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Course: World History Project AP® > Unit 2
Lesson 2: 2.1—The Mongol Empire- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Rebuilding the Silk Road
- WATCH: Rebuilding the Silk Road
- READ: Written in the Stars - Secrets of the Mongol Empire
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Wait for It…The Mongols! Crash Course World History #17
- WATCH: Wait For It...The Mongols!
- READ: Sorqoqtani Beki – Graphic Biography
- READ: Rashid al-Din – Graphic Biography
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READ: Written in the Stars - Secrets of the Mongol Empire
From 1206 to 1368, the Mongol Empire ruled most of Eurasia. The influence of the Khans stretched far beyond their borders and outlasted their empire. How did they do it?
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
First read: preview and skimming for gist
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Second read: key ideas and understanding content
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- Why was the Mongol Empire important?
- This article approaches the question of why the Mongol conquests succeeded as a murder mystery. What factors contributed to the Mongol Empire’s success?
- How did Mongol rule help increase trade in Afro-Eurasia?
- What role did scholars and technology play in the Mongol Empire?
- Does this article conclude that the Mongols were good or bad?
Third read: evaluating and corroborating
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
- How does the Mongol Empire represent a significant change from other empires you’ve learned about thus far in the course? What were some of the continuities you noticed between the Mongol Empire and other empires?
- You’ve encountered a diverse tapestry of communities across Afro-Eurasia in this unit. How does the story of the Mongol Empire support, extend, or challenge the narratives you’ve encountered so far?
- The author of this article concludes with a “both sides” view of the legacy of the Mongol Empire. What do you think? Can you take a side? Do you think the Mongols were a positive or negative force for the societies they encountered? What evidence from this article supports your opinion? What challenges it?
Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to read! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished reading.
Written in the Stars: Secrets of the Mongol Empire
By Bennett Sherry
From 1206 to 1368, the Mongol Empire ruled most of Eurasia. The influence of the Khans stretched far beyond their borders and outlasted their empire. How did they do it?
Driving their enemies before them
The Mongol Empire (1206–1368) was a world-altering force. Armies of horsemen thundered across seas of grass. They left devastation in their wake, committing acts of violence so horrific, entire cities surrendered in the hope of mercy. As he directed the sacking of the world’s greatest cities, the Mongols’ great conqueror, Genghis Khan, warned his victims: “I am the punishment of God.”
But why focus on the sensational accounts of the Mongol armies sweeping across Eurasia as though they were in an action film, when we can talk about merchants, physicians, administrators, and some guys who really liked to look at stars?
Woo! Yeah! Astronomers! Doctors! Bureaucrats! Let’s go!
The world conqueror
Don’t worry, we’ll talk a bit about the conquests and armies. Because they’re important too. To understand the Mongols’ impact on the world, you first need to understand how they managed to conquer most of that world.
The Mongol Empire was huge. It was the largest empire in history, covering over 17 percent of the world’s landmass and ruling a quarter of the global population. Its borders stretched from Korea to Hungary. Today, 28 countries have territory that was once ruled by the Mongol Empire. And it could have been even bigger. At the edges of their empire, the Mongols launched two failed invasions of Japan, thwarted both times by typhoons and samurai armies. The Mamluks in Egypt managed to prevent the Mongol conquest of the entire Islamic world. The Delhi Sultanate frustrated their attempts to take India. Other unsuccessful invasions of Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia also limited Mongol conquest.
Murder mystery on the steppes
At the dawn of the thirteenth century, the Mongols were unlikely empire builders. They were a loose collection of tribes on the steppes north of China. The Eurasian steppe is a band of dry grassland stretching from Eastern Europe to East Asia. The Mongols lived in semi-nomadic, pastoralist communities. Their populations were low, and they were politically decentralized. Though they valued trade, the Mongols lived on the edge of the major Afro-Eurasian trade networks. Their production was generally small scale and they sold their goods only to their neighbors. And yet, the Mongol Empire would conquer and reshape the world for 150 years. How did these divided tribes come to conquer and rule the world’s largest contiguous empire?
