Nomadic Empires

The term is contradictory as

Group of nomads- Mongols of Central Asia established a transcontinental empire under the
leadership of Genghis Khan (12-13th century) in Mongolia, China, Central Asia, and some
parts of Europe.

SOURCES
1. The steppe dwellers themselves usually produced no literature, so our knowledge of
nomadic societies comes mainly from chronicles, travelogues and documents
produced by city-based litterateurs. These authors often produced extremely ignorant
Buddhists, and biased reports of nomadic life.
Muslims,
Christians, 2. Perhaps the most valuable research on the Mongols was done by Russian scholars
Confucian,
starting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the Tsarist regime consolidated
Turkish
its control over Central Asia.

3. Excellent research on Mongol languages, their society and culture was carried out by
scholars such as Boris Yakovlevich Vladimirtsov. Others such as Vasily Vladimirovich
Bartold did not quite toe the official line.

4. The transcontinental span of the Mongol empire also meant that the sources
available to scholars are written in a vast number of languages. The most crucial are
the sources in Chinese, Mongolian, Persian and Arabic, but vital materials are also
available in Italian, Latin, French and Russian.
Igor de
Rachewiltz 5. For example, the Mongolian and Chinese versions of the earliest narrative on
(The Secret Genghis Khan, titled Mongqol-un niuèa tobèa’an (The Secret History of the
History of the Mongols) are quite different and the Italian and Latin versions of Marco Polo’s
Mongols travels to the Mongol court do not match.

Gerhard
6. The work of scholars like Igor de Rachewiltz on The Secret History of the Mongols
Doerfer-
Mongol and and Gerhard Doerfer on Mongol and Turkic terminologies that infiltrated the Persian
Turkic language brings out the difficulties involved in studying the history of the Central
terminologies Asian nomads.

7. Despite their incredible achievements there is much about Genghis Khan and the
Mongol world empire still awaiting the diligent scholar’s scrutiny.

INTRODUCTION
1. In the early decades of the thirteenth century the great empires of the Euro-Asian
continent realised the dangers posed to them by the arrival of a new political power in
the steppes of Central Asia: Genghis Khan (d. 1227) had united the Mongol people.
 2. Genghis Khan’s political vision, however, went far beyond the creation of a
confederacy of Mongol tribes in the steppes of Central Asia: he had a mandate from
God to rule the world.

3. Even though his own lifetime was spent consolidating his hold over the Mongol
tribes, leading and directing campaigns into adjoining areas in north China,
Transoxiana, Afghanistan, eastern Iran and the Russian steppes, his descendants
travelled further afield to fulfil Genghis Khan’s vision and create the largest empire
the world had ever seen.

4. It was in the spirit of Genghis Khan’s ideals that his grandson Mongke (1251-60)
warned the French ruler, Louis IX (1226-70): ‘In Heaven there is only one Eternal
Sky, on Earth there is only one Lord, Genghis Khan, the Son of Heaven…

5. These were not empty threats and the 1236-41 campaigns of Batu, another
grandson of Genghis Khan, devastated Russian lands up to Moscow, seized Poland
and Hungary and camped outside Vienna.

6. In the thirteenth century it did seem that the Eternal Sky was on the side of the
Mongols and many parts of China, the Middle East and Europe saw in Genghis
Khan’s conquests of the inhabited world the ‘wrath of God’, the beginning of the Day
of Judgement.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND

2. The pastoralists tended horses, sheep and, to a lesser extent, cattle, goats and
camels. They nomadised in the steppes of Central Asia in a tract of land in the area
of the modern state of Mongolia.

3. This was (and still is) a majestic landscape with wide horizons, rolling plains, ringed
by the snow-capped Altai mountains to the west, the arid Gobi desert in the south
and drained by the Onon and Selenga rivers and myriad springs from the melting
snows of the hills in the north and the west.

4. The hunter-gatherers resided to the north of the pastoralists in the Siberian forests.
They were a humbler body of people than the pastoralists, making a living from trade
in furs of animals trapped in the summer months.

5. There were extremes of temperature in the entire region: harsh, long winters followed
by brief, dry summers. Agriculture was possible in the pastoral regions during short
parts of the year but the Mongols (unlike some of the Turks further west) did not take
to farming.
 rule of father

6. Neither the pastoral nor the hunting-gathering economies could sustain dense
population settlements and as a result the region possessed no cities.

7. Ethnic and language ties united the Mongol people but the scarce resources meant
that their society was divided into patrilineal lineages; the richer families were larger,
possessed more animals and pasture lands. They therefore had many followers and
were more influential in local politics.

8. Periodic natural calamities – either unusually harsh, cold winters when game and
stored provisions ran out or drought which parched the grasslands – would force
families to forage further afield leading to conflict over pasture lands and predatory
raids in search of livestock.

9. Groups of families would occasionally ally for offensive and defensive purposes
around richer and more powerful lineages but, barring the few exceptions, these
confederacies were usually small and short-lived.

ATTILA
1. The size of Genghis Khan’s confederation of Mongol and Turkish tribes was perhaps
a situation in matched in size only by that which had been stitched together in the fifth century by
which states or Attila (d. 453).
people join
together for a
2. Unlike Attila, however, Genghis Khan’s political system was far more durable and
particular
purpose, usually survived its founder. It was stable enough to counter larger armies with superior
related to equipment in China, Iran and eastern Europe.
politics
3. And, as they established control over these regions, the Mongols administered
complex agrarian economies and urban settlements – sedentary societies – that
were quite distant from their own social experience and habitat.

