually associated with empire building. Nonetheless, he consolidates his power and influence through a mixture of conquest and assimilation, militarily overwhelming hostile clans and raiding rival tribes. While ruthlessly dispatching the ruling class of his enemies, he integrates their lower orders into his own nomadic community. They are not prisoners, but equals, and all men between 15 and 70 years of age are expected to fight when necessary. It is an entirely new way of going about business.
Starting point is 00:21:11 His followers are divided into small, lean units, with camps spread thinly to allow animals the largest grazing area. In time, he organizes his military, and by extension, wider society, along the rule of ten. The basic building block of his army is a squad of ten soldiers, bound to each other for life regardless of traditional family or clan ties. Ten squads make up a company, ten companies form a battalion, and ten battalions constitute an army. Before long, he has constructed a force that is disciplined, skilled, and utterly loyal to him personally. People are your resources. So that is what he's doing. And then he's taking everybody and organizing society among decimal lines.
Starting point is 00:21:57 The typical formations, military formations in the steppe are decimal, tens, hundreds, thousands. Now, this has been in use for centuries. But now he's organizing all of society. Everyone will be in this. And he's mixing the defeated among his loyal retainers in order to eradicate those old ties. Once you're in your regiment, so to speak, you can't leave it. So you have to learn how to play nice. In 1204, he finally defeats his old rival, Jamukha. As an aristocrat, he is executed by having his back broken, to avoid the bloodshed that Mongols believe trap the soul of the slain in their place
Starting point is 00:22:33 of death. And now TemĂĽjin's path to the next rung of power is at last clear. Two years later, he is back at the mountain where he fled from raiders as a youth, but this time hundreds of thousands join him for feasting and festivities. Temujin is carried on a black felt carpet to a grand throne, accompanied by shamanic drumming and chanting, while fermented horse's milk is ritualistically sprinkled around. sprinkled around. As his followers bowed nine times before him and stretched out their hands to the eternal blue sky, he is anointed Chinggis Khan, the first to be given the title of Universal Leader. He would become known as the first Great Khan, the supreme authority to whom all the other local Khans are answerable. By now in his 40s, he has achieved his life's dream of uniting the Mongol peoples, perhaps as many as a million of them,
Starting point is 00:23:32 into a single nation. He's making a new confederation and he calls it the Yekei Mongol Ulus, the great Mongol nation. Now, in his view, everyone who is a nomad is now a Mongol. You're no longer going to be a Karait, you're no longer going to be a Tachyut, you're no longer going to be a Merkit or Naiman or anybody else. You're a Mongol. Chinggis soon embarks on the greatest, most intense campaign of empire building the world has ever seen up to this point. His aim, though, is not to claim new territories as his own, but to safeguard his borders and to
Starting point is 00:24:11 quell any threats to his new nation. And the first of these are his nearest neighbors, the empire of Xishua and the mighty Jin Empire of northern China. He's not, you know, saying, well, I've unified Mongolia. I think I'll invade the Jin Empire of Northern China. He's not, you know, saying, well, I've unified Mongolia. I think I'll invade the Jin Empire because that's what I'm supposed to do. That was a long-held belief among historians for many, many years, decades, centuries even. But if you actually look at what he does, he has no intention of invading the Jin Empire, at least not now. For one thing, the emperor of the Jin Empire is, to use the technical term, a real badass. He's not a person you want to get on the bad side. Genghis Khan continues the Mongol
Starting point is 00:24:52 tradition of cross-border raiding. His troops are without rival, lean, fast, and skillful, with a bewildering array of tactics. They can fight in small pockets or in great waves, their horses so quick that they can encircle a foe almost before they know what's happening. Chinggis also perfects the feigned retreat, luring unwitting opponents out of their defensive lines and into an ambush. Then he develops altogether novel tactics. he develops altogether novel tactics. What he does is he sends his armies in to pillage and raid. It does not appear that he's looking to conquer it.
