The Mongol Empire: The Empire of the Horse
The Mongols. They are a pretty famous civilization. Most people have at least heard of Genghis Khan and have some idea how brutal his empire was. But no matter how extreme you thought it was, the Mongol Empire was even more brutal. The Mongols killed between 40 to 80 million people, about 10% of the world’s population at the time. And that included more than 50% of the people living in China, the closest civilization to them. They killed so many people, that there was a significant effect on the Earth’s climate: large areas of forests regrew because there were fewer people to cut them down. This new growth absorbed more carbon dioxide, causing a small but significant cooling the Earth’s atmosphere. Let’s dive in, to the Mongol Empire.
The Mongol Empire: A rapid rise and fall
The Mongol Empire was a large empire that dominated Asia from 1206 to 1368. That’s pretty short as Empires go, only a few generations, compared to the thousands of years that Egypt, Greece and Rome were around for. However, from this time it expanded to rule almost the entirety of Asia, from Korea in the East all the way to Turkey in the West, including all of China, and large portions of Russia. It was the largest land empire in history, only beaten by the cross-continental British Empire more than 500 years later.
The Empire was almost entirely the result of one man – Genghis Khan. Initially, the area known as Mongolia was populated by different warring tribes. They had banded together occasionally to fight off the Jin Dynasty in China and maintain their independence. However, they were constantly at war with each other, taking revenge for killing each other’s kings, with the neighboring Jin actively encouraging these conflicts to ensure the surrounding tribes were not a threat (see more on other Asian empires here).
Genghis Khan was born as a son of a local chieftain in 1162. He rapidly united the various warring Mongol tribes together into a single, coordinated military force and claimed surrounding territories. He introduced a wide variety of military reforms, mainly around rewarding loyalty of the soldiers, as opposed to aristocrats. For example, he would choose commanders from the ranks of the army, rewarding successful soldiers, as opposed to appointing powerful elites, as was the tradition at the time. He created a new structure, organizing the army into groups of 10, 100 and 1000 people. He even banned stealing and fighting within the army itself and regulated battlefield looting, requiring all spoils to be divided evenly between the soldiers who fought in the battles.
The Empire began to slowly disintegrate after Ghengis Khan died. He was succeeded by his son Ogedei and it continued to expand dominating more of the surrounding empires. However, after Ogedei’s death, power squabbles between various relatives reasonably quickly resulted in the Empire falling apart. There was almost nothing left of it within 100 years.
The Mongols: Horsemen
The Mongols were renowned for being extraordinarily brutal and effective warriors. A lot of this came from their extraordinary horsemanship.
The Mongol army was almost entirely on horseback. One Mongol soldier would have several horses, which they would switch between as their mount tired. They also traveled with much less equipment than many armies, meaning they were completely independent of supply lines. A lot of their weapons were specialized to be used on horseback – such as short recurve bows, as powerful as British longbows, but half the size. They also had a very sophisticated courier and postal system which allowed rapid communication between their armies – the Mongol postal riders were the fastest horse riders that have ever existed on the planet, faster than the American postal service in the Midwest even 600 years later. There are even reports that they would drink their horses blood and milk – which is a surprisingly common thing in nomadic societies – where the surrounding vegetation is inedible to humans but edible to the horses.
Their mastery of the horse meant that the Mongol army was incredibly fast, efficient, and well-coordinated and were able to defeat much larger military forces. In one case in 1223, two of Genghis Khan’s generals were riding with 20,000 men against 80,000 Russian troops. Realizing they could not win with a direct attack, the Mongol’s pretended to retreat, encouraging the Russians to pursue them. The Russians did pursue them, but sloppily, allowing their forces to be stretched out. After a week, the Russians were split up and the Mongol horsemen turned around, slamming their 20,000 troops against a couple of thousands of Russians at a time. The Mongols won easily. As was traditional, the Mongols then destroyed all surrounding villages, leaving no people alive. It was even rumored that individual Mongol soldiers would go on their own to surrounding villages and conduct loyalty tests, and kill the entire population of the village if even one individual did not pledge allegiance to the Mongols.
The Mongols: What remains
The Mongol Empire has not really survived into the modern world. Because of their nomadic and horse-based lives, they didn’t tend to build permanent settlements or large structures. And even the few that they did were destroyed when they collapsed (see Karakorum). In the modern age, Mongolia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world.
Mongolian culture, however, is still remarkably similar to the days of the Khans. For example, every year in the capital of Ulaanbaatar, the Naadam festival is held. It’s referred to as the festival of “three games”, wrestling, horse racing and archery. It is probably the oldest continuous sporting event in the world and has been held every year in some form since it was started by Genghis Khan. Horse culture certainly survives – there are still more horses in Mongolia than people, and their language has over 500 words to describe different traits of horses.
Our final note on the Mongol Empire – no one actually knows where Genghis Khan is buried. Mongol religious traditions believe if someone’s grave is disturbed, they will not be allowed to enter the afterlife. Because of this, many traditional Mongol burials involved the location being kept secret. This was true for Genghis Khan, but to the most extreme degree imaginable. Marco Polo reported in the last 13th century, that a giant tomb for Genghis Khan was constructed, somewhere far out in rural Mongolia where it would not be found. Then the 2,000 men who built this tomb, and hence knew its location, were marched to meet a squad of soldiers at a predetermined location. These soldiers then killed the builders – ensuring no one knew where the tomb was. These soldiers were then marched to meet another group of soldiers, who then killed them. A lot of these tales as pretty exaggerated, but considering the power and brutality of the Mongol Empire, this certainly does not sound impossible.
In the modern world, people are still attempting to find Genghis Khan’s tomb. Many researchers, particularly from China and Japan have spent good portions of their careers studying historical sources trying to locate it. Some more recent expeditions have even used drones and satellite imagery to investigate areas in rural Mongolia that have been identified as potential candidates for the tomb. There has been some success, some structures from the time of Genghis Khan have been located. However very few have been excavated. Attempts to actually find Genghis Khan’s grave have actually been actively resisted by the Mongolian government, as most Mongolians continue to believe the tomb should be left to rest. We here are The Universal Story, strongly agree. The great Khan does not want to be found. Let’s grant him his dying wish and allow him to rest in peace.