Solving this question is like solving a murder mystery. We need a motive, a weapon, and an opportunity. The motive in this case is maybe a little surprising: climate change. Historians believe that an intense drought in the late twelfth century shriveled the pasturelands that the Mongols’ herds relied on. This drove the tribes further south, where they raided agricultural societies. As for weapons, the Mongol Empire had two very important advantages. The first was their mastery of horse warfare. Mongol men and women were exceptional riders, and they perfected cavalry tactics.
Their second weapon was a leader: Genghis Khan.
After his remarkable feat of uniting the tribes, Genghis seized his opportunity, and he and his successors launched one of the largest campaigns of conquest the world has ever seen. While growing, however, the Mongol Empire became too big for one person to rule. Over the course of the thirteenth century, it was gradually divided into four khanates:
- The khanate of the Great Khan, centered in Mongolia and China (after 1279 known as the Yuan Dynasty)
- The Chagatai khanate, in Central Asia
- The Ilkhanate, in Persia
- The khanate of the Golden Horde, in the northwest
For a time, the Great Khan in the east ruled over the others, but eventually, the various khans came into conflict, and their power was diminished. Still, for over a century after his death, the successors of Genghis Khan dominated Eurasia.
The networks of Mongol rule
Managing an empire of nine million square miles was no easy thing. But the Mongols’ remarkably open society helped. Trade was central to the khans’ power. By maintaining order across the Silk Roads, they repressed bandits and encouraged the growth of new trading centers. The Mongols successfully reduced the cost and danger of overland travel. This made the northern Silk Roads preferable to the southern Indian Ocean routes, which had dominated trade for centuries. Merchants thrived under Mongol rule, enjoying higher status than they had in pre-Mongol China. Although the khanates fought each other, they continued to guarantee the safety of travelers and merchants across their lands, even in times of war.
Genghis and his son, Ögedei Khan, conquered the northern Jin dynasty of China. Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan completed the Mongol conquest of China with his defeat of the Song dynasty in 1279. Control of China made the Mongol khans the rulers of the most important centers of manufacturing in the world. The result was an expansion of the networks connecting the eastern and western halves of Eurasia and an increase in the amount of goods that traveled east to west. But merchants carried more than silk and spice. New ideas traveled across the Silk Roads in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Islamic knowledge of mathematics and medicine made its way to Europe during this period. The Italian city-states adopted the Arabic numbering system. The Mongol khans were generally very tolerant of foreign religions. They offered respect and tax benefits to the leaders of some religions, and people were allowed to worship as they pleased, for the most part. Under Mongol rule, Eurasia became a religious melting pot.
Merchants and priests weren’t the only people who moved. Mongol administration relied on a network of experts and specialists from across Eurasia. When Ögedei Khan decided to build a new capital at Karakorum, he imported thousands of specialists, including artisans and architects. Muslims in particular enjoyed high status in Mongol China. Unable to rely on Chinese bureaucrats, the Khans brought in experts from the Muslim world. They contracted Chinese tax collection to Muslim foreigners.
The Mongols quickly adopted the customs and technologies of conquered peoples. If a foe used superior military technology, the Mongols adopted it. The same was true of science and medicine, which made advances under Mongol rule. Foreign scholars and physicians attained positions of power in the Mongol court. For example, consider astronomers: The Mongols’ religion worshiped a sky god, and they believed their shamans could predict the future by reading the heavens (which they called Tengri). During his invasions, Genghis took foreign astronomers into his service. Later Mongol rulers in China and Persia employed Muslim and Chinese astronomers. These astronomers built scientific networks, and the Khans sponsored new observatories. Astronomers from across the empire flocked to Kublai Khan’s court. These astronomers, like the Persian Jamal al-Din, served as valued advisers on military and political matters, but they also advanced the science of astronomy by exchanging information between the Chinese and Muslim schools.