Starting point is 00:25:35 He does lay siege to a couple cities, but the Mongols are not very good at sieges. They don't have siege weapons. They basically can only try to surround it, starve it. At one point, they dam a river, the Yellow River, to then flood it. But they're not very good at building the dam. So they don't have engineers who really know what they're doing on a large scale. And they do flood the city, but at the same time, they flood their own camp and almost drown themselves.
Starting point is 00:26:07 But this is apparently sufficient to cause the king of Shisha to say, these guys are crazy, let's negotiate and make a deal. The Mongols' reputation for savage reprisals against all who resist soon spreads. Legends grow about how Chinggis and his men destroy whole cities. The question of bloodshed is not so much an issue when it's non-Mongols they are killing. As they sweep across the land, whole populations are slaughtered. Great mountains of skulls build outside city walls, bleaching in the sun. At Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan, Chinggis rides into the city and commands 300 of its most prominent citizens to come to its great mosque. He addresses them from the minbar, similar to a pulpit.
Starting point is 00:26:52 Though his own spiritual beliefs don't extend to the recognition of a single deity, as in Islam or Christianity, he announces, I am the punishment of God, before ordering their deaths. He knows that a fearful reputation is by no means a disadvantage for a man of war, but no one is quite sure how many people die at the hands of his armies. The number is certainly vast, six figures and quite possibly seven. But contrary to his modern-day image, he often displays a live-and-let-live attitude. He allows freedom of religion, finding other theologies fascinating rather than threatening. The Great Khan opens up trade and institutes a raft of civic reforms, eventually outlawing
Starting point is 00:27:37 raiding and the kidnapping of women. The supposed barbarian even introduces the Mongols' first formal written script. Genghis Khan seems to know what he's doing. Competent leadership is something that many people really desire. And the fact that if you surrender to him and pay tribute, he largely leaves you alone. Most of the destruction comes when you resist. He does not leave an army of occupation. He just expects them to pay tribute. And as long as they continue to do that, he doesn't really expect anything more than that.
Starting point is 00:28:15 By the 1220s, Chinggis' generals lead campaigns through what is now Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia into the Caucasus Mountains. They advance tirelessly through modern-day Russia and Ukraine, as far as Bulgaria and Hungary. Soon, the one-time outcast from his own clan is Khan of an empire stretching from China to the Caspian Sea, twice as large as the Roman Empire at its peak. But time is no longer on his side. In his mid-60s, he falls from his horse while hunting and does not recover from his injuries. His achievement in transforming the Mongols from minor regional tribe
Starting point is 00:28:55 to the most powerful nation in the world in under 30 years accords him a new status in death. The funny thing is, Chinggis Khan went from just being the founder of the Mongol Empire to basically being a demigod. When the Mongols took a moment to reflect and look at the size of their empire,
Starting point is 00:29:15 this is something that I don't think any of them envisioned. Just historically speaking, and there's no way that the Mongols knew this, Chinggis Khan had conquered more territory than anybody else in history. More than Julius Caesar, more than Alexander the Great, more than Napoleon, more than the Jin emperors, anybody. The question now is whether the great empire can survive without its founder. can survive without its founder. We see many empires rise and fall in one generation because you have such a strong personality who basically gives everything to that empire and the offspring
Starting point is 00:29:56 just aren't up to the task for whatever reasons. Or there's too many jealousies that lead to feuding and fighting. I mean, look at Alexander the Great's empire, quickly falls apart into many smaller ones. The issue of succession is not straightforward. There is no Mongol tradition of power passing to the eldest son, as in many monarchies. The next great Khan must be approved by the lesser Khans who will serve under him. Chinggis's various sons lobby for the top job, and in the end it falls to Ogedei, his third son. He insists that the royal family become known as the Golden Family, and right from his lavish inauguration in 1229, it's hard to miss his passions for wine
Starting point is 00:30:40 and women. But against expectations, Ogedei proves himself a highly effective political leader, if a less inspiring military one. Like his father, he is willing to divest responsibility where required to those better qualified than himself. Soon, Mongol rule in northern China and Central Asia is reasserted in areas where it had begun to drift during the interregnum. is reasserted in areas where it had begun to drift during the interregnum. Ogedei, however, does not share his father's commitment to nomadism. He begins work on a new capital city at Karakorum in western Mongolia, about 200 miles east of the modern-day Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar.