EARLY LIFE
Born- around 1. Genghis Khan was born sometime around 1162 near the Onon river in the north of
1162
present-day Mongolia. Named Temujin, he was the son of Yesugei, the chieftain of
Death- 1227
POB- near Onon the Kiyat, a group of families related to the Borjigid clan. His father was murdered at
river in the north an early age and his mother, Oelun-eke, raised Temujin, his brothers and
of present day step-brothers in great hardship.
Mongolia
Named Temujin 2. The following decade was full of reversals – Temujin was captured and enslaved and
soon after his marriage, his wife, Borte, was kidnapped, and he had to fight to
Father- Yesugei recover her. During these years of hardship he also managed to make important
Mother- Oelun-eke friends. The young Boghurchu was his first ally and remained a trusted friend;
Wife- Borte Jamuqa, his blood brother (anda), was another. Temujin also restored old alliances
Trusted friend and with the ruler of the Kereyits, Tughril/Ong Khan, his father’s old blood-brother.
first ally-
Boghurchu POLITICAL ALLIANCES
Blood brother- 1. Through the 1180s and 1190s, Temujin remained an ally of Ong Khan and used the
Jamuqa
alliance to defeat powerful adversaries like Jamuqa, his old friend who had become a
Father's blood
brother- ruler of hostile foe. It was after defeating him that Temujin felt confident enough to move
Kereyits,
Tughril/Ong Khan
1180s- 1190s-
Temujin
remained an ally
of Ong Khan

1203- defeat of against other tribes: the powerful Tatars (his father’s assassins), the Kereyits and
the Kereyits and Ong Khan himself in 1203. The final defeat of the Naiman people and the powerful
Ong Khan Jamuqa in 1206, left Temujin as the dominant personality in the politics of the steppe
lands.
1206- defeat of
Naiman people
and Jamuqa 2. A position that was recognised at an assembly of Mongol chieftains (quriltai) where
he was proclaimed the ‘Great Khan of the Mongols’ (Qa’an) with the title Genghis
1209- Defeat of Khan, the ‘Oceanic Khan’ or ‘Universal Ruler’.
Hsi Hsia dynasty
of Tibetan origin 3. The first of his concerns was to conquer China, divided at this time into three realms:
in the north-west the Hsi Hsia people of Tibetan origin in the north-western provinces; the Jurchen
provinces
whose Chin dynasty ruled north China from Peking; the Sung dynasty who controlled
1213- Great Wall south China. By 1209, the Hsi Hsia were defeated, the ‘Great Wall of China’ was
of China was breached in 1213 and Peking sacked in 1215. Long drawn-out battles against the
breached Chin continued until 1234 but Genghis Khan was satisfied enough with the progress
of his campaigns to return to his Mongolian homeland in 1216 and leave the military
1215- Pecking affairs of the region to his subordinates.
sacked
4. After the defeat in 1218 of the Qara Khita who controlled the Tien Shan mountains
till 1234- Battles
north-west of China, Mongol dominions reached the Amu Darya, and the states of
against the Chin
dynasty (North) Transoxiana and Khwarazm. Sultan Muhammad, the ruler of Khwarazm, felt the fury
by his of Genghis Khan’s rage when he executed Mongol envoys. In the campaigns
subordinates between 1219 and 1221 the great cities – Otrar, Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh,
Gurganj, Merv, Nishapur and Herat – surrendered to the Mongol forces. Towns that
1216- Genghis resisted were devastated.
Khan returned to
his Mongolian
5. Mongol forces in pursuit of Sultan Muhammad pushed into Azerbaijan, defeated
homeland
Russian forces at the Crimea and encircled the Caspian Sea. Another wing followed
1218- defeat of the Sultan’s son, Jalaluddin, into Afghanistan and the Sindh province. At the banks of
Qara Khita (Tien the Indus, Genghis Khan considered returning to Mongolia through North India and
Shan mountains Assam, but the heat, the natural habitat and the ill portents reported by his Shaman
(North-West soothsayer made him change his mind.
China)
NISHAPUR
At Nishapur, where a Mongol prince was killed during the siege operation, Genghis Khan
commanded that the ‘town should be laid waste in such a manner that the site could be
ploughed upon; and that in the exaction of vengeance [for the death of the prince] not even
cats and dogs should be left alive’.

MILITARY ACHIEVEMENTS
1. Genghis Khan died in 1227, having spent most of his life in military combat. His
military achievements were astounding and they were largely a result of his ability to
innovate and transform different aspects of steppe combat into extremely effective
military strategies.

2. The horse-riding skills of the Mongols and the Turks provided speed and mobility to
the army; their abilities as rapid-shooting archers from horseback were further
perfected during regular hunting expeditions which doubled as field manoeuvres.
3. The steppe cavalry had always travelled light and moved quickly, but now it brought
all its knowledge of the terrain and the weather to do the unimaginable: they carried
out campaigns in the depths of winter, treating frozen rivers as highways to enemy
cities and camps.

4. Nomads were conventionally at a loss against fortified encampments but Genghis