Our Mongol predicament

 

"Djingis khan: Erövraren och hans värld" is a recent book by Swedish professor Dick Harrison about - you no doubt guessed it - Genghis Khan, the 13th century Mongol warlord who began the creation of what became the world´s greatest land empire ever. Harrison points out that surprisingly little is *really* known about him. What did his name even mean? Or his original name, Temüjin? When was he born, where is his grave, and how did he look like? All portraits of Genghis Khan are fantasy. 

That being said, Harrison has deep dived in the scholarly literature and written an easily accesible introduction to this notorious character (only available in Swedish). Temüjin must have been an extraordinarily capable leader and warrior, since he managed to unite previously bickering tribes in Mongolia into a "state" and world-conquering army. Steppe nomads had been important before in world history (Attila comes to mind), but Genghis Khan took things to an entirely new level, perfecting the military tactics that usually gave the nomads an advantage in battle against armies of "normal" kingdoms and empires. He also skillfully introduced non-nomad tactics, making the Mongol armies dangerous both in the open field and during sieges. Non-nomad administrators were employed to run the day-to-day business of the Khan´s expanding empire, and skilled craftsmen were forcibly impressed and sent to the Mongolian heartland from conquered regions. Severe repression against anyone who dared to question orders (of any kind) also played an important role in the success story. A peculiar detail is that the laws of the Mongol Empire were secret! How do you follow a secret law code?

What made Genghis Khan most notorious was, of course, his genocidal tactics. The Mongol armies frequently slaughtered the entire population of conquered cities, as a warning to anyone who would dare to resist them. On land, the Mongols were largely undefeated, and after the death of Genghis, pushed as far west as Poland, Hungary and the outskirts of Vienna. The standard interpretation is that medieval Europe wouldn´t stand a chance had the Mongols chosen to continue their invasion (Wikipedia quotes some recent studies which disagree). However, when Genghis Khan´s grandson Kublai Khan attempted to take Japan and Java, which necessitated sea power, the Mongols were actually defeated. Still, for centuries, the Mongols and their successors ("Tartars", Ilkhanids, Mughals and so on) were the most important cluster of land powers in Eurasia. The original Mongol Empire at its height stretched from East Europe and Anatolia all the way to China and Korea (but excluding India). 

What strikes me when reading Harrison´s overview is the contradictory nature of Mongol rule. On the one hand, genocide, plunder and enslavement. On the other, a "Pax Mongolica" which stimulated long-distance trade and meetings between civilizations (Marco Polo visited China when it was ruled by Kublai). Somewhat bizarrely for an empire based on the slaughter of entire populations, there was almost complete religious tolerance. Some of the Mongols were actually Nestorian Christians. Genghis Khan was a traditional shamanist, but tolerated Islam, Christianity, Buddhism,Taoism and so on. The only exception to the rule was halal slaughter, which Genghis found personally distasteful. Muslim halal butchers were sentenced to death by being butchered themselves! 

The Western view of Genghis Khan has been strangely contradictory. In medieval Western Europe (never conquered by the Mongols), the khan was seen as a valiant warrior and wise ruler. During the crusades, the Christian princes hoped that the Mongols would ally with Christentum and attack the Muslims in the rear. The strange legend of Prester John is connected to these hopes. Prester John was supposedly a priest-king ruling a vast Christian empire somewhere in the East. At other times, Genghis Khan, the Mongols and the "Tartars" (compare Tartaros - the lowest level of the underworld in Greek mythology) were seen as menacing and genocidal. The conversion of the Mongols to Islam presumably didn´t improve their reputation. Today, the Western understanding of Genghis Khan is mostly on the genocidal side, although he is sometimes depicted as a comic character. Harrison actually mentions the German hit song "Dschinghis Khan" from 1979! I assume some people might dress up as the old butcher at Halloween parties. Meanwhile in Mongolia - today a very weak nation - Genghis Khan is a national hero, and I think he is venerated in Central Asia as well (sometimes together with Timur Lenk). 

If anything, the life of Genghis Khan and the history of the Mongol Empire shows the contradictory and perhaps absurd character of the human condition...