Starting point is 00:31:25 While his father established an operations base there some fifteen years earlier, Ogedei's vision is of something much grander than a traditional tented settlement. What he wants is a palace. He shoots an arrow, the trajectory of which determines the footprint of the building, and gets to work. The palace has all the gauche adornments of a city eager to make a splash. Soon there will be an immense silver tree in the center of the courtyard, from which rivers of alcoholic drinks will flow when summoned by a clockwork angel. Jesters, musicians, actors and wrestlers keep the locals entertained. Vast gold and silver vats are filled to the brim with wine, big enough to warrant elephants to move them around.
Starting point is 00:32:11 But though it's impressive, Karakorum is altogether too big and grand to be self-sufficient. The Mongols' nomadic economic model doesn't work in such a metropolis, especially one which functions in reality more as an administrative center. To survive, the city must rely on trade. Luckily, what Ogedei lacks in military acumen he makes up for in commercial nous. He introduces paper money, saving traders from heaving sacks of unwieldy coin around. He also looks to make Mongol territories as safe as possible for traveling merchants. He establishes garrisons along the Silk Road routes that cross his empire.
Starting point is 00:32:52 There is even a tree-planting program to provide shade during the baking summer months and to delineate paths during the winter. By the mid-1230s, though, Ogedai has burned through a prodigious amount of the empire's wealth. He needs new territories to loot, and he's not afraid to go and find them. What makes him successful is that while he's not a talented general, he's a guy who tends to see the big picture, and he's a guy who's able to serve as a unifier. He is able to unify the disparate branches of the Chinggisid family and hold it to a vision. And he's really the one who develops the idea of the Mongols are meant to rule the world.
Starting point is 00:33:40 That Koke Monke Tingri, the blue eternal sky, the chief Mongol god, has bequeathed the earth to Chinggis Khan and his sons to rule. And if you do not accept that rule, you are in rebellion against the will of heaven. So basically, from their view, the Mongol conquests are essentially an exercise of God's will. You need to submit or we will have to destroy you because you are disobeying the will of heaven. Along with his nephew, Ogedai simultaneously attacks the Song territories in China
Starting point is 00:34:18 and westwards into Europe and towards Kiev. Not until the Second World War does a power engage enemies on two such distant fronts, straddling both Europe and Asia. While the Song invasion fails to establish real dominance, the armoured knights of Europe are no match for the brilliant horsemen from the East. Here the Mongol army, numbering perhaps 150,000, takes city after city in the late 1230s. perhaps 150,000, takes city after city in the late 1230s. Kiev, the jewel in the Eastern European crown, falls in 1240, the same year that the Mongols are first mentioned in a Western text. Its author, an English monk, calls them the detestable race of Satan.
Starting point is 00:35:01 The armies continue west through Polish, Romanian, German, and Hungarian lands. Within a year, the Mongols have made it all the way to the outskirts of Vienna. Western Europe quakes at the prospect of this seemingly unstoppable force. But then, in 1241, Ogedei dies. With a new Khan to elect, the Mongol leadership prioritizes domestic concerns over further imperial expansion. There is a race back to the homeland. Western Europe has had the luckiest of escapes. As for Ogedei, his legacy is an empire even greater than that of his father.
Starting point is 00:35:41 By the time Ogedei is done, the empire stretches from Korea to the Carpathian Mountains and to the Black Sea. It is a huge empire. And we see during his reign the formation of a true empire with a formal administration. The next few years are characterized by dynastic squabbling. The next few years are characterized by dynastic squabbling. But in 1251, Mongke, a grandson of Chinggis, ascends to the throne, superseding Ogedei's family line. Mongke proves to actually be one of the best Khans in terms of knowing how to run things and getting things done. Now, he will also be the key in breaking the Mongol Empire up. But for now, Mongke is ambitious and determined to cement Chinggis' work.
