Led at first by Genghis Khan, the empire lasted from until During that time, it expanded to cover most of Eurasia, thanks to advanced technology and a massive horde of nomadic warriors. Their flocks of goats, sheep, horses, and other animals were dependent on abundant grass and water, and Mongols had to travel frequently to sustain them. Drought and disease could wipe out their livelihoods quickly. Genghis Khan helped allay this sense of precariousness.
He embraced trade and religious freedom, and adopted advanced technology of the time, such as stirrups, composite bows, leather armor, and gunpowder. Their success rested on a complex new military structure and new military tactic s, like arrow storms, amassing huge arsenals, engaging in repeated hit-and-run barrages, delayed sieges, and psychological warfare.
The warriors were assisted by new technologies like the stirrup and technological and tactical innovations they adopted from the people they conquered. Did the Great Wall of China kept the Mongols at bay? Traditional wisdom holds that the Mongols began growing their empire due to inhospitable conditions in their homeland. But more recent research suggests the Mongol Empire had an unexpected boon: climate.
Researchers think the Mongol hordes may have initially prevailed due to a year-long stretch of mild weather and above-average moisture that produced abundant grasses for their horses and better conditions for livestock breeding. The empire adapted constantly as it grew, and flourished during a year-long period of aggressive expansion.
Disputes among his successors eventually split the empire into four. By , all four had folded. She notes that the Mongols sparked large migrations, not just of displaced people but also of those fleeing future attacks.
Memories of these attacks loomed large in the imaginations of future generations. Hear how Genghis Khan has roughly 16 million descendants living today. But the Mongol Empire left other legacies: the Silk Road and its history of trade; cultural development ; and the potential for a modern era characterized by the unity of disparate peoples, and relative peace.
All rights reserved. The walls were scaled, the defenders overcome, and what followed was utter annihilation. For one month, his army burned, plundered and raped with abandon.
The city of the utmost sophistication, famed for its grand palaces and markets overflowing with silks and spices, had been reduced to a charnel house. They also recorded that beyond the walls stood a mountain of bones. That achievement in itself would have been enough to elevate him into the pantheon of great military commanders. But for Genghis Khan, it was just the start. Over the course of the century, he and his successors built the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world, a million-square-mile swathe of land that stretched from the Sea of Japan to the grasslands of Hungary in the heart of Europe.
To put that into context, the Mongol Empire grew to four times the size of the one created by that other great conqueror, Alexander the Great , and twice the size of the Roman Empire. Some three billion of the seven billion people alive today live in countries that formed part of the Mongol Empire.
Yet perhaps more astonishing still is the story of the catalyst behind this extraordinary feat of empire-building. He turned a rag-bag collection of tribes — with no permanent homes, precious few possessions and a long history of butchering one another — into an unstoppable juggernaut. And he did so from fraught beginnings.
When he was born in c, the son of a tribal warrior chief, he was named Temujin. The Secret History of the Mongols , the oldest-surviving literary work in the Mongolian language, set down shortly after his death, tells us that he was born clutching a blood clot, a sign that he would be a brave warrior.
If Temujin was destined for greatness, there were few signs during his early years. At the age of eight or nine, his father was poisoned by a rival tribe, the Tatars, and he and his mother were rejected by their clan and forced out onto the grasslands of Mongolia, where they survived by foraging for berries, rats and birds.
It was a humiliating, pitiful existence. Being friendless in the cut-throat world of 13th-century Mongolia was not a good place to be. The young Temujin came to the realisation that his best chance of reversing his fortunes — and creating a powerbase for himself — lay in establishing alliances.
Yet on the violent, febrile Mongolian steppe, even getting married could spell trouble. So he sought to secure another alliance, this time with a formidable leader named Toghrul. Temujin won over Toghrul by reminding him that he had fought alongside his father, and sugar-coated the offer with a lavish sable coat. The gambit worked. Someone, however, stood in his way, and it was one of his greatest friends.
Temujin had been blood brothers with a fellow warrior named Jamukha, also the son of a Mongolian tribal leader, for a number of years. In fact, Jamukha had played an instrumental role in the defeat of the Merkit. Yet, as the two had grown older, cracks began to appear in their friendship.
Soon, his distrust morphed into outright war. When Jamukha struck, it was with bloodthirsty ferocity. He was good to his word, and when his revenge came, it was total. Then a few months later, Jamukha was captured. Rather than dish out a fate similar to what befell his generals, though, Temujin showed him mercy… up to a point.
Jamukha asked for a noble death, which meant without the shedding of blood. His former friend granted him that, so had his back broken. Among the first people to feel the force of the newly united Mongol nation was the Western Xia of northwest China, who succumbed to a sustained Mongol invasion. In , Genghis followed that by attacking the Jin, gobbling up land, cities and loot in a spectacular campaign that culminated in the fall of Beijing.
The Mongolians were highly adept at communicating over large distances, something they had honed over centuries of rounding up animals on the steppe.
This enabled them to slowly tighten the noose around the enemy. Guile was another key weapon in the Mongol armoury. Genghis Khan relied heavily on spies and was certainly not above using fake news as a tactic.
Genghis Khan was also a master of the feigned retreat, luring opponents out of defensive positions before delivering a lethal strike. Combine all this with his ability to quickly assimilate new technologies into his own army — such as Chinese siege weapons, mortars, gunpowder, not to mention thousands of captured troops — and you had a truly formidable foe. They also were somewhat self-sufficient and didn't have to worry about supply lines sustaining them which can make or break an army. However, that began to change in and the Battle of Ain Jalut near present-day Israel marked a turning point for the empire when the Mongols were defeated by the Mamluks.
Although they had suffered losses occasionally during the reigns of Genghis and Ogedei, they always returned with a bigger, and stronger army. The Battle of Ain Jalut was the first time that a Mongol army had been permanently defeated and it saved Egypt from Mongol invasion. The Mongols had finally been contained. The vast empire soon began to splinter. While this is hardly surprising considering that this is what has happened to most empires throughout history, the Mongols were incredibly strong soldiers, and competent leaders and their decline was very fast.
The Mongols had no real succession plan set in place and Genghis Khan's grandchildren soon began to dispute who exactly carried the Royal Line forward. This chasm grew even further when the question arose as to whether the empire should remain nomadic or if it should become sedentary. Infighting and civil war broke out amongst tribes, weakening the empire further.
The Mongolian Empire was eventually divided into four smaller empires which were the Golden Horde located in the northeastern part of the territory near Russia, the Yuan Dynasty in China, the Ilkhanate in the southeast, and Persia present-day Iran , and the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. After continuous in-fighting, the Mongolian Empire effectively disintegrated into competing armies. As a result, they lost influence over the territories they ruled.
In , the Ming Dynasty overthrew the Yuan Dynasty which represented the end of the empire. By the late 14th century, the Mongolian Empire was gone. Although it lasted just over years, the Mongols changed world history as we know it. By unifying Europe and Asia, the Mongols were able to establish peace throughout the region.
Rather than convert people to their own religion, they allowed religious freedom and frequently followed the religion of the lands they conquered and became Muslims, Christians, or Buddhists. They supported and cultivated arts and became patrons of artists.
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