Experts were central to the Mongol strategy of rule, but not all of them moved willingly. After a conquest, Mongol rulers frequently captured experts and claimed them as personal property. Many thousands were forced to move far from home, accompanying the Khans back to their capitals
The verdict of history
So, were the Mongols good or bad? As with most historical topics, the answer depends on your perspective. Their conquests were brutal. Millions died in their invasions. Mongol armies sacked entire cities and centers of learning. If you were one of the many abducted experts or others enslaved by the Mongol khans, the Mongol conquests were certainly a bad thing.
On the other hand, 800 years later, we can look back and appreciate the many remarkable aspects of Mongol rule. This century-long period of peace—sometimes called the Pax Mongolica—changed the world. New ideas and new goods traveled unimpeded across the largest landmass on Earth. The connections between the east and west ends of Afro-Eurasia had never been closer, and they would not be again until several centuries after the Mongol collapse. These connections brought Western Europe some important benefits—and they escaped the Mongol invasions. An increase in overland trade heightened European access to and desire for luxury goods from the east. Along with this trade came new technologies and navigational techniques that would eventually allow Europeans to build overseas empires. Some historians even suggest that the Mongol invasions might have introduced gunpowder weaponry to Europe.
However, along with these new connections came disease. The expansion of trade under Mongol rule unintentionally allowed the Black Death to spread rapidly across Afro-Eurasia. In Europe, the plague killed as many as 50 million people. The turmoil of the Black Death combined with civil war to weaken the Mongol khanates. In 1368, the Mongol Yuan dynasty fell to the Chinese Ming dynasty. The other khanates began their decline and were gradually replaced by various successor states.
Author bio
Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in History from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maine at Augusta. Additionally, he is a Research Associate at Pitt’s World History Center. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century.
Want to join the conversation?
So, what are your perspectives on the mongols? Good? Bad? Neutral?(2 votes)- The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan and his successors, were a powerful and formidable empire that conquered vast territories in Asia and Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries. Their military conquests and brutal tactics have led to mixed opinions about their legacy. Some view them as ruthless and destructive invaders who brought immense suffering to the regions they conquered, while others admire their military prowess, administrative innovations, and role in facilitating cultural exchange and trade along the Silk Road. Ultimately, perspectives on the Mongols vary depending on individual interpretations of their history and impact on the world.One of the key factors that shaped the negative perception of the Mongols was their brutal tactics and ruthless approach to warfare. They were known for their fierce reputation on the battlefield, using strategies such as psychological warfare, terror tactics, and mass killings to instill fear in their enemies and quickly subdue opposition. Their conquests often resulted in widespread destruction, looting, and loss of life, leading to a significant amount of suffering and devastation in the conquered regions.
Additionally, the Mongol conquests were marked by a high level of brutality and violence, with reports of massacres, atrocities, and the enslavement of civilian populations. Cities were razed to the ground, entire populations were massacred, and valuable cultural and religious artifacts were destroyed. The Mongols showed little mercy to those who resisted their rule, leading to a legacy of fear and trauma among the conquered peoples.On the other hand, some argue that the Mongols were not solely destructive conquerors but also brought certain positive aspects to the regions they conquered. They were known for their organizational skills, administrative reforms, and promotion of trade and cultural exchange. Under Mongol rule, the Silk Road flourished, facilitating the exchange of goods, ideas, and technologies between East and West. They also promoted religious tolerance and allowed for a degree of local autonomy in the regions they ruled.Furthermore, the Mongol Empire played a significant role in shaping the political, economic, and cultural landscape of Eurasia during the medieval period. Their conquests led to the unification of vast territories under a single ruler, creating a vast empire that stretched from China to Europe. This had a lasting impact on the development of trade routes, political institutions, and cultural interactions in the region.Overall, the legacy of the Mongols is complex and multifaceted, with both positive and negative aspects to consider. While their ruthless tactics and brutal conquests have earned them a reputation as destructive invaders, their military prowess, administrative innovations, and promotion of cultural exchange have also contributed to their lasting impact on the world. Ultimately, the perception of the Mongols depends on individual interpretations of their history and the consequences of their actions.(2 votes)
how are yall doing fith graders :} !(0 votes)