Starting point is 00:36:38 But he is methodical, too, and systematically takes censuses to calculate taxation and deploy troops as efficiently as possible. He sends one brother, Kublai, back to the old Mongol enemy in China, the Song. Another brother, Huligo, leads armies against the great Muslim cities of the Middle East. When they reach Baghdad, they put their mastery of gunpowder picked up in China into action. Using cannons, they bombard the great city until it falls. Its ruler, the Caliph, is tied into a sack, rolled in a carpet, and then trampled. The records are unclear on whether this is by men or horses. What the Christian crusaders and Seljuk Turks have tried to achieve for two centuries, the Mongols manage in half a decade.
Starting point is 00:37:20 Soon, Damascus is taken too. Huligu's seven-year campaign has covered 4,000 miles and expanded the empire's population by several million. The Mongols seem irresistible. But in 1259, Mongke dies on campaign. Some say he is wounded, others that he succumbs to dysentery or perhaps cholera. Regardless, the power plays begin once more. But this time, there's no rush back to the homeland. Kublai is in southern China, entrenched in his heavy-going campaign against the Song. Huligu stays in the Middle East to protect his gains there. His armies have suffered a rare defeat at the hands of the Mamluks in Israel. Turning back now is too much of a risk,
Starting point is 00:38:05 given that he oversees more wealth than the rest of the empire combined. Meanwhile, the leader of what's known as the Golden Horde in the Russian territories, the first Mongol Khan to embrace Islam, also remains where he is, rather than risk losing control. That leaves two contenders for the title of Great Khan, both brothers of Mongke, Arik Boke in the traditional Mongol steppe and Kublai with his power base in China. Both contenders call a kurultai, or assembly, to vote for Mongke's successor, and each, unsurprisingly, wins on their home turf. Kublai has had enough of diplomacy. He mobilizes divisions of his vast Chinese army, hundreds of thousands strong, to strangle Karakorum, his own brother's capital. In 1264 it falls and soon Arik Bokeh is dead,
Starting point is 00:39:01 a victim of suspected poisoning. Arik Bokeh is dead, a victim of suspected poisoning. Now Kublai sits alone as Great Khan. But his empire is increasingly divided. The golden horde in Eastern Europe is a power in itself, and Tuligu's lands known as the Ikanate, stretching from Afghanistan to Turkey, bring him his own vast personal wealth and influence. The complicated nature of Kublai's ascent to the supreme job leaves him in a dilemma. And so everyone kind of acknowledges Kublai as the unified ruler, but he's not in a position to really assert authority. He takes the throne through a coup. So his next effort to sort of give himself legitimacy is to then conquer the Song Empire, which no one has ever done.
Starting point is 00:39:52 China presents a unique challenge with its history of disunity, shifting boundaries and dynasties, not to mention its vast array of regional languages. While the original Great Khan Chinggis sought to bring together perhaps a million Mongols initially, Kublai's challenge is to unify a region home to many millions more. His grand plan combines military might and cultural assimilation. He adopts Chinese names and seeks to underplay the Mongols' foreignness. Plans are developed for a great new
Starting point is 00:40:26 capital city, too, to replace his base at Shangdu, immortalized by the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as Xanadu. Known as Khanbalik, City of the Khan, this melting pot of a city, with boulevards wide enough to accommodate twelve horsemen abreast, will eventually evolve into modern-day Beijing. It attracts traders and scholars from as far as Western Europe, India, and North Africa. Its architecture draws on Mongol, Chinese, and Muslim influences, but at its center, in the walled, forbidden city, is a sea of Mongol gurs. From this base, Kublai directs his campaign against the Song. It takes many years, but their defeat eventually comes in 1279.
