Driving their enemies before them

The Mongol Empire was the largest in history. Its borders stretched from East Asia to Europe. It ruled one-quarter of the world’s people and more than 20 percent of its landmass. Today, there are 28 countries on land that once belonged to the Mongols.

The empire was an all-powerful fighting force. Entire cities surrendered in fear of its large armies. They were led by the great conqueror Genghis Khan. He believed that a god called Tengri wanted him to take over the world in his name.

Yet there is more to the Mongol Empire than its battles. The empire created important trade routes and supported merchants. It also enabled great advancements in medicine and science.

The world conqueror

At the start of the thirteenth century, the Mongols were a collection of small tribes. Their populations were low, and they did not have a central leader. They grazed animals on grasslands north of China. Today, this area is known as Mongolia. These grasslands were far from major trading ports. They sold only a small amount of goods to their neighbors. So how did these divided tribes become the world’s largest empire?

Solving this question is like solving a murder mystery. We need a motive, a weapon, and an opportunity. The motive was climate change. A terrible drought affected Mongol grasslands in the late twelfth century. The tribes moved farther south to find food. Here, they attacked farming communities. As for weapons, the Mongol peoples did not yet have an enormous army. But they were excellent horseback riders, which gave them an advantage.

The first Mongol leader was known as Genghis Khan.¹ He was another powerful weapon. His birth name was Temujin, and he was still a boy when his father was killed. His tribe left him, and he was seized by an enemy group. However, Temujin managed to escape. His skill as a military leader won him many victories. By 1206, he united the Mongols as their ruler. A council of chiefs renamed Temujin Genghis Khan. His new name means “universal emperor.”

After uniting the tribes, Genghis Khan became very powerful. He began one of the largest war plans the world has ever seen. Soon, the Mongol Empire became too big for one person to rule. Over the course of the thirteenth century, it was divided into four states known as khanates with local leaders called khans. The states were:

1. The khanate of the Great Khan, centered in Mongolia and China
2. The Chagatai khanate, in Central Asia
3. The Ilkhanate, in southwestern Asia
4. The khanate of the Golden Horde, the western part of the Mongol Empire

For a time, the Great Khan ruled over the other khanates. Eventually, the various khans began to fight among themselves. This weakened the Mongols’ power as a whole. Still, for more than 100 years after Genghis Khan’s death, the Mongols controlled Eurasia.

The networks of Mongol rule

The Mongols were cruel fighters. However, they also ruled their large empire through trade. They controlled the Silk Road system of trade routes. The Silk Road stretched across Asia and into Europe. Knowledge and goods traveled freely across the routes. Merchants and traders lived well as the Mongols made trade safer and cheaper.

Genghis’ son Ögedei Khan was the second leader of the Mongol Empire. He conquered the northern Jin dynasty of China in 1234. Genghis Khan’s grandson defeated the southern Song dynasty in 1279. This gave the Mongols full control of China. It became the most important center of manufacturing in the world. As a result, more items traveled from the east to western Eurasia and trade routes grew.

Information also moved along Mongol trade routes. Knowledge of mathematics and medicine made its way from the Middle East to Europe. The Italian city-states adopted the Arabic numbering system. These are the digits of 0 through 9 that we use today.

The Mongol khans were generally tolerant of different religions. For the most part, people were allowed to worship as they pleased. Monks and missionaries traveled the trade routes. Merchants brought their religions and cultures with them, too.

Merchants and priests were not the only people who moved across the land. Mongol leaders recruited experts from across Eurasia. They brought in thousands of designers and artisans to build their cities. An artisan is a person skilled in handcraft. Foreign scholars and doctors were given jobs in the Mongol court. The khans even sent Muslim tax collectors into China.

The Mongols quickly adopted the customs and technologies of conquered peoples. If an enemy had better weapons, the Mongols learned to use them. The same was true of science and medicine. These two areas of study made advances under Mongol rule.

Genghis Khan took astronomers from other lands into his service. Astronomers are scientists who study stars and planets. The Mongols believed they could learn the future by reading the skies. These astronomers shared information from across the world. The Mongol rulers hired Muslim and Chinese astronomers. They also built observatories. An observatory is a building used for studying the sun, moon, planets, and stars.

These experts were an important part to the Mongols’ plans to rule the land. However, the experts were not always free. Mongol rulers often took people against their will. Many thousands were forced to follow the khans back to their cities.

The verdict of history

So, were the Mongols good or bad? As with much of history, the answer depends on your point of view. Mongol armies acted with great force and killed millions of people. Entire cities and centers of learning were destroyed. You would not like the Mongols if you were one of the many people they enslaved.

There were also many good parts of Mongol rule. They created a 100-year-long period of peace. The east and west ends of Afro-Eurasia were more connected than ever. New ideas and new goods traveled easily across the largest landmass on Earth. New technologies and navigational skills made their way west, too. These technologies would one day allow Europeans to take lands overseas. Some historians even say the Mongols brought gunpowder to Europe.

However, these new connections also brought disease. The expansion of trade under Mongol rule spread an outbreak of the bubonic plague across the world. This disease was known as the Black Death. It killed nearly everyone who caught it. In Europe, as many as 50 million people died from the illness.

The terror of the Black Death combined with civil war began to weaken the Mongol khanates. In 1368, the Mongol Yuan dynasty fell to the Chinese Ming dynasty. In a dynasty, a single family rules a country. The other khanates began their decline and were replaced over time by new states. By 1368, the Mongol Empire was finished.

1 In English, alternative spellings of the name Ghengis include Chinggis, Chingis, Jenghiz, and Jinghis. “Khan” is a title meaning “ruler.”