Starting point is 00:41:18 Despite being outnumbered maybe ten to one, forces loyal to Kublai outmaneuver the Song at the Battle of Yamen. Shortly afterwards, the last Song emperor, a boy of just eight, leaps from a cliff top to his death to avoid being taken alive. The dynasty ends for good. China is now Kublai's, and he becomes first emperor of his own Yuan dynasty. Kublai's civic rule is remarkable. He codifies a new legal system, enshrines property rights, lowers taxes, promotes universal education, encourages cultural expression, and builds infrastructure. He introduces a more merciful penal code,
Starting point is 00:42:06 dramatically reducing the number of capital offences and outlawing many forms of torture. Over the entirety of his reign, Kublai executes only 2,500 prisoners, with the figure as low as seven in some years. Tiny by comparison with Europe at the time. And when torture is used, it is not with a rack or fire or metal spikes, but is limited to beating with a cane. It is not what you might imagine given the popular image of the Mongols and their Khans. However, Kublai's success in China comes at a price.
Starting point is 00:42:47 Kublai's success in China comes at a price. So while Kublai will establish a vast empire in East Asia, his civil war against Ereboke and then his own efforts to establish his own credentials through conquest allows the rest of the empire to kind of drift away and do its own thing. At this point, we could say the Mongol Empire exists, but more as separate confederations or as four or five small empires under the umbrella of the great Mongol Empire. It is spring in 1281 in the countryside of northern China. Kublai Khan, overweight and stricken with grief at the recent loss of his most beloved wife,
Starting point is 00:43:31 lies on a silk couch covered in tiger skins. He is shaded by a gilded pavilion, mounted onto the backs of four elephants that have been plundered from Burma. Wincing at the twinges of gout, from Burma. Wincing at the twinges of gout, Kublai watches as the sky fills with a thick cloud of cranes on their annual migration northwards. As has become his custom, he is here to hunt, though these days he is too out of shape to do the work himself. At least at this time of year, he finds the weather bearable. At his signal, a phalanx of falconers release their birds of prey, who fly off like arrows, plucking the cranes out of the heavens. Their terrified death calls fill
Starting point is 00:44:12 the air as they spiral to the ground. Although he cannot escape his own sorrow, the sight of the hunting procession pleases the great Khan. Along with the customary horses are camels and dogs, tigers in cages hauled by oxen, and leopards and lynxes mounted onto horses. Astrologists, shamans, and monks are here to ensure the most auspicious conditions. Altogether a cast of thousands, human and animal, cuts a swathe through the countryside. When the day's sport is done, Kublai returns to camp, a small city of gurs. After his attendants dress him in jewels and embroidered silks, he is taken to the heart of the makeshift community to play host in a tent large enough for a thousand people.
Starting point is 00:45:02 He takes his place on a luxurious divan and surveys the scene. The musicians start up, and soon there will be acrobats, jugglers, and contortionists. Each of them is there to ensure a smile on the face of every guest, but most of all, to entertain the calm. But none of this is really making Kublai happy. How can it, with his beloved no longer beside him? As the entertainments get underway, he beckons for more of his special royal drink, a brew made from the milk of a herd of pure white mares impregnated by pure white stallions. An attendant approaches him, bowing as they offer him a plate of bull's testicles fried with saffron. Kublai takes a bite despondently.
Starting point is 00:45:51 With the song at last defeated, he struggles to know what to do next. He entertains ideas of invading still more lands, Japan, Java, Vietnam, and building the greatest navy on the oceans to go with his incredible army. But deep down, he knows his best days are behind him. He's no youngster now, after all. And much the same can be said of his empire. Kublai dies an old man in 1294. The line of succession continues, but by the 1330s, the empire is fracturing, thanks to
Starting point is 00:46:31 a series of short-lived reigns, political assassinations, and disappearances. Then something even more damaging strikes. The Black Death. Although no one can be sure, it's likely the outbreak begins somewhere in Central Asia, perhaps in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Before long, it reaches the Golden Horde. According to one, probably apocryphal story, it is the Mongols who are responsible for spreading it to Europe. Around 1345, the Horde are said to catapult the bodies of men lost to the Black Death over the city walls during the siege of Caffa on the Crimean Peninsula.
Starting point is 00:47:13 It's claimed that Genoese traders who managed to escape carry the illness back to Italy, from where it spreads throughout Europe. Whether or not this is true, by 1353, it has claimed the lives of some 30 to 40 percent of the world's population. It has also made the world smaller. Faced with a killer disease, spread through contact, trade decreases, travel dries up, people stay close to home. The Mongol Empire relies not just on loyalty to the great Khan, but on exchange, openness to culture and trade. Now, with those connections closing down, communication slows. With Kublai cut off from much of his vast empire, allegiance from his subjects is hard to maintain.
Starting point is 00:48:02 The Golden Horde, for instance, has never felt so distant from China. The Black Death takes a particular toll in the Ilkhanate, which at its peak covered much of what is now Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Turkey. By the end of the decade, it's finished as a serious force. Its last Khan dies in 1335, leaving a weak confederation that will be overcome by foreign invaders before the century is out. For everywhere else, it's just a matter of time. In China, we'll see the Ming Empire rise out of rebellions against the Chinggisids. In 1368, the Mongols will abandon China. We'll
Starting point is 00:48:46 still have a Mongol empire in Mongolia. We'll still have parts of the Mongol empire of Kublai Khan still recognizing that, but slowly these will dissolve. And we see a great deal of confusion in the late 14th century. Indeed, I would not say that the threat of the Mongol Empire is fully gone until about 1410. The Ming are confident the Mongols are not going to come back and conquer China until that date. In Central Asia, in the Russian territories, or what we now view as Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, they'll still be Mongol princes ruling until the 1500s, but they're becoming less significant with every decade. Though it spanned only a couple of centuries in its full form, the Mongol Empire was the
Starting point is 00:49:41 largest the world had ever seen. It would not be surpassed until the heyday of the British Empire. History has not been altogether kind to the Mongols. It has suited various political agendas through the centuries to depict them solely as barbarians. It's true that the sight of a stampeding army of Mongol horsemen terrorized many an enemy. And this wasn't a civilization that left behind great architectural monuments, cultural works, or enduring technologies. But their legacy endures
Starting point is 00:50:12 in the global connections they forged. The importance of the Mongol Empire is that we have, in the first time in history, an empire that truly connects West and East. Even in its times of turmoil, there's still connections and trade routes that allow it to work, whether it's by sea around India, between the Middle East and China. It causes what I term as the Chinggis Exchange, where you have technologies, ideas, food, religious ideas going back and forth and intermingling east and west. We have new influences meeting and merging all over the empire that forever changes the world. After the Mongol Empire, you can't go back to before. After the Mongol Empire, you can't go back to before.
Starting point is 00:51:10 We have kingdoms that were wiped off the map and indeed, in many ways, forgotten by the Mongol conquest. And we have new dynasties emerge out of the ruins of the Mongols. The Ming Empire, the rise of Muscovy, even the Ottomans, they're all part of the Mongol legacy. And it's impossible to see them as existing without the Mongols. Next week on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of Mount Everest. By the time it came to 1953, Tenzing had a very proprietorial sense to an extent over Everest.
Starting point is 00:51:46 He thought, I've almost climbed Everest with the Swiss team. I would quite like to come back with the Swiss team if they make another attempt in 1955. And he was a little bit ambivalent, really, about working with the British. Because you've got to remember, this is the sort of post-colonial era. Tenzing had gotten on very well with the Swiss. And he really liked being with them. And he felt they treated him in a very equal fashion. And he wasn't quite so sure
Starting point is 00:52:09 whether the same thing would happen with the British. But nevertheless, the other thing you've got to remember about him is he was incredibly goal-driven. And I think he recognized that this was a pretty good British team, that they were going to go all out to get to the summit, and he wanted to be part of that. That's next time on Short History Of…

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